EPR Study of the Mn-Doped Magnesium Titanate Ceramics

Manganese-doped magnesium titanate ceramic samples obtained by a solid-state reaction via sintering in the air from a mixture of MgO and TiO2 powders of different molar ratios were analyzed by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) technique. The EPR signals of Mn2+ ions (S = 5/2, І = 5/2) in crystal phases of MgO, Mg2TiO4, and MgTiO3 were detected. We have obtained the following spin Hamiltonian parameters for Mn2+ ions: g = 2.0015, A ~ 81 ∗ 10-4 cm-1 (in MgO phase); g = 2.0029, A ~ 73.8 ∗ 10-4 cm-1, b2 0 = 35 ∗ 10-4 cm-1 (in Mg2TiO4 phase); g = 2.004, A ~ 79 ∗ 10-4 cm-1, b2 0 = 165 ∗ 10-4 cm-1 (in MgTiO3 phase). Despite the presence of Mn4+ centers in both Mg2TiO4:Mn and MgTiO3:Mn ceramics confirmed by previous optical studies, no EPR signals related to Mn4+ ions (S = 3/2, І = 5/2) were found. The Mn2+ EPR signals are proposed as structural probes in manganese-doped magnesium titanate ceramics.

Enthalpic and Entropic Contributions to Interleaflet Coupling Drive Domain Registration and Anti-registration in Biological Membrane

Biological membrane is a complex self-assembly of lipids, sterols and proteins organized as a fluid bilayer of two closely stacked lipid leaflets. Differential molecular interactions among its diverse constituents give rise to heterogeneities in the membrane lateral organization. Under certain conditions, heterogeneities in the two leaflets can be spatially synchronised and exist as registered domains across the bilayer. Several contrasting theories behind mechanisms that induce registration of nanoscale domains have been suggested[1–3]. Following a recent study[4] showing the effect of position of lipid tail unsaturation on domain registration behavior, we decided to develop an analytical theory to elucidate the driving forces that create and maintain domain registry across leaflets. Towards this, we formulated a Hamiltonian for a stacked lattice system where site variables encapsulate the lipid molecular properties including the position of unsaturation and various other interactions that could drive phase separation and interleaflet coupling. We solve the Hamiltonian using Monte Carlo simulations and create a complete phase diagram that reports the presence or absence of registered domains as a function of various Hamiltonian parameters. We find that the interleaflet coupling should be described as a competing enthalpic contribution due to interaction of lipid tail termini, primarily due to saturated-saturated interactions, and an interleaflet entropic contribution from overlap of unsaturated tail termini. We find that higher position of unsaturation provides weaker interleaflet coupling. We also find points in our parameter space that allow thermodynamically stable nanodomains in our bilayer model, which we have verified by carrying out extended Monte Carlo simulations. These persistent non-coalescing registered nanodomains close to the lower end of the accepted nanodomain size range also point towards a possible “nanoscale” emulsion description of lateral heterogeneities in biological membrane leaflets.

Energy-participation quantization of Josephson circuits

Superconducting microwave circuits incorporating nonlinear devices, such as Josephson junctions, are a leading platform for emerging quantum technologies. Increasing circuit complexity further requires efficient methods for the calculation and optimization of the spectrum, nonlinear interactions, and dissipation in multi-mode distributed quantum circuits. Here we present a method based on the energy-participation ratio (EPR) of a dissipative or nonlinear element in an electromagnetic mode. The EPR, a number between zero and one, quantifies how much of the mode energy is stored in each element. The EPRs obey universal constraints and are calculated from one electromagnetic-eigenmode simulation. They lead directly to the system quantum Hamiltonian and dissipative parameters. The method provides an intuitive and simple-to-use tool to quantize multi-junction circuits. We experimentally tested this method on a variety of Josephson circuits and demonstrated agreement within several percents for nonlinear couplings and modal Hamiltonian parameters, spanning five orders of magnitude in energy, across a dozen samples.

Spin–spin interactions in defects in solids from mixed all-electron and pseudopotential first-principles calculations

Understanding the quantum dynamics of spin defects and their coherence properties requires an accurate modeling of spin-spin interaction in solids and molecules, for example by using spin Hamiltonians with parameters obtained from first principles calculations. We present a real-space approach based on density functional theory for the calculation of spin-Hamiltonian parameters, where only selected atoms are treated at the all-electron level, while the rest of the system is described with the pseudopotential approximation. Our approach permits calculations for systems containing more than 1000 atoms, as demonstrated for defects in diamond and silicon carbide. We show that only a small number of atoms surrounding the defect needs to be treated at the all-electron level, in order to obtain an overall all-electron accuracy for hyperfine and zero-field splitting tensors. We also present results for coherence times, computed with the cluster correlation expansion method, highlighting the importance of accurate spin-Hamiltonian parameters for quantitative predictions of spin dynamics.

Parallel entangling gate operations and two-way quantum communication in spin chains

The power of a quantum circuit is determined through the number of two-qubit entangling gates that can be performed within the coherence time of the system. In the absence of parallel quantum gate operations, this would make the quantum simulators limited to shallow circuits. Here, we propose a protocol to parallelize the implementation of two-qubit entangling gates between multiple users which are spatially separated, and use a commonly shared spin chain data-bus. Our protocol works through inducing effective interaction between each pair of qubits without disturbing the others, therefore, it increases the rate of gate operations without creating crosstalk. This is achieved by tuning the Hamiltonian parameters appropriately, described in the form of two different strategies. The tuning of the parameters makes different bilocalized eigenstates responsible for the realization of the entangling gates between different pairs of distant qubits. Remarkably, the performance of our protocol is robust against increasing the length of the data-bus and the number of users. Moreover, we show that this protocol can tolerate various types of disorders and is applicable in the context of superconductor-based systems. The proposed protocol can serve for realizing two-way quantum communication.

Theoretical Investigations for the Defect Structure and the Spin Hamiltonian Parameters of Divalent Cobalt in LiMgPO4

The spin Hamiltonian parameters (SHPs, g factors and hyperfine structure constants) defect structure for LiMgPO4 doped with 0.1% Co2+ at 4.2 K are theoretically investigated from the perturbation formulas of the SHPs for a rhombically distorted octahedral 3d7 cluster. The impurity Co2+ on host Mg2+ site is found to suffer the larger axial relative compression ratio ρ (≈ 0.76%) and the planar angular variation Δφ (≈ 6.64°) related to the host oxygen octahedron due to size mismatch. The calculated SHPs based on the above defect structure show good agreement with the measured results. Present study can be helpful to the preparation and characterization for the local structures for transition-metal impurities in lithium-magnesium phosphate, which may is helpful to search for the phosphor materials with better dosimetric characteristics.

Perturbative Treatment of Three-Nucleon Force Contact Terms in Three-Nucleon Faddeev Equations

We present a perturbative approach to solving the three-nucleon continuum Faddeev equation. This approach is particularly well suited to dealing with variable strengths of contact terms in a chiral three-nucleon force. We use examples of observables in the elastic nucleon-deuteron scattering as well as in the deuteron breakup reaction to demonstrate high precision of the proposed procedure and its capability to reproduce exact results. A significant reduction of computer time achieved by the perturbative approach in comparison to exact treatment makes this approach valuable for fine-tuning of the three-nucleon Hamiltonian parameters.