We achieve direct electrical readout of the wavelength and polarization dependence of the plasmon resonance in individual gold nanogap antennas by positioning a graphene nanoconstriction within the gap as a localized photodetector. The polarization sensitivities can be as large as 99%, while the plasmon-induced photocurrent enhancement is 2-100. The plasmon peak frequency, polarization sensitivity, and photocurrent enhancement all vary between devices, indicating the degree to which the plasmon resonance is sensitive to nanometer-scale irregularities. © 2011 American Chemical Society.

We present a minimal model of plasma membrane heterogeneity that combines criticality with connectivity to cortical cytoskeleton. The development of this model was motivated by recent observations of micron-sized critical fluctuations in plasma membrane vesicles that are detached from their cortical cytoskeleton. We incorporate criticality using a conserved order parameter Ising model coupled to a simple actin cytoskeleton interacting through point-like pinning sites. Using this minimal model, we recapitulate several experimental observations of plasma membrane raft heterogeneity.

The study of critical phenomena and universal power laws has been one of the central advances in statistical mechanicsduring the second half of the past century, explaining traditional thermodynamic critical points 1 , avalanche behaviour near depinning transitions 2,3 and a wide variety of other phenomena 4 . Scaling, universality and the renormalization group claim to predict all behaviour at long length and timescales asymptotically close to critical points.

We show how interpenetrating optical lattices containing Bose-Fermi mixtures can be constructed to emulate the thermodynamics of quantum electrodynamics (QED). We present models of neutral atoms on lattices in 1+1, 2+1, and 3+1 dimensions whose low-energy effective action reduces to that of photons coupled to Dirac fermions of the corresponding dimensionality. We give special attention to (2+1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED3) and discuss how two of its most interesting features, chiral symmetry breaking and Chern-Simons physics, could be observed experimentally.

We observe apparent hole pockets in the Fermi surfaces of single-layer Bi-based cuprate superconductors from angle-resolved photoemission. From detailed low-energy electron diffraction measurements and an analysis of the angle-resolved photoemission polarization dependence, we show that these pockets are not intrinsic but arise from multiple overlapping superstructure replicas of the main and shadow bands.

We study the time scales for adiabaticity of trapped cold bosons subject to a time-varying lattice potential using a dynamic Gutzwiller mean-field theory. We explain apparently contradictory experimental observations by demonstrating a clear separation of time scales for local dynamics (∼ms) and global mass redistribution (∼1s). We provide a simple explanation for the short and fast time scales, finding that while density or energy transport is dominated by low energy phonons, particle-hole excitations set the adiabaticity time for fast ramps.

We present a method for discovering dense packings of general convex hard particles and apply it to study the dense packing behavior of a one-parameter family of particles with tetrahedral symmetry representing a deformation of the ideal mathematical tetrahedron into a less ideal, physical, tetrahedron and all the way to the sphere. Thus, we also connect the two well-studied problems of sphere packing and tetrahedron packing on a single axis. Our numerical results uncover a rich optimal-packing behavior, compared to that of other continuous families of particles previously studied.

Graphene's unparalleled strength, stiffness, and low mass per unit area make it an ideal material for nanomechanical resonators, but its relatively low quality factor is an important drawback that has been difficult to overcome. Here, we use a simple procedure to fabricate circular mechanical resonators of various diameters from graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. In addition to highly reproducible resonance frequencies and mode shapes, we observe a striking improvement of the membrane quality factor with increasing size.

Rare earth doping is a standard, yet experimentally poorly understood method to increase the Curie temperature (TC) of the ferromagnetic semiconductor EuO. Here, we report on the charge carrier density (n) and the TC of commonly used 4.2 at. % Gd-doped EuO films grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on (110) oriented YAlO3 substrates at various substrate temperatures (Tsub). Increasing Tsub leads to a decrease in n and TC. For high substrate temperatures the Gd-doping is rendered completely inactive: n and TC drop to the values of undoped EuO. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.