Stimulated emission and excited-state absorption at room temperature on the 550 nm-laser transition in Er3+ doped YAlO3

A pump- and probe-beam technique is used for measuring time-resolved and cw-pumped excited-state absorption (ESA) and stimulated-emission (SE) spectra of Er3+:YAlO3 with high resolution. In combination with absorption and fluorescence spectra, detailed information on the wavelengths and cross-sections of ESA and SE at the 550 nm laser transition is provided

Block-Transitive Designs in Affine Spaces

This paper deals with block-transitive $t$-$(v,k,\lambda)$ designs in affine spaces for large $t$, with a focus on the important index $\lambda=1$ case. We prove that there are no non-trivial 5-$(v,k,1)$ designs admitting a block-transitive group of automorphisms that is of affine type. Moreover, we show that the corresponding non-existence result holds for 4-$(v,k,1)$ designs, except possibly when the group is one-dimensional affine. Our approach involves a consideration of the finite 2-homogeneous affine permutation groups.Comment: 10 pages; to appear in: "Designs, Codes and Cryptography

Prime diagnosticity in short-term repetition priming: Is primed evidence discounted, even when it reliably indicates the correct answer?

The authors conducted 4 repetition priming experiments that manipulated prime duration and prime diagnosticity in a visual forced-choice perceptual identification task. The strength and direction of prime diagnosticity produced marked effects on identification accuracy, but those effects were resistant to subsequent changes of diagnosticity. Participants learned to associate different diagnosticities with primes of different durations but not with primes presented in different colors. Regardless of prime diagnosticity, preference for a primed alternative covaried negatively with prime duration, suggesting that even for diagnostic primes, evidence discounting remains an important factor. A computational model, with the assumption that adaptation to the statistics of the experiment modulates the level of evidence discounting, accounted for these results

Numerical Approach to Multi Dimensional Phase Transitions

We present an algorithm to analyze numerically the bounce solution of first-order phase transitions. Our approach is well suited to treat phase transitions with several fields. The algorithm consists of two parts. In the first part the bounce solution without damping is determined, in which case energy is conserved. In the second part the continuation to the physically relevant case with damping is performed. The presented approach is numerically stable and easily implemented.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; some comments, a reference and a table adde

Interplay between nanometer-scale strain variations and externally applied strain in graphene

We present a molecular modeling study analyzing nanometer-scale strain variations in graphene as a function of externally applied tensile strain. We consider two different mechanisms that could underlie nanometer-scale strain variations: static perturbations from lattice imperfections of an underlying substrate and thermal fluctuations. For both cases we observe a decrease in the out-of-plane atomic displacements with increasing strain, which is accompanied by an increase in the in-plane displacements. Reflecting the non-linear elastic properties of graphene, both trends together yield a non-monotonic variation of the total displacements with increasing tensile strain. This variation allows to test the role of nanometer-scale strain variations in limiting the carrier mobility of high-quality graphene samples