2,708 research outputs found
Modified Fermi's golden rule rate expressions
Fermi's golden rule (FGR) serves as the basis for many expressions of
spectroscopic observables and quantum transition rates. The utility of FGR has
been demonstrated through decades of experimental confirmation. However, there
still remain important cases where the evaluation of a FGR rate is ambiguous or
ill-defined. Examples are cases where the rate has divergent terms due to the
sparsity in the density of final states or time dependent fluctuations of
system Hamiltonians. Strictly speaking, assumptions of FGR are no longer valid
for such cases. However, it is still possible to define modified FGR rate
expressions that are useful as effective rates. The resulting modified FGR rate
expressions resolve a long standing ambiguity often encountered in using FGR
and offer more reliable ways to model general rate processes. Simple model
calculations illustrate the utility and implications of new rate expressions.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Q&A: How can advances in tissue clearing and optogenetics contribute to our understanding of normal and diseased biology?
Mammalian organs comprise a variety of cells that interact with each other and have distinct biological roles. Access to evaluate and perturb intact biological systems at the cellular and molecular levels is essential to fully understand their functioning in normal and diseased conditions, yet technical limitations have constrained most research to small pieces of tissue. Tissue clearing and optogenetics can help overcome this hurdle: tissue clearing affords optical interrogation of whole organs at the molecular level, and optogenetics enables the scalable control and measurement of cellular activity with light. In this Q&A, we delineate recent advances and practical challenges associated with these two techniques when applied body-wide
Influence of oxygen vacancy on the electronic structure of HfO film
We investigated the unoccupied part of the electronic structure of the
oxygen-deficient hafnium oxide (HfO) using soft x-ray absorption
spectroscopy at O and Hf edges. Band-tail states beneath the
unoccupied Hf 5 band are observed in the O -edge spectra; combined with
ultraviolet photoemission spectrum, this indicates the non-negligible
occupation of Hf 5 state. However, Hf -edge magnetic circular dichroism
spectrum reveals the absence of a long-range ferromagnetic spin order in the
oxide. Thus the small amount of electron gained by the vacancy formation
does not show inter-site correlation, contrary to a recent report [M.
Venkatesan {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 430}, 630 (2004)].Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Far-Ultraviolet Cooling Features of the Antlia Supernova Remnant
We present far-ultraviolet observations of the Antlia supernova remnant
obtained with Far-ultraviolet IMaging Spectrograph (FIMS, also called SPEAR).
The strongest lines observed are C IV 1548,1551 and C III 977. The C IV
emission of this mixed-morphology supernova remnant shows a clumpy
distribution, and the line intensity is nearly constant with radius. The C III
977 line, though too weak to be mapped over the whole remnant, is shown to vary
radially. The line intensity peaks at about half the radius, and drops at the
edge of the remnant. Both the clumpy distribution of C IV and the rise in the C
IV to C III ratio towards the edge suggest that central emission is from
evaporating cloudlets rather than thermal conduction in a more uniform, dense
medium.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, will be published in ApJ December 1, 2007, v670n2
issue. see http://astro.snu.ac.kr/~jhshinn/ms.pd
Highly Confined Tunable Mid-Infrared Plasmonics in Graphene Nanoresonators
Single-layer graphene has been shown to have intriguing prospects as a plasmonic material, as modes having plasmon wavelengths 20 times smaller than free space (λ_p ~ λ_0/20) have been observed in the 2–6 THz range, and active graphene plasmonic devices operating in that regime have been explored. However there is great interest in understanding the properties of graphene plasmons across the infrared spectrum, especially at energies exceeding the graphene optical phonon energy. We use infrared microscopy to observe the modes of tunable plasmonic graphene nanoresonator arrays as small as 15 nm. We map the wavevector-dependent dispersion relations for graphene plasmons at mid-infrared energies from measurements of resonant frequency changes with nanoresonator width. By tuning resonator width and charge density, we probe graphene plasmons with λ_p ≤ λ_0/100 and plasmon resonances as high as 310 meV (2500 cm^–1) for 15 nm nanoresonators. Electromagnetic calculations suggest that the confined plasmonic modes have a local density of optical states more than 10^6 larger than free space and thus could strongly increase light–matter interactions at infrared energies
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