11,631 research outputs found
Damage in graphene due to electronic excitation induced by highly charged ions
Graphene is expected to be rather insensitive to ionizing particle radiation.
We demonstrate that single layers of exfoliated graphene sustain significant
damage from irradiation with slow highly charged ions. We have investigated the
ion induced changes of graphene after irradiation with highly charged ions of
different charge states (q = 28-42) and kinetic energies E_kin = 150-450 keV.
Atomic force microscopy images reveal that the ion induced defects are not
topographic in nature but are related to a significant change in friction. To
create these defects, a minimum charge state is needed. In addition to this
threshold behaviour, the required minimum charge state as well as the defect
diameter show a strong dependency on the kinetic energy of the projectiles.
From the linear dependency of the defect diameter on the projectile velocity we
infer that electronic excitations triggered by the incoming ion in the
above-surface phase play a dominant role for this unexpected defect creation in
graphene
Unified Treatment of Heterodyne Detection: the Shapiro-Wagner and Caves Frameworks
A comparative study is performed on two heterodyne systems of photon
detectors expressed in terms of a signal annihilation operator and an image
band creation operator called Shapiro-Wagner and Caves' frame, respectively.
This approach is based on the introduction of a convenient operator
which allows a unified formulation of both cases. For the Shapiro-Wagner
scheme, where , quantum phase and amplitude
are exactly defined in the context of relative number state (RNS)
representation, while a procedure is devised to handle suitably and in a
consistent way Caves' framework, characterized by , within the approximate simultaneous measurements of
noncommuting variables. In such a case RNS phase and amplitude make sense only
approximately.Comment: 25 pages. Just very minor editorial cosmetic change
Light-Switchable Polymer Adhesive Based on Photoinduced Reversible Solid-to-Liquid Transitions
Liquid Oxygen Magnetohydrodynamics
In the cryogenic realm, liquid oxygen (LOX) possesses a natural paramagnetic susceptibility and does not require a colloidal suspension of particles for practical application as a magnetic working fluid. Commercial ferrofluids have performed well in industrial applications, but expanding their workable range to low temperatures requires a suitable selection of the carrier fluid, such as LOX. In this chapter, the equation of motion for the pure fluid is derived and applied to a slug of LOX being displaced by a pulsed magnetic field. Its theoretical performance is compared to actual experimental data with discussion on empirical parameters, sensitivity to measurement uncertainty, and geometric similarity. The 1.1 T pulse of magnetic flux density produced oscillations in the slug of 6-8 Hz, generating up to 1.4 kPa of pressure change in a closed section when the slug acted like a liquid piston. The experiments and theoretical model demonstrate that LOX could be used as a magnetic working fluid in certain applications
SPORT: A new sub-nanosecond time-resolved instrument to study swift heavy ion-beam induced luminescence - Application to luminescence degradation of a fast plastic scintillator
We developed a new sub-nanosecond time-resolved instrument to study the
dynamics of UV-visible luminescence under high stopping power heavy ion
irradiation. We applied our instrument, called SPORT, on a fast plastic
scintillator (BC-400) irradiated with 27-MeV Ar ions having high mean
electronic stopping power of 2.6 MeV/\mu m. As a consequence of increasing
permanent radiation damages with increasing ion fluence, our investigations
reveal a degradation of scintillation intensity together with, thanks to the
time-resolved measurement, a decrease in the decay constant of the
scintillator. This combination indicates that luminescence degradation
processes by both dynamic and static quenching, the latter mechanism being
predominant. Under such high density excitation, the scintillation
deterioration of BC-400 is significantly enhanced compared to that observed in
previous investigations, mainly performed using light ions. The observed
non-linear behaviour implies that the dose at which luminescence starts
deteriorating is not independent on particles' stopping power, thus
illustrating that the radiation hardness of plastic scintillators can be
strongly weakened under high excitation density in heavy ion environments.Comment: 5 figures, accepted in Nucl. Instrum. Methods
Non-Markovian entanglement dynamics of quantum continuous variable systems in thermal environments
We study two continuous variable systems (or two harmonic oscillators) and
investigate their entanglement evolution under the influence of non-Markovian
thermal environments. The continuous variable systems could be two modes of
electromagnetic fields or two nanomechanical oscillators in the quantum domain.
We use quantum open system method to derive the non-Markovian master equations
of the reduced density matrix for two different but related models of the
continuous variable systems. The two models both consist of two interacting
harmonic oscillators. In model A, each of the two oscillators is coupled to its
own independent thermal reservoir, while in model B the two oscillators are
coupled to a common reservoir. To quantify the degrees of entanglement for the
bipartite continuous variable systems in Gaussian states, logarithmic
negativity is used. We find that the dynamics of the quantum entanglement is
sensitive to the initial states, the oscillator-oscillator interaction, the
oscillator-environment interaction and the coupling to a common bath or to
different, independent baths.Comment: 10 two-column pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Optimized Dynamical Decoupling for Time Dependent Hamiltonians
The validity of optimized dynamical decoupling (DD) is extended to
analytically time dependent Hamiltonians. As long as an expansion in time is
possible the time dependence of the initial Hamiltonian does not affect the
efficiency of optimized dynamical decoupling (UDD, Uhrig DD). This extension
provides the analytic basis for (i) applying UDD to effective Hamiltonians in
time dependent reference frames, for instance in the interaction picture of
fast modes and for (ii) its application in hierarchical
DD schemes with pulses about two perpendicular axes in spin space. to
suppress general decoherence, i.e., longitudinal relaxation and dephasing.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
Insulin-like growth factor 1 receptors in human breast tumour: localisation and quantification by histo-autoradiographic analysis.
To assess the precise role of IGF1 in benign and malignant breast diseases, we analysed the tissular localisation, characterised, and quantified specific insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) binding sites in these heterogenous tissues, using histo-autoradiographic analysis (HAA). The 125I-IGF1 binding was performed on frozen tissue sections and analysed using 3H Ultrofilm autoradiography coupled to computerised image analysis. Competitive binding experiments using unlabelled IGF1, IGF2 and insulin showed that the tissues exhibited typical type I IGF binding sites. This specificity was confirmed by the use of alpha IR-3 monoclonal antibody, as inhibitor of 125I-IGF1 binding. IGF1 binding sites were detected in 18 human primary breast cancers, 12 benign breast tumours and two normal breast tissues. Using HAA we found that the human breast carcinomas studied exhibit a specific and high binding capacity for 125I-IGF1 exclusively localised on the proliferative epithelial component. The 125I-IGF1 binding activity of benign breast tumours or normal breast tissue was significantly lower than in cancerous tissues. There was a significant correlation between IGF1-R concentrations detected with HAA and those detected with a classical biochemical method. Moreover, HAA could be useful in further detailing whether a tumour is IGF1-R positive or negative HAA appears to be a useful method for the detection of growth factor receptors, specially in small biopsy specimens
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