B-meson decay constants: a more complete picture from full lattice QCD

We extend the picture of $B$-meson decay constants obtained in lattice QCD beyond those of the $B$, $B_s$ and $B_c$ to give the first full lattice QCD results for the $B^*$, $B^*_s$ and $B^*_c$. We use improved NonRelativistic QCD for the valence $b$ quark and the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action for the lighter quarks on gluon field configurations that include the effect of $u/d$, $s$ and $c$ quarks in the sea with $u/d$ quark masses going down to physical values. For the ratio of vector to pseudoscalar decay constants, we find $f_{B^*}/f_B$ = 0.941(26), $f_{B^*_s}/f_{B_s}$ = 0.953(23) (both $2\sigma$ less than 1.0) and $f_{B^*_c}/f_{B_c}$ = 0.988(27). Taking correlated uncertainties into account we see clear indications that the ratio increases as the mass of the lighter quark increases. We compare our results to those using the HISQ formalism for all quarks and find good agreement both on decay constant values when the heaviest quark is a $b$ and on the dependence on the mass of the heaviest quark in the region of the $b$. Finally, we give an overview plot of decay constants for gold-plated mesons, the most complete picture of these hadronic parameters to date.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures. Minor updates to the discussion in several places and some additional reference

Molecular orbital calculations of two-electron states for P donor solid-state spin qubits

We theoretically study the Hilbert space structure of two neighbouring P donor electrons in silicon-based quantum computer architectures. To use electron spins as qubits, a crucial condition is the isolation of the electron spins from their environment, including the electronic orbital degrees of freedom. We provide detailed electronic structure calculations of both the single donor electron wave function and the two-electron pair wave function. We adopted a molecular orbital method for the two-electron problem, forming a basis with the calculated single donor electron orbitals. Our two-electron basis contains many singlet and triplet orbital excited states, in addition to the two simple ground state singlet and triplet orbitals usually used in the Heitler-London approximation to describe the two-electron donor pair wave function. We determined the excitation spectrum of the two-donor system, and study its dependence on strain, lattice position and inter donor separation. This allows us to determine how isolated the ground state singlet and triplet orbitals are from the rest of the excited state Hilbert space. In addition to calculating the energy spectrum, we are also able to evaluate the exchange coupling between the two donor electrons, and the double occupancy probability that both electrons will reside on the same P donor. These two quantities are very important for logical operations in solid-state quantum computing devices, as a large exchange coupling achieves faster gating times, whilst the magnitude of the double occupancy probability can affect the error rate.Comment: 15 pages (2-column

Multicycle dynamics of fault systems and static and dynamic triggering of earthquakes

Dynamic simulations of rupture propagation and multiple earthquake cycles for varying fault geometries are presented. We investigate the role of both dynamic and static stress changes on earthquake triggering. Dynamic stress triggering of earthquakes is caused by the passage of seismic waves, whereas static stress triggering is due to net slippage on a fault resulting from an earthquake. Static stress changes represented by a Coulomb failure function and its relationship to seismicity rate change is a relatively well-known mechanism, whereas the physical origin of dynamic triggering remains one of the least understood aspects of earthquake nucleation. We investigate these mechanisms by analysing seismicity patterns with varying fault separation, geometry and with and without dynamic triggering present

Electron Exchange Coupling for Single Donor Solid-State Qubits

Inter-valley interference between degenerate conduction band minima has been shown to lead to oscillations in the exchange energy between neighbouring phosphorus donor electron states in silicon \cite{Koiller02,Koiller02A}. These same effects lead to an extreme sensitivity of the exchange energy on the relative orientation of the donor atoms, an issue of crucial importance in the construction silicon-based spin quantum computers. In this article we calculate the donor electron exchange coupling as a function of donor position incorporating the full Bloch structure of the Kohn-Luttinger electron wavefunctions. It is found that due to the rapidly oscillating nature of the terms they produce, the periodic part of the Bloch functions can be safely ignored in the Heitler-London integrals as was done by Koiller et. al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88,027903(2002),Phys. Rev. B. 66,115201(2002)], significantly reducing the complexity of calculations. We address issues of fabrication and calculate the expected exchange coupling between neighbouring donors that have been implanted into the silicon substrate using an 15keV ion beam in the so-called 'top down' fabrication scheme for a Kane solid-state quantum computer. In addition we calculate the exchange coupling as a function of the voltage bias on control gates used to manipulate the electron wavefunctions and implement quantum logic operations in the Kane proposal, and find that these gate biases can be used to both increase and decrease the magnitude of the exchange coupling between neighbouring donor electrons. The zero-bias results reconfirm those previously obtained by Koiller.Comment: 10 Pages, 8 Figures. To appear in Physical Review

Impurity conduction in phosphorus-doped buried-channel silicon-on-insulator field-effect transistors

We investigate transport in phosphorus-doped buried-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors at temperatures between 10 and 295 K. In a range of doping concentration between around 2.1 and 8.7 x 1017 cm-3, we find that a clear peak emerges in the conductance versus gate-voltage curves at low temperature. In addition, temperature dependence measurements reveal that the conductance obeys a variable-range-hopping law up to an unexpectedly high temperature of over 100 K. The symmetric dual-gate configuration of the silicon-on-insulator we use allows us to fully characterize the vertical-bias dependence of the conductance. Comparison to computer simulation of the phosphorus impurity band depth-profile reveals how the spatial variation of the impurity-band energy determines the hopping conduction in transistor structures. We conclude that the emergence of the conductance peak and the high-temperature variable-range hopping originate from the band bending and its change by the gate bias. Moreover, the peak structure is found to be strongly related to the density of states (DOS) of the phosphorus impurity band, suggesting the possibility of performing a novel spectroscopy for the DOS of phosphorus, the dopant of paramount importance in Si technology, through transport experiments.Comment: 9 figure

esys-Escript User’s Guide: Solving Partial Differential Equations with Escript and Finley Release - 3.2.1 (r3613)

esys.escript is a python-based environment for implementing mathematical models, in particular those based on coupled, non-linear, time-dependent partial differential equations. It consists of four major components • esys.escript core library • finite element solver esys.finley (which uses fast vendor-supplied solvers or our paso linear solver library) • the meshing interface esys.pycad • a model library. The current version supports parallelization through both MPI for distributed memory and OpenMP for distributed shared memory. Please see Chapter 2 for changes to the way to launch esys.escript scripts. For more info on this and other changes from previous releases see Appendix B. If you use this software in your research, then we would appreciate (but do not require) a citation. Some relevant references can be found in Appendix D

Electric Field Control of Shallow Donor Impurities in Silicon

We present a tight-binding study of donor impurities in Si, demonstrating the adequacy of this approach for this problem by comparison with effective mass theory and experimental results. We consider the response of the system to an applied electric field: donors near a barrier material and in the presence of an uniform electric field may undergo two different ionization regimes according to the distance of the impurity to the Si/barrier interface. We show that for impurities ~ 5 nm below the barrier, adiabatic ionization is possible within switching times of the order of one picosecond, while for impurities ~ 10 nm or more below the barrier, no adiabatic ionization may be carried out by an external uniform electric field. Our results are discussed in connection with proposed Si:P quantum computer architectures.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR