Scanning tunnelling spectroscopy of electron resonators

The electronic structure of artificial Mn atom arrays on Ag(111) is characterized in detail with scanning tunnelling spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging at low temperature. We demonstrate the degree to which variations in geometry may be used to control spatial and spectral distributions of surface state electrons confined within the arrays, how these are influenced by atoms placed within the structure and how the ability to induce spectral features at specific energies may be exploited through lineshape analyses to deduce quasiparticle lifetimes near the Fermi level. Through extensive comparison of $dI/dV$ maps and spectra we demonstrate the utility of a model based upon two-dimensional s-wave scatterers for describing and predicting the characteristics of specific resonators

On the Computation of EXIT Characteristics for Symbol-Based Iterative Decoding

In this paper we propose an efficient method for computing index-based extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts, which are useful for estimating the convergence properties of non-binary iterative decoding. A standard method is to apply <i>a priori</i> reliability information to the <i>a posteriori</i> probability (APP) constituent decoder and compute the resulting average extrinsic information at the decoder output via multidimensional histogram measurements. However, this technique is only reasonable for very small index lengths as the complexity of this approach grows exponentially with the index length. We show that by averaging over a function of the extrinsic APPs for a long block the extrinsic information can be estimated with very low complexity. In contrast to using histogram measurements this method allows to generate EXIT charts even for larger index alphabets. Examples for a non-binary serial concatenated code and for turbo trellis-coded modulation, resp., demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach

Focussing quantum states

Does the size of atoms present a lower limit to the size of electronic structures that can be fabricated in solids? This limit can be overcome by using devices that exploit quantum mechanical scattering of electron waves at atoms arranged in focussing geometries on selected surfaces. Calculations reveal that features smaller than a hydrogen atom can be obtained. These structures are potentially useful for device applications and offer a route to the fabrication of ultrafine and well defined tips for scanning tunneling microscopy.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The effect of leaf area and crop level on the concentration of amino acids and total nitrogen in 'Thompson Seedless' grapes

20 to 50% of the leaves and 25 to 75% of the clusters on 'Thompson Seedless' vines were removed 12 to 16 days after anthesis. In addition, 25 and 50% of the   leaves on other vines were removed 35 and 58 days after anthesis, with no cluster thinning.Total soluble solids in fruits from vines with less than 5 cm2 of leaf surface per gram of fruits was markedly reduced, while concentration in fruits from vines with a ratio above 10 was considerably higher, compared to the concentration in fruits from vines with ratios intermediate between these two values. The concentrations of arginine, proline, total free amino acids, and total N in berry juice were greatly increased by reducing the crop load. Also, the concentration of each of these substances increased during fruit ripening.A significant correlation between leaf area per vine and level of arginine in the juice was obtained. The concentration of proline in the juice was highly correlated with fruit maturity (°B) and with leaf area per unit weight of fruits. Total nitrogen was also correlated with leaf area per unit weight of fruits. Between 4 and 12 cm2 leaf area per gram of fruits there was a linear increase in the concentration of proline and total nitrogen in berry juice, while above 12 cm2 there was generally little further increase in the level of these substances. The ratio of arginine to proline decreased with fruit maturity and with smaller crop weights per vine. Total free amino acids accounted for 64 to 75% of the total nitrogen in the juice of grapes during the fruit-ripening period. Defoliation within 16 days after anthesis reduced crop yields, while later defoliations did not significantly reduce yields

Analysis and Design of Tuned Turbo Codes

It has been widely observed that there exists a fundamental trade-off between the minimum (Hamming) distance properties and the iterative decoding convergence behavior of turbo-like codes. While capacity achieving code ensembles typically are asymptotically bad in the sense that their minimum distance does not grow linearly with block length, and they therefore exhibit an error floor at moderate-to-high signal to noise ratios, asymptotically good codes usually converge further away from channel capacity. In this paper, we introduce the concept of tuned turbo codes, a family of asymptotically good hybrid concatenated code ensembles, where asymptotic minimum distance growth rates, convergence thresholds, and code rates can be traded-off using two tuning parameters, {\lambda} and {\mu}. By decreasing {\lambda}, the asymptotic minimum distance growth rate is reduced in exchange for improved iterative decoding convergence behavior, while increasing {\lambda} raises the asymptotic minimum distance growth rate at the expense of worse convergence behavior, and thus the code performance can be tuned to fit the desired application. By decreasing {\mu}, a similar tuning behavior can be achieved for higher rate code ensembles.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Lifetimes of electrons in the Shockley surface state band of Ag(111)

We present a theoretical many-body analysis of the electron-electron (e-e) inelastic damping rate $\Gamma$ of electron-like excitations in the Shockley surface state band of Ag(111). It takes into account ab-initio band structures for both bulk and surface states. $\Gamma$ is found to increase more rapidly as a function of surface state energy E than previously reported, thus leading to an improved agreement with experimental data

Model study of adsorbed metallic quantum dots: Na on Cu(111)

We model electronic properties of the second monolayer Na adatom islands (quantum dots) on the Cu(111) surface covered homogeneously by the first Na monolayer. An axially-symmetric three-dimensional jellium model, taking into account the effects due to the first Na monolayer and the Cu substrate, has been developed. The electronic structure is solved within the local-density approximation of the density-functional theory using a real-space multigrid method. The model enables the study of systems consisting of thousands of Na-atoms. The results for the local density of states are compared with differential conductance ($dI/dV$) spectra and constant current topographs from Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. For better quality figures, download http://www.fyslab.hut.fi/~tto/cylart1.pd