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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Electrical Characterization Of Irradiated Semiconducting Amorphous Hydrogenated Boron Carbide, George Glen Peterson Aug 2017

Electrical Characterization Of Irradiated Semiconducting Amorphous Hydrogenated Boron Carbide, George Glen Peterson

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Semiconducting amorphous partially dehydrogenated boron carbide has been explored as a neutron voltaic for operation in radiation harsh environments, such as on deep space satellites/probes. A neutron voltaic device could also be used as a solid state neutron radiation detector to provide immediate alerts for radiation workers/students, as opposed to the passive dosimetry badges utilized today. Understanding how the irradiation environment effects the electrical properties of semiconducting amorphous partially dehydrogenated boron carbide is important to predicting the stability of these devices in operation. p-n heterojunction diodes were formed from the synthesis of semiconducting amorphous partially dehydrogenated boron carbide on silicon …


Effects Of A Periodic Decay Rate On The Statistics Of Radioactive Decay: New Methods To Search For Violations Of The Law Of Radioactive Change, Mark P. Silverman Sep 2015

Effects Of A Periodic Decay Rate On The Statistics Of Radioactive Decay: New Methods To Search For Violations Of The Law Of Radioactive Change, Mark P. Silverman

Faculty Scholarship

It is a long-held tenet of nuclear physics, from the early work of Rutherford and Soddy up to present times that the disintegration of each species of radioactive nuclide occurs randomly at a constant rate unaffected by interactions with the external environment. During the past 15 years or so, reports have been published of some 10 or more unstable nuclides with non-exponential, periodic decay rates claimed to be of geophysical, astrophysical, or cosmological origin. Deviations from standard exponential decay are weak, and the claims are controversial. This paper examines the effects of a periodic decay rate on the statistical distributions …


Assessing Laser Lifetime Test Performance, Joe Weichman, Hamid Hemmati, Malcolm Wright Aug 2011

Assessing Laser Lifetime Test Performance, Joe Weichman, Hamid Hemmati, Malcolm Wright

STAR Program Research Presentations

Assessing expected component lifetime is necessary in developing instruments for future space-flight projects to ensure long term operation in the challenging environment. Although semiconductor diode lasers have widespread use in terrestrial applications, their use in space is still an emerging technology that requires on-going testing to demonstrate their capability. The project called for re-establishing the test setup for assessing lifetime performance of 20 continuously running 200mW 830 nm diode lasers. These lasers underwent previous testing based on parameters for NuSTAR’s laser metrology system, and met the six month lifetime project requirements under nominal operating conditions. Laser testing is currently underway …


Long-Lived Time-Dependent Remnants During Cosmological Symmetry Breaking: From Inflation To The Electroweak Scale, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham, Nikitas Stamatopoulos Aug 2010

Long-Lived Time-Dependent Remnants During Cosmological Symmetry Breaking: From Inflation To The Electroweak Scale, Marcelo Gleiser, Noah Graham, Nikitas Stamatopoulos

Dartmouth Scholarship

Through a detailed numerical investigation in three spatial dimensions, we demonstrate that long-lived time-dependent field configurations emerge dynamically during symmetry breaking in an expanding de Sitter spacetime. We investigate two situations: a single scalar field with a double-well potential and an SU(2) non-Abelian Higgs model. For the single scalar, we show that large-amplitude oscillon configurations emerge spontaneously and persist to contribute about 1.2% of the energy density of the Universe. We also show that for a range of parameters, oscillon lifetimes are enhanced by the expansion and that this effect is a result of parametric resonance. For the SU(2) case, …


Hole Drift Mobility Measurements On A-Si:H Using Surface And Uniformly Absorbed Illumination, Steluta A. Dinca, Eric A. Schiff, S. Guha, Baojie Yan, Jeff Yang Jan 2009

Hole Drift Mobility Measurements On A-Si:H Using Surface And Uniformly Absorbed Illumination, Steluta A. Dinca, Eric A. Schiff, S. Guha, Baojie Yan, Jeff Yang

Physics - All Scholarship

The standard, time-of-flight method for measuring drift mobilities in semiconductors uses strongly absorbed illumination to create a sheet of photocarriers near an electrode interface. This method is problematic for solar cells deposited onto opaque substrates, and in particular cannot be used for hole photocarriers in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells using stainless steel substrates. In this paper we report on the extension of the time-of-flight method that uses weakly absorbed illumination. We measured hole drift-mobilities on seven a-Si:H nip solar cells using strongly and weakly absorbed illumination incident through the n-layer. For thinner devices from two laboratories, the drift-mobilities …


Analytical Characterization Of Oscillon Energy And Lifetime, Marcelo Gleiser, David Sicilia Jul 2008

Analytical Characterization Of Oscillon Energy And Lifetime, Marcelo Gleiser, David Sicilia

Dartmouth Scholarship

We develop an analytical procedure to compute all relevant physical properties of scalar field oscillons in models with quartic polynomial potentials: energy, radius, frequency, core amplitude, and lifetime. We compare our predictions to numerical simulations of models with symmetric and asymmetric double-well potentials in three spatial dimensions, obtaining excellent agreement. We also explain why oscillons have not been seen to decay in two spatial dimensions.


Self‐Consistent Diffusive Lifetimes Of Weibel Magnetic Fields In Gamma‐Ray Bursts, C. H. Jaroschek, H. Lesch, R. A. Treumann Dec 2004

Self‐Consistent Diffusive Lifetimes Of Weibel Magnetic Fields In Gamma‐Ray Bursts, C. H. Jaroschek, H. Lesch, R. A. Treumann

Dartmouth Scholarship

Weibel filamentation in relativistic plasma shell collisions has been demonstrated as an efficient and fast mechanism for the generation of near-equipartition magnetic fields in self-consistent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. In generic γ-ray burst (GRB) models with kinetically dominated plasma outflow, sufficient strength and lifetime of magnetic fields are essential to validate synchrotron emission as the source of radiative outbursts. In this article we report on self-consistent PIC simulations of pair-plasma shell collisions in the highly relativistic regime with particle ensembles up to 5 × 108. Energy dependence of magnetic field generation in the Weibel process is discussed, and for …


High-Latitude Propagation Studies Using A Meridional Chain Of Lf/Mf/Hf Receivers, J Labelle Apr 2004

High-Latitude Propagation Studies Using A Meridional Chain Of Lf/Mf/Hf Receivers, J Labelle

Dartmouth Scholarship

For over a decade, Dartmouth College has oper- ated programmable radio receivers at multiple high-latitude sites covering the frequency range 100–5000 kHz with about a 1-s resolution. Besides detecting radio emissions of auro- ral origin, these receivers record characteristics of the iono- spheric propagation of natural and man-made signals, docu- menting well-known effects, such as the diurnal variation in the propagation characteristics of short and long waves, and also revealing more subtle effects. For example, at auroral zone sites in equinoctial conditions, the amplitudes of dis- tant transmissions on MF/HF frequencies are often enhanced by a few dB just before …


A Study Of Pc-5 Ulf Oscillations, M K. Hudson, R E. Denton, M R. Lessard, E G. Miftakhova, R R. Anderson Jan 2004

A Study Of Pc-5 Ulf Oscillations, M K. Hudson, R E. Denton, M R. Lessard, E G. Miftakhova, R R. Anderson

Dartmouth Scholarship

A study of Pc-5 magnetic pulsations using data from the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) was carried out. Three-component dynamic mag- netic field spectrograms have been used to survey ULF pul- sation activity for the approximate fourteen month lifetime of CRRES. Two-hour panels of dynamic spectra were exam- ined to find events which fall into two basic categories: 1) toroidal modes (fundamental and harmonic resonances) and 2) poloidal modes, which include compressional oscillations. The occurence rates were determined as a function of L value and local time. The main result is a comparable probabil- ity of occurence of …


Intersubband Lasing Lifetimes Of Sige/Si And Gaas/Algaas Multiple Quantum Well Structures, Greg Sun, L. Friedman, Richard A. Soref Jun 1995

Intersubband Lasing Lifetimes Of Sige/Si And Gaas/Algaas Multiple Quantum Well Structures, Greg Sun, L. Friedman, Richard A. Soref

Physics Faculty Publications

The feasibility of population inversion is studied for the SiGe/Si system and compared with that of GaAs/AlGaAs. Because of the absence of strong polar optical phonon scattering in SiGe/Si, the lifetime difference of the upper and lower lasing levels, to which the population inversion and laser gain are proportional, is consistently an order of magnitude larger than that of GaAs/AlGaAs; nor does it show the sudden drop to zero or negative values when the lasing energy exceeds the optical phonon energy. Both systems studied are superlattices, each period of which consists of three coupled quantum wells and barriers.


A Theoretical Study Of The Lifetime And Transport Of Large Ionospheric Density Structures, Robert W. Schunk, Jan Josef Sojka Jan 1987

A Theoretical Study Of The Lifetime And Transport Of Large Ionospheric Density Structures, Robert W. Schunk, Jan Josef Sojka

All Physics Faculty Publications

Large-scale density structures are a common feature in the high-latitude ionosphere. They have been observed in the dayside cusp, polar cap, and nocturnal auroral region. Relative to background densities, the perturbations associated with large-scale structures vary from about 10% to a factor of 100. The lifetime and transport characteristics of “large” ionospheric structures (factor of 10 to 100) were studied with the aid of a three-dimensional time-dependent ionospheric model. Both density depletions and enhancements were considered. A density structure was created at a specific location in the high latitude F region and the subsequent evolution was followed for different seasonal …