Modeling with structure of resins in electonic compornents

In recent years, interfacial fracture becomes one of the most important problems in the assessment of reliability of electronics packaging. Especially, underfill resin is used with solder joints in flip chip packaging for preventing the thermal fatigue fracture in solder joints. In general, the interfacial strength has been evaluated on the basis of interfacial fracture mechanics concept. However, as the size of devices decrease, it is difficult to evaluate the interfacial strength quantitatively. Most of researches in the interfacial fracture were conducted on the basis of the assumption of the perfectly bonding condition though the interface has the micro-scale structure and the bonding is often imperfect. In this study, the mechanical model of the interfacial structure of resin in electronic components was proposed. Bimaterial model with the imperfect bonding condition was examined by using a finite element analysis (FEA). Stress field in the vicinity of interface depends on the interfacial structure with the imperfect bonding. In the front of interfacial crack tip, the behavior of process zone is affected by interfacial structure. However, the instability of fracture for macroscopic crack which means the fracture toughness is governed by the stress intensity factor based on the fracture mechanics concept.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions

Variable-frequency-controlled coupling in charge qubit circuits: Effects of microwave field on qubit-state readout

To implement quantum information processing, microwave fields are often used to manipulate superconuducting qubits. We study how the coupling between superconducting charge qubits can be controlled by variable-frequency magnetic fields. We also study the effects of the microwave fields on the readout of the charge-qubit states. The measurement of the charge-qubit states can be used to demonstrate the statistical properties of photons.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Black holes, cuspy atmospheres, and galaxy formation

In cuspy atmospheres, jets driven by supermassive black holes (BHs) offset radiative cooling. The jets fire episodically, but often enough that the cuspy atmosphere does not move very far towards a cooling catastrophe in the intervals of jet inactivity. The ability of energy released on the sub-parsec scale of the BH to balance cooling on scales of several tens of kiloparsecs arises through a combination of the temperature sensitivity of the accretion rate and the way in which the radius of jet disruption varies with ambient density. Accretion of hot gas does not significantly increase BH masses, which are determined by periods of rapid BH growth and star formation when cold gas is briefly abundant at the galactic centre. Hot gas does not accumulate in shallow potential wells. As the Universe ages, deeper wells form, and eventually hot gas accumulates. This gas soon prevents the formation of further stars, since jets powered by the BH prevent it from cooling, and it mops up most cold infalling gas before many stars can form. Thus BHs set the upper limit to the masses of galaxies. The formation of low-mass galaxies is inhibited by a combination of photo-heating and supernova-driven galactic winds. Working in tandem these mechanisms can probably explain the profound difference between the galaxy luminosity function and the mass function of dark halos expected in the cold dark matter cosmology.Comment: To appear in Phil Trans Roy So

Simultaneous cooling of an artificial atom and its neighboring quantum system

We propose an approach for cooling both an artificial atom (e.g., a flux qubit) and its neighboring quantum system, the latter modeled by either a quantum two-level system or a quantum resonator. The flux qubit is cooled by manipulating its states, following an inverse process of state population inversion, and then the qubit is switched on to resonantly interact with the neighboring quantum system. By repeating these steps, the two subsystems can be simultaneously cooled. Our results show that this cooling is robust and effective, irrespective of the chosen quantum systems connected to the qubit.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Parity independence of the zero-bias conductance peak in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot hybrid device

