Obtaining a class of Type N pure radiation metrics using invariant operators

We develop further the integration procedure in the generalised invariant formalism, and demonstrate its efficiency by obtaining a class of Petrov type N pure radiation metrics without any explicit integration, and with comparatively little detailed calculations. The method is similar to the one exploited by Edgar and Vickers when deriving the general conformally flat pure radiation metric. A major addition to the technique is the introduction of non-intrinsic elements in generalised invariant formalism, which can be exploited to keep calculations manageable.Comment: This work was presented in July 2004, in the Gr17 meeting held in Dublin-Irelan

Shear-melting of a hexagonal columnar crystal by proliferation of dislocations

A hexagonal columnar crystal undergoes a shear-melting transition above a critical shear rate or stress. We combine the analysis of the shear-thinning regime below the melting with that of synchrotron X-ray scattering data under shear and propose the melting to be due to a proliferation of dislocations, whose density is determined by both techniques to vary as a power law of the shear rate with a 2/3 exponent, as expected for a creep model of crystalline solids. Moreover, our data suggest the existence under shear of a line hexatic phase, between the columnar crystal and the liquid phase

Towards a new determination of the QCD Lambda parameter from running couplings in the three-flavour theory

We review our new strategy and current status towards a high precision computation of the Lambda parameter from three-flavour simulations in QCD. To reach this goal we combine specific advantages of the Schr\"odinger functional and gradient flow couplings.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; Proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory; 23-28 June, 2014, Columbia University, New Yor

I-V curves of Fe/MgO (001) single- and double-barrier tunnel junctions

In this work, we calculate with ab initio methods the current-voltage characteristics for ideal single- and double-barrier Fe/MgO (001) magnetic tunnel junctions. The current is calculated in the phase-coherent limit by using the recently developed SMEAGOL code, combining the nonequilibrium Green function formalism with density-functional theory. In general we find that double-barrier junctions display a larger magnetoresistance, which decays with bias at a slower pace than their single-barrier counterparts. This is explained in terms of enhanced spin filtering from the middle Fe layer sandwiched in between the two MgO barriers. In addition, for double-barrier tunnel junctions, we find a well defined peak in the magnetoresistance at a voltage of V=0.1 V. This is the signature of resonant tunneling across a majority quantum well state. Our findings are discussed in relation to recent experiments

The Λ\Lambda-parameter in 3-flavour QCD and αs(mZ)\alpha_s(m_Z) by the ALPHA collaboration

We present results by the ALPHA collaboration for the $\Lambda$-parameter in 3-flavour QCD and the strong coupling constant at the electroweak scale, $\alpha_s(m_Z)$, in terms of hadronic quantities computed on the CLS gauge configurations. The first part of this proceedings contribution contains a review of published material \cite{Brida:2016flw,DallaBrida:2016kgh} and yields the $\Lambda$-parameter in units of a low energy scale, $1/L_{\rm had}$. We then discuss how to determine this scale in physical units from experimental data for the pion and kaon decay constants. We obtain $\Lambda_{\overline{\rm MS}}^{(3)} = 332(14)$ MeV which translates to $\alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1179(10)(2)$ using perturbation theory to match between 3-, 4- and 5-flavour QCD.Comment: 21 pages. Collects contributions of A. Ramos, S. Sint and R. Sommer to the 34th annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory; LaTeX input encoding problem fixe