Magnetoresistance of electrochemically produced nickel nanocontacts with quantized conductance

Nickel nanocontacts with quantized conductance have been obtained with the use of the electrochemical method of the formation of atomic-size contacts. The conductance jumps in the absence of the magnetic field are multiple of e ²/h in most experiments. The maximum magnetoresistance reaches 210%. The performed current-voltage investigations make it possible to determine the conditions necessary for forming nanocontacts with giant magnetoresistance, as well as a possible cause of the absence of magnetoresistance in some electrochemically formed nanocontacts.     

Mesoscopic fluctuations of thermopower in a periodic antidot lattice

The mesoscopic fluctuations of thermopower (MFT) were experimentally observed in an AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction with a low-resistance (～0.02h/e²) periodic antidot lattice in the situation where the mesoscopic fluctuations of conductance (MFC) were absent to within the experimental accuracy. The MFT spectrum contained a periodic component associated with the Aharonov-Bohm h/e oscillations in the area occupied by one antidot, whereas the h/2e oscillations were not observed. It is shown that a sizable contribution to the MFT comes from the interference of electron trajectories localized inside billiards formed by four neighboring antidots. Contrary to MFC, the MFT autocorrelation function in single billiards deviates from the Lorentzian form.     

Resonant mechanism of axion photoproduction in a magnetized electron gas

It was shown that the contribution of diagrams with electron-positron vacuum excitation in a strong magnetic field B ? B ₀ = m ²/e = 4.41 × 10¹³ G in the Compton mechanism of axion production γe → ae at temperatures on the order of the axion mass exceeds the contribution of the “simple” Compton diagram and the contribution of the neutrino production γe → (ν\(\bar \nu \))e to the radiation power by many orders of magnitude. The conclusion is made on the probable axionic nature of the cold hidden mass of the Universe.     

Increase in the probability of allowed electron beta decays in a superstrong magnetic field

The effect of a superstrong constant uniform magnetic field, H ? H ₀ = cm _e ² e ³/?³, on the probability of allowed electron beta decays is considered. It is shown that, for an atom whose nucleus is β ^?-active and which is placed in a superstrong magnetic field, the β ^?-decay probability increases owing to the enhancement of β ^? decay to a bound state of the electron. The effect is operative both for the nucleus of a fully ionized atom and for the nucleus of a neutral atom.     

Energy scan of cross sections for <Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis><Superscript>+</Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis><Superscript>–</Superscript> annihilation into quarkonia and light hadrons in the Belle experiment

The cross sections of the reactions e⁺e^– → ?(nS)π⁺π^? (n = 1, 2,3) and e⁺e^– → h _b (nP)π⁺π^? (n = 1, 2) are measured as a function of the cms collision energy from their thresholds up to 11.02 GeV using the data of the Belle experiment operating at the KEKB e⁺e^– collider. The peaks of the ?(10 860) and ?(11020) resonances are observed in the cross sections with an insignificant contribution of the continuum. The decay ?(11020) → h _b (nP)π⁺π^? is found to fully proceed through intermediate isovector states Z _b (10610) and Z _b (10650).     

Effect of incommensurate potential on the resonant tunneling through Majorana bound states on the topological superconductor chains

We study the transport through the Kitaev chain with incommensurate potentials coupled to two normal leads by the numerical operator method. We find a quantized linear conductance of e ² / h, which is independent to the disorder strength and the gate voltage in a wide range, signaling the Majorana bound states. While the incommensurate potential suppresses the current at finite voltage bias, and then narrows the linear response regime of the I-V curve which exhibits two plateaus corresponding to the superconducting gap and the band edge, respectively. The linear conductance abruptly drops to zero as the disorder strength reaches the critical value 2g _s + 2Δ with Δ the p-wave pairing amplitude and g _s the hopping between neighbor sites, corresponding to the transition from the topological superconducting phase to the Anderson localized phase. Changing the gate voltage also causes an abrupt drop of the linear conductance by driving the chain into the topologically trivial superconducting phase, whose I-V curve exhibits an exponential shape.     

A free convective boundary layer in a conducting fluid in the presence of a transverse magnetic field

The properties of free convection in a conducting fluid in laminar regime near a hot solid vertical w all in the presence of a transverse magnetic field are theoretically analyzed. The existence of two regimes of heat transfer from the wall to the fluid are established. In the first regime, at small heights x?x* where the magnetic field effect can be disregarded, heat transfer is described by the well-known results for a free convective boundary layer in a nonconducting fluid with the Nusselt number Nu_x∝x^3/4. In the second regime, at x? x* where the magnetic field plays a crucial role, the dependence of heat transfer on the height and field strength is \(Nu_x \propto {{\sqrt x } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{\sqrt x } B}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} B}\). The location of the boundary between these regimes strongly depends on the magnetic field, x*∝ B^?4.     

Long-range spin correlations in a honeycomb spin model with a magnetic field

We consider the spin-1/2 model on the honeycomb lattice [A. Kitaev, Ann. Phys. 321, 2 (2006)] in the presence of a weak magnetic field h _α ? J. Such a perturbation treated in the lowest nonvanishing order over h _α leads [K.S. Tikhonov, M.V. Feigel’man, and A.Yu. Kitaev, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 067203 (2011)] to a powerlaw decay of irreducible spin correlations 《s ^z (t, r)s ^z (0, 0)》 ∝ h _z ² f(t, r), where f(t, r) ∝ [max(t, Jr)]^–4. We have studied the effects of the next order of perturbation in h _z and found an additional term of the order h _z ⁴ in the correlation function 《s ^z (t, r)s ^z (0, 0)》 which scales as h _z ⁴ cosγ/r ³ at Jt? r, where γ is the polar angle in the 2D plane. We demonstrate that such a contribution can be understood as a result of a perturbation of the effective Majorana Hamiltonian by the weak imaginary vector potential A _x ∝ i h _z ² .     

Analytic properties of the effective dielectric constant of a two-dimensional Rayleigh model

Analytic properties of the dimensionless static effective dielectric constant f(p, h) of a two-dimensional Rayleigh model (p is the concentration and h is the ratio of the dielectric constants of components) are considered as a function of the complex variable h. It is shown that the only singularities of the function f(p, h) are first-order poles for real h = h _n < 0 (n = 1, 2, ...) with the condensation point h = ?1, which form an infinite discrete (countable) set. The positions of the first ten poles of the function f(p, h) and the residues at these points are calculated and represented graphically versus the concentration. Based on the results obtained, a pole-type approximate formula is proposed that describes the behavior of the function f(p, h) over a wide range of p and complex h.     

Resonant tunneling through a double-barrier quantum well in a transverse magnetic field

We theoretically analyze the tunneling of electrons through a heterostructure with two barriers and a quantum well between them in a magnetic field perpendicular to the current. We take into account the contribution from electrons with various positions of the magnetic oscillator center to the current. The region of the Z-shaped current-voltage characteristic for the heterostructure is shown to narrow as the magnetic field strengthens. Our analysis reveals a critical magnetic field strength at which the Z-shaped current-voltage characteristic transforms into an N-shaped one. We compare our results with experimental data.     

High-field autosolitons in an electron-hole plasma in <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Ge

The formation of high-field thermodiffusion autosolitons was studied experimentally in a photogenerated electron-hole plasma heated up by an electric field in p-Ge samples oriented along the 〈111〉 axis at T=77 K. Measurements of the current-voltage characteristics, electric field distributions along the samples, and IR emission in the wavelength range λ=1.65–10 μm showed that the arising of an autosoliton was accompanied by the appearance of N-shaped current-voltage characteristic regions. Autosolitons were formed at electron-hole plasma concentrations n≥1×10¹⁴ cm^?3 and field strengths E≥500 V/cm. They manifested themselves as static, moving, and pulsating strata with field strengths E _as =1000–20000 V/cm and carrier temperatures T _e ≥1000 K. We also observed a turbulent electron-hole plasma state when autosolitons chaotically appeared and disappeared in the samples. The multivalley band structure of germanium influenced the dynamics of autosoliton formation; intervalley transfer of electrons in the strong field of autosolitons caused a three-step autosoliton field growth.     

Analysis of the production of Higgs boson pairs at the one-loop level in the minimal supersymmetric standard model

Within theminimal supersymmetric standardmodel, the amplitudes and total cross sections for the processes e ⁺ e ^? → hh, e ⁺ e ^? → hH, e ⁺ e ^? → HH, and e ⁺ e ^? → AA are calculated in the first order of perturbation theory with allowance for a complete set of one-loop diagrams in the m _e → 0 approximation. Analytic expressions are obtained for the quantities under consideration; numerical results are presented in a graphical form. It is shown that the cross section for the process e ⁺ e ^? → hh is larger than those for the other processes (and is on the same order of magnitude as the cross section for the corresponding processes in the Standard Model). In the case of the collision energy equal to √s = 500 GeV, an integrated luminosity in the region ∫ ? ≥ 500 fb^?1, and a longitudinal polarization of the e ⁺ e ? beams used, 520, 320, and 300 production events are possible in the processes e ⁺ e ^? → hh (at M _h = 115 GeV), e ⁺ e ^? → HH, and e ⁺ e ^? → AA (at M _H,A = 120 GeV), respectively. Even at M _H,A ≈ 500 GeV and √s = 1.5 TeV, not less than 200 events for each of the processes can be accumulated. The cross section for the process e ⁺ e ^? → hH is small (about 10^?2 fb), which complicates the detection of the sought signal significantly.     

Violation of light beam reversibility principle in optical media with a random quasi-zero refractive index

The relic abundance of light millicharged particles (MCPs) with the electric charge e′ = 5 × 10^–5 e and with the mass slightly below or above the electron mass is calculated. The abundance depends on the mass ratio η = m _X /m _e and for η < 1 can be high enough to allow MCPs to be the cosmological dark matter or to make a noticeable contribution to it. On the other hand, for η ? 1 the cosmological energy density of MCPs can be quite low, Ω _X h ₀ ² ≈ 0.02 for scalar MCPs, and Ω _X h ₀ ² ≈ 0.001 for spin 1/2 fermions. But even the lowest value of Ω _X h ₀ ² is in tension with several existing limits on the MCP abundances and parameters. However, these limits have been derived under some natural or reasonable assumptions on the properties of MCPs. If these assumptions are relaxed, a patch in the mass–charge plot of MCPs may appear, permitting them to be dark matter particles.     

Resolvent Expansion and Time Decay of the Wave Functions for Two-Dimensional Magnetic Schrödinger Operators

We consider two-dimensional Schrödinger operators H(B, V) given by Eq. (1.1) below. We prove that, under certain regularity and decay assumptions on B and V, the character of the expansion for the resolvent (H(B, V) ? λ)^?1 as λ → 0 is determined by the flux of the magnetic field B through \({\mathbb{R}^2}\) . Subsequently, we derive the leading term of the asymptotic expansion of the unitary group e ^{?i t H(B, V)} as t → ∞ and show how the magnetic field improves its decay in t with respect to the decay of the unitary group e ^{?i t H(0, V)}.     

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 in the 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∞ T^α, I∞ V^β, expected for one-dimensional electron systems. The effect of the magnetic field corresponds to a 20% growth of the exponents α, β 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.     

Interference of ballistic electrons in an open quantum dot at high temperatures

The Aharonov-Bohm-type oscillations in the ballistic magnetoconductivity of an open quantum dot ～1 μm in size created in the GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure by local anode oxidation have been studied. The measurements have been performed at temperatures of 4.2 and 1.5 K, which are high enough to expect a considerable suppression of the oscillations with period h/e (in magnetic flux units). The magnetoconductivity oscillations with a period less than the quantum h/e with respect to the magnetic field are observed at 1.5 K. The explanation is proposed on the basis of the interference of the electrons moving along the time-reversed paths inscribed into the quantum dot that have their initial and final points at one of the contacts, i.e., corresponding to a period of h/2e.     

Line shape of <Superscript>57</Superscript>Co sources exhibiting self absorption

The effect of selfabsorption in Mössbauer sources is studied in detail. Spectra were measured using an old ⁵⁷ C o/R h source of 74M B q activity with an original activity of ca. 3.7G B q and a 0.15G B q ⁵⁷ C o/α ? F e source magnetized by an in-plane magnetic field of 0.2 T. The ⁵⁷ C o/α ? F e source of a thickness of 25 μ was used both from the active and the inactive side giving cause to very different selfabsorption effects. The absorber was a single crystal of ferrous ammonium sulphate hexahydrate (FAS). Its absorption properties were taken over from a detailed study (Bull et al., Hyperfine Interact. 94(1–3), 1; Spiering et al. 2). FAS (space group P21/c) crystallizes as flat plates containing the (\(\overline {2}\)01) plane. The γ-direction was orthogonal to the crystal plate. The ⁵⁷ C o atoms of the ⁵⁷ C o/R h source were assumed to be homogeneously distributed over a 6μ thick Rh foil and to follow a one dimensional diffusion profile in the 25 μ Fe-foil. The diffusion length was fitted to 10 μ. The theory follows the Blume-Kistner equations for forward scattering (Blume and Kistner, Phys. Rev. 171, 417, 3) by integrating over the source sampled up to 128 layers.     

Electronic transport through a Majorana bound state coupled to a T-shaped quantum-dot system with Coulomb interaction

Using the Green’s function technique, we respectively investigate the electron transport properties of two spin components through the system of a T-shaped double quantum dot structure coupled to a Majorana bound state, in which only one quantum dot is connected with two metallic leads. We explore the interplay between the Fano effect and the MBSs for different dot-MBS coupling strength λ, dot-dot coupling strength t, and MBS-MBS coupling strength ε_M in the noninteracting case. Then the Coulomb interaction and magnetic field effect on the conductance spectra are investigated. Our results indicate that G_↓(ω) is not affected by the Majorana bound states, but a “0.5” conductance signature occurs in the vicinities of Fermi level of G_↑(ω). This robust property persists for a wide range of dot-dot coupling strength and dot-MBS coupling strength, but it can be destroyed by Coulomb interaction in quantum dots. By adjusting the size and direction of magnetic field around the quantum dots, the “0.5” conductance signature damaged by U can be restored. At last, the spin magnetic moments of two dots by applying external magnetic field are also predicted.     

Equilibrium and stability of the charged particles’ fluxes drifting crosswise to the strong magnetic field at the expense of the Hall charge separation

The current equilibrium is investigated, where the generation of the Hall electric field on the magnetic Debye radius r _B = B ₀/(4πen _e) is considered by the drifting of the relativistic electrons crosswise to the strong magnetic field. In this case, the electron propagation is possible at the distance d that is essentially larger than the electron radius of the backward reflection in the magnetic field r ₀ ? m _e v _z c/(eB ₀). The instability of the joint drift motion of ions and electrons is investigated for the frequency oscillation w much higher than the ion cyclotron frequency w _Bi and by 4π n _i m _i c ² ? B ₀ ² and (k · B ₀) = 0. It is shown that the resonance effects by the ion beam’s plasma frequency w ? kv ₀ = w _pi leads to the generation of the nonpotential perturbations with the characteristic increment Imw ～ 10^?1 ÷ 10^{? 2} w _pi. Estimates show that the instability, associated with the propagation of the high-energy ion beam through the strong magnetic field, can essentially be like the edge-localized mode in tokamaks.     

Influence of photon-neutrino processes on the cooling of a magnetar

The influence of a strongly magnetized dense plasma on the photon-neutrino processes γe ^± → e ^±ν\(\bar \nu \), γ → ν\(\bar \nu \), and γγ → ν\(\bar \nu \) is considered; invariant amplitudes of the γe ^± → e ^±ν\(\bar \nu \) and γγ → ν\(\bar \nu \) reactions are calculated. The contributions from these processes to the neutrino luminosity are calculated in the special case of a cold plasma. Under these conditions, the contribution from the process γ → ν\(\bar \nu \) to the neutrino emissivity is shown to be strongly suppressed compared to the contributions from the photoneutrino and photon conversion processes. Since the neutron star cooling curve can be modified through a change of the neutrino luminosity in a strong magnetic field, the magnetic field strength in the outer crust of the magnetar is assumed to be constrained.