Effects on Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Performance from High-temperature Annealing Pulses in Photovoltaic Thermal Hybrid Devices

There is a renewed interest in photovoltaic solar thermal (PVT) hybrid systems, which harvest solar energy for heat and electricity. Typically, a main focus of a PVT system is to cool the photovoltaic (PV) cells to improve the electrical performance, however, this causes the thermal component to under-perform compared to a solar thermal collector. The low temperature coefficients of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) allow for the PV cells to be operated at higher temperatures and are a potential candidate for a more symbiotic PVT system. The fundamental challenge of a-Si:H PV is light-induced degradation known as the Staebler-Wronski effect (SWE). Fortunately, SWE is reversible and the a-Si:H PV efficiency can be returned to its initial state if the cell is annealed. Thus an opportunity exists to deposit a-Si:H directly on the solar thermal absorber plate where the cells could reach the high temperatures required for annealing. In this study, this opportunity is explored experimentally. First a-Si:H PV cells were annealed for 1 hour at 100\degreeC on a 12 hour cycle and for the remaining time the cells were degraded at 50\degreeC in order to simulate stagnation of a PVT system for 1 hour once a day. It was found that, when comparing the cells after stabilization at normal 50\degreeC degradation, this annealing sequence resulted in a 10.6% energy gain when compared to a cell that was only degraded at 50\degreeC

Precision Measurement of sin^2 theta_W at a Reactor

This paper presents a strategy for measuring sin^2 theta_W to ~1% at a reactor-based experiment, using antineutrinos electron elastic scattering. This error is comparable to the NuTeV, SLAC E158, and APV results on sin^2 theta_W, but with substantially different contributions to the systematics. An improved method for identifying antineutrino proton events, which serve both as a background and as a normalization sample, is described. The measurement can be performed using the near detector of the presently proposed reactor-based oscillation experiments. We conclude that an absolute error of delta(sin^2 theta_W)=0.0019 may be achieved.Comment: To be Submitted to Phys. Rev.

On the energy deposited by a quark moving in an N=4 SYM plasma

We evaluate the energy momentum tensor of a massive quark as it moves through an N=4 SYM quark gluon plasma at constant velocity. We find that in the near-quark region, where the dynamics is expected to be dominated by dissipative behavior, the energy density may be quantitatively characterized by a transient at velocities above the speed of sound of the plasma.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure; Typos corrected, references adde

A boundary element regularised Stokeslet method applied to cilia and flagella-driven flow

A boundary element implementation of the regularised Stokeslet method of Cortez is applied to cilia and flagella-driven flows in biology. Previously-published approaches implicitly combine the force discretisation and the numerical quadrature used to evaluate boundary integrals. By contrast, a boundary element method can be implemented by discretising the force using basis functions, and calculating integrals using accurate numerical or analytic integration. This substantially weakens the coupling of the mesh size for the force and the regularisation parameter, and greatly reduces the number of degrees of freedom required. When modelling a cilium or flagellum as a one-dimensional filament, the regularisation parameter can be considered a proxy for the body radius, as opposed to being a parameter used to minimise numerical errors. Modelling a patch of cilia, it is found that: (1) For a fixed number of cilia, reducing cilia spacing reduces transport. (2) For fixed patch dimension, increasing cilia number increases the transport, up to a plateau at $9\times 9$ cilia. Modelling a choanoflagellate cell it is found that the presence of a lorica structure significantly affects transport and flow outside the lorica, but does not significantly alter the force experienced by the flagellum.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, postprin

Holding Dissapearance in RTD-based Quantizers

Multiple-valued Logic (MVL) circuits are one of the most attractive applications of the Monostable-to-Multistable transition Logic (MML), and they are on the basis of advanced circuits for communications. The operation of such quantizer has two steps : sampling and holding. Once the quantizer samples the signal, it must maintain the sampled value even if the input changes. However, holding property is not inherent to MML circuit topologies. This paper analyses the case of an MML ternary inverter used as a quantizer, and determines the relations that circuit representative parameters must verify to avoid this malfunction.Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions

Rescattering in Meson Photoproduction off Few Body Systems

Exclusive reactions induced at high momentum transfer in few body systems provide us with an original way to study the production and propagation of hadrons in cold nuclear matter. In very well defined parts of the phase space, the reaction amplitude develops a logarithmic singularity. It is on solid ground since it depends only on on-shell elementary amplitudes and on low momentum components of the nuclear wave function. This is the best window to study the propagation of exotic configurations of hadrons such as, for instance, the onset of color transparency. It may appear earlier in meson photo-production reactions, more particularly in the strange sector, than in more classical quasi elastic scattering of electrons. More generally, those reactions provide us with the best tool to determine the cross section of the scattering of various hadrons (strange particles, vector mesons) from the nucleon and to access the production of possible exotic states.Comment: 15 pages; 11 figures During the review process of the paper, the following changes have been implemented: 1- The title has been changed, 2- The abstact and the first paragraph of the introduction have been rephrased for consistency; 3- Figure 10 has been added; 4- The Appedix has been considerably expanded: it gives the full expressions of the elementary photoproduction amplitudes in terms of Pauli spinors and matrice

Pentaquark, cusp and rescattering in single kaon photoproduction off deuterium

In very well defined part of the phase space, $K N$ and $\Lambda N$ rescattering depend on on-shell elementary matrix elements and on the low momentum components of the deuteron wave function. This provides us with the unique opportunity to study details in the scattering amplitudes that may have escaped the analysis of reactions induced on a nucleon target by Kaon and Hyperon beams at low energies. When folded with a typical experimental mass resolution, a narrow state with a width of 1 MeV would contribute by no more than 10% to the $KN$ mass spectrum. On the contrary, a cusp would be easily detected near the $\Sigma$ production threshold in the $\Lambda N$ mass spectrum.Comment: 7 pages; 7 figures Updated version after referees' review. Main changes: 1- The contribution of positive parity pentaquark has also been considered; 2- Figure 5 has been added. It shows the expected angular distributions of the contribution of a positive or negative parity pentaquark; 3- Units in Figure 4 and 7 have been updated; 4- The reference list has been update