Evaluation of ASTER GDEM ver2 using GPS measurements and SRTM ver4.1 in China

The freely available ASTER GDEM ver2 was released by NASA and METI on October 17, 2011. As one of the most complete high resolution digital topographic data sets of the world to date, the ASTER GDEM covers land surfaces between 83°N and 83°S at a spatial resolution of 1 arc-second and will be a useful product for many applications, such as relief analysis, hydrological studies and radar interferometry. The stated improvements in the second version of ASTER GDEM benefit from finer horizontal resolution, offset adjustment and water body detection in addition to new observed ASTER scenes. This study investigates the absolute vertical accuracy of the ASTER GDEM ver2 at five study sites in China using ground control points (GCPs) from high accuracy GPS benchmarks, and also using a DEM-to-DEM comparison with the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research Consortium for Spatial Information (CGIAR-CSI) SRTM DEM (Version 4.1). And then, the results are separated into GlobCover land cover classes to derive the spatial pattern of error. It is demonstrated that the RMSE (19m) and mean (-13m) values of ASTER GDEM ver2 against GPS-GCPs in the five study areas is lower than its first version ASTER GDEM ver1 (26m and -21m) as a result of the adjustment of the elevation offsets in the new version. It should be noted that the five study areas in this study are representative in terms of terrain types and land covers in China, and even for most of mid-latitude zones. It is believed that the ASTER GDEM offers a major alternative in accessibility to high quality elevation data

ArticleRank: a PageRank-based alternative to numbers of citations for analysing citation networks

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to suggest an alternative to the widely used Times Cited criterion for analysing citation networks. The approach involves taking account of the natures of the papers that cite a given paper, so as to differentiate between papers that attract the same number of citations. Design/methodology/approach - ArticleRank is an algorithm that has been derived from Google's PageRank algorithm to measure the influence of journal articles. ArticleRank is applied to two datasets - a citation network based on an early paper on webometrics, and a self-citation network based on the 19 most cited papers in the Journal of Documentation - using citation data taken from the Web of Knowledge database. Findings - ArticleRank values provide a different ranking of a set of papers from that provided by the corresponding Times Cited values, and overcomes the inability of the latter to differentiate between papers with the same numbers of citations. The difference in rankings between Times Cited and ArticleRank is greatest for the most heavily cited articles in a dataset. Originality/value - This is a novel application of the PageRank algorithm

Electron-phonon correlations on spin texture of gapped helical Dirac Fermions

The metallic surface states of a topological insulator support helical Dirac fermions protected by topology with their spin locked perpendicular to their momentum. They can acquire mass through magnetic doping or through hybridization of states on opposite faces of a thin sample. In this case there can be a component of electron spin oriented perpendicular to the surface plane. The electron-phonon interaction renormalizes the dynamics of the charge carriers through their spectral density. It also modifies the gap channel and a second spectral function enters which, not only determines the out of plane spin component, but also comes into in-plane properties. While the out of plane spin component is decreased below the Fermi momentum ($k_F$), the in plane component increases. There are also correlation tails extending well beyond $k_F$. The angular resolved photo-emission line shapes aquire Holstein side bands. The effective gap in the density of states is reduced and the optical conductivity aquires distinct measurable phonon structure even for modest value of the electron-phonon coupling.Comment: 9pages, 9 figure

Conductivity of Dirac fermions with phonon induced topological crossover

We study the Hall conductivity in single layer gapped Dirac fermion materials including coupling to a phonon field, which not only modifies the quasi-particle dynamics through the usual self-energy term but also renormalizes directly the gap. Consequently the Berry curvature is modified. As the temperature is increased the sign of the renormalized gap can change and the material can cross over from a band insulator to a topological insulator at higher temperature (T). The effective Chern numbers defined for valley and spin Hall conductivity show a rich phase diagram with increasing temperature. While the spin and valley DC Hall conductivity is no longer quantized at elevated temperature a change in sign with increasing T is a clear indication of a topological crossover. The chirality of the circularly polarized light which is dominantly absorbed by a particular valley can change with temperature as a result of a topological crossover.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Longitudinal and spin/valley Hall optical conductivity in single layer MoS2MoS_{2}

A monolayer of $MoS_{2}$ has a non-centrosymmetric crystal structure, with spin polarized bands. It is a two valley semiconductor with direct gap falling in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its optical properties are of particular interest in relation to valleytronics and possible device applications. We study the longitudinal and the transverse Hall dynamical conductivity which is decomposed into charge, spin and valley contributions. Circular polarized light associated with each of the two valleys separately is considered and results are filtered according to spin polarization. Temperature can greatly change the spin admixture seen in the frequency window where they are not closely in balance.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev.

