Low temperature specific heat of 12442-type KCa2Fe4As4F2 single crystals

The Hubble constant H_0 represents the expansion rate of the Universe at present and is closely related to the age of the Universe.The accurate measurement of Hubble constant is crucial for modern cosmology.However,different cosmological observations give diverse values of Hubble constant in literature.Up to now,there are two methods to measure the Hubble constant.One is to directly measure the Hubble constant based on distance ladder estimates of Cepheids and so on.The other is to globally fit the Hubble constant under the assumption of a cosmological model,for example the "standard" ACDM model.Adopting the low-redshift observational datasets,including the Pantheon sample of Type Ⅰa supernovae,baryon acoustic oscillation measurements,and the tomographic Alcock-Paczynski method,we determine the Hubble constant to be 67.95_(-1.03)~(+0.78),69.81_(-2.70)~(+2.22) and66.75_(-4.23)~(+3.42) km s~(-1) Mpc~(-1) at 68% confidence level in the △CDM,wCDM and W_0W_a CDM models,respectively.Compared to the Hubble constant given by Riess et al.in 2019,we conclude that the new physics beyond the standard △CDM model is needed if all of these datasets are reliable.     

Low-temperature heat transport of spin-gapped quantum magnets

This article reviews low-temperature heat transport studies of spin-gapped quantum magnets in the last few decades. Quantum magnets with small spins and low dimensionality exhibit a variety of novel phenomena. Among them, some systems are characteristic of having quantum-mechanism spin gap in their magnetic excitation spectra, including spin-Peierls systems, S=1 Haldane chains, S= 1/2 spin ladders, and spin dimmers. In some particular spin-gapped systems, the XY-type antiferromagnetic state induced by magnetic field that closes the spin gap can be described as a magnon Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Heat transport is effective in probing the magnetic excitations and magnetic phase transitions, and has been extensively studied for the spin-gapped systems. A large and ballistic spin thermal conductivity was observed in the two-leg Heisenberg S=1/2 ladder compounds. The characteristic of magnetic thermal transport of the Haldane chain systems is quite controversial on both the theoretical and experimental results. For the spin-Peierls system, the spin excitations can also act as heat carriers. In spin-dimer compounds, the magnetic excitations mainly play a role of scattering phonons. The magnetic excitations in the magnon BEC systems displayed dual roles, carrying heat or scattering phonons, in different materials.     

Size-dependent melting behavior of indium nanowires

Indium nanowires with different diameters (20-80 nm) and preferred orientations were electrodeposited in the pores of the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies showed an approximate linear relationship between melting temperature and the reciprocal of diameters. Comparing the experimental data with several theoretical models, we found the effect of crystalline structure should be taken into account for better explaining the size-dependent melting behavior. The influences of surface configuration and nanosolids size on the melting were also discussed.     

Surface plasmon polaritons based optical directional coupler

As a basic optical device, the optical directional coupler (ODC) is basically used as optical splitters, optic switches and so on. A novel ODC employing surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) is proposed for high integration. The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is adopted to simulate and analyze its properties. Results show that the ODC proposed here follows the general regulations of a conventional dielectric ODC, but its transverse size is of nanoscale, which improves the optical integration greatly. For 1550 nm and 1310 nm input wavelengths, when the coupling region length (L) equals half of its coupling length, the Excess Loss is respectively 0.57 dB and 0.56 dB, which is practical in applications. So the research on the present ODC is of some practical importance.