Kinetics of the electronic center annealing in Al2O3 crystals

Authors are greatly indebted to A. Ch. Lushchik, V. Kortov, M. Izerrouken and R.Vila for stimulating discussions. This work has been carried out within the framework of the Eurofusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euroatom research and training programme 2014–2018 under grant agreement No 633053 . The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. The calculations were performed using facilities of the Stuttgart Supercomputer Center (project DEFTD 12939 ).The experimental annealing kinetics of the primary electronic F, F+ centers and dimer F2 centers observed in Al2O3 produced under neutron irradiation were carefully analyzed. The developed theory takes into account the interstitial ion diffusion and recombination with immobile F-type and F2-centers, as well as mutual sequential transformation with temperature of three types of experimentally observed dimer centers which differ by net charges (0, +1, +2) with respect to the host crystalline sites. The relative initial concentrations of three types of F2 electronic defects before annealing are obtained, along with energy barriers between their ground states as well as the relaxation energies.Euroatom 2014–2018 agreement No 633053; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Kinetics of the electronic center annealing in Al2O3 crystals

Authors are greatly indebted to A. Ch. Lushchik, V. Kortov, M. Izerrouken and R.Vila for stimulating discussions. This work has been carried out within the framework of the Eurofusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euroatom research and training programme 2014–2018 under grant agreement No 633053 . The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. The calculations were performed using facilities of the Stuttgart Supercomputer Center (project DEFTD 12939 ).The experimental annealing kinetics of the primary electronic F, F+ centers and dimer F2 centers observed in Al2O3 produced under neutron irradiation were carefully analyzed. The developed theory takes into account the interstitial ion diffusion and recombination with immobile F-type and F2-centers, as well as mutual sequential transformation with temperature of three types of experimentally observed dimer centers which differ by net charges (0, +1, +2) with respect to the host crystalline sites. The relative initial concentrations of three types of F2 electronic defects before annealing are obtained, along with energy barriers between their ground states as well as the relaxation energies.Euroatom 2014–2018 agreement No 633053; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Analysis of self-trapped hole mobility in alkali halides and metal halides

Support from Latvian National Research Program IMIS2 (2014–2017) and LZP Grant No. 237/2012 (2013–2016) is greatly appreciated.The small radius hole polarons (self-trapped holes (STH) known also as the Vk centers) are very common color centers observed in numerous alkali halides and alkaline-earth halides. Their mobility controls the rate of secondary reactions between electron and hole defects and thus radiation stability/sensitivity of materials. We have analysed here the correlation between the temperatures at which hole polarons start migration in a series of alkali halides (fluorites, chlorides, bromides, iodides) and the lattice displacement around quasi-molecule. These results are especially important for identification of the self-trapped holes, for example, in novel scintillating materials such as SrI2, as well as in a large family of perovskite halides and more complex halide materials.IMIS2; LZP Grant No. 237/2012; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Kinetics of dimer F2 type center annealing in MgF2 crystals

Authors are greatly indebted to V. Lisitsyn, A. Ch. Lushchik and R.Vila for stimulating discussions. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. The calculations were performed using facilities of the Stuttgart Supercomputer Center (project DEFTD 12939).In this paper, we analyzed experimental annealing kinetics of the primary electronic F centers and dimer F2 centers observed in MgF2 at higher radiation doses and temperatures. The developed phenomenological theory takes into account the interstitial ion diffusion and recombination with the F2-centers, as well as mutual sequential transformation with temperature growth of three types of experimentally observed dimer centers: F2(1), F2(2), F2(3) (which differ tentatively by charges (0, +1, +2) with respect to the host crystalline sites). The results of the electron, neutron and ion irradiation are compared. As the result, the relative initial concentrations of three types of F2 electronic defects before annealing are obtained, along with energy barriers between their ground states as well as the relaxation energies.European Union’s Horizon 2020 agreement number 633053; Stuttgart Supercomputer Center project DEFTD 12939; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Anomalous Kinetics of Diffusion-Controlled Defect Annealing in Irradiated Ionic Solids

The authors thanks A. Ch. Lushchik, M. Izerrouken, and V. Lisitsyn for stimulating discussions. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euroatom research and training programme 2014-2018 under Grant Agreement No. 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. R.V. acknowledges the financial support by the MEIC (Ministerio de Economa, Industria y Competitivad; Project ENE2015-70300-C3-1-R). The calculations were performed using facilities of the Stuttgart Supercomputer Center (Project DEFTD 12939).The annealing kinetics of the primary electronic F-type color centers (oxygen vacancies with trapped one or two electrons) is analyzed for three ionic materials (Al2O3, MgO, and MgF2) exposed to intensive irradiation by electrons, neutrons, and heavy swift ions. Phenomenological theory of diffusion-controlled recombination of the F-type centers with much more mobile interstitial ions (complementary hole centers) allows us to extract from experimental data the migration energy of interstitials and pre-exponential factor of diffusion. The obtained migration energies are compared with available first-principles calculations. It is demonstrated that with the increase of radiation fluence both the migration energy and pre-exponent are decreasing in all three materials, irrespective of the type of irradiation. Their correlation satisfies the Meyer-Neldel rule observed earlier in glasses, liquids, and disordered materials.The origin of this effect is discussed. This study demonstrates that in the quantitative analysis of the radiation damage of real materials the dependence of the defect migration parameters on the radiation fluence plays an important role and cannot be neglected.Euroatom research and training programme 2014-2018 under Grant Agreement No. 633053; Ministerio de Economa, Industria y Competitivad; Project ENE2015-70300-C3-1-R; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

