arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W. Kong.
This article is a collection of contributions from speakers at the 2025 DEAMN [Dynamics of Electrons in Atomic and Molecular Nanoclusters] workshop at the Majorana Centre in Erice. Not ordinary contributions to a conference proceeding, this gives a new and different perspective on the work done by the workshop participants.
We employed {\it in-situ} pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to investigate the mechanism of the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in NdNiO$_3$ (NNO) thin films, grown on NdGaO$_3$(110) and LaAlO$_3$(100) substrates. In the metallic phase, we observe three dimensional hole and electron Fermi surface (FS) pockets formed from strongly renormalized bands with well-defined quasiparticles. Upon cooling across the MIT in NNO/NGO sample, the quasiparticles lose coherence via a spectral weight transfer from near the Fermi level to localized states forming at higher binding energies. In the case of NNO/LAO, the bands are apparently shifted upward with an additional holelike pocket forming at the corner of the Brillouin zone. We find that the renormalization effects are strongly anisotropic and are stronger in NNO/NGO than NNO/LAO. Our study reveals that substrate-induced strain tunes the crystal field splitting, which changes the FS properties, nesting conditions, and spin-fluctuation strength, and thereby controls the MIT via the formation of an electronic order parameter with Q$_{AF}\sim$(1/4, 1/4, 1/4$\pm$$δ$).
The distinctive set of infrared (IR) emission bands at 3.3, 6.2, 7.7, 8.6, and 11.3μm are ubiquitously seen in a wide variety of astrophysical environments. They are generally attributed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules. However, not a single PAH species has yet been identified in space, as the mid-IR vibrational bands are mostly representative of functional groups and thus do not allow one to fingerprint individual PAH molecules. In contrast, the far-IR (FIR) bands are sensitive to the skeletal characteristics of a molecule, hence they are important for chemical identification of unknown species. With an aim to offer laboratory astrophysical data for the Herschel Space Observatory, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, and similar future space missions, in this work we report neutral and cation FIR spectroscopy of pentacene (C_22H_14), a five-ring PAH molecule. We report three IR active modes of cationic pentacene at 53.3, 84.8, and 266μm that may be detectable by space missions such as the SAFARI instrument on board SPICA. In the experiment, pentacene is vaporized from a laser desorption source and cooled by a supersonic argon beam. We have obtained results from two-color resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization and two-color zero kinetic energy photoelectron (ZEKE) spectroscopy. Several skeletal vibrational modes of the first electronically excited state of the neutral species and those of the cation are assigned, with the aid of ab initio and density functional calculations.
We establish the asymptotics of blowup for nonlinear heat equations with superlinear power nonlinearities in arbitrary dimensions and we estimate the remainders.