Magnetic properties of a ferrimagnetic core/shell nanocube Ising model: A Monte Carlo simulation study

Monte Carlo simulation has been used to study the magnetic properties and hysteresis loops of a single nanocube, consisting of a ferromagnetic core of spin- surrounded by a ferromagnetic shell of spin-1 with antiferromagnetic interface coupling. We find a number of characteristic phenomena. In particular, the effects of the shell coupling and the interface coupling on both the compensation temperature and the magnetization profiles are investigated. The effects of the interface coupling on the hysteresis loops are also examined.     

Partial equivalence of statistical ensembles and kinetic energy

The phenomenon of partial equivalence of statistical ensembles is illustrated by discussing two examples, the mean-field XY and the mean-field spherical model. The configurational parts of these systems exhibit partial equivalence of the microcanonical and the canonical ensemble. Furthermore, the configurational microcanonical entropy is a smooth function, whereas a nonanalytic point of the configurational free energy indicates the presence of a phase transition in the canonical ensemble. In the presence of a standard kinetic energy contribution, partial equivalence is removed and a nonanalyticity arises also microcanonically. Hence in contrast to the common belief, kinetic energy, even though a quadratic form in the momenta, has a nontrivial effect on the thermodynamic behaviour. As a by-product we present the microcanonical solution of the mean-field spherical model with kinetic energy for finite and infinite system sizes.     

Damping of the domain walls motion in Co-based amorphous ribbons with helical magnetic anisotropy: Part III

The damping of the motion of domain walls of a sandwich domain structure by the eddy currents magnetic fields, the stray fields and the hysteresis friction fields is investigated. The blocking of the motion of domain walls by the eddy currents magnetic fields is discovered.     

Proximity effects in a superconductor/ferromagnet junction

A proximity effect in an s-wave superconductor/ferromagnet (SC/F) junction is theoretically studied using the second order perturbation theory for the tunneling Hamiltonian and Green's function method. We calculate a pair amplitude induced by the proximity effect in a weak ferromagnetic metal (FM) and a half-metal (HM). In the SC/FM junction, it is found that a spin-singlet pair amplitude (Ψ_s) and spin-triplet pair amplitude (Ψ_t) are induced in FM and both amplitudes depend on the frequency in the Matsubara representation. Ψ_s is an even function and Ψ_t is an odd function with respect to the Matsubara frequency (ω_n). In the SC/HM junction, we examine the proximity effects by taking account of magnon excitations in HM. It is found that the triplet-pair correlation is induced in HM. The induced pair amplitude in HM shows a damped oscillation as a function of the position and contains the terms of even and odd functions of ω_n as in the case of the SC/FM junction. We discuss that in our tunneling model the pair amplitude of even function of ω_n only contributes to a Josephson current.     

Zipf distribution in top Chinese firms and an economic explanation

By analyzing the data of top 500 Chinese firms from the year 2002 to 2007, we reveal that their revenues and ranks obey the Zipf’s law with exponent of 1 for each year. This result confirms the universality of firm size character which has been presented in many other empirical works, since China possesses a unique ideological and political system. We offer an explanation of it based on a simple economic model which takes production and capital accumulation into account.     

Aharonov-Bohm effect in a draining bathtub vortex

We study planar waves in a circulating, draining fluid flow, which: (i) exhibit an analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect in Quantum Mechanics; (ii) obey a Klein-Gordon equation on an ‘effective spacetime’ which resembles the Kerr spacetime of General Relativity; and (iii) may be observed in the laboratory using gravity waves in a shallow basin. We describe a modified AB effect which depends on two dimensionless parameters, associated with the circulation α and draining β rates; we call this the ‘αβ effect’. We show that the αβ effect is inherently asymmetric even in the low-frequency limit, and that it leads to novel interference patterns which carry the signature of both rotation and absorption.     

Classical limit of the Casimir entropy for scalar massless field

We study the Casimir effect at finite temperature for a massless scalar field in the parallel plates geometry in N spatial dimensions, under various combinations of Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions on the plates. We show that in all these cases the entropy, in the limit where energy equipartitioning applies, is a geometrical factor whose sign determines the sign of the Casimir force.     

The magnetoresistance effect in a nanostructure with the periodic magnetic barriers

The magnetoresistance (MR) effect is theoretically investigated in a periodic magnetically modulated nanostructure, which can be realized experimentally by depositing periodic parallel ferromagnetic strips on the top of a heterostructure. We find that there exists a significant conductance difference for electrons through the parallel (P) and antiparallel (AP) magnetization configurations, which results in a considerable magnetoresistance effect. We also find that the magnetoresistance effect depends not only on the temperature but also on the number of the periodic magnetic barriers.     

Point-contact study of the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn5

We have investigated the differential conductance spectra of the point contacts between the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn₅ and Pt. Many of them show a double-maximum structure that indicates the superconducting energy gap Δ. The Δ values derived using Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk model, however, varies from 0.47 to 0.77 meV, and yet they are within the scatter of the reported values. The evolution of Δ below T_c is slow as compared with that of BCS gap probably reflecting the unconventional superconductivity in CeCoIn₅.     

The bias- and temperature-dependent electron transport in a magnetic nanostructure

In this paper, we theoretically investigate the effect of the bias and temperature on the electron transport properties in a magnetic nanostructure. It is found that the large spin-polarization can be achieved in such a nanostructure, and the degree of spin-polarization obviously increases with increasing applied bias. It is also found that the conductance curves for the different temperatures obviously intersect at the same Fermi energy for the low Fermi energy, and the degree of spin-polarization decreases with the increase of temperature. Thus, we can control the electron transport through changing the bias and temperature.     

Measurement of the F5/2 and H(2)9/2 manifold lifetime in Nd:YLiF4

We present direct measurements of the lifetime of the ⁴F_5/2 and ²H(2)_9/2 manifold in Nd³⁺:YLiF₄, using a fluorescence pump-probe technique. The technique populates the ⁴F_5/2 and ²H(2)_9/2 manifold directly with a pump pulse. Via excited state absorption from this excited manifold, the ²F(2)_5/2 manifold of Nd³⁺ is populated with a delayed probe pulse. The population in the ⁴F_5/2 and ²H(2)_9/2 manifold is monitored as a function of time by observing the change in integrated UV fluorescence from the ²F(2)_5/2 manifold for each time delay between pump and probe pulses. The pump and probe beams come from the fundamental and second harmonic wavelengths of a femtosecond Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier. The measured lifetime agrees well with the energy gap law, based on other nonradiative lifetime measurements from the literature for Nd³⁺:YLiF₄.     

The adsorption-induced thermal step-bunching on the hexagonal lattice system

We present restricted solid-on-solid model coupled with Ising system (RSOS-I model) on the hexagonal system. Without long-range interaction such as elastic interaction, the adsorption-induced thermal step-bunching is obtained by the Monte Carlo calculation on the hexagonal RSOS-I model.     

Bias voltage effect on electron tunneling across a junction with a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic two-phase composite barrier

The effect of bias voltage on electron tunneling across a junction with a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic composite barrier is investigated theoretically. Because of the inversion symmetry breaking of the spontaneous ferroelectric polarization, bias voltage dependence of the electron tunneling shows significant differences between the positive bias and the negative one. The differences of spin filtering or tunnel magnetoresistance increase with the increasing absolute value of bias voltage. Such direction preferred electron tunneling is found intimately related with the unusual asymmetry of the electrical potential profile in two-phase composite barrier and provides a unique change to realize rectifying functions in spintronics.     

Dynamics of electrons and holes at surfaces

We present ab initio calculation results for electron-phonon (e-ph) contribution to hole lifetime broadening of the surface state on Al(0 0 1). We show that e-ph coupling in this state is significantly stronger than in bulk Al at the Fermi level. It makes the e-ph decay channel very important in the formation of the hole decay in the surface state at . We also present the results for e-e lifetime broadening in a quantum-well state in 1 ML K/Cu(1 1 1). We show that this contribution is not negligible and is much larger than that in a surface state on Ag(1 1 1).     

