An ultra-thin nanostructured plasmonic light absorber with an insulator-metal-insulator-metal (IMIM) architecture is designed and numerically studied. The IMIM structure is capable to absorb up to about 82.5% of visible light in a broad wavelength range of 300-750 nm. The absorption by the bottom metal is only 6% of that of the top metal. The results show that the IMIM architecture has weak dep...

Chromatin insulators are regulatory elements involved in the modulation of enhancer-promoter communication. The 1A2 and Wari insulators are located immediately downstream of the Drosophila yellow and white genes, respectively. Using an assay based on the yeast GAL4 activator, we have found that both insulators are able to interact with their target promoters in transgenic lines, forming gene lo...

We apply ultrafast spectroscopy to establish a time-domain hierarchy between structural and electronic effects in a strongly correlated electron system. We discuss the case of the model system VO2, a prototypical nonmagnetic compound that exhibits cell doubling, charge localization, and a metal-insulator transition below 340 K. We initiate the formation of the metallic phase by prompt hole phot...

In superconductors the zero-resistance current-flow is protected from dissipation at finite temperatures (T) by virtue of the short-circuit condition maintained by the electrons that remain in the condensed state. The recently suggested finite-T insulator and the "superinsulating" phase are different because any residual mechanism of conduction will eventually become dominant as the finite-T in...

The Iterated Perturbation Theory (IPT) equations of the Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) for the half-filled Hubbard model, are solved on nearly real frequencies at various values of the Hubbard parameters U , to investigate the nature of metal-insulator transition (MIT) at finite temperatures. This method avoids the instabilities associated with the infamous Padé analytic continuation and re...

Correlation between structure and transport properties are investigated in high-quality single-crystals of Ca2Ru1 xCrxO4 with 0oxo0.14 using single crystal X-ray diffraction and by electronic studies. The parent compound was known to exhibit an intriguing first-order structurally driven metal–insulator (MI) transition at 357 K. Upon chromium doping on the ruthenium site, the metal–insulator tra...

The Hubbard model with additional intersite interaction ‘V ’ ( the extended Hubbard model) is investigated by the correlator projection method (CPM). CPM is a newly developed numerical method which combines the equation-of-motion approach and the dynamical mean-field theory. Using this method, properties of the extended Hubbard Model at quarter filling are discussed with special emphasis on the...

Insulators might regulate gene expression by establishing and maintaining the organization of the chromatin fiber within the nucleus. Biochemical fractionation and in situ high salt extraction of lysed cells show that two known protein components of the gypsy insulator are present in the nuclear matrix. Using FISH with DNA probes located between two endogenous Su(Hw) binding sites, we show that...

Electrons in correlated insulators are prevented from conducting by Coulomb repulsion between them. When an insulator-to-metal transition is induced in a correlated insulator by doping or heating, the resulting conducting state can be radically different from that characterized by free electrons in conventional metals. We report on the electronic properties of a prototypical correlated insulato...

The Iterated Perturbation Theory (IPT) equations of the Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) for the half-filled Hubbard model, are solved on nearly real frequencies at various values of the Hubbard parameters, U , to investigate the nature of metal-insulator transition (MIT) at finite temperatures. This method avoids the instabilities associated with the infamous Padé analytic continuation and r...