8,359 research outputs found
Mercury in the environment
Problems in assessing mercury concentrations in environmental materials are discussed. Data for situations involving air, water, rocks, soils, sediments, sludges, fossil fuels, plants, animals, foods, and man are drawn together and briefly evaluated. Details are provided regarding the toxicity of mercury along with tentative standards and guidelines for mercury in air, drinking water, and food
Exchange coupling between silicon donors: the crucial role of the central cell and mass anisotropy
Donors in silicon are now demonstrated as one of the leading candidates for
implementing qubits and quantum information processing. Single qubit
operations, measurements and long coherence times are firmly established, but
progress on controlling two qubit interactions has been slower. One reason for
this is that the inter donor exchange coupling has been predicted to oscillate
with separation, making it hard to estimate in device designs. We present a
multivalley effective mass theory of a donor pair in silicon, including both a
central cell potential and the effective mass anisotropy intrinsic in the Si
conduction band. We are able to accurately describe the single donor properties
of valley-orbit coupling and the spatial extent of donor wave functions,
highlighting the importance of fitting measured values of hyperfine coupling
and the orbital energy of the levels. Ours is a simple framework that can
be applied flexibly to a range of experimental scenarios, but it is nonetheless
able to provide fast and reliable predictions. We use it to estimate the
exchange coupling between two donor electrons and we find a smoothing of its
expected oscillations, and predict a monotonic dependence on separation if two
donors are spaced precisely along the [100] direction.Comment: Published version. Corrected b and B values from previous versio
Surface code architecture for donors and dots in silicon with imprecise and nonuniform qubit couplings
A scaled quantum computer with donor spins in silicon would benefit from a
viable semiconductor framework and a strong inherent decoupling of the qubits
from the noisy environment. Coupling neighbouring spins via the natural
exchange interaction according to current designs requires gate control
structures with extremely small length scales. We present a silicon
architecture where bismuth donors with long coherence times are coupled to
electrons that can shuttle between adjacent quantum dots, thus relaxing the
pitch requirements and allowing space between donors for classical control
devices. An adiabatic SWAP operation within each donor/dot pair solves the
scalability issues intrinsic to exchange-based two-qubit gates, as it does not
rely on sub-nanometer precision in donor placement and is robust against noise
in the control fields. We use this SWAP together with well established global
microwave Rabi pulses and parallel electron shuttling to construct a surface
code that needs minimal, feasible local control.Comment: Published version - more detailed discussions, robustness to
dephasing pointed out additionall
Electron Paramagnetic Resonance of Boron Acceptors in Isotopically Purified Silicon
The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) linewidths of B acceptors in Si are
found to reduce dramatically in isotopically purified 28Si single crystals.
Moreover, extremely narrow substructures in the EPR spectra are visible
corresponding to either an enhancement or a reduction of the absorbed microwave
on resonance. The origin of the substructures is attributed to a combination of
simultaneous double excitation and spin relaxation in the four level spin
system of the acceptors. A spin population model is developed which
qualitatively describes the experimental results.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Modulation of the high mobility two-dimensional electrons in Si/SiGe using atomic-layer-deposited gate dielectric
Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET's) using
atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) AlO as the gate dielectric are fabricated
on the Si/SiGe heterostructures. The low-temperature carrier
density of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in the strained Si quantum
well can be controllably tuned from 2.5cm to
4.5cm, virtually without any gate leakage current.
Magnetotransport data show the homogeneous depletion of 2DES under gate biases.
The characteristic of vertical modulation using ALD dielectric is shown to be
better than that using Schottky barrier or the SiO dielectric formed by
plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor-deposition(PECVD).Comment: 3 pages Revtex4, 4 figure
Coherence of Spin Qubits in Silicon
Given the effectiveness of semiconductor devices for classical computation
one is naturally led to consider semiconductor systems for solid state quantum
information processing. Semiconductors are particularly suitable where local
control of electric fields and charge transport are required. Conventional
semiconductor electronics is built upon these capabilities and has demonstrated
scaling to large complicated arrays of interconnected devices. However, the
requirements for a quantum computer are very different from those for classical
computation, and it is not immediately obvious how best to build one in a
semiconductor. One possible approach is to use spins as qubits: of nuclei, of
electrons, or both in combination. Long qubit coherence times are a
prerequisite for quantum computing, and in this paper we will discuss
measurements of spin coherence in silicon. The results are encouraging - both
electrons bound to donors and the donor nuclei exhibit low decoherence under
the right circumstances. Doped silicon thus appears to pass the first test on
the road to a quantum computer.Comment: Submitted to J Cond Matter on Nov 15th, 200
High fidelity quantum memory via dynamical decoupling: theory and experiment
Quantum information processing requires overcoming decoherence---the loss of
"quantumness" due to the inevitable interaction between the quantum system and
its environment. One approach towards a solution is quantum dynamical
decoupling---a method employing strong and frequent pulses applied to the
qubits. Here we report on the first experimental test of the concatenated
dynamical decoupling (CDD) scheme, which invokes recursively constructed pulse
sequences. Using nuclear magnetic resonance, we demonstrate a near order of
magnitude improvement in the decay time of stored quantum states. In
conjunction with recent results on high fidelity quantum gates using CDD, our
results suggest that quantum dynamical decoupling should be used as a first
layer of defense against decoherence in quantum information processing
implementations, and can be a stand-alone solution in the right parameter
regime.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Published version. This paper was initially
entitled "Quantum gates via concatenated dynamical decoupling: theory and
experiment", by Jacob R. West, Daniel A. Lidar, Bryan H. Fong, Mark F. Gyure,
Xinhua Peng, and Dieter Suter. That original version split into two papers:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.3433 (theory only) and the current pape
Role-play simulations as an aid to achieve complex learning outcomes in hydrological science
Students in hydrology are expected to become proficient in a set of
quantitative skills while also acquiring the ability to apply their
problem-solving abilities in real-life situations. To achieve both these
types of learning outcomes, there is broad evidence that activity-based
learning is beneficial. In this paper, we argue that role-play simulations in
particular are useful for achieving complex learning outcomes, i.e., making
students able to coordinate and integrate various analytical skills in
complicated settings. We evaluated the effects of an integrated water
resources management (IWRM) negotiation simulation next to more traditional
teaching methods intended to foster quantitative understanding. Results
showed that despite similar student-reported achievement of both complex and
quantitative intended learning outcomes, the students favored the negotiation
simulation over the traditional method. This implies that role-play
simulations can motivate and actively engage a classroom, thereby creating a
space for potential deeper learning and longer retention of knowledge. While
our findings support the utility of simulations to teach complex learning
outcomes and indicate no shortcoming in achieving such outcomes next to
traditional methods aimed at quantitative learning outcomes, simulations are
still not widely used to foster activity-based learning in the classroom. We
thus conclude by presenting three particularly challenging areas of role-play
simulations as learning tools that serve as potential barriers to their
implementation and suggest ways to overcome such roadblocks.</p
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