771 research outputs found
Recovery For The Wrongful Death of a Viable Fetus: Werling v. Sandy
In Werling v. Sandy, the Ohio Supreme Court held a viable fetus, negligently injured en ventre sa mere and subsequently stillborn, may be the basis for a wrongful death action pursuant to Ohio Rev. Code § 2125.01.1 The court\u27s ruling represented Ohio\u27s explicit acceptance of the trend allowing a wrongful death action for the death of a fetus. Although Werling was not a case of first impression in Ohio, it presented the Ohio Supreme Court with the first opportunity to expand the legal rights of the unborn
Spin dynamics in high-mobility two-dimensional electron systems
Understanding the spin dynamics in semiconductor heterostructures is highly
important for future semiconductor spintronic devices. In high-mobility
two-dimensional electron systems (2DES), the spin lifetime strongly depends on
the initial degree of spin polarization due to the electron-electron
interaction. The Hartree-Fock (HF) term of the Coulomb interaction acts like an
effective out-of-plane magnetic field and thus reduces the spin-flip rate. By
time-resolved Faraday rotation (TRFR) techniques, we demonstrate that the spin
lifetime is increased by an order of magnitude as the initial spin polarization
degree is raised from the low-polarization limit to several percent. We perform
control experiments to decouple the excitation density in the sample from the
spin polarization degree and investigate the interplay of the internal HF field
and an external perpendicular magnetic field. The lifetime of spins oriented in
the plane of a [001]-grown 2DES is strongly anisotropic if the Rashba and
Dresselhaus spin-orbit fields are of the same order of magnitude. This
anisotropy, which stems from the interference of the Rashba and the Dresselhaus
spin-orbit fields, is highly density-dependent: as the electron density is
increased, the kubic Dresselhaus term becomes dominant and reduces the
anisotropy.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Effect of initial spin polarization on spin dephasing and electron g factor in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron system
We have investigated the spin dynamics of a high-mobility two-dimensional
electron system (2DES) in a GaAs--AlGaAs single quantum well by
time-resolved Faraday rotation (TRFR) in dependence on the initial degree of
spin polarization, , of the 2DES. From to %, we observe
an increase of the spin dephasing time, , by an order of magnitude,
from about 20 ps to 200 ps, in good agreement with theoretical predictions by
Weng and Wu [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 68}, 075312 (2003)]. Furthermore, by applying an
external magnetic field in the Voigt configuration, also the electron
factor is found to decrease for increasing . Fully microscopic calculations,
by numerically solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations considering the
D'yakonov-Perel' and the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanisms, reproduce the most
salient features of the experiments, {\em i.e}., a dramatic decrease of spin
dephasing and a moderate decrease of the electron factor with increasing
. We show that both results are determined dominantly by the Hartree-Fock
contribution of the Coulomb interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in PR
Acceleration Schemes for Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics and Electronic Structure Calculations
We study the convergence and the stability of fictitious dynamical methods
for electrons. First, we show that a particular damped second-order dynamics
has a much faster rate of convergence to the ground-state than first-order
steepest descent algorithms while retaining their numerical cost per time step.
Our damped dynamics has efficiency comparable to that of conjugate gradient
methods in typical electronic minimization problems. Then, we analyse the
factors that limit the size of the integration time step in approaches based on
plane-wave expansions. The maximum allowed time step is dictated by the highest
frequency components of the fictitious electronic dynamics. These can result
either from the large wavevector components of the kinetic energy or from the
small wavevector components of the Coulomb potential giving rise to the so
called {\it charge sloshing} problem. We show how to eliminate large wavevector
instabilities by adopting a preconditioning scheme that is implemented here for
the first-time in the context of Car-Parrinello ab-initio molecular dynamics
simulations of the ionic motion. We also show how to solve the charge-sloshing
problem when this is present. We substantiate our theoretical analysis with
numerical tests on a number of different silicon and carbon systems having both
insulating and metallic character.Comment: RevTex, 9 figures available upon request, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Dynamic Structure Factor of Liquid and Amorphous Ge From Ab Initio Simulations
We calculate the dynamic structure factor S(k,omega) of liquid Ge (l-Ge) at
temperature T = 1250 K, and of amorphous Ge (a-Ge) at T = 300 K, using ab
initio molecular dynamics. The electronic energy is computed using
density-functional theory, primarily in the generalized gradient approximation,
together with a plane wave representation of the wave functions and ultra-soft
pseudopotentials. We use a 64-atom cell with periodic boundary conditions, and
calculate averages over runs of up to 16 ps. The calculated liquid S(k,omega)
agrees qualitatively with that obtained by Hosokawa et al, using inelastic
X-ray scattering. In a-Ge, we find that the calculated S(k,omega) is in
qualitative agreement with that obtained experimentally by Maley et al. Our
results suggest that the ab initio approach is sufficient to allow approximate
calculations of S(k,omega) in both liquid and amorphous materials.Comment: 31 pages and 8 figures. Accepted for Phys. Rev.