Nanoscale observations of the operational failure for phase-change-type nonvolatile memory devices using Ge2Sb2Te5 chalcogenide thin films

In this study, a phase-change memory device was fabricated and the origin of device failure mode was examined using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ (GST) was used as the active phase-change material in the memory device and the active pore size was designed to be 0.5 m. After the programming signals of more than 2×10⁶ cycles were repeatedly applied to the device, the high-resistance memory state (reset) could not be rewritten and the cell resistance was fixed at the low-resistance state (set). Based on TEM and EDS studies, Sb excess and Ge deficiency in the device operating region had a strong effect on device reliability, especially under endurance-demanding conditions. An abnormal segregation and oxidation of Ge also was observed in the region between the device operating and inactive peripheral regions. To guarantee an data endurability of more than 1×10¹⁰ cycles of PRAM, it is very important to develop phase-change materials with more stable compositions and to reduce the current required for programming.     

Monitoring energy transfer in hyperbranched macromolecules through fluorescence depolarization

Fluorescence depolarization under dipolar quasiresonant energy transfer allows to monitor the presence of the excitation on the originally excited chromophore. Moreover, a simple model relates the arrangement of the chromophores to the depolarization decay via the eigenvalues of the corresponding connectivity matrix. Now, for important classes of polymers (such as dendrimers and fractal hyperbranched macromolecules) these eigenvalues can be obtained without the need of diagonalizing the corresponding connectivity matrices, a fact which allows to study very large systems also. We determine the fluorescence depolarization behavior of hyperbranched systems and emphasize the possibilities offered by such measurements in differentiating between the underlying geometries.     

Cascading failures on weighted urban traffic equilibrium networks

In this paper, we study the cascading failure on weighted urban traffic equilibrium networks by introducing a more practical flow assignment mechanism. The whole process including edges overloading to node malfunctioning, dynamic spanning clustering and the phase transitions trigged with O-D flow evolving is simulated. It is found that there are three districts: slow, fast and stationary (collapse for scale-free networks) cascading failure districts. And different topologies have large effects on the ranges of these districts. Simulations also show that, although the latter can support larger traffic flow, homogeneous networks appear to be more robust against cascading failures than heterogeneous ones.     

Josephson effect between conventional and non-centrosymmetric superconductors

We analyze the Josephson effect between a conventional and a non-centrosymmetric superconductor to examine characteristic features of such junctions and the symmetry of the superconducting phases. As a concrete example, we consider the non-centrosymmetric superconductor CePt₃Si where Rashba spin-orbit coupling plays a crucial role and affects the Josephson pair tunneling. In this case, the Josephson coupling is composed of two parts, spin-singlet-like and spin-triplet-like components. The triplet-like component can lead to a Josephson coupling shifted by π relative to the singlet-like coupling. This has important implications on the interference effects and may explain some recent experimental results for the Al/CePt₃Si junction.     

An exclusion process for modelling fungal hyphal growth

A simple model for mass transport within a growing fungal filament is reviewed. Inspired by the role of microtubule-transported vesicles, we embody the dynamics of mass along a quasi-one-dimensional hypha with mutually excluding particles hopping on a growing one-dimensional lattice. The model is a generalisation of the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) to a dynamically extending lattice. We discuss mean-field and improved mean-field equations and present a phase diagram of the model's steady-state behaviour which generalises that of the TASEP. In particular we identify a region in which a shock in the density travels forward more slowly than the tip of the lattice and thus moves away from both the boundaries.     

The spin-1 Ising model on a two-layer Bethe lattice with FM/AFM interactions

Two-layer Bethe lattice with the Ising spins of the top layer having only ferromagnetic (FM) interactions and the bottom layer having only antiferromagnetic (AFM) interactions are allowed to interact with the interlayer interaction of either FM or AFM type. The model is studied by using the exact recursion relations in a pairwise approach for given coordination numbers q=3, 4 and 6 with equal external magnetic fields acting on the layers. The phase diagrams of the model are obtained on different planes for given system parameters by studying the ground state (GS) phase diagrams and the thermal variations of the order-parameters and the response functions, i.e. the susceptibility and the specific heat, in detail. The model presents second- and first-order phase transitions, and where their lines are combined is the tricritical point. The critical end points also exist. The reentrant behavior is also seen when the model presents two Néel temperatures.