INITIAL PRODUCTION OF DEFECTS IN ALKALI-HALIDES - F AND H CENTER PRODUCTION BY NON-RADIATIVE DECAY OF SELF-TRAPPED EXCITON

Radiation damage in KCl can be produced by the decay of a self-trapped exciton into an F centre and an H centre. The authors present calculations of the energies of the states involved for various stages in the evolution of the damage. These lead to important conclusions about the very rapid damage process, and support strongly Itoh and Saidoh's suggestion (1973) that damage proceeds through an excited hole state. The results also help in understanding the prompt decay of F and H pairs at low temperatures, the thermal annihilation of F and H centres, the effects of optical excitation of the self-trapped exciton, and some of the trends within the alkali halides. The calculations use a self-consistent semi-empirical molecular-orbital method. A large cluster of ions is used (either 42 or 57 ions) plus long-range Madelung terms. The ion positions were obtained from separate lattice-relaxation calculations with the HADES code. The choice of CNDO parameters and the adequacy of the method were checked by a number of separate predictions

Making tracks in metals

Swift heavy ions lose energy primarily by inelastic electronic scattering and, above an energy threshold, electronic losses result in damage to the lattice. Such high energy radiation is beyond the range of validity of traditional cascade simulations, and predictive damage calculations are challenging. We use a novel methodology, which combines molecular dynamics with a consistent treatment of electronic energy transport and redistribution to the lattice, to model how swift heavy ions form damage tracks. We consider a range of material parameters (electron-phonon coupling strength, thermal conductivity and electronic specific heat) and show how these affect the maximum lattice temperature reached and the extent of residual damage. Our analysis also suggests that fission tracks may form in alloys of archaeological interest

Making tracks: electronic excitation roles in forming swift heavy ion tracks

Swift heavy ions cause material modification along their tracks, changes primarily due to their very dense electronic excitation. The available data for threshold stopping powers indicate two main classes of materials. Group I, with threshold stopping powers above about 10 keV nm(-1), includes some metals, crystalline semiconductors and a few insulators. Group II, with lower thresholds, comprises many insulators, amorphous materials and high T-c oxide superconductors. We show that the systematic differences in behaviour result from different coupling of the dense excited electrons, holes and excitons to atomic (ionic) motions, and the consequent lattice relaxation. The coupling strength of excitons and charge carriers with the lattice is crucial. For group II, the mechanism appears to be the self- trapped exciton model of Itoh and Stoneham ( 1998 Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. B 146 362): the local structural changes occur roughly when the exciton concentration exceeds the number of lattice sites. In materials of group I, excitons are not self- trapped and structural change requires excitation of a substantial fraction of bonding electrons, which induces spontaneous lattice expansion within a few hundred femtoseconds, as recently observed by laser- induced time- resolved x- ray diffraction of semiconductors. Our analysis addresses a number of experimental results, such as track morphology, the efficiency of track registration and the ratios of the threshold stopping power of various materials

Convective particle transport arising from poloidal inhomogeneity in tokamak H mode

In tokamak high-confinement modes (H modes), a large poloidal flow exists within an edge transport barrier, and the electrostatic potential and density profiles can be steep both in the radial and poloidal directions. The two-dimensional structures of the electrostatic potential, density, and flow velocity near the edge of a tokamak plasma are investigated. The analysis is carried out with the momentum conservation law using the shock ordering. For the case with a strong radial electric field (H-mode case), a particle flux is induced from asymmetry of the poloidal electric field in the transport barrier. This convective transport is found to depend weakly on collisionality, and changes its direction in accordance with the direction of the radial electric field, the toroidal magnetic field, and the plasma current. The divergence of a particle flux is a source of temporal variation of the density, and there are negative divergence regions both in the inward and outward flux cases. Thus this convective particle flux is a new candidate for the cause of the rapid establishment of the density pedestal after the onset of low to high confinement mode (L/H) transition

Phonon-Spectrum Narrowing Induced by Ultrafast Charge Fluctuation in an Organic Dimer Mott Insulator

We have observed the characteristic temperature dependence of the intermolecular phonon spectrum in the organic dimer Mott insulator kappa-(ET)2Cu2(CN)3 exhibiting a dielectric anomaly at 30 K. The anomalous spectral narrowing of the 55 cm-1 phonon peak at 30 K was analyzed in terms of motional narrowing within the framework of a stationary Gaussian process, i. e., the phonon frequency is modulated by the ultrafast charge fluctuation. The spectral narrowing occurs because the time constant of the correlation time tau_c and the amplitude of the frequency modulation delta satisfy the relation tau_c<delta at 30 K. At temperatures below 30 K, the motional narrowing is disturbed by the increasing of tau_c, near the charge-glass or the short-range order at 6 K. On the other hand, for temperatures above 30 K, the motional narrowing is disturbed by the increase of delta with increasing temperature.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, accepted Phys. Rev.

Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering in a Strong External Magnetic Field and the Neutrino Emissivity

The nucleon-nucleon scattering in a large magnetic background is considered to find its potential to change the neutrino emissivity of the neutron stars. For this purpose we consider the one-pion-exchange approximation to find the NN cross-section in a background field as large as $10^{15}\texttt{G}-10^{18}\texttt{G}$. We show that the NN cross-section in neutron stars with temperatures in the range 0.1-5 \texttt{MeV} can be changed up to the one order of magnitude with respect to the one in the absence of the magnetic field. In the limit of the soft neutrino emission the neutrino emissivity can be written in terms of the NN scattering amplitude therefore the large magnetic fields can dramatically change the neutrino emissivity of the neutron stars as well.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, to appear in PR

Fossil shell in 3C 84 as TeV γ\gamma-ray emitter and cosmic-ray accelerator

We explore physical properties of the shocked external medium (i.e., a shell) in 3C 84 associated with the recurrent radio lobe born around 1960. In the previous work of Ito et al., we investigated a dynamical and radiative evolution of such a shell after the central engine stops the jet launching and we found that a fossil shell emission overwhelms that of the rapidly fading radio lobe. We apply this model to 3C 84 and find the followings: (i) The fossil shell made of shocked diffuse ambient matter with the number density of 0.3 cm$^{-3}$ radiates bright Inverse-Compton (IC) emission with the seed photons of the radio emission from the central compact region and the IC emission is above the sensitivity threshold of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). (ii) When the fossil shell is produced in a geometrically thick ionized plasma with the number density of $10^{3}$ cm$^{-3}$ and the field strength in the shell may reach about 17 mG in the presence of magnetic fields amplification and the radio emission becomes comparable to the sensitivity of deep imaging VLBI observations. A possible production of ultra high energy cosmic-rays (UHECRs) in the dense shocked plasma is also argued.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, ApJ, in pres