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- Institut für Physik und Astronomie (720) (remove)
Galaxy morphology is a fossil record of how galaxies formed and evolved and can be regarded as a function of the dynamical state of a galaxy. It encodes the physical processes that dominate its evolutionary history, and is strongly aligned with physical properties like stellar mass, star formation rate and local environment. At a distance of ∼50 and 60 kpc, the Magellanic Clouds represent the nearest interacting pair of dwarf irregular galaxies to the Milky Way, rendering them an important test bed for galaxy morphology in the context of galaxy interactions and the effect of the local environment in which they reside. The Large Magellanic Cloud is classified as the prototype for Magellanic Spiral galaxies, with one prominent spiral arm, an offset bar and an inclined rotating disc while the Small Magellanic Cloud is classified as a dwarf Irregular galaxy and is known for its unstructured shape and large depth across the line–of–sight. Resolved stellar populations are powerful probes of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, the proximity of the Magellanic Clouds allows us to resolve their stellar populations to individual stars that share coherent chemical and age distributions. The coherent properties of resolved stellar populations enable us to analyse them as a function of position within the Magellanic Clouds, offering a picture of the growth of the galaxies’ substructures over time and yielding a comprehensive view of their morphology. Furthermore, investigating the kinematics of the Magellanic Clouds offers valuable insights into their dynamics and evolutionary history. By studying the motions and velocities of stars within these galaxies, we can trace their past interactions, with the Milky Way or with each other and unravel the complex interplay of forces that have influenced the Magellanic Clouds’ formation and evolution.
In Chapter 2, the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds was employed to generate unprecedented high-resolution morphological maps of the Magellanic Clouds in the near-infrared. Utilising colour-magnitude diagrams and theoretical evolutionary models to segregate stellar populations, this approach enabled a comprehensive age tomography of the galaxies. It revealed previously uncharacterised features in their central regions at spatial resolutions of 0.13 kpc (Large Magellanic Cloud) and 0.16 kpc (Small Magellanic Cloud), the findings showcased the impact of tidal interactions on their inner regions. Notably, the study highlighted the enhanced coherent structures in the Large Magellanic Cloud, shedding light on the significant role of the recent Magellanic Clouds’ interaction 200 Myr ago in shaping many of the fine structures. The Small Magellanic Cloud revealed asymmetry in younger populations and irregularities in intermediate-age ones, pointing towards the influence of past tidal interactions.
In Chapter 3, an examination of the outskirts of the Magellanic Clouds led to the identification of new substructures through the use of near-infrared photometry from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey and multi-dimensional phase-space information from Gaia. The distances and proper motions of these substructures were investigated. This analysis revealed the impact of past Magellanic Clouds’ interactions and the influence of the Milky Way’s tidal field on the morphology and kinematics of the Magellanic Clouds. A bi-modal distance distribution was identified within the luminosity function of the red clump stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, notably in its eastern regions, with the foreground substructure being attributed to the Magellanic Clouds’ interaction around 200 Myr ago. Furthermore, associations with the Counter Bridge and Old Bridge were uncovered through the detection of background and foreground structures in various regions of the SMC.
In chapter 4, a detailed kinematic analysis of the Small Magellanic Cloud was conducted using spectra from the European Southern Observatory Science Archive Facility. The study reveals distinct kinematics in the Wing and bar regions, attributed to interactions with the Large Magellanic Cloud and variations in star formation history. Notably, velocity disparities are observed in the bar’s young main sequence stars, aligning with specific star-forming episodes, and suggesting potential galactic stretching or tidal stripping, as corroborated by proper motion studies.
On the effects of disorder on the ability of oscillatory or directional dynamics to synchronize
(2024)
In this thesis I present a collection of publications of my work, containing analytic results and observations in numerical experiments on the effects of various inhomogeneities, on the ability of coupled oscillators to synchronize their collective dynamics. Most of these works are concerned with the effects of Gaussian and non-Gaussian noise acting on the phase of autonomous oscillators (Secs. 2.1-2.4) or on the direction of higher dimensional state vectors (Secs. 2.5,2.6). I obtain exact and approximate solutions to the non-linear equations governing the distributions of phases, or perform linear stability analysis of the uniform distribution to obtain the transition point from a completely disordered state to partial order or more complicated collective behavior. Other inhomogeneities, that can affect synchronization of coupled oscillators, are irregular, chaotic oscillations or a complex, and possibly random structure in the coupling network. In Section 2.9 I present a new method to define the phase- and frequency linear response function for chaotic oscillators. In Sections 2.4, 2.7 and 2.8 I study synchronization in complex networks of coupled oscillators. Each section in Chapter 2 - Manuscripts, is devoted to one research paper and begins with a list of the main results, a description of my contributions to the work and a short account of the scientific context, i.e. the questions and challenges which started the research and the relation of the work to my other research projects. The manuscripts in this thesis are reproductions of the arXiv versions, i.e. preprints under the creative commons licence.
Massive stars (Mini > 8 Msol) are the key feedback agents within galaxies, as they shape their surroundings via their powerful winds, ionizing radiation, and explosive supernovae. Most massive stars are born in binary systems, where interactions with their companions significantly alter their evolution and the feedback they deposit in their host galaxy. Understanding binary evolution, particularly in the low-metallicity environments as proxies for the Early Universe, is crucial for interpreting the rest-frame ultraviolet spectra observed in high-redshift galaxies by telescopes like Hubble and James Webb.
This thesis aims to tackle this challenge by investigating in detail massive binaries within the low-metallicity environment of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. From ultraviolet and multi-epoch optical spectroscopic data, we uncovered post-interaction binaries. To comprehensively characterize these binary systems, their stellar winds, and orbital parameters, we use a multifaceted approach. The Potsdam Wolf-Rayet stellar atmosphere code is employed to obtain the stellar and wind parameters of the stars. Additionally, we perform consistent light and radial velocity fitting with the Physics of Eclipsing Binaries software, allowing for the independent determination of orbital parameters and component masses. Finally, we utilize these results to challenge the standard picture of stellar evolution and improve our understanding of low-metallicity stellar populations by calculating our binary evolution models with the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics code.
We discovered the first four O-type post-interaction binaries in the SMC (Chapters 2, 5, and 6). Their primary stars have temperatures similar to other OB stars and reside far from the helium zero-age main sequence, challenging the traditional view of binary evolution. Our stellar evolution models suggest this may be due to enhanced mixing after core-hydrogen burning. Furthermore, we discovered the so-far most massive binary system undergoing mass transfer (Chapter 3), offering a unique opportunity to test mass-transfer efficiency in extreme conditions. Our binary evolution calculations revealed unexpected evolutionary pathways for accreting stars in binaries, potentially providing the missing link to understanding the observed Wolf-Rayet population within the SMC (Chapter 4). The results presented in this thesis unveiled the properties of massive binaries at low-metallicity which challenge the way the spectra of high-redshift galaxies are currently being analyzed as well as our understanding of massive-star feedback within galaxies.
Astrophysical shocks, driven by explosive events such as supernovae, efficiently accelerate charged particles to relativistic energies. The majority of these shocks occur in collisionless plasmas where the energy transfer is dominated by particle-wave interactions.Strong nonrelativistic shocks found in supernova remnants are plausible sites of galactic cosmic ray production, and the observed emission indicates the presence of nonthermal electrons. To participate in the primary mechanism of energy gain - Diffusive Shock Acceleration - electrons must have a highly suprathermal energy, implying a need for very efficient pre-acceleration. This poorly understood aspect of the shock acceleration theory is known as the electron injection problem. Studying electron-scale phenomena requires the use of fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, which describe collisionless plasma from first principles.
Most published studies consider a homogenous upstream medium, but turbulence is ubiquitous in astrophysical environments and is typically driven at magnetohydrodynamic scales, cascading down to kinetic scales. For the first time, I investigate how preexisting turbulence affects electron acceleration at nonrelativistic shocks using the fully kinetic approach. To accomplish this, I developed a novel simulation framework that allows the study of shocks propagating in turbulent media. It involves simulating slabs of turbulent plasma separately, which are further continuously inserted into a shock simulation. This demands matching of the plasma slabs at the interface. A new procedure of matching electromagnetic fields and currents prevents numerical transients, and the plasma evolves self-consistently. The versatility of this framework has the potential to render simulations more consistent with turbulent systems in various astrophysical environments.
In this Thesis, I present the results of 2D3V PIC simulations of high-Mach-number nonrelativistic shocks with preexisting compressive turbulence in an electron-ion plasma. The chosen amplitudes of the density fluctuations ($\lesssim15\%$) concord with \textit{in situ} measurements in the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium. I explored how these fluctuations impact the dynamics of upstream electrons, the driving of the plasma instabilities, electron heating and acceleration. My results indicate that while the presence of the turbulence enhances variations in the upstream magnetic field, their levels remain too low to influence the behavior of electrons at perpendicular shocks significantly. However, the situation is different at oblique shocks. The external magnetic field inclined at an angle between $50^\circ \lesssim \theta_\text{Bn} \lesssim 75^\circ$ relative to the shock normal allows the escape of fast electrons toward the upstream region. An extended electron foreshock region is formed, where these particles drive various instabilities. Results of an oblique shock with $\theta_\text{Bn}=60^\circ$ propagating in preexisting compressive turbulence show that the foreshock becomes significantly shorter, and the shock-reflected electrons have higher temperatures. Furthermore, the energy spectrum of downstream electrons shows a well-pronounced nonthermal tail that follows a power law with an index up to -2.3.
The methods and results presented in this Thesis could serve as a starting point for more realistic modeling of interactions between shocks and turbulence in plasmas from first principles.
Condensation and crystallization are omnipresent phenomena in nature. The formation of droplets or crystals on a solid surface are familiar processes which, beyond their scientific interest, are required in many technological applications. In recent years, experimental techniques have been developed which allow patterning a substrate with surface domains of molecular thickness, surface area in the mesoscopic scale, and different wettabilities (i.e., different degrees of preference for a substance that is in contact with the substrate). The existence of new patterned surfaces has led to increased theoretical efforts to understand wetting phenomena in such systems.
In this thesis, we deal with some problems related to the equilibrium of phases (e.g., liquid-vapor coexistence) and the kinetics of phase separation in the presence of chemically patterned surfaces. Two different cases are considered: (i) patterned surfaces in contact with liquid and vapor, and (ii) patterned surfaces in contact with a crystalline phase. One of the problems that we have studied is the following: It is widely believed that if air containing water vapor is cooled to its dew point, droplets of water are immediately formed. Although common experience seems to support this view, it is not correct. It is only when air is cooled well below its dew point that the phase transition occurs immediately. A vapor cooled slightly below its dew point is in a metastable state, meaning that the liquid phase is more stable than the vapor, but the formation of droplets requires some time to occur, which can be very long.
It was first pointed out by J. W. Gibbs that the metastability of a vapor depends on the energy necessary to form a nucleus (a droplet of a critical size). Droplets smaller than the critical size will tend to disappear, while droplets larger than the critical size will tend to grow. This is consistent with an energy barrier that has its maximum at the critical size, as is the case for droplets formed directly in the vapor or in contact with a chemically uniform planar wall. Classical nucleation theory describes the time evolution of the condensation in terms of the random process of droplet growth through this energy barrier. This process is activated by thermal fluctuations, which eventually will form a droplet of the critical size.
We consider nucleation of droplets from a vapor on a substrate patterned with easily wettable (lyophilic) circular domains. Under certain conditions of pressure and temperature, the condensation of a droplet on a lyophilic circular domain proceeds through a barrier with two maxima (a double barrier). We have extended classical nucleation theory to account for the kinetics of nucleation through a double barrier, and applied this extension to nucleation on lyophilic circular domains.
Laser induced switching offers an attractive possibility to manipulate small magnetic domains for prospective memory and logic devices on ultrashort time scales. Moreover, optical control of magnetization without high applied magnetic fields allows manipulation of magnetic domains individually and locally, without expensive heat dissipation. One of the major challenges for developing novel optically controlled magnetic memory and logic devices is reliable formation and annihilation of non-volatile magnetic domains that can serve as memory bits in ambient conditions. Magnetic skyrmions, topologically nontrivial spin textures, have been studied intensively since their discovery due to their stability and scalability in potential spintronic devices. However, skyrmion formation and, especially, annihilation processes are still not completely understood and further investigation on such mechanisms are needed. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to better understanding of the physical processes behind the optical control of magnetism in thin films, with the goal of optimizing material parameters and methods for their potential use in next generation memory and logic devices.
First part of the thesis is dedicated to investigation of all-optical helicity-dependent switching (AO-HDS) as a method for magnetization manipulation. AO-HDS in Co/Pt multilayer and CoFeB alloys with and without the presence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), which is a type of exchange interaction, have been investigated by magnetic imaging using photo-emission electron microscopy (PEEM) in combination with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). The results show that in a narrow range of the laser fluence, circularly polarized laser light induces a drag on domain walls. This enables a local deterministic transformation of the magnetic domain pattern from stripes to bubbles in out-of-plane magnetized Co/Pt multilayers, only controlled by the helicity of ultrashort laser pulses. The temperature and characteristic fields at which the stripe-bubble transformation occurs has been calculated using theory for isolated magnetic bubbles, using as parameters experimentally determined average size of stripe domains and the magnetic layer thickness.
