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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,495 records · Page 83
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

Diagnostics of the fine spectrum of a quantum well in laser heterostructures using ultrasonic deformation

This paper describes a new acoustoelectronic effect in laser nanoheterostructures, which is caused by hole energy modulation and intermixing of hole wave functions in the quantum well of a laser structure in response to ultrasonic deformation. Experimental data are presented which indicate that the laser output intensity and polarisation direction vary periodically, with the acoustic wave period. Theoretical analysis of experimental data is used to assess parameters of the quantum well and the strain distribution in the heterostructure. (semiconductor lasers. physics and technology)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Polarized near-infrared intersubband absorptions in CdSe colloidal quantum wells

Colloidal quantum wells are two-dimensional materials grown with atomically-precise thickness that dictates their electronic structure. Although intersubband absorption in epitaxial quantum wells is well-known, analogous observations in non-epitaxial two-dimensional materials are sparse. Here in this paper, we show that CdSe nanoplatelet quantum wells have narrow (30–200 meV), polarized intersubband absorption features when photoexcited or under applied bias, which can be tuned by thickness across the near-infrared (NIR) spectral window (900–1600 nm) inclusive of important telecommunications wavelengths. By examination of the optical absorption and polarization-resolved measurements, the NIR absorptions are assigned to electron intersubband transitions. Under photoexcitation, the intersubband features display hot carrier and Auger recombination effects similar to excitonic absorptions. Sequenced two-color photoexcitation permits the sub-picosecond modulation of the carrier temperature in such colloidal quantum wells. This work suggests that colloidal quantum wells may be promising building blocks for NIR technologies.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2016

Generalized model screening potentials for Fermi-Dirac plasmas

In this paper, some properties of relativistically degenerate quantum plasmas, such as static ion screening, structure factor, and Thomson scattering cross-section, are studied in the framework of linearized quantum hydrodynamic theory with the newly proposed kinetic γ-correction to Bohm term in low frequency limit. It is found that the correction has a significant effect on the properties of quantum plasmas in all density regimes, ranging from solid-density up to that of white dwarf stars. It is also found that Shukla-Eliasson attractive force exists up to a few times the density of metals, and the ionic correlations are seemingly apparent in the radial distribution function signature. Simplified statically screened attractive and repulsive potentials are presented for zero-temperature Fermi-Dirac plasmas, valid for a wide range of quantum plasma number-density and atomic number values. Moreover, it is observed that crystallization of white dwarfs beyond a critical core number-density persists with this new kinetic correction, but it is shifted to a much higher number-density value of n{sub 0} ≃ 1.94 × 10{sup 37} cm{sup −3} (1.77 × 10{sup 10} gr cm{sup −3}), which is nearly four orders of magnitude less than the nuclear density. It is found that the maximal Thomson scattering with the γ-corrected structure factor is a remarkable property of white dwarf stars. However, with the new γ-correction, the maximal scattering shifts to the spectrum region between hard X-ray and low-energy gamma-rays. White dwarfs composed of higher atomic-number ions are observed to maximally Thomson-scatter at slightly higher wavelengths, i.e., they maximally scatter slightly low-energy photons in the presence of correction.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Spin–Lattice Relaxation Decoherence Suppression in Vanishing Orbital Angular Momentum Qubits

Multifrequency electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy on oriented single crystals of magnetically dilute Gd(III) ions in Gd 0.004 Y 0.996 (trensal) is used to determine the Hamiltonian parameters of the ground 8 S 7/2 term and its phase memory time, Tm, characterizing its coherent spin dynamics. Here, the vanishing orbital angular momentum of the 8 S 7/2 term makes it relatively insensitive to spin–lattice relaxation mediated by magnetoelastic coupling and leads to a T m of 12 μs at 3 K, which is not limited by spin–lattice relaxation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Representations of relativistic particles of arbitrary spin in Poincaré, Lorentz, and Euclidean covariant formulations of relativistic quantum mechanics

