National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

Herein, the spectral and transport properties in the finite phosphorene lattice are investigated using the tight-binding model in the presence of Anderson disorder potential. The focus is on the zig-zag edge states localization, provided by the numerically calculated inverse participation number. At low disorder, the zig-zag states undergo a localization process, keeping their 1D character, while further increasing the disorder leads to delocalization due to hybridization with the extended 2D states. The disorder-induced changes in the electronic conductance, from one zig-zag edge to the other, are also discussed.

We theoretically describe electric transport through an optically active quantum dot embedded in a single-mode cavity, and coupled to source-drain particle reservoirs. The populations of various many-body configurations (e.g., excitons, trions, biexciton) and the photon-number occupancies are calculated from a master equation which is derived in the basis of dressed states. These take into account both the Coulomb and the light-matter interaction. The former is essential in the description of the transport, while for the latter we identify situations in which it can be neglected in the expression of tunneling rates. The fermionic nature of the particle reservoirs plays an important role in the argument. The master equation is numerically solved for the s-shell many-body configurations of disk-shaped quantum dots. If the cavity is tuned to the biexciton-exciton transition, the most efficient optical processes take place in a three-level A system. The alternative exciton-ground-state route is inhibited as nonresonant due to the biexciton binding energy. The steady-state current is analyzed as a function of the photon frequency and the coupling to the leads. An unexpected feature appears in its dependence on the cavity loss rate, which turns out to be nonmonotonic.

The main goal of this paper is to put on solid mathematical grounds the so-called non-equilibrium Green's function transport formalism for open systems. In particular, we derive the Jauho-Meir-Wingreen formula for the time-dependent current through an interacting sample coupled to non-interacting leads. Our proof is non-perturbative and uses neither complex-time Keldysh contours nor Langreth rules of 'analytic continuation.' We also discuss other technical identities (Langreth, Keldysh) involving various many-body Green's functions. Finally, we study the Dyson equation for the advanced/retarded interacting Green's function and we rigorously construct its (irreducible) self-energy, using the theory of Volterra operators.

We study the validity of Hund's first rule for the spin multiplicity in circular molecules-made of real or artificial atoms such as quantum dots-by considering a perturbative approach in the Coulomb interaction in the extended Hubbard model with both on-site and long-range interactions. In this approximation, we show that an anti-Hund rule always defines the ground state in a molecule with 4N atoms at half-filling. In all other cases (i.e., number of atoms not a multiple of four, or a 4N molecule away from half-filling) both the singlet and the triplet outcomes are possible, as determined primarily by the total number of electrons in the system. In some instances, the Hund rule is always obeyed and the triplet ground state is realized mathematically for any values of the on-site and long-range interactions, while for other filling situations the singlet is also possible but only if the long-range interactions exceed a certain threshold, relatively to the on-site interaction.

This paper reports on the aging of carbon nanowalls (CNW) and modification of their wettability by the storage time, growth conditions, and post-fabrication plasma treatments. The as-deposited CNW initially exhibit marked hydrophilic behavior (fresh CNW), but within a few days they become highly hydrophobic (aged CNW). Their final hydrophobicity is closely related to their topography which is controlled by the deposition parameters. In addition, subsequent fluorinated plasma treatments result in super-hydrophobic CNW layers, irrespective of the hydrophilic or hydrophobic character of the pre-treated samples. To explain this, we show that the CNW edges contain many defects initially, but such defects become passivated in time. As a result, the surfaces become highly hydrophobic after aging or fluorination, having inert stable terminations.

Using the kp theory and configuration interaction method, we analyze the effect of heavy hole-light hole (HH-LH) mixing in CdTe quantum dots (QDs) with a single manganese (Mn) ion. We find that the hole-Mn exchange switches the coupling between two excitons whose Luttinger spinors have both HH and LH components. If the magnetic dopant is off-centered and the QD is subjected to a single pulse the system periodically bounces between bright and dark mostly HH excitons with opposite HH spins. A pump-and-probe setup allows to estimate the efficiency of this HH spin unpinning from the biexciton response. The biexciton absorption spectrum is also discussed.

Shape memory alloys are known to memorise one -or several-temperatures at which the martensite-austenite transformation was stopped before completion in the past, the memory manifesting as specific dips in subsequent calorimetric scans. Previous studies have shown that this memory can be erased by heating to higher temperatures than the ones previously recorded. In this paper, we study a distinct memory fading effect which takes place by heating to a lower temperature. This effect is reported in NiFeGa as polycrystalline ribbons, the alloy being initially studied as bulk for which the thermal memory effect was not found. If, after an initial incomplete heating up to T-1 one performs a second incomplete heating up to T-2 < T-1, a new calorimetric dip appears at T-2, as expected, while less expected was that the dip corresponding to T-1 reduces in amplitude or even vanishes ( if the arrest at T-2 is repeated). The memory fading effect is more clear for small differences T-1-T-2 and less obvious or absent for large ones. The second part of the paper employs a statistical 2D model, which associates the memorized temperatures with a depletion of certain martensite plates sizes, and also supports the memory fading effect.

In this paper, we investigate the influence of Cu, Co, and Al substitutions on the transport properties, and in particular, the magnetoresistive effect in Ni-Fe-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloys (FSMAs) prepared as ribbons by melt spinning method and subjected to different thermal treatments. X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, magnetometry, and magnetoresistive characterizations were performed. In the range of the martensitic transformation (MT), different FSMA compositions show a rich spectrum of different behaviors. For one of the compositions (Ni52Fe20Co2Ga23Al3), the magnetoresistance (MR) showed a local minimum or, on the contrary, a local maxima of reduced amplitude on cooling, in the range of the MT, depending on the performed thermal treatments. In the same composition, by replacing one Al atom with a Co one, no local extremes are seen, the alloy having a concomitant magneto-structural transition. When the magnetic field was varied, the MR showed a nonmonotonic variation in the martensite phase for some compounds, possibly due to the dynamics of the martensite variants realignment. From the studied compositions, the highest MR found on the MT of -9% for 5 T is for Ni50Fe20Ga27Cu3.

We study Coulomb interacting electrons confined in polygonal quantum rings. We focus on the interplay of localization at the polygon corners and Coulomb repulsion. Remarkably, the Coulomb repulsion allows the formation of in-gap states, i.e., corner-localized states of electron pairs or clusters shifted to energies that were forbidden for non-interacting electrons, but below the energies of corner-side-localized states. We specify conditions allowing optical excitation to those states.

The phase shift of the electron's wave function after a tunneling event (i.e. the transmission phase) was at first measured for its fundamental or applicative relevance for quantum circuitry, but later the phase study self-motivated due to a number of unexpected results. One such result was the reduced increment of the phase on some resonances - with only fractions of pi - in the few-electrons "mesoscopic" regime. In this paper we address such a regime for a rectangular quantum dot and compute the total phase increase on the first four resonances by means of accurate configuration-interaction method and a generalized Friedel sum rule as proposed by Rontani (2006) [17]. Our findings confirm that the electronic correlations reduce the on-resonance phase growth which is also found to decrease quasi-linearly with the dot size, the decrease being more pronounced as the number of electrons on the dot is raised. Sudden jumps (of small amplitude) of the phase are found to accompany ground states spin transitions. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.