Radius dependent shift of surface plasmon frequency in large metallic nanospheres: theory and experiment

Theoretical description of oscillations of electron liquid in large metallic nanospheres (with radius of few tens nm) is formulated within random-phase-approximation semiclassical scheme. Spectrum of plasmons is determined including both surface and volume type excitations. It is demonstrated that only surface plasmons of dipole type can be excited by homogeneous dynamical electric field. The Lorentz friction due to irradiation of electro-magnetic wave by plasmon oscillations is analyzed with respect to the sphere dimension. The resulting shift of resonance frequency turns out to be strongly sensitive to the sphere radius. The form of e-m response of the system of metallic nanospheres embedded in the dielectric medium is found. The theoretical predictions are verified by a measurement of extinction of light due to plasmon excitations in nanosphere colloidal water solutions, for Au and Ag metallic components with radius from 10 to 75 nm. Theoretical predictions and experiments clearly agree in the positions of surface plasmon resonances and in an emergence of the first volume plasmon resonance in the e-m response of the system for limiting big nanosphere radii, when dipole approximation is not exact

Correlation between electrons and vortices in quantum dots

Exact many-body wave functions for quantum dots containing up to four interacting electrons are computed and we investigated the distribution of the wave function nodes, also called vortices. For this purpose, we evaluate the reduced wave function by fixing the positions of all but one electron and determine the locations of its zeros. We find that the zeros are strongly correlated with respect to each other and with respect to the position of the electrons and formulate rules describing their distribution. No multiple zeros are found, i.e. vortices with vorticity larger than one. Our exact calculations are compared to results extracted from the recently proposed rotating electron molecule (REM) wave functions

Emission spectrum of quasi-resonant laterally coupled quantum dots

We calculate the emission spectrum of neutral and charged excitons in a pair of laterally coupled InGaAs quantum dots with nearly degenerate energy levels. As the interdot distance decreases, a number of changes take place in the emission spectrum which can be used as indications of molecular coupling. These signatures ensue from the stronger tunnel-coupling of trions as compared to that of neutral excitons.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

The Future of Quark Matter at RHIC

Projected annual results for heavy particle and high-p_{T} correlation studies at future RHICII luminosities.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings for Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, Chin

Chiral Spin Textures of Strongly Interacting Particles in Quantum Dots

We probe for statistical and Coulomb induced spin textures among the low-lying states of repulsively-interacting particles confined to potentials that are both rotationally and time-reversal invariant. In particular, we focus on two-dimensional quantum dots and employ configuration-interaction techniques to directly compute the correlated many-body eigenstates of the system. We produce spatial maps of the single-particle charge and spin density and verify the annular structure of the charge density and the rotational invariance of the spin field. We further compute two-point spin correlations to determine the correlated structure of a single component of the spin vector field. In addition, we compute three-point spin correlation functions to uncover chiral structures. We present evidence for both chiral and quasi-topological spin textures within energetically degenerate subspaces in the three- and four-particle system.Comment: 13 pages, 17 figures, 1 tabl

Structural properties of electrons in quantum dots in high magnetic fields: Crystalline character of cusp states and excitation spectra

The crystalline or liquid character of the downward cusp states in N-electron parabolic quantum dots (QD's) at high magnetic fields is investigated using conditional probability distributions obtained from exact diagonalization. These states are of crystalline character for fractional fillings covering both low and high values, unlike the liquid Jastrow-Laughlin wave functions, but in remarkable agreement with the rotating-Wigner-molecule ones [Phys. Rev. B 66, 115315 (2002)]. The crystalline arrangement consists of concentric polygonal rings that rotate independently of each other, with the electrons on each ring rotating coherently. We show that the rotation stabilizes the Wigner molecule relative to the static one defined by the broken-symmetry unrestricted-Hartree-Fock solution. We discuss the non-rigid behavior of the rotating Wigner molecule and pertinent features of the excitation spectrum, including the occurrence of a gap between the ground and first excited states that underlies the incompressibility of the system. This leads us to conjecture that the rotating crystal (and not the static one) remains the relevant ground state for low fractional fillings even at the thermodynamic limit.Comment: Published version. Typos corrected. REVTEX4. 10 pages with 8 postscript figures (5 in color). For related papers, see http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~ph274cy

Creating excitonic entanglement in quantum dots through the optical Stark effect

We show that two initially non-resonant quantum dots may be brought into resonance by the application of a single detuned laser. This allows for control of the inter-dot interactions and the generation of highly entangled excitonic states on the picosecond timescale. Along with arbitrary single qubit manipulations, this system would be sufficient for the demonstration of a prototype excitonic quantum computer.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; published version, figure 3 improved, corrections to RWA derive