3,562 research outputs found
Applications of thermal energy storage in the cement industry
In the manufacture of cement, literally trillions of Btu's are rejected to the environment each year. The purpose of this feasibility study program was to determine whether thermal energy storage could be used to conserve or allow alternative uses of this rejected energy. This study identifies and quantifies the sources of rejected energy in the cement manufacturing process, established use of this energy, investigates various storage system concepts, and selects energy conservation systems for further study. Thermal performance and economic analyses are performed on candidate storage systems for four typical cement plants representing various methods of manufacturing cement. Through the use of thermal energy storage in conjunction with waste heat electric power generation units, an estimated 2.4 x 10 to the 13th power Btu/year, or an equivalent on investment of the proposed systems are an incentive for further development
Polarons in semiconductor quantum-dots and their role in the quantum kinetics of carrier relaxation
While time-dependent perturbation theory shows inefficient carrier-phonon
scattering in semiconductor quantum dots, we demonstrate that a quantum kinetic
description of carrier-phonon interaction predicts fast carrier capture and
relaxation. The considered processes do not fulfill energy conservation in
terms of free-carrier energies because polar coupling of localized quantum-dot
states strongly modifies this picture.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.
Optical properties of self-organized wurtzite InN/GaN quantum dots: A combined atomistic tight-binding and full configuration interaction calculation
In this work we investigate the electronic and optical properties of
self-assembled InN/GaN quantum dots. The one-particle states of the
low-dimensional heterostructures are provided by a tight-binding model that
fully includes the wurtzite crystal structure on an atomistic level. Optical
dipole and Coulomb matrix elements are calculated from these one-particle wave
functions and serve as an input for full configuration interaction
calculations. We present multi-exciton emission spectra and discuss in detail
how Coulomb correlations and oscillator strengths are changed by the
piezoelectric fields present in the structure. Vanishing exciton and biexciton
ground state emission for small lens-shaped dots is predicted.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure
Improving Forage Production on Claypan Soils
Mechanical range improvement practices such as contour ripping and furrowing have been used to increase forage production on a variety of range sites in the northern Great Plains. These improvement practices seem to have particular promise on Claypan and Thin Claypan range sites in western South Dakota. Soils on these range sites have a sodium dispersed layer (claypan) at or near the surface. This layer severely reduces the rate of water infiltration, thus causing a greater amount of the precipitation to run off or pool up and evaporate from the soil surface than would happen on soils of similar texture without the claypan layer. Because more precipitation water is lost to runoff and evaporation, less water is available for plant growth. The compact nature of the claypan layer also tends to restrict root growth, further reducing plant growth. Thus, claypan soils are inherently lower in forage production potential than similar soils without the claypan layer. The difference between productivity of the claypan soils and normal soils represents the potential increase in forage production if the effects of the claypan layer could somehow be removed
Range Renovation
Mechanical treatments of rangelands are designed to increase water infiltration and increase forage quantity and quality. Storing precipitation where it falls is important to stabilize in annual forage production, especially on sites with water uptake problems due to slope, shortgrass sod cover and/or high salt concentrations in the upper horizons Soil moisture and vegetation data accumulated over five growing seasons following mechanical renovation of Thin Claypan range sites indicate a great potential exists for increasing range carrying capacity. Both soil moisture and forage production can be improved
Relaxation properties of the quantum kinetics of carrier-LO-phonon interaction in quantum wells and quantum dots
The time evolution of optically excited carriers in semiconductor quantum
wells and quantum dots is analyzed for their interaction with LO-phonons. Both
the full two-time Green's function formalism and the one-time approximation
provided by the generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz are considered, in order to
compare their description of relaxation processes. It is shown that the
two-time quantum kinetics leads to thermalization in all the examined cases,
which is not the case for the one-time approach in the intermediate-coupling
regime, even though it provides convergence to a steady state. The
thermalization criterion used is the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Influence of carrier-carrier and carrier-phonon correlations on optical absorption and gain in quantum-dot systems
A microscopic theory is used to study the optical properties of semiconductor
quantum dots. The dephasing of a coherent excitation and line-shifts of the
interband transitions due to carrier-carrier Coulomb interaction and
carrier-phonon interaction are determined from a quantum kinetic treatment of
correlation processes. We investigate the density dependence of both mechanisms
and clarify the importance of various dephasing channels involving the
localized and delocalized states of the system.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure
The two-level atom laser: analytical results and the laser transition
The problem of the two-level atom laser is studied analytically. The
steady-state solution is expressed as a continued fraction, and allows for
accurate approximation by rational functions. Moreover, we show that the abrupt
change observed in the pump dependence of the steady-state population is
directly connected with the transition to the lasing regime. The condition for
a sharp transition to Poissonian statistics is expressed as a scaling limit of
vanishing cavity loss and light-matter coupling, , ,
such that stays finite and , where
is the rate of atomic losses. The same scaling procedure is also shown to
describe a similar change to Poisson distribution in the Scully-Lamb laser
model too, suggesting that the low-, low- asymptotics is of a more
general significance for the laser transition.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures. Extended discussion of the paper aim (in the
Introduction) and of the results (Conclusions and Discussion). Results
unchange
Coulomb effects in semiconductor quantum dots
Coulomb correlations in the optical spectra of semiconductor quantum dots are
investigated using a full-diagonalization approach. The resulting multi-exciton
spectra are discussed in terms of the symmetry of the involved states.
Characteristic features of the spectra like the nearly equidistantly spaced
s-shell emission lines and the approximately constant p-shell transition
energies are explained using simplified Hamiltonians that are derived taking
into account the relative importance of various interaction contributions.
Comparisons with previous results in the literature and their interpretation
are made.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
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