Recent advancement of turbulent flow measurement techniques

Advancements of the fluctuating density gradient cross beam laser Schlieren technique, the fluctuating line-reversal temperature measurement and the development of the two-dimensional drag-sensing probe to a three-dimensional drag-sensing probe are discussed. The three-dimensionality of the instantaneous momentum vector can shed some light on the nature of turbulence especially with swirling flow. All three measured fluctuating quantities (density, temperature, and momentum) can provide valuable information for theoreticians

General Conditions for Lepton Flavour Violation at Tree- and 1-Loop Level

In this work, we compile the necessary and sufficient conditions a theory has to fulfill in order to ensure general lepton flavour conservation, in the spirit of the Glashow-Weinberg criteria for the absence of flavour-changing neutral currents. At tree-level, interactions involving electrically neutral and doubly charged bosons are investigated. We also investigate flavour changes at 1-loop level. In all cases we find that the essential theoretical requirements can be reduced to a few basic conditions on the particle content and the coupling matrices. For 1-loop diagrams, we also investigate how exactly a GIM-suppression can occur that will strongly reduce the rates of lepton flavour violating effects even if they are in principle present in a certain theory. In all chapters, we apply our criteria to several models which can in general induce lepton flavour violation, e.g. LR-symmetric models or the MSSM. In the end we give a summarizing table of the obtained results, thereby demonstrating the applicability of our criteria to a large class of models beyond the Standard Model.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figure

One-loop quantum corrections to cosmological scalar field potentials

We study the loop corrections to potentials of complex or coupled real scalar fields used in cosmology to account for dark energy, dark matter or dark fluid. We show that the SUGRA quintessence and dark matter scalar field potentials are stable against the quantum fluctuations, and we propose solutions to the instability of the potentials of coupled quintessence and dark fluid scalar fields. We also find that a coupling to fermions is very restricted, unless this coupling has a structure which already exists in the scalar field potential or which can be compensated by higher order corrections. Finally, we study the influence of the curvature and kinetic term corrections.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Structure of the electrospheres of bare strange stars

We consider a thin ($\sim 10^2-10^3$ fm) layer of electrons (the electrosphere) at the quark surface of a bare strange star, taking into account the surface effects at the boundary with the vacuum. The quark surface holds the electron layer by an extremely strong electric field, generated in the electrosphere to prevent the electrons from escaping to infinity by counterbalancing the degeneracy and thermal pressure. Because of the surface tension and depletion of $s$ quarks a very thin (a few fm) charged layer of quarks forms at the surface of the star. The formation of this layer modifies the structure of the electrosphere, by significantly changing the electric field and the density of the electrons, in comparison with the case when the surface effects are ignored. Some consequences of the modification of the electrosphere structure on the properties of strange stars are briefly discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Ap

Local electronic structure near oxygen dopants in BSCCO-2212: a window on the high-Tc pair mechanism?

The cuprate material BSCCO-2212 is believed to be doped by a combination of cation switching and excess oxygen. The interstitial oxygen dopants are of particular interest because scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) experiments have shown that they are positively correlated with the local value of the superconducting gap, and calculations suggest that the fundamental attraction between electrons is modulated locally. In this work, we use density functional theory to try to ascertain which locations in the crystal are energetically most favorable for the O dopant atoms, and how the surrounding cage of atoms deforms. Our results provide support for the identification of STM resonances at -1eV with dopant interstitial O atoms, and show how the local electronic structure is modified nearby.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Light-Enhanced Spin Fluctuations and d-Wave Superconductivity at a Phase Boundary

Time-domain techniques have shown the potential of photo-manipulating existing orders and inducing new states of matter in strongly correlated materials. Using time-resolved exact diagonalization, we perform numerical studies of pump dynamics in a Mott-Peierls system with competing charge and spin density waves. A light-enhanced $d$-wave superconductivity is observed when the system resides near a quantum phase boundary. By examining the evolution of spin, charge and superconducting susceptibilities, we show that a sub-dominant state in equilibrium can be stabilized by photomanipulating charge order to allow superconductivity to appear and dominate. This work provides an interpretation of light-induced superconductivity from the perspective of order competition, and offers a promising approach for designing novel emergent states out of equilibrium.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Bounds on R-parity violating supersymmetric couplings from leptonic and semi-leptonic meson decays

