Traveling through potential energy landscapes of disordered materials: the activation-relaxation technique

A detailed description of the activation-relaxation technique (ART) is presented. This method defines events in the configurational energy landscape of disordered materials, such as a-Si, glasses and polymers, in a two-step process: first, a configuration is activated from a local minimum to a nearby saddle-point; next, the configuration is relaxed to a new minimum; this allows for jumps over energy barriers much higher than what can be reached with standard techniques. Such events can serve as basic steps in equilibrium and kinetic Monte Carlo schemes.Comment: 7 pages, 2 postscript figure

Band gap renormalization in photoexcited semiconductor quantum wire structures in the GW approximation

We investigate the dynamical self-energy corrections of the electron-hole plasma due to electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions at the band edges of a quasi-one dimensional (1D) photoexcited electron-hole plasma. The leading-order $GW$ dynamical screening approximation is used in the calculation by treating electron-electron Coulomb interaction and electron-optical phonon Fr\"{o}hlich interaction on an equal footing. We calculate the exchange-correlation induced band gap renormalization (BGR) as a function of the electron-hole plasma density and the quantum wire width. The calculated BGR shows good agreement with existing experimental results, and the BGR normalized by the effective quasi-1D excitonic Rydberg exhibits an approximate one-parameter universality.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Ionization degree of the electron-hole plasma in semiconductor quantum wells

The degree of ionization of a nondegenerate two-dimensional electron-hole plasma is calculated using the modified law of mass action, which takes into account all bound and unbound states in a screened Coulomb potential. Application of the variable phase method to this potential allows us to treat scattering and bound states on the same footing. Inclusion of the scattering states leads to a strong deviation from the standard law of mass action. A qualitative difference between mid- and wide-gap semiconductors is demonstrated. For wide-gap semiconductors at room temperature, when the bare exciton binding energy is of the order of T, the equilibrium consists of an almost equal mixture of correlated electron-hole pairs and uncorrelated free carriers.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Dynamic exchange-correlation potentials for the electron gas in dimensionality D=3 and D=2

Recent progress in the formulation of a fully dynamical local approximation to time-dependent Density Functional Theory appeals to the longitudinal and transverse components of the exchange and correlation kernel in the linear current-density response of the homogeneous fluid at long wavelength. Both components are evaluated for the electron gas in dimensionality D=3 and D=2 by an approximate decoupling in the equation of motion for the current density, which accounts for processes of excitation of two electron-hole pairs. Each pair is treated in the random phase approximation, but the role of exchange and correlation is also examined; in addition, final-state exchange processes are included phenomenologically so as to satisfy the exactly known high-frequency behaviours of the kernel. The transverse and longitudinal spectra involve the same decay channels and are similar in shape. A two-plasmon threshold in the spectrum for two-pair excitations in D=3 leads to a sharp minimum in the real part of the exchange and correlation kernel at twice the plasma frequency. In D=2 the same mechanism leads to a broad spectral peak and to a broad minimum in the real part of the kernel, as a consequence of the dispersion law of the plasmon vanishing at long wavelength. The numerical results have been fitted to simple analytic functions.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures included. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Simulation of thermal conductivity and heat transport in solids

Using molecular dynamics (MD) with classical interaction potentials we present calculations of thermal conductivity and heat transport in crystals and glasses. Inducing shock waves and heat pulses into the systems we study the spreading of energy and temperature over the configurations. Phonon decay is investigated by exciting single modes in the structures and monitoring the time evolution of the amplitude using MD in a microcanonical ensemble. As examples, crystalline and amorphous modifications of Selenium and $\rm{SiO_2}$ are considered.Comment: Revtex, 8 pages, 11 postscript figures, accepted for publication in PR

What are the experimentally observable effects of vertex corrections in superconductors?

