National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

The functionality of the ferromagnetic shape memory alloys is related to the martensitic and magnetic order-disorder transformations, both of which may be tailored by doping with other elements or by suitable thermal treatments, so that alloys with concomitant (or sequential but close) structural and magnetic phase transitions may be obtained. Concerning the magnetocaloric applications, it is assumed that the thin melt-spun ribbons assure a more efficient heat transfer. In the present work we investigate the influence of Co and Al substitutions on magnetocaloric effect characteristics of NiFeGa in bulk and also in ribbons prepared by melt spinning method and subjected to different thermal treatments. X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, magnetocaloric and magnetoresistive characterizations have been performed. The results highlight the differences between the bulk and the ribbons (both as prepared and annealed) and the role of substitutions.

We investigate the equilibrium and nonequilibrium transport through a quantum dot in the Kondo regime, embedded between a normal metal and a topological superconductor supportingMajorana bound states at its end points. We find that the Kondo physics is significantly modified by the presence of theMajorana modes. When the Majorana modes are coupled, aside from the Kondo scale T-K, a new energy scale T* << T-K emerges, that controls the low-energy physics of the system. At lowtemperatures, the ac conductance is suppressed for frequencies below T*, while the noise spectrum acquires a similar to omega(3) dependence. At high temperatures, T >> T-K, the regular logarithmic dependence in the differential conductance is also affected. Under nonequilibrium conditions, and in particular in the {T, B}-> 0 limit, the differential conductance becomes negative. These findings indicate that the changes in transport may serve as clues for detecting the Majorana bound states in such systems. In terms of methods used, we characterize the transport by using a combination of perturbative and renormalization-group approaches.

We address the existence of steady state Green-Keldysh correlation functions of interacting fermions in mesoscopic systems for both the partitioning and partition-free scenarios. Under some spectral assumptions on the non-interacting model and for sufficiently small interaction strength, we show that the system evolves to a NESS which does not depend on the profile of the time-dependent coupling strength/bias. For the partitioned setting we also show that the steady state is independent of the initial state of the inner sample. Closed formulae for the NESS two-point correlation functions (Green-Keldysh functions), in the form of a convergent expansion, are derived. In the partitioning approach, we show that the 0(th) order term in the interaction strength of the charge current leads to the Landauer-Buttiker formula, while the 1(st) order correction contains the mean-field (Hartree-Fock) results.

We address theoretically the electronic transport through graphene quantum dots with the emphasis on the transmission phase. Analytical and numerical results are presented regarding the existence - or not - of a lapse of the transmittance phase (and, consequentially, a Fano zero in the transmittance) at the charge neutrality point. A simple universal criterium is found, the phase lapses being always present if the contact sites belong to the same sub-lattice. ((c) 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

We study the effects of intraband relaxation processes on optical manipulation protocols for sp biexcitons hosted by CdTe disk-shaped quantum dots. The many-body states are calculated within the configuration interaction method starting from single-particle states given by the k.p theory. The time-dependent occupations of relevant many-body states are extracted from the von Neumann-Lindblad equation for the density operator. We mainly investigate the generation of sp biexcitons with two pulses of different polarizations sigma(+) and sigma(-). The fast hole relaxation processes prevent a high-fidelity controlled operation on sp biexcitons and lead to the occupation of some transient states which can be optically probed. More importantly, the many-body structure of the transient states consists of two holes on the s shell and antiparallel sp triplet states for electrons. Our simulations show that these triplet states are more stable against decoherence as they can only be damaged through slow electron relaxation. The configuration mixing due to correlation effects is also discussed.

We study the electronic properties of the confined honeycomb lattice in the presence of the intrinsic spin-orbit (ISO) interaction and perpendicular magnetic field, and report on uncommon aspects of the quantum spin Hall conductance corroborated by peculiar properties of the edge states. The ISO interaction induces two specific gaps in the Hofstadter spectrum, namely the "weak" topological gap defined by Beugeling et al. [Phys. Rev. B 86, 075118 (2012)], and spin-imbalanced gaps in the relativistic range of the energy spectrum. We analyze the evolution of the helical states with the magnetic field and with increasing Anderson disorder. The "edge" localization of the spin-dependent states and its dependence on the disorder strength is shown. The quantum transport, treated in the Landauer-Buttiker formalism, reveals interesting new plateaus of the quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE), and also of the integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE), in the energy ranges corresponding to the spin-imbalanced gaps. The properties of the spin-dependent transmittance matrix that determine the symmetries with respect to the spin, energy, and magnetic field of the longitudinal and transverse resistance are shown.

