Band-gap fluctuations in amorphous semiconductors

The exponential absorption tails of amorphous semiconductors are described by integrating the band-to-band absorption over an exponential distribution of band-gap. This requires that the tail states are derived from the band states, and are therefore not highly localised. We show that the fluctuations required by the absorption predict the principal features of the intrinsic 1.4eV luminescence of a-Si:H. The origin of the fluctuations is attributed to ‘frozen’ phonons which constitute the amorphous short-range disorder.     

热辐射中存在偶极相互作用的原子量子态保真度研究

建立了两个两能级原子置于热辐射场环境中的模型,当计及原子偶极间的相互作用时,利用密度矩阵方法,得到两能级原子密度矩阵元随时间的演化规律.针对三种不同的初始状态,分析置于强热辐射场中原子量子态保真度.结果表明:两个原子初始处于不同量子叠加态,量子信息在传输过程中可能发生部分失真,也可能不失真.初始状态对量子信息失真的快慢程度有明显的影响.     

A class of two dimensional models with extended structure solutions

We study some properties of a class of two-dimensional models which have infinite dimensional groups of symmetry which include both the Euclidean and Minkowskian groups. We show that all solutions of these models are self-dual and correspond to mappings of the 2 dimensional plane into itself which locally preserve the area. When treated as candidates for soliton-like structures we see that the structures are localised. In most cases the energy density of these structures has a power-like tail; in some cases, e.g. the modified sine-Gordon model, the localisation is exponential.     

Solitons in a linear lattice with defects

Solitons are generated in an anharmonic linear lattice in which neighbouring atoms interact through a Morse potential by giving either a strong initial impulse or a large displacement to an end atom. Studies on the variation of the characteristic properties of the soliton with the strength of the initial pulse show that the velocity and the amplitude of the soliton increase with the strength of the initial impulse, but below a certain critical value for the initial impulse, only an oscillatory tail is generated. It is shown that when a defect is present in the lattice, a localised mode appears at the site of the defect and additional solitons travelling forward or even backwards, are generated. When two solitons collide at a defect region, they reemerge but leave a localised mode at the site of the defect. If an initial velocity is imparted to a particular particle, synchronously with the crossing of the particle by the soliton, a localised mode emerges at the site of the particle and additional solitons are also generated. When a soliton moves from a denser to a rarer medium, a strong localised pulse is created near the region of the density discontinuity and additional solitons appear; and further a weak oscillatory tail is left behind in the denser medium. On the other hand, if a soliton moves from a rarer to a denser medium, it is reflected back and a small localised mode is generated at the site of the density discontinuity. The variation of amplitude of the soliton with the velocity of propagation is also studied.     

A contribution to the explanation of the electronic spectrum of amorphous materials

In this article the electronic spectrum is explained on the basis of a polycrystalline model of amorphous material. It is shown that from the given model the origin of the “tail profile” function can be derived which expresses the dependence of the density of states on energy. Taking into consideration the small density of states in the region of the tail, “the increase” of activation energy of amorphous materials in comparison with monocrystalline materials can easily be explained.     

Effect of time reversal symmetry breaking on the density of states in small superconducting grains

We show that in ultrasmall superconducting grains any concentration of magnetic impurities or infinitely small orbital effect of magnetic field leads to destruction of the hard gap in the tunneling density of states, and find analytically the exponential tail at low energies. Thus, the tunneling density of states exhibits the "soft gap" behavior. As the energy approaches zero, it vanishes linearly with excitation energy.     

Density of near-extreme events

We provide a quantitative analysis of the phenomenon of crowding of near-extreme events by computing exactly the density of states (DOS) near the maximum of a set of independent and identically distributed random variables. We show that the mean DOS converges to three different limiting forms depending on whether the tail of the distribution of the random variables decays slower than pure exponential, faster than pure exponential, or as a pure exponential function. We argue that some of these results would remain valid even for certain correlated cases and verify it for power-law correlated stationary Gaussian sequences. Satisfactory agreement is found between the near-maximum crowding in the summer temperature reconstruction data of western Siberia and the theoretical prediction.     

Late time behavior of false vacuum decay: possible implications for cosmology and metastable inflating states

We describe here how the late time behavior of the quantum mechanical decay of unstable states, which is predicted to deviate from an exponential form, may have important cosmological implications. It may increase the likelihood of eternal inflation and may enhance the likelihood of observing a small vacuum energy at late times versus possible late time decay into a large negative energy (anti-de Sitter space) vacuum state. Open questions include the following: How can internal observations made impact upon the wave function of the Universe and hence upon its decay characteristics?     

