We investigated macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) of Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oy intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) for two device structures. One is a small mesa, which is a few nanometers thick with only two or three IJJs, and the other is a stack of a few hundred IJJs in a narrow bridge structure. The experimental results regarding the switching current distribution for the first switch from the zero-voltage state were in good agreement with the conventional theory for a single Josephson junction, indicating that the crossover temperature from thermal activation to the MQT regime for the former device structure was similar to that for the latter device structure. Together with the observation of multiphoton transitions between quantized energy levels in the MQT regime, these results strongly suggest that the observed MQT behavior is intrinsic to a single IJJ in high-Tc cuprates and is independent of the device structure. The switching current distribution for the second switch from the first resistive state, which was carefully distinguished from the first switch, was also compared with respect to the two device structures. In spite of the differences between the heat transfer environments, the second switch exhibited a similar temperature-independent behavior for both devices up to a much higher temperature than the crossover temperature for the first switch. We argue that this cannot be explained in terms of self-heating caused by dissipative currents after the first switch. As possible candidates for this phenomenon, the MQT process for the second switch and the effective increase of the electronic temperature due to the quasiparticle injection are discussed.

We have previously proposed that asymptotically AdS 3D wormholes and black holes can be analytically continued to the Euclidean signature. The analytic continuation procedure was described for non-rotating spacetimes, for which a plane t = 0 of time symmetry exists. The resulting Euclidean manifolds turned out to be handlebodies whose boundary is the Schottky double of the geometry of the t = 0 plane. In the present paper we generalize this analytic continuation map to the case of rotating wormholes. The Euclidean manifolds we obtain are quotients of the hyperbolic space by a certain quasi-Fuchsian group. The group is the Fenchel-Nielsen deformation of the group of the non-rotating spacetime. The angular velocity of an asymptotic region is shown to be related to the Fenchel-Nielsen twist. This solves the problem of classification of rotating black holes and wormholes in (2 + 1) dimensions: the spacetimes are parametrized by the moduli of the boundary of the corresponding Euclidean spaces. We also comment on the thermodynamics of the wormhole spacetimes.

Low voltages in two stress modes and at three temperatures were applied to two kinds of p-channel metal-oxidesemiconductor field-effect transistors (pMOSFETs) to investigate the substrate current variations and hot-carrier (HC)induced degradation. Contrary to conventional concepts, this investigation reveals that the worst conditions for pMOSFET HC reliability involve channel HC (CHC) mode and high temperatures. The severity of degradation of pMOSFETs has become comparable to their n-channel MOSFET (nMOSFET) counterparts. A probable damage mechanism is suggested to involve the generation of interface states owing to the integration of HCs and the negative-biased temperature effect (NBTI). A new empirical lifetime model is proposed in terms of applied voltages and temperatures.

No abstract

In–Sb-based super-resolution near-field structure read-only-memory discs with radial density increased by introducing a narrow track pitch corresponding to the diffraction limit of an optical system were developed. Using an optical system with a laser diode with a wavelength of 405 nm and an objective lens with a numerical aperture of 0.85, we confirmed that differential phase detection (DPD) could detect track errors from disc samples recorded random data including a minimum pit length of 75 nm in a 240 nm track period. It has higher capability of track error detection than push–pull detection at a narrowed track pitch. Moreover, bit error rates satisfying the criterion of 3.0×10-4 were experimentally obtained for 66.7-GB-capacity disc samples with a 240 nm track pitch through signal processing with the partial response maximum likelihood of the (1,2,2,1)-type, by applying DPD to tracking servo control. The feasibility of increasing the track density of the Blu-ray DiscTM physical format by 1.33 times was indicated.