Modern Physics Letters B

We present a brief review of a series of on-going work on bacterial phylogeny. We propose a new method to infer relatedness of prokaryotes from their complete genome data without using sequence alignment, leading to results comparable with the bacteriologist's systematics as reflected in the latest 2001 edition of Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology.¹ We only touch on the mathematical aspects of the method. The biological implications of our results will be published elsewhere.

Entanglement in nonequilibrium systems is considered. A general definition for entanglement measure is introduced, which can be applied for characterizing the level of entanglement produced by arbitrary operators. Applying this definition to reduced density matrices makes it possible to measure the entanglement in nonequilibrium as well as in equilibrium statistical systems. An example of a multimode Bose–Einstein condensate is discussed.

Numerical calculations by a transfer matrix method have been performed to obtain the transmission coefficient of rectangular double barrier structures. The dependence of the well width, barrier width and the barrier height was systematically investigated. When the width ratio of the two barriers was varied on condition that a total width was fixed, the transmission coefficient at a resonance is varied while that at a valley region is not. It is concluded that the resonant tunneling is characterized by two parameters: total width and the width ratio. Our results clarify the transition of transmission spectrum from a single barrier to a double barrier structure.

We examine some new DNLS-like equations that arise when considering strongly-coupled electron-vibration systems, where the local oscillator potential is anharmonic. In particular, we focus on a single, rather general nonlinear vibrational impurity and determine its bound state(s) and its dynamical selftrapping properties.

We report on the synthesis and characterization of silicon nanoparticles by ablating silicon wafer in an ambient atmosphere of helium at 1 Torr. The mean cluster size ranging from 1.8 nm to 4.4 nm deposited on silicon substrate at room temperature is observed to depend on the laser fluence. The size of the nanoparticles decreases with laser fluence. Photoluminescence of the deposited films using Nd:YAG laser and Ar⁺ ion laser at 355 nm and 457.9 nm respectively shows emission peaks at 1.7, 2.2, and 2.7 eV. The luminescence peak at 2.2 eV and 2.7 eV are attributed to oxygen related impurities and the peak at 1.7 eV is attributed to quantum confinement.