We explore the signatures of Majorana fermions in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot-topological superconductor hybrid device by charge transport measurements. The device is made from an epitaxially grown InSb nanowire with two superconductor Nb contacts on a Si/SiO$_2$ substrate. At low temperatures, a quantum dot is formed in the segment of the InSb nanowire between the two Nb contacts and the two Nb contacted segments of the InSb nanowire show superconductivity due to the proximity effect. At zero magnetic field, well defined Coulomb diamonds and the Kondo effect are observed in the charge stability diagram measurements in the Coulomb blockade regime of the quantum dot. Under the application of a finite, sufficiently strong magnetic field, a zero-bias conductance peak structure is observed in the same Coulomb blockade regime. It is found that the zero-bias conductance peak is present in many consecutive Coulomb diamonds, irrespective of the even-odd parity of the quasi-particle occupation number in the quantum dot. In addition, we find that the zero-bias conductance peak is in most cases accompanied by two differential conductance peaks, forming a triple-peak structure, and the separation between the two side peaks in bias voltage shows oscillations closely correlated to the background Coulomb conductance oscillations of the device. The observed zero-bias conductance peak and the associated triple-peak structure are in line with the signatures of Majorana fermion physics in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot-topological superconductor system, in which the two Majorana bound states adjacent to the quantum dot are hybridized into a pair of quasi-particle states with finite energies and the other two Majorana bound states remain as the zero-energy modes located at the two ends of the entire InSb nanowire.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Optical selection rules and phase-dependent adiabatic state control in a superconducting quantum circuit

We analyze the optical selection rules of the microwave-assisted transitions in a flux qubit superconducting quantum circuit (SQC). We show that the parities of the states relevant to the superconducting phase in the SQC are well-defined when the external magnetic flux $\Phi_{e}=\Phi_{0}/2$, then the selection rules are same as the ones for the electric-dipole transitions in usual atoms. When $\Phi_{e}\neq \Phi_{0}/2$, the symmetry of the potential of the artificial "atom'' is broken, a so-called $\Delta$-type "cyclic" three-level atom is formed, where one- and two-photon processes can coexist. We study how the population of these three states can be selectively transferred by adiabatically controlling the electromagnetic field pulses. Different from $\Lambda$-type atoms, the adiabatic population transfer in our three-level $\Delta$-atom can be controlled not only by the amplitudes but also by the phases of the pulses

Measuring the quality factor of a microwave cavity using superconduting qubit devices

We propose a method to create superpositions of two macroscopic quantum states of a single-mode microwave cavity field interacting with a superconducting charge qubit. The decoherence of such superpositions can be determined by measuring either the Wigner function of the cavity field or the charge qubit states. Then the quality factor Q of the cavity can be inferred from the decoherence of the superposed states. The proposed method is experimentally realizable within current technology even when the $Q$ value is relatively low, and the interaction between the qubit and the cavity field is weak.Comment: 8 page

Optical properties of MgCNi3MgCNi_3 in the normal state

We present the optical reflectance and conductivity spectra for non-oxide antiperovskite superconductor $MgCNi_{3}$ at different temperatures. The reflectance drops gradually over a large energy scale up to 33,000 cm$^{-1}$, with the presence of several wiggles. The reflectance has slight temperature dependence at low frequency but becomes temperature independent at high frequency. The optical conductivity shows a Drude response at low frequencies and four broad absorption features in the frequency range from 600 $cm^{-1}$ to 33,000 $cm^{-1}$. We illustrate that those features can be well understood from the intra- and interband transitions between different components of Ni 3d bands which are hybridized with C 2p bands. There is a good agreement between our experimental data and the first-principle band structure calculations.Comment: 4 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.

LL-valley electron gg factor in bulk GaAs and AlAs

We study the Land\'e $g$-factor of conduction electrons in the $L$-valley of bulk GaAs and AlAs by using a three-band $\mathbf{k}\cdot\mathbf{p}$ model together with the tight-binding model. We find that the $L$-valley $g$-factor is highly anisotropic, and can be characterized by two components, $g_{\perp}$ and $g_{\|}$. $g_{\perp}$ is close to the free electron Land\'e factor but $g_{\|}$ is strongly affected by the remote bands. The contribution from remote bands on $g_{\|}$ depends on how the remote bands are treated. However, when the magnetic field is in the Voigt configuration, which is widely used in the experiments, different models give almost identical $g$-factor.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, To be published in J. App. Phys. 104, 200