Phase transition in dually weighted colored tensor models

Tensor models are a generalization of matrix models (their graphs being dual to higher-dimensional triangulations) and, in their colored version, admit a 1/N expansion and a continuum limit. We introduce a new class of colored tensor models with a modified propagator which allows us to associate weight factors to the faces of the graphs, i.e. to the bones (or hinges) of the triangulation, where curvature is concentrated. They correspond to dynamical triangulations in three and higher dimensions with generalized amplitudes. We solve analytically the leading order in 1/N of the most general model in arbitrary dimensions. We then show that a particular model, corresponding to dynamical triangulations with a non-trivial measure factor, undergoes a third-order phase transition in the continuum characterized by a jump in the susceptibility exponent.     

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.     

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.     

Structural modifications of diamond like carbon films induced by MeV nitrogen ion irradiation

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) films were deposited on Si(1 0 0) substrates using plasma deposition technique. The deposited films were irradiated using 2 MeV N⁺ ions at fluences of 1×10¹⁴, 1×10¹⁵ and 5×10¹⁵ ions/cm². Samples have been characterized by using Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Analysis of Raman spectra shows a gradual shift of both D and G band peaks towards higher frequencies along with an increase of the intensity ratio, I(D)/I(G), with increasing ion fluence in irradiation. These results are consistent with an increase of sp² bonding. XPS results also show a monotonic increase of sp²/sp³ hybridization ratio with increasing ion fluence. Plan view TEM images show the formation of clusters in the irradiated DLC films. HRTEM micrographs from the samples irradiated at a fluence of 5×10¹⁵ ions/cm² show the lattice image with an average interplanar spacing of 0.34 nm, revealing that the clusters are graphite clusters. The crystallographic planes in these clusters are somewhat distorted compared to the perfect graphite structure.     

Single- and double-pion production in nucleon collisions on the nucleon and on nuclei—the ABC effect and its origin in a dibaryonic resonance

The ABC effect-an intriguing low-mass enhancement in the ππ invariant mass spectrum-is known from inclusive measurements of two-pion production in nuclear fusion reactions. First exclusive measurements carried out at CELSIUS-WASA for the fusion reactions leading to d or ³He reveal this effect to be a σ-channel phenomenon associated with the formation of a ΔΔ system in the intermediate state and combined with a resonance-like behavior in the total cross-section. Together with the observation that the differential distributions do not change in shape over the resonance region the features fulfill the criteria of an isoscalar s-channel resonance in pn and NNππ systems, if the two emitted nucleons are bound. It obviously is robust enough to survive in nuclei as a dibaryonic resonance configuration. In this context also the phenomenon of NΔ resonances is reexamined.     

Alpha decay chains from superheavy nuclei

Magic islands for extra-stable nuclei in the midst of the sea of fission-instability were predicted to be around Z=114, 124 or, 126 with N=184, and Z=120, with N=172. Whether these fission-survived superheavy nuclei with high Z and N would live long enough for detection or, undergo α-decay in a very short time, remains an open question. α-decay half lives of nuclei with 130≥Z≥100 have been calculated in a WKB framework using density-dependent M3Y interaction with Q-values from different mass formulae. The results are in excellent agreement with the experimental data. Fission survived Sg nuclei with Z=106, N=162 is predicted to have the highest α-decay half life (∼3.2 h) in the Z=106-108, N=160-164 region called small island/peninsula. Superheavy nuclei with Z>118 are found to have α-decay half lives of the order of microseconds or less.     

Josephson effect in supercondutor/ferromagnetic semiconductor/superconductor junctions

Using a general expression for dc Josephson current, we study the Josephson effect in ballistic superconductor (SC)/ferromagnetic semiconductor (FS)/SC junctions, in which the mismatches of the effective mass and Fermi velocity between the FS and SC, spin polarization P in the FS, as well as strengths of potential scattering Z at the interfaces are included. It is shown that in the coherent regime, the oscillatory dependences of the maximum Josephson current on the FS layer thickness L and Josephson current on the macroscopic phase difference φ for the heavy and light holes, resulting from the spin splitting energy gained or lost by a quasiparticle Andreev-reflected at the FS/SC interface, are much different due to the different mismatches in the effective mass and Fermi velocity between the FS and the SC, which is related to the crossovers between positive (0) and negative (π) couplings or equivalently 0 and π junctions. Also, we find that, for the same reason, Z and P are required not to surpass different critical values for the Josephson currents of the heavy and light holes. Furthermore, it is found that, for the dependence of the Josephson current on φ, regardless of how L,Z, and P change, the Josephson junctions do not transit between 0 and π junctions for the light hole.     

The status of KATRIN

KATRIN will have the capability to push the limit on the mass of the electron anti-neutrino to 200 meV (90% C.L.) by investigating the kinematics of the electrons from tritium β decay very close to the endpoint of the β spectrum. The importance of this experiment will be discussed in various contributions to this school. KATRIN is currently under construction at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). This talk gives an overview over the status of KATRIN with emphasis on the aspects of KATRIN not covered by the talks following this one.     

Universality in bibliometrics

Many discussions have enlarged the literature in Bibliometrics since the Hirsch proposal, the so called h-index. Ranking papers according to their citations, this index quantifies a researcher only by its greatest possible number of papers that are cited at least h times. A closed formula for h-index distribution that can be applied for distinct databases is not yet known. In fact, to obtain such distribution, the knowledge of citation distribution of the authors and its specificities are required. Instead of dealing with researchers randomly chosen, here we address different groups based on distinct databases. The first group is composed of physicists and biologists, with data extracted from Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). The second group is composed of computer scientists, in which data were extracted from Google-Scholar system. In this paper, we obtain a general formula for the h-index probability density function (pdf) for groups of authors by using generalized exponentials in the context of escort probability. Our analysis includes the use of several statistical methods to estimate the necessary parameters. Also an exhaustive comparison among the possible candidate distributions are used to describe the way the citations are distributed among authors. The h-index pdf should be used to classify groups of researchers from a quantitative point of view, which is meaningfully interesting to eliminate obscure qualitative methods.     

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.     

Properties of the Ising magnet confined in a corner geometry

The properties of Ising square lattices with nearest neighbor ferromagnetic exchange confined in a corner geometry, are studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Free boundary conditions at which boundary magnetic fields ±h are applied, i.e., at the two boundary rows ending at the lower left corner a field +h acts, while at the two boundary rows ending at the upper right corner a field −h acts. For temperatures T less than the critical temperature T_c of the bulk, this boundary condition leads to the formation of two domains with opposite orientation of the magnetization direction, separated by an interface which for T larger than the filling transition temperature T_f(h) runs from the upper left corner to the lower right corner, while for T<T_f(h) this interface is localized either close to the lower left corner or close to the upper right corner. It is shown that for T=T_f(h) the magnetization profile m(z) in the z-direction normal to the interface simply is linear and the interfacial width scales as w∝L, while for T>T_f(h) it scales as . The distribution P(?) of the interface position ? (measured along the z-direction from the corners) decays exponentially for T<T_f(h) from either corner, is essentially flat for T=T_f(h), and is a Gaussian centered at the middle of the diagonal for T>T_f(h). Unlike the findings for critical wetting in the thin film geometry of the Ising model, the Monte Carlo results for corner wetting are in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions.     

Transport of waves in disordered waveguides: A potential model

We study the statistical properties of wave transport in a disordered waveguide. We first derive the properties of a “building block” (BB) of length δL starting from a potential model consisting of thin potential slices. We then find a diffusion equation—in the space of transfer matrices that describe our system—which governs the evolution with the length L of the disordered waveguide of the transport properties of interest. The latter depend only on the mean free paths and on no other property of the slice distribution. The universality that arises demonstrates the existence of a generalized central-limit theorem. We have developed a numerical simulation in which the universal statistical properties of the BB found analytically are first implemented numerically, and then the various BBs are combined to construct the full waveguide. The reported results thus obtained are in good agreement with microscopic calculations, for both bulk and surface disorder.     

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.     

Anti-persistence in levels of Lake Naivasha: Assessing effect of human intervention through time-series analysis

Lake Naivasha in Kenya is an important natural fresh water reserve, supporting surrounding wildlife as well as agriculture and industry. Uncontrolled use of the lake water for the past few decades is causing concern for environmentalists. In the present paper, fluctuations in the lake level for the last half century are analysed using standard tools for time-series analysis. The intervals 1951-1980 (period I) and 1981-2000 (period II) are treated separately, to look for any difference in their statistical patterns. From period II onwards, increased human consumption is believed to affect the level significantly. We analyse the data using three different approaches: (i) rescaled range analysis (R/S), (ii) roughness scaling analysis and (iii) a Lomb periodogram. R/S analysis shows no difference between the behavior in periods I and II, but the other methods reveal different fluctuation patterns for the two periods. The water level shows stronger fluctuations in period I compared to II. R/S analysis, however, shows an interesting anti-persistence with a Hurst exponent 0.44, which is not usually observed in natural time series.     

Charge dynamics and optical properties of layered cobaltates

We study the charge dynamics and electronic structure by optical spectroscopy technique. Here we focus on the following four issues: (1) the evolution of optical spectra with Na content; (2) the spectral features specific to different regions in the phase diagram; (3) the c-axis optical response for crystal at the A-type antiferromagnetic region; (4) the optical response of misfit-layered Bi₂M₂Co₂O_y (M=Ba, Sr, Ca) and Ca₃Co₄O_y single crystals.     