Peculiarities of the diffusion-controlled radiation defect accumulation kinetics under high fluencies

We are grateful to A. Lushchik and E. Shablonin for numerous and valuable discussions. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 and 2019-2020 under grant agreement No 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission. The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.Theory is developed for kinetics of the diffusion-controlled radiation defect accumulation in crystalline solids under high fluencies taking into account recently observed correlation between the defect diffusion energy and pre-exponential (known as the Meyer-Neldel rule in chemical kinetics) and their dependence on the radiation fluence (Kotomin et al., J Phys Chem A 122 (2018) 28). The predicted accumulation kinetics could be applied to all kinds of solids. It considerably differs from the commonly used, in particular, suggesting that concentration growth at high fluencies could be nonmonotonous and the saturation defect concentrations independent on the temperature.EUROfusion Consortium Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 and 2019-2020 under grant agreement No 633053; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

The Zel'dovich effect and evolution of atomic Rydberg spectra along the Periodic Table

In 1959 Ya. B. Zel'dovich predicted that the bound-state spectrum of the non-relativistic Coulomb problem distorted at small distances by a short-range potential undergoes a peculiar reconstruction whenever this potential alone supports a low-energy scattering resonance. However documented experimental evidence of this effect has been lacking. Previous theoretical studies of this phenomenon were confined to the regime where the range of the short-ranged potential is much smaller than Bohr's radius of the Coulomb field. We go beyond this limitation by restricting ourselves to highly-excited s states. This allows us to demonstrate that along the Periodic Table of elements the Zel'dovich effect manifests itself as systematic periodic variation of the Rydberg spectra with a period proportional to the cubic root of the atomic number. This dependence, which is supported by analysis of experimental and numerical data, has its origin in the binding properties of the ionic core of the atom.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Multi-particle Production and Thermalization in High-Energy QCD

We argue that multi-particle production in high energy hadron and nuclear collisions can be considered as proceeding through the production of gluons in the background classical field. In this approach we derive the gluon spectrum immediately after the collision and find that at high energies it is parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with respect to the quasi-classical result (x is the Bjorken variable). We show that the produced gluon spectrum becomes thermal (in three dimensions) with an effective temperature determined by the saturation momentum Qs, T= c Qs/2pi during the time ~1/T; we estimate c=sqrt{2pi}/2 ~ 1.2. Although this result by itself does not imply that the gluon spectrum will remain thermal at later times, it has an interesting applications to heavy ion collisions. In particular, we discuss the possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation of the produced gluon pairs and estimate the viscosity of the produced gluon system.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; typos fixed; discussions expanded; we added a new section IV in which we argue that at high energies the production mechanism discussed in the paper is parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with respect to the quasi-classical resul

Low temperature structural transformations on the (001) surface of SrTiO 3 single crystals

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine under the contract M/51–2019 within the framework of the Program of Ukrainian–Latvian Scientific and Technical Cooperation and Latvian–Ukranian Grant LV-UA/2018/2. Authors are indebted to L.L. Rusevich, G. Zvejnieks, V.P. Gnezdilov and A. Glamazda for stimulating discussions.The smooth (001) surfaces of SrTiO3 (STO) single crystals were investigated by the reflection high-energy electron diffraction method in the temperature range from 5.5 to 300 K. The Raman scattering confirmed the high quality of STO samples. Five structural anomalies were found depending on temperature. The antiferrodistortive phase transition from the cubic structure to tetragonal, observed in the STO bulk at 105 K, on the surface extends from 70 to 120 K. The anomalies below 7 K and about 35 K are similar to those in the bulk considered as a crossover between the growth of the ferroelectric atomic displacements with decreasing temperature and quantum-mechanical stabilization of this growth due to the zero-point atomic motion. The other two anomalies are related only to a surface. Differentiation of lattice parameters depending on the depth from a surface revealed nonmonotonic changes, which could be used for detecting the structural transformations. The comprehensive understanding of the structural properties of ABO3 perovskite surfaces is important for elucidating the nature of the effects at the boundary of metallic ferromagnetism in similar materials.Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine under the contract M/51–2019; Ukrainian–Latvian Scientific and Technical Cooperation and Latvian–Ukranian Grant LV-UA/2018/2; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART