Tunable dynamical channel blockade in double-dot Aharonov-Bohm interferometers

We study electronic transport through an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer with single-level quantum dots embedded in the two arms. The full counting statistics in the shot-noise regime is calculated to first order in the tunnel-coupling strength. The interplay of interference and charging energy in the dots leads to a dynamical channel blockade that is tunable by the magnetic flux penetrating the Aharonov-Bohm ring. We find super-Poissonian behavior with diverging second and higher cumulants when the Aharonov-Bohm flux approaches an integer multiple of the flux quantum.Comment: published version, 10 pages, 10 figure

Building CMS Pixel Barrel Detectur Modules

For the barrel part of the CMS pixel tracker about 800 silicon pixel detector modules are required. The modules are bump bonded, assembled and tested at the Paul Scherrer Institute. This article describes the experience acquired during the assembly of the first ~200 modules.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, Vertex200

Full Counting Statistics in Strongly Interacting Systems: Non-Markovian Effects

We present a theory of full counting statistics for electron transport through interacting electron systems with non-Markovian dynamics. We illustrate our approach for transport through a single-level quantum dot and a metallic single-electron transistor to second order in the tunnel-coupling strength, and discuss under which circumstances non-Markovian effects appear in the transport properties.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX; typos added, references adde

Probing the exchange field of a quantum-dot spin valve by a superconducting lead

Electrons in a quantum-dot spin valve, consisting of a single-level quantum dot coupled to two ferromagnetic leads with magnetizations pointing in arbitrary directions, experience an exchange field that is induced on the dot by the interplay of Coulomb interaction and quantum fluctuations. We show that a third, superconducting lead with large superconducting gap attached to the dot probes this exchange field very sensitively. In particular, we find striking signatures of the exchange field in the symmetric component of the supercurrent with respect to the bias voltage applied between the ferromagnets already for small values of the ferromagnets' spin polarization.Comment: published version, 10 pages, 7 figure

Collective Molecular Dynamics in Proteins and Membranes

The understanding of dynamics and functioning of biological membranes and in particular of membrane embedded proteins is one of the most fundamental problems and challenges in modern biology and biophysics. In particular the impact of membrane composition and properties and of structure and dynamics of the surrounding hydration water on protein function is an upcoming hot topic, which can be addressed by modern experimental and computational techniques. Correlated molecular motions might play a crucial role for the understanding of, for instance, transport processes and elastic properties, and might be relevant for protein function. Experimentally that involves determining dispersion relations for the different molecular components, i.e., the length scale dependent excitation frequencies and relaxation rates. Only very few experimental techniques can access dynamical properties in biological materials on the nanometer scale, and resolve dynamics of lipid molecules, hydration water molecules and proteins and the interaction between them. In this context, inelastic neutron scattering turned out to be a very powerful tool to study dynamics and interactions in biomolecular materials up to relevant nanosecond time scales and down to the nanometer length scale. We review and discuss inelastic neutron scattering experiments to study membrane elasticity and protein-protein interactions of membrane embedded proteins

Efficient few-body calculations in finite volume

Simulating quantum systems in a finite volume is a powerful theoretical tool to extract information about them. Real-world properties of the system are encoded in how its discrete energy levels change with the size of the volume. This approach is relevant not only for nuclear physics, where lattice methods for few- and many-nucleon states complement phenomenological shell-model descriptions and ab initio calculations of atomic nuclei based on harmonic oscillator expansions, but also for other fields such as simulations of cold atomic systems. This contribution presents recent progress concerning finite-volume simulations of few-body systems. In particular, it discusses details regarding the efficient numerical implementation of separable interactions and it presents eigenvector continuation as a method for performing robust and efficient volume extrapolations.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, ISS 2022 contributio

Cotunneling through quantum dots coupled to magnetic leads: zero-bias anomaly for non-collinear magnetic configurations

Cotunneling transport through quantum dots weakly coupled to non-collinearly magnetized leads is analyzed theoretically by means of the real-time diagrammatic technique. The electric current, dot occupations, and dot spin are calculated in the Coulomb blockade regime and for arbitrary magnetic configuration of the system. It is shown that an effective exchange field exerted on the dot by ferromagnetic leads can significantly modify the transport characteristics in non-collinear magnetic configurations, in particular the zero-bias anomaly found recently for antiparallel configuration. For asymmetric Anderson model, the exchange field gives rise to precession of the dot spin, which leads to a nonmonotonic dependence of the differential conductance and tunnel magnetoresistance on the angle between magnetic moments of the leads. An enhanced differential conductance and negative TMR are found for certain non-collinear configurations.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figgure