10,581 research outputs found
Online Popularity and Topical Interests through the Lens of Instagram
Online socio-technical systems can be studied as proxy of the real world to
investigate human behavior and social interactions at scale. Here we focus on
Instagram, a media-sharing online platform whose popularity has been rising up
to gathering hundred millions users. Instagram exhibits a mixture of features
including social structure, social tagging and media sharing. The network of
social interactions among users models various dynamics including
follower/followee relations and users' communication by means of
posts/comments. Users can upload and tag media such as photos and pictures, and
they can "like" and comment each piece of information on the platform. In this
work we investigate three major aspects on our Instagram dataset: (i) the
structural characteristics of its network of heterogeneous interactions, to
unveil the emergence of self organization and topically-induced community
structure; (ii) the dynamics of content production and consumption, to
understand how global trends and popular users emerge; (iii) the behavior of
users labeling media with tags, to determine how they devote their attention
and to explore the variety of their topical interests. Our analysis provides
clues to understand human behavior dynamics on socio-technical systems,
specifically users and content popularity, the mechanisms of users'
interactions in online environments and how collective trends emerge from
individuals' topical interests.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 201
Dense blocks of energetic ions driven by multi-petawatt lasers
Laser-driven ion accelerators have the advantages of compact size, high
density, and short bunch duration over conventional accelerators. Nevertheless,
it is still challenging to simultaneously enhance the yield and quality of
laser-driven ion beams for practical applications. Here we propose a scheme to
address this challenge via the use of emerging multi-petawatt lasers and a
density-modulated target. The density-modulated target permits its ions to be
uniformly accelerated as a dense block by laser radiation pressure. In
addition, the beam quality of the accelerated ions is remarkably improved by
embedding the target in a thick enough substrate, which suppresses hot electron
refluxing and thus alleviates plasma heating. Particle-in-cell simulations
demonstrate that almost all ions in a solid-density plasma of a few microns can
be uniformly accelerated to about 25% of the speed of light by a laser pulse at
an intensity around 1022 W/cm2. The resulting dense block of energetic ions may
drive fusion ignition and more generally create matter with unprecedented high
energy density.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure
Measurements of the effect of horizontal variability of atmospheric backscatter on dial measurements
The horizontal variability of atmospheric backscatter may have a substantial effect on how Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) data must be taken and analyzed. To minimize errors, lidar pulse pairs are taken with time separations which are short compared to the time scales associated with variations in atmospheric backscatter. To assess the atmospheric variability for time scales which are long compared to the lidar pulse repetition rate, the variance of the lidar return signal in a given channel can be computed. The variances of the on-line, off-line, and ration of the on-line to off-line signals at given altitudes obtained with the dual solid-state Alexandrite laser system were calculated. These evaluations were made for both down-looking aircraft and up-looking ground-based lidar data. Data were taken with 200 microsecond separation between on-line and off-line laser pulses, 30 m altitude resolution, 5 Hz repetition rate, and the signal were normalized for outgoing laser energy
-valley electron factor in bulk GaAs and AlAs
We study the Land\'e -factor of conduction electrons in the -valley of
bulk GaAs and AlAs by using a three-band model
together with the tight-binding model. We find that the -valley -factor
is highly anisotropic, and can be characterized by two components,
and . is close to the free electron Land\'e factor but
is strongly affected by the remote bands. The contribution from remote
bands on depends on how the remote bands are treated. However, when
the magnetic field is in the Voigt configuration, which is widely used in the
experiments, different models give almost identical -factor.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, To be published in J. App. Phys. 104, 200
Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topologically Invariant Chern Numbers
We present a topological description of quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) in a
two-dimensional electron system on honeycomb lattice with both intrinsic and
Rashba spin-orbit couplings. We show that the topology of the band insulator
can be characterized by a traceless matrix of first Chern integers.
The nontrivial QSHE phase is identified by the nonzero diagonal matrix elements
of the Chern number matrix (CNM). A spin Chern number is derived from the CNM,
which is conserved in the presence of finite disorder scattering and spin
nonconserving Rashba coupling. By using the Laughlin's gedanken experiment, we
numerically calculate the spin polarization and spin transfer rate of the
conducting edge states, and determine a phase diagram for the QSHE.Comment: 4 pages and 4 figure
Topological Gauge Structure and Phase Diagram for Weakly Doped Antiferromagnets
We show that the topological gauge structure in the phase string theory of
the {\rm t-J} model gives rise to a global phase diagram of antiferromagnetic
(AF) and superconducting (SC) phases in a weakly doped regime. Dual confinement
and deconfinement of holons and spinons play essential roles here, with a
quantum critical point at a doping concentration . The complex
experimental phase diagram at low doping is well described within such a
framework.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, modified version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Spin Hall Effect and Spin Transfer in Disordered Rashba Model
Based on numerical study of the Rashba model, we show that the spin Hall
conductance remains finite in the presence of disorder up to a characteristic
length scale, beyond which it vanishes exponentially with the system size. We
further perform a Laughlin's gauge experiment numerically and find that all
energy levels cannot cross each other during an adiabatic insertion of the flux
in accordance with the general level-repulsion rule. It results in zero spin
transfer between two edges of the sample as each state always evolves back
after the insertion of one flux quantum, in contrast to the quantum Hall
effect. It implies that the topological spin Hall effect vanishes with the
turn-on of disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures final versio
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