International Journal of Modern Physics B

The tasks posed for renormalization group theory (RGT) within statistical physics by critical phenomena theory in the 1960's are set out briefly in contradistinction to quantum field theory (QFT), which was the origin for Ken Wilson's concerns. Kadanoff's 1966 block spin scaling picture and its difficulties are presented; Wilson's early vision of flows is described from the author's perspective. How Wilson's subsequent breakthrough ideas, published in 1971, led to the epsilon expansion and the resulting clarity is related. Concluding sections complete the general picture of flows in a space of Hamiltonians, universality and scaling. The article represents a 40% condensation (but with added items) of an earlier account: Rev. Mod. Phys.70, 653–681 (1998).

Much as being among the least invasive mainstream imaging technologies in life sciences, the resolution of confocal microscopy is limited. Imaged structures, e.g., chromatin-fiber loops, have diameters around or beyond the diffraction limit, and microscopy images show seemingly random spatial density distributions only. While such images are important because the organization of the chromosomes influences different cell mechanisms, many interesting questions can also be related to the observed patterns. These concern their spatial aspects, the role of randomness, the possibility of modeling these images with a random generative process, the interaction between the densities of adjacent loci, the length-scales of these influences, etc. We answer these questions by implementing a generalization of the Potts model. We show how to estimate the model parameters, test the performance of the estimation process and numerically prove that the obtained values converge to the ground truth. Finally, we generate images with a trained model and show that they compare well to real cell images.

We investigate the generation of soliton-like pulses along a DNA chain which takes into account both torsional and solvent interaction effects. Interactions between neighboring base pairs are described by a twist angle. Twisting is essential in the model to capture the importance of nonlinear effects for the thermodynamical properties. The nonlinear dynamics of the DNA is then modeled in the Hamiltonian approach by the generalized Dauxois–Peyrard–Bishop model (combination of several models). We introduce the generalized discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation describing the dynamics of modulated wave through the twisted DNA with solvent interaction. The modulational instability is studied and we present an analytical expression for the MI gain to show the effects of twist angle on MI gain spectra as well as on stability diagram. With the increase of the twist angle the MI gain decreases then increases. Some interesting MI phenomena appear with an additional new MI region as the twist angle increases. The instability and stability diagrams are also affected. Numerical simulations are carried out to show the validity of the analytical approach. The result is that the initial wave breaks into a train of ultrashort pulses with repetition rates, which are trapped in some sites. The impact of the twist angle is investigated and we obtain that the twist angle affects the dynamics of stable patterns generated through the molecule. Thereafter, we study energy localization in the framework of twisted DNA with solvent interaction. While the twist angle leads to a stronger localization of energy, the solvent interaction delocalizes energy along the molecule.

Rashba spin–orbit interaction (RSOI) in two-dimensional electron gas is illustrated. When electron wave transmits through a semiconductor heterojunctions, spin flip and spin birefringence occur at the interface. According to the continuity conditions, we study how incident angle or the strength of spin–orbit interaction affects the scatter coefficients. Totally reflection of spin-up chirality is explained. This work will enlighten proposals of spin devices for spin filtration.

We propose to use superradiant Rayleigh scattering from degenerate Bose gas to detect unknown frequencies coupled to the pump laser beam. Theoretically we show a measurement of the time evolution of population at the initial momentum state could determine the unknown frequency with respect to a known one at which the pump laser's frequency modulates. We show a range of frequencies from kHz to MHz could be determined with this method at the currently available state-of-the-art technology.

In close analogy with optical Fabry–Pérot (FP) interferometer, we rederive the transmission and reflection coefficients of tunneling through a rectangular double barrier (RDB). Based on the same analogy, we also get an analytic finesse formula for its filtering capability of matter waves, and with this formula, we reproduce the RDB transmission rate in exactly the same form as that of FP interferometer. Compared with the numerical results obtained from the original finesse definition, we find the formula works well. Next, we turn to the elusive time issue in tunneling, and show that the "generalized Hartman effect" can be regarded as an artifact of the opaque limit βl → ∞. In the thin barrier approximation, phase (or dwell) time does depend on the free inter-barrier distance d asymptotically. Further, the analysis of transmission rate in the neighborhood of resonance shows that, phase (or dwell) time could be a good estimate of the resonance lifetime. The numerical results from the uncertainty principle support this statement. This fact can be viewed as a support to the idea that, phase (or dwell) time is a measure of lifetime of energy stored beneath the barrier. To confirm this result, we shrink RDB to a double Dirac δ-barrier. The landscape of the phase (or dwell) time in k and d axes fits excellently well with the lifetime estimates near the resonance. As a supplementary check, we also apply phase (or dwell) time formula to the rectangular well, where no obstacle exists to the propagation of particle. However, due to the self-interference induced by the common cavity-like structure, phase (or dwell) time calculation leads to a counterintuitive "slowing down" effect, which can be explained appropriately by the lifetime assumptions.

A promising method to generate the intense isolated attosecond sources has been theoretically investigated emerging from the two-dimensional Ar⁺ cluster driven in the two-color polarized gating pulse. The results show that with the introduction of the Ar⁺ cluster model, not only the harmonic cutoffs are extended, but also the harmonic yields are enhanced by at least two orders of magnitude compared with the single atom model. Further, by properly choosing the number of ions surrounding the central atom, the internuclear distance as well as the laser parameters, two isolated pulses with durations of 53 as and 46 as can be obtained.

Valence intersubband transitions of the wurtzite (WZ) strained AlGaN/GaN quantum wells are examined theoretically and compared with those of the zinc-blende (ZB) ones. In particular, the effect of the interband interaction between conduction (CB) and valence (VB) bands has been taken into account explicitly. We have used the 8-bands k.p model for both WZ and ZB structures to calculate subband energies and wavefunctions of Al_0.3Ga_0.7N/GaN quantum wells (QWs). The results indicate that, the prominent transitions for both ZB and WZ QWs were found to be essentially related to the heavy- and light-hole subbands. For the x-polarization, we have shown that it is necessary to take into account explicitly the interband interaction between CB and VB. Finally, we can predict that WZ QWs are more convenient than ZB QWs in most applications involving intersubband transitions, especially for the z-polarized light.

We develop a quantum theory to deal with the coherent magnon excitation in monolayer magnetic nanodots induced by a circularly polarized light. In our theoretical model, the exchange interaction, the magnetic dipole interaction and the light-matter interaction are all taken into account and an effective dynamic equations governing the magnon excitation is derived by a continuum approximation. Our theoretical model shows that the helicity of light and the magnetic dipole interaction govern the magnon excitation and result in the occurrence of various patterns for the spin z-component distribution. We present a scheme to manipulate the single-mode magnon excitation by properly tuning the light frequency.