Phase diagram of the pp-spin-interacting spin glass with ferromagnetic bias and a transverse field in the infinite-pp limit

The phase diagram of the $p$-spin-interacting spin glass model in a transverse field is investigated in the limit $p \to \infty$ under the presence of ferromagnetic bias. Using the replica method and the static approximation, we show that the phase diagram consists of four phases: Quantum paramagnetic, classical paramagnetic, ferromagnetic, and spin-glass phases. We also show that the static approximation is valid in the ferromagnetic phase in the limit $p \to \infty$ by using the large-$p$ expansion. Since the same approximation is already known to be valid in other phases, we conclude that the obtained phase diagram is exact.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. another additional author, some amendment

History Dependent Phenomena in the Transverse Ising Ferroglass: the Free Energy Landscape

In this paper we investigate the relationship between glassy and ferromagnetic phases in disordered Ising ferromagnets in the presence of transverse magnetic fields, $\Gamma$. Iterative mean field simulations probe the free energy landscape and suggest the existence of a glass transition as a function of $\Gamma$ which is distinct from the Curie temperature. New experimental field-cooled and zero-field-cooled data on LiHo$_x$Y$_{1-x}$F$_4$ provide support for our theoretical picture.Comment: 4 pages RevTex; 5 figure

Classical and Quantum Behavior in Mean-Field Glassy Systems

In this talk I review some recent developments which shed light on the main connections between structural glasses and mean-field spin glass models with a discontinuous transition. I also discuss the role of quantum fluctuations on the dynamical instability found in mean-field spin glasses with a discontinuous transition. In mean-field models with pairwise interactions in a transverse field it is shown, in the framework of the static approximation, that such instability is suppressed at zero temperature.Comment: 9 Pages (including 5 Figures), Revtex, Proceedings of the XIV Sitges Conference, June 1996 (Barcelona) Spai

Single valley Dirac fermions in zero-gap HgTe quantum wells

Dirac fermions have been studied intensively in condensed matter physics in recent years. Many theoretical predictions critically depend on the number of valleys where the Dirac fermions are realized. In this work, we report the discovery of a two dimensional system with a single valley Dirac cone. We study the transport properties of HgTe quantum wells grown at the critical thickness separating between the topologically trivial and the quantum spin Hall phases. At high magnetic fields, the quantized Hall plateaus demonstrate the presence of a single valley Dirac point in this system. In addition, we clearly observe the linear dispersion of the zero mode spin levels. Also the conductivity at the Dirac point and its temperature dependence can be understood from single valley Dirac fermion physics.Comment: version 2: supplementary material adde

Entanglement and correlation in anisotropic quantum spin systems

Analytical expressions for the entanglement measures concurrence, i-concurrence and 3-tangle in terms of spin correlation functions are derived using general symmetries of the quantum spin system. These relations are exploited for the one-dimensional XXZ-model, in particular the concurrence and the critical temperature for disentanglement are calculated for finite systems with up to six qubits. A recent NMR quantum error correction experiment is analyzed within the framework of the proposed theoretical approach.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Engineering the Controlled Assembly of Filamentous Injectisomes in E. coli K-12 for Protein Translocation into Mammalian Cells.

Bacterial pathogens containing type III protein secretion systems (T3SS) assemble large needle-like protein complexes in the bacterial envelope, called injectisomes, for translocation of protein effectors into host cells. The application of these molecular syringes for the injection of proteins into mammalian cells is hindered by their structural and genomic complexity, requiring multiple polypeptides encoded along with effectors in various transcriptional units (TUs) with intricate regulation. In this work, we have rationally designed the controlled expression of the filamentous injectisomes found in enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) in the nonpathogenic strain E. coli K-12. All structural components of EPEC injectisomes, encoded in a genomic island called the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE), were engineered in five TUs (eLEEs) excluding effectors, promoters and transcriptional regulators. These eLEEs were placed under the control of the IPTG-inducible promoter Ptac and integrated into specific chromosomal sites of E. coli K-12 using a marker-less strategy. The resulting strain, named synthetic injector E. coli (SIEC), assembles filamentous injectisomes similar to those in EPEC. SIEC injectisomes form pores in the host plasma membrane and are able to translocate T3-substrate proteins (e.g., translocated intimin receptor, Tir) into the cytoplasm of HeLa cells reproducing the phenotypes of intimate attachment and polymerization of actin-pedestals elicited by EPEC bacteria. Hence, SIEC strain allows the controlled expression of functional filamentous injectisomes for efficient translocation of proteins with T3S-signals into mammalian cells

The Aharonov-Bohm effect for massless Dirac fermions and the spectral flow of Dirac type operators with classical boundary conditions

We compute, in topological terms, the spectral flow of an arbitrary family of self-adjoint Dirac type operators with classical (local) boundary conditions on a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary under the assumption that the initial and terminal operators of the family are conjugate by a bundle automorphism. This result is used to study conditions for the existence of nonzero spectral flow of a family of self-adjoint Dirac type operators with local boundary conditions in a two-dimensional domain with nontrivial topology. Possible physical realizations of nonzero spectral flow are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. v2: A change has been made to the paragraph describing the previous work of M. Prokhorov

Scattering Theory of Photon-Assisted Electron Transport

The scattering matrix approach to phase-coherent transport is generalized to nonlinear ac-transport. In photon-assisted electron transport it is often only the dc-component of the current that is of experimental interest. But ac-currents at all frequencies exist independently of whether they are measured or not. We present a theory of photon-assisted electron transport which is charge and current conserving for all Fourier components of the current. We find that the photo-current can be considered as an up- and down-conversion of the harmonic potentials associated with the displacement currents. As an example explicit calculations are presented for a resonant double barrier coupled to two reservoirs and capacitively coupled to a gate. Two experimental situations are considered: in the first case the ac-field is applied via a gate, and in the second case one of the contact potentials is modulated. For the first case we show that the relative weight of the conduction sidebands varies with the screening properties of the system. In contrast to the non-interacting case the relative weights are not determined by Bessel functions. Moreover, interactions can give rise to an asymmetry between absorption and emission peaks. In the contact driven case, the theory predicts a zero-bias current proportional to the asymmetry of the double barrier. This is in contrast to the discussion of Tien and Gordon which, in violation of basic symmetry principles, predicts a zero-bias current also for a symmetric double barrier.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, REVTE

The polarizability model for ferroelectricity in perovskite oxides

This article reviews the polarizability model and its applications to ferroelectric perovskite oxides. The motivation for the introduction of the model is discussed and nonlinear oxygen ion polarizability effects and their lattice dynamical implementation outlined. While a large part of this work is dedicated to results obtained within the self-consistent-phonon approximation (SPA), also nonlinear solutions of the model are handled which are of interest to the physics of relaxor ferroelectrics, domain wall motions, incommensurate phase transitions. The main emphasis is to compare the results of the model with experimental data and to predict novel phenomena.Comment: 55 pages, 35 figure