Near-damage threshold femtosecond laser irradiation of dielectric surfaces: desorbed ion kinetics and defect dynamics

We study the modification of fluoride single crystals after irradiation with femtosecond laser pulses for a range of incident intensities from well below to near damage threshold. The behavior of the desorbed positive ion yields, as analyzed by time-of-flight mass spectrometry, is corroborated with temporal characteristics of radiation induced defects in fluorides. The ion yield evolution upon repetitive irradiation (incubation) exhibits the typical reduction of the multi-shot damage threshold with increasing number of pulses. The experimental data point towards an exponential growth of the transient defect density as the origin of this effect. On the other hand, measurements of the time decay of transient defect fluorescence inside the transparent sample show that the defect lifetime may be even longer than tens of milliseconds. To account for the incubation and the increase of the radiation-target coupling efficiency, a model relating the defect lifetime to a pulse-by-pulse accumulation of transient defects is presented, based on a calculation of the free electron density.     

Lifshitz Tails on the Bethe Lattice: A Combinatorial Approach

The density of states of disordered hopping models generically exhibits an essential singularity around the edges of its support, known as a Lifshitz tail. We study this phenomenon on the Bethe lattice, i.e. for the large-size limit of random regular graphs, converging locally to the infinite regular tree, for both diagonal and off-diagonal disorder. The exponential growth of the volume and surface of balls on these lattices is an obstacle for the techniques used to characterize the Lifshitz tails in the finite-dimensional case. We circumvent this difficulty by computing bounds on the moments of the density of states, and by deriving their implications on the behavior of the integrated density of states.     

Effect of the intermolecular thermal motions on the tail of the electronic density of states in polyacene crystals

The thermal fluctuation of the intermolecular hopping integral in the series of polyacene crystals (naphthalene, anthracene, tetracene, pentacene) was evaluated computationally using a combined molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry approach. It was shown that these large fluctuations can manifest themselves in a temperature-dependent relatively broad tail of the density of states extending from the valence band into the gap. It was also shown that this tail accounts for a large fraction of all states in the valence band and therefore it may be essential for accurately describing the charge transport and optical properties.     

Pair Formation of Hard Core Bosons in Flat Band Systems

Hard core bosons in a large class of one or two dimensional flat band systems have an upper critical density, below which the ground states can be described completely. At the critical density, the ground states are Wigner crystals. If one adds a particle to the system at the critical density, the ground state and the low lying multi particle states of the system can be described as a Wigner crystal with an additional pair of particles. The energy band for the pair is separated from the rest of the multi-particle spectrum. The proofs use a Gerschgorin type of argument for block diagonally dominant matrices. In certain one-dimensional or tree-like structures one can show that the pair is localised, for example in the chequerboard chain. For this one-dimensional system with periodic boundary condition the energy band for the pair is flat, the pair is localised.     

Second-harmonic spectroscopy of electronic structure of Si/SiO2 multiple quantum wells

Size effects in the resonant nonlinear optical response of amorphous Si/SiO₂ multiple quantum wells (MQW) are studied by second-harmonic generation (SHG) spectroscopy in a spectral interval of second-harmonic photon energies from 2.5 to 3.4 eV. The sensitivity of SHG spectroscopy to thickness-dependent electronic structure (sub-band energy position and density of states line shape) of MQW is demonstrated. A monotonic red shift of central energies of SHG resonances by 120 m eV upon increase of the well thickness from 2.5 to 10 ? is observed. This is interpreted as a size dependence of the position of singularities in the combined density of states for a 2D gas of electrons moving in an effective potential well. It is shown that, for agreement with experiment, the simplest (rectangular) shape of the well should be modified in order to take into account the lattice-potential distortion at the interfaces. Received: 16 October 2001 / Revised version: 16 April 2002 / Published online: 6 June 2002     

强热辐射环境中两能级原子量子态保真度

两个两能级原子置于强热辐射场环境中，原子用泡利算符描述，环境用无穷的谐振子热库描述，运用密度矩阵方法，得到两能级原子密度矩阵元演化规律.针对三种不同的初始状态，分析置于热辐射场中原子量子态保真度.结果表明：当两个原子初始处于不同量子叠加态时，量子信息在传输过程中可能发生部分失真，也可能不失真. 关键词： 热辐射场 两能级原子 保真度 消相干     

