1,907 research outputs found
Local Current Distribution and "Hot Spots" in the Integer Quantum Hall Regime
In a recent experiment, the local current distribution of a two-dimensional
electron gas in the quantum Hall regime was probed by measuring the variation
of the conductance due to local gating. The main experimental finding was the
existence of "hot spots", i.e. regions with high degree of sensitivity to local
gating, whose density increases as one approaches the quantum Hall transition.
However, the direct connection between these "hot spots" and regions of high
current flow is not clear. Here, based on a recent model for the quantum Hall
transition consisting of a mixture of perfect and quantum links, the relation
between the "hot spots" and the current distribution in the sample has been
investigated. The model reproduces the observed dependence of the number and
sizes of "hot spots" on the filling factor. It is further demonstrated that
these "hot spots" are not located in regions where most of the current flows,
but rather, in places where the currents flow both when injected from the left
or from the right. A quantitative measure, the harmonic mean of these currents
is introduced and correlates very well with the "hot spots" positions
Magic numbers in polymer phase separation -- the importance of being rigid
Cells possess non-membrane-bound bodies, many of which are now understood as
phase-separated condensates. One class of such condensates is composed of two
polymer species, where each consists of repeated binding sites that interact in
a one-to-one fashion with the binding sites of the other polymer. Previous
biologically-motivated modeling of such a two-component system surprisingly
revealed that phase separation is suppressed for certain combinations of
numbers of binding sites. This phenomenon, dubbed the "magic-number effect",
occurs if the two polymers can form fully-bonded small oligomers by virtue of
the number of binding sites in one polymer being an integer multiple of the
number of binding sites of the other. Here we use lattice-model simulations and
analytical calculations to show that this magic-number effect can be greatly
enhanced if one of the polymer species has a rigid shape that allows for
multiple distinct bonding conformations. Moreover, if one species is rigid, the
effect is robust over a much greater range of relative concentrations of the
two species. Our findings advance our understanding of the fundamental physics
of two-component polymer-based phase-separation and suggest implications for
biological and synthetic systems.Comment: 8 pages + 15 pages S
A New Spin-Orbit Induced Universality Class in the Quantum Hall Regime ?
Using heuristic arguments and numerical simulations it is argued that the
critical exponent describing the localization length divergence at the
quantum Hall transition is modified in the presence of spin-orbit scattering
with short range correlations. The exponent is very close to , the
percolation correlation length exponent, the prediction of a semi-classical
argument. In addition, a region of weakly localized regime, where the
localization length is exponentially large, is conjectured.Comment: 4 two-column pages including 4 eps figure
Revealing Cosmic Rotation
Cosmological Birefringence (CB), a rotation of the polarization plane of
radiation coming to us from distant astrophysical sources, may reveal parity
violation in either the electromagnetic or gravitational sectors of the
fundamental interactions in nature. Until only recently this phenomenon could
be probed with only radio observations or observations at UV wavelengths.
Recently, there is a substantial effort to constrain such non-standard models
using observations of the rotation of the polarization plane of cosmic
microwave background (CMB) radiation. This can be done via measurements of the
-modes of the CMB or by measuring its TB and EB correlations which vanish in
the standard model. In this paper we show that correlations-based
estimator is the best for upcoming polarization experiments. The based
estimator surpasses other estimators because it has the smallest noise and of
all the estimators is least affected by systematics. Current polarimeters are
optimized for the detection of -mode polarization from either primordial
gravitational waves or by large scale structure via gravitational lensing. In
the paper we also study optimization of CMB experiments for the detection of
cosmological birefringence, in the presence of instrumental systematics, which
by themselves are capable of producing correlations; potentially mimicking
CB.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
Structure and transport in multi-orbital Kondo systems
We consider Kondo impurity systems with multiple local orbitals, such as rare
earth ions in a metallic host or multi--level quantum dots coupled to metallic
leads. It is shown that the multiplet structure of the local orbitals leads to
multiple Kondo peaks above the Fermi energy , and to ``shadow'' peaks
below . We use a slave boson mean field theory, which recovers the strong
coupling Fermi liquid fixed point, to calculate the Kondo peak positions,
widths, and heights analytically at T=0, and NCA calculations to fit the
temperature dependence of high--resolution photoemission spectra of Ce
compounds. In addition, an approximate conductance quantization for transport
through multi--level quantum dots or single--atom transistors in the Kondo
regime due to a generalized Friedel sum rule is demonstrated.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Invited article, 23rd International Conference on
Low Temperature Physics LT23, Hiroshima, Japan 200
Shot Noise through a Quantum Dot in the Kondo Regime
The shot noise in the current through a quantum dot is calculated as a
function of voltage from the high-voltage, Coulomb blockaded regime to the
low-voltage, Kondo regime. Using several complementary approaches, it is shown
that the zero-frequency shot noise (scaled by the voltage) exhibits a
non-monotonic dependence on voltage, with a peak around the Kondo temperature.
Beyond giving a good estimate of the Kondo temperature, it is shown that the
shot noise yields additional information on the effects of electronic
correlations on the local density of states in the Kondo regime, unaccessible
in traditional transport measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Electron correlation resonances in the transport through a single quantum level
Correlation effects in the transport properties of a single quantum level
coupled to electron reservoirs are discussed theoretically using a
non-equilibrium Green functions approach. Our method is based on the
introduction of a second-order self-energy associated with the Coulomb
interaction that consistently eliminates the pathologies found in previous
perturbative calculations. We present results for the current-voltage
characteristic illustrating the different correlation effects that may be found
in this system, including the Kondo anomaly and Coulomb blockade. We finally
discuss the experimental conditions for the simultaneous observation of these
effects in an ultrasmall quantum dot.Comment: 4 pages (two columns), 3 figures under reques
The effect of the spin-orbit geometric phase on the spectrum of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in a semiconductor mesoscopic ring
Taking into account the spin precession caused by the spin-orbit splitting of
the conduction band in semiconductor quantum wells, we have calculated the
Fourier spectra of conductance and state-density correlators in a 2D ring, in
order to investigate the structure of the main peak corresponding to
Aharonov-Bohm oscillations. In narrow rings the peak structure is determined by
the competition between the spin-orbit and the Zeeman couplings. The latter
leads to a peak broadening, and produces the peak splitting in the
state-density Fourier spectrum. We have found an oscillation of the peak
intensity as a function of the spin-orbit coupling constant, and this effect of
the quantum interference caused by the spin geometric phase is destroyed with
increasing Zeeman coupling.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, uses epsfig.st
Computing Stable Coalitions: Approximation Algorithms for Reward Sharing
Consider a setting where selfish agents are to be assigned to coalitions or
projects from a fixed set P. Each project k is characterized by a valuation
function; v_k(S) is the value generated by a set S of agents working on project
k. We study the following classic problem in this setting: "how should the
agents divide the value that they collectively create?". One traditional
approach in cooperative game theory is to study core stability with the
implicit assumption that there are infinite copies of one project, and agents
can partition themselves into any number of coalitions. In contrast, we
consider a model with a finite number of non-identical projects; this makes
computing both high-welfare solutions and core payments highly non-trivial.
The main contribution of this paper is a black-box mechanism that reduces the
problem of computing a near-optimal core stable solution to the purely
algorithmic problem of welfare maximization; we apply this to compute an
approximately core stable solution that extracts one-fourth of the optimal
social welfare for the class of subadditive valuations. We also show much
stronger results for several popular sub-classes: anonymous, fractionally
subadditive, and submodular valuations, as well as provide new approximation
algorithms for welfare maximization with anonymous functions. Finally, we
establish a connection between our setting and the well-studied simultaneous
auctions with item bidding; we adapt our results to compute approximate pure
Nash equilibria for these auctions.Comment: Under Revie
Transmission Phase Shift of a Quantum Dot with Kondo Correlations
We study the effects of Kondo correlations on the transmission phase shift of
a quantum dot in an Aharonov-Bohm ring. We predict in detail how the
development of a Kondo resonance should affect the dependence of the phase
shift on transport voltage, gate voltage and temperature. This system should
allow the first direct observation of the well-known scattering phase shift of
pi/2 expected (but not directly measurable in bulk systems) at zero temperature
for an electron scattering off a spin-1/2 impurity that is screened into a
singlet.Comment: 4 pages Revtex, 4 figures, final published versio
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