For certain measurements, the Corbino geometry has a distinct advantage over the Hall and van der Pauw geometries, in that it provides a direct probe of the bulk 2DEG without complications due to edge effects. This may be important in enabling detect
ion of the non-Abelian entropy of the 5/2 fractional quantum Hall state via bulk thermodynamic measurements. We report the successful fabrication and measurement of a Corbino-geometry sample in an ultra-high mobility GaAs heterostructure, with a focus on transport in the second and higher Landau levels. In particular, we report activation energy gaps of fractional quantum Hall states, with all edge effects ruled out, and extrapolate the conductivity prefactor from the Arrhenius fits. Our results show that activated transport in the second Landau level remains poorly understood. The development of this Corbino device opens the possibility to study the bulk of the 5/2 state using techniques not possible in other geometries.
Electrostatic gates are of paramount importance for the physics of devices based on high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) since they allow depletion of electrons in selected areas. This field-effect gating enables the fabrication of a wid
e range of devices such as, for example, quantum point contacts (QPC), electron interferometers and quantum dots. To fabricate these gates, processing is usually performed on the 2DEG material, which is in many cases detrimental to its electron mobility. Here we propose an alternative process which does not require any processing of the 2DEG material other than for the ohmic contacts. This approach relies on processing a separate wafer that is then mechanically mounted on the 2DEG material in a flip-chip fashion. This technique proved successful to fabricate quantum point contacts on both GaAs/AlGaAs materials with both moderate and ultra-high electron mobility.
The degree of contact between a system and the external environment can alter dramatically its proclivity to quantum mechanical modes of relaxation. We show that controlling the thermal coupling of cubic centimeter-sized crystals of the Ising magnet
$LiHo_xY_{1-x}F_4$ to a heat bath can be used to tune the system between a glassy state dominated by thermal excitations over energy barriers and a state with the hallmarks of a quantum spin liquid. Application of a magnetic field transverse to the Ising axis introduces both random magnetic fields and quantum fluctuations, which can retard and speed the annealing process, respectively, thereby providing a mechanism for continuous tuning between the destination states. The non-linear response of the system explicitly demonstrates quantum interference between internal and external relaxation pathways.
We compare two families of continued fractions algorithms, the symmetrized Rosen algorithm and the Veech algorithm. Each of these algorithms expands real numbers in terms of certain algebraic integers. We give explicit models of the natural extension
of the maps associated with these algorithms; prove that these natural extensions are in fact conjugate to the first return map of the geodesic flow on a related surface; and, deduce that, up to a conjugacy, almost every real number has an infinite number of common approximants for both algorithms.
We give explicit pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms with vanishing Sah-Arnoux-Fathi invariant. Any translation surface whose Veech group is commensurable to any of a large class of triangle groups is shown to have an affine pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of t
his type. We also apply a reduction to finite triangle groups and thereby show the existence of non-parabolic elements in the periodic field of certain translation surfaces.
We give a new proof of Moeckels result that for any finite index subgroup of the modular group, almost every real number has its regular continued fraction approximants equidistributed into the cusps of the subgroup according to the weighted cusp wid
ths. Our proof uses a skew product over a cross-section for the geodesic flow on the modular surface. Our techniques show that the same result holds true for approximants found by Nakadas alpha-continued fractions, and also that the analogous result holds for approximants that are algebraic numbers given by any of Rosens lambda-continued fractions, related to the infinite family of Hecke triangle Fuchsian groups.
We adjust Arnouxs coding, in terms of regular continued fractions, of the geodesic flow on the modular surface to give a cross section on which the return map is a double cover of the natural extension for the alpha-continued fractions, for each $alp
ha$ in (0,1]. The argument is sufficiently robust to apply to the Rosen continued fractions and their recently introduced alpha-variants.
We show that the set of real numbers of Lagrange value 3 has Hausdorff dimension zero by showing the appropriate generalization for each element of the Teichmueller space of the appropriate subgroup of the classical modular group.
We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that a nanoscale hollow channel placed centrally in the solid glass core of a photonic crystal fiber strongly enhances the cylindrical birefringence (the modal index difference between radially and azim
uthally polarized modes). Furthermore, it causes a large split in group velocity and group velocity dispersion. We show analytically that all three parameters can be varied over a wide range by tuning the diameters of the nanobore and the core.
We show that each of Veechs original examples of translation surfaces with ``optimal dynamics whose trace field is of degree greater than two has non-periodic directions of vanishing SAF-invariant. Furthermore, we give explicit examples of pseudo-Ano
sov diffeomorphisms whose contracting direction has zero SAF-invariant.
