arXiv subjects

Bo Fan

Publications and source records attributed to Bo Fan.

32 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Elongated particles discharged with a conveyor belt in a two-dimensional silo

The flow of elliptical particles out of a 2-dimensional silo when extracted with a conveyor belt is analyzed experimentally. The conveyor belt - placed directly below the silo outlet - reduces the flow rate, increases the size of the stagnant zone, and it has a very strong influence on the relative velocity fluctuations as they strongly increase everywhere in the silo with decreasing belt speed. In other words, instead of slower but smooth flow, flow reduction by belt leads to intermittent flow. Interestingly, we show that this intermittency correlates with a strong reduction of the orientational order of the particles at the orifice region. Moreover, we observe that the average orientation of the grains passing through the outlet is modified when they are extracted with the belt, a feature that becomes more evident for large orifices.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2023

Tuning Superinductors by Quantum Coherence Effects for Enhancing Quantum Computing

Research on spatially inhomogeneous weakly-coupled superconductors has recently received a boost of interest because of the experimental observation of a dramatic enhancement of the kinetic inductance with relatively low losses. Here, we study the kinetic inductance and the quality factor of a strongly-disordered weakly-coupled superconducting thin film. We employ a gauge-invariant random-phase approximation capable of describing collective excitations and other fluctuations. In line with the experimental findings, we have found that in the range of frequencies of interest, and for sufficiently low temperatures, an exponential increase of the kinetic inductance with disorder coexists with a still large quality factor $\sim 10^4$. More interestingly, on the metallic side of the superconductor-insulator transition, we have identified a range of frequencies and temperatures $T \sim 0.1T_c$ where quantum coherence effects induce a broad statistical distribution of the quality factor with an average value that increases with disorder. We expect these findings to further stimulate experimental research on the design and optimization of superinductors for a better performance and miniaturization of quantum devices such as qubit circuits and microwave detectors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Exploring the vortex phase diagram of Bogoliubov-de Gennes disordered superconductors

We study the interplay of vortices and disorder in a two-dimensional disordered superconductor at zero temperature described by the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) self-consistent formalism for lattices of sizes up to $100\times100$ where the magnetic flux is introduced by the Peierls's substitution. The substantial larger size than in previous approaches ($\leq 36\times 36$) has allowed us to identify a rich phase diagram as a function of the magnetic flux and the disorder strength. For sufficiently weak disorder, and not too strong magnetic flux, we observe a slightly distorted Abrikosov triangular vortex lattice. An increase in the magnetic flux leads to an unexpected rectangular vortex lattice. A further increase in disorder, or flux gradually destroy the lattice symmetry though strong vortex repulsion persists. An even stronger disorder leads to deformed single vortices with an inhomogeneous core. As number of vortices increases, vortices overlap becomes more frequent. Finally, we show that global phase coherence is a feature of all these phases and that disorder enhances substantially the critical magnetic flux with respect to the clean limit with a maximum on the metallic side of the insulating transition.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Characterization of collective excitations in weakly-coupled disordered superconductors

Isolated islands in two-dimensional strongly-disordered and strongly-coupled superconductors become optically active inducing sub-gap collective excitations in the ac conductivity. Here, we investigate the fate of these excitations as a function of the disorder strength in the experimentally relevant case of weak electron-phonon coupling. An explicit calculation of the ac conductivity, that includes vertex corrections to restore gauge symmetry, reveals the existence of collective sub-gap excitations, related to phase fluctuations and therefore identified as the Goldstone modes, for intermediate to strong disorder. As disorder increases, the shape of the sub-gap excitation transits from peaked close to the spectral gap to a broader distribution reaching much smaller frequencies. Phase-coherence still holds in part of this disorder regime. The requirement to observe sub-gap excitations is not the existence of isolated islands acting as nano-antennas but rather the combination of a sufficiently inhomogeneous order parameter with a phase fluctuation correlation length smaller than the system size. Our results indicate that, by tuning disorder, the Goldstone mode may be observed experimentally in metallic superconductors based for instance on Al, Sn, Pb or Nb.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Silo discharge of mixtures of soft and rigid grains

