184 research outputs found
An Ultra-Stable Referenced Interrogation System in the Deep Ultraviolet for a Mercury Optical Lattice Clock
We have developed an ultra-stable source in the deep ultraviolet, suitable to
fulfill the interrogation requirements of a future fully-operational lattice
clock based on neutral mercury. At the core of the system is a Fabry-P\'erot
cavity which is highly impervious to temperature and vibrational perturbations.
The mirror substrate is made of fused silica in order to exploit the
comparatively low thermal noise limits associated with this material. By
stabilizing the frequency of a 1062.6 nm Yb-doped fiber laser to the cavity,
and including an additional link to LNE-SYRTE's fountain primary frequency
standards via an optical frequency comb, we produce a signal which is both
stable at the 1E-15 level in fractional terms and referenced to primary
frequency standards. The signal is subsequently amplified and frequency-doubled
twice to produce several milliwatts of interrogation signal at 265.6 nm in the
deep ultraviolet.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Probabilistic Model Checking for Energy Analysis in Software Product Lines
In a software product line (SPL), a collection of software products is
defined by their commonalities in terms of features rather than explicitly
specifying all products one-by-one. Several verification techniques were
adapted to establish temporal properties of SPLs. Symbolic and family-based
model checking have been proven to be successful for tackling the combinatorial
blow-up arising when reasoning about several feature combinations. However,
most formal verification approaches for SPLs presented in the literature focus
on the static SPLs, where the features of a product are fixed and cannot be
changed during runtime. This is in contrast to dynamic SPLs, allowing to adapt
feature combinations of a product dynamically after deployment. The main
contribution of the paper is a compositional modeling framework for dynamic
SPLs, which supports probabilistic and nondeterministic choices and allows for
quantitative analysis. We specify the feature changes during runtime within an
automata-based coordination component, enabling to reason over strategies how
to trigger dynamic feature changes for optimizing various quantitative
objectives, e.g., energy or monetary costs and reliability. For our framework
there is a natural and conceptually simple translation into the input language
of the prominent probabilistic model checker PRISM. This facilitates the
application of PRISM's powerful symbolic engine to the operational behavior of
dynamic SPLs and their family-based analysis against various quantitative
queries. We demonstrate feasibility of our approach by a case study issuing an
energy-aware bonding network device.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure
Ultrastable lasers based on vibration insensitive cavities
We present two ultra-stable lasers based on two vibration insensitive cavity
designs, one with vertical optical axis geometry, the other horizontal.
Ultra-stable cavities are constructed with fused silica mirror substrates,
shown to decrease the thermal noise limit, in order to improve the frequency
stability over previous designs. Vibration sensitivity components measured are
equal to or better than 1.5e-11 per m.s^-2 for each spatial direction, which
shows significant improvement over previous studies. We have tested the very
low dependence on the position of the cavity support points, in order to
establish that our designs eliminate the need for fine tuning to achieve
extremely low vibration sensitivity. Relative frequency measurements show that
at least one of the stabilized lasers has a stability better than 5.6e-16 at 1
second, which is the best result obtained for this length of cavity.Comment: 8 pages 12 figure
Exchange energies in CoFeB/Ru/CoFeB Synthetic Antiferromagnets
The interlayer exchange coupling confers specific properties to Synthetic
Antiferromagnets that make them suitable for several applications of
spintronics. The efficient use of this magnetic configuration requires an
in-depth understanding of the magnetic properties and their correlation with
the material structure. Here we establish a reliable procedure to quantify the
interlayer exchange coupling and the intralayer exchange stiffness in synthetic
antiferromagnets; we apply it to the ultrasmooth and amorphous
CoFeB (5-40 nm)/Ru/ CoFeB material
platform. The complex interplay between the two exchange interactions results
in a gradient of the magnetization orientation across the thickness of the
stack which alters the hysteresis and the spin wave eigenmodes of the stack in
a non trivial way. We measured the field-dependence of the frequencies of the
first four spin waves confined within the thickness of the stack. We modeled
these frequencies and the corresponding thickness profiles of these spin waves
using micromagnetic simulations. The comparison with the experimental results
allows to deduce the magnetic parameters that best account for the sample
behavior. The exchange stiffness is established to be 16 2 pJ/m,
independently of the CoFeB thickness. The interlayer
exchange coupling starts from -1.7 mJ/m for the thinnest layers and it can
be maintained above -1.3 mJ/m for CoFeB layers as thick as 40 nm. The
comparison of our method with earlier characterizations using the sole
saturation fields argues for a need to revisit the tabulated values of
interlayer exchange coupling in thick synthetic antiferromagnets
Unidirectionality of spin waves in Synthetic Antiferromagnets
We study the frequency non-reciprocity of the spin waves in symmetric
CoFeB/Ru/CoFeB synthetic antiferromagnets stacks set in the scissors state by
in-plane applied fields. Using a combination of Brillouin Light Scattering and