We present a comprehensive update of the bounds on R-Parity violating supersymmetric couplings from lepton-flavour- and lepton-number-violating decay processes. We consider tau and mu decays as well as leptonic and semi-leptonic decays of mesons. We present several new bounds resulting from tau, eta and Kaon decays and correct some results in the literature concerning B-meson decays.Comment: 30 pages; changed title, updated some bounds from the literature from different references, added reference

Chirally symmetric but confining dense and cold matter

The folklore tradition about the QCD phase diagram is that at the chiral restoration phase transition at finite density hadrons are deconfined and there appears the quark matter. We address this question within the only known exactly solvable confining and chirally symmetric model. It is postulated within this model that there exists linear Coulomb-like confining interaction. The chiral symmetry breaking and the quark Green function are obtained from the Schwinger-Dyson (gap) equation while the color-singlet meson spectrum results from the Bethe-Salpeter equation. We solve this model at T=0 and finite chemical potential $\mu$ and obtain a clear chiral restoration phase transition at the critical value \mu_{cr}. Below this value the spectrum is similar to the previously obtained one at \mu = 0. At \mu > \mu_{cr} the quarks are still confined and the physical spectrum consists of bound states which are arranged into a complete set of exact chiral multiplets. This explicitly demonstrates that a chirally symmetric matter consisting of confined but chirally symmetric hadrons at finite chemical potential is also possible in QCD. If so, there must be nontrivial implications for astrophysics.Comment: 7 pp; the paper has been expanded to make some technical details more clear; 3 new figures have been added. To appear in PR

Distributed NEGF Algorithms for the Simulation of Nanoelectronic Devices with Scattering

Through the Non-Equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) formalism, quantum-scale device simulation can be performed with the inclusion of electron-phonon scattering. However, the simulation of realistically sized devices under the NEGF formalism typically requires prohibitive amounts of memory and computation time. Two of the most demanding computational problems for NEGF simulation involve mathematical operations with structured matrices called semiseparable matrices. In this work, we present parallel approaches for these computational problems which allow for efficient distribution of both memory and computation based upon the underlying device structure. This is critical when simulating realistically sized devices due to the aforementioned computational burdens. First, we consider determining a distributed compact representation for the retarded Green's function matrix $G^{R}$. This compact representation is exact and allows for any entry in the matrix to be generated through the inherent semiseparable structure. The second parallel operation allows for the computation of electron density and current characteristics for the device. Specifically, matrix products between the distributed representation for the semiseparable matrix $G^{R}$ and the self-energy scattering terms in $\Sigma^{<}$ produce the less-than Green's function $G^{<}$. As an illustration of the computational efficiency of our approach, we stably generate the mobility for nanowires with cross-sectional sizes of up to 4.5nm, assuming an atomistic model with scattering

When renormalizability is not sufficient: Coulomb problem for vector bosons

The Coulomb problem for vector bosons W incorporates a known difficulty; the boson falls on the center. In QED the fermion vacuum polarization produces a barrier at small distances which solves the problem. In a renormalizable SU(2) theory containing vector triplet (W^+,W^-,gamma) and a heavy fermion doublet F with mass M the W^- falls on F^+, to distances r ~ 1/M, where M can be made arbitrary large. To prevent the collapse the theory needs additional light fermions, which switch the ultraviolet behavior of the theory from the asymptotic freedom to the Landau pole. Similar situation can take place in the Standard Model. Thus, the renormalizability of a theory is not sufficient to guarantee a reasonable behavior at small distances for non-perturbative problems, such as a bound state problem.Comment: Four page