Employing Brillouin spectroscopy, strong interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions have been observed in an ultrathin Pt/CoFeB film. Our micromagnetic simulations show that spin-wave nonreciprocity due to asymmetric surface pinning is insignific
ant for the 0.8nmthick CoFeB film studied. The observed high asymmetry of the monotonic spin wave dispersion relation is thus ascribed to strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions present at the Pt/CoFeB interface. Our findings should further enhance the significance of CoFeB as an important material for magnonic, spintronic and skyrmionic applications.
Using Brillouin spectroscopy, the first observation has been made of the band structures of nanostructured defect magnonic crystals. The samples are otherwise one-dimensional periodic arrays of equal-width Ni80Fe20 and cobalt nanostripes, where the d
efects are stripes of a different width. A dispersionless defect branch emerges within the bandgap with a frequency tunable by varying the defect stripe width, while the other branches observed are similar to those of a defect-free crystal. Micromagnetic and finite-element simulations performed unveil additional tiny bandgaps and the frequency-dependent localization of the defect mode in the vicinity of the defects.
Thin films of topological insulator Bi_2Se_3 were deposited directly on insulating ferromagnetic EuS. Unusual negative magnetoresistance was observed near the zero field below the Curie temperature (T_C), resembling the weak localization effect; wher
eas the usual positive magnetoresistance was recovered above T_C. Such negative magnetoresistance was only observed for Bi_2Se_3 layers thinner than t~4nm, when its top and bottom surfaces are coupled. These results provide evidence for a proximity effect between a topological insulator and an insulating ferromagnet, laying the foundation for future realization of the half-integer quantized anomalous Hall effect in three-dimensional topological insulators.
For some samples, it has been shown that spectra of QSOs with low redshift are bluer during their brighter phases. For the FIRST bright QSO sample, we assemble their spectra from SDSS DR7 to investigate variability between the spectra from White et a
l. (2000) and from the SDSS for a long rest-frame time-lag, up to 10 years. There are 312 radio loud QSOs and 232 radio quiet QSOs in this sample, up to $z sim 3.5$. With two-epoch variation, it is found that spectra of half of the QSOs appear redder during their brighter phases. There is no obvious difference in slope variability between sub-samples of radio quiet and radio loud QSOs. This result implies that the presence of a radio jet does not affect the slope variability on 10-year timescales. The arithmetic composite difference spectrum for variable QSOs is steep at blueward of $sim$ 2500AA. The variability for the region blueward of 2500 AA is different to that for the region redward of 2500 AA.
In block-matching motion estimation (BMME), the search patterns have a significant impact on the algorithms performance, both the search speed and the search quality. The search pattern should be designed to fit the motion vector probability (MVP) di
stribution characteristics of the real-world sequences. In this paper, we build a directional model of MVP distribution to describe the directional-center-biased characteristic of the MVP distribution and the directional characteristics of the conditional MVP distribution more exactly based on the detailed statistical data of motion vectors of eighteen popular sequences. Three directional search patterns are firstly designed by utilizing the directional characteristics and they are the smallest search patterns among the popular ones. A new algorithm is proposed using the horizontal cross search pattern as the initial step and the horizontal/vertical diamond search pattern as the subsequent step for the fast BMME, which is called the directional cross diamond search (DCDS) algorithm. The DCDS algorithm can obtain the motion vector with fewer search points than CDS, DS or HEXBS while maintaining the similar or even better search quality. The gain on speedup of DCDS over CDS or DS can be up to 54.9%. The simulation results show that DCDS is efficient, effective and robust, and it can always give the faster search speed on different sequences than other fast block-matching algorithm in common use.
We study the non-thermal emission from old shell-type supernova remnants (SNRs) on the frame of a time-dependent model. In this model, the time-dependent non-thermal spectra of both primary electrons and protons as well as secondary electron/positron
($e^{pm}$) pairs can be calculated numerically by taking into account the evolution of the secondary $e^{pm}$ pairs produced from proton-proton (p-p) interactions due to the accelerated protons collide with the ambient matter in an SNR. The multi-wavelength photon spectrum for a given SNR can be produced through leptonic processes such as electron/positron synchrotron radiation, bremsstrahlung and inverse Compton scattering as well as hadronic interaction. Our results indicate that the non-thermal emission of the secondary $e^{pm}$ pairs is becoming more and more prominent when the SNR ages in the radiative phase because the source of the primary electrons has been cut off and the electron synchrotron energy loss is significant for a radiative SNR, whereas the secondary $e^{pm}$ pairs can be produced continuously for a long time in the phase due to the large energy loss time for the p-p interaction. We apply the model to two old SNRs, G8.7$-$0.1 and G23.3$-$0.3, and the predicted results can explain the observed multi-wavelength photon spectra for the two sources.
Single walled carbon nanotubes exhibit advanced electrical and surface properties useful for high performance nanoelectronics. Important to future manufacturing of nanotube circuits is large scale assembly of SWNTs into aligned forms. Despite progres
s in assembly and oriented synthesis, pristine SWNTs in aligned and close-packed form remain elusive and needed for high current, speed and density devices through collective operations of parallel SWNTs. Here, we develop a Langmuir Blodgett method achieving monolayers of aligned SWNTs with dense packing, central to which is a non covalent polymer functionalization by PmPV imparting high solubility and stability of SWNTs in an organic solvent DCE. Pressure cycling or annealing during LB film compression reduces hysteresis and facilitates high degree alignment and packing of SWNTs characterized by microscopy and polarized Raman spectroscopy. The monolayer SWNTs are readily patterned for device integration by microfabrication, enabling the highest currents 3mA through the narrowest regions packed with aligned SWNTs thus far.