Background: Relativistic treatments of quantum mechanical systems are important for understanding hadronic structure and dynamics at subnucleon scales. Relativistic invariance of a quantum system means that there is an underlying unitary representation of the Poincaré group. This is equivalent to the requirement that the quantum observables (probabilities, expectation values, and ensemble averages) for equivalent measurements performed in different inertial reference frames are identical. Different representations are used in practice, including Poincaré covariant forms of dynamics, representations based on Lorentz covariant wave functions, Euclidean covariant representations, and representations generated by Lorentz covariant fields. Purpose: The purpose of this work is to illustrate the relation between the different equivalent representations of states in relativistic quantum mechanics. Method: The starting point is a description of a particle of mass m and spin j using irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. Since any unitary representation of the Poincaré group can be decomposed into a direct integral of irreducible representations, these are the basic building blocks of any relativistically invariant quantum theory. The equivalence is established by constructing equivalent Lorentz covariant irreducible representations from Poincaré covariant irreducible representations and constructing equivalent Euclidean covariant irreducible representations from Lorentz covariant irreducible representations. Results: Equivalent descriptions for positive mass representations of arbitrary spin are presented in each of these frameworks. Dynamical realizations of the different representations are briefly discussed. Conclusion: Poincaré covariant, Lorentz covariant, and Euclidean covariant realizations of relativistic dynamics are shown to be equivalent by explicitly relating the positive-mass positive-energy irreducible representations of the Poincaré group that appear in the direct integral.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Entanglement Generation in Weakly Driven Arrays of Multilevel Atoms via Dipolar Interactions

We investigate the driven-dissipative dynamics of multilevel atomic arrays interacting via dipolar interactions at subwavelength spacings. Unlike two-level atoms in the weakly excited regime, multilevel atoms can become strongly entangled. Here, the entanglement manifests as the growth of spin waves in the ground-state manifold and survives after turning off the drive. We propose the 2.9 μ⁢m transition between 3 P 2 ↔ 3 D 3 in 88 Sr with 389 nm trapping light as a platform to test our predictions and explore many-body physics with light-matter interactions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Nanostructured topological state in bismuth nanotube arrays: inverting bonding–antibonding levels of molecular orbitals

We demonstrate a new class of nanostructured topological materials that exhibit a topological quantum phase arising from nanoscale structural motifs. Based on first-principles calculations, we show that an array of bismuth nanotubes (Bi-NTs), a superlattice of Bi-NTs with periodicity in the order of tube diameter, behaves as a nanostructured two-dimensional (2D) quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator, as confirmed from the calculated band topology and 1D helical edge states. The underpinning mechanism of the QSH phase in the Bi-NT array is revealed to be inversion of bonding–antibonding levels of molecular orbitals of constituent nanostructural elements in place of atomic-orbital band inversion in conventional QSH insulators. The quantized edge conductance of the QSH phase in a Bi-NT array can be more easily isolated from bulk contributions and their properties can be highly tuned by tube size, representing distinctive advantages of nanostructured topological phases. Our finding opens a new avenue for topological materials by extending topological phases into nanomaterials with molecular-orbital-band inversion.

Jin, Kyung-Hwan↗
DOE OSTI2021

Hydrodynamics of quantum spin liquids

Quantum spin liquids are topological states of matter that arise in frustrated quantum magnets at low temperatures. At low energies, such states exhibit emergent gauge fields and fractionalized quasiparticles and can also possess enhanced global symmetries compared to their parent microscopic Hamiltonians. Here we study the consequences of this emergent gauge and symmetry structure for the hydrodynamics of quantum spin liquids. Specifically, we analyze two cases, the U(1) spin liquid with a Fermi surface and the SU(4)-symmetric “algebraic” spin liquid. We show that the emergent degrees of freedom in the spin liquid phase lead to a variety of additional hydrodynamic modes compared to the high-temperature paramagnetic phase. We identify a hydrodynamic regime for the internal U(1) gauge field common to both states, characterized by slow diffusion of the internal transverse photon.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Controllable synthesis, growth mechanism and optical properties of the ZnSe quantum dots and nanoparticles with different crystalline phases

Graphical abstract: The ZnSe quantum dots (3.5 nm) with the wurtzite structure exhibited a strong near band-edge emission (NBE) peak centered at 422 nm. The zinc blende ZnSe nanoparticles (21 nm) exhibited near-band-edge luminescence peak centered at 472 nm. Highlights: ► The results of TEM showed that the ZnSe quantum dots were about 3.5 nm. ► The ZnSe quantum dots exhibited a near band-edge emission peak centered at 422 nm. ► The ZnSe nanoparticles exhibited near-band-edge luminescence peak centered at 472 nm. - Abstract: ZnSe precursors were prepared by a solvothermal method at 180 °C without any surface-active agents. ZnSe quantum dots and nanoparticles were obtained by annealing the precursors at 300 °C for 2 h in argon atmosphere. The ZnSe quantum dots were about 3.5 nm, while the ZnSe nanoparticles were about 21 nm, as observed using TEM. The growth mechanisms for the two samples were discussed; this proved that the high coordination ability of ethylenediamine to zinc played an important role in the final phase of the products. The ZnSe quantum dots with the wurtzite structure exhibited a strong near band-edge emission (NBE) peak centered at 422 nm, which was blue-shifted in comparison to that of the bulk ZnSe, which was mainly caused by the quantum confinement effect. However, the zinc blende ZnSe nanoparticles exhibited a near-band-edge luminescence peak centered at 472 nm.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Ab initio structure determination of nanocrystals of organic pharmaceutical compounds by electron diffraction at room temperature using a Timepix quantum area direct electron detector

