Condensed Matter

A convective model describing the nature and structure of the roton is proposed. According to the model, the roton is a cylindrical convective cell with free horizontal boundaries. On the basis of the model, the characteristic geometric dimensions of the roton are estimated, and the spatial distribution of the velocity of the helium atoms and the perturbed temperature inside are described. It is assumed that the spatial distribution of rotons has a horizontally multilayer periodic structure, from which follows the quantization of the energy spectrum of rotons. The noted quantization allows us to adequately describe the energy spectrum of rotons. The convective model is quantitatively confirmed by experimental data on the measurement of the density of the normal component of helium II, the scattering of neutrons and light by helium II. The use of a convective model for describing the scattering of light by Helium II made it possible to estimate the dipole moment of the roton, as well as the number of helium atoms participating in the formation of the roton.

Cryogenic helium-4 has extremely small kinetic viscosity, which makes it a promising material for high Reynolds ( Re ) number turbulence research in compact laboratory apparatuses. In its superfluid phase (He II), helium has an extraordinary heat transfer capability and has been utilized in various scientific and engineering applications. In order to unlock the full potential of helium in turbulence research and to improve our understanding of the heat transfer mechanism in He II, a flow facility that allows quantitative study of helium heat-and-mass transfer processes is needed. Here we report our work in assembling and testing a unique helium pipe flow facility that incorporates a novel double-line molecular tracking velocimetry (DL-MTV) system. This flow facility allows us to generate turbulent pipe flows with Re above 10 7 , and it can also be adapted to produce heat-induced counterflow in He II. The DL-MTV system, which is based on the generation and tracking of two parallel thin He ∗ 2 molecular tracer lines with an adjustable separation distance, allows us to measure not only the velocity profile but also both the transverse and longitudinal spatial velocity structure functions. We have also installed a deferential pressure sensor to the flow pipe for pressure drop measurement. The testing results of the flow facility and the measurement devices are presented. We discuss how this facility will allow us to solve some outstanding problems in the helium heat-and-mass transfer topic area.

To study channeling radiation produced by an ultra-relativistic electron beam channeling through a single crystal, a lattice potential of the crystal is required for solving the transverse motion of beam electrons under the influence of the crystal lattice. In this paper, we present a general formalism for this two-dimensional lattice potential of a crystal with a Lorentz contraction in the beam channeling direction. With this formalism, the lattice potential can be calculated without approximation from any given model of electron-ion interaction for an ultra-relativistic beam channeling in any crystal direction. The formalism presented should be the standard recipe of the lattice potential for studying the channeling radiation.

We present a one-parameter family of mathematical models describing the dynamics of polarons in linear periodic structures such as polypeptides. By tuning the parameter, we are able to recover the Davydov and the Scott models. We describe the physical significance of this parameter. In the continuum limit, we derive analytical solutions which represent stationary polarons. On a discrete lattice, we compute stationary polaron solutions numerically. We investigate polaron propagation induced by several external forcing mechanisms. We show that an electric field consisting of a constant and a periodic component can induce polaron motion with minimal energy loss. We also show that thermal fluctuations can facilitate the onset of polaron motion. Finally, we discuss the bio-physical implications of our results.

We review the parity anomaly of the massless Dirac fermion in 2+1 dimensions from the Hamiltonian, as opposed to the path integral, point of view. We have two main goals for this note. First, we hope to make the parity anomaly more accessible to condensed matter physicists, who generally prefer to work within the Hamiltonian formalism. The parity anomaly plays an important role in modern condensed matter physics, as the massless Dirac fermion is the surface theory of the time-reversal invariant topological insulator (TI) in 3+1 dimensions. Our second goal is to clarify the relation between the time-reversal symmetry of the massless Dirac fermion and the fractional charge of ± 1 2 (in units of e ) which appears on the surface of the TI when a magnetic monopole is present in the bulk. To accomplish these goals we study the Dirac fermion in the Hamiltonian formalism using two different regularization schemes. One scheme is consistent with the time-reversal symmetry of the massless Dirac fermion, but leads to the aforementioned fractional charge. The second scheme does not lead to any fractionalization, but it does break time-reversal symmetry. For both regularization schemes we also compute the effective action S eff [A] which encodes the response of the Dirac fermion to a background electromagnetic field A . We find that the two effective actions differ by a Chern-Simons counterterm with fractional level equal to 1 2 , as is expected from path integral treatments of the parity anomaly. Finally, we propose the study of a bosonic analogue of the parity anomaly as a topic for future work.

In this paper a one-phase Stefan problem with size-dependent thermal conductivity is analysed. Approximate solutions to the problem are found via perturbation and numerical methods, and compared to the Neumann solution for the equivalent Stefan problem with constant conductivity. We find that the size-dependant thermal conductivity, relevant in the context of solidification at the nanoscale, slows down the solidification process. A small time asymptotic analysis reveals that the position of the solidification front in this regime behaves linearly with time, in contrast to the Neumann solution characterized by a square root of time proportionality. This has an important physical consequence, namely the speed of the front predicted by size-dependant conductivity model is finite while the Neumann solution predicts an infinite and, thus, unrealistic speed as t→0 .

The quasiparticle (QP) energies, which are minus of the energies required by removing or produced by adding one electron from/to the system, corresponding to the photoemission or inverse photoemission (PE/IPE) spectra, are determined together with the QP wave functions, which are not orthonormal and even not linearly independent but somewhat similar to the normal spin orbitals in the theory of the configuration interaction, by self-consistently solving the QP equation coupled with the equation for the self-energy. The electron density, kinetic and all interaction energies can be calculated using the QP wave functions. We prove in a simple way that the PE/IPE spectroscopy and therefore this QP theory can be applied to an arbitrary initial excited eigenstate. In this proof, we show that the energy-dependence of the self-energy is not an essential difficulty, and the QP picture holds exactly if there is no relaxation mechanism in the system. The validity of the present theory for some initial excited eigenstates is tested using the one-shot GW approximation for several atoms and molecules.

We present a position operator that is compatible with periodic boundary conditions (PBC). It is a one-body operator that can be applied in calculations of correlated materials by simply replacing the traditional position vector by the new definition. We show that it satisfies important fundamental as well as practical constraints. To illustrate the usefulness of the PBC position operator we apply it to the localization tensor, a key quantity that is able to differentiate metallic from insulating states. In particular, we show that the localization tensor given in terms of the PBC position operator yields the correct expression in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, we show that it correctly distinguishes between finite precursors of metals and insulators.

Large-radius translation invariant (TI) bipolarons are considered in a one-dimensional Holstein molecular chain. Criteria of their stability are obtained. The energy of a translation invariant bipolaron is shown to be lower than that of a bipolaron with broken symmetry. The results obtained are applied to the problem of superconductivity in 1D-systems. It is shown that TI-bipolaron mechanism of Bose-Einstein condensation can support superconductivity even for infinite chain.

In this work, we define a set of analytic tools to describe the dynamic response of the magnetization to small perturbations, which can be used on its own or in combination with micromagnetic simulations and does not require saturation. We present a general analytic description of the ferromagnetic high frequency susceptibility tensor to describe angular as well as frequency dependent ferromagnetic resonance spectra and account for asymmetries in the line shape. Furthermore, we expand this model to reciprocal space and show how it describes the magnon dispersion. Finally we suggest a trajectory dependent solving tool to describe the equilibrium states of the magnetization.