Strain relaxation in the epitaxy of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 grown by pulsed-laser deposition on SrTiO3(001)

With a Curie point at 370?K, the half-metal (La_0.7Sr_0.3)MnO₃ (LSMO) is one of the most interesting candidates for electronic devices based on tunnel magnetoresistance. SrTiO₃ (STO) is up to now the best substrate for the epitaxy of suitable thin films of LSMO. The pseudocubic unit cell of rhombohedral LSMO has a parameter a _LSMO such that (a _STO ? a _LSMO)/a _LSMO = +?0.83% (where a _STO is the parameter of cubic STO) and an angle of 90.26°. As strained growth is tetragonal, relaxation implies recovery of both the pseudocubic parameter and of the original angle. In the LSMO layers that we prepare by pulsed-laser deposition, we show that these two processes are quite independent. The angular distortion is partially recovered by twinning in films 25?nm thick, while recovery of the parameter never occurs in the thickness range that we explored (up to 432?nm). A relaxation, however, takes place above a thickness of 100?nm, associated with a transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional columnar growth. It is accompanied by chemical fluctuations. Our magnetic measurements exhibit Curie temperatures and magnetic moments very close to the bulk values in those layers where the crystal parameter is strained but the angle partially relaxed.     

Highly charged ions in a new era of high resolution X-ray astrophysics

X-ray astronomy and ground-based atomic physics have a long history of fruitful collaboration: Sound understanding of the underlying atomic physics is the key to reliable interpretation of the spectra from celestial sources; conversely, astronomical spectra have been used to benchmark and advance atomic physics. This interplay is about to become even more important as we enter a new era of high-resolution X-ray astrophysics with large effective collection area. Although high-resolution observations with the gratings on the Chandra and XMM-Newton observatories continue to drive new science, upcoming planned and proposed missions will open up new discovery space in the near future that is currently challenging to access: high-resolution spectroscopy on extended sources, in the Fe K band, and on short time scales. This review summarizes open questions in these areas and the design parameters for the Hitomi, XRISM, Athena, and Arcus observatories. The expected high quality of spectra taken with these observatories puts new constraints on the accuracy of atomic reference data required to take full advantage of the diagnostic potential of these spectra.     

中微子的螺旋度反转

庆祝著名物理学家Maurice Goldhaber百岁生日的文章,该文的作者是Maurice Goldhaber本人(前美国布鲁克海文国家实验室主任)和他的儿子Alfred Scharff Goldhaber(美国纽约大学石溪分校杨振宁理论物理研究所教授).在文章中,Goldhaber父子阐明了粒子的螺旋度和手征性     

Equitable resolvable coverings

In an earlier article, Willem H. Haemers has determined the minimum number of parallel classes in a resolvable 2‐(qk,k,1) covering for all k ≥ 2 and q = 2 or 3. Here, we complete the case q = 4, by construction of the desired coverings using the method of simulated annealing. Secondly, we look at equitable resolvable 2‐(qk,k,1) coverings. These are resolvable coverings which have the additional property that every pair of points is covered at most twice. We show that these coverings satisfy k < 2q ? , and we give several examples. In one of these examples, k > q. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 11: 113–123, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/jcd.10024     

Hyperpolarization of 13C through order transfer from parahydrogen: a new contrast agent for MRI

The order within proton pairs in organic molecules, resulting from hydrogenation with parahydrogen, can be transferred in great part to nearby carbon 13 spins through adequate field manipulations. The molecules with hyperpolarized 13C thus obtained can be used as new contrast agents of high efficiency in MRI. After a brief presentation of the hydrogenation process and apparatus, in relatively low magnetic field, we describe the procedure of order transfer to the 13C spins through a sudden drop from the initial field to zero field followed by an adiabatic remagnetization. The expected final polarizations in the absence of relaxation are given for several compounds. Finally, we show an example of MR images observed in vivo on animals as an illustration of the contrast capacity of this new method.