X-ray fluorescence holography (XFH) is a method of atomic resolution holography which utilizes fluorescing atoms as a wave source or a monitor of the interference field within a crystal sample. It provides three-dimensional atomic images around a specified element and has a range of up to a few nm in real space. Because of this feature, XFH is expected to be used for medium-range local structural analysis, which cannot be performed by x-ray diffraction or x-ray absorption fine structure analysis. In this article, we explain the theory of XFH including solutions to the twin-image problem, an advanced measuring system, and data processing for the reconstruction of atomic images. Then, we briefly introduce our recent applications of this technique to the analysis of local lattice distortions in mixed crystals and nanometer-size clusters appearing in the low-temperature phase of a shape-memory alloy.

Metallic nanostructures now play an important role in many applications. In particular, for the emerging fields of plasmonics and nanophotonics, the ability to engineer metals on nanometric scales allows the development of new devices and the study of exciting physics. This review focuses on top-down nanofabrication techniques for engineering metallic nanostructures, along with computational and experimental characterization techniques. A variety of current and emerging applications are also covered.

In this work we consider the role of aperiodic order—order without periodicity—in the design of different optical devices in one, two and three dimensions. To this end, we will first study devices based on aperiodic multilayered structures. In many instances the recourse to Fibonacci, Thue–Morse or fractal arrangements of layers results in improved optical properties compared with their periodic counterparts. On this basis, the possibility of constructing optical devices based on a modular design of the multilayered structure, where periodic and quasiperiodic subunits are properly mixed, is analyzed, illustrating how this additional degree of freedom enhances the optical performance in some specific applications. This line of thought can be naturally extended to aperiodic arrangements of optical elements, such as nanospheres or dielectric rods in the plane, as well as to three-dimensional photonic quasicrystals based on polymer materials. In this way, plentiful possibilities for ...

Linear-scaling methods, or methods, have computational and memory requirements which scale linearly with the number of atoms in the system, N, in contrast to standard approaches which scale with the cube of the number of atoms. These methods, which rely on the short-ranged nature of electronic structure, will allow accurate, ab initio simulations of systems of unprecedented size. The theory behind the locality of electronic structure is described and related to physical properties of systems to be modelled, along with a survey of recent developments in real-space methods which are important for efficient use of high-performance computers. The linear-scaling methods proposed to date can be divided into seven different areas, and the applicability, efficiency and advantages of the methods proposed in these areas are then discussed. The applications o...

A setup of two coupled and damped pendula is used to demonstrate the main features of transitions between the neutral mesons K ⁰, D ⁰, B ⁰ and their antiparticles, including CP violation in the K ⁰ system. The transitions are described by two-state Schrödinger equations. Since the real parts of their solutions obey the same differential equations as the pendula coordinates, the pendulum motions can be used to represent the meson transitions. Movie clips of the motions are available as supplementary material.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a common metabolism disorder characterized by high glucose in the bloodstream, especially in the case of insulin resistance and relative insulin deficiency. Nowadays, it is very common in middle-aged people and involves such dangerous symptoms as increasing risk of stroke, obesity and heart failure. In Vietnam, besides the common treatment of insulin injection, some herbal medication is used but no unified optimum remedy for the disease yet exists and there is no production of antidiabetic drugs in the domestic market yet. In the development of nanomedicine at the present time, drug design is considered as an innovative tool for researchers to study the mechanisms of diseases at the molecular level. The aim of this article is to review some common protein targets involved in type 2 diabetes, offering a new idea for designing new drug candidates to produce antidiabetic drugs against type 2 diabetes for Vietnamese people.

The applications of optical fibre technology to laser velocimetry are diverse and often critical to their successful implementation, particularly in harsh environments. Applications range from the use of optical fibres for beam delivery and scattered light collection, aiding the miniaturization of instrument probes, to the use of imaging fibre bundles for imaging the flow field in planar velocimetry systems. Optical fibre techniques have also been used in signal processing, for example fibre frequency shifters, and optical fibre devices such as amplifiers and lasers have been exploited. This paper will review the use of optical fibres in point-wise laser velocimetry techniques such as laser Doppler velocimetry and laser transit anemometry, as well as in planar measurement techniques such as particle imaging velocimetry and planar Doppler velocimetry.

The theory of the strong interaction, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), describes the generation of hadronic masses and the state of hadronic matter during the early stages of the evolution of the universe. As a complement, experiments with ultracold fermionic atoms provide a clean environment to benchmark our understanding of dynamical formation of condensates and the generation of bound states in strongly interacting many-body systems. Renormalization Group (RG) techniques offer great potential for theoretical advances in both hot and dense QCD and many-body physics, but their connections have not yet been investigated in great detail. We aim to take a further step to bridge this gap. A cross-fertilization is indeed promising since it may eventually provide us with an ab initio description of hadronization, condensation and bound-state formation in strongly interacting theories. After giving a thorough introduction to the derivation and analysis of fermionic RG flows, we giv...

We present three open problems in the mathematical modelling of the flow of non-Newtonian fluids. The first problem is rather long standing: a discontinuity in the dependence of the rise velocity of a gas bubble on its volume. This is very well characterized experimentally but not, so far, fully reproduced either numerically or analytically. The other two are both instabilities. The first is observed experimentally but never predicted analytically or numerically. In the second instability, numerical studies reproduce the experimental observations but there is as yet no analytical or semi-analytical prediction of the linear instability which must be present.

In this paper we review some recent results obtained on superconducting/ferromagnetic (S/F) structures when measuring the dynamic instabilities of the vortex lattice at high driving currents. The role played on the non-equilibrium properties of the hybrids by both the ferromagnetic and the superconducting materials has been analyzed with a special focus on the values and the temperature dependence of the quasiparticle relaxation times, τ _E. Knowledge of the relaxation mechanisms in these systems is extremely important in view of possible applications since it can drive the optimal choice of both materials to realize, in particular, ultrafast superconducting single photon detectors based on S/F hybrid structures.