Role of nitrogen and oxygen in emission of Si quantum dots formed by pulse laser

Silicon quantum dots fabricated by nanosecond pulsed laser in nitrogen, oxygen or air atmosphere have enhanced photoluminescence (PL) emission with the stimulated emission observed at about 700 nm. It is difficult to distinguish between the photoluminescence peaks emitted from samples prepared in different atmospheres. The reason for the appearance of similar peaks may be the similar distribution of the localised states in the gap for different samples when silicon dangling bonds of quantum dots are passivated by nitrogen or oxygen. It is revealed that both the kind and the density of passivated bonds on quantum dot surface prepared in oxygen or nitrogen have a strong influence on the enhancement of PL emission.     

The anisotropy of free path in a vibro-fluidized granular gas

The free path of a vibro-fluidized two-dimensional(2D) inelastic granular gas confined in a rectangular box is investigated by 2D event-driven molecular simulation. By tracking particles in the simulation, we analyze the local free path.The probability distribution of the free path shows a high tail deviating from the exponential prediction. The anisotropy of the free path is found when we separate the free path to x and y components. The probability distribution of y component is exponential, while x component has a high tail. The probability distribution of angle between the relative velocity and the unit vector joined two particle centers deviates from the distribution of two random vectors, indicating the existence of the dynamic heterogeneities in our system. We explain these results by resorting to the kinetic theory with two-peak velocity distribution. The kinetic theory agrees well with the simulation result.     

Capacitance spectroscopy of a system of gapless Dirac fermions in a HgTe quantum well

Information on the density of states of two-dimensional Dirac fermions in a 6.6-nm-thick HgTe quantum well that corresponds to a transition from the direct to inverted spectrum is obtained for the first time by means of capacitance measurements. It is found that the density of states of Dirac electrons is a linear function of the Fermi energy at E _F > 30 meV with the corresponding velocity vDF = 8.2 × 10⁵ m/s. At lower energies, this dependence deviates from the linear law, indicating a strong effect of disorder, which is associated with fluctuations of a built-in charge, on the density of states of the studied system near the Dirac point. At negative energies, a sharp increase in the density of states is observed, which is associated with the tail of the density of states of valleys of heavy holes. The described behavior is in agreement with the proposed model, which includes both the features of the real spectrum of Dirac fermions and the effect of the fluctuation potential.     

Three-dimensional analysis for transient coupled thermoelastic response of a functionally graded rectangular plate

The generalized coupled thermoelasticity based on the Lord-Shulman theory is considered to study the transient thermoelastic response of functionally graded rectangular plates. The state equations of functionally graded rectangular plate subjected to time-dependent thermal loads were established by using of state space approach, in which three displacement components, three stress components, the temperature and the heat flux were chosen as state variables. By giving simply supported boundary conditions and assuming that the material properties of the plate have an exponential law distribution along the thickness-coordinate, the equations were solved by the numerical Laplace transformations and shooting methods for transient thermal responses of a three dimensional functionally graded rectangular plate due to a thermal shock on its top surface. Effects of the volume fraction distributions of material constituents on the thermal responses, including the temperature change, the displacement and the stresses distributions were investigated.     

The role that conduction band tail states play in determining the optical response of hydrogenated amorphous silicon

We aim to explore the role that conduction band tail states play in shaping the optical response of hydrogenated amorphous silicon. We do so within the framework of an empirical model for the valence band and conduction band density of states functions, one that considers valence band band, valence band tail, conduction band band, and conduction band tail states. We examine the sensitivity of the joint density of states function to variations in the conduction band tail breadth, all other parameters being held fixed at their nominal hydrogenated amorphous silicon values. We find that when the conduction band tail is narrower than the valence band tail, its role in shaping the corresponding spectral dependence of the joint density of states function is relatively minor. This justifies the use of a simplified empirical model for the density of states functions that neglects the presence of the conduction band tail states in the characterization of the optical response of this material. Experimental data corresponding to hydrogenated amorphous silicon, demonstrating that the conduction band tail breadth is always less than the valence band tail breadth for this material, is then presented. Finally, fundamental reasons for the observed asymmetry in the band tail breadths are reviewed.