Diffusion on a heptagonal lattice

We study the diffusion phenomena on the negatively curved surface made up of congruent heptagons. Unlike the usual two-dimensional plane, this structure makes the boundary increase exponentially with the distance from the center, and hence the displacement of a classical random walker increases linearly in time. The diffusion of a quantum particle put on the heptagonal lattice is also studied in the framework of the tight-binding model Hamiltonian, and we again find the linear diffusion like the classical random walk. A comparison with diffusion on complex networks is also made.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Practical long-distance quantum key distribution system using decoy levels

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has the potential for widespread real-world applications. To date no secure long-distance experiment has demonstrated the truly practical operation needed to move QKD from the laboratory to the real world due largely to limitations in synchronization and poor detector performance. Here we report results obtained using a fully automated, robust QKD system based on the Bennett Brassard 1984 protocol (BB84) with low-noise superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) and decoy levels. Secret key is produced with unconditional security over a record 144.3 km of optical fibre, an increase of more than a factor of five compared to the previous record for unconditionally secure key generation in a practical QKD system.Comment: 9 page

Dislocation density dependent electroabsorption in epitaxial lateral overgrown InGaN/GaN quantum structures

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We study electroabsorption (EA) behavior of InGaN/GaN quantum structures grown using epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELOG) in correlation with their dislocation density levels and in comparison to steady state and time-resolved photoluminescence measurements. The results reveal that ELOG structures with decreasing mask stripe widths exhibit stronger EA performance, with a maximum EA enhancement factor of 4.8 compared to the reference without ELOG. The analyses show that the EA performance follows similar trends with decreasing dislocation density as the essential parameters of the photoluminescence spectra (peak position, width and intensity) together with the photoluminescence lifetimes. While keeping the growth window widths constant, compared to photoluminescence behavior, however, EA surprisingly exhibits the largest performance variation, making EA the most sensitive to the mask stripe widths. (C) 2013 Optical Society of Americ

Polarity control of carrier injection at ferroelectric/metal interfaces for electrically switchable diode and photovoltaic effects

We investigated a switchable ferroelectric diode effect and its physical mechanism in Pt/BiFeO3/SrRuO3 thin-film capacitors. Our results of electrical measurements support that, near the Pt/BiFeO3 interface of as-grown samples, a defective layer (possibly, an oxygen-vacancy-rich layer) becomes formed and disturbs carrier injection. We therefore used an electrical training process to obtain ferroelectric control of the diode polarity where, by changing the polarization direction using an external bias, we could switch the transport characteristics between forward and reverse diodes. Our system is characterized with a rectangular polarization hysteresis loop, with which we confirmed that the diode polarity switching occurred at the ferroelectric coercive voltage. Moreover, we observed a simultaneous switching of the diode polarity and the associated photovoltaic response dependent on the ferroelectric domain configurations. Our detailed study suggests that the polarization charge can affect the Schottky barrier at the ferroelectric/metal interfaces, resulting in a modulation of the interfacial carrier injection. The amount of polarization-modulated carrier injection can affect the transition voltage value at which a space-charge-limited bulk current-voltage (J-V) behavior is changed from Ohmic (i.e., J ~ V) to nonlinear (i.e., J ~ V^n with n \geq 2). This combination of bulk conduction and polarization-modulated carrier injection explains the detailed physical mechanism underlying the switchable diode effect in ferroelectric capacitors.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Incommensurate Charge and Spin Fluctuations in d-wave Superconductors

We show analytic results for the irreducible charge and spin susceptibilities, $\chi_0 (\omega, {\bf Q})$, where ${\bf Q}$ is the momentum transfer between the nodes in d-wave superconductors. Using the BCS theory and a circular Fermi surface, we find that the singular behavior of the irreducible charge susceptibility leads to the dynamic incommensurate charge collective modes. The peaks in the charge structure factor occur at a set of wave vectors which form an ellipse around ${\bf Q}_{\pi}=(\pi,\pi)$ and ${\bf Q}_0=(0,0)$ in momentum space with momentum dependent spectral weight. It is also found that, due to the non-singular irreducible spin susceptibility, an extremely strong interaction via random phase approximation is required to support the magnetic peaks near ${\bf Q}_{\pi}$. Under certain conditions, the peaks in the magnetic structure factor occur near ${\bf Q}=(\pi,\pi (1 \pm \delta))$ and $(\pi (1 \pm \delta),\pi)$.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Phase Transition of XY Model in Heptagonal Lattice

We numerically investigate the nature of the phase transition of the XY model in the heptagonal lattice with the negative curvature, in comparison to other interaction structures such as a flat two-dimensional (2D) square lattice and a small-world network. Although the heptagonal lattice has a very short characteristic path length like the small-world network structure, it is revealed via calculation of the Binder's cumulant that the former exhibits a zero-temperature phase transition while the latter has the finite-temperature transition of the mean-field nature. Through the computation of the vortex density as well as the correlation function in the low-temperature approximation, we show that the absence of the phase transition originates from the strong spinwave-type fluctuation, which is discussed in relation to the usual 2D XY model.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Europhys. Let