Kinetics of Exciton Emission Patterns and Carrier Transport

We report on the measurements of the kinetics of expanding and collapsing rings in the exciton emission pattern. The rings are found to preserve their integrity during expansion and collapse, indicating that the observed kinetics is controlled by charge carrier transport rather than by a much faster process of exciton production and decay. The relation between ring kinetics and carrier transport, revealed by our experiment and confirmed by comparison with a theoretical model, is used to determine electron and hole transport characteristics in a contactless fashion.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Model systems, lipid rafts, and cell membranes

Views of how cell membranes are organized are presently changing. The lipid bilayer that constitutes these membranes is no longer understood to be a homogeneous fluid. Instead, lipid assemblies, termed rafts, have been introduced to provide fluid platforms that segregate membrane components and dynamically compartmentalize membranes. These assemblies are thought to be composed mainly of sphingolipids and cholesterol in the outer leaflet, somehow connected to domains of unknown composition in the inner leaflet. Specific classes of proteins are associated with the rafts. This review critically analyzes what is known of phase behavior and liquid-liquid immiscibility in model systems and compares these data with what is known of domain formation in cell membranes

Distribution of the spacing between two adjacent avoided crossings

We consider the frequency at which avoided crossings appear in an energy level structure when an external field is applied to a quantum chaotic system. The distribution of the spacing in the parameter between two adjacent avoided crossings is investigated. Using a random matrix model, we find that the distribution of these spacings is well fitted by a power-law distribution for small spacings. The powers are 2 and 3 for the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble and Gaussian unitary ensemble, respectively. We also find that the distributions decay exponentially for large spacings. The distributions in concrete quantum chaotic systems agree with those of the random matrix model.Comment: 11 page

Emergence of stability in a stochastically driven pendulum: beyond the Kapitsa effect

We consider a prototypical nonlinear system which can be stabilized by multiplicative noise: an underdamped non-linear pendulum with a stochastically vibrating pivot. A numerical solution of the pertinent Fokker-Planck equation shows that the upper equilibrium point of the pendulum can become stable even when the noise is white, and the "Kapitsa pendulum" effect is not at work. The stabilization occurs in a strong-noise regime where WKB approximation does not hold.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Charge transport and phase transition in exciton rings

The macroscopic exciton rings observed in the photoluminescence (PL) patterns of excitons in coupled quantum wells (CQWs) are explained by a series of experiments and a theory based on the idea of carrier imbalance, transport and recombination. The rings are found to be a source of cold excitons with temperature close to that of the lattice. We explored states of excitons in the ring over a range of temperatures down to 380 mK. These studies reveal a sharp, albeit continuous, second order phase transition to a low-temperature ordered exciton state, characterized by ring fragmentation into a periodic array of aggregates. An instability at the onset of degeneracy in the cold exciton system, due to stimulated exciton formation, is proposed as the transition mechanism.Comment: 8 pages including 4 figure

Correlation Functions in Disordered Systems

{Recently, we found that the correlation between the eigenvalues of random hermitean matrices exhibits universal behavior. Here we study this universal behavior and develop a diagrammatic approach which enables us to extend our previous work to the case in which the random matrix evolves in time or varies as some external parameters vary. We compute the current-current correlation function, discuss various generalizations, and compare our work with the work of other authors. We study the distribution of eigenvalues of Hamiltonians consisting of a sum of a deterministic term and a random term. The correlation between the eigenvalues when the deterministic term is varied is calculated.}Comment: 19 pages, figures not included (available on request), Tex, NSF-ITP-93-12