The second part of the work aims at purely optical formation and annihilation of magnetic skyrmions by a single laser pulse. The presence of a skyrmion phase in the investigated CoFeB alloys was first confirmed using a Kerr microscope. Then the helicity-dependent skyrmion manipulation was studied using AO-HDS at different laser fluences. It was found that formation or annihilation individual skyrmions using AO-HDS is possible, but not always reliable, as fluctuations in the laser fluence or position can easily overwrite the helicity-dependent effect of AO-HDS. However, the experimental results and magnetic simulations showed that the threshold values for the laser fluence for the formation and annihilation of skyrmions are different. A higher fluence is required for skyrmion formation, and existing skyrmions can be annihilated by pulses with a slightly lower fluence. This provides a further option for controlling formation and annihilation of skyrmions using the laser fluence. Micromagnetic simulations provide additional insights into the formation and annihilation mechanism.
The ability to manipulate the magnetic state of individual skyrmions is of fundamental importance for magnetic data storage technologies. Our results show for the first time that the optical formation and annihilation of skyrmions is possible without changing the external field. These results enable further investigations to optimise the magnetic layer to maximise the energy gap between the formation and annihilation barrier. As a result, unwanted switching due to small laser fluctuations can be avoided and fully deterministic optical switching can be achieved.
Arctic climate change is marked by intensified warming compared to global trends and a significant reduction in Arctic sea ice which can intricately influence mid-latitude atmospheric circulation through tropo- and stratospheric pathways. Achieving accurate simulations of current and future climate demands a realistic representation of Arctic climate processes in numerical climate models, which remains challenging.
Model deficiencies in replicating observed Arctic climate processes often arise due to inadequacies in representing turbulent boundary layer interactions that determine the interactions between the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean. Many current climate models rely on parameterizations developed for mid-latitude conditions to handle Arctic turbulent boundary layer processes.
This thesis focuses on modified representation of the Arctic atmospheric processes and understanding their resulting impact on large-scale mid-latitude atmospheric circulation within climate models. The improved turbulence parameterizations, recently developed based on Arctic measurements, were implemented in the global atmospheric circulation model ECHAM6. This involved modifying the stability functions over sea ice and ocean for stable stratification and changing the roughness length over sea ice for all stratification conditions. Comprehensive analyses are conducted to assess the impacts of these modifications on ECHAM6's simulations of the Arctic boundary layer, overall atmospheric circulation, and the dynamical pathways between the Arctic and mid-latitudes.
Through a step-wise implementation of the mentioned parameterizations into ECHAM6, a series of sensitivity experiments revealed that the combined impacts of the reduced roughness length and the modified stability functions are non-linear. Nevertheless, it is evident that both modifications consistently lead to a general decrease in the heat transfer coefficient, being in close agreement with the observations.
Additionally, compared to the reference observations, the ECHAM6 model falls short in accurately representing unstable and strongly stable conditions.
The less frequent occurrence of strong stability restricts the influence of the modified stability functions by reducing the affected sample size. However, when focusing solely on the specific instances of a strongly stable atmosphere, the sensible heat flux approaches near-zero values, which is in line with the observations. Models employing commonly used surface turbulence parameterizations were shown to have difficulties replicating the near-zero sensible heat flux in strongly stable stratification.
I also found that these limited changes in surface layer turbulence parameterizations have a statistically significant impact on the temperature and wind patterns across multiple pressure levels, including the stratosphere, in both the Arctic and mid-latitudes. These significant signals vary in strength, extent, and direction depending on the specific month or year, indicating a strong reliance on the background state.
Furthermore, this research investigates how the modified surface turbulence parameterizations may influence the response of both stratospheric and tropospheric circulation to Arctic sea ice loss.
The most suitable parameterizations for accurately representing Arctic boundary layer turbulence were identified from the sensitivity experiments. Subsequently, the model's response to sea ice loss is evaluated through extended ECHAM6 simulations with different prescribed sea ice conditions.
The simulation with adjusted surface turbulence parameterizations better reproduced the observed Arctic tropospheric warming in vertical extent, demonstrating improved alignment with the reanalysis data. Additionally, unlike the control experiments, this simulation successfully reproduced specific circulation patterns linked to the stratospheric pathway for Arctic-mid-latitude linkages. Specifically, an increased occurrence of the Scandinavian-Ural blocking regime (negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation) in early (late) winter is observed. Overall, it can be inferred that improving turbulence parameterizations at the surface layer can improve the ECHAM6's response to sea ice loss.
Improving permafrost dynamics in land surface models: insights from dual sensitivity experiments
(2024)
The thawing of permafrost and the subsequent release of greenhouse gases constitute one of the most significant and uncertain positive feedback loops in the context of climate change, making predictions regarding changes in permafrost coverage of paramount importance. To address these critical questions, climate scientists have developed Land Surface Models (LSMs) that encompass a multitude of physical soil processes. This thesis is committed to advancing our understanding and refining precise representations of permafrost dynamics within LSMs, with a specific focus on the accurate modeling of heat fluxes, an essential component for simulating permafrost physics.
The first research question overviews fundamental model prerequisites for the representation of permafrost soils within land surface modeling. It includes a first-of-its-kind comparison between LSMs in CMIP6 to reveal their differences and shortcomings in key permafrost physics parameters. Overall, each of these LSMs represents a unique approach to simulating soil processes and their interactions with the climate system. Choosing the most appropriate model for a particular application depends on factors such as the spatial and temporal scale of the simulation, the specific research question, and available computational resources.
The second research question evaluates the performance of the state-of-the-art Community Land Model (CLM5) in simulating Arctic permafrost regions. Our approach overcomes traditional evaluation limitations by individually addressing depth, seasonality, and regional variations, providing a comprehensive assessment of permafrost and soil temperature dynamics. I compare CLM5's results with three extensive datasets: (1) soil temperatures from 295 borehole stations, (2) active layer thickness (ALT) data from the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring Network (CALM), and (3) soil temperatures, ALT, and permafrost extent from the ESA Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI). The results show that CLM5 aligns well with ESA-CCI and CALM for permafrost extent and ALT but reveals a significant global cold temperature bias, notably over Siberia. These results echo a persistent challenge identified in numerous studies: the existence of a systematic 'cold bias' in soil temperature over permafrost regions. To address this challenge, the following research questions propose dual sensitivity experiments.
The third research question represents the first study to apply a Plant Functional Type (PFT)-based approach to derive soil texture and soil organic matter (SOM), departing from the conventional use of coarse-resolution global data in LSMs. This novel method results in a more uniform distribution of soil organic matter density (OMD) across the domain, characterized by reduced OMD values in most regions. However, changes in soil texture exhibit a more intricate spatial pattern. Comparing the results to observations reveals a significant reduction in the cold bias observed in the control run. This method shows noticeable improvements in permafrost extent, but at the cost of an overestimation in ALT. These findings emphasize the model's high sensitivity to variations in soil texture and SOM content, highlighting the crucial role of soil composition in governing heat transfer processes and shaping the seasonal variation of soil temperatures in permafrost regions.
Expanding upon a site experiment conducted in Trail Valley Creek by \citet{dutch_impact_2022}, the fourth research question extends the application of the snow scheme proposed by \citet{sturm_thermal_1997} to cover the entire Arctic domain. By employing a snow scheme better suited to the snow density profile observed over permafrost regions, this thesis seeks to assess its influence on simulated soil temperatures. Comparing this method to observational datasets reveals a significant reduction in the cold bias that was present in the control run. In most regions, the Sturm run exhibits a substantial decrease in the cold bias. However, there is a distinctive overshoot with a warm bias observed in mountainous areas. The Sturm experiment effectively addressed the overestimation of permafrost extent in the control run, albeit resulting in a substantial reduction in permafrost extent over mountainous areas. ALT results remain relatively consistent compared to the control run. These outcomes align with our initial hypothesis, which anticipated that the reduced snow insulation in the Sturm run would lead to higher winter soil temperatures and a more accurate representation of permafrost physics.
In summary, this thesis demonstrates significant advancements in understanding permafrost dynamics and its integration into LSMs. It has meticulously unraveled the intricacies involved in the interplay between heat transfer, soil properties, and snow dynamics in permafrost regions. These insights offer novel perspectives on model representation and performance.
The mobile-immobile model (MIM) has been established in geoscience in the context of contaminant transport in groundwater. Here the tracer particles effectively immobilise, e.g., due to diffusion into dead-end pores or sorption. The main idea of the MIM is to split the total particle density into a mobile and an immobile density. Individual tracers switch between the mobile and immobile state following a two-state telegraph process, i.e., the residence times in each state are distributed exponentially. In geoscience the focus lies on the breakthrough curve (BTC), which is the concentration at a fixed location over time. We apply the MIM to biological experiments with a special focus on anomalous scaling regimes of the mean squared displacement (MSD) and non-Gaussian displacement distributions. As an exemplary system, we have analysed the motion of tau proteins, that diffuse freely inside axons of neurons. Their free diffusion thereby corresponds to the mobile state of the MIM. Tau proteins stochastically bind to microtubules, which effectively immobilises the tau proteins until they unbind and continue diffusing. Long immobilisation durations compared to the mobile durations give rise to distinct non-Gaussian Laplace shaped distributions. It is accompanied by a plateau in the MSD for initially mobile tracer particles at relevant intermediate timescales. An equilibrium fraction of initially mobile tracers gives rise to non-Gaussian displacements at intermediate timescales, while the MSD remains linear at all times. In another setting bio molecules diffuse in a biosensor and transiently bind to specific receptors, where advection becomes relevant in the mobile state. The plateau in the MSD observed for the advection-free setting and long immobilisation durations persists also for the case with advection. We find a new clear regime of anomalous diffusion with non-Gaussian distributions and a cubic scaling of the MSD. This regime emerges for initially mobile and for initially immobile tracers. For an equilibrium fraction of initially mobile tracers we observe an intermittent ballistic scaling of the MSD. The long-time effective diffusion coefficient is enhanced by advection, which we physically explain with the variance of mobile durations. Finally, we generalize the MIM to incorporate arbitrary immobilisation time distributions and focus on a Mittag-Leffler immobilisation time distribution with power-law tail ~ t^(-1-mu) with 0<mu<1 and diverging mean immobilisation durations. A fit of our model to the BTC of experimental data from tracer particles in aquifers matches the BTC including the power-law tail. We use the fit parameters for plotting the displacement distributions and the MSD. We find Gaussian normal diffusion at short times and long-time power-law decay of mobile mass accompanied by anomalous diffusion at long times. The long-time diffusion is subdiffusive in the advection-free setting, while it is either subdiffusive for 0<mu<1/2 or superdiffusive for 1/2<mu<1 when advection is present. In the long-time limit we show equivalence of our model to a bi-fractional diffusion equation.
The Arctic is the hot spot of the ongoing, global climate change. Over the last decades, near-surface temperatures in the Arctic have been rising almost four times faster than on global average. This amplified warming of the Arctic and the associated rapid changes of its environment are largely influenced by interactions between individual components of the Arctic climate system. On daily to weekly time scales, storms can have major impacts on the Arctic sea-ice cover and are thus an important part of these interactions within the Arctic climate. The sea-ice impacts of storms are related to high wind speeds, which enhance the drift and deformation of sea ice, as well as to changes in the surface energy budget in association with air mass advection, which impact the seasonal sea-ice growth and melt.
The occurrence of storms in the Arctic is typically associated with the passage of transient cyclones. Even though the above described mechanisms how storms/cyclones impact the Arctic sea ice are in principal known, there is a lack of statistical quantification of these effects. In accordance with that, the overarching objective of this thesis is to statistically quantify cyclone impacts on sea-ice concentration (SIC) in the Atlantic Arctic Ocean over the last four decades. In order to further advance the understanding of the related mechanisms, an additional objective is to separate dynamic and thermodynamic cyclone impacts on sea ice and assess their relative importance. Finally, this thesis aims to quantify recent changes in cyclone impacts on SIC. These research objectives are tackled utilizing various data sets, including atmospheric and oceanic reanalysis data as well as a coupled model simulation and a cyclone tracking algorithm.
Results from this thesis demonstrate that cyclones are significantly impacting SIC in the Atlantic Arctic Ocean from autumn to spring, while there are mostly no significant impacts in summer. The strength and the sign (SIC decreasing or SIC increasing) of the cyclone impacts strongly depends on the considered daily time scale and the region of the Atlantic Arctic Ocean. Specifically, an initial decrease in SIC (day -3 to day 0 relative to the cyclone) is found in the Greenland, Barents and Kara Seas, while SIC increases following cyclones (day 0 to day 5 relative to the cyclone) are mostly limited to the Barents and Kara Seas.
For the cold season, this results in a pronounced regional difference between overall (day -3 to day 5 relative to the cyclone) SIC-decreasing cyclone impacts in the Greenland Sea and overall SIC-increasing cyclone impacts in the Barents and Kara Seas. A cyclone case study based on a coupled model simulation indicates that both dynamic and thermodynamic mechanisms contribute to cyclone impacts on sea ice in winter. A typical pattern consisting of an initial dominance of dynamic sea-ice changes followed by enhanced thermodynamic ice growth after the cyclone passage was found. This enhanced ice growth after the cyclone passage most likely also explains the (statistical) overall SIC-increasing effects of cyclones in the Barents and Kara Seas in the cold season.
Significant changes in cyclone impacts on SIC over the last four decades have emerged throughout the year. These recent changes are strongly varying from region to region and month to month. The strongest trends in cyclone impacts on SIC are found in autumn in the Barents and Kara Seas. Here, the magnitude of destructive cyclone impacts on SIC has approximately doubled over the last four decades. The SIC-increasing effects following the cyclone passage have particularly weakened in the Barents Sea in autumn. As a consequence, previously existing overall SIC-increasing cyclone impacts in this region in autumn have recently disappeared. Generally, results from this thesis show that changes in the state of the sea-ice cover (decrease in mean sea-ice concentration and thickness) and near-surface air temperature are most important for changed cyclone impacts on SIC, while changes in cyclone properties (i.e. intensity) do not play a significant role.
