Intelligent thermal cloak-concentrators

How to macroscopically control the flow of heat at will is up to now a challenge, which, however, is very important for human life since heat flow is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Inspired by intelligent electronic components or intelligent materials, here we demonstrate, analytically and numerically, a unique class of intelligent bifunctional thermal metamaterials called thermal cloak-concentrators, which can automatically change from a cloak (concentrator) to a concentrator (cloak) when the applied temperature field decreases (increases). For future experimental realization, the behavior is also confirmed by assembling homogeneous isotropic materials according to the effective medium theory. The underlying mechanism originates from the effect of nonlinearity in thermal conduction. This work not only makes it possible to achieve a switchable Seebeck effect, but also offers guidance both for macroscopic manipulation of heat flow at will and for the design of similar intelligent multifunctional metamaterials in optics, electromagnetics, acoustics, or elastodynamics.

Temperature-dependent transformation thermotics: From switchable thermal cloaks to macroscopic thermal diodes

The macroscopic control of ubiquitous heat flow remains poorly explored due to the lack of a fundamental theoretical method. Here, by establishing temperature-dependent transformation thermotics for treating materials whose conductivity depends on temperature, we show analytical and simulation evidence for switchable thermal cloaking and a macroscopic thermal diode based on the cloaking. The latter allows heat flow in one direction but prohibits the flow in the opposite direction, which is also confirmed by our experiments. Our results suggest that the temperature-dependent transformation thermotics could be a fundamental theoretical method for achieving macroscopic heat rectification, and provide guidance both for macroscopic control of heat flow and for the design of the counterparts of switchable thermal cloaks or macroscopic thermal diodes in other fields like seismology, acoustics, electromagnetics, or matter waves.

In-situ EXAFS study on the thermal decomposition of TiH2

Thermal decomposition behaviors of TiH2 powder under a flowing helium atmosphere and in a low vacuum condition have been studied by using in-situ EXAFS technique. By an EXAFS analysis containing the multiple scattering paths including H atoms, the changes of hydrogen stoichiometric ratio and the phase transformation sequence are obtained. The results demonstrate that the initial decomposition temperature is dependent on experimental conditions, which occurs, respectively, at about 300 and 400 degree in a low vacuum condition and under a flowing helium atmosphere. During the decomposition process of TiH2 in a low vacuum condition, the sample experiences a phase change process: {delta}(TiH2) - {delta}(TiHx) - {delta}(TiHx)+{beta}(TiHx) - {delta}(TiHx)+{beta}(TiHx)+{alpha}(Ti) - {beta}(TiHx)+{alpha}(Ti) - {alpha}(Ti)+{beta}(Ti). This study offers a way to detect the structural information of hydrogen. A detailed discussion about the decomposition process of TiH2 is given in this paper.

Direct comparison of a Ca+ single ion clock against a Sr optical lattice clock

Optical frequency comparison of the 40Ca+ clock transition u_{Ca} (2S1/2-2D5/2, 729nm) against the 87Sr optical lattice clock transition u_{Sr}(1S0-3P0, 698nm) has resulted in a frequency ratio u_{Ca} / u_{Sr} = 0.957 631 202 358 049 9(2 3). The rapid nature of optical comparison allowed the statistical uncertainty of frequency ratio u_{Ca} / u_{Sr} to reach 1x10-15 in only 1000s and yielded a value consistent with that calculated from separate absolute frequency measurements of u_{Ca} using the International Atomic Time (TAI) link. The total uncertainty of the frequency ratio using optical comparison (free from microwave link uncertainties) is smaller than that obtained using absolute frequency measurement, demonstrating the advantage of optical frequency evaluation. We report the absolute frequency of ^{40}Ca+ with a systematic uncertainty 14 times smaller than our previous measurement [1].

Design of dispersive optomechanical coupling and cooling in ultrahigh-Q/V slot-type photonic crystal cavities

We describe the strong optomechanical dynamical interactions in ultrahigh-Q/V slot-type photonic crystal cavities. The dispersive coupling is based on a mode-gap photonic crystal cavities with light localization in an air mode with 0.02(lambda/n)3 modal volumes while preserving optical cavity Q up to 5 x 106. The mechanical mode is modeled to have fundamental resonance omega_m/2pi of 460 MHz and a quality factor Qm estimated at 12,000. For this slot-type optomechanical cavity, the dispersive coupling gom is numerically computed at up to 940 GHz/nm (Lom of 202 nm) for the fundamental optomechanical mode. Dynamical parametric oscillations for both cooling and amplification, in the resolved and unresolved sideband limit, are examined numerically, along with the displacement spectral density and cooling rates for the various operating parameters.

Buffer gas induced collision shift for the $^{88}$Sr $bf{^1S_0-^3P_1}$ clock transition

Precision saturation spectroscopy of the $^{88}{rm Sr} ^1S_0-^3P_1$ is performed in a vapor cell filled with various rare gas including He, Ne, Ar, and Xe. By continuously calibrating the absolute frequency of the probe laser, buffer gas induced collision shifts of $sim $kHz are detected with gas pressure of 1-20 mTorr. Helium gave the largest fractional shift of $1.6 times 10^{-9} {rm Torr}^{-1}$. Comparing with a simple impact calculation and a Doppler-limited experiment of Holtgrave and Wolf [Phys. Rev. A {bf 72}, 012711 (2005)], our results show larger broadening and smaller shifting coefficient, indicating effective atomic loss due to velocity changing collisions. The applicability of the result to the $^1S_0-^3P_0$ optical lattice clock transition is also discussed.

Probing Mott lobes via the AC Josephson effect

The alternating-current (AC) Josephson effect is studied in a system consisting of two weakly coupled Bose Hubbard models. In the framework of the mean field theory, Gross-Pitaevskii equations show that the amplitude of the Josephson current is proportional to the product of superfluid order parameters. In addition, the chemical potential--current relation for a small size system is obtained via the exact numerical computation. This allows us to propose a feasible experimental scheme to measure the Mott lobes of the quantum phase transition.

Photon-like flying qubit in the coupled cavity array

We propose a feasible scheme to realize a spin network via a coupled cavity array with the appropriate arrangement of external multi-driving lasers. It is demonstrated that the linear photon-like dispersion is achievable and this property opens up the possibility of realizing the pre-engineered spin network which is beneficial to quantum information processing.