Effects of ion irradiation on conductivity of CrSi_2 thin films

Electrical resistivity measurements are used to study damage in CrSi_2 thin films induced by Ne, Ar, or Xe ion irradiation over a fluence range of 10^(10)–10^(15) ions cm^(−2). Irradiation produces a factor of 5–12 increase in film conductivity at the higher fluences. The influence of defect generation and recombination is evident. We speculate that formation of a compound defect is a dominant factor enhancing film conductivity. A temperature dependence at low fluences is reported and tentatively identified

Controlling spin in an electronic interferometer with spin-active interfaces

We consider electronic current transport through a ballistic one-dimensional quantum wire connected to two ferromagnetic leads. We study the effects of the spin-dependence of interfacial phase shifts (SDIPS) acquired by electrons upon scattering at the boundaries of the wire. The SDIPS produces a spin splitting of the wire resonant energies which is tunable with the gate voltage and the angle between the ferromagnetic polarizations. This property could be used for manipulating spins. In particular, it leads to a giant magnetoresistance effect with a sign tunable with the gate voltage and the magnetic field applied to the wire.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. to be published in Europhysics Letter

Coexistence of Localized and Extended States in Disordered Systems

It is commonly believed that Anderson localized states and extended states do not coexist at the same energy. Here we propose a simple mechanism to achieve the coexistence of localized and extended states in a band in a class of disordered quasi-1D and quasi-2D systems. The systems are partially disordered in a way that a band of extended states always exists, not affected by the randomness, whereas the states in all other bands become localized. The extended states can overlap with the localized states both in energy and in space, achieving the aforementioned coexistence. We demonstrate such coexistence in disordered multi-chain and multi-layer systems.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A probabilistic model checking approach to analysing reliability, availability, and maintainability of a single satellite system

Satellites now form a core component for space based systems such as GPS and GLONAS which provide location and timing information for a variety of uses. Such satellites are designed to operate in-orbit and have lifetimes of 10 years or more. Reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) analysis of these systems has been indispensable in the design phase of satellites in order to achieve minimum failures or to increase mean time between failures (MTBF) and thus to plan maintainability strategies, optimise reliability and maximise availability. In this paper, we present formal modelling of a single satellite and logical specification of its reliability, availability and maintainability properties. The probabilistic model checker PRISM has been used to perform automated quantitative analyses of these properties