Wannier–Koopmans method calculations for transition metal oxide band gaps

The widely used density functional theory (DFT) has a major drawback of underestimating the band gaps of materials. Wannier–Koopmans method (WKM) was recently developed for band gap calculations with accuracy on a par with more complicated methods. WKM has been tested for main group covalent semiconductors, alkali halides, 2D materials, and organic crystals. Here we apply the WKM to another interesting type of material system: the transition metal (TM) oxides. TM oxides can be classified as either with d0 or d10 closed shell occupancy or partially occupied open shell configuration, and the latter is known to be strongly correlated Mott insulators. We found that, while WKM provides adequate band gaps for the d0 and d10 TM oxides, it fails to provide correct band gaps for the group with partially occupied d states. This issue is also found in other mean-field approaches like the GW calculations. We believe that the problem comes from a strong interaction between the occupied and unoccupied d-state Wannier functions in a partially occupied d-state system. We also found that, for pseudopotential calculations including deep core levels, it is necessary to remove the electron densities of these deep core levels in the Hartree and exchange–correlation energy functional when calculating the WKM correction parameters for the d-state Wannier functions

Time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model for light-induced superconductivity in the cuprate LESCO

Cavalleri and coworkers have discovered evidence of light-induced superconductivity and related phenomena in several different materials. Here we suggest that some features may be naturally interpreted using a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model. In particular, we focus on the lifetime of the transient state in La$_{1.675}$Eu$_{0.2}$Sr$_{0.125}$CuO$_4$ (LESCO$_{1/8}$), which is remarkably long below about 25 K, but exhibits different behavior at higher temperature.Comment: 5 pages, accepted by European Journal of Physics: Special Topic

Kinetic theory of spin transport in n-typed semiconductor quantum wells

We set up a set of many-body kinetic Bloch equations with spacial inhomogeneity. We reexamine the widely adopted quasi-independent electron model (QIEM) and show the inadequacy of this model in studying the spin transport. We further point out a new decoherence effect based on interference effect of electrons/spins with different momentum ${\bf k}$ along the direction of the diffusion, which is referred as ``inhomogeneous broadening effect'' in our paper. We show that this inhomogeneous broadening can cause spin decoherence alone even in the absence of the scattering and that the resulting decoherence can be more important than the dephasing effect due to the D'yakonov-Perel' (DP) term together with the scattering. Our theory takes all the inhomogeneous broadening effect, the spin diffusion due to the spacial inhomogeneity and the spin dephasing into account and gets the results self-consistently. We further study the spin diffusion/transport of an $n$-typed GaAs quantum well (QW) in the steady state under different conditions, such as at different temperatures; in the presence of impurities; in the presence of external electric fields along the diffusion direction and/or the QW growth direction; and with magnetic fields in the Voigt configuration. We also demonstrate a time evolution of a spin package calculated from our many-body theory. Different features predicted from our many-body theory are highlighted in the paper.Comment: Some misprints in the previous version (Revised v2) are correcte

Beating Rayleigh's Curse by Imaging Using Phase Information

Any imaging device such as a microscope or telescope has a resolution limit, a minimum separation it can resolve between two objects or sources; this limit is typically defined by "Rayleigh's criterion", although in recent years there have been a number of high-profile techniques demonstrating that Rayleigh's limit can be surpassed under particular sets of conditions. Quantum information and quantum metrology have given us new ways to approach measurement ; a new proposal inspired by these ideas has now re-examined the problem of trying to estimate the separation between two poorly resolved point sources. The "Fisher information" provides the inverse of the Cramer-Rao bound, the lowest variance achievable for an unbiased estimator. For a given imaging system and a fixed number of collected photons, Tsang, Nair and Lu observed that the Fisher information carried by the intensity of the light in the image-plane (the only information available to traditional techniques, including previous super-resolution approaches) falls to zero as the separation between the sources decreases; this is known as "Rayleigh's Curse." On the other hand, when they calculated the quantum Fisher information of the full electromagnetic field (including amplitude and phase information), they found it remains constant. In other words, there is infinitely more information available about the separation of the sources in the phase of the field than in the intensity alone. Here we implement a proof-of-principle system which makes use of the phase information, and demonstrate a greatly improved ability to estimate the distance between a pair of closely-separated sources, and immunity to Rayleigh's curse

Electron spin relaxation in cubic GaN quantum dots

The spin relaxation time $T_{1}$ in zinc blende GaN quantum dot is investigated for different magnetic field, well width and quantum dot diameter. The spin relaxation caused by the two most important spin relaxation mechanisms in zinc blende semiconductor quantum dots, {i.e.} the electron-phonon scattering in conjunction with the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling and the second-order process of the hyperfine interaction combined with the electron-phonon scattering, are systematically studied. The relative importance of the two mechanisms are compared in detail under different conditions. It is found that due to the small spin orbit coupling in GaN, the spin relaxation caused by the second-order process of the hyperfine interaction combined with the electron-phonon scattering plays much more important role than it does in the quantum dot with narrower band gap and larger spin-orbit coupling, such as GaAs and InAs.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, PRB 79, 2009, in pres

Dense blocks of energetic ions driven by multi-petawatt lasers

Laser-driven ion accelerators have the advantages of compact size, high density, and short bunch duration over conventional accelerators. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to simultaneously enhance the yield and quality of laser-driven ion beams for practical applications. Here we propose a scheme to address this challenge via the use of emerging multi-petawatt lasers and a density-modulated target. The density-modulated target permits its ions to be uniformly accelerated as a dense block by laser radiation pressure. In addition, the beam quality of the accelerated ions is remarkably improved by embedding the target in a thick enough substrate, which suppresses hot electron refluxing and thus alleviates plasma heating. Particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that almost all ions in a solid-density plasma of a few microns can be uniformly accelerated to about 25% of the speed of light by a laser pulse at an intensity around 1022 W/cm2. The resulting dense block of energetic ions may drive fusion ignition and more generally create matter with unprecedented high energy density.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure