5,342 research outputs found
Coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism in two dimensions
Ferromagnetism is usually considered to be incompatible with conventional
superconductivity, as it destroys the singlet correlations responsible for the
pairing interaction. Superconductivity and ferromagnetism are known to coexist
in only a few bulk rare-earth materials. Here we report evidence for their
coexistence in a two-dimensional system: the interface between two bulk
insulators, LaAlO (LAO) and SrTiO (STO), a system that has been studied
intensively recently. Magnetoresistance, Hall and electric-field dependence
measurements suggest that there are two distinct bands of charge carriers that
contribute to the interface conductivity. The sensitivity of properties of the
interface to an electric field make this a fascinating system for the study of
the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Dense Packings of Congruent Circles in Rectangles with a Variable Aspect Ratio
We use computational experiments to find the rectangles of minimum area into
which a given number n of non-overlapping congruent circles can be packed. No
assumption is made on the shape of the rectangles. Most of the packings found
have the usual regular square or hexagonal pattern. However, for 1495 values of
n in the tested range n =< 5000, specifically, for n = 49, 61, 79, 97, 107,...
4999, we prove that the optimum cannot possibly be achieved by such regular
arrangements. The evidence suggests that the limiting height-to-width ratio of
rectangles containing an optimal hexagonal packing of circles tends to
2-sqrt(3) as n tends to infinity, if the limit exists.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figure
Polarity control of carrier injection at ferroelectric/metal interfaces for electrically switchable diode and photovoltaic effects
We investigated a switchable ferroelectric diode effect and its physical
mechanism in Pt/BiFeO3/SrRuO3 thin-film capacitors. Our results of electrical
measurements support that, near the Pt/BiFeO3 interface of as-grown samples, a
defective layer (possibly, an oxygen-vacancy-rich layer) becomes formed and
disturbs carrier injection. We therefore used an electrical training process to
obtain ferroelectric control of the diode polarity where, by changing the
polarization direction using an external bias, we could switch the transport
characteristics between forward and reverse diodes. Our system is characterized
with a rectangular polarization hysteresis loop, with which we confirmed that
the diode polarity switching occurred at the ferroelectric coercive voltage.
Moreover, we observed a simultaneous switching of the diode polarity and the
associated photovoltaic response dependent on the ferroelectric domain
configurations. Our detailed study suggests that the polarization charge can
affect the Schottky barrier at the ferroelectric/metal interfaces, resulting in
a modulation of the interfacial carrier injection. The amount of
polarization-modulated carrier injection can affect the transition voltage
value at which a space-charge-limited bulk current-voltage (J-V) behavior is
changed from Ohmic (i.e., J ~ V) to nonlinear (i.e., J ~ V^n with n \geq 2).
This combination of bulk conduction and polarization-modulated carrier
injection explains the detailed physical mechanism underlying the switchable
diode effect in ferroelectric capacitors.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
A Central Partition of Molecular Conformational Space.III. Combinatorial Determination of the Volume Spanned by a Molecular System
In the first work of this series [physics/0204035] it was shown that the
conformational space of a molecule could be described to a fair degree of
accuracy by means of a central hyperplane arrangement. The hyperplanes divide
the espace into a hierarchical set of cells that can be encoded by the face
lattice poset of the arrangement. The model however, lacked explicit rotational
symmetry which made impossible to distinguish rotated structures in
conformational space. This problem was solved in a second work
[physics/0404052] by sorting the elementary 3D components of the molecular
system into a set of morphological classes that can be properly oriented in a
standard 3D reference frame. This also made possible to find a solution to the
problem that is being adressed in the present work: for a molecular system
immersed in a heat bath we want to enumerate the subset of cells in
conformational space that are visited by the molecule in its thermal wandering.
If each visited cell is a vertex on a graph with edges to the adjacent cells,
here it is explained how such graph can be built
Niche inheritance: a cooperative pathway to enhance cancer cell fitness though ecosystem engineering
Cancer cells can be described as an invasive species that is able to
establish itself in a new environment. The concept of niche construction can be
utilized to describe the process by which cancer cells terraform their
environment, thereby engineering an ecosystem that promotes the genetic fitness
of the species. Ecological dispersion theory can then be utilized to describe
and model the steps and barriers involved in a successful diaspora as the
cancer cells leave the original host organ and migrate to new host organs to
successfully establish a new metastatic community. These ecological concepts
can be further utilized to define new diagnostic and therapeutic areas for
lethal cancers.Comment: 8 pages, 1 Table, 4 Figure
Class of self-limiting growth models in the presence of nonlinear diffusion
The source term in a reaction-diffusion system, in general, does not involve
explicit time dependence. A class of self-limiting growth models dealing with
animal and tumor growth and bacterial population in a culture, on the other
hand are described by kinetics with explicit functions of time. We analyze a
reaction-diffusion system to study the propagation of spatial front for these
models.Comment: RevTex, 13 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Physical Review
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