Design of a 2.4 GHz High-Performance Up-Conversion Mixer with Current Mirror Topology

In this paper, a low voltage low power up-conversion mixer, designed in a Chartered 0.18 μm RFCMOS technology, is proposed to realize the transmitter front-end in the frequency band of 2.4 GHz. The up-conversion mixer uses the current mirror topology and current-bleeding technique in both the driver and switching stages with a simple degeneration resistor. The proposed mixer converts an input of 100 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal to an output of 2.4 GHz radio frequency (RF) signal, with a local oscillator (LO) power of 2 dBm at 2.3 GHz. A comparison with conventional CMOS up-conversion mixer shows that this mixer has advantages of low voltage, low power consumption and high-performance. The post-layout simulation results demonstrate that at 2.4 GHz, the circuit has a conversion gain of 7.1 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 7.3 dBm and a noise figure of 11.9 dB, while drawing only 3.8 mA for the mixer core under a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.62×0.65 mm2

Out of plane effect on the superconductivity of Sr2-xBaxCuO3+y with Tc up to 98K

A series of new Sr2-xBaxCuO3+y (0 x 0.6) superconductors were prepared using high-pressure and high-temperature synthesis. A Rietveld refinement based on powder x-ray diffraction confirms that the superconductors crystallize in the K2NiF4-type structure of a space group I4/mmm similar to that of La2CuO4 but with partially occupied apical oxygen sites. It is found that the superconducting transition temperature Tc of this Ba substituted Sr2CuO3+y superconductor with constant carrier doping level, i.e., constant d, is controlled not only by order/disorder of apical-O atoms but also by Ba content. Tcmax =98 K is achieved in the material with x=0.6 that reaches the record value of Tc among the single-layer copper oxide superconductors, and is higher than Tc=95K of Sr2CuO3+y with optimally ordered apical-O atoms. There is Sr-site disorder in Sr2-xBaxCuO3+y which might lead to a reduction of Tc. The result indicates that another effect surpasses the disorder effect that is related either to the increased in-plane Cu-O bond length or to elongated apical-O distance due to Ba substitution with larger cation size. The present experiment demonstrates that the optimization of local geometry out of the Cu-O plane can dramatically enhance Tc in the cuprate superconductors.Comment: 23 Pages, 1 Table, 5 Figure

Vacuum induced Berry phases in single-mode Jaynes-Cummings models

Motivated by the work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 220404 (2002)] for detecting the vacuum-induced Berry phases with two-mode Jaynes-Cummings models (JCMs), we show here that, for a parameter-dependent single-mode JCM, certain atom-field states also acquire the photon-number-dependent Berry phases after the parameter slowly changed and eventually returned to its initial value. This geometric effect related to the field quantization still exists, even the filed is kept in its vacuum state. Specifically, a feasible Ramsey interference experiment with cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system is designed to detect the vacuum-induced Berry phase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Envelope Expansion with Core Collapse. III. Similarity Isothermal Shocks in a Magnetofluid

We explore MHD solutions for envelope expansions with core collapse (EECC) with isothermal MHD shocks in a quasi-spherical symmetry and outline potential astrophysical applications of such magnetized shock flows. MHD shock solutions are classified into three classes according to the downstream characteristics near the core. Class I solutions are those characterized by free-fall collapses towards the core downstream of an MHD shock, while Class II solutions are those characterized by Larson-Penston (LP) type near the core downstream of an MHD shock. Class III solutions are novel, sharing both features of Class I and II solutions with the presence of a sufficiently strong magnetic field as a prerequisite. Various MHD processes may occur within the regime of these isothermal MHD shock similarity solutions, such as sub-magnetosonic oscillations, free-fall core collapses, radial contractions and expansions. We can also construct families of twin MHD shock solutions as well as an `isothermal MHD shock' separating two magnetofluid regions of two different yet constant temperatures. The versatile behaviours of such MHD shock solutions may be utilized to model a wide range of astrophysical problems, including star formation in magnetized molecular clouds, MHD link between the asymptotic giant branch phase to the proto-planetary nebula phase with a hot central magnetized white dwarf, relativistic MHD pulsar winds in supernova remnants, radio afterglows of soft gamma-ray repeaters and so forth.Comment: 21 pages, 33 figures, accepted by MNRA

An Imaging and Spectral Study of Ten X-Ray Filaments around the Galactic Center

We report the detection of 10 new X-ray filaments using the data from the {\sl Chandra} X-ray satellite for the inner $6^{\prime}$ ($\sim 15$ parsec) around the Galactic center (GC). All these X-ray filaments are characterized by non-thermal energy spectra, and most of them have point-like features at their heads that point inward. Fitted with the simple absorbed power-law model, the measured X-ray flux from an individual filament in the 2-10 keV band is $\sim 2.8\times10^{-14}$ to $10^{-13}$ ergs cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ and the absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity is $\sim 10^{32}-10^{33}$ ergs s$^{-1}$ at a presumed distance of 8 kpc to the GC. We speculate the origin(s) of these filaments by morphologies and by comparing their X-ray images with the corresponding radio and infrared images. On the basis of combined information available, we suspect that these X-ray filaments might be pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) associated with pulsars of age $10^3 \sim 3\times 10^5$ yr. The fact that most of the filament tails point outward may further suggest a high velocity wind blowing away form the GC.Comment: 29 pages with 7 figures and 3 pages included. Accepted to Ap