78 research outputs found
Creation of scalar and Dirac particles in the presence of a time varying electric field in an anisotropic Bianchi I universe
In this article we compute the density of scalar and Dirac particles created
by a cosmological anisotropic Bianchi type I universe in the presence of a time
varying electric field. We show that the particle distribution becomes thermal
when one neglects the electric interaction.Comment: 8 pages, REVTEX 3.0. to appear in Phys. Rev.
Numerical study of the thermoelectric power factor in ultra-thin Si nanowires
Low dimensional structures have demonstrated improved thermoelectric (TE)
performance because of a drastic reduction in their thermal conductivity,
{\kappa}l. This has been observed for a variety of materials, even for
traditionally poor thermoelectrics such as silicon. Other than the reduction in
{\kappa}l, further improvements in the TE figure of merit ZT could potentially
originate from the thermoelectric power factor. In this work, we couple the
ballistic (Landauer) and diffusive linearized Boltzmann electron transport
theory to the atomistic sp3d5s*-spin-orbit-coupled tight-binding (TB)
electronic structure model. We calculate the room temperature electrical
conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and power factor of narrow 1D Si nanowires
(NWs). We describe the numerical formulation of coupling TB to those transport
formalisms, the approximations involved, and explain the differences in the
conclusions obtained from each model. We investigate the effects of cross
section size, transport orientation and confinement orientation, and the
influence of the different scattering mechanisms. We show that such methodology
can provide robust results for structures including thousands of atoms in the
simulation domain and extending to length scales beyond 10nm, and point towards
insightful design directions using the length scale and geometry as a design
degree of freedom. We find that the effect of low dimensionality on the
thermoelectric power factor of Si NWs can be observed at diameters below ~7nm,
and that quantum confinement and different transport orientations offer the
possibility for power factor optimization.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures; Journal of Computational Electronics, 201
Decoherence of electron spin qubits in Si-based quantum computers
Direct phonon spin-lattice relaxation of an electron qubit bound by a donor
impurity or quantum dot in SiGe heterostructures is investigated. The aim is to
evaluate the importance of decoherence from this mechanism in several important
solid-state quantum computer designs operating at low temperatures. We
calculate the relaxation rate as a function of [100] uniaxial strain,
temperature, magnetic field, and silicon/germanium content for Si:P bound
electrons. The quantum dot potential is much smoother, leading to smaller
splittings of the valley degeneracies. We have estimated these splittings in
order to obtain upper bounds for the relaxation rate. In general, we find that
the relaxation rate is strongly decreased by uniaxial compressive strain in a
SiGe-Si-SiGe quantum well, making this strain an important positive design
feature. Ge in high concentrations (particularly over 85%) increases the rate,
making Si-rich materials preferable. We conclude that SiGe bound electron
qubits must meet certain conditions to minimize decoherence but that
spin-phonon relaxation does not rule out the solid-state implementation of
error-tolerant quantum computing.Comment: 8 figures. To appear in PRB-July 2002. Revisions include: some
references added/corrected, several typos fixed, a few things clarified.
Nothing dramati
Renormalization-Group Improved Effective Potential for Interacting Theories with Several Mass Scales in Curved Spacetime
The renormalization group (RG) is used in order to obtain the RG improved
effective potential in curved spacetime. This potential is explicitly
calculated for the Yukawa model and for scalar electrodynamics, i.e. theories
with several (namely, more than one) mass scales, in a space of constant
curvature. Using the -theory on a general curved spacetime
as an example, we show how it is possible to find the RG improved effective
Lagrangian in curved spacetime. As specific applications, we discuss the
possibility of curvature induced phase transitions in the Yukawa model and the
effective equations (back-reaction problem) for the -theory
on a De Sitter background.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX file, UB-ECM-PF 93/2
Renormalization Group and Decoupling in Curved Space: II. The Standard Model and Beyond
We continue the study of the renormalization group and decoupling of massive
fields in curved space, started in the previous article and analyse the higher
derivative sector of the vacuum metric-dependent action of the Standard Model.
The QCD sector at low-energies is described in terms of the composite effective
fields. For fermions and scalars the massless limit shows perfect
correspondence with the conformal anomaly, but similar limit in a massive
vector case requires an extra compensating scalar. In all three cases the
decoupling goes smoothly and monotonic. A particularly interesting case is the
renormalization group flow in the theory with broken supersymmetry, where the
sign of one of the beta-functions changes on the way from the UV to IR.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure
Trace anomaly driven inflation
This paper investigates Starobinsky's model of inflation driven by the trace
anomaly of conformally coupled matter fields. This model does not suffer from
the problem of contrived initial conditions that occurs in most models of
inflation driven by a scalar field. The universe can be nucleated
semi-classically by a cosmological instanton that is much larger than the
Planck scale provided there are sufficiently many matter fields. There are two
cosmological instantons: the four sphere and a new ``double bubble'' solution.
This paper considers a universe nucleated by the four sphere. The AdS/CFT
correspondence is used to calculate the correlation function for scalar and
tensor metric perturbations during the ensuing de Sitter phase. The analytic
structure of the scalar and tensor propagators is discussed in detail.
Observational constraints on the model are discussed. Quantum loops of matter
fields are shown to strongly suppress short scale metric perturbations, which
implies that short distance modifications of gravity would probably not be
observable in the cosmic microwave background. This is probably true for any
model of inflation provided there are sufficiently many matter fields. This
point is illustrated by a comparison of anomaly driven inflation in four
dimensions and in a Randall-Sundrum brane-world model.Comment: LaTeX, 42 pages, 5 .eps figures. v2: typos corrected, references
added and 2 new paragraphs in conclusions section. v3: comments about strong
coupling and unboundedness of action changed, other minor changes. v4:
Comments about strong coupling changed again (2-point functions of metric
perturbations do not depend on Yang-Mills coupling
Quantum Energy-Transport and Drift-Diffusion Models
We show that Quantum Energy-Transport and Quantum Drift-Diffusion models can be derived through diffusion limits of a collisional Wigner equation. The collision operator relaxes to an equilibrium defined through the entropy minimization principle. Both models are shown to be entropic and exhibit fluxes which are related with the state variables through spatially non-local relations. Thanks to an ďż˝ expansion of these models, ďż˝ 2 perturbations of the Classical Energy-Transport and Drift-Diffusion models are found. In the Drift-Diffusion case, the quantum correction is the Bohm potential and the model is still entropic. In the Energy-Transport case however, the quantum correction is a rather complex expression and the model cannot be proven entropic.
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