Scattering of vortex pairs in 2D easy-plane ferromagnets

Vortex-antivortex pairs in 2D easy-plane ferromagnets have characteristics of solitons in two dimensions. We investigate numerically and analytically the dynamics of such vortex pairs. In particular we simulate numerically the head-on collision of two pairs with different velocities for a wide range of the total linear momentum of the system. If the momentum difference of the two pairs is small, the vortices exchange partners, scatter at an angle depending on this difference, and form two new identical pairs. If it is large, the pairs pass through each other without losing their identity. We also study head-tail collisions. Two identical pairs moving in the same direction are bound into a moving quadrupole in which the two vortices as well as the two antivortices rotate around each other. We study the scattering processes also analytically in the frame of a collective variable theory, where the equations of motion for a system of four vortices constitute an integrable system. The features of the different collision scenarios are fully reproduced by the theory. We finally compare some aspects of the present soliton scattering with the corresponding situation in one dimension.Comment: 13 pages (RevTeX), 8 figure

Spectral tuning of plasmon-enhanced silicon quantum dot luminescence

In the presence of nanoscale silver island arrays, silicon quantum dots exhibit up to sevenfold luminescence enhancements at emission frequencies that correspond to the collective dipole plasmon resonance frequency of the Ag island array. Using electron-beam lithography to alter the pitch and particle diameter, this wavelength-selective enhancement can be varied as the metal array resonance wavelength is tuned from 600 to 900 nm. The luminescence intensity enhancement upon coupling is attributed to an increase in the radiative decay rate of the silicon quantum dots

Modeling of electron emission processes accompanying Radon-α\alpha-decays within electrostatic spectrometers

Electrostatic spectrometers utilized in high-resolution beta-spectroscopy studies such as in the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment have to operate with a background level of less than 10^(-2) counts per second. This limit can be exceeded by even a small number of Rn-219 or Rn-220 atoms being emanated into the volume and undergoing alpha-decay there. In this paper we present a detailed model of the underlying background-generating processes via electron emission by internal conversion, shake-off and relaxation processes in the atomic shells of the Po-215 and Po-216 daughters. The model yields electron energy spectra up to 400 keV and electron multiplicities of up to 20 which are compared to experimental data.Comment: 7 figure

Process length variation in cysts of a dinoflagellate, Lingulodinium machaerophorum, in surface sediments: Investigating its potential as salinity proxy

“Many authors have contributed to writing this paper. Those listed in the metadata are: the main/contact author, the first listed author and Brunel University author(s). For a full list of the authors, please see the PDF version.”A biometrical analysis of the dinoflagellate cyst Lingulodinium machaerophorum (Deflandre and Cookson 1955) Wall, 1967 in 144 globally distributed surface sediment samples revealed that the average process length is related to summer salinity and temperature at a water depth of 30 m by the equation (salinity/temperature) = (0.078*average process length + 0.534) with R² = 0.69. This relationship can be used to reconstruct palaeosalinities, albeit with caution. The particular ecological window can be associated with known distributions of the corresponding motile stage Lingulodinium polyedrum (Stein) Dodge, 1989. Confocal laser microscopy showed that the average process length is positively related to the average distance between process bases (R²=0.78), and negatively related to the number of processes (R²=0.65). These results document the existence of two end members in cyst formation: one with many short, densely distributed processes and one with a few, long, widely spaced processes, which can be respectively related to low and high salinity/temperature ratios. Obstruction during formation of the cysts causes anomalous distributions of the processes. From a biological perspective, processes function to facilitate sinking of the cysts through clustering

Exponentially hard problems are sometimes polynomial, a large deviation analysis of search algorithms for the random Satisfiability problem, and its application to stop-and-restart resolutions

A large deviation analysis of the solving complexity of random 3-Satisfiability instances slightly below threshold is presented. While finding a solution for such instances demands an exponential effort with high probability, we show that an exponentially small fraction of resolutions require a computation scaling linearly in the size of the instance only. This exponentially small probability of easy resolutions is analytically calculated, and the corresponding exponent shown to be smaller (in absolute value) than the growth exponent of the typical resolution time. Our study therefore gives some theoretical basis to heuristic stop-and-restart solving procedures, and suggests a natural cut-off (the size of the instance) for the restart.Comment: Revtex file, 4 figure

Perturbative and Non-perturbative Corrections to B→D(∗)lνB\to D^{(*)}l\nu

It is shown that certain double ratios introduced for computing semileptonic form factors are accurate to order $1/m_Q^2$, even when the action and current are accurate to order $1/m_Q$.Comment: Lattice99(heavyquarks); 3 + epsilon pp. LaTe