401 research outputs found
Conductance fluctuations in metallic nanogaps made by electromigration
We report on low temperature conductance measurements of gold nanogaps
fabricated by controlled electromigration. Fluctuations of the conductance due
to quantum interferences and depending both on bias voltage and magnetic field
are observed. By analyzing the voltage and magnetoconductance correlation
functions we determine the type of electron trajectories generating the
observed quantum interferences and the effective characteristic time of phase
coherence in our device.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J. Appl. Phy
Storage capabilities of a 4-junction single electron trap with an on-chip resistor
We report on the operation of a single electron trap comprising a chain of
four Al/AlOx/Al tunnel junctions attached, at one side, to a memory island and,
at the other side, to a miniature on-chip Cr resistor R=50 kOhm which served to
suppress cotunneling. At appropriate voltage bias the bi-stable states of the
trap, with the charges differing by the elementary charge e, were realized. At
low temperature, spontaneous switching between these states was found to be
infrequent. For instance, at T=70 mK the system was capable of holding an
electron for more than 2 hours, this time being limited by the time of the
measurement.Comment: 3 pages of text and 2 figure
Variable electrostatic transformer: controllable coupling of two charge qubits
We propose and investigate a novel method for the controlled coupling of two
Josephson charge qubits by means of a variable electrostatic transformer. The
value of the coupling capacitance is given by the discretized curvature of the
lowest energy band of a Josephson junction, which can be positive, negative, or
zero. We calculate the charging diagram of the two-qubit system that reflects
the transition from positive to negative through vanishing coupling. We also
discuss how to construct a phase gate making use of the controllable coupling.Comment: final version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Coulomb Charging at Large Conduction
We discuss the suppression of Coulomb charging effects on a small metallic
island coupled to an electrode by a tunnel junction. At high temperatures the
quantum corrections to the classical charging energy , where is
the island capacitance, are evaluated. At low temperatures the large quantum
fluctuations of the island charge cause a strong reduction of the effective
which is determined explicitly in the limit of a large tunneling
conductance.Comment: 4 page
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Effect of elevated CO2 and high temperature on seed-set and grain quality of rice
Hybrid vigour may help overcome the negative effects of climate change in rice. A popular rice hybrid (IR75217H), a heat-tolerant check (N22), and a mega-variety (IR64) were tested for tolerance of seed-set and grain quality to high-temperature stress at anthesis at ambient and elevated [CO2]. Under an ambient air temperature of 29 °C (tissue temperature 28.3 °C), elevated [CO2] increased vegetative and reproductive growth, including seed yield in all three genotypes. Seed-set was reduced by high temperature in all three genotypes, with the hybrid and IR64 equally affected and twice as sensitive as the tolerant cultivar N22. No interaction occurred between temperature and [CO2] for seed-set. The hybrid had significantly more anthesed spikelets at all temperatures than IR64 and at 29 °C this resulted in a large yield advantage. At 35 °C (tissue temperature 32.9 °C) the hybrid had a higher seed yield than IR64 due to the higher spikelet number, but at 38 °C (tissue temperature 34–35 °C) there was no yield advantage. Grain gel consistency in the hybrid and IR64 was reduced by high temperatures only at elevated [CO2], while the percentage of broken grains increased from 10% at 29 °C to 35% at 38 °C in the hybrid. It is concluded that seed-set of hybrids is susceptible to short episodes of high temperature during anthesis, but that at intermediate tissue temperatures of 32.9 °C higher spikelet number (yield potential) of the hybrid can compensate to some extent. If the heat tolerance from N22 or other tolerant donors could be transferred into hybrids, yield could be maintained under the higher temperatures predicted with climate change
Domain-adversarial neural networks to address the appearance variability of histopathology images
Preparing and scanning histopathology slides consists of several steps, each
with a multitude of parameters. The parameters can vary between pathology labs
and within the same lab over time, resulting in significant variability of the
tissue appearance that hampers the generalization of automatic image analysis
methods. Typically, this is addressed with ad-hoc approaches such as staining
normalization that aim to reduce the appearance variability. In this paper, we
propose a systematic solution based on domain-adversarial neural networks. We
hypothesize that removing the domain information from the model representation
leads to better generalization. We tested our hypothesis for the problem of
mitosis detection in breast cancer histopathology images and made a comparative
analysis with two other approaches. We show that combining color augmentation
with domain-adversarial training is a better alternative than standard
approaches to improve the generalization of deep learning methods.Comment: MICCAI 2017 Workshop on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysi
Metallic single-electron transistor without traditional tunnel barriers
We report on a new type of single-electron transistor (SET) comprising two
highly resistive Cr thin-film strips (~ 1um long) connecting a 1 um-long Al
island to two Al outer electrodes. These resistors replace small-area oxide
tunnel junctions of traditional SETs. Our transistor with a total asymptotic
resistance of 110 kOhm showed a very sharp Coulomb blockade and reproducible,
deep and strictly e-periodic gate modulation in wide ranges of bias currents I
and gate voltages V_g. In the Coulomb blockade region (|V| < 0.5 mV), we
observed a strong suppression of the cotunneling current allowing appreciable
modulation curves V-V_g to be measured at currents I as low as 100 fA. The
noise figure of our SET was found to be similar to that of typical Al/AlOx/Al
single-electron transistors.Comment: 5 pages incl. 4 fig
Inferring a Third Spatial Dimension from 2D Histological Images
Histological images are obtained by transmitting light through a tissue
specimen that has been stained in order to produce contrast. This process
results in 2D images of the specimen that has a three-dimensional structure. In
this paper, we propose a method to infer how the stains are distributed in the
direction perpendicular to the surface of the slide for a given 2D image in
order to obtain a 3D representation of the tissue. This inference is achieved
by decomposition of the staining concentration maps under constraints that
ensure realistic decomposition and reconstruction of the original 2D images.
Our study shows that it is possible to generate realistic 3D images making this
method a potential tool for data augmentation when training deep learning
models.Comment: IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 201
The Cooper Pair Pump as a Quantized Current Source
A new charge quantization in a phase-polarized Cooper Pair Pump (CPP) is
proposed, based on the topological properties of its Hamiltonian ground state
over a three-dimensional parameter space . The charge is quantized
using a set of path in covering the surface of a torus, and is a
multiple of the integer Chern index of this surface. This quantization is
asymptotic but the pumped charge converges rapidly to the quantized value with
the increase in the path frequency. The topological nature of the current makes
this CPP implementation an excellent candidate for a metrological current
standard.Comment: 4 PRL page
Enhanced transmission of slit arrays in an extremely thin metallic film
Horizontal resonances of slit arrays are studied. They can lead to an
enhanced transmission that cannot be explained using the single-mode
approximation. A new type of cavity resonance is found when the slits are
narrow for a wavelength very close to the period. It can be excited for very
low thicknesses. Optimization shows these structures could constitute
interesting monochromatic filters
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