Mapping the optical properties of slab-type two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides

We report on systematic experimental mapping of the transmission properties of two-dimensional silicon-on-insulator photonic crystal waveguides for a broad range of hole radii, slab thicknesses and waveguide lengths for both TE and TM polarizations. Detailed analysis of numerous spectral features allows a direct comparison of experimental data with 3D plane wave and finite-difference time-domain calculations. We find, counter-intuitively, that the bandwidth for low-loss propagation completely vanishes for structural parameters where the photonic band gap is maximized. Our results demonstrate that, in order to maximize the bandwidth of low-loss waveguiding, the hole radius must be significantly reduced. While the photonic band gap considerably narrows, the bandwidth of low-loss propagation in PhC waveguides is increased up to 125nm with losses as low as 8$\pm$2dB/cm.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

The Mean-Field Limit for a Regularized Vlasov-Maxwell Dynamics

The present work establishes the mean-field limit of a N-particle system towards a regularized variant of the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system, following the work of Braun-Hepp [Comm. in Math. Phys. 56 (1977), 101-113] and Dobrushin [Func. Anal. Appl. 13 (1979), 115-123] for the Vlasov-Poisson system. The main ingredients in the analysis of this system are (a) a kinetic formulation of the Maxwell equations in terms of a distribution of electromagnetic potential in the momentum variable, (b) a regularization procedure for which an analogue of the total energy - i.e. the kinetic energy of the particles plus the energy of the electromagnetic field - is conserved and (c) an analogue of Dobrushin's stability estimate for the Monge-Kantorovich-Rubinstein distance between two solutions of the regularized Vlasov-Poisson dynamics adapted to retarded potentials.Comment: 34 page

Effect of iron doping on the properties of nanopowders and coatings on the basis of Al2O3 produced by pulsed electron beam evaporation

Multiphase nanopowders (NPs) and amorphous/amorphous-nanocrystalline coatings (A-NC) have been prepared by the evaporation of ceramic targets of Al2O3-Fe2O3 (0.1, 3, 5 Fe2O3 mass %) by a pulsed electron beam in vacuum. The specific surface area of NP Al2O3-Fe2O3 reached 277 m2/g. The α and γ phases Al2O3 and other nonidentified phases have been found in the composition of NP Al2O3-Fe2O3. All coatings contained an insignificant fraction of the crystalline γ phase. No secondary phases on the basis of iron have been revealed. According to transmission electron microscopy, the fine fraction of NP Al2O3-Fe2O3 consists of amorphous nanoparticles of an irregular and quasispherical shape no more than 10 nm in size which form agglomerates reaching 1.5 μm. A large fraction of NPs consists of crystal spherical nanoparticles with preferential sizes of about 10-20 nm. All NP Al2O3-Fe2O3 showed ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. The maximum magnetic response has been established in NPs with a minimum iron content (1.1 mass %). The pulsed cathode luminescence spectra of coatings and NP Al2O3-Fe2O3 have been presented by a wide band in the wavelength range of 300-900 nm regardless of their phase composition. Phase transformations into NP AL2O3-1.1% Fe and coatings from undoped Al2O3 heated to 1400°C occur according to the following scheme: amorphous phase → γ → δ → θ → α, regardless of their initial phase composition. The threshold of thermal stability of the Γ phase in NPs and the coating of undoped Al2O3 does not exceed 830°C. For the first time, the increased thermo and optically stimulated luminescent response comparable with the response of the leading TLD-500K thermoluminescent dosimeter has been reached in A-NC coatings of undoped Al2O3. © 2013 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd

Luminescent and dosimetric properties of thin nanostructured layers of aluminum oxide obtained using evaporation of a target by a pulsed electron beam

Results of a study of optically and thermally stimulated luminescence (OSL and TL) of thin nanostructured aluminum oxide coatings obtained with evaporation of the target by a pulsed electron beam and deposited on quartz glass, Al, steel, Cu, Ta, and graphite wafers are presented. It follows from data of X-ray phase analysis that the obtained Al2O3 layers have an amorphous nanocrystal structure with different contents of the γ phase depending on the geometry of the wafer location on evaporation and annealing temperature of the samples. It is established that the material of the wafer and the ratio of the amorphous and γ phase in Al2O3 layers affect the yields of OSL and TL. Annealing at up to 970 K results in an increase of γ-phase concentration and OSL and TL responses. It was found that the yields of OSL and TL for the most emission-effective coating samples are comparable with those for the detectors on the basis of anion-defective corundum. The dose-dependence for β radiation, which was linear in the range 20-5000 mGy, was investigated. © 2013 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd

A geometric theory of non-local two-qubit operations

We study non-local two-qubit operations from a geometric perspective. By applying a Cartan decomposition to su(4), we find that the geometric structure of non-local gates is a 3-Torus. We derive the invariants for local transformations, and connect these local invariants to the coordinates of the 3-Torus. Since different points on the 3-Torus may correspond to the same local equivalence class, we use the Weyl group theory to reduce the symmetry. We show that the local equivalence classes of two-qubit gates are in one-to-one correspondence with the points in a tetrahedron except on the base. We then study the properties of perfect entanglers, that is, the two-qubit operations that can generate maximally entangled states from some initially separable states. We provide criteria to determine whether a given two-qubit gate is a perfect entangler and establish a geometric description of perfect entanglers by making use of the tetrahedral representation of non-local gates. We find that exactly half the non-local gates are perfect entanglers. We also investigate the non-local operations generated by a given Hamiltonian. We first study the gates that can be directly generated by a Hamiltonian. Then we explicitly construct a quantum circuit that contains at most three non-local gates generated by a two-body interaction Hamiltonian, together with at most four local gates generated by single qubit terms. We prove that such a quantum circuit can simulate any arbitrary two-qubit gate exactly, and hence it provides an efficient implementation of universal quantum computation and simulation.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Flip-flop jet nozzle extended to supersonic flows

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76991/1/AIAA-11725-757.pd

Vortex avalanches and magnetic flux fragmentation in superconductors

We report results of numerical simulations of non isothermal dendritic flux penetration in type-II superconductors. We propose a generic mechanism of dynamic branching of a propagating hotspot of a flux flow/normal state triggered by a local heat pulse. The branching occurs when the flux hotspot reflects from inhomogeneities or the boundary on which magnetization currents either vanish, or change direction. Then the hotspot undergoes a cascade of successive splittings, giving rise to a dissipative dendritic-type flux structure. This dynamic state eventually cools down, turning into a frozen multi-filamentary pattern of magnetization currents.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev. Let

Strong Collapse Turbulence in Quintic Nonlinear Schr\"odinger Equation

We consider the quintic one dimensional nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with forcing and both linear and nonlinear dissipation. Quintic nonlinearity results in multiple collapse events randomly distributed in space and time forming forced turbulence. Without dissipation each of these collapses produces finite time singularity but dissipative terms prevents actual formation of singularity. In statistical steady state of the developed turbulence the spatial correlation function has a universal form with the correlation length determined by the modulational instability scale. The amplitude fluctuations at that scale are nearly-Gaussian while the large amplitude tail of probability density function (PDF) is strongly non-Gaussian with power-like behavior. The small amplitude nearly-Gaussian fluctuations seed formation of large collapse events. The universal spatio-temporal form of these events together with the PDF for their maximum amplitudes define the power-like tail of PDF for large amplitude fluctuations, i.e., the intermittency of strong turbulence.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figure

Mass for the graviton

Can we give the graviton a mass? Does it even make sense to speak of a massive graviton? In this essay I shall answer these questions in the affirmative. I shall outline an alternative to Einstein Gravity that satisfies the Equivalence Principle and automatically passes all classical weak-field tests (GM/r approx 10^{-6}). It also passes medium-field tests (GM/r approx 1/5), but exhibits radically different strong-field behaviour (GM/r approx 1). Black holes in the usual sense do not exist in this theory, and large-scale cosmology is divorced from the distribution of matter. To do all this we have to sacrifice something: the theory exhibits {*prior geometry*}, and depends on a non-dynamical background metric.Comment: 12 pages, plain LaTeX. Major revisions: (1) Inconsistency in equations of motion fixed. (2) More discussion of the problems associated with quantization. (3) Many more references adde