118873533
From Andreev bound states to Majorana fermions in topological wires on superconducting substrates: A story of mutation
We study the proximity effect in a topological nanowire tunnel coupled to an s-wave superconducting substrate. We use a general Green's function approach that allows us to study the evolution of the Andreev bound states in the wire into Majorana fermions. We show that the strength of the tunnel coupling induces a topological transition in which the Majorana fermionic states can be destroyed when the coupling is very strong. Moreover, we provide a phenomenologial study of the effects of disorder in the superconductor on the formation of Majorana fermions. We note a non-trivial effect of a quasiparticle broadening term which can take the wire from a topological into a non-topological phase in certain ranges of parameters. Our results have also direct consequences for a nanowire coupled to an inhomogenous superconductor.
7559852
A renormalization group study of asymmetrically coupled minimal models
Abstract We investigate the renormalization group flows and fixed point structure of many coupled minimal models. The models are coupled two by two by energy-energy couplings. We take the general approach where the bare couplings are all taken to be independent. New fixed points are found for N models ( N ≥3). At these fixed points, the coupling constants all have the same magnitude, but some are positive while others are negative. By analogy with spin lattices, these can be interpreted as non-frustrated configurations with a maximal number of antiferromagnetic links. The stability of the different fixed points is studied. We compute the critical exponents and spin-spin correlation functions between different models. Our classification is shown to be complete.
15453015
Interplay between classical magnetic moments and superconductivity in quantum one-dimensional conductors: toward a self-sustained topological Majorana phase.
We study a one-dimensional interacting electronic liquid coupled to a 1D array of classical magnetic moments and to a superconductor. We show that at low energy and temperature the magnetic moments and the electrons become strongly entangled and that a magnetic spiral structure emerges. For strong enough coupling between the electrons and magnetic moments, the 1D electronic liquid is driven into a topological superconducting phase supporting Majorana fermions without any fine-tuning of external parameters. Our analysis applies at low enough temperature to a quantum wire in proximity to a superconductor when the hyperfine interaction between electrons and nuclear spins is taken into account, or to a chain of magnetic adatoms adsorbed on a superconducting surface.
119500460
Coupled critical models: application to Ising-Potts models
Abstract We discuss the critical behaviour of 2 D Ising and q -states Potts models coupled by their energy density. We found new tricritical points. The procedure employed is the renormalisation approach of the perturbations series around conformal field theories representing pure models as already used for disordered spins models. This analysis could be useful to understand the physics of coupled critical models like the fully frustrated XY model.
124148859
2-D fractional supersymmetry: From rational to irrational conformal field theory
14198652
Bosonic-type S -matrix, vacuum instability and CDD ambiguities
Abstract We consider the simplest bosonic-type S -matrix which is usually regarded as unphysical due to the complex values of the finite volume ground state energy. While a standard quantum field theory interpretation of such a scattering theory is precluded, we argue that the physical situation described by this S -matrix is of a massive Ising model perturbed by a particular set of irrelevant operators. The presence of these operators drastically affects the stability of the original vacuum of the massive Ising model and its ultraviolet properties.
16847649
GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey V. Data release of the ESO Deep-Public-Survey ?
Aims. In this paper the optical data of the ESO Deep-Public-Survey observed with the Wide Field Imager and reduced with the THELI pipeline are described. Methods. Here we present 63 fully reduced and stacked images. The astrometric and photometric calibrations are discussed and the properties of the images are compared to images released by the ESO Imaging Survey team covering a subset of our data. Results. These images are publicly released to the community. Our main scientific goals with this survey are to study the high-redshift universe by optically pre-selecting high-redshift objects from imaging data and to use VLT instruments for follow-up spectroscopy as well as weak lensing applications.
54505515
Evidence of the accelerated expansion of the Universe from weak lensing tomography with COSMOS
We present a comprehensive analysis of weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structure in the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), in which we combine space-based galaxy shape measurements with ground-based photometric redshifts to study the redshift dependence of the lensing signal and constrain cosmological parameters. After applying our weak lensing-optimized data reduction, principal-component interpolation for the spatially, and temporally varying ACS point-spread function, and improved modelling of charge-transfer inefficiency, we measured a lensing signal that is consistent with pure gravitational modes and no significant shape systematics. We carefully estimated the statistical uncertainty from simulated COSMOS-like fields obtained from ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation, including the full non-Gaussian sampling variance. We tested our lensing pipeline on simulated space-based data, recalibrated non-linear power spectrum corrections using the ray-tracing analysis, employed photometric redshift information to reduce potential contamination by intrinsic galaxy alignments, and marginalized over systematic uncertainties. We find that the weak lensing signal scales with redshift as expected from general relativity for a concordance ACDM cosmology, including the full cross-correlations between different redshift bins. Assuming a flat ACDM cosmology, we measure σ 8 (Ω m /0.3) 0.51 = 0.75 ± 0.08 from lensing, in perfect agreement with WMAP-5, yielding joint constraints Ω m = 0.266 +0.025 -0.023 σ 8 = 0.802 +0.028 -0.029 (all 68.3% conf.). Dropping the assumption of flatness and using priors from the HST Key Project and Big-Bang nucleosynthesis only, we find a negative deceleration parameter q 0 at 94.3% confidence from the tomographic lensing analysis, providing independent evidence of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. For a flat ωCDM cosmology and prior ω ∈ [-2, 0], we obtain ω < -0.41 (90% conf.). Our dark energy constraints are still relatively weak solely due to the limited area of COSMOS. However, they provide an important demonstration of the usefulness of tomographic weak lensing measurements from space.
