37,928 research outputs found
High Thermoelectric Performance and Defect Energetics of Multipocketed Full Heusler Compounds
We report a first-principles density-functional study of electron-phonon interactions in and thermoelectric transport properties of the full Heusler compounds Sr2BiAu and Sr2SbAu. Our results show that ultrahigh intrinsic bulk thermoelectric performance across a wide range of temperatures is physically possible and point to the presence of multiply degenerate and highly dispersive carrier pockets as the key factor for achieving this. Sr2BiAu, which features ten energy-aligned low-effective-mass pockets (six along Γ-X and four at L), is predicted to deliver n-type zT=0.4-4.9 at T=100-700 K. Comparison with the previously investigated compound Ba2BiAu shows that the additional L pockets in Sr2BiAu significantly increase its low-temperature power factor to a maximum value of 12 mW m-1 K-2 near T=300 K. However, at high temperatures the power factor of Sr2BiAu drops below that of Ba2BiAu because the L states are heavier and subject to strong scattering by phonon deformation, as opposed to the lighter Γ-X states, which are limited by polar-optical scattering. Sr2SbAu is predicted to deliver a lower n-type zT=3.4 at T=750 K due to appreciable misalignment between the L and Γ-X carrier pockets, generally heavier scattering, and a slightly higher lattice thermal conductivity. Soft acoustic modes, which are responsible for the low lattice thermal conductivity, also increase the vibrational entropy and high-temperature stability of these Heusler compounds, suggesting that their experimental synthesis may be feasible. The dominant intrinsic defects are found to be Au vacancies, which drive the Fermi level towards the conduction band and work in favor of n-doping
Radiance and Doppler shift distributions across the network of the quiet Sun
The radiance and Doppler-shift distributions across the solar network provide
observational constraints of two-dimensional modeling of transition-region
emission and flows in coronal funnels. Two different methods, dispersion plots
and average-profile studies, were applied to investigate these distributions.
In the dispersion plots, we divided the entire scanned region into a bright and
a dark part according to an image of Fe xii; we plotted intensities and Doppler
shifts in each bin as determined according to a filtered intensity of Si ii. We
also studied the difference in height variations of the magnetic field as
extrapolated from the MDI magnetogram, in and outside network. For the
average-profile study, we selected 74 individual cases and derived the average
profiles of intensities and Doppler shifts across the network. The dispersion
plots reveal that the intensities of Si ii and C iv increase from network
boundary to network center in both parts. However, the intensity of Ne viii
shows different trends, namely increasing in the bright part and decreasing in
the dark part. In both parts, the Doppler shift of C iv increases steadily from
internetwork to network center. The average-profile study reveals that the
intensities of the three lines all decline from the network center to
internetwork region. The binned intensities of Si ii and Ne viii have a good
correlation. We also find that the large blue shift of Ne viii does not
coincide with large red shift of C iv. Our results suggest that the network
structure is still prominent at the layer where Ne viii is formed in the quiet
Sun, and that the magnetic structures expand more strongly in the dark part
than in the bright part of this quiet Sun region.Comment: 10 pages,9 figure
Dynamic responses of an elastic beam moving over a simple beam using modal superposition method
The dynamic responses of an elastic beam moving over a simple beam are investigated. The elastic beam is modeled as an Euler beam with both ends free, and connected to the simple beam by two spring units. With modal superposition method, the dynamic responses of these two beams are studied. The vibrations of the simple beam are almost the same due to the moving elastic beam and rigid beam, even the latter beam ignores the flexural vibration of the elastic beam. However, the acceleration of the moving elastic beam is much larger than that of the moving rigid beam, which can be attributed to the flexible vibration of the elastic beam. With various flexural stiffness of the elastic beam, the max accelerations of the elastic beam at midpoint are computed along with different moving velocities. It is observed that, with an increase of flexural stiffness of the elastic beam, the max acceleration of the elastic beam decreases evidently
Analytic Spectra of CMB Anisotropies and Polarization Generated by Relic Gravitational Waves with Modification due to Neutrino Free-Streaming
We present an analytical calculation of the spectra of CMB anisotropies and
polarizations generated by relic gravitational waves (RGWs). As a substantial
extension to the previous studies, three new ingredients are included in this
work. Firstly, the analytic and are given; especially the
latter can be useful to extract signal of RGWs from the observed data in the
zero multipole method. Secondly, a fitting formula of the decaying factor on
small scales is given, coming from the visibility function around the photon
decoupling. Thirdly, the impacts by the neutrino free-streaming (NFS) is
examined, a process that occurred in the early universe and leaves observable
imprints on CMB via RGWs.
It is found that the analytic and have profiles
agreeing with the numeric ones, except that in a range
and the trough of around have some deviations.
With the new damping factor, the analytic and match with
the numeric ones with the maximum errors only up to the first three
peaks for , improving the previous studies substantially. The
correspondence of the positions of peaks of and those of RGWs are
also demonstrated explicitly. We also find that NFS reduces the amplitudes of
by for and shifts slightly
their peaks to smaller angles. Detailed analyses show that the zero multipoles
, where crosses 0, are shifted to larger values by NFS. This
shifting effect is as important as those causedby different inflation models
and different baryon fractions.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. accepted by PR
Tests of a Novel Design of Resistive Plate Chambers
A novel design of Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs), using only a single
resistive plate, is being proposed. Based on this design, two large size
prototype chambers were constructed and were tested with cosmic rays and in
particle beams. The tests confirmed the viability of this new approach. In
addition to showing an improved single-particle response compared to the
traditional 2-plate design, the novel chambers also prove to be suitable for
calorimetric applications
Adversarial Sparse-View CBCT Artifact Reduction
We present an effective post-processing method to reduce the artifacts from
sparsely reconstructed cone-beam CT (CBCT) images. The proposed method is based
on the state-of-the-art, image-to-image generative models with a perceptual
loss as regulation. Unlike the traditional CT artifact-reduction approaches,
our method is trained in an adversarial fashion that yields more perceptually
realistic outputs while preserving the anatomical structures. To address the
streak artifacts that are inherently local and appear across various scales, we
further propose a novel discriminator architecture based on feature pyramid
networks and a differentially modulated focus map to induce the adversarial
training. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can greatly
correct the cone-beam artifacts from clinical CBCT images reconstructed using
1/3 projections, and outperforms strong baseline methods both quantitatively
and qualitatively
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