Phonon structure in dispersion curves and density of states of massive Dirac Fermions

Dirac fermions exist in many solid state systems including graphene, silicene and other two dimensional membranes such as are found in group VI dichalcogenides, as well as on the surface of some insulators where such states are protected by topology. Coupling of those fermions to phonons introduces new structures in their dispersion curves and, in the case of massive Dirac fermions, can shift and modify the gap. We show how these changes present in angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of the dressed charge carrier dispersion curves and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements of their density of states. In particular we focus on the region around the band gap. In this region the charge carrier spectral density no longer consists of a dominant quasiparticle peak and a smaller incoherent phonon related background. The quasiparticle picture has broken down and this leads to important modification in both dispersion curves and density of states.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to appear in PR

Hexagonal warping on spin texture, Hall conductivity and circular dichroism of Topological Insulator

The topological protected electronic states on the surface of a topological insulator can progressively change their Fermi cross-section from circular to a snowflake shape as the chemical potential is increased above the Dirac point because of an hexagonal warping term in the Hamiltonian. Another effect of warping is to change the spin texture which exists when a finite gap is included by magnetic doping, although the in-plane spin component remains locked perpendicular to momentum. It also changes the orbital magnetic moment, the matrix element for optical absorption and the circular dichroism. We find that the Fermi surface average of z-component of spin is closely related to the value of the Berry phase. This holds even when the Hamiltonian includes a subdominant non-relativistic quadratic in momentum term (which provides particle-hole asymmetry) in addition to the dominant relativistic Dirac term. There is also a qualitative correlation between $\left\langle S_z \right\rangle$ and the dichroism. For the case when the chemical potential falls inside the gap between valence and conduction band, the Hall conductivity remains quantized and unaffected in value by the hexagonal warping term.Comment: 10 figures, accepted in PR

Hexagonal warping on optical conductivity of surface states in Topological Insulator Bi_{2}Te_{3}

ARPES studies of the protected surface states in the Topological Insulator $Bi_{2}Te_{3}$ have revealed the existence of an important hexagonal warping term in its electronic band structure. This term distorts the shape of the Dirac cone from a circle at low energies to a snowflake shape at higher energies. We show that this implies important modifications of the interband optical transitions which no longer provide a constant universal background as seen in graphene. Rather the conductivity shows a quasilinear increase with a slightly concave upward bending as energy is increased. Its slope increases with increasing magnitude of the hexagonal distortion as does the magnitude of the jump at the interband onset. The energy dependence of the density of states is also modified and deviates downward from linear with increasing energy.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev.

Magneto-optical conductivity in a topological insulator

Adding a small subdominant quadratic in momentum term to a dominant linear Dirac dispersion curve affects conduction and valence band differently and leads to an hourglass-like structure for energy as a function of momentum. This applies to the protected surface states in topological insulators. The energies of the conduction and valence band Landau levels are also different and this leads to the splitting of optical absorption lines produced by the magnetic field, which acquire a two peak structure. It also changes the peaks in the imaginary part of the Hall conductivity into two distinct contributions of opposite signs. The real part of the circularly polarized optical conductivity however retains its single peak structure but the peaks in right and left handedness case are shifted in energy with respect to each other in contrast to the pure Dirac case. The magnitude of the semiclassical cyclotron frequency is significantly modified by the presence of a mass term as is its variation with value of the chemical potential $\mu$. Its optical spectral weight is found to decrease with increasing $\mu$ rather than increase as it does in the pure Dirac limit.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, to appear in PR