Structure of polydisperse inverse ferrofluids: Theory and computer simulation

By using theoretical analysis and molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the structure of colloidal crystals formed by nonmagnetic microparticles (or magnetic holes) suspended in ferrofluids (called inverse ferrofluids), by taking into account the effect of polydispersity in size of the nonmagnetic microparticles. Such polydispersity often exists in real situations. We obtain an analytical expression for the interaction energy of monodisperse, bidisperse, and polydisperse inverse ferrofluids. Body-centered tetragonal (bct) lattices are shown to possess the lowest energy when compared with other sorts of lattices and thus serve as the ground state of the systems. Also, the effect of microparticle size distributions (namely, polydispersity in size) plays an important role in the formation of various kinds of structural configurations. Thus, it seems possible to fabricate colloidal crystals by choosing appropriate polydispersity in size.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Magnetophoresis of nonmagnetic particles in ferrofluids

Ferrofluids containing nonmagnetic particles are called inverse ferrofluids. On the basis of the Ewald-Kornfeld formulation and the Maxwell-Garnett theory, we theoretically investigate the magnetophoretic force exerting on the nonmagnetic particles in inverse ferrofluids due to the presence of a nonuniform magnetic field, by taking into account the structural transition and long-range interaction. We numerically demonstrate that the force can be adjusted by choosing appropriate lattices, volume fractions, geometric shapes, and conductivities of the nonmagnetic particles, as well as frequencies of external magnetic fields.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure

Coherent output of photons from coupled superconducting transmission line resonators controlled by charge qubits

We study the coherent control of microwave photons propagating in a superconducting waveguide consisting of coupled transmission line resonators, each of which is connected to a tunable charge qubit. While these coupled line resonators form an artificial photonic crystal with an engineered photonic band structure, the charge qubits collectively behave as spin waves in the low excitation limit, which modify the band-gap structure to slow and stop the microwave propagation. The conceptual exploration here suggests an electromagnetically controlled quantum device based on the on-chip circuit QED for the coherent manipulation of photons, such as the dynamic creation of laser-like output from the waveguide by pumping the artificial atoms for population inversion.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure