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Manuel Carretero

Publications and source records attributed to Manuel Carretero.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Hyperchaos, intermittency, noise and disorder in modified semiconductor superlattices

Weakly coupled semiconductor superlattices under dc voltage bias are nonlinear systems with many degrees of freedom whose nonlinearity is due to sequential tunneling of electrons. They may exhibit spontaneous chaos at room temperature and act as fast physical random number generator devices. Here we present a general sequential transport model with different voltage drops at quantum wells and barriers that includes noise and fluctuations due to the superlattice epitaxial growth. Excitability and oscillations of the current in superlattices with identical periods are due to nucleation and motion of charge dipole waves that form at the emitter contact when the current drops below a critical value. Insertion of wider wells increases superlattice excitability by allowing wave nucleation at the modified wells and more complex dynamics. Then hyperchaos and different types of intermittent chaos are possible on extended dc voltage ranges. Intrinsic shot and thermal noises and external noises produce minor effects on chaotic attractors. However, random disorder due to growth fluctuations may suppress any regular or chaotic current oscillations. Numerical simulations show that more than 70\% of samples remain chaotic when the standard deviation of their fluctuations due to epitaxial growth is below 0.024 nm (10\% of a single monolayer) whereas for 0.015 nm disorder suppresses chaos.

cond-mat.mes-hall

The statistical theory of the angiogenesis equations

Angiogenesis is a multiscale process by which a primary blood vessel issues secondary vessel sprouts that reach regions lacking oxygen. Angiogenesis can be a natural process of organ growth and development or a pathological induced by a cancerous tumor. A mean field approximation for a stochastic model of angiogenesis consists of partial differential equation (PDE) for the density of active tip vessels. Addition of Gaussian and jump noise terms to this equation produces a stochastic PDE that defines an infinite dimensional Lévy process and is the basis of a statistical theory of angiogenesis. The associated functional equation has been solved and the invariant measure obtained. The results are compared to a direct numerical simulation of the stochastic model of angiogenesis and invariant measure multiplied by an exponentially decaying factor. The results of this theory are compared to direct numerical simulations of the underlying angiogenesis model. The invariant measure and the moments are functions of the Korteweg-de Vries soliton which approximates the deterministic density of active vessel tips.

math.AP

Anomalous angiogenesis in retina

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) may cause severe loss of vision or blindness particularly in elderly people. Exudative AMD is characterized by angiogenesis of blood vessels growing from underneath the macula, crossing the blood-retina barrier (that comprise Bruch's membrane, BM, and the retinal pigmentation epithelium RPE), leaking blood and fluid into the retina and knocking off photoreceptors. Here, we simulate a computational model of angiogenesis from the choroid blood vessels via a cellular Potts model, as well as BM, RPE cells, drusen deposits and photoreceptors. Our results indicate that improving AMD may require fixing the impaired lateral adhesion between RPE cells and with BM, as well as diminishing Vessel Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) and Jagged proteins that affect the Notch signaling pathway. Our numerical simulations suggest that anti-VEGF and anti-Jagged therapies could temporarily halt exudative AMD while addressing impaired cellular adhesion could be more effective on a longer time span.

physics.bio-ph

Coherence Resonance and Stochastic Resonance in an Excitable Semiconductor Superlattice

Collective electron transport causes a weakly coupled semiconductor superlattice under dc voltage bias to be an excitable system with $2N+2$ degrees of freedom: electron densities and fields at $N$ superlattice periods plus the total current and the field at the injector. External noise of sufficient amplitude induces regular current self-oscillations (coherence resonance) in states that are stationary in the absence of noise. Numerical simulations show that these oscillations are due to the repeated nucleation and motion of charge dipole waves that form at the emitter when the current falls below a critical value. At the critical current, the well-to-well tunneling current intersects the contact load line. We have determined the device-dependent critical current for the coherence resonance from experiments and numerical simulations. We have also described through numerical simulations how a coherence resonance triggers a stochastic resonance when its oscillation mode becomes locked to a weak ac external voltage signal. Our results agree with the experimental observations.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Parameter dependence of high-frequency nonlinear oscillations and intrinsic chaos in short GaAs/(Al,Ga)As superlattices

We explore the design parameter space of short (5--25 period), n-doped, Ga/(Al,Ga)As semiconductor superlattices (SSLs) in the sequential resonant tunneling regime. We consider SSLs at cool (77K) and warm (295K) temperatures, simulating the electronic response to variations in (a) the number of SSL periods, (b) the contact conductivity, and (c) the strength of disorder (aperiodicities). Our analysis shows that the chaotic dynamical phases exist on a number of sub-manifolds of codimension zero within the design parameter space. This result provides an encouraging guide towards the experimental observation of high-frequency intrinsic dynamical chaos in shorter SSLs.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Enhancing Chaotic Behavior at room temperature in GaAs/(Al,Ga)As Superlattices

Previous theoretical and experimental work has put forward 50-period semiconductor superlattices as fast, true random number generators at room temperature. Their randomness stems from feedback between nonlinear electronic dynamics and stochastic processes that are intrinsic to quantum transitions. This work theoretically demonstrates that shorter superlattices with higher potential barriers contain fully chaotic dynamics over several intervals of the applied bias voltage compared to the 50-periods device which presented a much weaker chaotic behavior. The chaos arises from deterministic dynamics, hence it persists even in the absence of additional stochastic processes. Moreover, the frequency of the chaotic current oscillations is higher for shorter superlattices. These features should allow for faster and more robust generation of true random numbers.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Noise-enhanced chaos in a weakly coupled GaAs/(Al,Ga)As superlattice

Noise-enhanced chaos in a doped, weakly coupled GaAs/Al_{0.45}Ga_{0.55}As superlattice has been observed at room temperature in experiments as well as in the results of the simulation of nonlinear transport based on a discrete tunneling model. When external noise is added, both the measured and simulated current-versus-time traces contain irregularly spaced spikes for particular applied voltages, which separate a regime of periodic current oscillations from a region of no current oscillations at all. In the voltage region without current oscillations, the electric field profile consist of a low-field domain near the emitter contact separated by a domain wall consisting of a charge accumulation layer from a high-field regime closer to the collector contact. With increasing noise amplitude, spontaneous chaotic current oscillations appear over a wider bias voltage range. For these bias voltages, the domain boundary between the two electric-field domains becomes unstable, and very small current or voltage fluctuations can trigger the domain boundary to move toward the collector and induce chaotic current spikes. The experimentally observed features are qualitatively very well reproduced by the simulations. Increased noise can consequently enhance chaotic current oscillations in semiconductor superlattices.

nlin.CD