15,644 research outputs found
Effects of quark family nonuniversality in SU(3)_c X SU(4)_L X U(1)_x models
Flavour changing neutral currents arise in the extension of the standard model because anomaly cancellation among the
fermion families requires one generation of quarks to transform differently
from the other two under the gauge group. In the weak basis the distinction
between quark families is meaningless. However, in the mass eigenstates basis,
the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mixing matrix motivates us to classify
left-handed quarks in families. In this sense there are, in principle, three
different assignments of quark weak eigenstates into mass eigenstates. In this
work, by using measurements at the Z-pole, atomic parity violation data and
experimental input from neutral meson mixing, we examine two different models
without exotic electric charges based on the 3-4-1 symmetry, and address the
effects of quark family nonuniversality on the bounds on the mixing angle
between two of the neutral currents present in the models and on the mass
scales and of the new neutral gauge bosons predicted by the
theory. The heaviest family of quarks must transform differently in order to
keep lower bounds on and as low as possible without
violating experimental constraints.Comment: 27 pages, 10 tables, 2 figures. Equation (19) and typos corrected.
Matches version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Improvement of dielectric loss of doped Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 thin films for tunable microwave devices
Al2O3-Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 (Al2O3-BST) thin films, with different Al2O3 contents,
were deposited on (100) LaAlO3 substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD)
technique. The Al2O3-BST films was demosnstrated to be a suitable systems to
fabricate ferroelectric thin films with low dielectric loss and higher figure
of merit for tunable microwave devices. Pure BST thin films were also
fabricated for comparison purpose. The films' structure and morphology were
analyzed by X-ray diffractiopn and scanning electron microscopy, respectively;
nad showed that the surface roughness for the Al2O3-BST films increased with
the Al2O3 content. Apart from that, the broadening in the intensity peak in XRD
result indicating the grain size of the Al2O3-BST films reduced with the
increasing of Al2O3 dopant. We measured the dielctric properties of Al2O3-BST
films with a home-made non-destructive dual resonator method at frequency ~ 7.7
GHZ. The effect of doped Al2O3 into BST thin films significantly reduced the
dielectric constant, dielectric loss and tunability compare to pure BST thin
film. Our result shows the figure of merit (K), used to compare the films with
varied dielectric properties, increased with the Al2O3 content. Therefore
Al2O3-BST films show the potential to be exploited in tunable microwave
devices.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted & tentatively for Feb 15 2004
issue, Journal of Applied Physic
Impact of the de-alloying kinetics and alloy microstructure on the final morphology of de-alloyed meso-porous metal films
Nano-textured porous metal materials present unique surface properties due to their enhanced surface energy with potential applications in sensing, molecular separation and catalysis. In this paper, commercial alloy foils, including brass (Cu85Zn15 and Cu70Zn30) and white gold (Au50Ag50) foils have been chemically de-alloyed to form nano-porous thin films. The impact of the initial alloy micro-structure and number of phases, as well as chemical de-alloying (DA) parameters, including etchant concentration, time and solution temperature on the final nano-porous thin film morphology and properties were investigated by electron microscopy (EM). Furthermore, the penetration depth of the pores across the alloys were evaluated through the preparation of cross sections by focus ion beam (FIB) milling. It is demonstrated that ordered pores ranging between 100 nm and 600 nm in diameter and 2–5 μm in depth can be successfully formed for the range of materials tested. The microstructure of the foils were obtained by electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and linked to development of pits across the material thickness and surface during DA. The role of selective etching of both noble and sacrificial metal phases of the alloy were discussed in light of the competitive surface etching across the range of microstructures and materials tested
Identification and Analysis of Factors Influencing the Efficiency of Web Development Team Projects from the Students’ Perspective
The postgraduate subject “Web Technologies” is offered to engineering students who have different engineering backgrounds. The students have generally studied other computer programming and design methodologies in their engineering domain. The major learning objectives of this subject include being able to critically evaluate web technologies, apply web design methodologies to web based systems, and work efficiently with groups. To achieve these objectives, we have designed a web development process to apply to the major assessment task of developing a web system as a group. This research is to study the efficiency of this process with regard to student learning
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