Atomic layering at the liquid silicon surface: a first- principles simulation
We simulate the liquid silicon surface with first-principles molecular
dynamics in a slab geometry. We find that the atom-density profile presents a
pronounced layering, similar to those observed in low-temperature liquid metals
like Ga and Hg. The depth-dependent pair correlation function shows that the
effect originates from directional bonding of Si atoms at the surface, and
propagates into the bulk. The layering has no major effects in the electronic
and dynamical properties of the system, that are very similar to those of bulk
liquid Si. To our knowledge, this is the first study of a liquid surface by
first-principles molecular dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
Generation of finite wave trains in excitable media
Spatiotemporal control of excitable media is of paramount importance in the
development of new applications, ranging from biology to physics. To this end
we identify and describe a qualitative property of excitable media that enables
us to generate a sequence of traveling pulses of any desired length, using a
one-time initial stimulus. The wave trains are produced by a transient
pacemaker generated by a one-time suitably tailored spatially localized finite
amplitude stimulus, and belong to a family of fast pulse trains. A second
family, of slow pulse trains, is also present. The latter are created through a
clumping instability of a traveling wave state (in an excitable regime) and are
inaccessible to single localized stimuli of the type we use. The results
indicate that the presence of a large multiplicity of stable, accessible,
multi-pulse states is a general property of simple models of excitable media.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Bosons in anisotropic traps: ground state and vortices
We solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equations for a dilute atomic gas in a magnetic
trap, modeled by an anisotropic harmonic potential. We evaluate the wave
function and the energy of the Bose Einstein condensate as a function of the
particle number, both for positive and negative scattering length. The results
for the transverse and vertical size of the cloud of atoms, as well as for the
kinetic and potential energy per particle, are compared with the predictions of
approximated models. We also compare the aspect ratio of the velocity
distribution with first experimental estimates available for Rb. Vortex
states are considered and the critical angular velocity for production of
vortices is calculated. We show that the presence of vortices significantly
increases the stability of the condensate in the case of attractive
interactions.Comment: 22 pages, REVTEX, 8 figures available upon request or at
http://anubis.science.unitn.it/~dalfovo/papers/papers.htm
Detection of large magneto-anisotropy of electron spin dephasing in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron system in a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well
In time-resolved Faraday rotation experiments we have detected an inplane
anisotropy of the electron spin-dephasing time (SDT) in an
--modulation-doped GaAs/AlGaAs single quantum well. The SDT
was measured with magnetic fields of T, applied in the and
inplane crystal directions of the GaAs quantum well. For fields
along , we have found an up to a factor of about 2 larger SDT than
in the perpendicular direction. Fully microscopic calculations, by numerically
solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations considering the D'yakonov-Perel' and
the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanisms, reproduce the experimental findings
quantitatively. This quantitative analysis of the data allowed us to determine
the relative strengths of Rashba and Dresselhaus terms in our sample. Moreover,
we could estimate the SDT for spins aligned in the {\em inplane}
direction to be on the order of several nanoseconds, which is up to two orders
of magnitude larger than that in the perpendicular {\em inplane} direction.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in PR
Dependence of spin dephasing on initial spin polarization in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron system
We have studied the spin dynamics of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron
system in a GaAs/Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}As single quantum well by time-resolved
Faraday rotation and time-resolved Kerr rotation in dependence on the initial
degree of spin polarization, P, of the electrons. By increasing the initial
spin polarization from the low-P regime to a significant P of several percent,
we find that the spin dephasing time, , increases from about 20 ps to
200 ps; Moreover, increases with temperature at small spin
polarization but decreases with temperature at large spin polarization. All
these features are in good agreement with theoretical predictions by Weng and
Wu [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 68}, 075312 (2003)]. Measurements as a function of spin
polarization at fixed electron density are performed to further confirm the
theory. A fully microscopic calculation is performed by setting up and
numerically solving the kinetic spin Bloch equations, including the
D'yakonov-Perel' and the Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanisms, with {\em all} the
scattering explicitly included. We reproduce all principal features of the
experiments, i.e., a dramatic decrease of spin dephasing with increasing
and the temperature dependences at different spin polarizations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, to be published in PR
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