Schulpraktische Phasen stellen eine bedeutende praxisnahe Lerngelegenheit im Lehramtsstudium dar, da sie Raum für umfangreiche Reflexionen der eigenen Lernerfahrung bieten. Das im Studium erworbene theoretisch-formale Wissen steht hierbei dem praktischen Wissen und Können gegenüber. Mit der professionellen Entwicklung im Referendariat, besonders im Kompetenzbereich des Unterrichtens, kann geschlussfolgert werden, dass sich eine Reflexion über eher fachliche Aspekte unter den Studierenden im Referendariat auf eine Reflexion über eher überfachliche und pädagogische Aspekte weitet. Infolge der Analyse von N = 55 schriftlichen Fremdreflexionen von angehenden Physiklehrkräften aus Studium und Referendariat konnte diese Hypothese für den Bereich der Unterrichtsanalyse und -reflexion unterstützt werden. Weiter wurde aus der Videovignette ein Workshopangebot für Lehrkräfte der zweiten und dritten Phase der Lehrkräftebildung entwickelt, erprobt und evaluiert.
We show that, although the equilibrium band dispersion of the Shockley-type surface state of two-dimensional Au(111) quantum films grown on W(110) does not deviate from the expected free-electron-like behavior, its nonequilibrium energy-momentum dispersion probed by time- and angle-resolved photoemission exhibits a remarkable kink above the Fermi level due to a significant enhancement of the effective mass. The kink is pronounced for certain thicknesses of the Au quantum well and vanishes in the very thin limit. We identify the kink as induced by the coupling between the Au(111) surface state and emergent quantum-well states which probe directly the buried gold-tungsten interface. The signatures of the coupling are further revealed by our time-resolved measurements which show that surface state and quantum-well states thermalize together behaving as dynamically locked electron populations. In particular, relaxation of hot carriers following laser excitation is similar for both surface state and quantum-well states and much slower than expected for a bulk metallic system. The influence of quantum confinement on the interplay between elementary scattering processes of the electrons at the surface and ultrafast carrier transport in the direction perpendicular to the surface is shown to be the reason for the slow electron dynamics.
The performance of the recently commissioned spectrometer PEAXIS for resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering (RIXS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and its hosting beamline U41-PEAXIS at the BESSY II synchrotron are characterized. The beamline provides linearly polarized light from 180 eV to 1600 eV allowing for RIXS measurements in the range 200-1200 eV. The monochromator optics can be operated in different configurations to provide either high flux with up to 10(12) photons s(-1) within the focal spot at the sample or high energy resolution with a full width at half maximum of <40 meV at an incident photon energy of similar to 400 eV. The measured total energy resolution of the RIXS spectrometer is in very good agreement with theoretically predicted values obtained by ray-tracing simulations. PEAXIS features a 5 m-long RIXS spectrometer arm that can be continuously rotated about the sample position by 106 degrees within the horizontal photon scattering plane, thus enabling the study of momentum-transfer-dependent excitations. Selected scientific examples are presented to demonstrate the instrument capabilities, including measurements of excitations in single-crystalline NiO and in liquid acetone employing a fluid cell sample manipulator. Planned upgrades of the beamline and the RIXS spectrometer to further increase the energy resolution to similar to 100 meV at 1000 eV incident photon energy are discussed.
Relativistic pair beams produced in the cosmic voids by TeV gamma rays from blazars are expected to produce a detectable GeV-scale cascade emission missing in the observations. The suppression of this secondary cascade implies either the deflection of the pair beam by intergalactic magnetic fields (IGMFs) or an energy loss of the beam due to the electrostatic beam-plasma instability. IGMF of femto-Gauss strength is sufficient to significantly deflect the pair beams reducing the flux of secondary cascade below the observational limits. A similar flux reduction may result in the absence of the IGMF from the beam energy loss by the instability before the inverse Compton cooling. This dissertation consists of two studies about the instability role in the evolution of blazar-induced beams.
Firstly, we investigated the effect of sub-fG level IGMF on the beam energy loss by the instability. Considering IGMF with correlation lengths smaller than a few kpc, we found that such fields increase the transverse momentum of the pair beam particles, dramatically reducing the linear growth rate of the electrostatic instability and hence the energy-loss rate of the pair beam. Our results show that the IGMF eliminates beam plasma instability as an effective energy-loss agent at a field strength three orders of magnitude below that needed to suppress the secondary cascade emission by magnetic deflection. For intermediate-strength IGMF, we do not know a viable process to explain the observed absence of GeV-scale cascade emission and hence can be excluded.
Secondly, we probed how the beam-plasma instability feeds back on the beam, using a realistic two-dimensional beam distribution. We found that the instability broadens the beam opening angles significantly without any significant energy loss, thus confirming a recent feedback study on a simplified one-dimensional beam distribution. However, narrowing diffusion feedback of the beam particles with Lorentz factors less than 1e6 might become relevant even though initially it is negligible. Finally, when considering the continuous creation of TeV pairs, we found that the beam distribution and the wave spectrum reach a new quasi-steady state, in which the scattering of beam particles persists and the beam opening angle may increase by a factor of hundreds. This new intrinsic scattering of the cascade can result in time delays of around ten years, thus potentially mimicking the IGMF deflection. Understanding the implications on the GeV cascade emission requires accounting for inverse Compton cooling and simulating the beam-plasma system at different points in the IGM.
The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of state-of-the-art organic solar cells is still limited by significant open-circuit voltage (V-OC) losses, partly due to the excitonic nature of organic materials and partly due to ill-designed architectures. Thus, quantifying different contributions of the V-OC losses is of importance to enable further improvements in the performance of organic solar cells. Herein, the spectroscopic and semiconductor device physics approaches are combined to identify and quantify losses from surface recombination and bulk recombination. Several state-of-the-art systems that demonstrate different V-OC losses in their performance are presented. By evaluating the quasi-Fermi level splitting (QFLS) and the V-OC as a function of the excitation fluence in nonfullerene-based PM6:Y6, PM6:Y11, and fullerene-based PPDT2FBT:PCBM devices with different architectures, the voltage losses due to different recombination processes occurring in the active layers, the transport layers, and at the interfaces are assessed. It is found that surface recombination at interfaces in the studied solar cells is negligible, and thus, suppressing the non-radiative recombination in the active layers is the key factor to enhance the PCE of these devices. This study provides a universal tool to explain and further improve the performance of recently demonstrated high-open-circuit-voltage organic solar cells.
Actin is one of the most highly conserved proteins in eukaryotes and distinct actin-related proteins with filament-forming properties are even found in prokaryotes. Due to these commonalities, actin-modulating proteins of many species share similar structural properties and proposed functions. The polymerization and depolymerization of actin are critical processes for a cell as they can contribute to shape changes to adapt to its environment and to move and distribute nutrients and cellular components within the cell. However, to what extent functions of actin-binding proteins are conserved between distantly related species, has only been addressed in a few cases. In this work, functions of Coronin-A (CorA) and Actin-interacting protein 1 (Aip1), two proteins involved in actin dynamics, were characterized. In addition, the interchangeability and function of Aip1 were investigated in two phylogenetically distant model organisms. The flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana (encoding two homologs, AIP1-1 and AIP1-2) and in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum (encoding one homolog, DdAip1) were chosen because the functions of their actin cytoskeletons may differ in many aspects. Functional analyses between species were conducted for AIP1 homologs as flowering plants do not harbor a CorA gene.
In the first part of the study, the effect of four different mutation methods on the function of Coronin-A protein and the resulting phenotype in D. discoideum was revealed in two genetic knockouts, one RNAi knockdown and a sudden loss-of-function mutant created by chemical-induced dislocation (CID). The advantages and disadvantages of the different mutation methods on the motility, appearance and development of the amoebae were investigated, and the results showed that not all observed properties were affected with the same intensity. Remarkably, a new combination of Selection-Linked Integration and CID could be established.
In the second and third parts of the thesis, the exchange of Aip1 between plant and amoeba was carried out. For A. thaliana, the two homologs (AIP1-1 and AIP1-2) were analyzed for functionality as well as in D. discoideum. In the Aip1-deficient amoeba, rescue with AIP1-1 was more effective than with AIP1-2. The main results in the plant showed that in the aip1-2 mutant background, reintroduced AIP1-2 displayed the most efficient rescue and A. thaliana AIP1-1 rescued better than DdAip1. The choice of the tagging site was important for the function of Aip1 as steric hindrance is a problem. The DdAip1 was less effective when tagged at the C-terminus, while the plant AIP1s showed mixed results depending on the tag position. In conclusion, the foreign proteins partially rescued phenotypes of mutant plants and mutant amoebae, despite the organisms only being very distantly related in evolutionary terms.
Pre-service physics teachers often do not recognise the relevance for their future career in their university content knowledge courses. A lower perceived relevance can, however, have a negative effect on their motivation and on their academic success. Several intervention studies have been undertaken with the goal to increase this perceived relevance. A previous study shows that conceptual physics problems used in university physics courses are perceived by pre-service physics teachers as more relevant for their future career than regular, quantitative problems. It is however not clear, what the students' meaning of the construct 'relevance' is: what makes a problem more relevant to them than another problem? To answer this question, N = 7 pre-service teachers were interviewed using the repertory grid technique, based on the personal construct theory. Nine physics problems were discussed with regards to their perceived relevance and with regards to problem properties that distinguish these problems from each other. We are able to identify six problem properties that have a positive influence on the perceived relevance. Physics problems that are based on these properties should therefore potentially have a higher perceived relevance, which can have a positive effect on the motivation of the pre-service teachers who solve these problems.
A synthesis route to controlled and dynamic single polymer chain folding is reported. Sequence-controlled macromolecules containing precisely located selenol moieties within a polymer chain are synthesized. Oxidation of selenol functionalities lead to diselenide bridges and induces controlled intramolecular crosslinking to generate single chain collapse. The cyclization process is successfully characterized by SEC as well as by H-1 NMR and 2D HSQC NMR spectroscopies. In order to gain insight on the molecular level to reveal the degree of structural control, the folded polymers are transformed into folded molecular brushes that are known to be visualizable as single molecule structures by AFM. The "grafting onto" approach is performed by using triazolinedione-diene reaction to graft the side chain polymers. A series of folded molecular brushes as well as the corresponding linear controls are synthesized. AFM visualization is proving the cyclization of the folded backbone by showing globular objects, where non-folded brushes show typical worm-like structures. (C) 2019 The Authors. Journal of Polymer Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Bacterial chemotaxis-a fundamental example of directional navigation in the living world-is key to many biological processes, including the spreading of bacterial infections. Many bacterial species were recently reported to exhibit several distinct swimming modes-the flagella may, for example, push the cell body or wrap around it. How do the different run modes shape the chemotaxis strategy of a multimode swimmer? Here, we investigate chemotactic motion of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida as a model organism. By simultaneously tracking the position of the cell body and the configuration of its flagella, we demonstrate that individual run modes show different chemotactic responses in nutrition gradients and, thus, constitute distinct behavioral states. On the basis of an active particle model, we demonstrate that switching between multiple run states that differ in their speed and responsiveness provides the basis for robust and efficient chemotaxis in complex natural habitats.
Photoluminescence spectroscopy is a widely applied characterization technique for semiconductor materials in general and halide perovskite solar cell materials in particular. It can give direct information on the recombination kinetics and processes as well as the internal electrochemical potential of free charge carriers in single semiconductor layers, layer stacks with transport layers, and complete solar cells. The correct evaluation and interpretation of photoluminescence requires the consideration of proper excitation conditions, calibration and application of the appropriate approximations to the rather complex theory, which includes radiative recombination, non-radiative recombination, interface recombination, charge transfer, and photon recycling. In this article, an overview is given of the theory and application to specific halide perovskite compositions, illustrating the variables that should be considered when applying photoluminescence analysis in these materials.
We investigate the initiation and early evolution of 12 solar eruptions, including six active-region hot channel and six quiescent filament eruptions, which were well observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, as well as by the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory for the latter. The sample includes one failed eruption and 11 coronal mass ejections, with velocities ranging from 493 to 2140 km s(-1). A detailed analysis of the eruption kinematics yields the following main results. (1) The early evolution of all events consists of a slow-rise phase followed by a main-acceleration phase, the height-time profiles of which differ markedly and can be best fit, respectively, by a linear and an exponential function. This indicates that different physical processes dominate in these phases, which is at variance with models that involve a single process. (2) The kinematic evolution of the eruptions tends to be synchronized with the flare light curve in both phases. The synchronization is often but not always close. A delayed onset of the impulsive flare phase is found in the majority of the filament eruptions (five out of six). This delay and its trend to be larger for slower eruptions favor ideal MHD instability models. (3) The average decay index at the onset heights of the main acceleration is close to the threshold of the torus instability for both groups of events (although, it is based on a tentative coronal field model for the hot channels), suggesting that this instability initiates and possibly drives the main acceleration.
