1,487 research outputs found
Femtosecond study of the interplay between excitons, trions, and carriers in (Cd,Mn)Te quantum wells
We present an absorption study of the neutral and positively charged exciton
(trion) under the influence of a femtosecond, circularly polarized, resonant
pump pulse. Three populations are involved: free holes, excitons, and trions,
all exhibiting transient spin polarization. In particular, a polarization of
the hole gas is created by the formation of trions. The evolution of these
populations is studied, including the spin flip and trion formation processes.
The contributions of several mechanisms to intensity changes are evaluated,
including phase space filling and spin-dependent screening. We propose a new
explanation of the oscillator strength stealing phenomena observed in p-doped
quantum wells, based on the screening of neutral excitons by charge carriers.
We have also found that binding heavy holes into charged excitons excludes them
from the interaction with the rest of the system, so that oscillator strength
stealing is partially blockedComment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Kinetic Characterization and X-ray Structure of a Mutant of Haloalkane Dehalogenase with Higher Catalytic Activity and Modified Substrate Range
Conversion of halogenated aliphatics by haloalkane dehalogenase proceeds via the formation of a covalent alkyl-enzyme intermediate which is subsequently hydrolyzed by water. In the wild type enzyme, the slowest step for both 1,2-dichloroethane and 1,2-dibromoethane conversion is a unimolecular enzyme isomerization preceding rapid halide dissociation. Phenylalanine 172 is located in a helix-loop-helix structure that covers the active site cavity of the enzyme, interacts with the Clβ of 1,2-dichloroethane during catalysis, and could be involved in stabilization of this helix-loop-helix region of the cap domain of the enzyme. To obtain more information about the role of this residue in dehalogenase function, we performed a mutational analysis of position 172 and studied the kinetics and X-ray structure of the Phe172Trp enzyme. The Phe172Trp mutant had a 10-fold higher kcat/Km for 1-chlorohexane and a 2-fold higher kcat for 1,2-dibromoethane than the wild-type enzyme. The X-ray structure of the Phe172Trp enzyme showed a local conformational change in the helix-loop-helix region that covers the active site. This could explain the elevated activity for 1-chlorohexane of the Phe172Trp enzyme, since it allows this large substrate to bind more easily in the active site cavity. Pre-steady-state kinetic analysis showed that the increase in kcat found for 1,2-dibromoethane conversion could be attributed to an increase in the rate of an enzyme isomerization step that preceeds halide release. The observed conformational difference between the helix-loop-helix structures of the wild-type enzyme and the faster mutant suggests that the isomerization required for halide release could be a conformational change that takes place in this region of the cap domain of the dehalogenase. It is proposed that Phe172 is involved in stabilization of the helix-loop-helix structure that covers the active site of the enzyme and creates a rigid hydrophobic cavity for small apolar halogenated alkanes.
A Cantor set of tori with monodromy near a focus-focus singularity
We write down an asymptotic expression for action coordinates in an
integrable Hamiltonian system with a focus-focus equilibrium. From the
singularity in the actions we deduce that the Arnol'd determinant grows
infinitely large near the pinched torus. Moreover, we prove that it is possible
to globally parametrise the Liouville tori by their frequencies. If one
perturbs this integrable system, then the KAM tori form a Whitney smooth
family: they can be smoothly interpolated by a torus bundle that is
diffeomorphic to the bundle of Liouville tori of the unperturbed integrable
system. As is well-known, this bundle of Liouville tori is not trivial. Our
result implies that the KAM tori have monodromy. In semi-classical quantum
mechanics, quantisation rules select sequences of KAM tori that correspond to
quantum levels. Hence a global labeling of quantum levels by two quantum
numbers is not possible.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure
Polar type density of states in non-unitary odd-parity superconducting states of gap with point nodes
It is shown that the density of states (DOS) proportional to the excitation
energy, the so-called polar like DOS, can arise in the odd-parity states with
the superconducting gap vanishing at points even if the spin-orbit interaction
for Cooper pairing is strong enough. Such gap stuructures are realized in the
non-unitary states, F_{1u}(1,i,0), F_{1u}(1,varepsilon,varepsilon^{2}), and
F_{2u}(1,i,0), classified by Volovik and Gorkov, Sov. Phys.-JETP Vol.61 (1985)
843. This is due to the fact that the gap vanishes in quadratic manner around
the point on the Fermi surface. It is also shown that the region of quadratic
energy dependence of DOS, in the state F_{2u}(1,varepsilon,varepsilon^{2}), is
restricted in very small energy region making it difficult to distinguish from
the polar-like DOS.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matter Lette
Neutron-induced background in the CONUS experiment
CONUS is a novel experiment aiming at detecting elastic neutrino nucleus
scattering in the fully coherent regime using high-purity Germanium (Ge)
detectors and a reactor as antineutrino () source. The detector setup
is installed at the commercial nuclear power plant in Brokdorf, Germany, at a
very small distance to the reactor core in order to guarantee a high flux of
more than 10/(scm). For the experiment, a good
understanding of neutron-induced background events is required, as the neutron
recoil signals can mimic the predicted neutrino interactions. Especially
neutron-induced events correlated with the thermal power generation are
troublesome for CONUS. On-site measurements revealed the presence of a thermal
power correlated, highly thermalized neutron field with a fluence rate of
(74530)cmd. These neutrons that are produced by nuclear
fission inside the reactor core, are reduced by a factor of 10 on
their way to the CONUS shield. With a high-purity Ge detector without shield
