Superconducting current in hybrid heterojunctions of metal-oxide superconductors: Size and frequency dependences

We have detected experimentally considerable deviations of the frequency dependences of the Shapiro step amplitudes and the critical current of Nb/Au/YBa₂Cu₃O_x thin-film hybrid Josephson heterojunctions prepared on YBa₂Cu₃O_x metal-oxide superconductor films with a tilted c axis from the regularities inherent in Josephson junctions of traditional superconductors with an s-symmetry of the order parameter. It is shown that possible formation of “splintered” fluxons with a size λ_s<λ_J due to faceting of the interface and formation of a chain of nanosize 0 and π junctions must be taken into account in describing processes in lumped heterojunctions (whose size L is smaller than the Josephson penetration depth λ_J determined from the averaged value of the critical current density). For heterojunctions with a size λ_s < L < λ_J, a substantial decrease in the maximal amplitude of the first Shapiro step with increasing voltage (Josephson oscillation frequency) is observed at voltages much smaller than the energy gap in niobium (V « Δ_Nb/e); this effect is manifested most strongly when the size L is greater than λ_s. A fractional Shapiro step and a subharmonic detector response have been observed in the current-voltage characteristics of heterojunctions; the dynamic processes responsible for their emergence and indicating the presence of the second harmonic in the current-phase relation are studied. It is shown that the effect of interface faceting on the current-phase relation increases with a heterojunction size L>λ_s.     

Production of highly charged argon ions from a room temperature electron beam ion trap

In this work.highly charged ions have been extracted from the advanced Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS-A) developed in a scientific cooperation between the Dresden University of Technology and the DREEBIT GmbH Dresden.The charge state distributions of ions extracted from the EBIS-A are measured in and extracted in the leaky mode.3×105 Ar18+ ions per pulse are extracted in the pulse mode.The ion charge state distribution is a function of the ionization time.     

Analysis of high temperature ammonia spectra from 780 to 2100 cm

A recently-recorded set [Hargreaves et al., Astrophys. J., in press] of Fourier transform emission spectra of hot ammonia is analyzed using a variational line list. Approximately 3350 lines are newly assigned to mainly hot bands from vibrational states as high as v₂ = 2. 431 new energy levels of these states are experimentally determined, considerably extending the range of known rotationally-excited states. Comparisons with a recent study of high J levels in the ground and first vibrational states [Yu et al., J. Chem. Phys., 133 (2010) 174317] suggests that while the line assignments presented in that work are correct, their energy level predictions suffer from problems associated with the use of very high-order perturbation series in the effective Hamiltonian. It is suggested that variational calculations provide a more stable method for analyzing spectra involving highly-excited states of ammonia.     

Photoemission electron microscopy of arrays of submicron nickel rods in a silicon dioxide matrix

Arrays of Ni rods (～500 nm diameter) formed by the ion-track technology in combination with electrochemical deposition into a SiO₂ matrix on the surface of single-crystal silicon plates have been investigated using photoemission electron microscopy with high-intensity synchrotron (undulator) radiation. An analysis of the Ni L _2,3 X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra has demonstrated that rod-like structures in pores and connecting bridges between the rods are formed by a metallic nickel phase, which is stable to oxidation by atmospheric oxygen. No formation of intermediate compound phases (nickel silicides and oxides) is observed at the Ni/SiO₂ heterojunction, whereas oxidized nickel(II) species are identified on the surface of the SiO₂ matrix, which presumably can be attributed to nickel silicate and hydroxide compounds formed upon nickel(II) chemisorption in electrochemical deposition electrolytes.     

One-dimensional minimal fillings with negative edge weights

A.O. Ivanov and A.A. Tuzhilin proposed a particular case of Gromov??s minimal fillings problem generalized to the case of stratified manifolds using weighted graphs with a nonnegative weight function as minimal fillings of finite metric spaces. In this paper we introduce generalized minimal fillings, i.e., the minimal fillings where the weight function is not necessarily nonnegative. We prove that for any finite metric space its minimal filling has the minimum weight in the class of its generalized fillings.