A specialized quantum area detector for electron diffraction studies makes it possible to solve the structure of small organic compound nanocrystals in non-cryo conditions by direct methods. Until recently, structure determination by transmission electron microscopy of beam-sensitive three-dimensional nanocrystals required electron diffraction tomography data collection at liquid-nitrogen temperature, in order to reduce radiation damage. Here it is shown that the novel Timepix detector combines a high dynamic range with a very high signal-to-noise ratio and single-electron sensitivity, enabling ab initio phasing of beam-sensitive organic compounds. Low-dose electron diffraction data (∼0.013 e{sup −} Å{sup −2} s{sup −1}) were collected at room temperature with the rotation method. It was ascertained that the data were of sufficient quality for structure solution using direct methods using software developed for X-ray crystallography (XDS, SHELX) and for electron crystallography (ADT3D/PETS, SIR2014)

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

From transistor to trapped-ion computers for quantum chemistry

Over the last few decades, quantum chemistry has progressed through the development of computational methods based on modern digital computers. However, these methods can hardly fulfill the exponentially-growing resource requirements when applied to large quantum systems. As pointed out by Feynman, this restriction is intrinsic to all computational models based on classical physics. Recently, the rapid advancement of trapped-ion technologies has opened new possibilities for quantum control and quantum simulations. Here, we present an efficient toolkit that exploits both the internal and motional degrees of freedom of trapped ions for solving problems in quantum chemistry, including molecular electronic structure, molecular dynamics, and vibronic coupling. We focus on applications that go beyond the capacity of classical computers, but may be realizable on state-of-the-art trapped-ion systems. These results allow us to envision a new paradigm of quantum chemistry that shifts from the current transistor to a near-future trapped-ion-based technology.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Universal corner symmetry and the orbit method for gravity

A universal symmetry algebra organizing the gravitational phase space has been recently found. It corresponds to the subset of diffeomorphisms that become physical at corners – codimension-2 surfaces supporting Noether charges. It applies to both finite distance and asymptotic corners. In this paper, we study this algebra and its representations, via the coadjoint orbit method. We show that generic orbits of the universal algebra split into sub-orbits spanned by finite distance and asymptotic corner symmetries, such that the full universal symmetry algebra gives rise to a unified treatment of corners in a manifold. We then identify the geometric structure that captures these algebraic properties on corners, which is the Atiyah Lie algebroid associated to a principal GL(2,R) $\ltimes$ R 2 -bundle. This structure is suggestive of the existence of a novel quantum gravitational theory which would unitarily glue such geometric structures, with spacetime geometries appearing as semi-classical configurations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Collective Phonon–Polaritonic Modes in Silicon Carbide Subarrays

Localized surface phonon polaritons (LSPhPs) can be implemented to engineer light–matter interactions through nanoscale patterning for a range of midinfrared application spaces. However, the polar material systems studied to date have mainly focused on simple designs featuring a single element in the periodic unit cell. Increasing the complexity of the unit cell can serve to modify the resonant near-fields and intra- and inter-unit-cell coupling as well as to dictate spectral tuning in the far-field. In this work, we exploit more complicated unit-cell structures to realize LSPhP modes with additional degrees of design freedom, which are largely unexplored. Collectively excited LSPhP modes with distinctly symmetric and antisymmetric near-fields are supported in these subarray designs, which are based on nanopillars that are scaled by the number of subarray elements to ensure a constant unit-cell size. Moreover, we observe an anomalous mode-matching of the collective symmetric mode in our fabricated subarrays that is robust to changing numbers of pillars within the subarrays as well as to defects intentionally introduced in the form of missing pillars. This work therefore illustrates the hierarchical design of tailored LSPhP resonances and modal near-field profiles simultaneously for a variety of IR applications such as surface-enhanced spectroscopies and biochemical sensing.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

Optical Control of Fluorescence through plasmonic eigenmode extinction

We introduce the concept of optical control of the fluorescence yield of CdSe quantum dots through plasmon-induced structural changes in random semicontinuous nanostructured gold films. We demonstrate that the wavelength- and polarization dependent coupling between quantum dots and the semicontinuous films, and thus the fluorescent emission spectrum, can be controlled and significantly increased through the optical extinction of a selective band of eigenmodes in the films. This optical method of effecting controlled changes in the metal nanostructure allows for versatile functionality in a single sample and opens a pathway to in situ control over the fluorescence spectrum.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Statistical analysis on random quantum circuit sampling by Sycamore and Zuchongzhi quantum processors

Random quantum circuit sampling, a task to sample bit strings from a random quantum circuit, is considered a suitable benchmark task to demonstrate the outperformance of quantum computers even with noisy qubits. Recently, random quantum circuit sampling was performed on the Sycamore quantum processor with 53 qubits [Nature (London) 574, 505 (2019)] and on the Zuchongzhi quantum processor with 56 qubits [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 180501 (2021)]. Here, we analyze and compare the statistical properties of the outputs of the random quantum circuit sampling by the Sycamore and Zuchongzhi processors. Using the Marchenko-Pastur law of random matrices of bit strings and the Wasssertein distances between bit strings, we find that the statistical properties of Sycamore bit strings are quite different from those of Zuchongzhi bit strings, while both processors score similar values of linear cross-entropy fidelity for random circuit sampling. Some bit strings sampled by the Zuchongzhi processor pass the NIST random number tests while both Sycamore and Zuchongzhi processors show similar patterns in the heat maps of bit strings. Zuchongzhi bit strings are much closer to classical uniform random bits than those of Sycamore. It is shown that the statistical properties of bit strings of both random quantum circuits change little as the depth of the random quantum circuits increases. Our findings raise a question about the computational reliability of noisy quantum processors because two quantum processors with similar noise levels and similar qubit structures produced statistically different outputs for the same random quantum circuit sampling.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Hardware-Conscious Optimization of the Quantum Toffoli Gate

While quantum computing holds great potential in combinatorial optimization, electronic structure calculation, and number theory, the current era of quantum computing is limited by noisy hardware. Many quantum compilation approaches can mitigate the effects of imperfect hardware by optimizing quantum circuits for objectives such as critical path length. Few approaches consider quantum circuits in terms of the set of vendor-calibrated operations (i.e., native gates) available on target hardware. This manuscript expands the analytical and numerical approaches for optimizing quantum circuits at this abstraction level. We present a procedure for combining the strengths of analytical native gate-level optimization with numerical optimization. Although we focus on optimizing Toffoli gates on the IBMQ native gate set, the methods presented are generalizable to any gate and superconducting qubit architecture. Our optimized Toffoli gate implementation demonstrates an 18% reduction in infidelity compared with the canonical implementation as benchmarked on IBM Jakarta with quantum process tomography. Assuming the inclusion of multi-qubit cross-resonance (MCR) gates in the IBMQ native gate set, we produce Toffoli implementations with only six multi-qubit gates, a 25% reduction from the canonical eight multi-qubit implementations for linearly connected qubits.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Editorial: Quantum Information and Quantum Computing for Chemical Systems

Quantum computing has emerged as an exciting inter-disciplinary research topic that cuts across the traditional fields of physics, computer science, and engineering. It is a revolutionary model of computation that has offered new insights into methods for modeling and simulation of chemical systems. Applications of quantum computing to chemistry have demonstrated rapid progress on both theoretical and experimental fronts. Past theoretical efforts have shown how to adapt quantum computation to a variety of problems including electronic structure and molecular dynamics. In addition, the development of quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry has been stimulated by the greater availability of more capable quantum computing devices. Advances in the number and quality of qubits continues to enable remarkable proof-of-concept demonstrations working towards a milestone of quantum computational advantage.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2018

Coarse-Grained Double-Stranded RNA Model from Quantum-Mechanical Calculations

A coarse-grained model for simulating structural properties of double-stranded RNA is developed with parameters obtained from quantum-mechanical calculations. This model follows previous parametrization for double stranded DNA, which is based on mapping the all-atom picture to a coarse-grained four-bead scheme. Chemical and structural differences between RNA and DNA have been taken into account for the model development. The parametrization is based on simulations using density functional theory (DFT) on separate units of the RNA molecule without implementing experimental data. The total energy is decomposed into four terms of physical significance: hydrogen bonding interaction, stacking interactions, backbone interactions, and electrostatic interactions. The first three interactions are treated within DFT, whereas the last one is included within a mean field approximation. Our double-stranded RNA coarse-grained model predicts stable helical structures for RNA. Other characteristics, such as structural or mechanical properties are reproduced with a very good accuracy. The development of the coarse-grained model for RNA allows extending the spatial and temporal length scales accessed by computer simulations and being able to model RNA-related biophysical processes, as well as novel RNA nanostructures.

Cruz-León, Sergio↗