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.
We introduce a finite-range pseudopotential built as an expansion in derivatives up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) and we calculate the corresponding nonlocal energy density functional (EDF). The coupling constants of the nonlocal
EDF, for both finite nuclei and infinite nuclear matter, are expressed through the parameters of the pseudopotential. All central, spin-orbit, and tensor terms of the pseudopotential are derived both in the spherical-tensor and Cartesian representation. At next-to-leading order (NLO), we also derive relations between the nonlocal EDF expressed in the spherical-tensor and Cartesian formalism. Finally, a simplified version of the finite-range pseudopotential is considered, which generates the EDF identical to that generated by a local potential.
Recently, it has been recently shown that the linear response theory in symmetric nuclear matter can be used as a tool to detect finite size instabilities for different Skyrme functionals. In particular it has been shown that there is a correlation b
etween the density at which instabilities occur in infinite matter and the instabilities in finite nuclei. In this article we present a new fitting protocol that uses this correlation to add new additional constraint in Symmetric Infinite Nuclear Matter in order to ensure the stability of finite nuclei against matter fluctuation in all spin and isospin channels. As an application, we give the parameters set for a new Skyrme functional which includes central and spin-orbit parts and which is free from instabilities by construction.
[Background] Symmetry restoration and configuration mixing in the spirit of the generator coordinate method based on energy density functionals have become widely used techniques in low-energy nuclear structure physics. Recently, it has been pointed
out that these techniques are ill-defined for standard Skyrme functionals, and a regularization procedure has been proposed to remove the resulting spuriosities from such calculations. This procedure imposes an integer power of the density for the density dependent terms of the functional. At present, only dated parameterizations of the Skyrme interaction fulfill this condition. [Purpose] To construct a set of parameterizations of the Skyrme energy density functional for multi-reference energy density functional calculations with regularization using the state-of-the-art fitting protocols. [Method] The parameterizations were adjusted to reproduce ground state properties of a selected set of doubly magic nuclei and properties of nuclear matter. Subsequently, these parameter sets were validated against properties of spherical and deformed nuclei. [Results] Our parameter sets successfully reproduce the experimental binding energies and charge radii for a wide range of singly-magic nuclei. Compared to the widely used SLy5 and to the SIII parameterization that has integer powers of the density, a significant improvement of the reproduction of the data is observed. Similarly, a good description of the deformation properties at $Asim 80$ was obtained. [Conclusions] We have constructed new Skyrme parameterizations with integer powers of the density and validated them against a broad set of experimental data for spherical and deformed nuclei. These parameterizations are tailor-made for regularized multi-reference energy density functional calculations and can be used to study correlations beyond the mean-field in atomic nuclei.
We investigate electron dynamics at the graphene edge by studying the propagation of collective edge magnetoplasmon (EMP) excitations. By timing the travel of narrow wave-packets on picosecond time scales around exfoliated samples, we find chiral pro
pagation with low attenuation at a velocity which is quantized on Hall plateaus. We extract the carrier drift contribution from the EMP propagation and find it to be slightly less than the Fermi velocity, as expected for an abrupt edge. We also extract the characteristic length for Coulomb interaction at the edge and find it to be smaller than for soft, depletion edge systems.
Nuclear effective interactions are often modelled by simple analytical expressions such as the Skyrme zero-range force. This effective interaction depends on a limited number of parameters that are usually fitted using experimental data obtained from
doubly magic nuclei. It was recently shown that many Skyrme functionals lead to the appearance of instabilities, in particular when symmetries are broken, for example unphysical polarization of odd-even or rotating nuclei. In this article, we show how the formalism of the linear response in infinite nuclear matter can be used to predict and avoid the regions of parameters that are responsible for these unphysical instabilities.
The analysis method proposed in Ref. cite{rotival07a} is applied to characterize halo properties in finite many-fermion systems. First, the versatility of the method is highlighted by applying it to light and medium-mass nuclei as well as to atom-pos
itron and ion-positronium complexes. Second, the dependence of nuclear halo properties on the characteristics of the energy density functional used in self-consistent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov calculations is studied. It is found that (a) the low-density behavior of the pairing functional and the regularization/renormalization scheme must be chosen coherently and with care to provide meaningful predictions, (b) the impact of pairing correlations on halo properties is significant and is the result of two competing effects, (c) the detailed characteristics of the pairing functional has however only little importance, (d) halo properties depend significantly on any ingredient of the energy density functional that influences the location of single-particle levels; i.e. the effective mass, the tensor terms and the saturation density of nuclear matter. The latter dependencies give insights to how experimental data on medium-mass drip-line nuclei can be used in the distant future to constrain some characteristics of the nuclear energy density functional. Last but not least, large scale predictions of halos among all spherical even-even nuclei are performed using specific sets of particle-hole and particle-particle energy functionals. It is shown that halos in the ground state of medium-mass nuclei will only be found at the very limit of neutron stability and for a limited number of elements.
We perform systematic calculations of pairing gaps in semi-magic nuclei across the nuclear chart using the Energy Density Functional method and a {it non-empirical} pairing functional derived, without further approximation, at lowest order in the two
-nucleon vacuum interaction, including the Coulomb force. The correlated single-particle motion is accounted for by the SLy4 semi-empirical functional. Rather unexpectedly, both neutron and proton pairing gaps thus generated are systematically close to experimental data. Such a result further suggests that missing effects, i.e. higher partial-waves of the NN interaction, the NNN interaction and the coupling to collective fluctuations, provide an overall contribution that is sub-leading as for generating pairing gaps in nuclei. We find that including the Coulomb interaction is essential as it reduces proton pairing gaps by up to 40%.
We discuss the origin of pathological behaviors that have been recently identified in particle-number-restoration calculations performed within the nuclear energy density functional framework. A regularization method that removes the problematic term
s from the multi-reference energy density functional and which applies (i) to any symmetry restoration- and/or generator-coordinate-method-based configuration mixing calculation and (ii) to energy density functionals depending only on integer powers of the density matrices, was proposed in [D. Lacroix, T. Duguet, M. Bender, arXiv:0809.2041] and implemented for particle-number restoration calculations in [M. Bender, T. Duguet, D. Lacroix, arXiv:0809.2045]. In the present paper, we address the viability of non-integer powers of the density matrices in the nuclear energy density functional. Our discussion builds upon the analysis already carried out in [J. Dobaczewski emph{et al.}, Phys. Rev. C textbf{76}, 054315 (2007)]. First, we propose to reduce the pathological nature of terms depending on a non-integer power of the density matrices by regularizing the fraction that relates to the integer part of the exponent using the method proposed in [D. Lacroix, T. Duguet, M. Bender, arXiv:0809.2041]. Then, we discuss the spurious features brought about by the remaining fractional power. Finally, we conclude that non-integer powers of the density matrices are not viable and should be avoided in the first place when constructing nuclear energy density functionals that are eventually meant to be used in multi-reference calculations.
