Experimental evidence of ageing and slow restoration of the weak-contact configuration in tilted 3D granular packings

Granular packings slowly driven towards their instability threshold are studied using a digital imaging technique as well as a nonlinear acoustic method. The former method allows us to study grain rearrangements on the surface during the tilting and the latter enables to selectively probe the modifications of the weak-contact fraction in the material bulk. Gradual ageing of both the surface activity and the weak-contact reconfigurations is observed as a result of repeated tilt cycles up to a given angle smaller than the angle of avalanche. For an aged configuration reached after several consecutive tilt cycles, abrupt resumption of the on-surface activity and of the weak-contact rearrangements occurs when the packing is subsequently inclined beyond the previous maximal tilting angle. This behavior is compared with literature results from numerical simulations of inclined 2D packings. It is also found that the aged weak-contact configurations exhibit spontaneous restoration towards the initial state if the packing remains at rest for tens of minutes. When the packing is titled forth and back between zero and near-critical angles, instead of ageing, the weak-contact configuration exhibits "internal weak-contact avalanches" in the vicinity of both the near-critical and zero angles. By contrast, the stronger-contact skeleton remains stable

Boundary resistance in magnetic multilayers

Quasiclassical boundary conditions for electrochemical potentials at the interface between diffusive ferromagnetic and non-magnetic metals are derived for the first time. An expression for the boundary resistance accurately accounts for the momentum conservation law as well as essential gradients of the chemical potentials. Conditions are established at which spin-asymmetry of the boundary resistance has positive or negative sign. Dependence of the spin asymmetry and the absolute value of the boundary resistance on the exchange splitting of the conduction band opens up new possibility to estimate spin polarization of the conduction band of ferromagnetic metals. Consistency of the theory is checked on existing experimental data.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, designed using IOPART styl

Unconventional magnetoresistance in long InSb nanowires

Magnetoresistance in long correlated nanowires of degenerate semiconductor InSb in asbestos matrix (wire diameter of around 5 nm, length 0.1 - 1 mm) is studied over temperature range 2.3 - 300 K. At zero magnetic field the electric conduction $G$ and the current-voltage characteristics of such wires obey the power laws $G\propto T^\alpha$, $I\propto V^\beta$, expected for one-dimensional electron systems. The effect of magnetic field corresponds to a 20% growth of the exponents $\alpha$, $\beta$ at H=10 T. The observed magnetoresistance is caused by the magnetic-field-induced breaking of the spin-charge separation and represents a novel mechanism of magnetoresistance.Comment: To be published in JETP Letters, vol. 77 (2003

Strong-Pinning Effects in Low-Temperature Creep: Charge-Density Waves in TaS_3

Nonlinear conduction in the quasi-one dimensional conductor o-TaS_3 has been studied in the low-temperature region down to 30 mK. It was found that at temperatures below a few Kelvins the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics consist of several branches. The temperature evolution of the I-V curve proceeds through sequential freezing-out of the branches. The origin of each branch is attributed to a particular strong pinning impurity type. Similar behavior is expected for other physical systems with collective transport (spin-density waves, Wigner crystals, vortex lattices in type-II superconductors etc.) in the presence of strong pinning centers.Comment: 11 pages, 3 ps figures, Revtex, To be published in Phys. Rev. Letters (1997

Contributions of spontaneous phase slippage to linear and non-linear conduction near the Peierls transition in thin samples of o-TaS_3

In the Peierls state very thin samples of TaS_3 (cross-section area \sim 10^{-3} mkm^2) are found to demonstrate smearing of the I-V curves near the threshold field. With approaching the Peierls transition temperature, T_P, the smearing evolves into smooth growth of conductance from zero voltage interpreted by us as the contribution of fluctuations to the non--linear conductance. We identify independently the fluctuation contribution to the linear conductance near T_P. Both linear and non-linear contributions depend on temperature with close activation energies \sim (2 - 4) x 10^3 K and apparently reveal the same process. We reject creep of the {\it continuous} charge-density waves (CDWs) as the origin of this effect and show that it is spontaneous phase slippage that results in creep of the CDW. A model is proposed accounting for both the linear and non-linear parts of the fluctuation conduction up to T_P.Comment: 6 pages, 5 Postscript figure, RevTeX, accepted for publication in PR

Optimizing the speed of a Josephson junction

We review the application of dynamical mean-field theory to Josephson junctions and study how to maximize the characteristic voltage IcRn which determines the width of a rapid single flux quantum pulse, and thereby the operating speed in digital electronics. We study a wide class of junctions ranging from SNS, SCmS (where Cm stands for correlated metal), SINIS (where the insulating layer is formed from a screened dipole layer), and SNSNS structures. Our review is focused on a survey of the physical results; the formalism has been developed elsewhere.Comment: (36 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. B