Junctions of Spin-Incoherent Luttinger Liquids with Ferromagnets and Superconductors

We discuss the properties of a strongly interacting spin-charge separated one dimensional system coupled to ferromagnets and/or superconductors. Our results are valid for arbitrary temperatures with respect to the spin energy, but require temperature be small compared to the charge energy. We focus mainly on the spin-incoherent regime where temperature is large compared to the spin energy, but small compared to the charge energy. In the case of a ferromagnet we study spin pumping and the renormalized dynamics of a precessing magnetic order parameter. We find the interaction-dependent temperature dependence of the spin pumping can be qualitatively different in the spin-incoherent regime from the Luttinger liquid regime, allowing an identification of the former. Likewise, the temperature dependence of the renormlized magnetization dynamics can be used to identify spin-incoherent physics. For the case of a spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid coupled to two superconductors, we compute the ac and dc Josephson current for a wire geometry in the limit of tunnel coupled superconductors. Both the ac and dc response contain "smoking gun" signatures that can be used to identify spin-incoherent behavior. Experimental requirements for the observation of these effects are laid out.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

Targeted Imaging of Urothelium Carcinoma in Human Bladders by an ICG pHLIP Peptide Ex vivo

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common in incidence and one of the most expensive cancers to treat. Early detection greatly improves the chances of survival and bladder preservation. The pH Low Insertion Peptide (pHLIP® peptide) conjugated with a near infrared fluorescent dye (ICG) targets low extracellular pH allowing visualization of malignant lesions in human bladder carcinoma ex vivo. Cystectomy specimens obtained after radical surgery were immediately irrigated with non-buffered saline and instilled with a solution of the ICG pHLIP® construct, incubated, and rinsed. Bladders were subsequently opened and imaged, the fluorescent spots were marked, and a standard pathological analysis was carried out to establish the correlation between ICG pHLIP® imaging and white light pathological assessment. Accurate targeting of bladder lesions was achieved with a sensitivity of 97%. Specificity is 100%, but reduced to 80%, if targeting of necrotic tissue from previous transurethral resections or chemotherapy are considered as false positives. ICG pHLIP® imaging agent marked high grade urothelial carcinomas, both muscle invasive and non-muscle invasive. Carcinoma in situ (CIS) was accurately diagnosed in 11 cases, whereas only 4 cases were seen using white light, so imaging with the ICG pHLIP® peptide offers improved early diagnosis of bladder cancers, and may also enable new treatment alternatives

The Worldvolume Action of Kink Solitons in AdS Spacetime

A formalism is presented for computing the higher-order corrections to the worldvolume action of co-dimension one solitons. By modifying its potential, an explicit "kink" solution of a real scalar field in AdS spacetime is found. The formalism is then applied to explicitly compute the kink worldvolume action to quadratic order in two expansion parameters--associated with the hypersurface fluctuation length and the radius of AdS spacetime respectively. Two alternative methods are given for doing this. The results are expressed in terms of the trace of the extrinsic curvature and the intrinsic scalar curvature. In addition to conformal Galileon interactions, we find a non-Galileon term which is never sub-dominant. This method can be extended to any conformally flat bulk spacetime.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected and additional comments adde

Infrared nanoscopy of Dirac plasmons at the graphene-SiO2 interface

We report on infrared (IR) nanoscopy of 2D plasmon excitations of Dirac fermions in graphene. This is achieved by confining mid-IR radiation at the apex of a nanoscale tip: an approach yielding two orders of magnitude increase in the value of in-plane component of incident wavevector q compared to free space propagation. At these high wavevectors, the Dirac plasmon is found to dramatically enhance the near-field interaction with mid-IR surface phonons of SiO2 substrate. Our data augmented by detailed modeling establish graphene as a new medium supporting plasmonic effects that can be controlled by gate voltage.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Efficiency of Finding Muon Track Trigger Primitives in CMS Cathode Strip Chambers

In the CMS Experiment, muon detection in the forward direction is accomplished by cathode strip chambers~(CSC). These detectors identify muons, provide a fast muon trigger, and give a precise measurement of the muon trajectory. There are 468 six-plane CSCs in the system. The efficiency of finding muon trigger primitives (muon track segments) was studied using~36 CMS CSCs and cosmic ray muons during the Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge~(MTCC) exercise conducted by the~CMS experiment in~2006. In contrast to earlier studies that used muon beams to illuminate a very small chamber area ($< \! 0.01$~m$^2$), results presented in this paper were obtained by many installed CSCs operating {\em in situ} over an area of $\approx \! 23$~m$^2$ as a part of the~CMS experiment. The efficiency of finding 2-dimensional trigger primitives within 6-layer chambers was found to be~$99.93 \pm 0.03\%$. These segments, found by the CSC electronics within $800$~ns after the passing of a muon through the chambers, are the input information for the Level-1 muon trigger and, also, are a necessary condition for chambers to be read out by the Data Acquisition System

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

Fabrication of semiconductor nanowires by conjugation of quantum dots to actin filaments

We demonstrate the feasibility of fabrication of semiconducting nanowires (quantum dots) using F-actin as a template. Three different approaches of assembling quantum dots into nanowires are described. The nanowires were characterized by fluorescence microscopy. © 2009 Springer-Verlag