Giant Microwave Absorption in Metallic Grains: Relaxation Mechanism

We show that the low frequency microwave absorption of an ensemble of small metallic grains at low temperatures is dominated by a mesoscopic relaxation mechanism. Giant positive magnetoresistance and very strong temperature dependence of the microwave conductivity is predicted.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX3+mutlticol+epsf, one EPS figur

Raman spectroscopy on mechanically exfoliated pristine graphene ribbons

We present Raman spectroscopy measurements of non-etched graphene nanoribbons, with widths ranging from 15 to 160 nm, where the D-line intensity is strongly dependent on the polarization direction of the incident light. The extracted edge disorder correlation length is approximately one order of magnitude larger than on previously reported graphene ribbons fabricated by reactive ion etching techniques. This suggests a more regular crystallographic orientation of the non-etched graphene ribbons here presented. We further report on the ribbons width dependence of the line-width and frequency of the long-wavelength optical phonon mode (G-line) and the 2D-line of the studied graphene ribbons

Gravitational waves from nonspinning black hole-neutron star binaries: dependence on equations of state

We report results of a numerical-relativity simulation for the merger of a black hole-neutron star binary with a variety of equations of state (EOSs) modeled by piecewise polytropes. We focus in particular on the dependence of the gravitational waveform at the merger stage on the EOSs. The initial conditions are computed in the moving-puncture framework, assuming that the black hole is nonspinning and the neutron star has an irrotational velocity field. For a small mass ratio of the binaries (e.g., MBH/MNS = 2 where MBH and MNS are the masses of the black hole and neutron star, respectively), the neutron star is tidally disrupted before it is swallowed by the black hole irrespective of the EOS. Especially for less-compact neutron stars, the tidal disruption occurs at a more distant orbit. The tidal disruption is reflected in a cutoff frequency of the gravitational-wave spectrum, above which the spectrum amplitude exponentially decreases. A clear relation is found between the cutoff frequency of the gravitational-wave spectrum and the compactness of the neutron star. This relation also depends weakly on the stiffness of the EOS in the core region of the neutron star, suggesting that not only the compactness but also the EOS at high density is reflected in gravitational waveforms. The mass of the disk formed after the merger shows a similar correlation with the EOS, whereas the spin of the remnant black hole depends primarily on the mass ratio of the binary, and only weakly on the EOS. Properties of the remnant disks are also analyzed.Comment: 27pages, 21 figures; erratum is added on Aug 5. 201

Limitations to Carrier Mobility and Phase-Coherent Transport in Bilayer Graphene

We present transport measurements on high-mobility bilayer graphene fully encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride. We show two terminal quantum Hall effect measurements which exhibit full symmetry broken Landau levels at low magnetic fields. From weak localization measurements, we extract gate-tunable phase coherence times $\tau_{\phi}$ as well as the inter- and intra-valley scattering times $\tau_i$ and $\tau_*$. While $\tau_{\phi}$ is in qualitative agreement with an electron-electron interaction mediated dephasing mechanism, electron spin-flip scattering processes are limiting $\tau_{\phi}$ at low temperatures. The analysis of $\tau_i$ and $\tau_*$ points to local strain fluctuation as the most probable mechanism for limiting the mobility in high-quality bilayer graphene

Gravitational waves from black hole-neutron star binaries I: Classification of waveforms

Using our new numerical-relativity code SACRA, long-term simulations for inspiral and merger of black hole (BH)-neutron star (NS) binaries are performed, focusing particularly on gravitational waveforms. As the initial conditions, BH-NS binaries in a quasiequilibrium state are prepared in a modified version of the moving-puncture approach. The BH is modeled by a nonspinning moving puncture and for the NS, a polytropic equation of state with $\Gamma=2$ and the irrotational velocity field are employed. The mass ratio of the BH to the NS, $Q=M_{\rm BH}/M_{\rm NS}$, is chosen in the range between 1.5 and 5. The compactness of the NS, defined by ${\cal C}=GM_{\rm NS}/c^2R_{\rm NS}$, is chosen to be between 0.145 and 0.178. For a large value of $Q$ for which the NS is not tidally disrupted and is simply swallowed by the BH, gravitational waves are characterized by inspiral, merger, and ringdown waveforms. In this case, the waveforms are qualitatively the same as that from BH-BH binaries. For a sufficiently small value of Q \alt 2, the NS may be tidally disrupted before it is swallowed by the BH. In this case, the amplitude of the merger and ringdown waveforms is very low, and thus, gravitational waves are characterized by the inspiral waveform and subsequent quick damping. The difference in the merger and ringdown waveforms is clearly reflected in the spectrum shape and in the "cut-off" frequency above which the spectrum amplitude steeply decreases. When an NS is not tidally disrupted (e.g., for Q=5), kick velocity, induced by asymmetric gravitational wave emission, agrees approximately with that derived for the merger of BH-BH binaries, whereas for the case that the tidal disruption occurs, the kick velocity is significantly suppressed.Comment: 25 pages, 3 jpg figures, accepted for publication in PRD; erratum is added on Jul 23. 201

New Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of the High Redshift Quasar B 1422+231 at z=3.62

We present new near-infrared (rest-frame UV-to-optical) spectra of the high redshift, gravitationally lensed quasar B 1422+231 (z=3.62). Diagnostic emission lines of FeII, [OIII]5007, and Hb, commonly used to determine the excitation, ionization, and chemical abundances of radio-quiet and radio-loud quasars, were detected. Our new data show that the ratio FeII(UV)/Hb=18.1+-4.6 and FeII(optical)/Hb=2.3+-0.6 are higher than those reported by Kawara et al. (1996) by factors of 1.6 and 3.3, respectively, although the ration [OIII]5007/Hb=0.19+-0.02 is nearly the same between the two measurements. The discrepancy of the line flux ratios between the measurements is likely due to improved data and fitting procedures rather that to intrinsic variability. While approximately half of the high-z quasars observed to date have much more extreme FeII(optical)/Hb ratios, the line ratio measured for B 422+231 are consistent with the observed range of FeII(optical) ratios of low-z quasars.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 4 figures. To appear in The Astronomical Journa