Interfaces Within Graphene Nanoribbons

We study the conductance through two types of graphene nanostructures: nanoribbon junctions in which the width changes from wide to narrow, and curved nanoribbons. In the wide-narrow structures, substantial reflection occurs from the wide-narrow interface, in contrast to the behavior of the much studied electron gas waveguides. In the curved nanoribbons, the conductance is very sensitive to details such as whether regions of a semiconducting armchair nanoribbon are included in the curved structure -- such regions strongly suppress the conductance. Surprisingly, this suppression is not due to the band gap of the semiconducting nanoribbon, but is linked to the valley degree of freedom. Though we study these effects in the simplest contexts, they can be expected to occur for more complicated structures, and we show results for rings as well. We conclude that experience from electron gas waveguides does not carry over to graphene nanostructures. The interior interfaces causing extra scattering result from the extra effective degrees of freedom of the graphene structure, namely the valley and sublattice pseudospins.Comment: 19 pages, published version, several references added, small changes to conclusion

Interfaces within graphene nanoribbons

We study the conductance through two types of graphene nanostructures: nanoribbon junctions in which the width changes from wide to narrow, and curved nanoribbons. In the wide-narrow structures, substantial reflection occurs from the wide-narrow interface, in contrast to the behavior of the much studied electron gas waveguides. In the curved nanoribbons, the conductance is very sensitive to details such as whether regions of a semiconducting armchair nanoribbon are included in the curved structure -- such regions strongly suppress the conductance. Surprisingly, this suppression is not due to the band gap of the semiconducting nanoribbon, but is linked to the valley degree of freedom. Though we study these effects in the simplest contexts, they can be expected to occur for more complicated structures, and we show results for rings as well. We conclude that experience from electron gas waveguides does not carry over to graphene nanostructures. The interior interfaces causing extra scattering result from the extra effective degrees of freedom of the graphene structure, namely the valley and sublattice pseudospins

Spin-orbit induced longitudinal spin-polarized currents in non-magnetic solids

For certain non-magnetic solids with low symmetry the occurrence of spin-polarized longitudinal currents is predicted. These arise due to an interplay of spin-orbit interaction and the particular crystal symmetry. This result is derived using a group-theoretical scheme that allows investigating the symmetry properties of any linear response tensor relevant to the field of spintronics. For the spin conductivity tensor it is shown that only the magnetic Laue group has to be considered in this context. Within the introduced general scheme also the spin Hall- and additional related transverse effects emerge without making reference to the two-current model. Numerical studies confirm these findings and demonstrate for (Au$_{1-x}$Pt$_{\rm x}$)$_4$Sc that the longitudinal spin conductivity may be in the same order of magnitude as the conventional transverse one. The presented formalism only relies on the magnetic space group and therefore is universally applicable to any type of magnetic order.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 2 figures (3 & 2 subfigures

Improved silicon nitride for advanced heat engines

The AiResearch Casting Company baseline silicon nitride (92 percent GTE SN-502 Si sub 3 N sub 4 plus 6 percent Y sub 2 O sub 3 plus 2 percent Al sub 2 O sub 3) was characterized with methods that included chemical analysis, oxygen content determination, electrophoresis, particle size distribution analysis, surface area determination, and analysis of the degree of agglomeration and maximum particle size of elutriated powder. Test bars were injection molded and processed through sintering at 0.68 MPa (100 psi) of nitrogen. The as-sintered test bars were evaluated by X-ray phase analysis, room and elevated temperature modulus of rupture strength, Weibull modulus, stress rupture, strength after oxidation, fracture origins, microstructure, and density from quantities of samples sufficiently large to generate statistically valid results. A series of small test matrices were conducted to study the effects and interactions of processing parameters which included raw materials, binder systems, binder removal cycles, injection molding temperatures, particle size distribution, sintering additives, and sintering cycle parameters

Graphene Rings in Magnetic Fields: Aharonov-Bohm Effect and Valley Splitting

We study the conductance of mesoscopic graphene rings in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field by means of numerical calculations based on a tight-binding model. First, we consider the magnetoconductance of such rings and observe the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We investigate different regimes of the magnetic flux up to the quantum Hall regime, where the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations are suppressed. Results for both clean (ballistic) and disordered (diffusive) rings are presented. Second, we study rings with smooth mass boundary that are weakly coupled to leads. We show that the valley degeneracy of the eigenstates in closed graphene rings can be lifted by a small magnetic flux, and that this lifting can be observed in the transport properties of the system.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Visual Experience Shapes Orthographic Representations in the Visual Word Form Area

Current neurocognitive research suggests that the efficiency of visual word recognition rests on abstract memory representations of written letters and words stored in the visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These representations are assumed to be invariant to visual characteristics such as font and case. In the present functional MRI study, we tested this assumption by presenting written words and varying the case format of the initial letter of German nouns (which are always capitalized) as well as German adjectives and adverbs (both usually in lowercase). As evident from a Word Type × Case Format interaction, activation in the VWFA was greater to words presented in unfamiliar case formats relative to familiar case formats. Our results suggest that neural representations of written words in the VWFA are not fully abstract and still contain information about the visual format in which words are most frequently perceived

Safety-Aware Apprenticeship Learning

Apprenticeship learning (AL) is a kind of Learning from Demonstration techniques where the reward function of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) is unknown to the learning agent and the agent has to derive a good policy by observing an expert's demonstrations. In this paper, we study the problem of how to make AL algorithms inherently safe while still meeting its learning objective. We consider a setting where the unknown reward function is assumed to be a linear combination of a set of state features, and the safety property is specified in Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic (PCTL). By embedding probabilistic model checking inside AL, we propose a novel counterexample-guided approach that can ensure safety while retaining performance of the learnt policy. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on several challenging AL scenarios where safety is essential.Comment: Accepted by International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV) 201

Symmetry Classes in Graphene Quantum Dots: Universal Spectral Statistics, Weak Localization, and Conductance Fluctuations

We study the symmetry classes of graphene quantum dots, both open and closed, through the conductance and energy level statistics. For abrupt termination of the lattice, these properties are well described by the standard orthogonal and unitary ensembles. However, for smooth mass confinement, special time-reversal symmetries associated with the sublattice and valley degrees of freedom are critical: they lead to block diagonal Hamiltonians and scattering matrices with blocks belonging to the unitary symmetry class even at zero magnetic field. While the effect of this structure is clearly seen in the conductance of open dots, it is suppressed in the spectral statistics of closed dots, because the intervalley scattering time is shorter than the time required to resolve a level spacing in the closed systems but longer than the escape time of the open systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTex, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let