Vibrational modes and lattice distortion of a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond from first-principles calculations

We investigate vibrational properties and lattice distortion of negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Using the first-principles electronic structure calculations, we show that the presence of NV center leads to appearance of a large number of quasilocalized vibrational modes (qLVMs) with different degree of localization. The vibration patterns and the symmetries of the qLVMs are presented and analyzed in detail for both ground and excited orbital states of the NV center. We find that in the high-symmetry ($C_{3v}$) excited orbital state a pair of degenerate qLVMs becomes unstable, and the stable excited state has lower ($C_{1h}$) symmetry. This is a direct indication of the Jahn-Teller effect, and our studies suggest that dynamical Jahn-Teller effect in the weak coupling regime takes place. We have also performed a detailed comparison of our results with the available experimental data on the vibrations involved in optical emission/absorption of the NV centers. We have directly demonstrated that, among other modes, the qLVMs crucially impact the optical properties of the NV centers in diamond, and identified the most important groups of qLVMs. Our results are important for deeper understanding of the optical properties and the orbital relaxation associated with lattice vibrations of the NV centers.Comment: 10 RevTeX pages, 10 EPS figure

Anomalous Tail Effect on Resistivity Transition and Weak-link Behavior of Iron Based Superconductor

Temperature dependent resistivity of the iron-based superconductor NdFeAsO0.88F0.12 was measured under different applied fields and excitation currents. Arrhenius plot shows an anomalous tail effect, which contains obvious two resistivity dropping stages. The first is caused by the normal superconducting transition, and the second is supposed to be related to the weak-link between the grains. A model for the resistivity dropping related to the weak-link behavior is proposed, which is based on the Josephson junctions formed by the impurities in grain boundaries like FeAs, Sm2O3 and cracks together with the adjacent grains. These Josephson junctions can be easily broken by the applied fields and the excitations currents, leading to the anomalous resistivity tail in many polycrystalline iron-based superconductors. The calculated resistivity dropping agrees well with the experimental data, which manifests the correctness of the explanation of the obtained anomalous tail effect.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

A mathematical model for a house integrated with an elevated Chinese Kang heating system

Chinese kang, a potentially energy-efficient domestic heating system in China, uses high thermal mass to store surplus heat from the stove during cooking and releases it later for space heating. In this paper a preliminary mathematical model is developed for a House Integrated with an Elevated Kang system (HIEK). This model considers the transient thermal behaviors of building envelope, kang system and indoor air. The macroscopic approach is used to model the thermal and airflow process for the elevated kang system. The numerical method for solving the resultant non-linear equations of HIEK is proposed and implemented. The HIEK model is preliminarily evaluated using the measured data from a field survey, and agreement is reasonably good. This model can be used to predict the indoor air temperature for multi-zone HIEK by inputting the basic parameters like geometry, physical properties of building and kang. The model can be easily extended for investigating the thermal performance of a kang system and its influence on indoor thermal environment and building energy consumption. Finally, suggestions for incorporating the kang model into existing building simulation tools are also described.published_or_final_versio

Ultrathin MgB2 films fabricated on Al2O3 substrate by hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition with high Tc and Jc

Ultrathin MgB2 superconducting films with a thickness down to 7.5 nm are epitaxially grown on (0001) Al2O3 substrate by hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition method. The films are phase-pure, oxidation-free and continuous. The 7.5 nm thin film shows a Tc(0) of 34 K, which is so far the highest Tc(0) reported in MgB2 with the same thickness. The critical current density of ultrathin MgB2 films below 10 nm is demonstrated for the first time as Jc ~ 10^6 A cm^{-2} for the above 7.5 nm sample at 16 K. Our results reveal the excellent superconducting properties of ultrathin MgB2 films with thicknesses between 7.5 and 40 nm on Al2O3 substrate.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Using Stacked Sparse Auto-Encoder and Superpixel CRF for Long-Term Visual Scene Understanding of UGVs

Multiple images have been widely used for scene understanding and navigation of unmanned ground vehicles in long term operations. However, as the amount of visual data in multiple images is huge, the cumulative error in many cases becomes untenable. This paper proposes a novel method that can extract features from a large dataset of multiple images efficiently. Then the membership K-means clustering is used for high dimensional features, and the large dataset is divided into N subdatasets to train N conditional random field (CRF) models based on superpixel. A Softmax subdataset selector is used to decide which one of the N CRF models is chosen as the prediction model for labeling images. Furthermore, some experiments are conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed approach

The 7-channel FIR HCN Interferometer on J-TEXT Tokamak

A seven-channel far-infrared hydrogen cyanide (HCN) laser interferometer has been established aiming to provide the line integrated plasma density for the J-TEXT experimental scenarios. A continuous wave glow discharge HCN laser designed with a cavity length 3.4 m is used as the laser source with a wavelength of 337 {\mu}m and an output power up to 100 mW. The system is configured as a Mach-Zehnder type interferometer. Phase modulation is achieved by a rotating grating, with a modulation frequency of 10 kHz which corresponds to the temporal resolution of 0.1 ms. The beat signal is detected by TGS detector. The phase shift induced by the plasma is derived by the comparator with a phase sensitivity of 0.06 fringe. The experimental results measured by the J-TEXT interferometer are presented in details. In addition, the inversed electron density profile done by a conventional approach is also given. The kinematic viscosity of dimethyl silicone and vibration control is key issues for the system performance. The laser power stability under different kinematic viscosity of silicone oil is presented. A visible improvement of measured result on vibration reduction is shown in the paper.Comment: conference (15th-International Symposium on Laser-Aided Plasma Diagnostics

Liquid Crystal-Solid Interface Structure at the Antiferroelectric-Ferroelectric Phase Transition

Total Internal Reflection (TIR) is used to probe the molecular organization at the surface of a tilted chiral smectic liquid crystal at temperatures in the vicinity of the bulk antiferroelectric-ferroelectric phase transition. Data are interpreted using an exact analytical solution of a real model for ferroelectric order at the surface. In the mixture T3, ferroelectric surface order is expelled with the bulk ferroelectric-antiferroelectric transition. The conditions for ferroelectric order at the surface of an antiferroelectric bulk are presented