8,033 research outputs found
Mercury in the environment
Problems in assessing mercury concentrations in environmental materials are discussed. Data for situations involving air, water, rocks, soils, sediments, sludges, fossil fuels, plants, animals, foods, and man are drawn together and briefly evaluated. Details are provided regarding the toxicity of mercury along with tentative standards and guidelines for mercury in air, drinking water, and food
Exchange coupling between silicon donors: the crucial role of the central cell and mass anisotropy
Donors in silicon are now demonstrated as one of the leading candidates for
implementing qubits and quantum information processing. Single qubit
operations, measurements and long coherence times are firmly established, but
progress on controlling two qubit interactions has been slower. One reason for
this is that the inter donor exchange coupling has been predicted to oscillate
with separation, making it hard to estimate in device designs. We present a
multivalley effective mass theory of a donor pair in silicon, including both a
central cell potential and the effective mass anisotropy intrinsic in the Si
conduction band. We are able to accurately describe the single donor properties
of valley-orbit coupling and the spatial extent of donor wave functions,
highlighting the importance of fitting measured values of hyperfine coupling
and the orbital energy of the levels. Ours is a simple framework that can
be applied flexibly to a range of experimental scenarios, but it is nonetheless
able to provide fast and reliable predictions. We use it to estimate the
exchange coupling between two donor electrons and we find a smoothing of its
expected oscillations, and predict a monotonic dependence on separation if two
donors are spaced precisely along the [100] direction.Comment: Published version. Corrected b and B values from previous versio
Onsager's Wien Effect on a Lattice
The Second Wien Effect describes the non-linear, non-equilibrium response of
a weak electrolyte in moderate to high electric fields. Onsager's 1934
electrodiffusion theory along with various extensions has been invoked for
systems and phenomena as diverse as solar cells, surfactant solutions, water
splitting reactions, dielectric liquids, electrohydrodynamic flow, water and
ice physics, electrical double layers, non-Ohmic conduction in semiconductors
and oxide glasses, biochemical nerve response and magnetic monopoles in spin
ice. In view of this technological importance and the experimental ubiquity of
such phenomena, it is surprising that Onsager's Wien effect has never been
studied by numerical simulation. Here we present simulations of a lattice
Coulomb gas, treating the widely applicable case of a double equilibrium for
free charge generation. We obtain detailed characterisation of the Wien effect
and confirm the accuracy of the analytical theories as regards the field
evolution of the free charge density and correlations. We also demonstrate that
simulations can uncover further corrections, such as how the field-dependent
conductivity may be influenced by details of microscopic dynamics. We conclude
that lattice simulation offers a powerful means by which to investigate
system-specific corrections to the Onsager theory, and thus constitutes a
valuable tool for detailed theoretical studies of the numerous practical
applications of the Second Wien Effect.Comment: Main: 12 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary Information: 7 page
Surface code architecture for donors and dots in silicon with imprecise and nonuniform qubit couplings
A scaled quantum computer with donor spins in silicon would benefit from a
viable semiconductor framework and a strong inherent decoupling of the qubits
from the noisy environment. Coupling neighbouring spins via the natural
exchange interaction according to current designs requires gate control
structures with extremely small length scales. We present a silicon
architecture where bismuth donors with long coherence times are coupled to
electrons that can shuttle between adjacent quantum dots, thus relaxing the
pitch requirements and allowing space between donors for classical control
devices. An adiabatic SWAP operation within each donor/dot pair solves the
scalability issues intrinsic to exchange-based two-qubit gates, as it does not
rely on sub-nanometer precision in donor placement and is robust against noise
in the control fields. We use this SWAP together with well established global
microwave Rabi pulses and parallel electron shuttling to construct a surface
code that needs minimal, feasible local control.Comment: Published version - more detailed discussions, robustness to
dephasing pointed out additionall
Modulation of the high mobility two-dimensional electrons in Si/SiGe using atomic-layer-deposited gate dielectric
Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET's) using
atomic-layer-deposited (ALD) AlO as the gate dielectric are fabricated
on the Si/SiGe heterostructures. The low-temperature carrier
density of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in the strained Si quantum
well can be controllably tuned from 2.5cm to
4.5cm, virtually without any gate leakage current.
Magnetotransport data show the homogeneous depletion of 2DES under gate biases.
The characteristic of vertical modulation using ALD dielectric is shown to be
better than that using Schottky barrier or the SiO dielectric formed by
plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor-deposition(PECVD).Comment: 3 pages Revtex4, 4 figure
Electron Paramagnetic Resonance of Boron Acceptors in Isotopically Purified Silicon
The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) linewidths of B acceptors in Si are
found to reduce dramatically in isotopically purified 28Si single crystals.
Moreover, extremely narrow substructures in the EPR spectra are visible
corresponding to either an enhancement or a reduction of the absorbed microwave
on resonance. The origin of the substructures is attributed to a combination of
simultaneous double excitation and spin relaxation in the four level spin
system of the acceptors. A spin population model is developed which
qualitatively describes the experimental results.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Role-play simulations as an aid to achieve complex learning outcomes in hydrological science
Students in hydrology are expected to become proficient in a set of
quantitative skills while also acquiring the ability to apply their
problem-solving abilities in real-life situations. To achieve both these
types of learning outcomes, there is broad evidence that activity-based
learning is beneficial. In this paper, we argue that role-play simulations in
particular are useful for achieving complex learning outcomes, i.e., making
students able to coordinate and integrate various analytical skills in
complicated settings. We evaluated the effects of an integrated water
resources management (IWRM) negotiation simulation next to more traditional
teaching methods intended to foster quantitative understanding. Results
showed that despite similar student-reported achievement of both complex and
quantitative intended learning outcomes, the students favored the negotiation
simulation over the traditional method. This implies that role-play
simulations can motivate and actively engage a classroom, thereby creating a
space for potential deeper learning and longer retention of knowledge. While
our findings support the utility of simulations to teach complex learning
outcomes and indicate no shortcoming in achieving such outcomes next to
traditional methods aimed at quantitative learning outcomes, simulations are
still not widely used to foster activity-based learning in the classroom. We
thus conclude by presenting three particularly challenging areas of role-play
simulations as learning tools that serve as potential barriers to their
implementation and suggest ways to overcome such roadblocks.</p
Path integral Monte Carlo calculations of helium and hydrogen-helium plasma thermodynamics and of the deuterium shock Hugoniot
In this work we calculate the thermodynamic properties of hydrogen-helium
plasmas with different mass fractions of helium by the direct path integral
Monte Carlo method. To avoid unphysical approximations we use the path integral
representation of the density matrix. We pay special attention to the region of
weak coupling and degeneracy and compare the results of simulation with a model
based on the chemical picture. Further with the help of calculated deuterium
isochors we compute the shock Hugoniot of deuterium. We analyze our results in
comparison with recent experimental and calculated data on the deuterium
Hugoniot.Comment: 7 pages, 5 Postscript figures, accepted for publication in J. Phys.
A: Math. Ge
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