22,870 research outputs found
Mechanical modulation of single-electron tunneling through molecular-assembled metallic nanoparticles
We present a microscopic study of single-electron tunneling in nanomechanical
double-barrier tunneling junctions formed using a vibrating scanning nanoprobe
and a metallic nanoparticle connected to a metallic substrate through a
molecular bridge. We analyze the motion of single electrons on and off the
nanoparticle through the tunneling current, the displacement current and the
charging-induced electrostatic force on the vibrating nanoprobe. We demonstrate
the mechanical single-electron turnstile effect by applying the theory to a
gold nanoparticle connected to the gold substrate through alkane dithiol
molecular bridge and probed by a vibrating platinum tip.Comment: Accepted by Phys. Rev.
Water Content and Superconductivity in Na0.3CoO2*yH2O
We report here the correlation between the water content and
superconductivity in Na0.3CoO2*yH2O under the influences of elevated
temperature and cold compression. The x-ray diffraction of the sample annealed
at elevated temperatures indicates that intergrowths exist in the compound at
equilibrium when 0.6 < y < 1.4. Its low-temperature diamagnetization varies
linearly with y, but is insensitive to the intergrowth, indicative of quasi-2D
superconductivity. The Tc-onset, especially, shifts only slightly with y. Our
data from cold compressed samples, on the other hand, show that the water-loss
non-proportionally suppresses the diamagnetization, which is suggestive of weak
links.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures; submitted to Physica C (August 13, 2003
Fast geometric gate operation of superconducting charge qubits in circuit QED
A scheme for coupling superconducting charge qubits via a one-dimensional
superconducting transmission line resonator is proposed. The qubits are working
at their optimal points, where they are immune to the charge noise and possess
long decoherence time. Analysis on the dynamical time evolution of the
interaction is presented, which is shown to be insensitive to the initial state
of the resonator field. This scheme enables fast gate operation and is readily
scalable to multiqubit scenario
GRB 970228 Within the EMBH Model
We consider the gamma-ray burst of 1997 February 28 (GRB 970228) within the
ElectroMagnetic Black Hole (EMBH) model. We first determine the value of the
two free parameters that characterize energetically the GRB phenomenon in the
EMBH model, that is to say the dyadosphere energy,
ergs, and the baryonic remnant mass in units of ,
. Having in this way estimated the
energy emitted during the beam-target phase, we evaluate the role of the
InterStellar Medium (ISM) number density (n) and of the ratio between the effective emitting area and the total surface area of the GRB
source, in reproducing the observed profiles of the GRB 970228 prompt emission
and X-ray (2-10 keV energy band) afterglow. The importance of the ISM
distribution three-dimensional treatment around the central black hole is also
stressed in this analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the Los Alamos
"Gamma Ray Burst Symposium" in Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 8-12 2003 (AIP
Conf. Ser.), CHAPTER: GRB Connection to Supernova
Photometric identification of blue horizontal branch stars
We investigate the performance of some common machine learning techniques in
identifying BHB stars from photometric data. To train the machine learning
algorithms, we use previously published spectroscopic identifications of BHB
stars from SDSS data. We investigate the performance of three different
techniques, namely k nearest neighbour classification, kernel density
estimation and a support vector machine (SVM). We discuss the performance of
the methods in terms of both completeness and contamination. We discuss the
prospect of trading off these values, achieving lower contamination at the
expense of lower completeness, by adjusting probability thresholds for the
classification. We also discuss the role of prior probabilities in the
classification performance, and we assess via simulations the reliability of
the dataset used for training. Overall it seems that no-prior gives the best
completeness, but adopting a prior lowers the contamination. We find that the
SVM generally delivers the lowest contamination for a given level of
completeness, and so is our method of choice. Finally, we classify a large
sample of SDSS DR7 photometry using the SVM trained on the spectroscopic
sample. We identify 27,074 probable BHB stars out of a sample of 294,652 stars.
We derive photometric parallaxes and demonstrate that our results are
reasonable by comparing to known distances for a selection of globular
clusters. We attach our classifications, including probabilities, as an
electronic table, so that they can be used either directly as a BHB star
catalogue, or as priors to a spectroscopic or other classification method. We
also provide our final models so that they can be directly applied to new data.Comment: To appear in A&A. 19 pages, 22 figures. Tables 7, A3 and A4 available
electronically onlin
Conserving GW scheme for nonequilibrium quantum transport in molecular contacts
We give a detailed presentation of our recent scheme to include correlation
effects in molecular transport calculations using the GW approximation within
the non-equilibrium Keldysh formalism. We restrict the GW self-energy to the
central region, and describe the leads by density functional theory (DFT). A
minimal basis of maximally localized Wannier functions is applied both in the
central GW region and the leads. The importance of using a conserving, i.e.
fully self-consistent, GW self-energy is demonstrated both analytically and by
numerical examples. We introduce an effective spin-dependent interaction which
automatically reduces self-interaction errors to all orders in the interaction.
The scheme is applied to the Anderson model in- and out of equilibrium. In
equilibrium at zero temperature we find that GW describes the Kondo resonance
fairly well for intermediate interaction strengths. Out of equilibrium we
demonstrate that the one-shot G0W0 approximation can produce severe errors, in
particular at high bias. Finally, we consider a benzene molecule between
featureless leads. It is found that the molecule's HOMO-LUMO gap as calculated
in GW is significantly reduced as the coupling to the leads is increased,
reflecting the more efficient screening in the strongly coupled junction. For
the IV characteristics of the junction we find that HF and G0W0[G_HF] yield
results closer to GW than does DFT and G0W0[G_DFT]. This is explained in terms
of self-interaction effects and life-time reduction due to electron-electron
interactions.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figure
Strong electric fields induced on a sharp stellar boundary
Due to a first order phase transition, a compact star may have a
discontinuous distribution of baryon as well as electric charge densities, as
e.g. at the surface of a strange quark star. The induced separation of positive
and negative charges may lead to generation of supercritical electric fields in
the vicinity of such a discontinuity. We study this effect within a
relativistic Thomas-Fermi approximation and demonstrate that the strength of
the electric field depends strongly on the degree of sharpness of the surface.
The influence of strong electric fields on the stability of compact stars is
discussed. It is demonstrated that stable configurations appear only when the
counter-pressure of degenerate fermions is taken into consideration.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
Decoherence processes during active manipulation of excitonic qubits in semiconductor quantum dots
Using photoluminescence spectroscopy, we have investigated the nature of Rabi
oscillation damping during active manipulation of excitonic qubits in
self-assembled quantum dots. Rabi oscillations were recorded by varying the
pulse amplitude for fixed pulse durations between 4 ps and 10 ps. Up to 5
periods are visible, making it possible to quantify the excitation dependent
damping. We find that this damping is more pronounced for shorter pulse widths
and show that its origin is the non-resonant excitation of carriers in the
wetting layer, most likely involving bound-to-continuum and continuum-to-bound
transitions.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure
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