the -ray background was examined including highly thermal power
correlated N decay products as well as -lines from neutron
capture. Using the measured neutron spectrum as input, it was shown, with the
help of Monte Carlo simulations, that the thermal power correlated field is
successfully mitigated by the installed CONUS shield. The reactor-induced
background contribution in the region of interest is exceeded by the expected
signal by at least one order of magnitude assuming a realistic ionization
quenching factor of 0.2.Comment: 28 pages, 28 figure
The Role of Nonequilibrium Dynamical Screening in Carrier Thermalization
We investigate the role played by nonequilibrium dynamical screening in the
thermalization of carriers in a simplified two-component two-band model of a
semiconductor. The main feature of our approach is the theoretically sound
treatment of collisions. We abandon Fermi's Golden rule in favor of a
nonequilibrium field theoretic formalism as the former is applicable only in
the long-time regime. We also introduce the concept of nonequilibrium dynamical
screening. The dephasing of excitonic quantum beats as a result of
carrier-carrier scattering is brought out. At low densities it is found that
the dephasing times due to carrier-carrier scattering is in picoseconds and not
femtoseconds, in agreement with experiments. The polarization dephasing rates
are computed as a function of the excited carrier density and it is found that
the dephasing rate for carrier-carrier scattering is proportional to the
carrier density at ultralow densities. The scaling relation is sublinear at
higher densities, which enables a comparison with experiment.Comment: Revised version with additional refs. 12 pages, figs. available upon
request; Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Propagation of a hole on a Neel background
We analyze the motion of a single hole on a N\'eel background, neglecting
spin fluctuations. Brinkman and Rice studied this problem on a cubic lattice,
introducing the retraceable-path approximation for the hole Green's function,
exact in a one-dimensional lattice. Metzner et al. showed that the
approximationalso becomes exact in the infinite-dimensional limit. We introduce
a new approach to this problem by resumming the Nagaoka expansion of the
propagator in terms of non-retraceable skeleton-paths dressed by
retraceable-path insertions. This resummation opens the way to an almost
quantitative solution of the problemin all dimensions and, in particular sheds
new light on the question of the position of the band-edges. We studied the
motion of the hole on a double chain and a square lattice, for which deviations
from the retraceable-path approximation are expected to be most pronounced. The
density of states is mostly adequately accounted for by the
retra\-ce\-able-path approximation. Our band-edge determination points towards
an absence of band tails extending to the Nagaoka energy in the spectrums of
the double chain and the square lattice. We also evaluated the spectral density
and the self-energy, exhibiting k-dependence due to finite dimensionality. We
find good agreement with recent numerical results obtained by Sorella et al.
with the Lanczos spectra decoding method. The method we employ enables us to
identify the hole paths which are responsible for the various features present
in the density of states and the spectral density.Comment: 26 pages,Revte
Spectral functions of the Falicov-Kimball model with electronic ferroelectricity
We calculate the angular resolved photoemission spectrum of the
Falicov-Kimball model with electronic ferroelectricity where - and
-electrons have different hoppings. In mix-valence regimes, the presence of
strong scattering processes between - excitons and a hole, created by
emission of an electron, leads to the formation of pseudospin polarons and
novel electronic structures with bandwidth scaling with that of -
excitons. Especially, in the two-dimensional case, we find that flat regions
exist near the bottom of the quasiparticle band in a wide range of the - and
-level energy difference.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Acoustically driven storage of light in a quantum well
The strong piezoelectric fields accompanying a surface acoustic wave on a
semiconductor quantum well structure are employed to dissociate optically
generated excitons and efficiently trap the created electron hole pairs in the
moving lateral potential superlattice of the sound wave. The resulting spatial
separation of the photogenerated ambipolar charges leads to an increase of the
radiative lifetime by orders of magnitude as compared to the unperturbed
excitons. External and deliberate screening of the lateral piezoelectric fields
triggers radiative recombination after very long storage times at a remote
location on the sample.Comment: 4 PostScript figures included, Physical Review Letters, in pres
Cumulant approach to weakly doped antiferromagnets
We present a new approach to static and dynamical properties of holes and
spins in weakly doped antiferromagnets in two dimensions. The calculations are
based on a recently introduced cumulant approach to ground--state properties of
correlated electronic systems. The present method allows to evaluate hole and
spin--wave dispersion relations by considering hole or spin excitations of the
ground state. Usually, these dispersions are found from time--dependent
correlation functions. To demonstrate the ability of the approach we first
derive the dispersion relation for the lowest single hole excitation at
half--filling. However, the main purpose of this paper is to focus on the
mutual influence of mobile holes and spin waves in the weakly doped system. It
is shown that low-energy spin excitations strongly admix to the ground--state.
The coupling of spin waves and holes leads to a strong suppression of the
staggered magnetization which can not be explained by a simple rigid--band
picture for the hole quasiparticles. Also the experimentally observed doping
dependence of the spin--wave excitation energies can be understood within our
formalism.Comment: REVTEX, 25 pages, 7 figures (EPS), to be published in Phys. Rev.
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