A molecular dynamics study of the thermal properties of thorium oxide

There is growing interest in the exploitation of the thorium nuclear fuel cycle as an alternative to that of uranium. As part of a wider study of the suitability of thorium dioxide (thoria) as a nuclear fuel, we have used molecular dynamics to investigate the thermal expansion, oxygen diffusion, and heat capacity of pure thoria and uranium doped (1-10%) thoria between 1500K and 3600 K. Our results indicate that the thermal performance of the thoria matrix, even when doped with 10%U, is comparable to, and possibly better than, that of UO2

Quantum phase transition in capacitively coupled double quantum dots

We investigate two equivalent, capacitively coupled semiconducting quantum dots, each coupled to its own lead, in a regime where there are two electrons on the double dot. With increasing interdot coupling a rich range of behavior is uncovered: first a crossover from spin- to charge-Kondo physics, via an intermediate SU(4) state with entangled spin and charge degrees of freedom; followed by a quantum phase transition of Kosterlitz-Thouless type to a non-Fermi liquid `charge-ordered' phase with finite residual entropy and anomalous transport properties. Physical arguments and numerical renormalization group methods are employed to obtain a detailed understanding of the problem.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A local moment approach to the degenerate Anderson impurity model

The local moment approach is extended to the orbitally-degenerate [SU(2N)] Anderson impurity model (AIM). Single-particle dynamics are obtained over the full range of energy scales, focussing here on particle-hole symmetry in the strongly correlated regime where the onsite Coulomb interaction leads to many-body Kondo physics with entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom. The approach captures many-body broadening of the Hubbard satellites, recovers the correct exponential vanishing of the Kondo scale for all N, and its universal scaling spectra are found to be in very good agreement with numerical renormalization group (NRG) results. In particular the high-frequency logarithmic decays of the scaling spectra, obtained here in closed form for arbitrary N, coincide essentially perfectly with available numerics from the NRG. A particular case of an anisotropic Coulomb interaction, in which the model represents a system of N `capacitively-coupled' SU(2) AIMs, is also discussed. Here the model is generally characterised by two low-energy scales, the crossover between which is seen directly in its dynamics.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Magnetic field effects in few-level quantum dots: theory, and application to experiment

We examine several effects of an applied magnetic field on Anderson-type models for both single- and two-level quantum dots, and make direct comparison between numerical renormalization group (NRG) calculations and recent conductance measurements. On the theoretical side the focus is on magnetization, single-particle dynamics and zero-bias conductance, with emphasis on the universality arising in strongly correlated regimes; including a method to obtain the scaling behavior of field-induced Kondo resonance shifts over a very wide field range. NRG is also used to interpret recent experiments on spin-1/2 and spin-1 quantum dots in a magnetic field, which we argue do not wholly probe universal regimes of behavior; and the calculations are shown to yield good qualitative agreement with essentially all features seen in experiment. The results capture in particular the observed field-dependence of the Kondo conductance peak in a spin-1/2 dot, with quantitative deviations from experiment occurring at fields in excess of $\sim$ 5 T, indicating the eventual inadequacy of using the equilibrium single-particle spectrum to calculate the conductance at finite bias.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. Version as published in PR

Second order phase dispersion by optimised rotation pulses

We show that the duration of broadband universal control pulses can be halved by choosing control targets with a quadratic function of phase dispersion. This class of control pulses perform a broadband universal rotation around an axis, in the Bloch sphere representation of two-level systems, given by this phase dispersion function. We present an effective optimal control method to avoid the problem of convergence to local extrema traps.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Unified dark energy and dark matter from a scalar field different from quintessence

We explore unification of dark matter and dark energy in a theory containing a scalar field of non-Lagrangian type, obtained by direct insertion of a kinetic term into the energy-momentum tensor. This scalar is different from quintessence, having an equation of state between -1 and 0 and a zero sound speed in its rest frame. We solve the equations of motion for an exponential potential via a rewriting as an autonomous system, and demonstrate the observational viability of the scenario, for sufficiently small exponential potential parameter \lambda, by comparison to a compilation of kinematical cosmological data.Comment: 10 pages RevTeX4 with 5 figures incorporate