The forts on Hadrian s wall: a comparative analysis of the form and construction of some buildings

The thesis undertakes a comparative analysis of some of the stone buildings within the forts of the completed concept of Hadrian's Wall. The buildings included are the principia, granaries, gates and barracks. Each building type has been measured and inspected on site, or the data obtained from archival or documentary sources. As a background to the study the forts are set in the context of the Wall, examining its structure, garrisons and taking an overview of the archaeological record, additionally general Roman building techniques are reviewed. The selected buildings within each fort are then discussed and compared with other buildings on the Wall, or on other military sites. In this way then- form, dimensional analysis, construction sequence and building techniques are considered and discussed. Common features and major differences are highlighted in the forts and the buildings, and comparisons drawn. Some tentative links are made as to the builders of the forts and the probable use of standard units of measure. Reconstructions of the buildings are put forward, taking into account the archaeological evidence and architectural considerations. Supporting information supplied in the appendices includes data relating to each fort as well as schedules of dimensions of the buildings, together with comparative tables. A catalogue of the decorated and moulded stonework sets out and discusses the stonework from the various buildings

Interface state contribution to the photovoltaic effect in organic phototransistors:Photocapacitance measurements and optical sensing

Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-11T16:50:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2018-01-01Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia em Eletrônica OrgânicaWe report the results of an investigation into the contribution that trapping in interface states makes to the photovoltaic effect observed in organic phototransistors. To isolate this effect from other processes that occur in the transistor structure when under illumination, we focus attention on the photo-response of metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) capacitors - the core structure of transistors. The capacitors comprised poly(3-hexylthiophene), (P3HT), as the active semiconductor in combination with one of three insulators, namely, poly(amide-imide), (PAI), SU-8 photoresist and polysilsesquioxane (PSQ). Following initial characterization in the dark, the capacitor response was measured both during and after irradiation with light in the wavelength range 400–700 nm. Three different approaches were employed to study the photo-response, each providing a different insight into the processes occurring. Capacitance-voltage sweeps before, during and after illumination provided direct evidence supporting the view that the photovoltaic effect occurred as a result of electron trapping in interface states of density up to ∼2 × 1012 cm−2 in the P3HT/PAI combination but lower for SU-8 and PSQ. The dynamic photo-response, in which device capacitance was held constant by changing the applied bias, showed a fast component related to optically induced photoconduction in the semiconductor and a slower component reflecting the dynamics of interface electron trapping. Finally, photo-induced capacitance changes occurring with constant applied voltage were used to demonstrate a simple 3 × 3 imaging array.School of Electronic Engineering Bangor University, Dean StreetBrazilian Nanotechnology National Laboratory (LNNano) Brazilian Centre of Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM)Department of Physics São Paulo State University (UNESP), PO Box 266Institute of Physics of São Carlos University of São Paulo (USP), PO Box 369Catarinense Federal Institute of Education Science and Technology, PO Box 21Department of Physics São Paulo State University (UNESP), PO Box 26

Phenomenology of symmetry breaking from extra dimensions

Motivated by the electroweak hierarchy problem, we consider theories with two extra dimensions in which the four-dimensional scalar fields are components of gauge boson in full space. We explore the Nielsen-Olesen instability for SU(N) on a torus, in the presence of a magnetic background. A field theory approach is developed, computing explicitly the minimum of the complete effective potential, including tri-linear and quartic couplings and determining the symmetries of the stable vacua. We also develop appropriate gauge-fixing terms when both Kaluza-Klein and Landau levels are present and interacting, discussing the interplay between the possible six and four dimensional choices. The equivalence between coordinate dependent and constant Scherk-Schwarz boundary conditions -associated to either continuous or discrete Wilson lines- is analyzed.Comment: 39 pages and 8 eps figures. Few changes in section

Threshold Corrections and Gauge Symmetry in Twisted Superstring Models

Threshold corrections to the running of gauge couplings are calculated for superstring models with free complex world sheet fermions. For two N=1 $SU(2)\times U(1)^5$ models, the threshold corrections lead to a small increase in the unification scale. Examples are given to illustrate how a given particle spectrum can be described by models with different boundary conditions on the internal fermions. We also discuss how complex twisted fermions can enhance the symmetry group of an N=4 $SU(3)\times U(1)\times U(1)$ model to the gauge group $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$. It is then shown how a mixing angle analogous to the Weinberg angle depends on the boundary conditions of the internal fermions.Comment: easier to Tex version, figures to be sent separatel

Stretched strings in tachyon condensation models

In this note, we consider the two derivative truncation of boundary string field theory for unstable D9 branes in Type IIA string theory. We construct multiples of the stable codimension 1 solitons that correspond to stacks of D8 branes. We find the fluctuation modes that correspond to open strings stretching between the branes, and find that their masses are consistent with the string tension. We show that these modes are localized halfway between the branes and that their width is independent of the brane separation.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX; v2, references adde

The Tachyon Potential in the Sliver Frame

We evaluate the tachyon potential in the Schnabl gauge through off-shell computations in the sliver frame. As an application of the results of our computations, we provide a strong evidence that Schnabl's analytic solution for tachyon condensation in open string field theory represents a saddle point configuration of the full tachyon potential. Additionally we verify that Schnabl's analytic solution lies on the minimum of the effective tachyon potential.Comment: v1: 19 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; v2: 20 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 1 reference added, comments added; v3: 21 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, 4 references added, comments adde

Random walks and the Hagedorn transition

We study details of the approach to the Hagedorn temperature in string theory in various static spacetime backgrounds. We show that the partition function for a {\it single} string at finite temperature is the torus amplitude restricted to unit winding around Euclidean time. We use the worldsheet path integral to derive the statement that the the sum over random walks of the thermal scalar near the Hagedorn transition is precisely the image under a modular transformation of the sum over spatial configurations of a single highly excited string. We compute the radius of gyration of thermally excited strings in $AdS_D\times S^n$. We show that the winding mode indicates an instability despite the AdS curvature at large radius, and that the negative mass squared decreases with decreasing AdS radius, much like the type 0 tachyon. We add further arguments to statements by Barbon and Rabinovici, and by Adams {\it et. al.}, that the Euclidean AdS black hole can thought of as a condensate of the thermal scalar. We use this to provide circumstantial evidence that the condensation of the thermal scalar decouples closed string modes.Comment: 34 pages (7 of references), 5 figures. v2: Reference added, grant acknowledgement added, typos correcte

Off-Shell Interactions for Closed-String Tachyons

Off-shell interactions for localized closed-string tachyons in C/Z_N superstring backgrounds are analyzed and a conjecture for the effective height of the tachyon potential is elaborated. At large N, some of the relevant tachyons are nearly massless and their interactions can be deduced from the S-matrix. The cubic interactions between these tachyons and the massless fields are computed in a closed form using orbifold CFT techniques. The cubic interaction between nearly-massless tachyons with different charges is shown to vanish and thus condensation of one tachyon does not source the others. It is shown that to leading order in N, the quartic contact interaction vanishes and the massless exchanges completely account for the four point scattering amplitude. This indicates that it is necessary to go beyond quartic interactions or to include other fields to test the conjecture for the height of the tachyon potential.Comment: 37 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, JHEP class. Typos corrected, references added, published versio

Experimental String Field Theory

We develop efficient algorithms for level-truncation computations in open bosonic string field theory. We determine the classical action in the universal subspace to level (18,54) and apply this knowledge to numerical evaluations of the tachyon condensate string field. We obtain two main sets of results. First, we directly compute the solutions up to level L=18 by extremizing the level-truncated action. Second, we obtain predictions for the solutions for L > 18 from an extrapolation to higher levels of the functional form of the tachyon effective action. We find that the energy of the stable vacuum overshoots -1 (in units of the brane tension) at L=14, reaches a minimum E_min = -1.00063 at L ~ 28 and approaches with spectacular accuracy the predicted answer of -1 as L -> infinity. Our data are entirely consistent with the recent perturbative analysis of Taylor and strongly support the idea that level-truncation is a convergent approximation scheme. We also check systematically that our numerical solution, which obeys the Siegel gauge condition, actually satisfies the full gauge-invariant equations of motion. Finally we investigate the presence of analytic patterns in the coefficients of the tachyon string field, which we are able to reliably estimate in the L -> infinity limit.Comment: 37 pages, 6 figure