Smearing of the 2D Kohn anomaly in a nonquantizing magnetic field: Implications for the interaction effects

Thermodynamic and transport characteristics of a clean two-dimensional interacting electron gas are shown to be sensitive to the weak perpendicular magnetic field even at temperatures much higher than the cyclotron energy, when the quantum oscillations are completely washed out. We demonstrate this sensitivity for two interaction-related characteristics: electron lifetime and the tunnel density of states. The origin of the sensitivity is traced to the field-induced smearing of the Kohn anomaly; this smearing is the result of curving of the semiclassical electron trajectories in magnetic field.Comment: 4.5 pages, 3 figures, published versio

Generation and near-field imaging of Airy surface plasmons

We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of nondiffracting surface waves - plasmonic Airy beams, propagating on the surface of a gold metal film. The Airy plasmons are excited by an engineered nanoscale phase grating, and demonstrate significant beam bending over their propagation. We show that the observed Airy plasmons exhibit self-healing properties, suggesting novel applications in plasmonic circuitry and surface optical manipulation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The relativistic massless harmonic oscillator

A detailed study of the relativistic classical and quantum mechanics of the massless harmonic oscillator is presented.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Scattering and delay time for 1D asymmetric potentials: the step-linear and the step-exponential cases

We analyze the quantum-mechanical behavior of a system described by a one-dimensional asymmetric potential constituted by a step plus (i) a linear barrier or (ii) an exponential barrier. We solve the energy eigenvalue equation by means of the integral representation method, classifying the independent solutions as equivalence classes of homotopic paths in the complex plane. We discuss the structure of the bound states as function of the height U_0 of the step and we study the propagation of a sharp-peaked wave packet reflected by the barrier. For both the linear and the exponential barrier we provide an explicit formula for the delay time \tau(E) as a function of the peak energy E. We display the resonant behavior of \tau(E) at energies close to U_0. By analyzing the asymptotic behavior for large energies of the eigenfunctions of the continuous spectrum we also show that, as expected, \tau(E) approaches the classical value for E -> \infty, thus diverging for the step-linear case and vanishing for the step-exponential one.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Effect of a magnetic field on the two-phonon Raman scattering in graphene

We have studied, both experimentally and theoretically, the change of the so-called 2D band of the Raman scattering spectrum of graphene (the two-phonon peak near 2700 cm-1) in an external magnetic field applied perpendicular to the graphene crystal plane at liquid helium temperature. A shift to lower frequency and broadening of this band is observed as the magnetic field is increased from 0 to 33 T. At fields up to 5--10 T the changes are quadratic in the field while they become linear at higher magnetic fields. This effect is explained by the curving of the quasiclassical trajectories of the photo-excited electrons and holes in the magnetic field, which enables us (i) to extract the electron inelastic scattering rate, and (ii) to conclude that electronic scattering accounts for about half of the measured width of the 2D peak.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

One-Dimensional Directed Sandpile Models and the Area under a Brownian Curve

We derive the steady state properties of a general directed ``sandpile'' model in one dimension. Using a central limit theorem for dependent random variables we find the precise conditions for the model to belong to the universality class of the Totally Asymmetric Oslo model, thereby identifying a large universality class of directed sandpiles. We map the avalanche size to the area under a Brownian curve with an absorbing boundary at the origin, motivating us to solve this Brownian curve problem. Thus, we are able to determine the moment generating function for the avalanche-size probability in this universality class, explicitly calculating amplitudes of the leading order terms.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure

The Stark effect in linear potentials

We examine the Stark effect (the second-order shift in the energy spectrum due to an external constant force) for two 1-dimensional model quantum mechanical systems described by linear potentials, the so-called quantum bouncer (defined by V(z) = Fz for z>0 and V(z) infinite for z<0) and the symmetric linear potential (given by V(z) = F|z|). We show how straightforward use of the most obvious properties of the Airy function solutions and simple Taylor expansions give closed form results for the Stark shifts in both systems. These exact results are then compared to other approximation techniques, such as perturbation theory and WKB methods. These expressions add to the small number of closed-form descriptions available for the Stark effect in model quantum mechanical systems.Comment: 15 pages. To appear in Eur. J. Phys. Needs Institute of Physics (iopart) style file

Interaction effects in 2D electron gas in a random magnetic field: Implications for composite fermions and quantum critical point

We consider a clean two-dimensional interacting electron gas subject to a random perpendicular magnetic field, h({\bf r}). The field is nonquantizing, in the sense, that {\cal N}_h-a typical flux into the area \lambda_{\text{\tiny F}}^2 in the units of the flux quantum (\lambda_{\text{\tiny F}} is the de Broglie wavelength) is small, {\cal N}_h\ll 1. If the spacial scale, \xi, of change of h({\bf r}) is much larger than \lambda_{\text{\tiny F}}, the electrons move along semiclassical trajectories. We demonstrate that a weak field-induced curving of the trajectories affects the interaction-induced electron lifetime in a singular fashion: it gives rise to the correction to the lifetime with a very sharp energy dependence. The correction persists within the interval \omega \sim \omega_0= E_{\text{\tiny F}}{\cal N}_h^{2/3} much smaller than the Fermi energy, E_{\text{\tiny F}}. It emerges in the third order in the interaction strength; the underlying physics is that a small phase volume \sim (\omega/E_{\text{\tiny F}})^{1/2} for scattering processes, involving {\em two} electron-hole pairs, is suppressed by curving. Even more surprising effect that we find is that {\em disorder-averaged} interaction correction to the density of states, \delta\nu(\omega), exhibits {\em oscillatory} behavior, periodic in \bigl(\omega/\omega_0\bigr)^{3/2}. In our calculations of interaction corrections random field is incorporated via the phases of the Green functions in the coordinate space. We discuss the relevance of the new low-energy scale for realizations of a smooth random field in composite fermions and in disordered phase of spin-fermion model of ferromagnetic quantum criticality.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, Revte

Optical Phonon Lasing in Semiconductor Double Quantum Dots

We propose optical phonon lasing for a double quantum dot (DQD) fabricated in a semiconductor substrate. We show that the DQD is weakly coupled to only two LO phonon modes that act as a natural cavity. The lasing occurs for pumping the DQD via electronic tunneling at rates much higher than the phonon decay rate, whereas an antibunching of phonon emission is observed in the opposite regime of slow tunneling. Both effects disappear with an effective thermalization induced by the Franck-Condon effect in a DQD fabricated in a carbon nanotube with a strong electron-phonon coupling.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Program transformations using temporal logic side conditions

This paper describes an approach to program optimisation based on transformations, where temporal logic is used to specify side conditions, and strategies are created which expand the repertoire of transformations and provide a suitable level of abstraction. We demonstrate the power of this approach by developing a set of optimisations using our transformation language and showing how the transformations can be converted into a form which makes it easier to apply them, while maintaining trust in the resulting optimising steps. The approach is illustrated through a transformational case study where we apply several optimisations to a small program