3,891 research outputs found
Cooper pair splitting in a nanoSQUID geometry at high transparency
We describe a Josephson device composed of two superconductors separated by
two interacting quantum dots in parallel, as a probe for Cooper pair splitting.
In addition to sequential tunneling of electrons through each dot, an
additional transport channel exists in this system: crossed Andreev reflection,
where a Cooper pair from the source is split between the two dots and
recombined in the drain superconductor. Unlike non-equilibrium scenarios for
Cooper pair splitting which involves superconducting/normal metal "forks", our
proposal relies on an Aharonov-Bohm measurement of the DC Josephson current
when a flux is inserted between the two dots. We provide a path integral
approach to treat arbitrary transparencies, and we explore all contributions
for the individual phases ( or ) of the quantum dots. We propose a
definition of the Cooper pair splitting efficiency for arbitrary
transparencies, which allows us to find the phase associations which favor the
crossed Andreev process. Possible applications to experiments using nanowires
as quantum dots are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure
Image Segmentation Applied to Scanning Electron Microscopy Multi-Images of Weathered Stones of Monuments
This paper describes a three complementary images processing method. The three images are coming from a scanning electron microscope (SEM) during the analysis of a particular stone: the Tuffeau used in most monuments of the Loire valley (France). The goal is to separate two classes of particles (calcareous and siliceous) from the porosity to give more information to experts who evaluate the damage of weathering on monuments. A specific process is developed: a first threshold on the good quality image allows separation of particles from porosity. Then, the complementarity of the three images gives the two other thresholds. Granulometry, percentages of components, and anisotropy of the porosity are precious information that can be derived from the three segmented image
Distinguished non-Archimedean representations
For a symmetric space (G,H), one is interested in understanding the vector
space of H-invariant linear forms on a representation \pi of G. In particular
an important question is whether or not the dimension of this space is bounded
by one. We cover the known results for the pair (G=R_{E/F}GL(n),H=GL(n)), and
then discuss the corresponding SL(n) case. In this paper, we show that
(G=R_{E/F}SL(n),H=SL(n)) is a Gelfand pair when n is odd. When is even, the
space of H-invariant forms on \pi can have dimension more than one even when
\pi is supercuspidal. The latter work is joint with Dipendra Prasad
Polyphenolic C-glucosidic ellagitannins present in oak-aged wine inhibit HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein
HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein (NC) is a nucleic acid chaperone implicated in several steps of the virus replication cycle and an attractive new target for drug development. In reverse transcription, NC destabilizes nucleic acid secondary structures and catalyzes the annealing of HIV-1 TAR RNA to its DNA copy (cTAR) to form the heteroduplex TAR/cTAR. A screening program led to the identification of the plant polyphenols acutissimins A and B as potent inhibitors of NC in different assays. These two flavano-ellagitannins, which are found in wine aged in oak barrels, exhibited different mechanisms of protein inhibition and higher potency relatively to their epimers, epiacutissimins A and B, and to simpler structures notably representing hydrolytic fragments and metabolites therefrom
Picoheterotroph (Bacteria and Archaea) biomass distribution in the global ocean
We compiled a database of 39 766 data points consisting of flow cytometric and microscopical measurements of picoheterotroph abundance, including both Bacteria and Archaea. After gridding with 1° spacing, the database covers 1.3% of the ocean surface. There are data covering all ocean basins and depths except the Southern Hemisphere below 350m or from April until June. The average picoheterotroph biomass is 3.9 ± 3.6 µg Cl-1 with a 20-fold decrease between the surface and the deep sea. We estimate a total ocean inventory of about 1.3 × 1029 picoheterotroph cells. Surprisingly, the abundance in the coastal regions is the same as at the same depths in the open ocean. Using an average of published open ocean measurements for the conversion from abundance to carbon biomass of 9.1 fg cell-1, we calculate a picoheterotroph carbon inventory of about 1.2 Pg C. The main source of uncertainty in this inventory is the conversion factor from abundance to biomass. Picoheterotroph biomass is ? 2 times higher in the tropics than in the polar oceans
Information geometry in a reduced model of self-organised shear flows without the uniform coloured noise approximation
We investigate information geometry in a toy model of self-organised shear flows, where a bimodal PDF of x with two peaks signifying the formation of mean shear gradients is induced by a finite memory time γ⁻¹ of a stochastic forcing f . We calculate time-dependent probability density functions (PDFs) for different values of the correlation time γ⁻¹ and amplitude D of the stochastic forcing, and identify the parameter space for unimodal and bimodal stationary PDFs. By comparing results with those obtained under the uniform coloured noise approximation (UCNA) in Jacquet et al (2018 Entropy 20 613), we find that UCNA tends to favor the formation of a bimodal PDF of x for given parameter values γ⁻¹ and D. We map out attractor structure associated with unimodal and bimodal PDFs of x by measuring the total information length L∞ = L(t → ∞) against the location x₀ of a narrow initial PDF of x. Here L(t) represents the total number of statistically different states that a system passes through in time. We examine the validity of the UCNA from the perspective of information change and show how to fine-tune an initial joint PDF of x and f to achieve a better agreement with UCNA results
Spin-polarized tunneling spectroscopy in tunnel junctions with half-metallic electrodes
We have studied the magnetoresistance (TMR) of tunnel junctions with
electrodes of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 and we show how the variation of the conductance
and TMR with the bias voltage can be exploited to obtain a precise information
on the spin and energy dependence of the density of states. Our analysis leads
to a quantitative description of the band structure of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 and
allows the determination of the gap delta between the Fermi level and the
bottom of the t2g minority spin band, in good agreement with data from
spin-polarized inverse photoemission experiments. This shows the potential of
magnetic tunnel junctions with half-metallic electrodes for spin-resolved
spectroscopic studies.Comment: To appear in Physical Review Letter
On an Asymptotic Series of Ramanujan
An asymptotic series in Ramanujan's second notebook (Entry 10, Chapter 3) is
concerned with the behavior of the expected value of for large
where is a Poisson random variable with mean and
is a function satisfying certain growth conditions. We generalize this by
studying the asymptotics of the expected value of when the
distribution of belongs to a suitable family indexed by a convolution
parameter. Examples include the problem of inverse moments for distribution
families such as the binomial or the negative binomial.Comment: To appear, Ramanujan
3D simulations of gas puff effects on edge density and ICRF coupling in ASDEX Upgrade
In recent experiments, a local gas puff was found to be an effective way to tailor the scrape-off layer (SOL) density and improve the ion cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) power coupling in tokamaks. In order to quantitatively reproduce these experiments, to understand the corresponding physics and to optimize the gas valve positions and rates, simulations were carried out with the 3D edge plasma transport code EMC3-EIRENE in ASDEX Upgrade. An inter-ELM phase of an H-mode discharge with a moderate gas puff rate (1.2 x 10(22) electrons s(-1)) is used in our simulations. We simulated cases with gas puff in the lower divertor, the outer mid-plane and the top of the machine while keeping other conditions the same. Compared with the lower divertor gas puff, the outer mid-plane gas puff can increase the local density in front of the antennas most effectively, while a toroidally uniform but significantly smaller enhancement is found for the top gas puff. Good agreement between our simulations and experiments is obtained. With further simulations, the mechanisms of SOL density tailoring via local gas puffing and the strategies of gas puff optimization are discussed in the paper
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