1663219
CARS: the CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey II. Weighing dark matter halos of Lyman-break galaxies at z = 3-5
Aims. We measure the clustering properties for a large samples of u- (z ~ 3), g- (z ~ 4), and r- (z ~ 5) dropouts from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) Deep fields. 
 
Methods. Photometric redshift distributions along with simulations allow us to de-project the angular correlation measurements and estimate physical quantities such as the correlation length, halo mass, galaxy bias, and halo occupation as a function of UV luminosity. 
 
Results. For the first time we detect a significant one-halo term in the correlation function at z ~ 5 . The comoving correlation lengths and halo masses of LBGs are found to decrease with decreasing rest-frame UV-luminosity. No significant redshift evolution is found in either quantity. The typical halo mass hosting an LBG is M ≳ 10^(12)h^(-1) M⊙ and the halos are typically occupied by less than one galaxy. Clustering segregation with UV luminosity is clearly observed in the dropout samples, however redshift evolution cannot clearly be disentangled from systematic uncertainties introduced by the redshift distributions. We study a range of possible redshift distributions to illustrate the effect of this choice. Spectroscopy of representative subsamples is required to make high-accuracy absolute measurements of high-z halo masses.
119103864
The bispectrum covariance beyond Gaussianity - A log-normal approach
Context. To investigate and specify the statistical properties of cosmological fields with particular attention to possible non-Gaussian features, accurate formulae for the bispectrum and the bispectrum covariance are required. The bispectrum is the lowest-order statistic providing an estimate for non-Gaussianities of a distribution, and the bispectrum covariance depicts the errors of the bispectrum measurement and their correlation on different scales. Currently, there do exist fitting formulae for the bispectrum and an analytical expression for the bispectrum covariance, but the former is not very accurate and the latter contains several intricate terms and only one of them can be readily evaluated from the power spectrum of the studied field. Neglecting all higher-order terms results in the Gaussian approximation of the bispectrum covariance. Aims. We study the range of validity of this Gaussian approximation for two-dimensional non-Gaussian random fields. Methods. For this purpose, we simulate Gaussian and non-Gaussian random fields, the latter represented by log-normal fields and obtained directly from the former by a simple transformation. From the simulated fields, we calculate the power spectra, the bispectra, and the covariance from the sample variance of the bispectra, for different degrees of non-Gaussianity α, which is equivalent to the skewness on a given angular scale θg. In doing so, we minimize sample variance by selecting the same “phases” of the Gaussian and non-Gaussian fields. Results. We find that the Gaussian approximation of the bispectrum covariance provides a good approximation for degrees of nonGaussianity α ≤ 0.5 and a reasonably accurate approximation for α ≤ 1, both on scales >8θg. For larger values of α, the Gaussian approximation clearly breaks down. Using results from cosmic shear simulations, we estimate that the cosmic shear convergence fields are described by α < 0. 7a tθg ∼ 4 �� . Conclusions. We therefore conclude that the Gaussian approximation for the bispectrum covariance is likely to be applicable in ongoing and future cosmic shear studies.
5127951
Time evolution of the stochastic linear bias of interacting galaxies on linear scales
We extend the time dependent bias model of Tegmark & Peebles (1998) to predict the large-scale evolution of the stochastic linear bias of different galaxy populations with respect to both the dark matter and each other. The resulting model equations contain a general expression, coined the "interaction term", accounting for the destruction or production of galaxies. This term may be used to model couplings between different populations that lead to an increase or decrease of the number of a galaxies belonging to a population, e.g. passive evolution or merging processes. This is explored in detail using a toy model. In particular, it is shown that the presence of such a coupling may change the evolution of the bias parameter compared to an interaction-free evolution. We argue that the observation of the evolution of the large-scale bias and galaxy number density with wide-field surveys may be used to infer fundamental interaction parameters between galaxy populations, possibly giving an insight in their formation and evolution.