Axially excited chiral sculptured thin films (STFs) are shown to exhibit the circular Bragg phenomenon in the pre-resonant (long-wavelength) regime but not in some parts of the post-resonant (short-wavelength) regime. Chiral STFs act as very good polarization-independent reflectors in the vicinity of material resonances in the latter regime.
A stepwise chirping of the periodicity of a chiral sculptured thin film is shown to considerably enhance the bandwidth of the Bragg regime, thereby extending the frequency range of operation as a circular{polarization filter.
The solution of a boundary--value problem formulated for the Kretschmann configuration shows that the phase speed of a surface--plasmon--polariton (SPP) wave guided by the planar interface of a sufficiently thin metal film and a sculptured thin film (STF) depends on the vapor incidence angle used while fabricating the STF by physical vapor deposition. Furthermore, it may be possible to engineer the phase speed by periodically varying the vapor incidence angle. The phase speed of the SPP wave can be set by selecting higher mean value and/or the modulation amplitude of the vapor incidence angle.
It has recently been suggested that the parity doublet structure seen in the spectrum of highly excited baryons may be due to effective chiral restoration for these states. We argue how the idea of chiral symmetry restoration high in the spectrum is consistent with the concept of quark-hadron duality. If chiral symmetry is effectively restored for highly-lying states, then the baryons should fall into representations of $SU(2)_Ltimes SU(2)_R$ that are compatible with the given parity of the states - the parity-chiral multiplets. We classify all possible parity-chiral multiplets: (i) $(1/2,0)oplus(0, 1/2)$ that contain parity doublet for nucleon spectrum;(ii) $(3/2,0) oplus (0, 3/2)$ consists of the parity doublet for delta spectrum; (iii) $(1/2,1) oplus (1, 1/2)$ contains one parity doublet in the nucleon spectrum and one parity doublet in the delta spectrum of the same spin that are degenerate in mass. Here we show that the available spectroscopic data for nonstrange baryons in the $sim$ 2 GeV range is consistent with all possibilities, but the approximate degeneracy of parity doublets in nucleon and delta spectra support the latter possibility with excited baryons approximately falling into $(1/2,1) oplus (1, 1/2)$ representation of $SU(2)_LtimesSU(2)_R$ with approximate degeneracy between positive and negative parity $N$ and $Delta$ resonances of the same spin.
We have investigated the nanoscale switching properties of strain-engineered BiFeO3 thin films deposited on LaAlO3 substrates using a combination of scanning probe techniques. Polarized Raman spectral analysis indicate that the nearly-tetragonal films have monoclinic (Cc) rather than P4mm tetragonal symmetry. Through local switching-spectroscopy measurements and piezoresponse force microscopy we provide clear evidence of ferroelectric switching of the tetragonal phase but the polarization direction, and therefore its switching, deviates strongly from the expected (001) tetragonal axis. We also demonstrate a large and reversible, electrically-driven structural phase transition from the tetragonal to the rhombohedral polymorph in this material which is promising for a plethora of applications.
In order to ascertain conditions for surface-wave propagation guided by the planar interface of an isotropic dielectric material and a sculptured nematic thin film (SNTF) with periodic nonhomogeneity, we formulated a boundary-value problem, obtained a dispersion equation therefrom, and numerically solved it. The surface waves obtained are Dyakonov-Tamm waves. The angular domain formed by the directions of propagation of the Dyakonov--Tamm waves can be very wide (even as wide as to allow propagation in every direction in the interface plane), because of the periodic nonhomogeneity of the SNTF. A search for Dyakonov-Tamm waves is, at the present time, the most promising route to take for experimental verification of surface-wave propagation guided by the interface of two dielectric materials, at least one of which is anisotropic. That would also assist in realizing the potential of such surface waves for optical sensing of various types of analytes infiltrating one or both of the two dielectric materials.