Physics Department News
Spin-coherent dynamics and carrier lifetime in strained Ge1鈭抶Snx semiconductors on silicon
The first observation of spin dynamics in the Germanium Tin semiconductor can potentially offer a very rich spin physics, whose fundamental understanding is however still absent.
Unconventional Field-Induced Spin Gap in an S = 1/2 Chiral Staggered Chain
[Cu(pyrimidine)(H2O)4]SiF6.H2O is an unusual S = 1/2 chiral chain with a spin gap that grows linearly with applied magnetic field and a rich excitation spectrum of soliton and breather modes.
The Anderson metal-insulator transition (MIT) is central to our understanding of the quantum mechanical nature of disordered materials. Despite extensive efforts by theory and experiment, there is still no agreement on the value of the critical exponent 谓 describing the universality of the transition—the so-called 鈥渆xponent puzzle.鈥 In this Rapid Communication, going beyond the standard Anderson model, we employ ab initio methods to study the MIT in a realistic model of a doped semiconductor. We use linear-scaling density functional theory to simulate prototypes of sulfur-doped silicon (Si:S). From these we build larger tight-binding models close to the critical concentration of the MIT. When the dopant concentration is increased, an impurity band forms and eventually delocalizes. We characterize the MIT via multifractal finite-size scaling, obtaining the phase diagram and estimates of 谓. Our results suggest an explanation of the long-standing exponent puzzle, which we link to the hybridization of conduction and impurity bands.
New ideas to measure the mass of the W boson
As a first step towards a new measurement of the W boson mass with the LHCb experiment the role of proton structure uncertainties is studied in detail, resulting in interesting new ideas.