Loss reduction in silicon nanophotonic waveguide micro-bends through etch profile improvement

Single mode silicon photonic wire waveguides allow low-loss sharp micro-bends, which enables compact photonic devices and circuits. The circuit compactness is achieved at the cost of loss induced by micro-bends, which can seriously affect the device performance. The bend loss strongly depends on the bend radius, polarization, waveguide dimension and profile. In this paper, we present the effect of waveguide profile on the bend loss. We present waveguide profile improvement with optimized etch chemistry and the role of etch chemistry in adapting the etch profile of silicon is investigated. We experimentally demonstrate that by making the waveguide sidewalls vertical, the bend loss can be reduced up to 25% without affecting the propagation loss of the photonic wires. The bend loss of a 2 μm bend has been reduced from 0.039dB/90° bend to 0.028dB/90° bend by changing the sidewall angle from 81° to 90°, respectively. The propagation loss of 2.7 ± 0.1dB/cm and 3 ± 0.09dB/cm was observed for sloped and vertical photonic wires respectively was obtained.     

Effect of substrate texture on the growth of hematite nanowires

The effect of texture of iron foil substrate on the growth of hematite nanowires by annealing method has been investigated in detail. Three substrates of different textures were prepared from a [2 0 0] oriented iron foil by some simple processes. The hematite nanowires on these substrates were synthesized by annealing iron foil at 700 °C in moist oxygen. The growth pattern of nanowires on these substrates showed that the growth of hematite nanowires depends strongly on the iron substrate texture and [1 1 0] oriented iron grains are necessary for their growth. The samples were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) and Raman Spectroscopy. We have also tried to explain the various observations on the mechanism of growth. Mainly, the presence of water vapor significantly enhanced the formation of hematite nanowires which resulted in a very dense and aligned growth of nanowires on the substrate areas of favorable texture. Finally, the study proved the substrate texture to be a powerful tool to control growth of nanowires and can be used efficiently for patterning and large scale synthesis of the nanowires.     

The augmented multiplicative coalescent,bounded size rules and critical dynamics of random graphs

Random graph models with limited choice have been studied extensively with the goal of understanding the mechanism of the emergence of the giant component. One of the standard models are the Achlioptas random graph processes on a fixed set of \(n\) vertices. Here at each step, one chooses two edges uniformly at random and then decides which one to add to the existing configuration according to some criterion. An important class of such rules are the bounded-size rules where for a fixed \(K\ge 1\) , all components of size greater than \(K\) are treated equally. While a great deal of work has gone into analyzing the subcritical and supercritical regimes, the nature of the critical scaling window, the size and complexity (deviation from trees) of the components in the critical regime and nature of the merging dynamics has not been well understood. In this work we study such questions for general bounded-size rules. Our first main contribution is the construction of an extension of Aldous’s standard multiplicative coalescent process which describes the asymptotic evolution of the vector of sizes and surplus of all components. We show that this process, referred to as the standard augmented multiplicative coalescent (AMC) is ‘nearly’ Feller with a suitable topology on the state space. Our second main result proves the convergence of suitably scaled component size and surplus vector, for any bounded-size rule, to the standard AMC. This result is new even for the classical Erd?s–Rényi setting. The key ingredients here are a precise analysis of the asymptotic behavior of various susceptibility functions near criticality and certain bounds from Bhamidi et al. (The barely subcritical regime. Arxiv preprint, 2012) on the size of the largest component in the barely subcritical regime.     

Azimuthal correlation and fractal study of compound hadrons (pions and protons) at Dubna and SPS energy

This paper presents an investigation of compound hadrons (pions and protons) distribution emitted from ²⁴Mg-AgBr and ¹²C-AgBr interactions both at 4.5 AGeV and ³²S-AgBr interactions at 200 AGeV. The study includes azimuthal correlations (two particle and three particle), azimuthal asymmetry and fractal behaviour. This paper reveals some interesting results.     

Time-dependent quantum fluid density functional theory of hydrogen molecule under intense laser fields

A time-dependent generalized non-linear Schr?dinger equation (GNLSE) of motion was earlier derived in our laboratory by combining density functional theory and quantum fluid dynamics in three-dimensional space. In continuation of the work reported previously, the GNLSE is applied to provide additional knowledge on the femtosecond dynamics of the electron density in the hydrogen molecule interacting with high-intensity laser fields. For this purpose, the GNLSE is solved numerically for many time-steps over a total interaction time of 100 fs, by employing a finite-difference scheme. Various time-dependent (TD) quantities, namely, electron density, ground-state survival probability and dipole moment have been obtained for two laser wavelengths and four different intensities. The high-order harmonics generation (HHG) is also examined. The present approach goes beyond the linear response formalism and, in principle, calculates the TD electron density to all orders of change. Dedicated to Prof. D Mukherjee on his 60th birthday     

Helium atom in intense and superintense laser fields: A new theoretical approach

A quantum hydrodynamical study is made of the dynamical changes of a helium atom interacting with lasers of two different intensities, but having the same frequency. Under the intense laser field, electron density oozes out of the helium atom by absorbing laser photons and getting promoted to higher excited states including the continuum. Under the superintense field, electron density partly moves away from the helium nucleus but remains in the “quasi-bound” dressed states along with the laser field, thus suppressing ionization.     

Axial eigenfunctions and inhomogeneous solutions for the three-dimensional Stokes system with an application to natural convection in a cylinder

This paper presents two contributions to the analysis of three-dimensional slow viscous flows in cylinders of circular section. First the vector axial eigenfunctions for this geometry, namely those that satisfy homogeneous boundary conditions on the flat end walls, are derived. Secondly a method is presented to find particular solutions to the inhomogeneous Stokes equations in this geometry. These new results, together with some results obtained earlier, are used to analyse slow natural convection in a vertical cylinder completely filled with a viscous liquid. The fluid motion is generated by the differential heating of the walls of the cylinder. The natural convection flow field is shown to be a superposition of an inhomogeneous field, the fields generated by the vector eigenfunctions and a Stokes flow field. A by-product of this work has been the identification of constraints on the boundary data that have to be satisfied in order for the eigenfunction expansions to work; this knowledge will be useful when attempts are made to prove the completeness of these Stokes flow eigenfunctions.     

Exact results for spin dynamics and fractionalization in the Kitaev Model

We present certain exact analytical results for dynamical spin correlation functions in the Kitaev Model. It is the first result of its kind in nontrivial quantum spin models. The result is also novel: in spite of the presence of gapless propagating Majorana fermion excitations, dynamical two spin correlation functions are identically zero beyond nearest neighbor separation. This shows existence of a gapless but short range spin liquid. An unusual, all energy scale fractionalization of a spin-flip quanta, into two infinitely massive pi fluxes and a dynamical Majorana fermion, is shown to occur. As the Kitaev Model exemplifies topological quantum computation, our result presents new insights into qubit dynamics and generation of topological excitations.