Light dynamics in glass-vanadium dioxide nanocomposite waveguides with thermal nonlinearity

We address the propagation of laser beams in Si02-VO2 nanocomposite waveguides with thermo-optical nonlinearity. We show that the large modifications of the absorption coefficient as well as notable changes of refractive index of VO2 nanoparticles embedded into the SiO2 host media that accompany the semiconductor-to-metal phase transition may lead to optical limiting in the near-infrared wave range.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Optics Letter

M-theory Inspired No-scale Supergravity

We propose a supergravity model that contains elements recently shown to arise in the strongly-coupled limit of the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string (M-theory), including a no-scale--like K\"ahler potential, the identification of the string scale with the gauge coupling unification scale, and the onset of supersymmetry breaking at an intermediate scale determined by the size of the eleventh dimension of M-theory. We also study the phenomenological consequences of such scenario, which include a rather constrained sparticle spectrum within the reach of present-generation particle accelerators.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 3 figures (included