Fluorescence intermittency in blinking quantum dots: renewal or slow modulation?

We study time series produced by the blinking quantum dots, by means of an aging experiment, and we examine the results of this experiment in the light of two distinct approaches to complexity, renewal and slow modulation. We find that the renewal approach fits the result of the aging experiment, while the slow modulation perspective does not. We make also an attempt at establishing the existence of an intermediate condition.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for pubblication on Journal of Chemical Physic

The MC@NLO 4.0 Event Generator

This is the user's manual of MC@NLO 4.0. This package is a practical implementation, based upon the Fortran HERWIG and Herwig++ event generators, of the MC@NLO formalism, which allows one to incorporate NLO QCD matrix elements consistently into a parton shower framework. Processes available in this version include the hadroproduction of single vector and Higgs bosons, vector boson pairs, heavy quark pairs, single top, single top in association with a W, single top in association with a charged Higgs in type I or II 2HDM models, lepton pairs, and Higgs bosons in association with a W or Z. Spin correlations are included for all processes except ZZ production. This document is self-contained, but we emphasise the main differences with respect to previous versions.Comment: 36 pages, no figure

Exploring the S-Matrix of Massless Particles

We use the recently proposed generalised on-shell representation for scattering amplitudes and a consistency test to explore the space of tree-level consistent couplings in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. The extension of the constructible notion implied by the generalised on-shell representation, i.e. the possibility to reconstruct at tree level all the scattering amplitudes from the three-particle ones, together with the imposition of the consistency conditions at four-particle level, allow to rediscover all the known theories and their algebra structure, if any. Interestingly, this analysis seems to leave room for high-spin couplings, provided that at least the requirement of locality is weakened. We do not claim to have found tree-level consistent high-spin theories, but rather that our methods show signatures of them and very likely, with a suitable modification, they can be a good framework to perform a systematic search.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figur

Non dissipative decoherence of Rabi oscillations

We present a simple theoretical description of two recent experiments where damping of Rabi oscillations, which cannot be attributed to dissipative decoherence, has been observed. This is obtained considering the evolution time or the Hamiltonian as random variables and then averaging the usual unitary evolution on a properly defined, model-independent, probability distribution.Comment: 4 pages, RevTe

Simplicial Chiral Models

Principal chiral models on a d-1 dimensional simplex are introduced and studied analytically in the large $N$ limit. The $d = 0, 2, 4$ and $\infty$ models are explicitly solved. Relationship with standard lattice models and with few-matrix systems in the double scaling limit are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, PHYZZ

First-principles study of multiferroic RbFe(MoO4_4)2_2

We have investigated the magnetic structure and ferroelectricity in RbFe(MoO$_4$)$_2$ via first-principles calculations. Phenomenological analyses have shown that ferroelectricity may arise due to both the triangular chirality of the magnetic structure, and through coupling between the magnetic helicity and the ferroaxial structural distortion. Indeed, it was recently proposed that the structural distortion plays a key role in stabilising the chiral magnetic structure itself. We have determined the relative contribution of the two mechanisms via \emph{ab-initio} calculations. Whilst the structural axiality does induce the magnetic helix by modulating the symmetric exchange interactions, the electric polarization is largely due to the in-plane spin triangular chirality, with both electronic and ionic contributions being of relativistic origin. At the microscopic level, we interpret the polarization as a secondary steric consequence of the inverse Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya mechanism and accordingly explain why the ferroaxial component of the electric polarization must be small

Exact solution of a model DNA-inversion genetic switch with orientational control

DNA inversion is an important mechanism by which bacteria and bacteriophage switch reversibly between phenotypic states. In such switches, the orientation of a short DNA element is flipped by a site-specific recombinase enzyme. We propose a simple model for a DNA inversion switch in which recombinase production is dependent on the switch state (orientational control). Our model is inspired by the fim switch in Escherichia coli. We present an exact analytical solution of the chemical master equation for the model switch, as well as stochastic simulations. Orientational control causes the switch to deviate from Poissonian behaviour: the distribution of times in the on state shows a peak and successive flip times are correlated.Comment: Revised version, accepted for publicatio

Quantum Cloning in dd dimensions

The quantum state space $\cal S$ over a $d$-dimensional Hilbert space is represented as a convex subset of a $D-1$-dimensional sphere $S_{D-1}\subset {\bf{R}}^D$, where $D=d^2-1.$ Quantum tranformations (CP-maps) are then associated with the affine transformations of ${\bf{R}}^D,$ and $N\mapsto M$ {\it cloners} induce polynomial mappings. In this geometrical setting it is shown that an optimal cloner can be chosen covariant and induces a map between reduced density matrices given by a simple contraction of the associated $D$-dimensional Bloch vectors.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, no figure