Excitation of zonal flow by the modulational instability in electron temperature gradient driven turbulence

The generation of large-scale zonal flows by small-scale electrostatic drift waves in electron temperature gradient(ETG) driven turbulence model is considered. The generation mechanism is based on the modulational instability of a finite amplitude monochromatic drift wave. The threshold and growth rate of the instability as well as the optimal spatial scale of zonal flow are obtained.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Effects of accidental microconstriction on the quantized conductance in long wires

We have investigated the conductance of long quantum wires formed in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. Using realistic fluctuation potentials from donor layers we have simulated numerically the conductance of four different kinds of wires. While ideal wires show perfect quantization, potential fluctuations from random donors may give rise to strong conductance oscillations and degradation of the quantization plateaux. Statistically there is always the possibility of having large fluctuations in a sample that may effectively act as a microconstriction. We therefore introduce microconstrictions in the wires by occasional clustering of donors. These microconstrictions are found to restore the quantized plateaux. A similar effect is found for accidental lithographic inaccuracies.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, paper for NANO2002 symposium, will appear in SPIE proceeding

Two-dimensional nonlinear vector states in Bose-Einstein condensates

Two-dimensional (2D) vector matter waves in the form of soliton-vortex and vortex-vortex pairs are investigated for the case of attractive intracomponent interaction in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates. Both attractive and repulsive intercomponent interactions are considered. By means of a linear stability analysis we show that soliton-vortex pairs can be stable in some regions of parameters while vortex-vortex pairs turn out to be always unstable. The results are confirmed by direct numerical simulations of the 2D coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure