Observation of quantum capacitance in the Cooper-pair transistor

We have fabricated a Cooper-pair transistor (CPT) with parameters such that for appropriate voltage biases, it behaves essentially like a single Cooper-pair box (SCB). The effective capacitance of a SCB can be defined as the derivative of the induced charge with respect to gate voltage and has two parts, the geometric capacitance, C(geom), and the quantum capacitance C(Q). The latter is due to the level anticrossing caused by the Josephson coupling and is dual to the Josephson inductance. It depends parametrically on the gate voltage and its magnitude may be substantially larger than C(geom). We have detected C(Q) in our CPT, by measuring the in phase and quadrature rf signal reflected from a resonant circuit in which the CPT is embedded. C(Q) can be used as the basis of a charge qubit readout by placing a Cooper-pair box in such a resonant circuit.     

Exchange and correlation in inhomogeneous electron systems

An exchange-correlation functional with a nonlocal density dependence is proposed. It fulfills a sum rule stating that the exchange-correlation hole should contain on electron, atom. We have used this functional as well as an earlier proposed approximation to calculate the exchange energy of atoms. The errors in the local density approximation are reduced by an order of magnitude, indicating that these improved functionals should be very useful for more complicated systems.     

One-pot three-component synthesis of α-amino nitriles catalyzed by nano powder TiO_2 P 25

A simple and efficient method has been developed for the synthesis ofα-amino nitriles from aldehydes,amines and trimethylsilyl cyanide（Me₃SiCN） in the presence of a catalytic amount of cyanuric acid at room temperature.     

Capacity of a Simultaneous Quantum Secure Direct Communication Scheme between the Central Party and Other M Parties

We analyse the capacity of a simultaneous quantum secure direct communication scheme between the central party and other M parties via M＋1-particle GHZ states and swapping quantum entanglement. It is shown that the encoding scheme should be secret if other M parties wants to transmit M ＋ 1 bit classical messages to the centre party secretly. However, when the encoding scheme is announced publicly, we prove that the capacity of the scheme in transmitting the secret messages is 2 bits, no matter how large M is.