12,491 research outputs found
The structure, energy, and electronic states of vacancies in Ge nanocrystals
The atomic structure, energy of formation, and electronic states of vacancies
in H-passivated Ge nanocrystals are studied by density functional theory (DFT)
methods. The competition between quantum self-purification and the free surface
relaxations is investigated. The free surfaces of crystals smaller than 2 nm
distort the Jahn-Teller relaxation and enhance the reconstruction bonds. This
increases the energy splitting of the quantum states and reduces the energy of
formation to as low as 1 eV per defect in the smallest nanocrystals. In
crystals larger than 2 nm the observed symmetry of the Jahn-Teller distortion
matches the symmetry expected for bulk Ge crystals. Near the nanocrystal's
surface the vacancy is found to have an energy of formation no larger than 0.5
to 1.4 eV per defect, but a vacancy more than 0.7 nm inside the surface has an
energy of formation that is the same as in bulk Ge. No evidence of the
self-purification effect is observed; the dominant effect is the free surface
relaxations, which allow for the enhanced reconstruction. From the evidence in
this paper, it is predicted that for moderate sized Ge nanocrystals a vacancy
inside the crystal will behave bulk-like and not interact strongly with the
surface, except when it is within 0.7 nm of the surface.Comment: In Press at Phys. Rev.
Embryo impacts and gas giant mergers II: Diversity of Hot Jupiters' internal structure
We consider the origin of compact, short-period, Jupiter-mass planets. We
propose that their diverse structure is caused by giant impacts of embryos and
super-Earths or mergers with other gas giants during the formation and
evolution of these hot Jupiters. Through a series of numerical simulations, we
show that typical head-on collisions generally lead to total coalescence of
impinging gas giants. Although extremely energetic collisions can disintegrate
the envelope of gas giants, these events seldom occur. During oblique and
moderately energetic collisions, the merger products retain higher fraction of
the colliders' cores than their envelopes. They can also deposit considerable
amount of spin angular momentum to the gas giants and desynchronize their spins
from their orbital mean motion. We find that the oblateness of gas giants can
be used to infer the impact history. Subsequent dissipation of stellar tide
inside the planets' envelope can lead to runaway inflation and potentially a
substantial loss of gas through Roche-lobe overflow. The impact of super-Earths
on parabolic orbits can also enlarge gas giant planets' envelope and elevates
their tidal dissipation rate over 100 Myr time scale. Since giant
impacts occur stochastically with a range of impactor sizes and energies, their
diverse outcomes may account for the dispersion in the mass-radius relationship
of hot Jupiters.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Phase-reference VLBI Observations of the Compact Steep-Spectrum Source 3C 138
We investigate a phase-reference VLBI observation that was conducted at 15.4
GHz by fast switching VLBA antennas between the compact steep-spectrum radio
source 3C 138 and the quasar PKS 0528+134 which are about 4 away on the
sky. By comparing the phase-reference mapping with the conventional hybrid
mapping, we demonstrate the feasibility of high precision astrometric
measurements for sources separated by 4. VLBI phase-reference mapping
preserves the relative phase information, and thus provides an accurate
relative position between 3C 138 and PKS 0528+134 of
and
(J2000.0) in right ascension and declination, respectively. This gives an
improved position of the nucleus (component A) of 3C 138 in J2000.0 to be
RA= and Dec= under the
assumption that the position of calibrator PKS 0528+134 is correct. We further
made a hybrid map by performing several iterations of CLEAN and
self-calibration on the phase-referenced data with the phase-reference map as
an input model for the first phase self-calibration. Compared with the hybrid
map from the limited visibility data directly obtained from fringe fitting 3C
138 data, this map has a similar dynamic range, but a higher angular
resolution. Therefore, phase-reference technique is not only a means of phase
connection, but also a means of increasing phase coherence time allowing
self-calibration technique to be applied to much weaker sources.Comment: 9 pages plus 2 figures, accepted by PASJ (Vol.58 No.6
Collapse of Vacuum Bubbles in a Vacuum
Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string
landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we
revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter
spacetime. We find that there exists a large parameter space that allows the
bubble to collapse into a black hole or to form a wormhole. This may have
interesting implications to inflationary physics.Comment: 8 pages including 6 figures, LaTex; references adde
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