Sca0pest pesticide-free agroforestry cropping system: effects on weed communities

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On the Synchronizing Probability Function and the Triple Rendezvous Time for Synchronizing Automata

Cerny's conjecture is a longstanding open problem in automata theory. We study two different concepts, which allow to approach it from a new angle. The first one is the triple rendezvous time, i.e., the length of the shortest word mapping three states onto a single one. The second one is the synchronizing probability function of an automaton, a recently introduced tool which reinterprets the synchronizing phenomenon as a two-player game, and allows to obtain optimal strategies through a Linear Program. Our contribution is twofold. First, by coupling two different novel approaches based on the synchronizing probability function and properties of linear programming, we obtain a new upper bound on the triple rendezvous time. Second, by exhibiting a family of counterexamples, we disprove a conjecture on the growth of the synchronizing probability function. We then suggest natural follow-ups towards Cernys conjecture.Comment: A preliminary version of the results has been presented at the conference LATA 2015. The current ArXiv version includes the most recent improvement on the triple rendezvous time upper bound as well as formal proofs of all the result

Orbital magnetic moments in insulating Dirac systems: Impact on magnetotransport in graphene van der Waals heterostructures

In honeycomb Dirac systems with broken inversion symmetry, orbital magnetic moments coupled to the valley degree of freedom arise due to the topology of the band structure, leading to valley-selective optical dichroism. On the other hand, in Dirac systems with prominent spin-orbit coupling, similar orbital magnetic moments emerge as well. These moments are coupled to spin, but otherwise have the same functional form as the moments stemming from spatial inversion breaking. After reviewing the basic properties of these moments, which are relevant for a whole set of newly discovered materials, such as silicene and germanene, we study the particular impact that these moments have on graphene nanoengineered barriers with artificially enhanced spin-orbit coupling. We examine transmission properties of such barriers in the presence of a magnetic field. The orbital moments are found to manifest in transport characteristics through spin-dependent transmission and conductance, making them directly accessible in experiments. Moreover, the Zeeman-type effects appear without explicitly incorporating the Zeeman term in the models, i.e., by using minimal coupling and Peierls substitution in continuum and the tight-binding methods, respectively. We find that a quasiclassical view is able to explain all the observed phenomena

Collider Constraints on Dipole-Interacting Dark Matter

Dark matter which interacts through a magnetic or electric dipole moment is an interesting possibility which may help to resolve the discrepancy between the DAMA annual modulation signal and the null results of other searches. In this article we examine relic density and collider constraints on such dark matter, and find that for couplings needed to explain DAMA, the thermal relic density is generically in the right ballpark to account for cosmological measurements. Collider constraints are relevant for light WIMPs, but less constraining that direct searches for masses above about 10 GeV.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, extended discussion, added references, conclusion unchange

Spin and Valley dependent analysis of the two-dimensional low-density electron system in Si-MOSFETS

The 2-D electron system (2DES) in Si metal-oxide field-effect transistors (MOSFETS) consists of two distinct electron fluids interacting with each other. We calculate the total energy as a function of the density $n$, and the spin polarization $\zeta$ in the strongly-correlated low-density regime, using a classical mapping to a hypernetted-chain (CHNC) equation inclusive of bridge terms. Here the ten distribution functions, arising from spin and valley indices, are self-consistently calculated to obtain the total free energy, the chemical potential, the compressibility and the spin susceptibility. The T=0 results are compared with the 2-valley Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) data of Conti et al. (at T=0, $\zeta=0$) and found to be in excellent agreement. However, unlike in the one-valley 2DES, it is shown that {\it the unpolarized phase is always the stable phase in the 2-valley system}, right up to Wigner Crystallization at $r_s=42$. This leads to the insensitivity of $g^*$ to the spin polarization and to the density. The compressibility and the spin-susceptibility enhancement calculated from the free energy confirm the validity of a simple approach to the two-valley response based on coupled-mode formation. The three methods, QMC, CHNC, and Coupled-mode theory agree closely. Our results contain no {\it ad hoc} fit parameters. They agree with experiments and do not invoke impurity effects or metal-insulator transition phenomenology.Comment: 10 pages 4 figure