4,776 research outputs found
Current and current fluctuations in quantum shuttles
We review the properties of electron shuttles, i.e. nanoelectromechanical
devices that transport electrons one-by-one by utilizing a combination of
electronic and mechanical degrees of freedom. We focus on the extreme quantum
limit, where the mechanical motion is quantized. We introduce the main
theoretical tools needed for the analysis, e.g. generalized master equations
and Wigner functions, and we outline the methods how the resulting large
numerical problems can be handled. Illustrative results are given for current,
noise, and full counting statistics for a number of model systems. Throughout
the review we focus on the physics behind the various approximations, and some
simple examples are given to illustrate the theoretical concepts. We also
comment on the experimental situation.Comment: Minireview; technical level aimed at general audience, based on an
invited talk at "Transport Phenomena in Micro and Nanodevices", October 17-21
Kona, Hawai
Low-temperature nucleation in a kinetic Ising model with soft stochastic dynamics
We study low-temperature nucleation in kinetic Ising models by analytical and
simulational methods, confirming the general result for the average metastable
lifetime, = A*exp(beta*Gamma) (beta = 1/kT) [E. Jordao Neves and R.H.
Schonmann, Commun. Math. Phys. 137, 209 (1991)]. Contrary to common belief, we
find that both A and Gamma depend significantly on the stochastic dynamic. In
particular, for a ``soft'' dynamic, in which the effects of the interactions
and the applied field factorize in the transition rates, Gamma does NOT simply
equal the energy barrier against nucleation, as it does for the standard
Glauber dynamic, which does not have this factorization property.Comment: 4 pages RevTex4, 2 figures. Phys. Rev. Lett., in pres
Quantum systems in a stationary environment out of thermal equilibrium
We discuss how the thermalization of an elementary quantum system is modified
when the system is placed in an environment out of thermal equilibrium. To this
aim we provide a detailed investigation of the dynamics of an atomic system
placed close to a body of arbitrary geometry and dielectric permittivity, whose
temperature is different from that of the surrounding walls . A
suitable master equation for the general case of an -level atom is first
derived and then specialized to the cases of a two- and three-level atom.
Transition rates and steady states are explicitly expressed as a function of
the scattering matrices of the body and become both qualitatively and
quantitatively different from the case of radiation at thermal equilibrium. Out
of equilibrium, the system steady state depends on the system-body distance, on
the geometry of the body and on the interplay of all such parameters with the
body optical resonances. While a two-level atom tends toward a thermal state,
this is not the case already in the presence of three atomic levels. This
peculiar behavior can be exploited, for example, to invert the populations
ordering and to provide an efficient cooling mechanism for the internal state
of the quantum system. We finally provide numerical studies and asymptotic
expressions when the body is a slab of finite thickness. Our predictions can be
relevant for a wide class of experimental configurations out of thermal
equilibrium involving different physical realizations of two or three-level
systems.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, published versio
An analytical model for the detection of levitated nanoparticles in optomechanics
Interferometric position detection of levitated particles is crucial for the
centre-of-mass (CM) motion cooling and manipulation of levitated particles. In
combination with balanced detection and feedback cooling, this system has
provided picometer scale position sensitivity, zeptonewton force detection, and
sub-millikelvin CM temperatures. In this article, we develop an analytical
model of this detection system and compare its performance with experimental
results allowing us to explain the presence of spurious frequencies in the
spectra
Ising model with memory: coarsening and persistence properties
We consider the coarsening properties of a kinetic Ising model with a memory
field. The probability of a spin-flip depends on the persistence time of the
spin in a state. The more a spin has been in a given state, the less the
spin-flip probability is. We numerically studied the growth and persistence
properties of such a system on a two dimensional square lattice. The memory
introduces energy barriers which freeze the system at zero temperature. At
finite temperature we can observe an apparent arrest of coarsening for low
temperature and long memory length. However, since the energy barriers
introduced by memory are due to local effects, there exists a timescale on
which coarsening takes place as for the Ising model. Moreover the two point
correlation functions of the Ising model with and without memory are the same,
indicating that they belong to the same universality class.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures; some figures and some comments adde
Projected single-spin flip dynamics in the Ising Model
We study transition matrices for projected dynamics in the
energy-magnetization space, magnetization space and energy space. Several
single spin flip dynamics are considered such as the Glauber and Metropolis
canonical ensemble dynamics and the Metropolis dynamics for three
multicanonical ensembles: the flat energy-magnetization histogram, the flat
energy histogram and the flat magnetization histogram. From the numerical
diagonalization of the matrices for the projected dynamics we obtain the
sub-dominant eigenvalue and the largest relaxation times for systems of varying
size. Although, the projected dynamics is an approximation to the full state
space dynamics comparison with some available results, obtained by other
authors, shows that projection in the magnetization space is a reasonably
accurate method to study the scaling of relaxation times with system size. The
transition matrices for arbitrary single-spin flip dynamics are obtained from a
single Monte-Carlo estimate of the infinite temperature transition-matrix, for
each system size, which makes the method an efficient tool to evaluate the
relative performance of any arbitrary local spin-flip dynamics. We also present
new results for appropriately defined average tunnelling times of magnetization
and compute their finite-size scaling exponents that we compare with results of
energy tunnelling exponents available for the flat energy histogram
multicanonical ensemble.Comment: 23 pages and 6 figure
Fast Simulation of Facilitated Spin Models
We show how to apply the absorbing Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm of
Novotny to simulate kinetically constrained models of glasses. We consider in
detail one-spin facilitated models, such as the East model and its
generalizations to arbitrary dimensions. We investigate how to maximise the
efficiency of the algorithms, and show that simulation times can be improved on
standard continuous time Monte Carlo by several orders of magnitude. We
illustrate the method with equilibrium and aging results. These include a study
of relaxation times in the East model for dimensions d=1 to d=13, which
provides further evidence that the hierarchical relaxation in this model is
present in all dimensions. We discuss how the method can be applied to other
kinetically constrained models.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Optical extinction in a single layer of nanorods
We demonstrate that almost 100 % of incident photons can interact with a
monolayer of scatterers in a symmetrical environment. Nearly-perfect optical
extinction through free-standing transparent nanorod arrays has been measured.
The sharp spectral opacity window, in the form of a characteristic Fano
resonance, arises from the coherent multiple scattering in the array. In
addition, we show that nanorods made of absorbing material exhibit a 25-fold
absorption enhancement per unit volume compared to unstructured thin film.
These results open new perspectives for light management in high-Q, low volume
dielectric nanostructures, with potential applications in optical systems,
spectroscopy, and optomechanics
A Numerical Transfer-Matrix Study of Surface-Tension Anisotropy in Ising Models on Square and Cubic Lattices
We compute by numerical transfer-matrix methods the surface free energy
the surface stiffness coefficient and the single-step
free energy for Ising ferromagnets with
square-lattice and cubic-lattice geometries, into
which an interface is introduced by imposing antiperiodic or plus/minus
boundary conditions in one transverse direction. These quantities occur in
expansions of the angle-dependent surface tension, either for rough or for
smooth interfaces. The finite-size scaling behavior of the interfacial
correlation length provides the means of investigating and
The resulting transfer-matrix estimates are fully consistent with previous
series and Monte Carlo studies, although current computational technology does
not permit transfer-matrix studies of sufficiently large systems to show
quantitative improvement over the previous estimates.Comment: 40 pages, 17 figures available on request. RevTeX version 2.
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