Localized subharmonic waves in a circularly vibrated granular bed

Localized period-doubling waves arise in circularly shaken granular beds contained in an annular channel. These solitary wave packets are accompanied by a locally increased particle density. The width and velocity of the granular wave pulse are measured as a function of the bed height. A continuum model for the material distribution, based on the measured granular transport velocity as a function of the bed thickness, captures the essence of the experimental findings.     

Linking confinement to spectral properties of the dirac operator

We represent Polyakov loops and their correlators as spectral sums of eigenvalues and eigenmodes of the lattice Dirac operator. The deconfinement transition of pure gauge theory is characterized as a change in the response of moments of eigenvalues to varying the boundary conditions of the Dirac operator. We argue that the potential between static quarks is linked to spatial correlations of Dirac eigenvectors.     

Imaging spin-reorientation transitions in consecutive atomic Co layers on Ru(0001)

By means of spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy, we show that the magnetic easy axis of one to three atomic-layer thick cobalt films on Ru(0001) changes its orientation twice during deposition: One-monolayer and three-monolayer thick films are magnetized in plane, while two-monolayer films are magnetized out of plane. The Curie temperatures of films thicker than one monolayer are well above room temperature. Fully relativistic calculations based on the screened Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method demonstrate that only for two-monolayer cobalt films does the interplay between strain, surface, and interface effects lead to perpendicular magnetization.     

Asynchronous sampling for ultrafast experiments with low momentum compaction at the ANKA ring

A high‐repetition‐rate pump–probe experiment is presented, based on the asynchronous sampling approach. The low‐α mode at the synchrotron ANKA can be used for a time resolution down to the picosecond limit for the time‐domain sampling of the coherent THz emission as well as for hard X‐ray pump–probe experiments, which probe structural dynamics in the condensed phase. It is shown that a synchronization of better than 1 ps is achieved, and examples of phonon dynamics of semiconductors are presented.     

Studies of the out-of-plane emission of pions in symmetric heavy-ion collisions

Triple differential cross-sections of midrapidity pions from ²⁰⁹Bi+²⁰⁹Bi collisions were measured with the Kaon Spectrometer at SIS at incident energies of 400, 700 and 1000 AMeV. The azimuthal emission pattern of the pions has been investigated in dependence of beam energy and impact parameter. An enhanced emission of pions perpendicular to the reaction plane is observed. The strength of the anisotropy increases with beam energy and pion transverse momentum. In contrast to the nucleons the anisotropy varies only little with the impact parameter. No difference in the behaviour of positive and negative pions is observed.     

Causal structure and algebraic classification of non-dissipative linear optical media

In crystal optics and quantum electrodynamics in gravitational vacua, the propagation of light is not described by a metric, but an area metric geometry. In this article, this prompts us to study conditions for linear electrodynamics on area metric manifolds to be well-posed. This includes an identification of the timelike future cones and their duals associated to an area metric geometry, and thus paves the ground for a discussion of the related local and global causal structures in standard fashion. In order to provide simple algebraic criteria for an area metric manifold to present a consistent spacetime structure, we develop a complete algebraic classification of area metric tensors up to general transformations of frame. This classification, valuable in its own right, is then employed to prove a theorem excluding the majority of algebraic classes of area metrics as viable spacetimes. Physically, these results classify and drastically restrict the viable constitutive tensors of non-dissipative linear optical media.     

B-CALM: An open-source GPU-based 3D-FDTD with multi-pole dispersion for plasmonics

Numerical calculations with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) on metallic nanostructures in a broad optical spectrum require an accurate approximation of the permittivity of dispersive materials. In this paper, we present the algorithms behind B-CALM (Belgium-California Light Machine), an open-source 3D-FDTD solver operating on Graphical Processing Units with multi-pole dispersion models. Our modified architecture shows a reduction in computing times for multi-pole dispersion models. We benchmark B-CALM by computing the absorption efficiency of a metallic nanosphere on a broad spectral range with a six-poles Drude-Lorentz model and compare it with Mie theory.

     

Metastates in Disordered Mean-Field Models II: The Superstates

We continue to investigate the size dependence of disordered mean-field models with finite local spin space in more detail, illustrating the concept of superstates as recently proposed by Bovier and Gayrard. We discuss various notions of convergence for the behavior of the paths (t_[tN]()) _{t(0, 1]} in the thermodynamic limit N. Here _n () is the Gibbs measure in the finite volume {1,..., n} and is the disorder variable. In particular we prove refined convergence statements in our concrete examples, the Hopfield model with finitely many patterns (having continuous paths) and the Curie–Weiss random-field Ising model (having singular paths).