propagating spin wave spectroscopy experiments, we show that the acoustical
spin waves in synthetic antiferromagnets possess a unique feature if their
wavevector is parallel to the applied field: the frequency non-reciprocity can
be so large that the acoustical spin waves transfer energy in a unidirectional
manner for a wide and bipolar interval of wavevectors. Analytical modeling and
full micromagnetic calculations are conducted to account for the dispersion
relations of the optical and acoustical spin waves for arbitrary field
orientations. Our formalism provides a simple and direct method to understand
and design devices harnessing propagating spin waves in synthetic
antiferromagnets
Laser locking to the 199Hg clock transition with 5.4x10^(-15)/sqrt(tau) fractional frequency instability
With Hg atoms confined in an optical lattice trap in the Lamb-Dicke regime,
we obtain a spectral line at 265.6 nm in which the full-width at half-maximum
is <15Hz. Here we lock an ultrastable laser to this ultranarrow clock
transition and achieve a fractional frequency stability of
5.4x10^(-15)/sqrt(tau) for tau<=400s. The highly stable laser light used for
the atom probing is derived from a 1062.6 nm fiber laser locked to an
ultrastable optical cavity that exhibits a mean drift rate of -6.0x10^(-17)
s^(-1) (or -16.9 mHz.s^(-1) at 282 THz) over a five month period. A comparison
between two such lasers locked to independent optical cavities shows a flicker
noise limited fractional frequency instability of 4x10^(-16) per cavity
Spin-orbit Scattering and the Kondo Effect
The effects of spin-orbit scattering of conduction electrons in the Kondo
regime are investigated theoretically. It is shown that due to time-reversal
symmetry, spin-orbit scattering does not suppress the Kondo effect, even though
it breaks spin-rotational symmetry, in full agreement with experiment. An
orbital magnetic field, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, leads to an
effective Zeeman splitting, which can be probed in transport measurements. It
is shown that, similar to weak-localization, this effect has anomalous magnetic
field and temperature dependence.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, one postscript figure available on request from
[email protected]
Morpho-Mineralogical and Bio-Geochemical Description of Cave Manganese Stromatolite-Like Patinas (Grotta del Cervo, Central Italy) and Hints on Their Paleohydrological-Driven Genesis
Caves are dark subsurface environments with relatively constant temperatures that allow studying bio-mineralization processes and paleoenvironmental or climate changes in optimal conditions. In the extreme and oligotrophic cave environment, manganese patinas having stromatolite-like features are uncommon. Here we provide the first detailed mineralogical, geochemical, and microbiological investigation of fine-grained and poorly crystalline MnFe stromatolite-like wall patinas formed in a deep-cave environment in Italy. These mineralizations, about 3 mm thick, consist of an alternation of Mn-layers and Fe-lenses. We show that the microbial communities' composition is dominated by Mn-oxidizing bacteria, such as Bacillus, Flavobacterium, and Pseudomonas. Our multidisciplinary investigation, integrating data from different analytical techniques (i.e., optical microscopy, SEM-EDS, μXRF, XRPD, FT-IR, Raman spectroscopy, and DNA sequencing), revealed peculiar chemical, mineralogical, and biological features: 1) A cyclical oscillation of Mn and Fe along the growth of the patinas. We propose that this oscillation represents the shift between oxic and suboxic conditions related to different phases occurring during paleo-flood events; 2) A typical spatial distribution of mineralogy and oxidation state of Mn, bacterial imprints, detrital content, and stromatolite-like morphologies along the Mn-layers. We propose that this distribution is controlled by the local hydraulic regime of the paleo-floods, which, in turn, is directly related to the morphology of the wall surface. Under less turbulent conditions, the combination of clay mineral catalysis and biological oxidation produced vernadite, a poor-crystalline phyllomanganate with a low average oxidation state of Mn, and branched columnar stromatolite-like morphologies. On the other hand, under more turbulent conditions, the sedimentation of clay minerals and microbial communities' development are both inhibited. In this local environment, a lower oxidation rate of Mn2+ favored the formation of todorokite and/or ranciéite, two compounds with a high average oxidation state of Mn, and flat-laminated or columnar stromatolite-like morphologies
Random Matrix Theory of Transition Strengths and Universal Magnetoconductance in the Strongly Localized Regime
Random matrix theory of the transition strengths is applied to transport in
the strongly localized regime. The crossover distribution function between the
different ensembles is derived and used to predict quantitatively the {\sl
universal} magnetoconductance curves in the absence and in the presence of
spin-orbit scattering. These predictions are confirmed numerically.Comment: 15 pages and two figures in postscript, revte
Observation of Multi-Gap Superconductivity in GdO(F)FeAs by Andreev Spectroscopy
We have studied current-voltage characteristics of Andreev contacts in
polycrystalline GdOFFeAs samples with bulk critical
temperature = (52.5 \pm 1)K using break-junction technique. The data
obtained cannot be described within the single-gap approach and suggests the
existence of a multi-gap superconductivity in this compound. The large and
small superconducting gap values estimated at T = 4.2K are {\Delta}L = 10.5 \pm
2 meV and {\Delta}S = 2.3 \pm 0.4 meV, respectively.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to JETP Letter
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