Surface grating formation and erasing on a-Se films

Surface relief formation at holographic recording on amorphous selenium films was demonstrated and investigated. The presence of this optical phase modulation component is essential for ensuring significant, stable and erasable optical recording in a-Se films at 290–320 K temperatures, where conventional photodarkening was known as insignificant and unstable. Photocrystallization can only be observed in super-exposed a-Se films at the given experimental conditions of hologram recording. Erasing behavior of surface relief gratings under heat treatment was also investigated in order to reveal further details of the mechanism. Photoinduced structural transformations within the amorphous phase, connected to local ordering under the condition of light-induced fluidity, are proposed as an explanation for the relief formation and erasing. The observed reversible optical recording process may be useful for the various optoelectronic applications of photoconductive a-Se layers. Received: 12 June 2000 / Accepted: 6 June 2001 / Published online: 30 August 2001     

Comments on quasiparticle models of quark–gluon plasma

Here we comment on the thermodynamic inconsistency problem and the reformulation of statistical mechanics of widely studied quasiparticle models of quark–gluon plasma. Their starting relation, the expression for pressure itself is a wrong choice and lead to thermodynamic inconsistency and the requirements of the reformulation of statistical mechanics. We propose a new approach to the problem using the standard statistical mechanics and is thermodynamically consistent. We also show that the other quasiparticle models may be obtained from our general formalism as a special case under certain restrictive condition. Further, as an example, we have applied our model to explain the nonideal behaviour of gluon plasma and obtained a remarkable good fit to the lattice results by adjusting just a single parameter.     

Synthesis,Characterization and Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Cysteine and Valine Adducts of Sulphur Mustard

The synthetic standards for cysteine and valine adducts of sulphur mustard have been synthesized using 2-(2-chloroethylthio) ethanol (half-mustard). These adducts have been recognized as biomarkers for exposure to sulphur mustard. The adducts have been fully characterized using 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometric techniques.     

Chiral magnetism of the nucleona

We study the quark mass expansion of the magnetic moments of the nucleon in a chiral effective field theory including nucleons, pions and delta-resonances as explicit degrees of freedom. We point out that the usual power counting applied so far to this problem misses important quark mass structures generated via an intermediate isovector M1 nucleon-delta transition. We propose a modified power counting and compare the resulting chiral extrapolation function to available (quenched) lattice data. The extrapolation is found to work surprisingly well, given that the lattice data result from rather large quark masses. Our calculation raises the hope that extrapolations of lattice data utilizing chiral effective field theory might be applicable over a wider range in quark masses than previously thought, and we discuss some open questions in this context. Furthermore, we observe that within the current lattice data uncertainties the extrapolations presented here are consistent with the Padé fit ansatz introduced by the Adelaide group a few years ago. Received: 23 April 2002 / Accepted: 18 July 2002 / Published online: 17 December 2002 RID="c" ID="c"e-mail: themmert@physik.tu-muenchen.de RID="d" ID="d"e-mail: weise@ect.it Communicated by A. Sch?fer     

Infrared gluon and ghost propagators from lattice QCD

We report on the infrared limit of the quenched lattice Landau gauge gluon and ghost propagators as well as the strong-coupling constant computed from large asymmetric lattices. The infrared lattice propagators are compared with the pure power law solutions from Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSE). For the gluon propagator, the lattice data is compatible with the DSE solution. The preferred measured gluon exponent being ∼0.52, favouring a vanishing propagator at zero momentum. The lattice ghost propagator shows finite-volume effects and, for the volumes considered, the propagator does not follow a pure power law. Furthermore, the strong-coupling constant is computed and its infrared behaviour investigated.     

Understanding nucleon structure using lattice simulations

This review focuses on the discussion of three key results of nucleon structure calculations on the lattice. These three results are the quark contribution to the nucleon spin, J_q, the nucleon-Δ transition form factors, and the nucleon axial coupling, g_A. The importance for phenomenology and experiment is discussed and the requirements for future simulations are pointed out.     

GeSbTe deposition for the PRAM application

GeSbTe (GST) chalcogenide thin films for the phase-change random access memory (PRAM) were deposited by an atomic layer deposition (ALD) process. New precursors for GST thin films made with an ALD process were synthesized. Among the synthesized precursors, Ge(N(CH₃)₂)₄, Sb(N(CH₃)₂)₄, and Te(i-Pr)₂ (i-Pr = iso-propyl) were selected. Using the above precursors, GST thin films were deposited using an H₂ plasma-assisted ALD process. Film resistivity abruptly changed after an N₂ annealing process above a temperature of 350 °C. Cross-sectional scanning electron microscope (SEM) photographs of the GST films on the patterned substrate with aspect ratio of 7 shows that the step coverage is about 90%.     

A coincidence technique for the study of intense laser atom interactions

A new device for charged particle coincidence experiments in strong-field, short pulse laser-atom/molecule interactions is presented. The device consists of a single time of flight spectrometer, common for both positive and negative charge detection. Experimental parameters required for the use of the device in the high intensity regime are discussed. A demonstration of electron-ion coincidence measurements in the interaction of Xe atoms with 60 fs laser pulses at 800 nm and an intensity of W/cm² is reported. Received 22 November 1999     

Broken symmetries from minimally doubled fermions

Novel chirally symmetric fermion actions containing the minimum amount of fermion doubling have been recently proposed in the literature. We study the symmetries and renormalization of these actions and find that in each case, discrete symmetries, such as parity and time-reversal, are explicitly broken. Consequently, when the gauge interactions are included, these theories radiatively generate relevant and marginal operators. The restoration of these symmetries and the approach to the continuum limit thus require the fine-tuning of several parameters. With some assumptions, we show that this behavior is expected for actions displaying minimal fermion doubling.