Status of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiment

The last unknown neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ is one of the fundamental parameters of nature; it is also a crucial parameter for determining the sensitivity of future long-baseline experiments aimed to study CP violation in the neutrino sector. Daya Bay is a reactor neutrino oscillation experiment designed to achieve a sensitivity on the value of $sin^2(2\theta_{13})$ to better than 0.01 at 90% CL. The experiment consists of multiple identical detectors placed underground at different baselines to minimize systematic errors and suppress cosmogenic backgrounds. With the baseline design, the expected anti-neutrino signal at the far site is about 360 events per day and at each of the near sites is about 1500 events per day. An overview and current status of the experiment will be presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of the 35th International Conference of High Energy Physics, July 22-28, 2010, Paris, Franc

Signatures of strong correlation effects in RIXS on Cuprates

Recently, spin excitations in doped cuprates are measured using the resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS). The paramagnon dispersions show the large hardening effect in the electron-doped systems and seemingly doping-independence in the hole-doped systems, with the energy scales comparable to that of the antiferromagnetic magnons. This anomalous hardening effect was partially explained by using the strong coupling t-J model but with a three-site term(Nature communications 5, 3314 (2014)). However we show that hardening effect is a signature of strong coupling physics even without including this extra term. By considering the t-t'-t"-J model and using the Slave-Boson (SB) mean field theory, we obtain, via the spin-spin susceptibility, the spin excitations in qualitative agreement with the experiments. These anomalies is mainly due to the doping-dependent bandwidth. We further discuss the interplay between particle-hole-like and paramagnon-like excitations in the RIXS measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Flexible parametric bootstrap for testing homogeneity against clustering and assessing the number of clusters

There are two notoriously hard problems in cluster analysis, estimating the number of clusters, and checking whether the population to be clustered is not actually homogeneous. Given a dataset, a clustering method and a cluster validation index, this paper proposes to set up null models that capture structural features of the data that cannot be interpreted as indicating clustering. Artificial datasets are sampled from the null model with parameters estimated from the original dataset. This can be used for testing the null hypothesis of a homogeneous population against a clustering alternative. It can also be used to calibrate the validation index for estimating the number of clusters, by taking into account the expected distribution of the index under the null model for any given number of clusters. The approach is illustrated by three examples, involving various different clustering techniques (partitioning around medoids, hierarchical methods, a Gaussian mixture model), validation indexes (average silhouette width, prediction strength and BIC), and issues such as mixed type data, temporal and spatial autocorrelation

Exact Quantum Many-Body Scar States in the Rydberg-Blockaded Atom Chain

A recent experiment in the Rydberg atom chain observed unusual oscillatory quench dynamics with a charge density wave initial state, and theoretical works identified a set of many-body "scar states" showing nonthermal behavior in the Hamiltonian as potentially responsible for the atypical dynamics. In the same nonintegrable Hamiltonian, we discover several eigenstates at \emph{infinite temperature} that can be represented exactly as matrix product states with finite bond dimension, for both periodic boundary conditions (two exact $E = 0$ states) and open boundary conditions (two $E = 0$ states and one each $E = \pm \sqrt{2}$). This discovery explicitly demonstrates violation of strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in this model and uncovers exact quantum many-body scar states. These states show signatures of translational symmetry breaking with period-2 bond-centered pattern, despite being in one dimension at infinite temperature. We show that the nearby many-body scar states can be well approximated as "quasiparticle excitations" on top of our exact $E = 0$ scar states, and propose a quasiparticle explanation of the strong oscillations observed in experiments.Comment: Published version. In addition to (v2): (1) Add additional proofs to the exact scar states and intuitions behind SMA and MMA to the appendices. (2) Add entanglement scaling of SMA and MMA to the appendice

Non-magnetic Stern-Gerlach Experiment from Electron Diffraction

Using the wave nature of the electrons, we demonstrate that a transverse spin current can be generated simply by the diffraction through a single slit in the spin-orbital coupling system of the two-dimensional electron gas. The diffracted electron picks up the transverse momentum. The up spin electron goes one way and the down spin electron goes the other, producing the coherent spin current. In the system of spin-orbital coupling $\sim10^{-13}$ eV$\cdot$m, the \emph{out-of-plane} component of the spin of the electron can be generated up to 0.42 $\hbar$. Based on this effect, a novel device of grating to distill spin is designed. Two first diffraction peaks of electron carry different spins, duplicating the non-magnetic version of Stern-Gerlach experiment. The direction of the spin current can be controlled by the gate voltage with low energy cost.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Raman fingerprint of semi-metal WTe2 from bulk to monolayer

Tungsten ditelluride (WTe2), a layered transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD), has recently demonstrated an extremely large magnetoresistance effect, which is unique among TMDs. This fascinating feature seems to be correlated with its special electronic structure. Here, we report the observation of 6 Raman peaks corresponding to the A_2^4, A_1^9, A_1^8, A_1^6, A_1^5 and A_1^2 phonons, from the 33 Raman-active modes predicted for WTe2. This provides direct evidence to distinguish the space group of WTe2 from that of other TMDs. Moreover, the Raman evolution of WTe2 from bulk to monolayer is clearly revealed. It is interesting to find that the A_2^4 mode, centered at ~109.8 cm-1, is forbidden in a monolayer, which may be attributable to the transition of the point group from C2v (bulk) to C2h (monolayer). Our work characterizes all observed Raman peaks in the bulk and few-layer samples and provides a route to study the physical properties of two-dimensional WTe2.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures and 2 table