Condensed Matter

Even the best quality 2D materials have non-negligible concentrations of vacancies and impurities. It is critical to understand and quantify how defects change intrinsic properties, and use this knowledge to generate functionality. This challenge can be addressed by employing many-body perturbation theory to obtain the optical absorption spectra of defected transition metal dichalcogenides. Herein metal vacancies, which are largely unreported, show a larger set of polarized exitons than chalcogenide vacancies, introducing localized excitons in the sub-optical-gap region, whose wave functions and spectra make them good candidates as quantum emitters. Despite the strong interaction with substitutional defects, the spin texture and pristine exciton energies are preserved, enabling grafting and patterning in optical detectors, as the full optical-gap region remains available. A redistribution of excitonic weight between the A and B excitons is visible in both cases and may allow the quantification of the defect concentration. This work establishes excitonic signatures to characterize defects in 2D materials and highlights vacancies as qubit candidates for quantum computing.

We discuss optical chirality in different types of gyrotropic media. Our analysis is based on the formalism of nongeometric symmetries of Maxwell's equations in vacuum generalized to material media with given constituent relations. This approach enables us to derive directly conservation laws related to the nongeometric symmetries. For isotropic chiral media, we demonstrate that likewise free electromagnetic field, both duality and helicity generators belong to the basis set of nongeometric symmetries that guarantees the conservation of optical chirality. In gyrotropic crystals, which exhibit natural optical activity, the situation is quite different from the case of isotropic media. For light propagating along certain crystallographic direction, there arise two distinct cases, i.~e., (1) the duality is broken but the helicity is preserved, or (2) only the duality symmetry survives. We show that the existence of one of these symmetries (duality or helicity) is enough to define optical chirality. In addition, we present examples of low-symmetry media, where optical chirality can not be defined.

Optical properties of color centers in diamond have been the subject of intense research due to their promising applications in quantum photonics. In this work we study the optical properties of Xe related color centers implanted into nitrogen rich (type IIA) and an ultrapure, electronic grade diamond. The Xe defect has two zero phonon lines at ~ 794 and 811 nm, which can be effectively excited using both green and red excitation, however, its emission in the nitrogen rich diamond is brighter. Near resonant excitation is performed at cryogenic temperatures and luminescence is probed under strong magnetic field. Our results are important towards the understanding of the Xe related defect and other near infrared color centers in diamond.

An analytical solution to the problem of decreasing the energy losses Ω in diode current interrupters during recovery of the blocking ability by optimizing dopant distribution N(x) over structure thickness has been obtained. It was found the distribution N(x) close to optimal one that decreases Ω by 30-55% compared with standard interrupters with uniformly doped high-resistivity layers.

We study the accuracy of analytical wave function based many-body methods derived by energy minimization of a Jastrow-Feenberg ansatz for electrons (`Fermi hypernetted chain / Euler Lagrange' approach). Approximations to avoid the complexity of the fermion problem are chosen to parallel successful boson theories and be computationally efficient. For the three-dimensional homogeneous electron gas, we calculate the correlation energy, the pair distribution function and the static structure function in comparison with simulation results. We also present a new variant of theory, which is interpreted as approximate, self-consistent sum of ladder and ring diagrams of perturbation theory. The theory performs particularly well in the highly dilute density regime.

In this work we study the influence of orbital viscosity on the dynamics of the order parameter texture in the superfluid B-phase of 3 He near a moving bounda ry. Based on the redistribution of thermal quasiparticles within the texture, we develop a model which bestows a significant effective mass on the interface, an d gives a new mechanism for friction as the boundary moves. We have tested the model against existing data of a moving A-B interface whose motion was controlled using magnetic field. The model allows some predictions in experimental situations which involve texture rearrangement due to the B-phase boundary motion.

Motivated by the presence of a lattice of rotating molecular dipoles in the high temperature phase of methylammonium lead iodide, we investigate the ground state of a simple cubic lattice of dipoles interacting with each other via the dipole-dipole interaction and with an external field via the Zeeman interaction. In the absence of an external field, the ground state is infinitely degenerate, and all the configurations in the ground state manifold are periodic along the three lattice axes with period 2. We numerically determine the ground state of a 1000-dipole lattice interacting with an external field, and we analyze the polarization, dipole orientation statistics and correlations in this state. These calculations show that for some special directions of the external field the two-site periodicity in the dipole configurations is preserved, while in the general case this periodicity is lost and complex dipole configurations form in the presence of the external field.

We present experiments on nematic aerogel oscillating in superfluid 3 He. This aerogel consists of nearly parallel mullite strands and is attached to a vibrating wire moving along the direction of the strands. Previous nuclear magnetic resonance experiments in 3 He confined in similar aerogel sample have shown that the superfluid transition of 3 He in aerogel occurs into the polar phase and the transition temperature ( T ca ) is only slightly suppressed with respect to the superfluid transition temperature of bulk 3 He. In present experiments we observed a change in resonant properties of the vibrating wire at T= T ca and found that below T ca an additional resonance mode is excited which is coupled to the main resonance.

We study spectral and transport properties of one-dimensional tight-binding PT -symmetric chains with alternating couplings. Based on the transfer matrix method, we have analytically developed the expressions for the transmission and reflection coefficients for any values of control parameters. These expressions are obtained in a very compact form which separately imbed the generic energy dependence valid for any periodic structure, as well as specific properties of a unit cell composing the scattering setup. Out main interest is in specific properties of the left/right reflections that are due to the PT symmetric structure of the model. We have found that for the case of asymmetric couplings between dimers, a new type of specific points emerge in the spectrum, which are responsible for quite specific properties of the unidirectional reflectivity.

The texturization of poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) surfaces is achieved at atmospheric pressure by using the post-discharge of a radio-frequency plasma torch supplied in helium and oxygen gases. The surface properties are characterized by contact angle measurement, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. We show that the plasma treatment increases the surface hydrophobicity (with water contact angles increasing from 115 to 155°) only by modifying the PTFE surface morphology and not the stoichiometry. Measurements of sample mass losses correlated to the ejection of CF 2 fragments from the PTFE surface evidenced an etching mechanism at atmospheric pressure.