Magnetic structure of Ba(TiO)Cu4_4(PO4_4)4_4 probed using spherical neutron polarimetry

The antiferromagnetic compound Ba(TiO)Cu$_4$(PO$_4$)$_4$ contains square cupola of corner-sharing CuO$_4$ plaquettes, which were proposed to form effective quadrupolar order. To identify the magnetic structure, we have performed spherical neutron polarimetry measurements. Based on symmetry analysis and careful measurements we conclude that the orientation of the Cu$^{2+}$ spins form a non-collinear in-out structure with spins approximately perpendicular to the CuO$_4$ motif. Strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction naturally lends itself to explain this phenomenon. The identification of the ground state magnetic structure should serve well for future theoretical and experimental studies into this and closely related compounds.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Effect of a Weak Electromagnetic Field on Particle Acceleration by a Rotating Black Hole

We study high energy charged particle collisions near the horizon in an electromagnetic field around a rotating black hole and reveal the condition of the fine-tuning to obtain arbitrarily large center-of-mass (CM) energy. We demonstrate that the CM energy can be arbitrarily large as the uniformly magnetized rotating black hole arbitrarily approaches maximal rotation under the situation that a charged particle plunges from the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) and collides with another particle near the horizon. Recently, Frolov [Phys. Rev. D 85, 024020 (2012)] proposed that the CM energy can be arbitrarily high if the magnetic field is arbitrarily strong, when a particle collides with a charged particle orbiting the ISCO with finite energy near the horizon of a uniformly magnetized Schwarzschild black hole. We show that the charged particle orbiting the ISCO around a spinning black hole needs arbitrarily high energy in the strong field limit. This suggests that Frolov's process is unstable against the black hole spin. Nevertheless, we see that magnetic fields may substantially promote the capability of rotating black holes as particle accelerators in astrophysical situations.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

Acceleration of colliding shells around a black hole: Validity of the test particle approximation in the Banados-Silk-West process

Recently, Banados, Silk and West (BSW) showed that the total energy of two colliding test particles has no upper limit in their center of mass frame in the neighborhood of an extreme Kerr black hole, even if these particles were at rest at infinity in the infinite past. We call this mechanism the BSW mechanism or BSW process. The large energy of such particles would generate strong gravity, although this has not been taken into account in the BSW analysis. A similar mechanism is seen in the collision of two spherical test shells in the neighborhood of an extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole. In this paper, in order to draw some implications concerning the effects of gravity generated by colliding particles in the BSW process, we study a collision of two spherical dust shells, since their gravity can be exactly treated. We show that the energy of two colliding shells in the center of mass frame observable from infinity has an upper limit due to their own gravity. Our result suggests that an upper limit also exists for the total energy of colliding particles in the center of mass frame in the observable domain in the BSW process due the gravity of the particles.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, title change

Anisotropic Electronic Structure of the Kondo Semiconductor CeFe2Al10 Studied by Optical Conductivity

We report temperature-dependent polarized optical conductivity [$\sigma(\omega)$] spectra of CeFe$_2$Al$_{10}$, which is a reference material for CeRu$_2$Al$_{10}$ and CeOs$_2$Al$_{10}$ with an anomalous magnetic transition at 28 K. The $\sigma(\omega)$ spectrum along the b-axis differs greatly from that in the $ac$-plane, indicating that this material has an anisotropic electronic structure. At low temperatures, in all axes, a shoulder structure due to the optical transition across the hybridization gap between the conduction band and the localized $4f$ states, namely $c$-$f$ hybridization, appears at 55 meV. However, the gap opening temperature and the temperature of appearance of the quasiparticle Drude weight are strongly anisotropic indicating the anisotropic Kondo temperature. The strong anisotropic nature in both electronic structure and Kondo temperature is considered to be relevant the anomalous magnetic phase transition in CeRu$_2$Al$_{10}$ and CeOs$_2$Al$_{10}$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Chiral Zeromodes on Vortex-type Intersecting Heterotic Five-branes

We solve the gaugino Dirac equation on a smeared intersecting five-brane solution in E_8\times E_8 heterotic string theory to search for localized chiral zeromodes on the intersection. The background is chosen to depend on the full two-dimensional overall transverse coordinates to the branes. Under some appropriate boundary conditions, we compute the complete spectrum of zeromodes to find that, among infinite towers of Fourier modes, there exist only three localized normalizable zeromodes, one of which has opposite chirality to the other two. This agrees with the result previously obtained in the domain-wall type solution, supporting the claim that there exists one net chiral zeromode localized on the heterotic five-brane system.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure