Peculiarities of neutron waveguides with thin Gd layer

Peculiarities of the formation of a neutron enhanced standing wave in the structure with a thin highly absorbing layer of gadolinium are considered in the article. An analogue of the poisoning effect well known in reactor physics was found. The effect is stronger for the Nb/Gd/Nb system. Despite of this effect, for a Nb/Gd bilayer and a Nb/Gd/Nb trilayer placed between Al2O3 substrate and Cu layer, it is shown theoretically and experimentally that one order of magnitude enhancement of neutron density is possible in the vicinity of the Gd layer. This enhancement makes it possible to study domain formation in the Gd layer under transition of the Nb layer(s) into the superconducting state (cryptoferromagnetic phase).Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Open Source Dataset and Machine Learning Techniques for Automatic Recognition of Historical Graffiti

Machine learning techniques are presented for automatic recognition of the historical letters (XI-XVIII centuries) carved on the stoned walls of St.Sophia cathedral in Kyiv (Ukraine). A new image dataset of these carved Glagolitic and Cyrillic letters (CGCL) was assembled and pre-processed for recognition and prediction by machine learning methods. The dataset consists of more than 4000 images for 34 types of letters. The explanatory data analysis of CGCL and notMNIST datasets shown that the carved letters can hardly be differentiated by dimensionality reduction methods, for example, by t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (tSNE) due to the worse letter representation by stone carving in comparison to hand writing. The multinomial logistic regression (MLR) and a 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) models were applied. The MLR model demonstrated the area under curve (AUC) values for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) are not lower than 0.92 and 0.60 for notMNIST and CGCL, respectively. The CNN model gave AUC values close to 0.99 for both notMNIST and CGCL (despite the much smaller size and quality of CGCL in comparison to notMNIST) under condition of the high lossy data augmentation. CGCL dataset was published to be available for the data science community as an open source resource.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for 25th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2018), 14-16 December, 2018 (Siem Reap, Cambodia

On the feasibility to study inverse proximity effect in a single S/F bilayer by Polarized Neutron Reflectometry

Here we report on a feasibility study aiming to explore the potential of Polarized Neutron Reflectometry (PNR) for detecting the inverse proximity effect in a single superconducting/ferromagnetic bilayer. Experiments, conducted on the V(40nm)/Fe(1nm) S/F bilayer, have shown that experimental spin asymmetry measured at T = 0.5TC is shifted towards higher Q values compared to the curve measured at T = 1.5TC. Such a shift can be described by the appearance in superconducting vanadium of magnetic sub-layer with thickness of 7 nm and magnetization of +0.8 kG.Comment: Changes in the 2nd version: small mistypes are corrected. Manuscript submitted to JETP let. 4 pages, 2 figure

Antisymmetric magnetoresistance in magnetic multilayers with perpendicular anisotropy

While magnetoresistance (MR) has generally been found to be symmetric in applied field in non-magnetic or magnetic metals, we have observed antisymmetric MR in Co/Pt multilayers. Simultaneous domain imaging and transport measurements show that the antisymmetric MR is due to the appearance of domain walls that run perpendicular to both the magnetization and the current, a geometry existing only in materials with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. As a result, the extraordinary Hall effect (EHE) gives rise to circulating currents in the vicinity of the domain walls that contributes to the MR. The antisymmetric MR and EHE have been quantitatively accounted for by a theoretical model.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Heavy MSSM Higgs Bosons at CMS: "LHC wedge" and Higgs-Mass Precision

The search for MSSM Higgs bosons will be an important goal at the LHC. In order to analyze the search reach of the CMS experiment for the heavy neutral MSSM Higgs bosons, we combine the latest results for the CMS experimental sensitivities based on full simulation studies with state-of-the-art theoretical predictions of MSSM Higgs-boson properties. The experimental analyses are done assuming an integrated luminosity of 30 or 60 fb^-1. The results are interpreted as 5 \si discovery contours in MSSM M_A-tan_beta benchmark scenarios. Special emphasis is put on the variation of the Higgs mixing parameter mu. While the variation of mu can shift the prospective discovery reach (and correspondingly the ``LHC wedge'' region) by about Delta tan_beta= 10, the discovery reach is rather stable with respect to the impact of other supersymmetric parameters. Within the discovery region we analyze the accuracy with which the masses of the heavy neutral Higgs bosons can be determined. An accuracy of 1-4% should be achievable, depending on M_A and tan_beta.Comment: Talk given by G.W. at EPS07 (Manchester, July 2007) and talk given by S.H. at SUSY07 (Karlsruhe, July 2007). 4 pages, 2 figure

Evidence for nonmonotonic magnetic field penetration in a type-I superconductor

Polarized neutron reflectometry (PNR) provides evidence that nonlocal electrodynamics governs the magnetic field penetration in an extreme low-k superconductor. The sample is an indium film with a large elastic mean free path (11 mkm) deposited on a silicon oxide wafer. It is shown that PNR can resolve the difference between the reflected neutron spin asymmetries predicted by the local and nonlocal theories of superconductivity. The experimental data support the nonlocal theory, which predicts a nonmonotonic decay of the magnetic field.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, LaTex, corrected typos and figure

Magnetic and Superconducting Phase Diagram of Nb/Gd/Nb trilayers

We report on a study of the structural, magnetic and superconducting properties of Nb(25nm)/Gd($d_f$)/Nb(25nm) hybrid structures of a superconductor/ ferromagnet (S/F) type. The structural characterization of the samples, including careful determination of the layer thickness, was performed using neutron and X-ray scattering with the aid of depth sensitive mass-spectrometry. The magnetization of the samples was determined by SQUID magnetometry and polarized neutron reflectometry and the presence of magnetic ordering for all samples down to the thinnest Gd(0.8nm) layer was shown. The analysis of the neutron spin asymmetry allowed us to prove the absence of magnetically dead layers in junctions with Gd interlayer thickness larger than one monolayer. The measured dependence of the superconducting transition temperature $T_c(d_f)$ has a damped oscillatory behavior with well defined positions of the minimum at $d_f$=3nm and the following maximum at $d_f$=4nm; the behavior, which is in qualitative agreement with the prior work (J.S. Jiang et al, PRB 54, 6119). The analysis of the $T_c(d_f)$ dependence based on Usadel equations showed that the observed minimum at $d_f$=3nm can be described by the so called "$0$" to "$\pi$" phase transition of highly transparent S/F interfaces with the superconducting correlation length $\xi_f \approx 4$nm in Gd. This penetration length is several times higher than for strong ferromagnets like Fe, Co or Ni, simplifying thus preparation of S/F structures with $d_f \sim \xi_f$ which are of topical interest in superconducting spintronics