The problem of the Friedel oscillations in two-and three-dimensional electron Fermi liquids is examined by means of the many-body local fields theory as aided by the most recent results of accurate numerical studies based on the quantum Monte Carlo method. Within linear response, an exact answer is obtained for the amplitude of the electron density distortion due to both short-and long-ranged impurity potentials. It is discussed how a measurement of the local environment of an impurity embedded in an otherwise homogeneous electron liquid can be used to characterize the systems as a Fermi liquid as well as to extract the magnitude of the static many-body corrections beyond the random phase approximation for wave vector equal to 2k F .

The coherence of state-of-the-art superconducting qubit devices is predominantly limited by two-level-system defects, found primarily at amorphous interface layers. Reducing microwave loss from these interfaces by proper surface treatments is key to push the device performance forward. Here, we study niobium resonators after removing the native oxides with a hydrofluoric acid etch. We investigate the reappearance of microwave losses introduced by surface oxides that grow after exposure to the ambient environment. We find that losses in quantum devices are reduced by an order of magnitude, with internal Qfactors reaching up to 7×10 6 in the single photon regime, when devices are exposed to ambient conditions for 16 min. Furthermore, we observe that Nb2O5 is the only surface oxide that grows significantly within the first 200 hours, following the extended Cabrera-Mott growth model. In this time, microwave losses scale linearly with the Nb2O5 thickness, with an extracted loss tangent tanδNb2O5 = 9.9×10 -3 . Our findings are of particular interest for devices spanning from superconducting qubits, quantum-limited amplifiers, microwave kinetic inductance detectors to single photon detectors.

We present a quantitative study of the quasiparticle properties of a three-dimensional electron Fermi liquid. Our approach is based on the theory of the many-body local field factors which we use to include vertex corrections associated with charge and spin fluctuations. Extensive use is made of the results of recent quantum Monte Carlo calculations. Several models for the wave-vector dependence of the spin-antisymmetric manybody local field factor G − , for which no numerical results are currently available, are discussed and compared. Both the real and imaginary parts of the self-energy as well as the quasiparticle renormalization constant and the enhancement of the effective mass are calculated in the experimentally accessible range of electron densities. The results obtained by means of the on-shell approximation are critically compared with those given by a self-consistent solution of the Dyson equation. An ultraviolet catastrophe in the Coulomb-hole part of the self-energy is identified and a satisfactory resolution of this impasse is presented. The same many-body local field factors are also used to obtain the Landau interaction function. This allows us to obtain both the spin susceptibility and the proper compressibility of the system.

We develop an analytic approach to two-dimensional (2D) holes in a magnetic field that allows us to gain insight into physics of measuring the parameters of holes, such as cyclotron resonance, Shubnikov-De Haas effect and spin resonance. We derive hole energies, cyclotron masses and the g-factors in the semiclassical regime analytically, as well as analyze numerical results outside the semiclassical range of parameters, qualitatively explaining experimentally observed magnetic field dependence of the cyclotron mass. In the semiclassical regime with large Landau level indices, and for size quantization energy much bigger than the cyclotron energy, the cyclotron mass coinsides with the in-plane effective mass, calculated in the absence of a magnetic field.The hole g-factor in a magnetic field perpendicular to the 2D plane is defined not only by the constant of direct coupling of the angular momentum of the holes to the magnetic field, but also by the Luttinger constants defining the effective masses of holes. We find that the g-factor for quasi 2D holes with heavy mass in the [001] growth direction in GaAs quantum well is g = 4.05 in the semiclasssical regime. Outside the semiclassical range of parameters, holes behave as a species completely different from electrons. Spectra for size-and magnetic-field-quantized holes are non-equidistant, not fan-like, and exhibit multiple crossings, including crossing in the ground level. We calculate the effect of Dresselhaus terms, which transform some of the crossings into anticrossings, and the effects of the anisotropy of the Luttinger Hamiltonian on the 2D hole spectra. Dresselhaus terms of different symmetries are taken into account, and a regularization procedure is developed for the k 3 z Dresselhaus terms. Control of the non-equidistant levels and crossing structure by the magnetic field can be used to control Landau level mixing in hole systems, and thereby control hole-hole interactions in the magnetic field.

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