484 research outputs found
Glass Transition in a Two-Dimensional Electron System in Silicon in a Parallel Magnetic Field
Studies of low-frequency resistance noise show that the glassy freezing of
the two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in Si in the vicinity of the
metal-insulator transition (MIT) persists in parallel magnetic fields B of up
to 9 T. At low B, both the glass transition density and , the
critical density for the MIT, increase with B such that the width of the
metallic glass phase () increases with B. At higher B, where the
2DES is spin polarized, and no longer depend on B. Our results
demonstrate that charge, as opposed to spin, degrees of freedom are responsible
for glassy ordering of the 2DES near the MIT.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Metal-insulator transition and glassy behavior in two-dimensional electron systems
Studies of low-frequency resistance noise demonstrate that glassy freezing
occurs in a two-dimensional electron system in silicon in the vicinity of the
metal-insulator transition (MIT). The width of the metallic glass phase, which
separates the 2D metal and the (glassy) insulator, depends strongly on
disorder, becoming extremely small in high-mobility (low-disorder) samples. The
glass transition is manifested by a sudden and dramatic slowing down of the
electron dynamics, and by a very abrupt change to the sort of statistics
characteristic of complicated multistate systems. In particular, the behavior
of the second spectrum, an important fourth-order noise statistic, indicates
the presence of long-range correlations between fluctuators in the glassy
phase, consistent with the hierarchical picture of glassy dynamics.Comment: Contribution to conference on "Noise as a tool for studying
materials" (SPIE), Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 2003; 15 pages, 12 figs.
(includes some low-quality figs; send e-mail to get high-quality figs.
Unusual persistence of superconductivity against high magnetic fields in the strongly-correlated iron-chalcogenide film FeTe:O
We report an unusual persistence of superconductivity against high magnetic
fields in the iron chalcogenide film FeTe:O below ~ 2.5 K. Instead of
saturating like a mean-field behavior with a single order parameter, the
measured low-temperature upper critical field increases progressively,
suggesting a large supply of superconducting states accessible via magnetic
field or low-energy thermal fluctuations. We demonstrate that superconducting
states of finite momenta can be realized within the conventional theory,
despite its questionable applicability. Our findings reveal a fundamental
characteristic of superconductivity and electronic structure in the
strongly-correlated iron-based superconductors.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Characterizing the Cluster Lens Population
We present a detailed investigation into which properties of CDM halos make
them effective strong gravitational lenses. Strong lensing cross sections of
878 clusters from an N-body simulation are measured by ray tracing through
13,594 unique projections. We measure concentrations, axis ratios,
orientations, and the amount of substructure of each cluster, and compare the
lensing weighted distribution of each quantity to that of the cluster
population as a whole. The concentrations of lensing clusters are on average
34% larger than the typical cluster in the Universe. Despite this bias, the
anomalously high concentrations (c >14) recently measured by several groups,
appear to be inconsistent with the concentration distribution in our
simulations, which predict < 2% of lensing clusters should have concentrations
this high. No correlation is found between lensing cross section and the amount
of substructure. We introduce several types of simplified dark matter halos,
and use them to isolate which properties of CDM clusters make them effective
lenses. Projections of halo substructure onto small radii and the large scale
mass distribution of clusters do not significantly influence cross sections.
The abundance of giant arcs is primarily determined by the mass distribution
within an average overdensity of ~ 10,000. A multiple lens plane ray tracing
algorithm is used to show that projections of large scale structure increase
the giant arc abundance by a modest amount <7%. We revisit the question of
whether there is an excess of giant arcs behind high redshift clusters in the
RCS survey and find that the number of high redshift (z > 0.6) lenses is in
good agreement with LCDM, although our simulations predict more low redshift (z
< 0.6) lenses than were observed. (abridged)Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures. Submitted to Ap
Investigating Binary Properties with Next-Generation Microlensing Surveys
We explore the usefulness of future gravitational microlensing surveys in the
study of binary properties such as the binary fraction and the distributions of
binary separation and mass ratio by using the binary sample detectable through
a channel of repeating events. For this, we estimate the rate of repeating
microlensing eventstoward the Galactic bulge field based on standard models of
dynamical and physical distributions of Galactic matter combined with models of
binary separation and mass function. From this, we find that the total number
of repeating events expected to be detected from -year space-based
surveys will be --400, that is --50 times higher than the
rate of current surveys. We find that the high detection rate is due to the
greatly improved sensitivity to events associated with faint source stars and
low-magnification events. We find that the separation range of the binaries to
be covered by the repeating events will extend up to 100 AU. Therefore, the
future lensing surveys will provide a homogeneous sample that will allow to
investigate the statistical properties of Galactic binaries unbiased by
brightness of the binary components.Comment: total 6 pages, including 4 figures, ApJ, in pres
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