55,941 research outputs found
Magnetic monopole and string excitations in a two-dimensional spin ice
We study the magnetic excitations of a square lattice spin-ice recently
produced in an artificial form, as an array of nanoscale magnets. Our analysis,
based upon the dipolar interaction between the nanomagnetic islands, correctly
reproduces the ground-state observed experimentally. In addition, we find
magnetic monopole-like excitations effectively interacting by means of the
usual Coulombic plus a linear confining potential, the latter being related to
a string-like excitation binding the monopoles pairs, what indicates that the
fractionalization of magnetic dipoles may not be so easy in two dimensions.
These findings contrast this material with the three-dimensional analogue,
where such monopoles experience only the Coulombic interaction. We discuss,
however, two entropic effects that affect the monopole interactions: firstly,
the string configurational entropy may loose the string tension and then, free
magnetic monopoles should also be found in lower dimensional spin ices;
secondly, in contrast to the string configurational entropy, an entropically
driven Coulomb force, which increases with temperature, has the opposite effect
of confining the magnetic defects.Comment: 8 pages. Accepted by Journal of Applied Physics (2009
Spatial-temporal evolution of the current filamentation instability
The spatial-temporal evolution of the purely transverse current filamentation
instability is analyzed by deriving a single partial differential equation for
the instability and obtaining the analytical solutions for the spatially and
temporally growing current filament mode. When the beam front always encounters
fresh plasma, our analysis shows that the instability grows spatially from the
beam front to the back up to a certain critical beam length; then the
instability acquires a purely temporal growth. This critical beam length
increases linearly with time and in the non-relativistic regime it is
proportional to the beam velocity. In the relativistic regime the critical
length is inversely proportional to the cube of the beam Lorentz factor
. Thus, in the ultra-relativistic regime the instability
immediately acquires a purely temporal growth all over the beam. The analytical
results are in good agreement with multidimensional particle-in-cell
simulations performed with OSIRIS. Relevance of current study to recent and
future experiments on fireball beams is also addressed
BRST quantization of quasi-symplectic manifolds and beyond
We consider a class of \textit{factorizable} Poisson brackets which includes
almost all reasonable Poisson structures. A particular case of the factorizable
brackets are those associated with symplectic Lie algebroids. The BRST theory
is applied to describe the geometry underlying these brackets as well as to
develop a deformation quantization procedure in this particular case. This can
be viewed as an extension of the Fedosov deformation quantization to a wide
class of \textit{irregular} Poisson structures. In a more general case, the
factorizable Poisson brackets are shown to be closely connected with the notion
of -algebroid. A simple description is suggested for the geometry underlying
the factorizable Poisson brackets basing on construction of an odd Poisson
algebra bundle equipped with an abelian connection. It is shown that the
zero-curvature condition for this connection generates all the structure
relations for the -algebroid as well as a generalization of the Yang-Baxter
equation for the symplectic structure.Comment: Journal version, references and comments added, style improve
Size-dependent bandgap and particle size distribution of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals
A new analytical expression for the size-dependent bandgap of colloidal
semiconductor nanocrystals is proposed within the framework of the finite-depth
square-well effective mass approximation in order to provide a quantitative
description of the quantum confinement effect. This allows one to convert
optical spectroscopic data (photoluminescence spectrum and absorbance edge)
into accurate estimates for the particle size distributions of colloidal
systems even if the traditional effective mass model is expected to fail, which
occurs typically for very small particles belonging to the so-called strong
confinement limit. By applying the reported theoretical methodologies to CdTe
nanocrystals synthesized through wet chemical routes, size distributions are
inferred and compared directly to those obtained from atomic force microscopy
and transmission electron microscopy. This analysis can be used as a
complementary tool for the characterization of nanocrystal samples of many
other systems such as the II-VI and III-V semiconductor materials.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
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