Phonon-assisted optical absorption in silicon from first principles

The phonon-assisted interband optical absorption spectrum of silicon is calculated at the quasiparticle level entirely from first principles. We make use of the Wannier interpolation formalism to determine the quasiparticle energies, as well as the optical transition and electron-phonon coupling matrix elements, on fine grids in the Brillouin zone. The calculated spectrum near the onset of indirect absorption is in very good agreement with experimental measurements for a range of temperatures. Moreover, our method can accurately determine the optical absorption spectrum of silicon in the visible range, an important process for optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications that cannot be addressed with simple models. The computational formalism is quite general and can be used to understand the phonon-assisted absorption processes in general.     

A spatiotemporal Data Envelopment Analysis (S-T DEA) approach: the need to assess evolving units

We consider a two-stage supply chain with one supplier and one manufacturer. The manufacturer faces a Poisson demand process where the arrival rate depends on the selling price, the announced delivery time, and the delivery reliability defined as the probability of satisfying the announced delivery time. Such a demand model generalizes the works in the literature by simultaneously considering the above three demand sensitivity factors. The main purpose of this paper is to study the equilibrium decisions in the supply chain with an all-unit quantity discount contract. We consider four scenarios regarding whether the leadtime standard, the delivery reliability standard, and the manufacturer’s capacity are endogenous, and whether the manufacturer’s production cost is its private information. We find that an all-unit quantity discount scheme can coordinate the supply chain for most cases. Managerial insights are observed regarding the impact of the three demand sensitivity factors. For example, the breakpoint in an optimal quantity discount contract always increases with the delivery reliability sensitivity under an exogenous delivery reliability, but may decrease under an endogenous delivery reliability; with asymmetric information, a higher variance of the manufacturer’s unit production costs leads to a lower unit wholesale price for the low-cost manufacturer.     

HPLC determination of residual monomers released from heat-cured acrylic resins

HPLC was used to examine the leachability of three non-phthalic and four phthalic post-polymerized residual monomers from three commercially available heat-cured acrylic resins. Specimens of equal dimensions were constructed from each brand of material by following the standardized procedure and were stored under three different conditions, namely, distilled water, artificial saliva, and a binary mixture of ethanol/water. The resulting liquids provided samples for analysis by HPLC. Three different experiments were performed for each brand of acrylic and each storage condition in order to examine the effects of parameters, particularly time and temperature. The results obtained from this study suggest that a wide spectrum of residues diffuse out of the three examined acrylic resin materials. The non-phthalic compounds were leached at high concentrations, whereas all the phthalates examined exhibited different degrees of elusion commensurate with the storage condition, brand of material, and type of experiment. It seems that a significant quantity of non-phthalic and phthalic residues diffuse out of the acrylic resin materials examined. The main component extracted was methyl methacrylate, the level of which seems to be time-dependent and decreases for a period of up to 5 days when resins are stored in distilled water at room temperature.     

On a refinement of the generalized Catalan numbers for Weyl groups

Let be an irreducible crystallographic root system with Weyl group , coroot lattice and Coxeter number , spanning a Euclidean space , and let be a positive integer. It is known that the set of regions into which the fundamental chamber of is dissected by the hyperplanes in of the form for and is equinumerous to the set of orbits of the action of on the quotient . A bijection between these two sets, as well as a bijection to the set of certain chains of order ideals in the root poset of , are described and are shown to preserve certain natural statistics on these sets. The number of elements of these sets and their corresponding refinements generalize the classical Catalan and Narayana numbers, which occur in the special case and .

     

Berechnung von Wärmespannungen in Scheiben infolge stationärer Temperaturfelder mit Hilfe der Integralgleichungsmethode

Übersicht Mit Hilfe der Integralgleichungsmethode (BEM) werden in dieser Arbeit Wärmespannungen, die in Scheiben infolge stationärer Temperaturfelder entstehen, berechnet. Neben den statischen oder geometrischen Randbedingungen wird die Temperatur oder der Temperaturgradient als zusätzliche Randbedingung vorgegeben. Unter Verwendung von Wärmequellen oder Wärmedipolen wird das Problem auf ein System Fredholmscher Integralgleichungen zurückgeführt, das numerisch gelöst wird. Numerische Untersuchungen schließen die Arbeit ab.

---

Determination of thermal stresses in disks with the boundary element method

Summary The Boundary Element Method (BEM) is used to calculate thermal stresses in discs, caused by stationary temperature fields. Beside the statical or geometrical boundary conditions the temperature or the temperature gradient can be formulated as an additional boundary condition. By use of thermal sources or thermal dipols the problem is reduced to a system of Fredholm integral equations, which is solved numerically. Finally examples are presented including numerical results.

     

On spherical-wave scattering by a spherical scatterer and related near-field inverse problems

A spherical acoustic wave is scattered by a bounded obstacle.A generalization of the ‘optical theorem’ (whichrelates the scattering cross-section to the far-field patternin the forward direction for an incident plane wave) is proved.For a spherical scatterer, low-frequency results are obtainedby approximating the known exact solution (separation of variables).In particular, a closed-form approximation for the scatteredwavefield at the source of the incident spherical wave is obtained.This leads to the explicit solution of some simple near-fieldinverse problems, where both the source and coincident receiverare located at several points in the vicinity of a small sphere.     

The absolute order of a permutation representation of a Coxeter group

A permutation representation of a Coxeter group W naturally defines an absolute order. This family of partial orders (which includes the absolute order on W) is introduced and studied in this paper. Conditions under which the associated rank generating polynomial divides the rank generating polynomial of the absolute order on W are investigated when W is finite. Several examples, including a symmetric group action on perfect matchings, are discussed. As an application, a well-behaved absolute order on the alternating subgroup of W is defined.     

Plasmon-enhanced light emission based on lattice resonances of silver nanocylinder arrays

Diffractive arrays of silver nanocylinders are used to increase the radiative efficiency of InGaN/GaN quantum wells emitting at near-green wavelengths. Large enhancements in luminescence intensity (up to a factor of nearly 5) are measured when the array period exceeds the emission wavelength in the semiconductor material. The experimental results and related numerical simulations indicate that the underlying mechanism is a strong resonant coupling between the light-emitting excitons in the quantum wells and the plasmonic lattice resonances of the arrays. These excitations are particularly well suited to light-emission-efficiency enhancement, compared to localized surface plasmon resonances at similar wavelengths, due to their larger scattering efficiency and larger spatial extension across the sample area.     

Determination of antimicrobial activity and resistance to oxidation of moringa peregrina seed oil

The antimicrobial activity of the oil extracted with n-hexane from the seeds of Moringa peregrina was tested against Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Candida albicans, C. tropicalis and C. glabrata. The oil proved effective against all of the tested microorganisms. Standard antibiotics (netilmycin, 5-flucytocine, intraconazole and 7-amino-4-methylcoumarin-3-acetic acid) were used for comparison. The resistance to oxidation of the extracted seed oil was also determined.     

Use of ultrafast dispersed pump-dump-probe and pump-repump-probe spectroscopies to explore the light-induced dynamics of peridinin in solution

Optical pump-induced dynamics of the highly asymmetric carotenoid peridinin in methanol was studied by dispersed pump-probe, pump-dump-probe, and pump-repump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy in the visible region. Dispersed pump-probe measurements show that the decay of the initially excited S2 state populates two excited states, the S1 and the intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) state, at a ratio determined by the excitation wavelength. The ensuing spectral evolution occurs on the time scale of a few picoseconds and suggests the equilibration of these states. Dumping the stimulated emission of the ICT state with an additional 800-nm pulse after 400- and 530-nm excitation preferentially removes the ICT state contribution from the broad excited-state absorption, allowing for its spectral characterization. At the same time, an unrelaxed ground-state species, which has a subpicosecond lifetime, is populated. The application of the 800-nm pulse at early times, when the S2 state is still populated, led to direct generation of the peridinin cation, observed for the first time in a transient absorption experiment. The excited and ground electronic states manifold of peridinin has been reconstructed using target analysis; this approach combined with the measured multipulse spectroscopic data allows us to estimate the spectra and time scales of the corresponding transient states.