Fluorination of organic spacer impacts on the structural and optical response of 2D perovskites
(2020)
Low-dimensional hybrid perovskites have triggered significant research interest due to their intrinsically tunable optoelectronic properties and technologically relevant material stability. In particular, the role of the organic spacer on the inherent structural and optical features in two-dimensional (2D) perovskites is paramount for material optimization. To obtain a deeper understanding of the relationship between spacers and the corresponding 2D perovskite film properties, we explore the influence of the partial substitution of hydrogen atoms by fluorine in an alkylammonium organic cation, resulting in (Lc)(2)PbI4 and (Lf)(2)PbI4 2D perovskites, respectively. Consequently, optical analysis reveals a clear 0.2 eV blue-shift in the excitonic position at room temperature. This result can be mainly attributed to a band gap opening, with negligible effects on the exciton binding energy. According to Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations, the band gap increases due to a larger distortion of the structure that decreases the atomic overlap of the wavefunctions and correspondingly bandwidth of the valence and conduction bands. In addition, fluorination impacts the structural rigidity of the 2D perovskite, resulting in a stable structure at room temperature and the absence of phase transitions at a low temperature, in contrast to the widely reported polymorphism in some non-fluorinated materials that exhibit such a phase transition. This indicates that a small perturbation in the material structure can strongly influence the overall structural stability and related phase transition of 2D perovskites, making them more robust to any phase change. This work provides key information on how the fluorine content in organic spacer influence the structural distortion of 2D perovskites and their optical properties which possess remarkable importance for future optoelectronic applications, for instance in the field of light-emitting devices or sensors.
Organic photovoltaics based on non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) show record efficiency of 16 to 17% and increased photovoltage owing to the low driving force for interfacial charge-transfer. However, the low driving force potentially slows down charge generation, leading to a tradeoff between voltage and current. Here, we disentangle the intrinsic charge-transfer rates from morphology-dependent exciton diffusion for a series of polymer:NFA systems. Moreover, we establish the influence of the interfacial energetics on the electron and hole transfer rates separately. We demonstrate that charge-transfer timescales remain at a few hundred femtoseconds even at near-zero driving force, which is consistent with the rates predicted by Marcus theory in the normal region, at moderate electronic coupling and at low re-organization energy. Thus, in the design of highly efficient devices, the energy offset at the donor:acceptor interface can be minimized without jeopardizing the charge-transfer rate and without concerns about a current-voltage tradeoff.
According to established understanding, deep-water formation in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean keeps the deep ocean cold, counter-acting the downward mixing of heat from the warmer surface waters in the bulk of the world ocean. Therefore, periods of strong Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) are expected to coincide with cooling of the deep ocean and warming of the surface waters. It has recently been proposed that this relation may have reversed due to global warming, and that during the past decades a strong AMOC coincides with warming of the deep ocean and relative cooling of the surface, by transporting increasingly warmer waters downward. Here we present multiple lines of evidence, including a statistical evaluation of the observed global mean temperature, ocean heat content, and different AMOC proxies, that lead to the opposite conclusion: even during the current ongoing global temperature rise a strong AMOC warms the surface. The observed weakening of the AMOC has therefore delayed global surface warming rather than enhancing it.
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The overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean has weakened in response to global warming, as predicted by climate models. Since it plays an important role in transporting heat, nutrients and carbon, a slowdown will affect global climate processes and the global mean temperature. Scientists have questioned whether this slowdown has worked to cool or warm global surface temperatures. This study analyses the overturning strength and global mean temperature evolution of the past decades and shows that a slowdown acts to reduce the global mean temperature. This is because a slower overturning means less water sinks into the deep ocean in the subpolar North Atlantic. As the surface waters are cold there, the sinking normally cools the deep ocean and thereby indirectly warms the surface, thus less sinking implies less surface warming and has a cooling effect. For the foreseeable future, this means that the slowing of the overturning will likely continue to slightly reduce the effect of the general warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
Perovskite photovoltaic (PV) cells have demonstrated power conversion efficiencies (PCE) that are close to those of monocrystalline silicon cells; however, in contrast to silicon PV, perovskites are not limited by Auger recombination under 1-sun illumination. Nevertheless, compared to GaAs and monocrystalline silicon PV, perovskite cells have significantly lower fill factors due to a combination of resistive and non-radiative recombination losses. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the underlying loss mechanisms and in particular the ideality factor of the cell. By measuring the intensity dependence of the external open-circuit voltage and the internal quasi-Fermi level splitting (QFLS), the transport resistance-free efficiency of the complete cell as well as the efficiency potential of any neat perovskite film with or without attached transport layers are quantified. Moreover, intensity-dependent QFLS measurements on different perovskite compositions allows for disentangling of the impact of the interfaces and the perovskite surface on the non-radiative fill factor and open-circuit voltage loss. It is found that potassium-passivated triple cation perovskite films stand out by their exceptionally high implied PCEs > 28%, which could be achieved with ideal transport layers. Finally, strategies are presented to reduce both the ideality factor and transport losses to push the efficiency to the thermodynamic limit.
In classical thermodynamic processes the unavoidable presence of irreversibility, quantified by the entropy production, carries two energetic footprints: the reduction of extractable work from the optimal, reversible case, and the generation of a surplus of heat that is irreversibly dissipated to the environment. Recently it has been shown that in the quantum regime an additional quantum irreversibility occurs that is linked to decoherence into the energy basis. Here we employ quantum trajectories to construct distributions for classical heat and quantum heat exchanges, and show that the heat footprint of quantum irreversibility differs markedly from the classical case. We also quantify how quantum irreversibility reduces the amount of work that can be extracted from a state with coherences. Our results show that decoherence leads to both entropic and energetic footprints which both play an important role in the optimization of controlled quantum operations at low temperature.
In classical thermodynamics irreversibility occurs whenever a non-thermal system is brought into contact with a thermal environment. Using quantum trajectories the authors here establish two energetic footprints of quantum irreversible processes, and find that while quantum irreversibility leads to the occurrence of a quantum heat and a reduction of work production, the two are not linked in the same manner as the classical laws of thermodynamics would dictate.
Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey
(2020)
Sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions. To elicit projections from members of the scientific community regarding future global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise, we repeated a survey originally conducted five years ago. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 106 experts projected a likely (central 66% probability) GMSL rise of 0.30-0.65 m by 2100, and 0.54-2.15 m by 2300, relative to 1986-2005. Under RCP 8.5, the same experts projected a likely GMSL rise of 0.63-1.32 m by 2100, and 1.67-5.61 m by 2300. Expert projections for 2100 are similar to those from the original survey, although the projection for 2300 has extended tails and is higher than the original survey. Experts give a likelihood of 42% (original survey) and 45% (current survey) that under the high-emissions scenario GMSL rise will exceed the upper bound (0.98 m) of the likely range estimated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is considered to have an exceedance likelihood of 17%. Responses to open-ended questions suggest that the increases in upper-end estimates and uncertainties arose from recent influential studies about the impact of marine ice cliff instability on the meltwater contribution to GMSL rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The increasing number of known exoplanets raises questions about their demographics and the mechanisms that shape planets into how we observe them today. Young planets in close-in orbits are exposed to harsh environments due to the host star being magnetically highly active, which results in high X-ray and extreme UV fluxes impinging on the planet. Prolonged exposure to this intense photoionizing radiation can cause planetary atmospheres to heat up, expand and escape into space via a hydrodynamic escape process known as photoevaporation. For super-Earth and sub-Neptune-type planets, this can even lead to the complete erosion of their primordial gaseous atmospheres. A factor of interest for this particular mass-loss process is the activity evolution of the host star. Stellar rotation, which drives the dynamo and with it the magnetic activity of a star, changes significantly over the stellar lifetime. This strongly affects the amount of high-energy radiation received by a planet as stars age. At a young age, planets still host warm and extended envelopes, making them particularly susceptible to atmospheric evaporation. Especially in the first gigayear, when X-ray and UV levels can be 100 - 10,000 times higher than for the present-day sun, the characteristics of the host star and the detailed evolution of its high-energy emission are of importance.
In this thesis, I study the impact of stellar activity evolution on the high-energy-induced atmospheric mass loss of young exoplanets. The PLATYPOS code was developed as part of this thesis to calculate photoevaporative mass-loss rates over time. The code, which couples parameterized planetary mass-radius relations with an analytical hydrodynamic escape model, was used, together with Chandra and eROSITA X-ray observations, to investigate the future mass loss of the two young multiplanet systems V1298 Tau and K2-198. Further, in a numerical ensemble study, the effect of a realistic spread of activity tracks on the small-planet radius gap was investigated for the first time. The works in this thesis show that for individual systems, in particular if planetary masses are unconstrained, the difference between a young host star following a low-activity track vs. a high-activity one can have major implications: the exact shape of the activity evolution can determine whether a planet can hold on to some of its atmosphere, or completely loses its envelope, leaving only the bare rocky core behind. For an ensemble of simulated planets, an observationally-motivated distribution of activity tracks does not substantially change the final radius distribution at ages of several gigayears. My simulations indicate that the overall shape and slope of the resulting small-planet radius gap is not significantly affected by the spread in stellar activity tracks. However, it can account for a certain scattering or fuzziness observed in and around the radius gap of the observed exoplanet population.
The icosahedral non-hydrostatic large eddy model (ICON-LEM) was applied around the drift track of the Multidisciplinary Observatory Study of the Arctic (MOSAiC) in 2019 and 2020. The model was set up with horizontal grid-scales between 100m and 800m on areas with radii of 17.5km and 140 km. At its lateral boundaries, the model was driven by analysis data from the German Weather Service (DWD), downscaled by ICON in limited area mode (ICON-LAM) with horizontal grid-scale of 3 km.
The aim of this thesis was the investigation of the atmospheric boundary layer near the surface in the central Arctic during polar winter with a high-resolution mesoscale model. The default settings in ICON-LEM prevent the model from representing the exchange processes in the Arctic boundary layer in accordance to the MOSAiC observations. The implemented sea-ice scheme in ICON does not include a snow layer on sea-ice, which causes a too slow response of the sea-ice surface temperature to atmospheric changes. To allow the sea-ice surface to respond faster to changes in the atmosphere, the implemented sea-ice parameterization in ICON was extended with an adapted heat capacity term.
The adapted sea-ice parameterization resulted in better agreement with the MOSAiC observations. However, the sea-ice surface temperature in the model is generally lower than observed due to biases in the downwelling long-wave radiation and the lack of complex surface structures, like leads. The large eddy resolving turbulence closure yielded a better representation of the lower boundary layer under strongly stable stratification than the non-eddy-resolving turbulence closure. Furthermore, the integration of leads into the sea-ice surface reduced the overestimation of the sensible heat flux for different weather conditions.
The results of this work help to better understand boundary layer processes in the central Arctic during the polar night. High-resolving mesoscale simulations are able to represent temporally and spatially small interactions and help to further develop parameterizations also for the application in regional and global models.
Organic-inorganic hybrids based on P3HT and mesoporous silicon for thermoelectric applications
(2024)
This thesis presents a comprehensive study on synthesis, structure and thermoelectric transport properties of organic-inorganic hybrids based on P3HT and porous silicon. The effect of embedding polymer in silicon pores on the electrical and thermal transport is studied. Morphological studies confirm successful polymer infiltration and diffusion doping with roughly 50% of the pore space occupied by conjugated polymer. Synchrotron diffraction experiments reveal no specific ordering of the polymer inside the pores. P3HT-pSi hybrids show improved electrical transport by five orders of magnitude compared to porous silicon and power factor values comparable or exceeding other P3HT-inorganic hybrids. The analysis suggests different transport mechanisms in both materials. In pSi, the transport mechanism relates to a Meyer-Neldel compansation rule. The analysis of hybrids' data using the power law in Kang-Snyder model suggests that a doped polymer mainly provides charge carriers to the pSi matrix, similar to the behavior of a doped semiconductor. Heavily suppressed thermal transport in porous silicon is treated with a modified Landauer/Lundstrom model and effective medium theories, which reveal that pSi agrees well with the Kirkpatrick model with a 68% percolation threshold. Thermal conductivities of hybrids show an increase compared to the empty pSi but the overall thermoelectric figure of merit ZT of P3HT-pSi hybrid exceeds both pSi and P3HT as well as bulk Si.
Additive manufacturing (AM) processes enable the production of metal structures with exceptional design freedom, of which laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB) is one of the most common. In this process, a laser melts a bed of loose feedstock powder particles layer-by-layer to build a structure with the desired geometry. During fabrication, the repeated melting and rapid, directional solidification create large temperature gradients that generate large thermal stress. This thermal stress can itself lead to cracking or delamination during fabrication. More often, large residual stresses remain in the final part as a footprint of the thermal stress. This residual stress can cause premature distortion or even failure of the part in service. Hence, knowledge of the residual stress field is critical for both process optimization and structural integrity.
Diffraction-based techniques allow the non-destructive characterization of the residual stress fields. However, such methods require a good knowledge of the material of interest, as certain assumptions must be made to accurately determine residual stress. First, the measured lattice plane spacings must be converted to lattice strains with the knowledge of a strain-free material state. Second, the measured lattice strains must be related to the macroscopic stress using Hooke's law, which requires knowledge of the stiffness of the material. Since most crystal structures exhibit anisotropic material behavior, the elastic behavior is specific to each lattice plane of the single crystal. Thus, the use of individual lattice planes in monochromatic diffraction residual stress analysis requires knowledge of the lattice plane-specific elastic properties. In addition, knowledge of the microstructure of the material is required for a reliable assessment of residual stress.
This work presents a toolbox for reliable diffraction-based residual stress analysis. This is presented for a nickel-based superalloy produced by PBF-LB. First, this work reviews the existing literature in the field of residual stress analysis of laser-based AM using diffraction-based techniques. Second, the elastic and plastic anisotropy of the nickel-based superalloy Inconel 718 produced by PBF-LB is studied using in situ energy dispersive synchrotron X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques. These experiments are complemented by ex situ material characterization techniques. These methods establish the relationship between the microstructure and texture of the material and its elastic and plastic anisotropy. Finally, surface, sub-surface, and bulk residual stress are determined using a texture-based approach. Uncertainties of different methods for obtaining stress-free reference values are discussed.