We study the outflow dynamics and clogging phenomena of mixtures of soft, elastic low-friction spherical grains and hard frictional spheres of similar size in a quasi-two-dimensional (2D) silo with narrow orifice at the bottom. Previous work has demonstrated the crucial influence of elasticity and friction on silo discharge. We show that the addition of small amounts, even as low as 5\%, of hard grains to an ensemble of soft, low-friction grains already has significant consequences. The mixtures allow a direct comparison of the probabilities of the different types of particles to clog the orifice. We analyze these probabilities for the hard, frictional and the soft, slippery grains on the basis of their participation in the blocking arches, and compare outflow velocities and durations of non-permanent clogs for different compositions of the mixtures. Experimental results are compared with numerical simulations. The latter strongly suggest a significant influence of the inter-species particle friction.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Superconductivity at the three-dimensional Anderson metal-insulator transition

We study a disordered weakly-coupled superconductor around the Anderson transition by solving numerically the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations in a three dimensional lattice of size up to $20\times20\times20$ in the presence of a random potential. The spatial average of the order parameter is moderately enhanced as disorder approaches the transition but decreases sharply in the insulating region. The spatial distribution of the order parameter is sensitive to the disorder strength: for intermediate disorders below the transition, we already observe a highly asymmetric distribution with an exponential tail. Around the transition, it is well described by a log-normal distribution and a parabolic singularity spectrum. These features are typical of a multifractal measure. We determine quantitatively the critical disorder at which the insulator transition occurs by an analysis of level statistics in the spectral region that contributes to the formation of the order parameter. Interestingly, spectral correlations at the transition are similar to those found in non-interacting disordered systems at the Anderson transition. A percolation analysis suggests that the loss of phase coherence may occur around the critical disorder.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

The Emergency of Pico-Kelvin Physics

The frontier of low-temperature physics has advanced to the mid pico-Kelvin (pK) regime but progress has come to a halt because of the problem of gravity. Ultra cold atoms must be confined in some type of potential energy well: if the depth of the well is less than the energy an atom gains by falling through it, the atom escapes. This article reviews ultra cold atom research, emphasizing the advances that carried the low temperature frontier to 450 pico-Kelvin. We review micro gravity methods for overcoming the gravitation limit to achieve further low temperature using free fall techniques such as a drop tower, sounding rocket, parabolic flight plane and the Space Station. We describe two techniques that give promise of further advance--an atom chip and an all-optical trap--and present recent experimental results. Basic research in new regimes of observation has generally led to scientific discoveries and new technologies that benefit society. We expect this to be the case as the low temperature frontier advances and we propose some new opportunities for research.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Visualization of multifractal superconductivity in a two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide in the weak-disorder regime

Eigenstate multifractality is a distinctive feature of non-interacting disordered metals close to a metal-insulator transition, whose properties are expected to extend to superconductivity. While multifractality in three dimensions (3D) only develops near the critical point for specific strong-disorder strengths, multifractality in 2D systems is expected to be observable even for weak disorder. Here we provide evidence for multifractal features in the superconducting state of an intrinsic weakly disordered single-layer NbSe$_2$ by means of low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. The superconducting gap, characterized by its width, depth and coherence peaks' amplitude, shows a characteristic spatial modulation coincident with the periodicity of the quasiparticle interference pattern. Spatial inhomogeneity of the superconducting gap width, proportional to the local order parameter in the weak-disorder regime, follows a log-normal statistical distribution as well as a power-law decay of the two-point correlation function, in agreement with our theoretical model. Furthermore, the experimental singularity spectrum f($α$) shows anomalous scaling behavior typical from 2D weakly disordered systems.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Enhanced, phase coherent, multifractal-like, two-dimensional superconductivity

We study the interplay of superconductivity and disorder by solving numerically the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equations in a two dimensional lattice of size $80\times80$ which makes possible to investigate the weak-coupling limit. In contrast with results in the strong coupling region, we observe enhancement of superconductivity and intriguing multifractal-like features such as a broad log-normal spatial distribution of the order parameter, a parabolic singularity spectrum, and level statistics consistent with those of a disordered metal at the Anderson transition. The calculation of the superfluid density, including small phase fluctuations, reveals that, despite this intricate spatial structure, phase coherence still holds for sufficiently weak disorder. It only breaks down for stronger disorder but before the insulating transition takes place.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Numerical Study of Evaporative Cooling in the Space Station

In this paper, we numerically studied the effects of mechanical vibration and magnetic fields on evaporative cooling process carried in space station by direct simulation Monte Carlo method. Simulated with the vibration data of international space station, we found that the cooling process would suffer great atomic losses until the accelerations reduced tenfold at least. In addition, if we enlarge the s-wave scattering length five times by Feshbach resonance, the PSD increased to 50 compared to 3 of no magnetic fields situation after 5 seconds evaporative cooling. We also simulated the two stages crossed beam evaporative cooling process (TSCBC) under both physical impacts and obtain $4\times10^5$ $^{85}$Rb atoms with a temperature of 8 pK. These results are of significance to the cold atom experiments carried out on space station in the future.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Persistent Threshold Dynamics with Recovery in Complex Networks

Threshold rules of spreading in binary-state networks lead to cascades. We study persistent cascade-recovery dynamics on quasi-robust networks, i.e., networks which are robust against small trigger but may collapse for larger one. It is observed that depending on the relative rate of triggering and recovery, the network falls into one of the two dynamical phases: collapsing or active phase. We devise an analytical framework which characterizes not only the critical behavior but also the temporal evolution of network activity in both phases. Agent-based simulation results show good agreement with the analytical calculations, indicating strong predicative power of our method for persistent cascade dynamics in complex networks.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2018

What has been Revealed by Urban Grid Data of Shanghai

With the fast-growing economy in the past ten years, cities in China have experience great changes, meanwhile, huge volume of urban grid management data has been recorded. Studies on urban grid management are not common so far. This kind of study is important, however, because the urban grid data describes the individual behaviors and detailed problems in community, and reveals the dynamics of changing policies and social relations. In this article, we did a preliminary study on the urban grid management data of Shanghai, and investigated the key characteristics of the interactions between local government and citizen in such a fast-growing metropolitan. Our investigation illustrates the dynamics of coevolution between economy and living environments. We also developed mathematical model to quantitatively discover the spatial and temporal intra-relations among events found in data, providing insights to local government to fine tune the policy of resource allocation and give proper incentives to drive the coevolution to the optimal state, thereby achieving the good governance.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2018

Diffractive optics approach towards subwavelength pixels

Pixel size in cameras and other refractive imaging devices is typically limited by the free-space diffraction. However, a vast majority of semiconductor-based detectors are based on materials with substantially high refractive index. We demonstrate that diffractive optics can be used to take advantage of this high refractive index to reduce effective pixel size of the sensors below free-space diffraction limit. At the same time, diffractive systems encode both amplitude and phase information about the incoming beam into multiple pixels, offering the platform for noise-tolerant imaging with dynamical refocusing. We explore the opportunities opened by high index diffractive optics to reduce sensor size and increase signal-to-noise ratio of imaging structures.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2015

A Waveform Representation Framework for High-quality Statistical Parametric Speech Synthesis

State-of-the-art statistical parametric speech synthesis (SPSS) generally uses a vocoder to represent speech signals and parameterize them into features for subsequent modeling. Magnitude spectrum has been a dominant feature over the years. Although perceptual studies have shown that phase spectrum is essential to the quality of synthesized speech, it is often ignored by using a minimum phase filter during synthesis and the speech quality suffers. To bypass this bottleneck in vocoded speech, this paper proposes a phase-embedded waveform representation framework and establishes a magnitude-phase joint modeling platform for high-quality SPSS. Our experiments on waveform reconstruction show that the performance is better than that of the widely-used STRAIGHT. Furthermore, the proposed modeling and synthesis platform outperforms a leading-edge, vocoded, deep bidirectional long short-term memory recurrent neural network (DBLSTM-RNN)-based baseline system in various objective evaluation metrics conducted.

cs.SD↗