Observation of a wurtzite form of gallium arsenide

After a pressure decrease to ambient, the high-pressure SC16 phase of GaAs is found to transform to the hexagonal wurtzite structure. This has been suggested for GaAs in calculations but never previously observed experimentally. Wurtzite-GaAs is found to be stable at ambient pressures at temperatures up to 473 K, with a structure that is only slightly distorted from ideal. On recompression, the ratio is constant with pressure and wurtzite-GaAs transforms to the orthorhombic phase at 18.7(9) GPa.     

Controllable soliton emission from a Bose-Einstein condensate

We demonstrate, through numerical simulations, the controllable emission of matter-wave bursts from a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shallow optical dipole trap. The process is triggered by spatial variations of the scattering length along the trapping axis. In our approach, the outcoupling mechanisms are atom-atom interactions and thus, the trap remains unaltered. Once emitted, the matter wave forms a robust soliton. We calculate analytically the parameters for the experimental implementation of these matter-wave bursts of solitons.     

Yb3+-doped YVO4 crystal for efficient Kerr-lens mode locking in solid-state lasers

We report the first demonstration, to our knowledge, of soft-aperture Kerr-lens mode locking in a diode-pumped femtosecond Yb3+:YVO4 laser. Near-transform-limited pulses as short as 61 fs are generated around a center wavelength of 1050 nm with an output power of 54 mW and a pulse repetition frequency of 104.5 MHz. This is, to our knowledge, the shortest pulse generated directly from an Yb laser having a crystalline host material. The femtosecond operation has a mode-locking threshold at an absorbed pump power of 190 mW. The nonlinear refractive indexes of the Yb3+:YVO4 crystal have been measured to be 19 x 10(-16) cm2/W and 15 x 10(-16) cm2/W for the sigma and pi polarizations, respectively, at 1080 nm.     

Chain "melting" in the composite Rb-IV structure

The Bragg peaks from the structure formed by the guest chains in the incommensurate composite structure of Rb-IV are all found to broaden strongly at pressures below 16.7(1) GPa. This signals a loss of the interchain correlation. At the lowest reachable pressure before the transition to Rb-III, 16.2 GPa, the correlation length is only approximately 30 A, or 4 times the interchain distance. There is also evidence of a loss of long-range order within each chain. The chains thus exhibit the onset of the characteristics of an ordered 1D liquid.     

Medium modifications of kaons in pion matter

Kaon in-medium masses and mean-field potentials are calculated in isotopically symmetric pion matter to one loop of chiral perturbation theory. The results are extended to BNL RHIC temperatures using experimental data on piK scattering phase shifts. The kaon in-medium broadening results in an acceleration of the phi-->K(-)K decay. The increased apparent dilepton branching of the phi mesons, observed recently by the NA50, NA49, and PHENIX Collaborations at RHIC, is interpreted in terms of rescattering of secondary kaons inside the pion matter.     

Structural complexity in gallium under high pressure: relation to alkali elements

Ga-II, the stable phase of Ga between 2 and 10 GPa at room temperature, is shown to have a complex 104-atom orthorhombic structure. A new phase, Ga-V, is found between 10 and 14 GPa, with a rhombohedral hR6 structure. Ga-II has a modulated layer structure like those recently reported for Rb-III and Cs-III, with similar 8- and 10-atom a-b layers stacked along the c axis in the sequence 8-10-8-8-10-8-8-10-8-8-10-8. The cI16 structure of Li and Na can be understood as a stacking of very similar 8-atom layers. It is suggested that a Hume-Rothery mechanism contributes to the occurrence of these complex structures in such different metals.     

Nanofocusing of optical energy in tapered plasmonic waveguides

We predict theoretically that surface plasmon polaritons propagating toward the tip of a tapered plasmonic waveguide are slowed down and asymptotically stopped when they tend to the tip, never actually reaching it (the travel time to the tip is logarithmically divergent). This phenomenon causes accumulation of energy and giant local fields at the tip. There are various prospective applications in nano-optics and nanotechnology.