The tensile behavior in the as-built condition is shown to be controlled by texture and cellular sub-grain structure, while in the heat-treated condition the precipitation of strengthening phases and grain morphology dictate the behavior. In fact, the results of this thesis show that the diffraction elastic constants depend on the underlying microstructure, including texture and grain morphology. For columnar microstructures in both as-built and heat-treated conditions, the diffraction elastic constants are best described by the Reuss iso-stress model. Furthermore, the low accumulation of intergranular strains during deformation demonstrates the robustness of using the 311 reflection for the diffraction-based residual stress analysis with columnar textured microstructures. The differences between texture-based and quasi-isotropic approaches for the residual stress analysis are shown to be insignificant in the observed case. However, the analysis of the sub-surface residual stress distributions show, that different scanning strategies result in a change in the orientation of the residual stress tensor. Furthermore, the location of the critical sub-surface tensile residual stress is related to the surface roughness and the microstructure. Finally, recommendations are given for the diffraction-based determination and evaluation of residual stress in textured additively manufactured alloys.
The origin and structure of magnetic fields in the Galaxy are largely unknown. What is known is that they are essential for several astrophysical processes, in particular the propagation of cosmic rays. Our ability to describe the propagation of cosmic rays through the Galaxy is severely limited by the lack of observational data needed to probe the structure of the Galactic magnetic field on many different length scales. This is particularly true for modelling the propagation of cosmic rays into the Galactic halo, where our knowledge of the magnetic field is particularly poor.
In the last decade, observations of the Galactic halo in different frequency regimes have revealed the existence of out-of-plane bubble emission in the Galactic halo. In gamma rays these bubbles have been termed Fermi bubbles with a radial extent of ≈ 3 kpc and an azimuthal height of ≈ 6 kpc. The radio counterparts of the Fermi bubbles were seen by both the S-PASS telescopes and the Planck satellite, and showed a clear spatial overlap. The X-ray counterparts of the Fermi bubbles were named eROSITA bubbles after the eROSITA satellite, with a radial width of ≈ 7 kpc and an azimuthal height of ≈ 14 kpc. Taken together, these observations suggest the presence of large extended Galactic Halo Bubbles (GHB) and have stimulated interest in exploring the less explored Galactic halo.
In this thesis, a new toy model (GHB model) for the magnetic field and non-thermal electron distribution in the Galactic halo has been proposed. The new toy model has been used to produce polarised synchrotron emission sky maps. Chi-square analysis was used to compare the synthetic skymaps with the Planck 30 GHz polarised skymaps. The obtained constraints on the strength and azimuthal height were found to be in agreement with the S-PASS radio observations.
The upper, lower and best-fit values obtained from the above chi-squared analysis were used to generate three separate toy models. These three models were used to propagate ultra-high energy cosmic rays. This study was carried out for two potential sources, Centaurus A and NGC 253, to produce magnification maps and arrival direction skymaps. The simulated arrival direction skymaps were found to be consistent with the hotspots of Centaurus A and NGC 253 as seen in the observed arrival direction skymaps provided by the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO).
The turbulent magnetic field component of the GHB model was also used to investigate the extragalactic dipole suppression seen by PAO. UHECRs with an extragalactic dipole were forward-tracked through the turbulent GHB model at different field strengths. The suppression in the dipole due to the varying diffusion coefficient from the simulations was noted. The results could also be compared with an analytical analogy of electrostatics. The simulations of the extragalactic dipole suppression were in agreement with similar studies carried out for galactic cosmic rays.
Organic solar cells (OSCs) represent a new generation of solar cells with a range of captivating attributes including low-cost, light-weight, aesthetically pleasing appearance, and flexibility. Different from traditional silicon solar cells, the photon-electron conversion in OSCs is usually accomplished in an active layer formed by blending two kinds of organic molecules (donor and acceptor) with different energy levels together.
The first part of this thesis focuses on a better understanding of the role of the energetic offset and each recombination channel on the performance of these low-offset OSCs. By combining advanced experimental techniques with optical and electrical simulation, the energetic offsets between CT and excitons, several important insights were achieved: 1. The short circuit current density and fill-factor of low-offset systems are largely determined by field-dependent charge generation in such low-offset OSCs. Interestingly, it is strongly evident that such field-dependent charge generation originates from a field-dependent exciton dissociation yield. 2. The reduced energetic offset was found to be accompanied by strongly enhanced bimolecular recombination coefficient, which cannot be explained solely by exciton repopulation from CT states. This implies the existence of another dark decay channel apart from CT.
The second focus of the thesis was on the technical perspective. In this thesis, the influence of optical artifacts in differential absorption spectroscopy upon the change of sample configuration and active layer thickness was studied. It is exemplified and discussed thoroughly and systematically in terms of optical simulations and experiments, how optical artifacts originated from non-uniform carrier profile and interference can manipulate not only the measured spectra, but also the decay dynamics in various measurement conditions. In the end of this study, a generalized methodology based on an inverse optical transfer matrix formalism was provided to correct the spectra and decay dynamics manipulated by optical artifacts.
Overall, this thesis paves the way for a deeper understanding of the keys toward higher PCEs in low-offset OSC devices, from the perspectives of both device physics and characterization techniques.
Properties of Arctic aerosol in the transition between Arctic haze to summer season derived by lidar
(2023)
During the Arctic haze period, the Arctic troposphere consists of larger, yet fewer, aerosol particles than during the summer (Tunved et al., 2013; Quinn et al., 2007). Interannual variability (Graßl and Ritter, 2019; Rinke et al., 2004), as well as unknown origins (Stock et al., 2014) and properties of aerosol complicate modeling these annual aerosol cycles. This thesis investigates the modification of the microphysical properties of Arctic aerosols in the transition from Arctic haze to the summer season. Therefore, lidar measurements of Ny-Ålesund from April 2021 to the end of July 2021 are evaluated based on the aerosols’ optical properties. An overview of those properties will be provided. Furthermore, parallel radiosonde data is considered for indication of hygroscopic growth.
The annual aerosol cycle in 2021 differs from expectations based on previous studies from Tunved et al. (2013) and Quinn et al. (2007). Developments of backscatter, extinction, aerosol depolarisation, lidar ratio and color ratio show a return of the Arctic haze in May. The haze had already reduced in April, but regrew afterwards.
The average Arctic aerosol displays hygroscopic behaviour, meaning growth due to water uptake. To determine such a behaviour is generally laborious because various meteorological circumstances need to be considered. Two case studies provide further information on these possible events. In particular, a day with a rare ice cloud and with highly variable water cloud layers is observed.
Supernova remnants are considered to be the primary sources of galactic cosmic rays. These cosmic rays are assumed to be accelerated by the diffusive shock acceleration mechanism, specifically at shocks in the remnants. Particularly in the core-collapse scenario, these supernova remnant shocks expand inside the wind-blown bubbles structured by massive progenitors during their lifetime. Therefore, the complex environment of wind bubbles can influence the particle acceleration and radiation from the remnants. Further, the evolution of massive stars depends on their Zero Age Main Sequence mass, rotation, and metallicity. Consequently, the structures of the wind bubbles generated during the lifetime of massive stars should be considerably different. Hence, the particle acceleration in the core-collapse supernova remnants should vary, not only from the remnants evolving in the uniform environment but also from one another, depending on their progenitor stars.
A core-collapse supernova remnant with a very massive 60 𝑀 ⊙ progenitor star has been considered to study the particle acceleration at the shock considering Bohm-like diffusion. This dissertation demonstrates the modification in particle acceleration and radiation while the remnant propagates through different regions of the wind bubble by impacts from the profiles of gas density, the temperature of the bubble and the magnetic field structure. Subsequently, in this thesis, I discuss the impacts of the non-identical ambient environment of core-collapse supernova remnants on particle spectra and the non-thermal emissions, considering 20 𝑀 ⊙ and 60 𝑀⊙ massive progenitors having different evolutionary tracks. Additionally, I also analyse the effect of cosmic ray streaming instabilities on particle spectra.
To model the particle acceleration in the remnants, I have performed simulations in one-dimensional spherical symmetry using RATPaC code. The transport equation for cosmic rays and magnetic turbulence in test-particle approximation, along with the induction equation for the evolution of the large-scale magnetic field, have been solved simultaneously with the hydrodynamic equations for the expansion of remnants inside the pre-supernova circumstellar medium.
The results from simulations describe that the spectra of accelerated particles in supernova remnants are regulated by density fluctuations, temperature variations, the large-scale magnetic field configuration and scattering turbulence. Although the diffusive shock acceleration mechanism at supernova remnant shock predicts the spectral index of 2 for the accelerated non-thermal particles, I have obtained the particle spectra that deviate from this prediction, in the core-collapse scenario. I have found that the particle spectral index reaches 2.5 for the supernova remnant with 60 𝑀 ⊙ progenitor when the remnant resides inside the shocked wind region of the wind bubble, and this softness persists at later evolutionary stages even with Bohm-like diffusion for accelerated particles. However, the supernova remnant with 20 𝑀 ⊙ progenitor does not demonstrate persistent softness in particle spectra from the influence of the hydrodynamics of the corresponding wind bubble. At later stages of evolution, the particle spectra illustrate softness at higher energies for both remnants as the consequence of the escape of high-energy particles from the remnants while considering the cosmic ray streaming instabilities. Finally, I have probed the emission morphology of remnants that varies depending on the progenitors, particularly in earlier evolutionary stages. This dissertation provides insight into different core-collapse remnants expanding inside wind bubbles, for instance, the calculated gamma-ray spectral index from the supernova remnant with 60 𝑀 ⊙ progenitor at later evolutionary stages is consistent with that of the observed supernova remnants expanding in dense molecular clouds.
Reflexion – unhinterfragt eines der wichtigsten Worte im Kontext der Lehrkräftebildung. Fest verankert in den bundesdeutschen Bildungsstandards sind in Forschung und Lehre die Suche nach Evidenz und die Unterstützung (angehender) Lehrkräfte ständiger Antrieb unzähliger Akteur:innen aller Phasen der Lehrkräftebildung. Wenngleich begriff liche Unklarheiten die Kommunikation von Forschungsergebnissen nicht immer intuitiv und die Unterstützung in der Lehre nicht immer praktikabel werden lassen, besteht Einigkeit darüber, dass ein Diskurs zur reflexiven Professionalisierung von Lehrkräften geführt werden muss. Aus diesem Grund veranstalteten die beiden QLB-Projekte PSI-Potsdam der Universität Potsdam und K2teach der Freien Universität Berlin vom 5. bis 7. Oktober 2022 die Onlinetagung „Reflexion in der Lehrkräftebildung. Empirisch – Phasenübergreifend – Interdisziplinär“. Ausgehend von den verschiedensten Fachdisziplinen diskutierten Akteur:innen aller Phasen der Lehrkräftebildung unterschiedlicher Standorte Ergebnisse empirischer Studien und Erfahrungen aus der Arbeit mit (angehenden) Lehrkräften. Beiträge der Tagung sind in diesem Buch festgehalten und sind als Momentaufnahme eines sich ständig entwickelnden Themenfelds zu verstehen. Forschende und Lehrende haben mit dieser Momentaufnahme die Möglichkeit, Eindrücke für die eigene Arbeit aufzunehmen und weiterzuentwickeln.
Stars under influence: evidence of tidal interactions between stars and substellar companions
(2023)
Tidal interactions occur between gravitationally bound astrophysical bodies. If their spatial separation is sufficiently small, the bodies can induce tides on each other, leading to angular momentum transfer and altering of evolutionary path the bodies would have followed if they were single objects. The tidal processes are well established in the Solar planet-moon systems and close stellar binary systems. However, how do stars behave if they are orbited by a substellar companion (e.g. a planet or a brown dwarf) on a tight orbit?
Typically, a substellar companion inside the corotation radius of a star will migrate toward the star as it loses orbital angular momentum. On the other hand, the star will gain angular momentum which has the potential to increase its rotation rate. The effect should be more pronounced if the substellar companion is more massive. As the stellar rotation rate and the magnetic activity level are coupled, the star should appear more magnetically active under the tidal influence of the orbiting substellar companion. However, the difficulty in proving that a star has a higher magnetic activity level due to tidal interactions lies in the fact that (I) substellar companions around active stars are easier to detect if they are more massive, leading to a bias toward massive companions around active stars and mimicking the tidal interaction effect, and that (II) the age of a main-sequence star cannot be easily determined, leaving the possibility that a star is more active due to its young age.
In our work, we overcome these issues by employing wide stellar binary systems where one star hosts a substellar companion, and where the other star provides the magnetic activity baseline for the host star, assuming they have coevolved, and thereby provides the host's activity level if tidal interactions have no effect on it. Firstly, we find that extrasolar planets can noticeably increase the host star's X-ray luminosity and that the effect is more pronounced if the exoplanet is at least Jupiter-like in mass and close to the star. Further, we find that a brown dwarf will have an even stronger effect, as expected, and that the X-ray surface flux difference between the host star and the wide stellar companion is a significant outlier when compared to a large sample of similar wide binary systems without any known substellar companions. This result proves that substellar hosting wide binary systems can be good tools to reveal the tidal effect on host stars, and also show that the typical stellar age indicators as activity or rotation cannot be used for these stars. Finally, knowing that the activity difference is a good tracer of the substellar companion's tidal impact, we develop an analytical method to calculate the modified tidal quality factor Q' of individual host stars, which defines the tidal dissipation efficiency in the convective envelope of a given main-sequence star.
