Leakage-current properties of encapsulants

A theoretical modeling of leakage current in ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and polyvinyl butyral (PVB) modules is being developed and is described. The modeling effort derives mathematical relationships for the bulk and surface conductivites of EVA and PVB, the surface conductivities of glass and polymeric films, and the EVA and PVB pottants, all as functions of environmental parameters. Results from the modeling indicate that for glass/EVA, the glass surface controls the interfacial conductivity, although EVA bulk conductivity controls total leakage current. For PVB/glass, the interface conductivity controls leakage currents for relative humidity (RH) less than 40 to 50%, but PVB bulk conductivity controls leakage current above 50% RH

Screening and antiscreening in anisotropic QED and QCD plasmas

We use a transport-theory approach to construct the static propagator of a gauge boson in a plasma with a general axially- and reflection-symmetric momentum distribution. Non-zero magnetic screening is found if the distribution is anisotropic, confirming the results of a closed-time-path-integral approach. We find that the electric and magnetic screening effects depend on both the orientation of the momentum carried by the boson and the orientation of its polarization. In some orientations there can be antiscreening, reflecting the instabilities of such a medium. We present some fairly general conditions on the dependence of these effects on the anisotropy.Comment: 14 pages late

Classical Extended Conformal Algebras Associated with Constrained KP Hierarchy

We examine the conformal property of the second Hamiltonian structure of constrained KP hierarchy derived by Oevel and Strampp. We find that it naturallygives a family of nonlocal extended conformal algebras. We give two examples of such algebras and find that they are similar to Bilal's V algebra. By taking a gauge transformation one can map the constrained KP hierarchy to Kuperschmidt's nonstandard Lax hierarchy. We consider the second Hamiltonian structure in this representation. We show that after mapping the Lax operator to a pure differential operator the second structure becomes the sum of the second and the third Gelfand-Dickey brackets defined by this differential operator. We show that this Hamiltonian structure defines the W-U(1)-Kac-Moody algebra by working out its conformally covariant form.Comment: NHCU-HEP-94-28, 19 pages (Plain TeX

A STIS Survey for OVI Absorption Systems at 0.12 < z < 0.5 I.: The Statistical Properties of Ionized Gas

We have conducted a systematic survey for intervening OVI absorbers in available echelle spectra of 16 QSOs at z_QSO = 0.17-0.57. These spectra were obtained using HST/STIS with the E140M grating. Our search uncovered a total of 27 foreground OVI absorbers with rest-frame absorption equivalent width W_r(1031) > 25mA. Ten of these QSOs exhibit strong OVI absorbers in their vicinity. Our OVI survey does not require the known presence of Lya, and the echelle resolution allows us to identify the OVI absorption doublet based on their common line centroid and known flux ratio. We estimate the total redshift survey path, \Delta z, using a series of Monte-Carlo simulations, and find that \Delta z=1.66, 2.18, and 2.42 for absorbers of strength W_r = 30, 50 and 80mA, respectively, leading to a number density of dN(W > 50mA)/dz = 6.7 +/- 1.7 and dN(W > 30mA)/dz = 10.4 +/- 2.2. In contrast, we also measure dN/dz = 27 +/- 9 for OVI absorbers of W_r > 50mA at |\Delta v|< 5000 kms from the background QSOs. Using the random sample of OVI absorbers with well characterized survey completeness, we estimate a mean cosmological mass density of the OVI gas \Omega(OVI)h = 1.7 +/- 0.3 x 10^-7. In addition, we show that <5% of OVI absorbers originate in underdense regions that do not show a significant trace of HI. Furthermore, we show that the neutral gas column N(HI) associated with these OVI absorbers spans nearly five orders of magnitude, and show moderate correlation with N(OVI). Finally, while the number density of OVI absorbers varies substantially from one sightline to another, it also appears to be inversely correlated with the number density of HI absorbers along individual lines of sight.Comment: 12 pages. ApJ accepte

Thermodynamics of AdS Black Holes in Einstein-Scalar Gravity

We study the thermodynamics of $n$-dimensional static asymptotically AdS black holes in Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field with a potential admitting a stationary point with an AdS vacuum. Such black holes with non-trivial scalar hair can exist provided that the mass-squared of the scalar field is negative, and above the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We use the Wald procedure to derive the first law of thermodynamics for these black holes, showing how the scalar hair (or "charge") contributes non-trivially in the expression. We show in general that a black hole mass can be deduced by isolating an integrable contribution to the (non-integrable) variation of the Hamiltonian arising in the Wald construction, and that this is consistent with the mass calculated using the renormalised holographic stress tensor and also, in those cases where it is defined, with the mass calculated using the conformal method of Ashtekar, Magnon and Das. Similar arguments can also be given for the smooth solitonic solutions in these theories. Neither the black hole nor the soliton solutions can be constructed explicitly, and we carry out a numerical analysis to demonstrate their existence and to provide approximate checks on some of our thermodynamic results.Comment: 42 pages, 2 figures. Version published in JHEP, plus a "Note Added" expanding on our definition of "mass" via the first la