Effects of effective attractive multi-body interaction on quantum phase and transport dynamics of a strongly correlated bosonic gas across the superfluid to Mott insulator transition

We theoretically investigate quantum phases and transport dynamics of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice in the presence of effective multi-body interaction.When a harmonic external potential is added,several interesting phenomena are revealed,such as the broadening and the emergence of a central insulator plateau and the phase transition between superfluid and Mott insulator phase.We also study the transport of the system which runs across the superfluid–insulator transition after ramping up the lattice,and predict a slower relaxation which is attributed to the influence of the multi-body interaction on the mass transport.     

Control of gain and thermal carrier loss profiles for mode optimization in 980-nm broad-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Optical gain and thermal carrier loss distributions regarding current diffusion and various electric contact areas are investigated to improve the near-field modes from the ring-shape to a Gaussian-like configuration for extra-broad-area and oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. In this work an equivalent circuit network model is used. The resistance of the continuously-graded distributed Bragg reflectors （DBRs）, the current diffusion and the temperature effect due to different electric-contact areas are calculated and analyzed at first, as these parameters affect one another and are the key factors in determining the gain and thermal carrier loss. Finally, the gain and thermal carrier loss distributions are calculated and discussed.     

Sonochemical fabrication of Fe3O4 nanoparticles on reduced graphene oxide for biosensors

This study synthesized Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles of 30–40 nm by a sonochemical method, and these particles were uniformly dispersed on the reduced graphene oxide sheets (Fe₃O₄/RGO). The superparamagnetic property of Fe₃O₄/RGO was evidenced from a saturated magnetization of 30 emu/g tested by a sample-vibrating magnetometer. Based on the testing results, we proposed a mechanism of ultrasonic waves to explain the formation and dispersion of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles on RGO. A biosensor was fabricated by modifying a glassy carbon electrode with the combination of Fe₃O₄/RGO and hemoglobin. The biosensor showed an excellent electrocatalytic reduction toward H₂O₂ at a wide, linear range from 4 × 10^?6 to 1 × 10^?3 M (R² = 0.994) as examined by amperometry, and with a detection limit of 2 × 10^?6 M. The high performance of H₂O₂ detection is attributed to the synergistic effect of the combination of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles and RGO, promoting the electron transfer between the peroxide and electrode surface.     

Immunoassays Based on Surface-Enhanced Fluorescence using Gap-Plasmon-Tunable Ag Bilayer Nanoparticle Films

A novel gap-plasmon-tunable Ag bilayer nanoparticle film for immunoassays is demonstrated. Different from a traditional Ag monolayer nanoparticle film, a desired number of polyelectrolyte (PEL) layers are deposited on the nanoparticles before the self-assembly of a second Ag nanoparticle layer. Interestingly, by controlling the number of the PEL interlayers, the gap plasmon between the two Ag nanoparticle layers can be tuned across the visible spectral range. The ability of the presented Ag bilayer nanoparticle films in fluorescence enhancement has been examined experimentally. A maximal enhancement of around 15.4 fold was achieved when 7 layers of polyelectrolyte were used. When this optimal Ag bilayer nanoparticle film was applied to fluorescence immunoassay, a performance with approximately 3.3-fold enhancement was obtained compared with that performed on a traditional glass substrate. The experimental results suggest that the presented gap-plasmon tunable Ag bilayer nanoparticle films have great potential in fluorescence-based immunoassays. The method of the bilayer-film construction presented here also provides new insights into the rational design of the plasmonic substrates.     

Influence of Non-Kolmogorov Turbulence on Bit-Error Rates in Laser Satellite Communications

In satellite–ground laser communications, atmospheric turbulence in the link degrades the performance of the system, so it is very important to estimate its influence on the performance of the system. The bit-error rate (BER) is an important parameter to indicate the communication performance of the system, which is directly used to judge the quality of the communication system. Using the results of our two previous papers, we analyze the joint influence of Kolmogorov turbulence from the ground up to 6 km and non-Kolmogorov turbulence above 6 km on the BER. These kinds of turbulence are associated respectively with the uplink and the downlink propagation channels for the geosynchronous orbit satellite communication system.     

