Double pion photoproduction off 40Ca

The photoproduction of π ⁰ π ⁰ and π ⁰ π ^± pairs off ⁴⁰Ca has been investigated with the TAPS detector using the Glasgow photon tagging spectrometer at the Mainz MAMI accelerator. Data have been taken for incident photon energies in the energy range from 200-820MeV. Total cross-sections have been extracted from threshold up to the maximum photon energy and invariant-mass distributions of the pion pairs have been obtained for incident photon energies between 400-500MeV and 500-550MeV. The double π ⁰ invariant-mass distributions show some relative enhancement with respect to the mixed charge channel at small invariant masses. The effects are smaller than previously observed for lead nuclei and the distributions do not significantly deviate from carbon data. The data are in good agreement with the results of recent calculations in the framework of the BUU model, with careful treatment of final-state interaction effects but without an explicit in-medium modification of scalar, iso-scalar pion pairs. This means that for Ca most of the experimentally observed effect can be explained by final-state interactions. Only at low incident photon energies there is still a small low mass enhancement of the double π ⁰ data over the BUU results.     

A study of particle-vibration multiplets in 203Tl using the 205Tl(p,t)203Tl, 208Pb(p,t)206Pb and 206Pb(p,t)204Pb reactions

The ²⁰⁵Tl(p, t)²⁰³Tl reaction has been used at 26.2 MeV to obtain additional information on the particle-vibration multiplets in ²⁰³Tl. Enhancement factors for the L = 0 and L = 2 transitions to the lower excited states of ²⁰³Tl were well accounted for by using enhancement factors from the ²⁰⁶Pb(p, t)²⁰⁴Pb reaction and the wave functions from the intermediate coupling calculations of Covello and Sartoris. Additional data on the ²⁰⁸Pb(p, t)²⁰⁶Pb reaction at 26.2 MeV were used along with data at other energies to examine the energy dependence of the zero-range enhancement factors.     

In situ real-time observation of thin film deposition: roughening, zeno effect, grain boundary crossing barrier, and steering

We report on the first atomic-scale real-time in situ investigation of the growth of a polycrystalline gold film during its deposition performed with a scanning tunneling microscope. Continuously scanning while depositing the film enables the direct observation of atomic processes. The grain boundaries play a crucial role in the evolving film structure, as they initiate mound formation, thereby significantly increasing the film roughness. A possible additional roughness increase comes from atom steering, which also can delay the film closure in the early stages during film growth.     

Attosecond resolved charging of ions in a rare-gas cluster

A scheme to probe dissipative multielectron motion in time is introduced. In this context attosecond probing enables one to obtain information which is lost at later times and cannot be retrieved by conventional methods in the energy domain due to the incoherent nature of the dynamics. As a specific example we will trace the transient charging of ions in a rare-gas cluster during a strong femtosecond vacuum-ultraviolet pulse by means of delayed attosecond pulses.     

The copolymer route to new luminescent materials for LEDs

The synthesis of the highly fluorescent mono‐ and bis‐silylated poly(1,4‐phenylene vinylene) derivatives 1 and 2 is reported. The Gilch dehydrohalogenation polycondensation and the Horner synthesis of strictly alternating copolymers have been used to prepare the copolymers 8‐11 and 14, 16‐18 , respectively, in which the tunability of various optoelectonic properties may be examined systematically.     

Conserved dynamics and interface roughening in spontaneous imbibition: A phase field model

The propagation and roughening of a fluid-gas interface through a disordered medium in the case of capillary driven spontaneous imbibition is considered. The system is described by a conserved (model B) phase-field model, with the structure of the disordered medium appearing as a quenched random field . The flow of liquid into the medium is obtained by imposing a non-equilibrium boundary condition on the chemical potential, which reproduces Washburn's equation for the slowing down motion of the average interface position H. The interface is found to be superrough, with global roughness exponent , indicating anomalous scaling. The spatial extent of the roughness is determined by a length scale arising from the conservation law. The interface advances by avalanche motion, which causes temporal multiscaling and qualitatively reproduces the experimental results of Horv'ath and Stanley (Phys. Rev. E 52, 5166 (1995)) on the temporal scaling of the interface. Received 24 November 1999     

Electron-energy bunching in laser-driven soft recollisions

We introduce soft recollisions in laser-matter interaction. They are characterized by the electron missing the ion upon recollision in contrast with the well-known head-on collisions responsible for high-harmonic generation or above-threshold ionization. We demonstrate analytically that soft recollisions can cause a bunching of photoelectron energies through which a series of low-energy peaks emerges in the electron yield along the laser polarization axis. This peak sequence is universal, it does not depend on the binding potential, and is found below an excess energy of one tenth of the ponderomotive energy.