Supernova bound on keV-mass sterile neutrinos reexamined

Active-sterile neutrino mixing is strongly constrained for m_s > 100 keV to avoid excessive energy losses from supernova cores. For smaller m_s, matter effects suppress the effective mixing angle except for a resonant range of energies where it is enhanced. We study the case of \nu_tau-\nu_s-mixing where a \nu_tau-\bar\nu_tau asymmetry builds up due to the strong excess of \nu_s over \bar\nu_s emission or vice versa, reducing the overall emission rate. In the warm dark matter range m_s < 10 keV the mixing angle is essentially unconstrained.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; minor changes, references updated, matches the published versio

Spin and orbital valence bond solids in a one-dimensional spin-orbital system: Schwinger boson mean field theory

A generalized one-dimensional $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ spin-orbital model is studied by Schwinger boson mean-field theory (SBMFT). We explore mainly the dimer phases and clarify how to capture properly the low temperature properties of such a system by SBMFT. The phase diagrams are exemplified. The three dimer phases, orbital valence bond solid (OVB) state, spin valence bond solid (SVB) state and spin-orbital valence bond solid (SOVB) state, are found to be favored in respectively proper parameter regions, and they can be characterized by the static spin and pseudospin susceptibilities calculated in SBMFT scheme. The result reveals that the spin-orbit coupling of $SU(2)\times SU(2)$ type serves as both the spin-Peierls and orbital-Peierles mechanisms that responsible for the spin-singlet and orbital-singlet formations respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

A Minimal Type II Seesaw Model

We propose a minimal type II seesaw model by introducing only one right-handed neutrino besides the $SU(2)_{L}$ triplet Higgs to the standard model. In the usual type II seesaw models with several right-handed neutrinos, the contributions of the right-handed neutrinos and the triplet Higgs to the CP asymmetry, which stems from the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino, are proportional to their respective contributions to the light neutrino mass matrix. However, in our minimal type II seesaw model, this CP asymmetry is just given by the one-loop vertex correction involving the triplet Higgs, even though the contribution of the triplet Higgs does not dominate the light neutrino masses. For illustration, the Fritzsch-type lepton mass matrices are considered.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, some points clarified, useful references added, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Possible Deviation from the Tri-bimaximal Neutrino Mixing in a Seesaw Model

We propose a simple but suggestive seesaw model with two phenomenological conjectures: three heavy (right-handed) Majorana neutrinos are degenerate in mass in the symmetry limit and three light Majorana neutrinos have the tri-bimaximal mixing pattern $V^{}_0$. We show that a small mass splitting between the first generation and the other two generations of heavy Majorana neutrinos is responsible for the deviation of the solar neutrino mixing angle $\theta^{}_{12}$ from its initial value $35.3^\circ$ given by $V^{}_0$, and the slight breaking of the mass degeneracy between the second and third generations of heavy Majorana neutrinos results in a small mixing angle $\theta^{}_{13}$ and a tiny departure of the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle $\theta^{}_{23}$ from $45^\circ$. It turns out that a normal hierarchy of the light neutrino mass spectrum is favored in this seesaw scenario.Comment: RevTex 12 pages (2 EPS figures included). More discussions and references adde

Updated Values of Running Quark and Lepton Masses

Reliable values of quark and lepton masses are important for model building at a fundamental energy scale, such as the Fermi scale M_Z \approx 91.2 GeV and the would-be GUT scale \Lambda_GUT \sim 2 \times 10^16 GeV. Using the latest data given by the Particle Data Group, we update the running quark and charged-lepton masses at a number of interesting energy scales below and above M_Z. In particular, we take into account the possible new physics scale (\mu \sim 1 TeV) to be explored by the LHC and the typical seesaw scales (\mu \sim 10^9 GeV and \mu \sim 10^12 GeV) which might be relevant to the generation of neutrino masses. For illustration, the running masses of three light Majorana neutrinos are also calculated. Our up-to-date table of running fermion masses are expected to be very useful for the study of flavor dynamics at various energy scales.Comment: 23 pages, 6 tables, 2 figures; version published in PR

Temperature Dependence of Electrical and Optical Modulation Responses of Quantum-Well Lasers

We present theory and experiment for high-speed optical injection in the absorption region of a quantum-well laser and compare the results with those of electrical injection including the carrier transport effect. We show that the main difference between the two responses is the low-frequency roll-off. By using both injection methods, we obtain more accurate and consistent measurements of many important dynamic laser parameters, including the differential gain, carrier lifetime, K factor, and gain compression factor. Temperature-dependent data of the test laser are presented which show that the most dominant effect is the linear degradation of differential gain and injection efficiency with increasing temperature. While the K-factor is insensitive to temperature variation for multiple-quantum-well lasers, we find that the carrier capture time and nonlinear gain suppression coefficient decreases as temperature increases

Implicit Decomposition for Write-Efficient Connectivity Algorithms

The future of main memory appears to lie in the direction of new technologies that provide strong capacity-to-performance ratios, but have write operations that are much more expensive than reads in terms of latency, bandwidth, and energy. Motivated by this trend, we propose sequential and parallel algorithms to solve graph connectivity problems using significantly fewer writes than conventional algorithms. Our primary algorithmic tool is the construction of an $o(n)$-sized "implicit decomposition" of a bounded-degree graph $G$ on $n$ nodes, which combined with read-only access to $G$ enables fast answers to connectivity and biconnectivity queries on $G$. The construction breaks the linear-write "barrier", resulting in costs that are asymptotically lower than conventional algorithms while adding only a modest cost to querying time. For general non-sparse graphs on $m$ edges, we also provide the first $o(m)$ writes and $O(m)$ operations parallel algorithms for connectivity and biconnectivity. These algorithms provide insight into how applications can efficiently process computations on large graphs in systems with read-write asymmetry