Fastest Frozen Temperature for a Thermodynamic System

For a thermodynamic system obeying both the equipartition theorem in high temperature and the third law in low temperature, the curve showing relationship between the specific heat and the temperature has two common behaviors: it terminates at zero when the temperature is zero Kelvin and converges to a constant as temperature is higher and higher. Since it is always possible to find the characteristic temperature $T_{C}$ to mark the excited temperature as the specific heat almost reaches the equipartition value, it is reasonable to find a temperature in low temperature interval, complementary to $T_{C}$. The present study reports a possibly universal existence of the such a temperature $vartheta$, defined by that at which the specific heat falls textit{fastest} along with decrease of the temperature. For the Debye model of solids, above the temperature $vartheta$ the Debyes law starts to fail.

Multi-outcome homodyne detection in a coherent-state light interferometer

The Cram{e}r-Rao bound plays a central role in both classical and quantum parameter estimation, but finding the observable and the resulting inversion estimator that saturates this bound remains an open issue for general multi-outcome measurements. Here we consider multi-outcome homodyne detection in a coherent-light Mach-Zehnder interferometer and construct a family of inversion estimators that almost saturate the Cram{e}r-Rao bound over the whole range of phase interval. This provides a clue on constructing optimal inversion estimators for phase estimation and other parameter estimation in any multi-outcome measurement.

Density-functional studies of spin-orbit splitting in graphene on metals

Spin-orbit splitting in graphene on Ni, Au, or Ag (111) substrates was examined on the basis of density-functional theory. Graphene grown on the three metals was found to have Rashba splitting of a few or several tens of meV. The strong splitting obtained on Au or Ag substrates was mainly ascribed to effective hybridization of graphene $p_{z}$ state with Au or Ag $d_{z^{2}}$ states, rather than charge transfer as previously proposed. Our work provides theoretical understandings of the metal-induced Rashba effect in graphene.