Reflexion ist eine Schlüsselkategorie für die professionelle Entwicklung von Lehrkräften, welche als Ausbildungsziel in den Bildungsstandards für die Lehrkräftebildung verankert ist. Eine Verstetigung universitär geprägter Forschung und Modellierung in der praxisnahen Anwendung im schulischen Kontext bietet Potentiale nachhaltiger Professionalisierung. Die Stärkung reflexionsbezogener Kompetenzen durch Empirie und Anwendung scheint eine phasenübergreifende Herausforderung der Lehrkräftebildung zu sein, die es zu bewältigen gilt. Ziele des Tagungsbandes Reflexion in der Lehrkräftebildung sind eine theoretische Schärfung des Konzeptes „Reflexive Professionalisierung“ und der Austausch über Fragen der Einbettung wirksamer reflexionsbezogener Lerngelegenheiten in die Lehrkräftebildung. Forschende und Lehrende der‚ drei Phasen (Studium, Referendariat sowie Fort- und Weiterbildung) der Lehrkräftebildung stellen Lehrkonzepte und Forschungsprojekte zum Thema Reflexion in der Lehrkräftebildung vor und diskutieren diese. Gemeinsam mit Teilnehmenden aller Phasen und von verschiedenen Standorten der Lehrkräftebildung werden zukünftige Herausforderungen identifiziert und Lösungsansätze herausgearbeitet.
Für die Entwicklung professioneller Handlungskompetenzen angehender Lehrkräfte stellt die Unterrichtsreflexion ein wichtiges Instrument dar, um Theoriewissen und Praxiserfahrungen in Beziehung zu setzen. Die Auswertung von Unterrichtsreflexionen und eine entsprechende Rückmeldung stellt Forschende und Dozierende allerdings vor praktische wie theoretische Herausforderungen. Im Kontext der Forschung zu Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) entwickelte Methoden bieten hier neue Potenziale. Der Beitrag stellt überblicksartig zwei Teilstudien vor, die mit Hilfe von KI-Methoden wie dem maschinellen Lernen untersuchen, inwieweit eine Auswertung von Unterrichtsreflexionen angehender Physiklehrkräfte auf Basis eines theoretisch abgeleiteten Reflexionsmodells und die automatisierte Rückmeldung hierzu möglich sind. Dabei wurden unterschiedliche Ansätze des maschinellen Lernens verwendet, um modellbasierte Klassifikation und Exploration von Themen in Unterrichtsreflexionen umzusetzen. Die Genauigkeit der Ergebnisse wurde vor allem durch sog. Große Sprachmodelle gesteigert, die auch den Transfer auf andere Standorte und Fächer ermöglichen. Für die fachdidaktische Forschung bedeuten sie jedoch wiederum neue Herausforderungen, wie etwa systematische Verzerrungen und Intransparenz von Entscheidungen. Dennoch empfehlen wir, die Potenziale der KI-basierten Methoden gründlicher zu erforschen und konsequent in der Praxis (etwa in Form von Webanwendungen) zu implementieren.
Late-type stars are by far the most frequent stars in the universe and of fundamental interest to various fields of astronomy – most notably to Galactic archaeology and exoplanet research. However, such stars barely change during their main sequence lifetime; their temperature, luminosity, or chemical composition evolve only very slowly over the course of billions of years. As such, it is difficult to obtain the age of such a star, especially when it is isolated and no other indications (like cluster association) can be used. Gyrochronology offers a way to overcome this problem.
Stars, just like all other objects in the universe, rotate and the rate at which stars rotate impacts many aspects of their appearance and evolution. Gyrochronology leverages the observed rotation rate of a late-type main sequence star and its systematic evolution to estimate their ages. Unlike the above-mentioned parameters, the rotation rate of a main sequence star changes drastically throughout its main sequence lifetime; stars spin down. The youngest stars rotate every few hours, whereas much older stars rotate only about once a month, or – in the case of some late M-stars – once in a hundred days. Given that this spindown is systematic (with an additional mass dependence), it gave rise to the idea of using the observed rotation rate of a star (and its mass or a suitable proxy thereof) to estimate a star’s age. This has been explored widely in young stellar open clusters but remains essentially unconstrained for stars older than the sun, and K and M stars older than 1 Gyr.
This thesis focuses on the continued exploration of the spindown behavior to assess, whether gyrochronology remains applicable for stars of old ages, whether it is universal for late-type main sequence stars (including field stars), and to provide calibration mileposts for spindown models. To accomplish this, I have analyzed data from Kepler space telescope for the open clusters Ruprecht 147 (2.7 Gyr old) and M 67 (4 Gyr). Time series photometry data (light curves)
were obtained for both clusters during Kepler’s K2 mission. However, due to technical limitations and telescope malfunctions, extracting usable data from the K2 mission to identify (especially long) rotation periods requires extensive data preparation.
For Ruprecht 147, I have compiled a list of about 300 cluster members from the literature and adopted preprocessed light curves from the Kepler archive where available. They have been cleaned of the gravest of data artifacts but still contained systematics. After correcting them for said artifacts, I was able to identify rotation periods in 31 of them.
For M 67 more effort was taken. My work on Ruprecht 147 has shown the limitations imposed by the preselection of Kepler targets. Therefore, I adopted the time series full frame image directly and performed photometry on a much higher spatial resolution to be able to obtain data for as many stars as possible. This also means that I had to deal with the ubiquitous artifacts in Kepler data. For that, I devised a method that correlates the artificial flux variations with the ongoing drift of the telescope pointing in order to remove it. This process was a large success and I was able to create light curves whose quality match and even exceede those that were created by the Kepler mission – all while operating on higher spatial resolution and processing fainter stars. Ultimately, I was able to identify signs of periodic variability in the (created) light curves for 31 and 47 stars in Ruprecht 147 and M 67, respectively. My data connect well to bluer stars of cluster of the same age and extend for the first time to stars redder than early-K and older than 1 Gyr. The cluster data show a clear flattening in the distribution of Ruprecht 147 and even a downturn for M 67, resulting in a somewhat sinusoidal shape. With that, I have shown that the systematic spindown of stars continues at least until 4 Gyr and stars continue to live on a single surface in age-rotation periods-mass space which allows gyrochronology to be used at least up to that age. However, the shape of the spindown – as exemplified by the newly discovered sinusoidal shape of the cluster sequence – deviates strongly from the expectations.
I then compiled an extensive sample of rotation data in open clusters – very much including my own work – and used the resulting cluster skeleton (with each cluster forming a rip in color-rotation period-mass space) to investigate if field stars follow the same spindown as cluster stars. For the field stars, I used wide binaries, which – with their shared origin and coevality – are in a sense the smallest possible open clusters. I devised an empirical method to evaluate the consistency between the rotation rates of the wide binary components and found that the vast majority of them are in fact consistent with what is observed in open clusters. This leads me to conclude that gyrochronology – calibrated on open clusters – can be applied to determine the ages of field stars.
The Lyman-𝛼 (Ly𝛼) line commonly assists in the detection of high-redshift galaxies, the so-called Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs). LAEs are useful tools to study the baryonic matter distribution of the high-redshift universe. Exploring their spatial distribution not only reveals the large-scale structure of the universe at early epochs, but it also provides an insight into the early formation and evolution of the galaxies we observe today. Because dark matter halos (DMHs) serve as sites of galaxy formation, the LAE distribution also traces that of the underlying dark matter. However, the details of this relation and their co-evolution over time remain unclear. Moreover, theoretical studies predict that the spatial distribution of LAEs also impacts their own circumgalactic medium (CGM) by influencing their extended Ly𝛼 gaseous halos (LAHs), whose origin is still under investigation. In this thesis, I make several contributions to improve the knowledge on these fields using samples of LAEs observed with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at redshifts of 3 < 𝑧 < 6.
The near-Earth space environment is a highly complex system comprised of several regions and particle populations hazardous to satellite operations. The trapped particles in the radiation belts and ring current can cause significant damage to satellites during space weather events, due to deep dielectric and surface charging. Closer to Earth is another important region, the ionosphere, which delays the propagation of radio signals and can adversely affect navigation and positioning. In response to fluctuations in solar and geomagnetic activity, both the inner-magnetospheric and ionospheric populations can undergo drastic and sudden changes within minutes to hours, which creates a challenge for predicting their behavior. Given the increasing reliance of our society on satellite technology, improving our understanding and modeling of these populations is a matter of paramount importance.
In recent years, numerous spacecraft have been launched to study the dynamics of particle populations in the near-Earth space, transforming it into a data-rich environment. To extract valuable insights from the abundance of available observations, it is crucial to employ advanced modeling techniques, and machine learning methods are among the most powerful approaches available. This dissertation employs long-term satellite observations to analyze the processes that drive particle dynamics, and builds interdisciplinary links between space physics and machine learning by developing new state-of-the-art models of the inner-magnetospheric and ionospheric particle dynamics.
The first aim of this thesis is to investigate the behavior of electrons in Earth's radiation belts and ring current. Using ~18 years of electron flux observations from the Global Positioning System (GPS), we developed the first machine learning model of hundreds-of-keV electron flux at Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) that is driven solely by solar wind and geomagnetic indices and does not require auxiliary flux measurements as inputs. We then proceeded to analyze the directional distributions of electrons, and for the first time, used Fourier sine series to fit electron pitch angle distributions (PADs) in Earth's inner magnetosphere. We performed a superposed epoch analysis of 129 geomagnetic storms during the Van Allen Probes era and demonstrated that electron PADs have a strong energy-dependent response to geomagnetic activity. Additionally, we showed that the solar wind dynamic pressure could be used as a good predictor of the PAD dynamics. Using the observed dependencies, we created the first PAD model with a continuous dependence on L, magnetic local time (MLT) and activity, and developed two techniques to reconstruct near-equatorial electron flux observations from low-PA data using this model.
The second objective of this thesis is to develop a novel model of the topside ionosphere. To achieve this goal, we collected observations from five of the most widely used ionospheric missions and intercalibrated these data sets. This allowed us to use these data jointly for model development, validation, and comparison with other existing empirical models. We demonstrated, for the first time, that ion density observations by Swarm Langmuir Probes exhibit overestimation (up to ~40-50%) at low and mid-latitudes on the night side, and suggested that the influence of light ions could be a potential cause of this overestimation. To develop the topside model, we used 19 years of radio occultation (RO) electron density profiles, which were fitted with a Chapman function with a linear dependence of scale height on altitude. This approximation yields 4 parameters, namely the peak density and height of the F2-layer and the slope and intercept of the linear scale height trend, which were modeled using feedforward neural networks (NNs). The model was extensively validated against both RO and in-situ observations and was found to outperform the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model by up to an order of magnitude. Our analysis showed that the most substantial deviations of the IRI model from the data occur at altitudes of 100-200 km above the F2-layer peak. The developed NN-based ionospheric model reproduces the effects of various physical mechanisms observed in the topside ionosphere and provides highly accurate electron density predictions.
This dissertation provides an extensive study of geospace dynamics, and the main results of this work contribute to the improvement of models of plasma populations in the near-Earth space environment.
This thesis discusses heat and charge transport phenomena in single-crystalline Silicon penetrated by nanometer-sized pores, known as mesoporous Silicon (pSi). Despite the extensive attention given to it as a thermoelectric material of interest, studies on microscopic thermal and electronic transport beyond its macroscopic characterizations are rarely reported. In contrast, this work reports the interplay of both.
PSi samples synthesized by electrochemical anodization display a temperature dependence of specific heat 𝐶𝑝 that deviates from the characteristic 𝑇^3 behaviour (at 𝑇<50𝐾). A thorough analysis reveals that both 3D and 2D Einstein and Debye modes contribute to this specific heat. Additional 2D Einstein modes (~3 𝑚𝑒𝑉) agree reasonably well with the boson peak of SiO2 in pSi pore walls. 2D Debye modes are proposed to account for surface acoustic modes causing a significant deviation from the well-known 𝑇^3 dependence of 𝐶𝑝 at 𝑇<50𝐾.
A novel theoretical model gives insights into the thermal conductivity of pSi in terms of porosity and phonon scattering on the nanoscale. The thermal conductivity analysis utilizes the peculiarities of the pSi phonon dispersion probed by the inelastic neutron scattering experiments. A phonon mean-free path of around 10 𝑛𝑚 extracted from the presented model is proposed to cause the reduced thermal conductivity of pSi by two orders of magnitude compared to p-doped bulk Silicon. Detailed analysis indicates that compound averaging may cause a further 10-50% reduction. The percolation threshold of 65% for thermal conductivity of pSi samples is subsequently determined by employing theoretical effective medium models.
Temperature-dependent electrical conductivity measurements reveal a thermally activated transport process. A detailed analysis of the activation energy 𝐸𝐴𝜎 in the thermally activated transport exhibits a Meyer Neldel compensation rule between different samples that originates in multi-phonon absorption upon carrier transport. Activation energies 𝐸𝐴𝑆 obtained from temperature-dependent thermopower measurements provide further evidence for multi-phonon assisted hopping between localized states as a dominant charge transport mechanism in pSi, as they systematically differ from the determined 𝐸𝐴𝜎 values.
Reflexion und Reflexivität
(2023)
Reflexion gilt in der Lehrkräftebildung als eine Schlüsselkategorie der professionellen Entwicklung. Entsprechend wird auf vielfältige Weise die Qualität reflexionsbezogener Kompetenzen untersucht. Eine Herausforderung hierbei kann in der Annahme bestehen, von der Analyse schriftlicher Reflexionen unmittelbar auf die Reflexivität einer Person zu schließen, da Reflexion stets kontextspezifisch als Abbild reflexionsbezogener Argumentationsprozesse angesehen werden sollte und reflexionsbezogenen Dispositionen unterliegt. Auch kann die Qualität einer Reflexion auf mehreren Dimensionen bewertet werden, ohne quantifizierbare, absolute Aussagen treffen zu können.
