Charge transport and phase transition in exciton rings

The macroscopic exciton rings observed in the photoluminescence (PL) patterns of excitons in coupled quantum wells (CQWs) are explained by a series of experiments and a theory based on the idea of carrier imbalance, transport and recombination. The rings are found to be a source of cold excitons with temperature close to that of the lattice. We explored states of excitons in the ring over a range of temperatures down to 380 mK. These studies reveal a sharp, albeit continuous, second order phase transition to a low-temperature ordered exciton state, characterized by ring fragmentation into a periodic array of aggregates. An instability at the onset of degeneracy in the cold exciton system, due to stimulated exciton formation, is proposed as the transition mechanism.Comment: 8 pages including 4 figure

Stopping of relativistic projectiles in two-component plasmas

Relativistic and correlation contributions to the polarizational energy losses of heavy projectiles moving in dense two-component plasmas are analyzed within the method of moments that allows one to reconstruct the Lindhard loss function from its three independently known power frequency moments. The techniques employed result in a thorough separation of the relativistic and correlation corrections to the classical asymptotic form for the polarizational losses obtained by Bethe and Larkin. The above corrections are studied numerically at different values of plasma parameters to show that the relativistic contribution enhances only slightly the corresponding value of the stopping power.This research was financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia Project No. ENE2010-21116-C02-02 and by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan under Grants No. 1128/GF, 1129/GF and 1099/GF. IMT acknowledges the hospitality of the al-Farabi Kazakh National University.Arkhipov, YV.; Ashikbayeva, AB.; Askaruly, A.; Davletov, AE.; Tkachenko Gorski, IM. (2013). Stopping of relativistic projectiles in two-component plasmas. EPL. 104(3):35003-p1-35003-p6. https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/104/35003S35003-p135003-p6104

Horizontal Branch Stars: The Interplay between Observations and Theory, and Insights into the Formation of the Galaxy

We review HB stars in a broad astrophysical context, including both variable and non-variable stars. A reassessment of the Oosterhoff dichotomy is presented, which provides unprecedented detail regarding its origin and systematics. We show that the Oosterhoff dichotomy and the distribution of globular clusters (GCs) in the HB morphology-metallicity plane both exclude, with high statistical significance, the possibility that the Galactic halo may have formed from the accretion of dwarf galaxies resembling present-day Milky Way satellites such as Fornax, Sagittarius, and the LMC. A rediscussion of the second-parameter problem is presented. A technique is proposed to estimate the HB types of extragalactic GCs on the basis of integrated far-UV photometry. The relationship between the absolute V magnitude of the HB at the RR Lyrae level and metallicity, as obtained on the basis of trigonometric parallax measurements for the star RR Lyrae, is also revisited, giving a distance modulus to the LMC of (m-M)_0 = 18.44+/-0.11. RR Lyrae period change rates are studied. Finally, the conductive opacities used in evolutionary calculations of low-mass stars are investigated. [ABRIDGED]Comment: 56 pages, 22 figures. Invited review, to appear in Astrophysics and Space Scienc