We calculate the effects of vertex corrections, of non-constant density of states and of a (self-consistently determined) phonon self-energy for the Holstein model on a 3D cubic lattice. We replace vertex corrections with a Coulomb pseudopotential, mu*, adjusted to give the same Tc, and repeat the calculations, to see which effects are a distinct feature of vertex corrections. This allows us to determine directly observable effects ofvertex corrections on a variety of thermodynamic properties of superconductors. To this end, we employ conserving approximations (in the local approximation) to calculate the superconducting critical temperatures, isotope coefficients, superconducting gaps, free-energy differences and thermodynamic critical fields for a range of parameters. We find that the dressed value of lambda is significantly larger than the bare value. While vertex corrections can cause significant changes in all the above quantities (even whenthe bare electron-phonon coupling is small), the changes can usually be well-modeled by an appropriate Coulomb pseudopotential. The isotope coefficient proves to be the quantity that most clearly shows effects of vertex corrections that can not be mimicked by a mu*.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure

Coupling atomistic and continuum length scales in heteroepitaxial systems: Multiscale molecular-dynamics/finite-element simulations of strain relaxation in Si/Si3N4 nanopixels

A hybrid atomistic-continuum simulation approach has been implemented to study strain relaxation in lattice-mismatched Si/Si3N4 nanopixels on a Si(111) substrate. We couple the molecular-dynamics (MD) and finite-element simulation approaches to provide an atomistic description near the interface and a continuum description deep into the substrate, increasing the accessible length scales and greatly reducing the computational cost. The results of the hybrid simulation are validated against full multimillion-atom MD simulations. We find that strain relaxation in Si/Si3N4 nanopixels may occur through the formation of a network of interfacial domain boundaries reminiscent of interfacial misfit dislocations. They result from the nucleation of domains of different interfacial bonding at the free edges and corners of the nanopixel, and subsequent to their creation they propagate inwards. We follow the motion of the domain boundaries and estimate a propagation speed of about similar to 2.5x10(3) m/s. The effects of temperature, nanopixel architecture, and film structure on strain relaxation are also investigated. We find: (i) elevated temperature increases the interfacial domain nucleation rates; (ii) a thin compliant Si layer between the film and the substrate plays a beneficial role in partially suppressing strain relaxation; and (iii) additional control over the interface morphology may be achieved by varying the film structure.Physical Review

Simultaneous Observation of Carrier-Specific Redistribution and Coherent Lattice Dynamics in 2H-MoTe2_{2} with Femtosecond Core-Level Spectroscopy

We employ few-femtosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) transient absorption spectroscopy to reveal simultaneously the intra- and interband carrier relaxation and the light-induced structural dynamics in nanoscale thin films of layered 2H-MoTe$_{2}$ semiconductor. By interrogating the valence electronic structure via localized Te 4$\textit{d}$ (39-46 eV) and Mo 4$\textit{p}$ (35-38 eV) core levels, the relaxation of the photoexcited hole distribution is directly observed in real time. We obtain hole thermalization and cooling times of 15$\pm$5 fs and 380$\pm$90 fs, respectively, and an electron-hole recombination time of 1.5$\pm$0.1 ps. Furthermore, excitations of coherent out-of-plane A$_{1g}$ (5.1 THz) and in-plane E$_{1g}$ (3.7 THz) lattice vibrations are visualized through oscillations in the XUV absorption spectra. By comparison to Bethe-Salpeter equation simulations, the spectral changes are mapped to real-space excited-state displacements of the lattice along the dominant A$_{1g}$ coordinate. By directly and simultaneously probing the excited carrier distribution dynamics and accompanying femtosecond lattice displacement in 2H-MoTe$_{2}$ within a single experiment, our work provides a benchmark for understanding the interplay between electronic and structural dynamics in photoexcited nanomaterials

Glass breaks like metals, but at the nanometer scale

We report in situ Atomic Force Microscopy experiments which reveal the presence of nanoscale damage cavities ahead of a stress-corrosion crack tip in glass. Their presence might explain the departure from linear elasticity observed in the vicinity of a crack tip in glass. Such a ductile fracture mechanism, widely observed in the case of metallic materials at the micrometer scale, might be also at the origin of the striking similarity of the morphologies of fracture surfaces of glass and metallic alloys at different length scales.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett, few minor corrections, Fig. 1b change