From Si nanowires to porous silicon: the role of excitonic effects

We show that the electronic and optical properties of silicon nanowires, with different size and orientation, are dominated by important many-body effects. The electronic and excitonic gaps, calculated within first principles, agree with the available experimental data. Huge excitonic effects, which depend strongly on wire orientation and size, characterize the optical spectra. Modeling porous silicon as a collection of interacting nanowires, we find an absorption spectrum which is in very good agreement with experimental measurements only when the electron-hole interaction is included.     

Detecting and localizing the foci in human epileptic seizures

We consider the electrical signals recorded from a subdural array of electrodes placed on the pial surface of the brain for chronic evaluation of epileptic patients before surgical resection. A simple and computationally fast method to analyze the interictal phase synchrony between such electrodes is introduced and developed with the aim of detecting and localizing the foci of the epileptic seizures. We evaluate the method by comparing the results of surgery to the localization predicted here. We find an indication of good correspondence between the success or failure in the surgery and the agreement between our identification and the regions actually operated on.     

Effect of Tomato Peel Extract Grown under Drought Stress Condition in a Sarcopenia Model

Tomatoes and their derivates represent an important source of natural biologically active components. The present study aims to investigate the protective effect of tomato peel extracts, grown in normal (RED-Ctr) or in drought stress (RED-Ds) conditions, on an experimental model of sarcopenia. The phenolic profile and total polyphenols content (TPC) of RED-Ctr and RED-Ds were determined by Ultra High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) analyses coupled to electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (ESI-HR-MS). Human skeletal muscle myoblasts (HSMM) were differentiated in myotubes, and sarcopenia was induced by dexamethasone (DEXA) treatment. Differentiation and sarcopenia were evaluated by both real-time PCR and immunofluorescent techniques. Data show that myosin heavy chain 2 (MYH2), troponin T (TNNT1), and miogenin (MYOG) were expressed in differentiated myotubes. 5 μg Gallic Acid Equivalent (GAE/mL) of TPC from RED-Ds extract significantly reduced muscle atrophy induced by DEXA. Moreover, Forkhead BoxO1 (FOXO1) expression, involved in cell atrophy, was significantly decreased by RED-Ds extract. The protective effect of tomato peel extracts depended on their qualitative polyphenolic composition, resulting effectively in the in vitro model of sarcopenia.     

Dependence of calibration sensitivity of a polysulfone/Ru(II)-tris(4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline)-based oxygen optical sensor on its structural parameters

The optimum performance of an optical oxygen sensor based on polysulfone (PSF)/[Ru(II)-Tris(4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline)] octylsulfonate (Ru(dpp)OS) was checked by carefully tuning the parameters affecting the membrane preparation. In particular, membranes having thickness ranging between 0.2 and 8.0 μm with various luminophore concentrations were prepared by dip-coating and tested. The membrane thickness was controlled by tuning the solution viscosity, and was measured both by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and by visible spectroscopy (Vis). Luminescence-quenching-based calibration was a single value of the Stern-Volmer constant (K^′SV) for membranes containing up to 20 mmol Ru(dpp) g⁻¹ PSF (1.35 μm average thickness). The K^′SV value decreased for larger concentration. The highest sensitivity was obtained with membrane thickness around 1.6 μm, having a response time close to 1 s. Thicker membranes exhibited an emission saturation effect and were characterized by longer response time. The K^′SV behavior was interpreted on the basis of a mathematical approach accounting for the contribution of luminescence lifetime (τ₀), oxygen diffusion coefficient (DO₂) and oxygen solubility inside the membrane (sO₂) establishing the role of all of them and allowing their experimental determination. Moreover, a simple experimental way to estimate K^′SV without needing calibration was proposed. It was based either on the light emission asymmetry or on the percent variation of light emission on passing from pure nitrogen to pure oxygen.     

Noise robustness of the nonlocality of entangled quantum states

We study the nonlocal properties of states resulting from the mixture of an arbitrary entangled state rho of two d-dimensional systems and completely depolarized noise, with respective weights p and 1-p. We first construct a local model for the case in which rho is maximally entangled and p at or below a certain bound. We then extend the model to arbitrary rho. Our results provide bounds on the resistance to noise of the nonlocal correlations of entangled states. For projective measurements, the critical value of the noise parameter p for which the state becomes local is at least asymptotically log(d) larger than the critical value for separability.     

dc Josephson effect in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes

The dc Josephson effect is investigated in a single-walled metallic carbon nanotube connected to two superconducting leads. In particular, by using the Luttinger liquid theory, we analyze the effects of the electron-electron interaction on the supercurrent. We find that in the long junction limit the strong electronic correlations of the nanotube, together with its peculiar band structure, induce oscillations in the critical current as a function of the junction length and/or the nanotube electron filling. These oscillations represent a signature of the Luttinger liquid physics of the nanotube, for they are absent if the interaction is vanishing. We show that this effect can be exploited to reverse the sign of the supercurrent, realizing a tunable π-junction.     

Airy beams from a microchip laser

It is theoretically shown that an end-pumped microchip laser formed by a thin laser crystal with plane-plane but slightly tilted facets can emit, under appropriate pumping conditions and near a crystal edge, a truncated self-accelerating Airy output beam.     

Comparison of Spaces of Hardy Type for the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck Operator

Denote by γ the Gauss measure on ℝ ⁿ and by ${\mathcal{L}}${\mathcal{L}} the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck operator. In this paper we introduce a Hardy space \mathfrakh¹g{{\mathfrak{h}}^1}{{\rm \gamma}} of Goldberg type and show that for each u in ℝ ∖ {0} and r > 0 the operator (rI+L)^iu(r{\mathcal{I}}+{\mathcal{L}})^{iu} is unbounded from \mathfrakh¹g{{\mathfrak{h}}^1}{{\rm \gamma}} to L ¹γ. This result is in sharp contrast both with the fact that (rI+L)^iu(r{\mathcal{I}}+{\mathcal{L}})^{iu} is bounded from H ¹γ to L ¹γ, where H ¹γ denotes the Hardy type space introduced in Mauceri and Meda (J Funct Anal 252:278–313, 2007), and with the fact that in the Euclidean case (rI-D)^iu(r{\mathcal{I}}-\Delta)^{iu} is bounded from the Goldberg space \mathfrakh¹\mathbbRⁿ{{\mathfrak{h}}^1}{{\mathbb{R}}^n} to L ¹ℝ ⁿ . We consider also the case of Riemannian manifolds M with Riemannian measure μ. We prove that, under certain geometric assumptions on M, an operator T{\mathcal{T}}, bounded on L ² μ, and with a kernel satisfying certain analytic assumptions, is bounded from H ¹ μ to L ¹ μ if and only if it is bounded from \mathfrakh¹m{{\mathfrak{h}}^1}{\mu} to L ¹ μ. Here H ¹ μ denotes the Hardy space introduced in Carbonaro et al. (Ann Sc Norm Super Pisa, 2009), and \mathfrakh¹m{{\mathfrak{h}}^1}{\mu} is defined in Section 4, and is equivalent to a space recently introduced by M. Taylor (J Geom Anal 19(1):137–190, 2009). The case of translation invariant operators on homogeneous trees is also considered.     

Spectral Structure and Doublon Dissociation in the Two-Particle Non-Hermitian Hubbard Model

Strongly-correlated systems in non-Hermitian models are an emergent area of research. Herein, a non-Hermitian Hubbard model is considered, where the single-particle hopping amplitudes on the lattice are not reciprocal, and provide exact analytical results of the spectral structure in the two-particle sector of Hilbert space under different boundary conditions. The analysis unveils some interesting spectral and dynamical effects of purely non-Hermitian nature and that deviate from the usual scenario found in the single-particle regime. Specifically, a spectral phase transition of the Mott-Hubbard band on the infinite lattice is predicted as the interaction energy is increased above a critical value, from an open to a closed loop in complex energy plane, and the dynamical dissociation of doublons, i.e., instability of two-particle bound states, in the bulk of the lattice, with a sudden revival of the doublon state when the two particles reach the lattice edge. Particle dissociation observed in the bulk of the lattice is a clear manifestation of non-Hermitian dynamics arising from the different lifetimes of single-particle and two-particle states, whereas the sudden revival of the doublon state at the boundaries is a striking burst edge dynamical effect peculiar to non-Hermitian systems with boundary-dependent energy spectra, here predicted for the first time for correlated particles.