Volume integrals associated with the inhomegeneous Helmholtz equation. Part 2: Cylindrical region; rectangular region

Results are presented for volume integrals associated with the Helmholtz operator, nabla(2) + alpha(2), for the cases of a finite cylindrical region and a region of rectangular parallelepiped. By using appropriate Taylor series expansions and multinomial theorem, these volume integrals are obtained in series form for regions r r' and r 4', where r and r' are distances from the origin to the point of observation and source, respectively. When the wave number approaches zero, the results reduce directly to the potentials of variable densities

Exploring the quantum critical behaviour in a driven Tavis-Cummings circuit

Quantum phase transitions play an important role in many-body systems and have been a research focus in conventional condensed matter physics over the past few decades. Artificial atoms, such as superconducting qubits that can be individually manipulated, provide a new paradigm of realising and exploring quantum phase transitions by engineering an on-chip quantum simulator. Here we demonstrate experimentally the quantum critical behaviour in a highly-controllable superconducting circuit, consisting of four qubits coupled to a common resonator mode. By off-resonantly driving the system to renormalise the critical spin-field coupling strength, we have observed a four-qubit non-equilibrium quantum phase transition in a dynamical manner, i.e., we sweep the critical coupling strength over time and monitor the four-qubit scaled moments for a signature of a structural change of the system's eigenstates. Our observation of the non-equilibrium quantum phase transition, which is in good agreement with the driven Tavis-Cummings theory under decoherence, offers new experimental approaches towards exploring quantum phase transition related science, such as scaling behaviours, parity breaking and long-range quantum correlations.Comment: Main text with 3 figure

First-principles investigation of 180-degree domain walls in BaTiO_3

We present a first-principles study of 180-degree ferroelectric domain walls in tetragonal barium titanate. The theory is based on an effective Hamiltonian that has previously been determined from first-principles ultrasoft-pseudopotential calculations. Statistical properties are investigated using Monte Carlo simulations. We compute the domain-wall energy, free energy, and thickness, analyze the behavior of the ferroelectric order parameter in the interior of the domain wall, and study its spatial fluctuations. An abrupt reversal of the polarization is found, unlike the gradual rotation typical of the ferromagnetic case.Comment: Revtex (preprint style, 13 pages) + 3 postscript figures. A version in two-column article style with embedded figures is available at http://electron.rutgers.edu/~dhv/preprints/index.html#pad_wal

A universal primer for isolation of fragments of a gene encoding phytoene desaturase for use in virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) studies

We have been using Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) to test the function of genes that are candidates for involvement in floral senescence. Although VIGS is a powerful tool for assaying the effects of gene silencing in plants, relatively few taxa have been studied using this approach, and most that have are in the Solanaceae. We typically use silencing of phytoene desaturase (PDS) in preliminary tests of the feasibility of using VIGS. Silencing this gene, whose product is involved in carotene biosynthesis, results in a characteristic photobleaching phenotype in the leaves. We have found that efficient silencing requires the use of fragments that are more than 90% homologous to the target gene. To simplify testing the effectiveness of VIGS in a range of species, we designed a set of universal primers to a region of the PDS gene that is highly conserved among species, and that therefore allows an investigator to isolate a fragment of the homologous PDS gene from the species of interest. We report the sequences of these primers and the results of VIGS experiments in horticultural species from the Asteraceae, Leguminosae, Balsaminaceae and Solanaceae

In situ imaging of field emission from individual carbon nanotubes and their structural damage

©2002 American Institute of Physics. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/80/856/1DOI:10.1063/1.1446994Field emission of individual carbon nanotubes was observed by in situ transmission electron microscopy. A fluctuation in emission current was due to a variation in distance between the nanotube tip and the counter electrode owing to a "head-shaking" effect of the nanotube during field emission. Strong field-induced structural damage of a nanotube occurs in two ways: a piece-by-piece and segment-by-segment pilling process of the graphitic layers, and a concentrical layer-by-layer stripping process. The former is believed owing to a strong electrostatic force, and the latter is likely due to heating produced by emission current that flowed through the most outer graphitic layers

A More Precise Extraction of |V_{cb}| in HQEFT of QCD

The more precise extraction for the CKM matrix element |V_{cb}| in the heavy quark effective field theory (HQEFT) of QCD is studied from both exclusive and inclusive semileptonic B decays. The values of relevant nonperturbative parameters up to order 1/m^2_Q are estimated consistently in HQEFT of QCD. Using the most recent experimental data for B decay rates, |V_{cb}| is updated to be |V_{cb}| = 0.0395 \pm 0.0011_{exp} \pm 0.0019_{th} from B\to D^{\ast} l \nu decay and |V_{cb}| = 0.0434 \pm 0.0041_{exp} \pm 0.0020_{th} from B\to D l \nu decay as well as |V_{cb}| = 0.0394 \pm 0.0010_{exp} \pm 0.0014_{th} from inclusive B\to X_c l \nu decay.Comment: 7 pages, revtex, 4 figure