Analysis of the mechanisms of electron recombination in HgCdTe infrared photodiode

This paper presents an experimental study of minority carrier lifetime and recombination mechanisms in HgCdTe photodiode. The excitation light source is a wavelength-tunable pulsed infrared laser. A constant background illumination has been introduced to minimize the effect of the junction equivalent capacitor and resistance. The decay of the photo-generated voltage is recorded by a storage oscilloscope. By fitting the exponentially decay curve, the time constant has been obtained which is regarded as the photo-generated minority carrier lifetime of the HgCdTe photodiode. The experimental results show that the carrier lifetime is in the range of 18–407 ns at 77 K for the measured detectors of four Cd compositions. It was found that the Auger recombination process is more effective for low Cd composition while the radiative recombination process became more important for high composition materials. The Shockley–Read–Hall recombination processes could not be ignored for all Cd composition.     

Interaction Between Neuroglobin and Caffeine by Multispectroscopic Methods

The interaction between neuroglobin (Ngb) and caffeine was studied by spectroscopy. UV-Vis spectra revealed that caffeine did not influence the native hexa-coordinated heme structure of neuroglobin. Fluorescence spectra indicated that caffeine could quench the intrinsic fluorescence of neuroglobin through static quenching mechanisms. The calculated thermodynamic parameters showed that the electrostatic force was the main intermolecular force in the reaction. Results also indicated that the microenvironmental changes of tryptophan and tyrosine residues within neuroglobin are inapparent. Furthermore, the circular dichroism (CD) spectra implied that caffeine could induce the formation of α-helix structure of neuroglobin.     

Theoretical investigation of high-order harmonic generation from asymmetric molecular ions in the chirped laser field

High-order harmonic generation from the asymmetric helium hydrogen molecular ion exposed to a few-cycle chirped laser field is theoretically investigated by numerically solving the reduced one-dimension non-Born–Oppenheimer time dependent Schrödinger equation. The numerical results show that the plateau of the high-order harmonic spectrum is dramatically broadened and smoother with the introduction of the chirp. Further study presents that only the short quantum path contributes to harmonic emission and the long quantum path disappears in the chirped laser. In addition, an 80-as isolated attosecond pulse is obtained by superposing the harmonics from the 100th to the 130th order in the chirped field. The time-frequency distributions and the electronic probability distributions are presented to explain the underlying physical mechanism.     

Asymptotic Behaviour of Solutions of a Multidimensional Moving Boundary Problem Modeling Tumor Growth

We study a moving boundary problem modeling the growth of multicellular spheroids or in vitro tumors. This model consists of two elliptic equations describing the concentration of a nutrient and the distribution of the internal pressure in the tumor's body, respectively. The driving mechanism of the evolution of the tumor surface is governed by Darcy's law. Finally surface tension effects on the moving boundary are taken into account which are considered to counterbalance the internal pressure. To put our analysis on a solid basis, we first state a local well-posedness result for general initial data. However, the main purpose of our study is the investigation of the asymptotic behaviour of solutions as time goes to infinity. As a result of a centre manifold analysis, we prove that if the initial domain is sufficiently close to a Euclidean ball in the C ^m+μ-norm with m ≥ 3 and μ ∈ (0,1), then the solution exists globally and the corresponding domains converge exponentially fast to some (possibly shifted) ball, provided the surface tension coefficient γ is larger than a positive threshold value γ_*. In the case 0 < γ < γ_* the radially symmetric equilibrium is unstable.     

Some results of the worst-case analysis for flow shop scheduling with a learning effect

This article considers flow shop scheduling problems with a learning effect. By the learning effect, we mean that the processing time of a job is defined by a function of its position in a processing permutation. The objective is to minimize the total weighted completion time. Some heuristic algorithms by using the optimal permutations for the corresponding single machine scheduling problems are presented, and the worst-case bound of these heuristics are also analyzed.