Information theoretic description of networks

We present a new information theoretic approach for network characterizations. It is developed to describe the general type of networks with n nodes and L directed and weighted links, i.e., it also works for the simpler undirected and unweighted networks. The new information theoretic measures for network characterizations are based on a transmitter-receiver analogy of effluxes and influxes. Based on these measures, we classify networks as either complex or non-complex and as either democracy or dictatorship networks. Directed networks, in particular, are furthermore classified as either information spreading and information collecting networks.The complexity classification is based on the information theoretic network complexity measure medium articulation (MA). It is proven that special networks with a medium number of links (L∼n^1.5) show the theoretical maximum complexity . A network is complex if its MA is larger than the average MA of appropriately randomized networks: MA>MA_r. A network is of the democracy type if its redundancy R<R_r, otherwise it is a dictatorship network. In democracy networks all nodes are, on average, of similar importance, whereas in dictatorship networks some nodes play distinguished roles in network functioning. In other words, democracy networks are characterized by cycling of information (or mass, or energy), while in dictatorship networks there is a straight through-flow from sources to sinks. The classification of directed networks into information spreading and information collecting networks is based on the conditional entropies of the considered networks (H(A/B)=uncertainty of sender node if receiver node is known, H(B/A)=uncertainty of receiver node if sender node is known): if H(A/B)>H(B/A), it is an information collecting network, otherwise an information spreading network.Finally, different real networks (directed and undirected, weighted and unweighted) are classified according to our general scheme.     

Intense laser effects on donor impurity in a cylindrical single and vertically coupled quantum dots under combined effects of hydrostatic pressure and applied electric field

Using the effective mass and parabolic band approximations and a variational procedure we have calculated the combined effects of intense laser radiation, hydrostatic pressure, and applied electric field on shallow-donor impurity confined in cylindrical-shaped single and double GaAs-Ga_1−xAl_xAs QD. Several impurity positions and inputs of the heterostructure dimensions, hydrostatic pressure, and applied electric field have been considered. The laser effects have been introduced by a perturbative scheme in which the Coulomb and the barrier potentials are modified to obtain dressed potentials. Our findings suggest that (1) for on-center impurities in single QD the binding energy is a decreasing function of the dressing parameter and for small dot dimensions of the structures (lengths and radius) the binding energy is more sensitive to the dressing parameter, (2) the binding energy is an increasing/decreasing function of the hydrostatic pressure/applied electric field, (3) the effects of the intense laser field and applied electric field on the binding energy are dominant over the hydrostatic pressure effects, (4) in vertically coupled QD the binding energy for donor impurity located in the barrier region is smaller than for impurities in the well regions and can be strongly modified by the laser radiation, and finally (5) in asymmetrical double QD heterostructures the binding energy as a function of the impurity positions follows a similar behavior to the observed for the amplitude of probability of the noncorrelated electron wave function.     

Nonlinear statistical coupling

By considering a nonlinear combination of the probabilities of a system, a physical interpretation of Tsallis statistics as representing the nonlinear coupling or decoupling of statistical states is proposed. The escort probability is interpreted as the coupled probability, with Q=1−q defined as the degree of nonlinear coupling between the statistical states. Positive values of Q have coupled statistical states, a larger entropy metric, and a maximum coupled-entropy distribution of compact-support coupled-Gaussians. Negative values of Q have decoupled statistical states and for −2<Q<0 a maximum coupled-entropy distribution of heavy-tail coupled-Gaussians. The conjugate transformation between the heavy-tail and compact-support domains is shown to be for coupled-Gaussian distributions. This conjugate relationship has been used to extend the generalized Fourier transform to the compact-support domain and to define a scale-invariant correlation structure with heavy-tail limit distribution. In the present paper, we show that the conjugate is a mapping between the source of nonlinearity in non-stationary stochastic processes and the nonlinear coupling which defines the coupled-Gaussian limit distribution. The effects of additive and multiplicative noise are shown to be separable into the coupled-variance and the coupling parameter Q, providing further evidence of the importance of the generalized moments.     

Pricing European options with a log Student’s t-distribution: A Gosset formula

The distributions of returns for stocks are not well described by a normal probability density function (pdf). Student’s t-distributions, which have fat tails, are known to fit the distributions of the returns. We present pricing of European call or put options using a log Student’s t-distribution, which we call a Gosset approach in honour of W.S. Gosset, the author behind the nom de plume Student. The approach that we present can be used to price European options using other distributions and yields the Black-Scholes formula for returns described by a normal pdf.     

A generalization of the Virasoro algebra to arbitrary dimensions

Colored tensor models generalize matrix models in higher dimensions. They admit a 1/N expansion dominated by spherical topologies and exhibit a critical behavior strongly reminiscent of matrix models. In this paper we generalize the colored tensor models to colored models with generic interaction, derive the Schwinger Dyson equations in the large N limit and analyze the associated algebra of constraints satisfied at leading order by the partition function. We show that the constraints form a Lie algebra (indexed by trees) yielding a generalization of the Virasoro algebra in arbitrary dimensions.