The specific topology of the line-centered square lattice (known also as the Lieb lattice) induces remarkable spectral properties such as the macroscopically degenerated zero-energy flat band, the Dirac cone in the low-energy spectrum, and the peculiar Hofstadter-type spectrum in a magnetic field. We study here the properties of the finite Lieb lattice with periodic and vanishing boundary conditions. We investigate the behavior of the flat band induced by disorder and external magnetic and electric fields. We show that in the confined Lieb plaquette threaded by a perpendicular magnetic flux there are edge states with nontrivial behavior. The specific class of twisted edge states, which have alternating chirality, are sensitive to disorder and do not support integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE), but contribute to the longitudinal resistance. The symmetry of the transmittance matrix in the energy range where these states are located is revealed. The diamagnetic moments of the bulk and edge states in the Dirac-Landau domain, and also of the flat states in crossed magnetic and electric fields are shown. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.125428

The usual experimental set-up for measuring the wave function phase shift of electrons tunneling through a quantum dot (QD) embedded in a ring (i.e., the transmittance phase) is the so-called 'open' interferometer as first proposed by Schuster et al. in 1997, in which the electrons back-scattered at source and the drain contacts are absorbed by additional leads in order to exclude multiple interference. While in this case one can conveniently use a simple two-path interference formula to extract the QD transmittance phase, the open interferometer has also a number of draw-backs, such as a reduced signal and some uncertainty regarding the effects of the extra leads. Here we present a meaningful theoretical study of the QD transmittance phase in 'closed' interferometers (i.e., connected only to source and drain leads). By putting together data from existing literature and giving some new proofs, we show both analytically and by numerical simulations that the existence of phase lapses between consecutive resonances of the 'bare' QD is related to the signs of the corresponding Fano parameters - of the QD + ring system. More precisely, if the Fano parameters have the same sign, the transmittance phase of the QD exhibits a I lapse. Therefore, closed mesoscopic interferometers can be used to address the 'universal phase lapse' problem. Moreover, the data from already existing Fano interference experiments from Kobayashi et al. in 2003 can be used to infer the phase lapses.

We investigate the connection between the asymmetry of the Fano resonances in a mesoscopic interferometer with an embedded quantum dot and the pi lapses in the phase of the "bare" dot transmittance. Consecutive Fano resonances with the same (opposite) sign of the Fano parameter imply the presence (absence) of a phase lapse with pi between the corresponding resonances of the dot. Our results suggest that the famous "phase lapse" problem, first reported by Schuster et al. [R. Schuster, E. Buks, M. Heiblum, D. Mahalu, V. Umansky, H. Shtrikman, Nature 385 (1997) 417], can therefore be experimentally addressed in closed interferometers. It is also proposed that the Fano effect can be used to extract the phase distributions of the eigenfunctions for a mesoscopic 20 shape, via the parity of the resonances. In the presence of electron-electron interaction, one can calculate the phases of the T-matrix elements. The numerical results lead to the same conclusions as for the non-interacting case. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Persistent, oscillatory charge and spin currents are shown to be driven by a two-component terahertz laser pulse in a one-dimensional mesoscopic ring with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions (SOI) linear in the electron momentum. The characteristic interference effects result from the opposite precession directions imposed on the electron spin by the two SOI couplings. The time dependence of the currents is obtained by solving numerically the equation of motion for the density operator, which is later employed in calculating statistical averages of quantum operators on few electron eigenstates. The parameterization of the problem is done in terms of the SOI coupling constants and of the phase difference between the two laser components. Our results indicate that the amplitude of the oscillations is controlled by the relative strength of the two SOI's, while their frequency is determined by the difference between the excitation energies of the electron states. Furthermore, the oscillations of the spin current acquire a beating pattern of higher frequency that we associate with the nutation of the electron spin between the quantization axes of the two SOI couplings. This phenomenon disappears at equal SOI strengths, whereby the opposite precessions occur with the same probability. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.