Spin-3/2 physics of semiconductor hole nanowires: Valence-band mixing and tunable interplay between bulk-material and orbital bound-state spin splittings

We present a detailed theoretical study of the electronic spectrum and Zeeman splitting in hole quantum wires. The spin-3/2 character of the topmost bulk-valence-band states results in a strong variation of subband-edge g factors between different subbands. We elucidate the interplay between quantum confinement and heavy-hole - light-hole mixing and identify a certain robustness displayed by low-lying hole-wire subband edges with respect to changes in the shape or strength of the wire potential. The ability to address individual subband edges in, e.g., transport or optical experiments enables the study of holes states with nonstandard spin polarization, which do not exist in spin-1/2 systems. Changing the aspect ratio of hole wires with rectangular cross-section turns out to strongly affect the g factor of subband edges, providing an opportunity for versatile in-situ tuning of hole-spin properties with possible application in spintronics. The relative importance of cubic crystal symmetry is discussed, as well as the spin splitting away from zone-center subband edges.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, RevTe

Study of 0-π\pi phase transition in hybrid superconductor-InSb nanowire quantum dot devices

Hybrid superconductor-semiconducting nanowire devices provide an ideal platform to investigating novel intragap bound states, such as the Andreev bound states (ABSs), Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states, and the Majorana bound states. The competition between Kondo correlations and superconductivity in Josephson quantum dot (QD) devices results in two different ground states and the occurrence of a 0-$\pi$ quantum phase transition. Here we report on transport measurements on hybrid superconductor-InSb nanowire QD devices with different device geometries. We demonstrate a realization of continuous gate-tunable ABSs with both 0-type levels and $\pi$-type levels. This allow us to manipulate the transition between 0 and $\pi$ junction and explore charge transport and spectrum in the vicinity of the quantum phase transition regime. Furthermore, we find a coexistence of 0-type ABS and $\pi$-type ABS in the same charge state. By measuring temperature and magnetic field evolution of the ABSs, the different natures of the two sets of ABSs are verified, being consistent with the scenario of phase transition between the singlet and doublet ground state. Our study provides insights into Andreev transport properties of hybrid superconductor-QD devices and sheds light on the crossover behavior of the subgap spectrum in the vicinity of 0-$\pi$ transition

The Spin--Symmetry of the Quark Model

Corrections to the exact heavy--quark symmetry results are expected to follow the $1/m_{Q}$ mass effect of the heavy--quark. We show, by an explicit calculation, that there is something other than the mass effect that suppresses the breaking of the spin symmetry

Concatenated LDPC-TCM coding for reliable storage in multi-level flash memories

In this paper, we present an efficient fault tolerant solution for multi-level per cell (MLC) flash memory that concatenates trellis coded modulation (TCM) with an outer low-density parity-check (LDPC) code. Traditional flash coding systems employ simple hard-decisions based codes, such as Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, that can correct a fixed, specified number of errors. Thanks to the Bahl, Cocke, Jelinek, and Raviv (BCJR) algorithm, the TCM decoder within the proposed design can provide soft decisions which make it possible to use the more powerful LDPC codes. Moreover, the error-correction performance is further improved since TCM can decrease the raw error rate of MLC and hence relieve the burden of outer LDPC code. The effectiveness of concatenated LDPC-TCM systems has been successfully demonstrated through computer simulations