Search results for "general physics"
showing 10 items of 13583 documents
Visual cues improve students’ understanding of divergence and curl: Evidence from eye movements during reading and problem solving
2019
The coordination of multiple external representations is important for learning, but yet a difficult task for students, requiring instructional support. The subject in this study covers a typical relation in physics between abstract mathematical equations (definitions of divergence and curl) and a visual representation (vector field plot). To support the connection across both representations, two instructions with written explanations, equations, and visual representations (differing only in the presence of visual cues) were designed and their impact on students’ performance was tested. We captured students’ eye movements while they processed the written instruction and solved subsequent c…
Single Crystal Sub‐Nanometer Sized Cu6(SR)6 Clusters: Structure, Photophysical Properties, and Electrochemical Sensing
2016
Organic ligand-protected metal nanoclusters have attracted extensively attention owing to their atomically precise composition, determined atom-packing structure and the fascinating properties and promising applications. To date, most research has been focused on thiol-stabilized gold and silver nanoclusters and their single crystal structures. Here the single crystal copper nanocluster species (Cu6(SC7H4NO)6) determined by X-ray crystallography and mass spectrometry is presented. The hexanuclear copper core is a distorted octahedron surrounded by six mercaptobenzoxazole ligands as protecting units through a simple bridging bonding motif. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations provide…
Origins of radiation-induced attenuation in pure-silica-core and Ge-doped optical fibers under pulsed x-ray irradiation
2020
We investigated the nature, optical properties, and decay kinetics of point defects causing large transient attenuation increase observed in silica-based optical fibers exposed to short duration and high-dose rate x-ray pulses. The transient radiation-induced attenuation (RIA) spectra of pure-silica-core (PSC), Ge-doped, F-doped, and Ge + F-doped optical fibers (OFs) were acquired after the ionizing pulse in the spectral range of [∼0.8–∼3.2] eV (∼1500–∼380 nm), from a few ms to several minutes after the pulse, at both room temperature (RT) and liquid nitrogen temperature (LNT). Comparing the fiber behavior at both temperatures better highlights the thermally unstable point defects contribut…
Temporal spying and concealing process in fibre-optic data transmission systems through polarization bypass
2014
Recent research has been focused on the ability to manipulate a light beam in such a way to hide, namely to cloak, an event over a finite time or localization in space. The main idea is to create a hole or a gap in the spatial or time domain so as to allow for an object or data to be kept hidden for a while and then to be restored. By enlarging the field of applications of this concept to telecommunications, researchers have recently reported the possibility to hide transmitted data in an optical fibre. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of perpetual temporal spying and blinding process of optical data in fibre-optic transmission line based on polarization bypass. We succes…
Even harmonic pulse train generation by cross-polarization-modulation seeded instability in optical fibers
2012
International audience; We show that, by properly adjusting the relative state of polarization of the pump and of a weak modulation, with a frequency such that at least one of its even harmonics falls within the band of modulation instability, one obtains a fully modulated wave at the second or higher even harmonic of the initial modulation. An application of this principle to the generation of a 80-GHz optical pulse train with high extinction ratio from a 40-GHz weakly modulated pump is experimentally demonstrated using a nonzero dispersion shifted fiber in the telecom C band.
Evolution of microstructure and related optical properties of ZnO grown by atomic layer deposition.
2013
A study of transmittance and photoluminescence spectra on the growth of oxygen-rich ultra-thin ZnO films prepared by atomic layer deposition is reported. The structural transition from an amorphous to a polycrystalline state is observed upon increasing the thickness. The unusual behavior of the energy gap with thickness reflected by optical properties is attributed to the improvement of the crystalline structure resulting from a decreasing concentration of point defects at the growth of grains. The spectra of UV and visible photoluminescence emissions correspond to transitions near the band-edge and defect-related transitions. Additional emissions were observed from band-tail states near th…
Stability, electronic structure, and optical properties of protected gold-doped silver Ag29−xAux (x = 0–5) nanoclusters
2017
In this work, we used density functional theory (DFT) and linear response time-dependent DFT (LR-TDDFT) to investigate the stability, electronic structure, and optical properties of Au-doped [Ag29-xAux(BDT)12(TPP)4]3- nanoclusters (BDT: 1,3-benzenedithiol; TPP triphenylphosphine) with x = 0-5. The aim of this work is to shed light on the most favorable doped structures by comparing our results with previously published experimental data. The calculated relative energies, ranging between 0.8 and 10 meV per atom, indicate that several doped Ag29-xAux nanoclusters are likely to co-exist at room temperature. However, only the Au-doped [Ag29-xAux(BDT)12(TPP)4]3- nanoclusters that have direct bon…
Unravelling the Intertwined Atomic and Bulk Nature of Localised Excitons by Attosecond Spectroscopy
2021
The electro-optical properties of most semiconductors and insulators of technological interest are dominated by the presence of electron-hole quasi-particles, called excitons. The manipulation of excitons in dielectrics has recently received great attention, with possible applications in different fields including optoelectronics and photonics. Here, we apply attosecond transient reflection spectroscopy in a sequential two-foci geometry and observe sub-femtosecond dynamics of a core-level exciton in bulk MgF2 single crystals. Furthermore, we access absolute phase delays, which allow for an unambiguous comparison with theoretical calculations. Our results show that excitons surprisingly exhi…
Optimization of the JUNO liquid scintillator composition using a Daya Bay antineutrino detector
2021
To maximize the light yield of the liquid scintillator (LS) for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a 20 t LS sample was produced in a pilot plant at Daya Bay. The optical properties of the new LS in various compositions were studied by replacing the gadolinium-loaded LS in one antineutrino detector. The concentrations of the fluor, PPO, and the wavelength shifter, bis-MSB, were increased in 12 steps from 0.5 g/L and <0.01 mg/L to 4 g/L and 13 mg/L, respectively. The numbers of total detected photoelectrons suggest that, with the optically purified solvent, the bis-MSB concentration does not need to be more than 4 mg/L. To bridge the one order of magnitude in the detect…
GPU-accelerated time integration of Gross-Pitaevskii equation with discrete exterior calculus
2022
The quantized vortices in superfluids are modeled by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation whose numerical time integration is instrumental in the physics studies of such systems. In this paper, we present a reliable numerical method and its efficient GPU-accelerated implementation for the time integration of the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The method is based on discrete exterior calculus which allows us the usage of more versatile spatial discretization than traditional finite difference and spectral methods are applicable to. We discretize the problem using six different natural crystal structures and observe the correct choices of spatial tiling to decrease the truncation error…