Inequalities generalizing the second law of thermodynamics for transitions between nonstationary states

We discuss the consequences of a variant of the Hatano-Sasa relation in which a nonstationary distribution is used in place of the usual stationary one. We first show that this nonstationary distribution is related to a difference of traffic between the direct and dual dynamics. With this formalism, we extend the definition of the adiabatic and nonadiabatic entropies introduced by M. Esposito and C. Van den Broeck in Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 090601 (2010) for the stationary case. We also obtain interesting second-law-like inequalities for transitions between nonstationary states.     

Emissivity measurements of 3D photonic crystals at high temperatures

An accurate methodology is presented to measure photonic crystal emissivity using a direct method. This method addresses the issue of how to separate the emissions from the photonic crystal and the substrate. The method requires measuring two quantities: the total emissivity of the photonic crystal–substrate system, and the emissivity of the substrate alone. Our measurements have an uncertainty of 4% and represent the most accurate measure of a photonic crystal's emissivity. The measured results are compared to, and agree very well with, the independent emitter model.     

Non-equivalence of Dynamical Ensembles and Emergent Non-ergodicity

Dynamical ensembles have been introduced to study constrained stochastic processes. In the microcanonical ensemble, the value of a dynamical observable is constrained to a given value. In the canonical ensemble a bias is introduced in the process to move the mean value of this observable. The equivalence between the two ensembles means that calculations in one or the other ensemble lead to the same result. In this paper, we study the physical conditions associated with ensemble equivalence and the consequences of non-equivalence. For continuous time Markov jump processes, we show that ergodicity guarantees ensemble equivalence. For non-ergodic systems or systems with emergent ergodicity breaking, we adapt a method developed for equilibrium ensembles to compute asymptotic probabilities while caring about the initial condition. We illustrate our results on the infinite range Ising model by characterizing the fluctuations of magnetization and activity. We discuss the emergence of non-ergodicity by showing that the initial condition can only be forgotten after a time that scales exponentially with the number of spins.

     

Die Methode zur Bestimmung von Alkoholen und Phenolen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Overcoming limitations in semiconductor alloy design

The phenomenon of giant band gap ‘bowing’ recently observed in several III–V dilute nitride alloys is promising for increasing the flexibility in choice of semiconductor band gaps available for specified lattice constants. However, the poor electrical transport properties that these materials exhibit seriously limit their usefulness. It is proposed that these materials behave as heavily nitrogen-doped semiconductors rather than dilute nitride alloys and that the abnormal or irregular alloy behavior is associated with impurity band formation that manifests itself in the giant bowing and poor transport properties. The potential for regularizing the alloy behavior using isoelectronic co-doping is discussed.