Daher wurden im Rahmen einer Physik-Videovignette N = 134 schriftliche Fremdreflexionen verfasst und kontextspezifische reflexionsbezogene Dispositionen erhoben. Expert*innen erstellten theoriegeleitet Qualitätsbewertungen zur Breite, Tiefe, Kohärenz und Spezifität eines jeden Reflexionstextes. Unter Verwendung computerbasierter Klassifikations- und Analyseverfahren wurden weitere Textmerkmale erhoben. Mittels explorativer Faktorenanalyse konnten die Faktoren Qualität, Quantität und Deskriptivität gefunden werden. Da alle konventionell eingeschätzten Qualitätsbewertungen durch einen Faktor repräsentiert wurden, konnte ein maximales Qualitätskorrelat kalkuliert werden, zu welchem jede schriftliche Fremdreflexion im Rahmen der vorliegenden Vignette eine computerbasiert bestimmbare Distanz aufweist. Diese Distanz zum maximalen Qualitätskorrelat konnte validiert werden und kann die Qualität der schriftlichen Reflexionen unabhängig von menschlichen Ressourcen quantifiziert repräsentieren. Abschließend konnte identifiziert werden, dass ausgewählte Dispositionen in unterschiedlichem Maße mit der Reflexionsqualität zusammenhängen. So konnten beispielsweise bezogen auf das Physik-Fachwissen minimale Zusammenhänge identifiziert werden, wohingegen Werthaltung sowie wahrgenommene Unterrichtsqualität eng mit der Qualität einer schriftlichen Reflexion in Verbindung stehen können.
Es wird geschlussfolgert, dass reflexionsbezogene Dispositionen moderierenden Einfluss auf Reflexionen nehmen können. Es wird empfohlen bei der Erhebung von Reflexion mit dem Ziel der Kompetenzmessung ausgewählte Dispositionen mit zu erheben. Weiter verdeutlicht diese Arbeit die Möglichkeit, aussagekräftige Quantifizierungen auch in der Analyse komplexer Konstrukte vorzunehmen. Durch computerbasierte Qualitätsabschätzungen können objektive und individuelle Analysen und differenzierteres automatisiertes Feedback ermöglicht werden.
Es wird ein Überblick über verschiedene spektroskopische Techniken, mit denen dünne organische Schichten, wie sie in der Fotovoltaik, bei Leuchtdioden oder organischen Halbleitern Anwendung finden, gegeben. Mit einfachen Zusatzgeräten lassen sich Schichtdicke, Schichtaufbau und Zusammensetzung untersuchen. Die Schichtdicke kann monomolekular sein. Unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen sind einzelne Moleküle in einer Schicht charakterisierbar.
Planets outside our solar system, so-called "exoplanets", can be detected with different methods, and currently more than 5000 exoplanets have been confirmed, according to NASA Exoplanet Archive. One major highlight of the studies on exoplanets in the past twenty years is the characterization of their atmospheres usingtransmission spectroscopy as the exoplanet transits. However, this characterization is a challenging process and sometimes there are reported discrepancies in the literature regarding the atmosphere of the same exoplanet. One potential reason for the observed atmospheric inconsistencies is called impact parameter degeneracy, and it is highly driven by the limb darkening effect of the host star. A brief introductionto those topics in presented in chapter 1, while the motivation and objectives of thiswork are described in chapter 2.The first goal is to clarify the origin of the transmission spectrum, which is anindicator of an exoplanet’s atmosphere; whether it is real or influenced by the impactparameter degeneracy. A second goal is to determine whether photometry from space using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), could improve on the major parameters, which are responsible for the aforementioned degeneracy, of known exoplanetary systems. Three individual projects were conducted in order toaddress those goals. The three manuscripts are presented, in short, in the manuscriptoverview in chapter 3.More specifically, in chapter 4, the first manuscript is presented, which is an ex-tended investigation on the impact parameter degeneracy and its application onsynthetic transmission spectra. Evidently, the limb darkening of the host star isan important driver for this effect. It keeps the degeneracy persisting through different groups of exoplanets, based on the uncertainty of their impact parameter and on the type of their host star. The second goal, was addressed in the second and third manuscripts (chapter 5 and chapter 6 respectively). Using observationsfrom the TESS mission, two samples of exoplanets were studied; 10 transiting inflated hot-Jupiters and 43 transiting grazing systems. Potentially, the refinement or confirmation of their major system parameters’ measurements can assist in solving current or future discrepancies regarding their atmospheric characterization.In chapter 7 the conclusions of this work are discussed, while in chapter 8 itis proposed how TESS’s measurements can be able to discern between erroneousinterpretations of transmission spectra, especially on systems where the impact parameter degeneracy is likely not applicable.
Control over spin and electronic structure of MoS₂ monolayer via interactions with substrates
(2023)
The molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) monolayer is a semiconductor with a direct bandgap while it is a robust and affordable material.
It is a candidate for applications in optoelectronics and field-effect transistors.
MoS2 features a strong spin-orbit coupling which makes its spin structure promising for acquiring the Kane-Mele topological concept with corresponding applications in spintronics and valleytronics.
From the optical point of view, the MoS2 monolayer features two valleys in the regions of K and K' points. These valleys are differentiated by opposite spins and a related valley-selective circular dichroism.
In this study we aim to manipulate the MoS2 monolayer spin structure in the vicinity of the K and K' points to explore the possibility of getting control over the optical and electronic properties.
We focus on two different substrates to demonstrate two distinct routes: a gold substrate to introduce a Rashba effect and a graphene/cobalt substrate to introduce a magnetic proximity effect in MoS2.
The Rashba effect is proportional to the out-of-plane projection of the electric field gradient. Such a strong change of the electric field occurs at the surfaces of a high atomic number materials and effectively influence conduction electrons as an in-plane magnetic field. A molybdenum and a sulfur are relatively light atoms, thus, similar to many other 2D materials, intrinsic Rashba effect in MoS2 monolayer is vanishing small. However, proximity of a high atomic number substrate may enhance Rashba effect in a 2D material as it was demonstrated for graphene previously.
Another way to modify the spin structure is to apply an external magnetic field of high magnitude (several Tesla), and cause a Zeeman splitting, the conduction electrons.
However, a similar effect can be reached via magnetic proximity which allows us to reduce external magnetic fields significantly or even to zero. The graphene on cobalt interface is ferromagnetic and stable for MoS2 monolayer synthesis. Cobalt is not the strongest magnet; therefore, stronger magnets may lead to more significant results.
Nowadays most experimental studies on the dichalcogenides (MoS2 included) are performed on encapsulated heterostructures that are produced by mechanical exfoliation.
While mechanical exfoliation (or scotch-tape method) allows to produce a huge variety of structures, the shape and the size of the samples as well as distance between layers in heterostructures are impossible to control reproducibly.
In our study we used molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) methods to synthesise both MoS2/Au(111) and MoS2/graphene/Co systems.
We chose to use MBE, as it is a scalable and reproducible approach, so later industry may adapt it and take over.
We used graphene/cobalt instead of just a cobalt substrate because direct contact of MoS2\ monolayer and a metallic substrate may lead to photoluminescence (PL) quenching in the metallic substrate. Graphene and hexagonal boron nitride monolayer are considered building blocks of a new generation of electronics also commonly used as encapsulating materials for PL studies. Moreover graphene is proved to be a suitable substrate for the MBE growth of transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs).
In chapter 1,
we start with an introduction to TMDCs. Then we focus on MoS2 monolayer state of the art research in the fields of application scenario; synthesis approaches; electronic, spin, and optical properties; and interactions with magnetic fields and magnetic materials.
We briefly touch the basics of magnetism in solids and move on to discuss various magnetic exchange interactions and magnetic proximity effect.
Then we describe MoS2 optical properties in more detail. We start from basic exciton physics and its manifestation in the MoS2 monolayer. We consider optical selection rules in the MoS2 monolayer and such properties as chirality, spin-valley locking, and coexistence of bright and dark excitons.
Chapter 2 contains an overview of the employed surface science methods: angle-integrated, angle-resolved, and spin-resolved photoemission; low energy electron diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy.
In chapter 3, we describe MoS2 monolayer synthesis details for two substrates: gold monocrystal with (111) surface and graphene on cobalt thin film with Co(111) surface orientation.
The synthesis descriptions are followed by a detailed characterisation of the obtained structures: fingerprints of MoS2 monolayer formation; MoS2 monolayer symmetry and its relation to the substrate below; characterisation of MoS2 monolayer coverage, domain distribution, sizes and shapes, and moire structures.
In chapter~4, we start our discussion with MoS2/Au(111) electronic and spin structure. Combining density functional theory computations (DFT) and spin-resolved photoemission studies, we demonstrate that the MoS2 monolayer band structure features an in-plane Rashba spin splitting. This confirms the possibility of MoS2 monolayer spin structure manipulation via a substrate.
Then we investigate the influence of a magnetic proximity in the MoS2/graphene/Co system on the MoS2 monolayer spin structure.
We focus our investigation on MoS2 high symmetry points: G and K.
First, using spin-resolved measurements, we confirm that electronic states are spin-split at the G point via a magnetic proximity effect. Second, combining spin-resolved measurements and DFT computations for MoS2 monolayer in the K point region, we demonstrate the appearance of a small in-plane spin polarisation in the valence band top and predict a full in-plane spin polarisation for the conduction band bottom.
We move forward discussing how these findings are related to the MoS2 monolayer optical properties, in particular the possibility of dark exciton observation. Additionally, we speculate on the control of the MoS2 valley energy via magnetic proximity from cobalt.
As graphene is spatially buffering the MoS2 monolayer from the Co thin film, we speculate on the role of graphene in the magnetic proximity transfer by replacing graphene with vacuum and other 2D materials in our computations.
We finish our discussion by investigating the K-doped MoS2/graphene/Co system and the influence of this doping on the electronic and spin structure as well as on the magnetic proximity effect.
In summary, using a scalable MBE approach we synthesised
MoS2/Au(111) and MoS2/graphene/Co systems. We found a Rashba effect taking place in MoS2/Au(111) which proves that the MoS2 monolayer in-plane spin structure can be modified. In MoS2/graphene/Co the in-plane magnetic proximity effect indeed takes place which rises the possibility of fine tuning the MoS2 optical properties via manipulation of the the substrate magnetisation.
We present an X-ray-optical cross-correlator for the soft (> 150 eV) up to the hard X-ray regime based on a molybdenum-silicon superlattice. The cross-correlation is done by probing intensity and position changes of superlattice Bragg peaks caused by photoexcitation of coherent phonons. This approach is applicable for a wide range of X-ray photon energies as well as for a broad range of excitation wavelengths and requires no external fields or changes of temperature. Moreover, the cross-correlator can be employed on a 10 ps or 100 fs time scale featuring up to 50% total X-ray reflectivity and transient signal changes of more than 20%. (C) 2016 Author(s).
Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5-10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 GeV-10 TeV range and the extension to energies well below 100 GeV and above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of two arrays (one in the north, one in the south) for full sky coverage and will be operated as open observatory. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology. This document reports on the status and presents the major design concepts of CTA.
In recent decades, astronomy has seen a boom in large-scale stellar surveys of the Galaxy. The detailed information obtained about millions of individual stars in the Milky Way is bringing us a step closer to answering one of the most outstanding questions in astrophysics: how do galaxies form and evolve? The Milky Way is the only galaxy where we can dissect many stars into their high-dimensional chemical composition and complete phase space, which analogously as fossil records can unveil the past history of the genesis of the Galaxy. The processes that lead to large structure formation, such as the Milky Way, are critical for constraining cosmological models; we call this line of study Galactic archaeology or near-field cosmology.
At the core of this work, we present a collection of efforts to chemically and dynamically characterise the disks and bulge of our Galaxy. The results we present in this thesis have only been possible thanks to the advent of the Gaia astrometric satellite, which has revolutionised the field of Galactic archaeology by precisely measuring the positions, parallax distances and motions of more than a billion stars. Another, though not less important, breakthrough is the APOGEE survey, which has observed spectra in the near-infrared peering into the dusty regions of the Galaxy, allowing us to determine detailed chemical abundance patterns in hundreds of thousands of stars. To accurately depict the Milky Way structure, we use and develop the Bayesian isochrone fitting tool/code called StarHorse; this software can predict stellar distances, extinctions and ages by combining astrometry, photometry and spectroscopy based on stellar evolutionary models. The StarHorse code is pivotal to calculating distances where Gaia parallaxes alone cannot allow accurate estimates.
We show that by combining Gaia, APOGEE, photometric surveys and using StarHorse, we can produce a chemical cartography of the Milky way disks from their outermost to innermost parts. Such a map is unprecedented in the inner Galaxy. It reveals a continuity of the bimodal chemical pattern previously detected in the solar neighbourhood, indicating two populations with distinct formation histories. Furthermore, the data reveals a chemical gradient within the thin disk where the content of 𝛼-process elements and metals is higher towards the centre. Focusing on a sample in the inner MW we confirm the extension of the chemical duality to the innermost regions of the Galaxy. We find stars with bar shape orbits to show both high- and low-𝛼 abundances, suggesting the bar formed by secular evolution trapping stars that already existed. By analysing the chemical orbital space of the inner Galactic regions, we disentangle the multiple populations that inhabit this complex region. We reveal the presence of the thin disk, thick disk, bar, and a counter-rotating population, which resembles the outcome of a perturbed proto-Galactic disk. Our study also finds that the inner Galaxy holds a high quantity of super metal-rich stars up to three times solar suggesting it is a possible repository of old super-metal-rich stars found in the solar neighbourhood.
