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In the past few decades, there have been intense debates whether the brain operates at a critical state. To verify the criticality hypothesis in the neuronal networks is challenging and the accumulating experimental and theoretical results remain controversial at this point. Here we simulate how visual information of a nature image is processed by the finite Kinouchi-Copelli neuronal network, extracting the trends of the mutual information (how sensible the neuronal network is), the dynamical range (how sensitive the network responds to external stimuli) and the statistical fluctuations (how criticality is defined in conventional statistical physics). It is rather remarkable that the optimized state for visual recognition, although close to, does not coincide with the critical state where the statistical fluctuations reach the maximum. Different images and/or network sizes of course lead to differences in details but the trend of the information optimization remains the same. Our findings pave the first step to investigate how the information processing is optimized in different neuronal networks and suggest that the criticality hypothesis may not be necessary to explain why a neuronal network can process information smartly., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures in the main text and 3 figures in the Supplementary Information

The work presents the extended theoretical model of the electrical conductance in non-magnetic and magnetic nano-size point contacts. The developed approach describes diffusive, quasi-ballistic, ballistic and quantum regimes of the spin-resolved conductance. It is based on the electron transport through metallic junction within approach of the circular constriction. The model provides unified description of the contact resistance from Maxwell diffusive through the ballistic to purely quantum transport regimes without any residual terms depending from the scale. An application are given for experimental treatment of the golden nanocontacts as a non-magnetic case and Permalloy nanowire with/without domain wall as example for the magnetic system. The model of quantum point contact assumes that contact area can be replaced by the quantum object (i.e. magnetic tunnel junction, narrow domain wall, etc.), where potential energy profile determine its electrical properties., Comment: 4 fugures

With ultra-fast writing capacity and high reliability, the spin-orbit torque is regarded as a promising alternative to fabricate next-generation magnetic random access memory. However, the three-terminal setup can be challenging when scaling down the cell size. In particular, the thermal stability is an important issue. Here we demonstrate that the current-pulse-induced perpendicular exchange bias can significantly relieve the concern of thermal stability. The switching of the exchange bias direction is induced by the spin-orbit torque when passing current pulses through the Pt/Co system with an inserted IrMn antiferromagnetic layer. Manipulating the current-pulse-induced exchange bias, spin-orbit-torque switching at zero field between states with unidirectional anisotropy is achieved and the thermal agitation of the magnetic moment is strongly suppressed. The spin-orbit torque mechanism provides an innovative method to generate and to control the exchange bias by electrical means, which enables us to realize the new switching mechanism of highly stable perpendicular memory cells.

Carrier-mediated Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction plays an important role in itinerant magnetism. There have been intense interest on its general trend on bipartite lattice with particle-hole symmetry. In particular, recently fabricated graphene is well described by the honeycomb lattice within tight-binding approximation. We use SUSY quantum mechanics to study the RKKY interaction on bipartite lattices. The SUSY structure naturally differentiate the zero modes and those paired states at finite energies. The significant role of zero modes is largely ignored in previous literature because their measure is often zero in the thermodynamic limit. Employing both real-time and imaginary-time formalism, we arrive at the same conclusion: The RKKY interaction for impurity spins on different sublattices is always antiferromagnetic. However, for impurity spins on the same sublattice, the carrier-mediated RKKY interaction is not always ferromagnetic. Only in the absence of zero modes, the sign rule on the bipartite lattice holds true. Our finding highlight the importance of the zero modes in bipartite lattices. Their significance needs further investigation and may lead to important advances in carrier-mediated magnetism., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

The effects of magnetic doping on a EuB_6 single crystal were investigated based on magnetic and transport measurements. A modest 5% Sm substitution for Eu changes the magnetic and transport properties dramatically and gives rise to concurrent antiferromagnetic and metal-insulator transitions (MIT) from ferromagnetic MIT for EuB6. Magnetic doping simultaneously changes the itinerant carrier density and the magnetic interactions. We discuss the origin of the concurrent magnetic MIT in (Eu,Sm)B_6., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, final version to appear in Appl. Phys. Lett.

It is generally believed that a point defect in graphene gives rise to an impurity state at zero energy and causes a sharp peak in the local density of states near the defect site. We revisit the defect problem in graphene and find the general consensus incorrect. By both analytic and numeric methods, we show that the contribution to the local density of states from the impurity state vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. Instead, the pronounced peak of the zero-bias anomaly is a power-law singularity $1/|E|$ from infinite resonant peaks in the low-energy regime induced by the defect. Our finding shows that the peak shall be viewed as a collective phenomenon rather than a single impurity state in previous studies., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We study the non-collinear exchange coupling across a trilayer magnetic junction consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin dilute magnetic semiconductor containing itinerant carriers with finite spin relaxation. It is remarkable that, by increasing the spin relaxation, the critical temperature is substantially enhanced and the shape of the magnetization curve becomes more mean-field like. We attribute these interesting changes to the broken time-reversal symmetry which suppresses the oscillatory Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction. Our argument is further strengthened by the emergence of the non-collinear spiral exchange coupling across the trilayer magnetic junction with finite spin relaxation.

We study the Andreev edge state on the semi-infinite triangular lattice with different pairing symmetries and boundary topologies. We find a rich phase diagram of zero energy Andreev edge states that is a unique fingerprint of each of the possible pairing symmetries. We propose to pin down the pairing symmetry in recently discovered Na_xCoO_2 material by the Fourier-transformed scanning tunneling spectroscopy for the edge state. A surprisingly rich phase diagram is found and explained by a general gauge argument and mapping to 1D tight-binding model. Extensions of this work are discussed at the end., Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 4 figures

We study the electronic correlation effects in armchair nanoribbon and nanotube using weak-coupling approach and non-Abelian density-matrix renormalization-group method. We show that upon appropriate doping, the system exhibits a new type of flat-band ferromagnetism, different from the well-known Milke-Tasaki one. The strongly correlated ground state consists of intrinsic magnetic moments of flat-band states and itinerant carriers of dispersive bands, and the exchange coupling between them yields a ferromagnetism. The resultant ferromagnetic state with metallic conductivity has a potential in spintronics applications at nanoscale., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, introduction part rewritten

We carry out a complete analytical stability study for the SO(8) symmetric phases in the weakly-interacting two-leg ladder. It is shown that the SO(8) symmetry is robust under generic perturbations. Since there are no fixed points in the one-loop renormalization group equations, the conventional classification of relevant and irrelevant perturbations fails in this case. A new classification is defined and explained in detail. It leads to the anomalous scaling in the ratios of excitation gaps and an universal exponent 1/3 is extracted. This new method is also applied to the well studied 2D Ising model and similar exponent is calculated., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX format