Field testing of strategies for fire blight control in organic fruit growing

In organic fruit growing effective control strategies are needed to prevent blossom infections by the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora. Many potential control agents are under discussion and have been tested in vitro and in vivo. 19 out of 27 tested preparations showed a high efficacy against E. amylovora in vitro. Nevertheless, on detached apple blossoms only 7 of them led to a symptom reduction by more than 50%. In six field trials conducted according to the EPPO guideline PP1/166(3) BlossomProtect (82%), Myco-sin (65%) and Funguran (58%) had the highest efficiency. In 2006 and 2007, strategies to integrate BlossomProtect in spray schedules of organic apple production have been tested. The use of sulphur or lime-sulphur before or after BlossomProtect did not influence the efficiency of BlossomProtect, which showed that fire blight control is possible without compromising apple scab control. The addition of Cutisan to BlossomProtect reduced fruit russet. An alternating use of BlossomProtect and Myco-sin was shown to be possible

Non-equilibrium GW approach to quantum transport in nano-scale contacts

Correlation effects within the GW approximation have been incorporated into the Keldysh non-equilibrium transport formalism. We show that GW describes the Kondo effect and the zero-temperature transport properties of the Anderson model fairly well. Combining the GW scheme with density functional theory and a Wannier function basis set, we illustrate the impact of correlations by computing the I-V characteristics of a hydrogen molecule between two Pt chains. Our results indicate that self-consistency is fundamental for the calculated currents, but that it tends to wash out satellite structures in the spectral function.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Nonequilibrium Green's Function Approach to Phonon Transport in Defective Carbon Nanotubes

We have developed a new theoretical formalism for phonon transport in nanostructures using the nonequilibrium phonon Green's function technique and have applied it to thermal conduction in defective carbon nanotubes. The universal quantization of low-temperature thermal conductance in carbon nanotubes can be observed even in the presence of local structural defects such as vacancies and Stone-Wales defects, since the long wavelength acoustic phonons are not scattered by local defects. At room temperature, however, thermal conductance is critically affected by defect scattering since incident phonons are scattered by localized phonons around the defects. We find a remarkable change from quantum to classical features for the thermal transport through defective CNTs with increasing temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Spin Hall effect in infinitely large and finite-size diffusive Rashba two-dimensional electron systems: A helicity-basis nonequilibrium Green's function approach

A nonequilibrium Green's function approach is employed to investigate the spin-Hall effect in diffusive two-dimensional electron systems with Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Considering a long-range electron-impurity scattering potential in the self-consistent Born approximation, we find that the spin-Hall effect arises from two distinct interband polarizations in helicity basis: a disorder-unrelated polarization directly induced by the electric field and a polarization mediated by electron-impurity scattering. The disorder-unrelated polarization is associated with all electron states below the Fermi surface and produces the original intrinsic spin-Hall current, while the disorder-mediated polarization emerges with contribution from the electron states near the Fermi surface and gives rise to an additional contribution to the spin-Hall current. Within the diffusive regime, the total spin-Hall conductivity vanishes in {\it infinitely large} samples, independently of temperature, of the spin-orbit coupling constant, of the impurity density, and of the specific form of the electron-impurity scattering potential. However, in a {\it finite-size} Rashba two-dimensional semiconductor, the spin-Hall conductivity no longer always vanishes. Depending on the sample size in the micrometer range, it can be positive, zero or negative with a maximum absolute value reaching as large as $e/8\pi$ order of magnitude at low temperatures. As the sample size increases, the total spin-Hall conductivity oscillates with a decreasing amplitude. We also discuss the temperature dependence of the spin-Hall conductivity for different sample sizes.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, extended version of cond-mat/041162

Non-equilibrium current and electron pumping in nanostructures

We discuss a numerical method to study electron transport in mesoscopic devices out of equilibrium. The method is based on the solution of operator equations of motion, using efficient Chebyshev time propagation techniques. Its peculiar feature is the propagation of operators backwards in time. In this way the resource consumption scales linearly with the number of states used to represent the system. This allows us to calculate the current for non-interacting electrons in large one-, two- and three-dimensional lead-device configurations with time-dependent voltages or potentials. We discuss the technical aspects of the method and present results for an electron pump device and a disordered system, where we find transient behaviour that exists for a very long time and may be accessible to experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the International Conference on Magnetism (ICM) 2009 in Karlsruh

Electron-positron pair production by linearly polarized photon in the nuclear field

Process of lepton pair production by polarized photon on nuclei can be used to measure the degree of linear polarization of high energy photon. The differential cross section and the analyzing power are calculated with taking into account higher powers of expansion on $Z\alpha$. Pure Coulomb and screened potential are considered.Comment: 12 page

Anomalous enhancement of spin Hall conductivity in superconductor/normal metal junction

We propose a spin Hall device to induce a large spin Hall effect in a superconductor/normal metal (SN) junction. The side jump and skew scattering mechanisms are both taken into account to calculate the extrinsic spin Hall conductivity in the normal metal. We find that both contributions are anomalously enhanced when the voltage between the superconductor and the normal metal approaches to the superconducting gap. This enhancement is attributed to the resonant increase of the density of states in the normal metal at the Fermi level. Our results demonstrate a novel way to control and amplify the spin Hall conductivity by applying an external dc electric field, suggesting that a SN junction has a potential application for a spintronic device with a large spin Hall effect.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, To be published as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review

Excitation Induced Dephasing in Semiconductor Quantum Dots

A quantum kinetic theory is used to compute excitation induced dephasing in semiconductor quantum dots due to the Coulomb interaction with a continuum of states, such as a quantum well or a wetting layer. It is shown that a frequency dependent broadening together with nonlinear resonance shifts are needed for a microscopic explanation of the excitation induced dephasing in such a system, and that excitation induced dephasing for a quantum-dot excitonic resonance is different from quantum-well and bulk excitons.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Extensively revised text, two figures change

Current induced light emission and light induced current in molecular tunneling junctions

The interaction of metal-molecule-metal junctions with light is considered within a simple generic model. We show, for the first time, that light induced current in unbiased junctions can take place when the bridging molecule is characterized by a strong charge-transfer transition. The same model shows current induced light emission under potential bias that exceeds the molecular excitation energy. Results based on realistic estimates of molecular-lead coupling and molecule-radiation field interaction suggest that both effects should be observable.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, RevTeX