Quasi-particle spectra, absorption spectra, and excitonic properties of sodium iodide and strontium iodide from many-body perturbation theory

We investigate the basic quantum mechanical processes behind non-proportional response of scintillators to incident radiation responsible for reduced resolution. For this purpose, we conduct a comparative first principles study of quasiparticle spectra on the basis of the $G_0W_0$ approximation as well as absorption spectra and excitonic properties by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for two important systems, NaI and SrI$_2$. The former is a standard scintillator material with well-documented non-proportionality while the latter has recently been found to exhibit a very proportional response. We predict band gaps for NaI and SrI$_2$ of 5.5 and 5.2 eV, respectively, in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, we obtain binding energies for the groundstate excitons of 216 meV for NaI and 195$\pm$25 meV for SrI$_2$. We analyze the degree of exciton anisotropy and spatial extent by means of a coarse-grained electron-hole pair-correlation function. Thereby, it is shown that the excitons in NaI differ strongly from those in SrI$_2$ in terms of structure and symmetry, even if their binding energies are similar. Furthermore, we show that quite unexpectedly the spatial extents of the highly anisotropic low-energy excitons in SrI$_2$ in fact exceed those in NaI by a factor of two to three in terms of the full width at half maxima of the electron-hole pair-correlation function.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Poisson and Porter-Thomas Fluctuations in off-Yrast Rotational Transitions

Fluctuations associated with stretched E2 transitions from high spin levels in nuclei around $^{168}$Yb are investigated by a cranked shell model extended to include residual two-body interactions. It is found that the gamma-ray energies behave like random variables and the energy spectra show the Poisson fluctuation, in the cranked mean field model without the residual interaction. With two-body residual interaction included, discrete transition pattern with unmixed rotational bands is still valid up to around 600 keV above yrast, in good agreement with experiments. At higher excitation energy, a gradual onset of rotational damping emerges. At 1.8 MeV above yrast, complete damping is observed with GOE type fluctuations for both energy levels and transition strengths(Porter-Thomas fluctuations).Comment: 21 pages, phyzzx, YITP/K-99

Correlation studies of fission fragment neutron multiplicities

We calculate neutron multiplicities from fission fragments with specified mass numbers for events having a specified total fragment kinetic energy. The shape evolution from the initial compound nucleus to the scission configurations is obtained with the Metropolis walk method on the five-dimensional potential-energy landscape, calculated with the macroscopic-microscopic method for the three-quadratic-surface shape family. Shape-dependent microscopic level densities are used to guide the random walk, to partition the intrinsic excitation energy between the two proto-fragments at scission, and to determine the spectrum of the neutrons evaporated from the fragments. The contributions to the total excitation energy of the resulting fragments from statistical excitation and shape distortion at scission is studied. Good agreement is obtained with available experimental data on neutron multiplicities in correlation with fission fragments from $^{235}$U(n$_{\rm th}$,f). At higher neutron energies a superlong fission mode appears which affects the dependence of the observables on the total fragment kinetic energy.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Microscopic Origin of Quantum Chaos in Rotational Damping

The rotational spectrum of $^{168}$Yb is calculated diagonalizing different effective interactions within the basis of unperturbed rotational bands provided by the cranked shell model. A transition between order and chaos taking place in the energy region between 1 and 2 MeV above the yrast line is observed, associated with the onset of rotational damping. It can be related to the higher multipole components of the force acting among the unperturbed rotational bands.Comment: 7 pages, plain TEX, YITP/K-99

Survival Probability of a Doorway State in regular and chaotic environments

We calculate survival probability of a special state which couples randomly to a regular or chaotic environment. The environment is modelled by a suitably chosen random matrix ensemble. The exact results exhibit non--perturbative features as revival of probability and non--ergodicity. The role of background complexity and of coupling complexity is discussed as well.Comment: 19 pages 5 Figure

Polarization Effects in Superdeformed Nuclei

A detailed theoretical investigation of polarization effects in superdeformed nuclei is performed. In the pure harmonic oscillator potential it is shown that when one particle (or hole) with the mass single-particle quadrupole moment q_{nu} is added to a superdeformed core, the change of the electric quadrupole moment can be parameterized as q_{eff}=e(bq_{nu}+a), and analytical expressions are derived for the two parameters, $a$ and $b$. Simple numerical expressions for q_{eff}(q_\nu}) are obtained in the more realistic modified oscillator model. It is also shown that quadrupole moments of nuclei with up to 10 particles removed from the superdeformed core of 152Dy can be well described by simply subtracting effective quadrupole moments of the active single-particle states from the quadrupole moment of the core. Tools are given for estimating the quadrupole moment for possible configurations in the superdeformed A 150-region.Comment: 28 pages including 9 figure

Evaluating a fast headspace method for measuring DIC and subsequent calculation of pCO2 in freshwater systems

A variety of different sampling and analysis methods are found in the literature for determining carbon dioxide (CO2) in freshwaters, methods that rarely have been evaluated or compared. Here we present an evaluation of an acidified headspace method (AHS) in which the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is measured from an acidified sample and the partial pressure (pCO2) is calculated from DIC using pH and water temperature. We include information on practical sampling, accuracy, and precision of the DIC/pCO2 determination and a storage test of samples. The pCO2 determined from the AHS method is compared to that obtained from the more widely used direct headspace method (DHS) in which CO2 is equilibrated between the water and gas phases at ambient pH. The method was tested under both controlled laboratory conditions as well as wintertime field sampling. The accuracy of the DIC detection was on average 99% based on prepared standard solutions. The pCO2 determination in lab, using the DHS method as a reference, showed no significant difference, although the discrepancy between the methods was larger in samples with <1000 µatm. The precision of the pCO2 determination was on average ±4.3%, which was slightly better than the DHS method (±6.7%). In the field, the AHS method determined on average 10% higher pCO2 than the DHS method, which was explained by the extreme winter conditions (below −20 °C) at sampling that affected the sampling procedure of the DHS method. Although samples were acidified to pH 2, respiration processes were still occurring (at a low rate), and we recommend that analyses are conducted within 3 days from sampling. The AHS method was found to be a robust method to determine DIC and pCO2 in acidic to pH-neutral freshwater systems. The simple and quick sampling procedure makes the method suitable for time-limited sampling campaigns and sampling in cold climate