3,079 research outputs found
Exciting Andreev pairs in a superconducting atomic contact
The Josephson effect describes the flow of supercurrent in a weak link, such
as a tunnel junction, nanowire, or molecule, between two superconductors. It is
the basis for a variety of circuits and devices, with applications ranging from
medicine to quantum information. Currently, experiments using Josephson
circuits that behave like artificial atoms are revolutionizing the way we probe
and exploit the laws of quantum physics. Microscopically, the supercurrent is
carried by Andreev pair states, which are localized at the weak link. These
states come in doublets and have energies inside the superconducting gap.
Existing Josephson circuits are based on properties of just the ground state of
each doublet and so far the excited states have not been directly detected.
Here we establish their existence through spectroscopic measurements of
superconducting atomic contacts. The spectra, which depend on the atomic
configuration and on the phase difference between the superconductors, are in
complete agreement with theory. Andreev doublets could be exploited to encode
information in novel types of superconducting qubits.Comment: Submitted to Natur
Emergence of thin shell structure during collapse in isotropic coordinates
Numerical studies of gravitational collapse in isotropic coordinates have
recently shown an interesting connection between the gravitational Lagrangian
and black hole thermodynamics. A study of the actual spacetime was not the main
focus of this work and in particular, the rich and interesting structure of the
interior has not been investigated in much detail and remains largely unknown.
We elucidate its features by performing a numerical study of the spacetime in
isotropic coordinates during gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field.
The most salient feature to emerge is the formation of a thin shell of matter
just inside the apparent horizon. The energy density and Ricci scalar peak at
the shell and there is a jump discontinuity in the extrinsic curvature across
the apparent horizon, the hallmark that a thin shell is present in its
vicinity. At late stages of the collapse, the spacetime consists of two vacuum
regions separated by the thin shell. The interior is described by an
interesting collapsing isotropic universe. It tends towards a vacuum (never
reaches a perfect vacuum) and there is a slight inhomogeneity in the interior
that plays a crucial role in the collapse process as the areal radius tends to
zero. The spacetime evolves towards a curvature (physical) singularity in the
interior, both a Weyl and Ricci singularity. In the exterior, our numerical
results match closely the analytical form of the Schwarzschild metric in
isotropic coordinates, providing a strong test of our numerical code.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures. version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Quantum Repeaters with Photon Pair Sources and Multi-Mode Memories
We propose a quantum repeater protocol which builds on the well-known DLCZ
protocol [L.M. Duan, M.D. Lukin, J.I. Cirac, and P. Zoller, Nature 414, 413
(2001)], but which uses photon pair sources in combination with memories that
allow to store a large number of temporal modes. We suggest to realize such
multi-mode memories based on the principle of photon echo, using solids doped
with rare-earth ions. The use of multi-mode memories promises a speedup in
entanglement generation by several orders of magnitude and a significant
reduction in stability requirements compared to the DLCZ protocol.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PRL, accepted versio
Integration of Langevin Equations with Multiplicative Noise and Viability of Field Theories for Absorbing Phase Transitions
Efficient and accurate integration of stochastic (partial) differential
equations with multiplicative noise can be obtained through a split-step
scheme, which separates the integration of the deterministic part from that of
the stochastic part, the latter being performed by sampling exactly the
solution of the associated Fokker-Planck equation. We demonstrate the
computational power of this method by applying it to most absorbing phase
transitions for which Langevin equations have been proposed. This provides
precise estimates of the associated scaling exponents, clarifying the
classification of these nonequilibrium problems, and confirms or refutes some
existing theories.Comment: 4 pages. 4 figures. RevTex. Slightly changed versio
General framework of the non-perturbative renormalization group for non-equilibrium steady states
This paper is devoted to presenting in detail the non-perturbative
renormalization group (NPRG) formalism to investigate out-of-equilibrium
systems and critical dynamics in statistical physics. The general NPRG
framework for studying non-equilibrium steady states in stochastic models is
expounded and fundamental technicalities are stressed, mainly regarding the
role of causality and of Ito's discretization. We analyze the consequences of
Ito's prescription in the NPRG framework and eventually provide an adequate
regularization to encode them automatically. Besides, we show how to build a
supersymmetric NPRG formalism with emphasis on time-reversal symmetric
problems, whose supersymmetric structure allows for a particularly simple
implementation of NPRG in which causality issues are transparent. We illustrate
the two approaches on the example of Model A within the derivative expansion
approximation at order two, and check that they yield identical results.Comment: 28 pages, 1 figure, minor corrections prior to publicatio
Contribution of Coastal Retrogressive Thaw Slumps to the Nearshore Organic Carbon budget along the Yukon Coast
We describe the evolution of coastal retrogressive thaw slumps (RTSs) between 1952 and 2011 along the Yukon
Coast, Canada, and provide the first estimate of the contribution of RTSs to the nearshore organic carbon budget in this area. We 1) monitor the evolution of RTSs during the periods 1952-1972 and 1972-2011; 2) calculate the volume of material eroded and stocks of organic carbon (OC) mobilized through slumping – including soil organic carbon (SOC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) – and 3) measure the OC fluxes mobilized through slumping between 1972 and 2011. We identified RTSs using high-resolution satellite imagery from 2011 and geocoded aerial photographs from 1952 and 1972. To estimate the volume of eroded material, we applied a spline interpolation on an airborne LiDAR dataset acquired in July 2013. We inferred the stocks of mobilized SOC and DOC from existing related literature. Our results show a 73% increase in the
number of RTSs between 1952 and 2011. In the study area, RTSs displaced at least 8600*103 m^3 of material, with 53% of ice. We estimated that slumping mobilized 81900*10^3 kg of SOC and 156*10^3 kg of DOC. Since 1972, 17% of the RTSs have displaced 8.6*103 m^3/yr of material, with an average OC flux of 82.5*10^3 kg/yr. This flux represents 0.3% of the OC flux released from coastal retreat; however RTSs have a strong impact on the transformation of OC in the coastal fringe
Non-perturbative Approach to Critical Dynamics
This paper is devoted to a non-perturbative renormalization group (NPRG)
analysis of Model A, which stands as a paradigm for the study of critical
dynamics. The NPRG formalism has appeared as a valuable theoretical tool to
investigate non-equilibrium critical phenomena, yet the simplest -- and
nontrivial -- models for critical dynamics have never been studied using NPRG
techniques. In this paper we focus on Model A taking this opportunity to
provide a pedagological introduction to NPRG methods for dynamical problems in
statistical physics. The dynamical exponent is computed in and
and is found in close agreement with results from other methods.Comment: 13 page
Comment on ``Deterministic equations of motion and phase ordering dynamics''
Zheng [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 61}, 153 (2000), cond-mat/9909324] claims that phase
ordering dynamics in the microcanonical model displays unusual scaling
laws. We show here, performing more careful numerical investigations, that
Zheng only observed transient dynamics mostly due to the corrections to scaling
introduced by lattice effects, and that Ising-like (model A) phase ordering
actually takes place at late times. Moreover, we argue that energy conservation
manifests itself in different corrections to scaling.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Two independent photon pairs versus four-photon entangled states in parametric down conversion
We study the physics of four-photon states generated in spontaneous
parametric down-conversion with a pulsed pump field. In the limit where the
coherence time of the photons t_c is much shorter than the duration of the pump
pulse Delta t, the four photons can be described as two independent pairs. In
the opposite limit, the four photons are in a four-particle entangled state.
Any intermediate case can be characterized by a single parameter chi, which is
a function of t_c/Delta t. We present a direct measurement of chi through a
simple experimental setup. The full theoretical analysis is also provided.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, submitte
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