We also enter into the complicated task of deriving individual stellar ages. With StarHorse, we calculate the ages of main-sequence turn-off and sub-giant stars for several public spectroscopic surveys. We validate our results by investigating linear relations between chemical abundances and time since the 𝛼 and neutron capture elements are sensitive to age as a reflection of the different enrichment timescales of these elements. For further study of the disks in the solar neighbourhood, we use an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to delineate a multidimensional separation of chrono-chemical stellar groups revealing the chemical thick disk, the thin disk, and young 𝛼-rich stars. The thick disk is shown to have a small age dispersion indicating its fast formation contrary to the thin disk that spans a wide range of ages.
With groundbreaking data, this thesis encloses a detailed chemo-dynamical view of the disk and bulge of our Galaxy. Our findings on the Milky Way can be linked to the evolution of high redshift disk galaxies, helping to solve the conundrum of galaxy formation.
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest freshwater reservoir worldwide. If it were to melt completely, global sea levels would rise by about 58 m. Calculation of projections of the Antarctic contribution to sea level rise under global warming conditions is an ongoing effort which
yields large ranges in predictions. Among the reasons for this are uncertainties related to the physics of ice sheet modeling. These
uncertainties include two processes that could lead to runaway ice retreat: the Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI), which causes rapid grounding line retreat on retrograde bedrock, and the Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI), in which tall ice cliffs become unstable and calve off, exposing even taller ice cliffs.
In my thesis, I investigated both marine instabilities (MISI and MICI) using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM), with a focus on MICI.
Search for light primordial black holes with VERITAS using gamma γ-ray and optical observations
(2023)
The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is an array of four imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). VERITAS is sensitive to very-high-energy gamma-rays in the range of 100 GeV to >30 TeV. Hypothesized primordial black holes (PBHs) are attractive targets for IACTs. If they exist, their potential cosmological impact reaches beyond the candidacy for constituents of dark matter. The sublunar mass window is the largest unconstrained range of PBH masses. This thesis aims to develop novel concepts searching for light PBHs with VERITAS. PBHs below the sublunar window lose mass due to Hawking radiation. They would evaporate at the end of their lifetime, leading to a short burst of gamma-rays. If PBHs formed at about 10^15 g, the evaporation would occur nowadays. Detecting these signals might not only confirm the existence of PBHs but also prove the theory of Hawking radiation. This thesis probes archival VERITAS data recorded between 2012 and 2021 for possible PBH signals. This work presents a new automatic approach to assess the quality of the VERITAS data. The array-trigger rate and far infrared temperature are well suited to identify periods with poor data quality. These are masked by time cuts to obtain a consistent and clean dataset which contains about 4222 hours. The PBH evaporations could occur at any location in the field of view or time within this data. Only a blind search can be performed to identify these short signals. This thesis implements a data-driven deep learning based method to search for short transient signals with VERITAS. It does not depend on the modelling of the effective area and radial acceptance. This work presents the first application of this method to actual observational IACT data. This thesis develops new concepts dealing with the specifics of the data and the transient detection method. These are reflected in the developed data preparation pipeline and search strategies. After correction for trial factors, no candidate PBH evaporation is found in the data. Thus, new constraints of the local rate of PBH evaporations are derived. At the 99% confidence limit it is below <1.07 * 10^5 pc^-3 yr^-1. This constraint with the new, independent analysis approach is in the range of existing limits for the evaporation rate.
This thesis also investigates an alternative novel approach to searching for PBHs with IACTs. Above the sublunar window, the PBH abundance is constrained by optical microlensing studies. The sampling speed, which is of order of minutes to hours for traditional optical telescopes, is a limiting factor in expanding the limits to lower masses. IACTs are also powerful instruments for fast transient optical astronomy with up to O(ns) sampling. This thesis investigates whether IACTs might constrain the sublunar window with optical microlensing observations. This study confirms that, in principle, the fast sampling speed might allow extending microlensing searches into the sublunar mass window. However, the limiting factor for IACTs is the modest sensitivity to detect changes in optical fluxes. This thesis presents the expected rate of detectable events for VERITAS as well as prospects of possible future next-generation IACTs. For VERITAS, the rate of detectable microlensing events in the sublunar range is ~10^-6 per year of observation time. The future prospects for a 100 times more sensitive instrument are at ~0.05 events per year.
The evolution of a galaxy is pivotally governed by its pattern of star formation over a given period of time. The star formation rate at any given time is strongly dependent on the amount of cold gas available in the galaxy. Accretion of pristine gas from the Intergalactic medium (IGM) is thought to be one of the primary sources for star-forming gas. This gas first passes through the virial regions of the galaxy before reaching the Interstellar medium (ISM), the hub of star formation. On the other hand, owing to the evolutionary course of young and massive stars, energetic winds are ejected from the ISM to the virial regions of the galaxy. A bunch of interlinked, complex astrophysical processes, arising from the concurrent presence of both infalling as well as outbound gas, play out over a range of timescales in the halo region or the Circumgalactic medium (CGM) of a galaxy. It would not be incorrect to say that the CGM has a stronghold over the gas reserves of a galaxy and thus, plays a backhand, yet, rather pivotal role in shaping many galactic properties, some of which are also readily observable. Observing the multi-phase CGM (via spectral-line ion measurements), however, remains a non-trivial effort even today. Low particle densities as well as the CGM’s vast spatial extent, coupled with likely deviations from a spherical distribution, marr the possibility of obtaining complete, unbiased, high-quality spectral information tracing the full extent of the gaseous halo. This often incomplete information leads to multiple inferences about the CGM properties that give rise to multiple contradicting models. In this regard, computer simulations offer a neat solution towards testing and, subsequently, falsifying many of these existing CGM models. Thanks to their controlled environments, simulations are able to not only effortlessly transcend several orders of magnitude in time and space, but also get around many of the observational limitations and provide some unique views on many CGM properties. In this thesis, I focus on effectively using different computer simulations to understand the role of CGM in various astrophysical contexts, namely, the effect of Local Group (LG) environment, major merger events and satellite galaxies. In Chapter 2, I discuss the approach used for modeling various phases of the simulated z = 0 LG CGM in Hestia constrained simulations. Each of the three realizations contain a Milky Way (MW)–Andromeda (M31) galaxy pair, along with their corresponding sets of satellite galaxies, all embedded within the larger cosmological context. For characterizing the different temperature–density phases within the CGM, I model five tracer ions with cloudy ionization modeling. The cold and cool–ionized CGM (H i and Si iii respectively) in Hestia is very clumpy and distributed close to the galactic centers, while the warm-hot and hot CGM (O vi, O vii and O viii) is tenuous and volume-filling. On comparing the H i and Si iii column densities for the simulated M31 with observational measurements from Project AMIGA survey and other low-z galaxies, I found that Hestia galaxies produced less gas in the outer CGM, unlike observations. My carefully designed observational bias model subsequently revealed the possibility that some MW gas clouds might be incorrectly associated with the M31 CGM in observations, and hence, may be partly responsible for giving rise to the detected mismatch between simulated data and observations. In Chapter 3, I present results from four zoom–in, major merger, gas–rich simulations and the subsequent role of the gas, originally situated in the CGM, in influencing some of the galactic observables. The progenitor parameters are selected such that the post–merger remnants are MW–mass galaxies. We generally see a very clear gas bridge joining the merging galaxies in case of multiple passage mergers while such a bridge is mostly absent when a direct collision occurs. On the basis of particle–to–galaxy distance computations and tracer particle analysis, I found that about 33–48 percent of the cold gas contributing to the merger–induced star formation in the bridge originated from the CGM regions. In Chapter 4, I used a sample of 234 MW-mass, L* galaxies from the TNG50 cosmological simulations, with an aim of characterizing the impact of their global satellite populations on the extended cold CGM properties of their host L* halos. On the basis of halo mass and number of satellite galaxies (N_sats ), I categorized the sample into low and high mass bins, and subsequently into bottom, inter and top quartiles respectively. After confirming that satellites indeed influence the extended cold halo gas density profiles of the host galaxies, I investigated the effects of different satellite population parameters on the host halo cold CGMs. My analysis showed that there is hardly any cold gas associated with the satellite population of the lowest mass halos. The stellar mass of the most massive satellite (M_*mms ) impacted the cold gas in low mass bin halos the most, while N_sats (followed by M_*mms ) was the most influential factor for the high mass halos. In any case, how easily cold gas was stripped off the most massive satellite did not play much role. The number of massive (Stellar mass, M* > 10^8 M_solar) satellites as well as the M_*mms associated with a galaxy are two of the most crucial parameters determining how much cold gas ultimately finds its way from the satellites to the host halo. Low mass galaxies are found rather lacking on both these fronts unlike their high mass counterparts. This work highlights some aspects of the complex gas physics that constitute the basic essence of a low-z CGM. My analysis proved the importance of a cosmological environment, local surroundings and merger history in defining some key observable properties of a galactic CGM. Furthermore, I found that different satellite properties were responsible for affecting the cold–dense CGM of the low and high-mass parent galaxies. Finally, the LG emerged as an exciting prospect for testing and pinning down several intricate details about the CGM.
The first part of the thesis studies the properties of fast mode in magneto hydro-dynamic (MHD) turbulence. 1D and 3D numerical simulations are carried out to generate decaying fast mode MHD turbulence. The injection of waves are carried out in a collinear and isotropic fashion to generate fast mode turbulence. The properties of fast mode turbulence are analyzed by studying their energy spectral density, 2D structure functions and energy decay/cascade time. The injection wave vector is varied to study the dependence of the above properties on the injection wave vectors. The 1D energy spectrum obtained for the velocity and magnetic fields has 𝐸 (𝑘) ∝ 𝑘−2. The 2D energy spectrum and 2D structure functions in parallel and perpendicular directions shows that fast mode turbulence generated is isotropic in nature. The cascade/decay rate of fast mode MHD turbulence is proportional to 𝑘−0.5 for different kinds of wave vector injection. Simulations are also carried out in 1D and 3D to compare balanced and imbalanced turbulence. The results obtained shows that while 1D imbalanced turbulence decays faster than 1D balanced turbulence, there is no difference in the decay of 3D balanced and imbalanced turbulence for the current resolution of 512 grid points.
"The second part of the thesis studies cosmic ray (CR) transport in driven MHD turbulence and is strongly dependent on it’s properties. Test particle simulations are carried out to study CR interaction with both total MHD turbulence and decomposed MHD modes. The spatial diffusion coefficients and the pitch angle scattering diffusion coefficients are calculated from the test particle trajectories in turbulence. The results confirms that the fast modes dominate the CR propagation, whereas Alfvén, slow modes are much less efficient with similar pitch angle scattering rates. The cross field transport on large and small scales are investigated next. On large/global scales, normal diffusion is observed and the diffusion coefficient is suppressed by 𝑀𝜁𝐴 compared to the parallel diffusion coefficients, with 𝜁 closer to 4 in Alfvén modes than that in total turbulence as theoretically expected. For the CR transport on scales smaller than the turbulence injection scale 𝐿, both the local and global magnetic reference frames are adopted. Super diffusion is observed on such small scales in all the cases. Particularly, CR transport in Alfvén modes show clear Richardson diffusion in the local reference frame. The diffusion transition smoothly from the Richardson’s one with index 1.5 to normal diffusion as particle’s mean free path decreases from 𝜆∥ ≫ 𝐿 to 𝜆∥ ≪ 𝐿. These results have broad applications to CRs in various astrophysical environments".
With the implementation of intense, short pulsed light sources throughout the last years, the powerful technique of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) became feasible for a wide range of experiments within femtosecond dynamics in correlated materials and molecules.
In this thesis I investigate the potential to bring RIXS into the fluence regime of nonlinear X-ray-matter interactions, especially focusing on the impact of stimulated scattering on RIXS in transition metal systems in a transmission spectroscopy geometry around transition metal L-edges.
After presenting the RIXS toolbox and the capabilities of free electron laser light sources for ultrafast intense X-ray experiments, the thesis explores an experiment designed to understand the impact of stimulated scattering on diffraction and direct beam transmission spectroscopy on a CoPd multilayer system. The experiments require short X-ray pulses that can only be generated at free electron lasers (FEL). Here the pulses are not only short, but also very intense, which opens the door to nonlinear X-ray-matter interactions. In the second part of this thesis, we investigate observations in the nonlinear interaction regime, look at potential difficulties for classic spectroscopy and investigate possibilities to enhance the RIXS through stimulated scattering. Here, a study on stimulated RIXS is presented, where we investigate the light field intensity dependent CoPd demagnetization in transmission as well as scattering geometry. Thereby we show the first direct observation of stimulated RIXS as well as light field induced nonlinear effects,
namely the breakdown of scattering intensity and the increase in sample transmittance. The topic is of ongoing interest and will just increase in relevance as more free electron lasers are planned and the number of experiments at such light sources will continue to increase in the near future.
Finally we present a discussion on the accessibility of small DOS shifts in the absorption-band of transition metal complexes through stimulated resonant X-ray scattering. As these shifts occur for example in surface states this finding could expand the experimental selectivity of NEXAFS and RIXS to the detectability of surface states. We show how stimulation can indeed enhance the visibility of DOS shifts through the detection of stimulated spectral shifts and enhancements in this theoretical study. We also forecast the observation of stimulated enhancements in resonant excitation experiments at FEL sources in systems with a high density of states just below the Fermi edge and in systems with an occupied to unoccupied DOS ratio in the valence band above 1.
Using time-resolved x-ray diffraction, we demonstrate the manipulation of the picosecond strain response of a metallic heterostructure consisting of a dysprosium (Dy) transducer and a niobium (Nb) detection layer by an external magnetic field. We utilize the first-order ferromagnetic–antiferromagnetic phase transition of the Dy layer, which provides an additional large contractive stress upon laser excitation compared to its zerofield response. This enhances the laser-induced contraction of the transducer and changes the shape of the picosecond strain pulses driven in Dy and detected within the buried Nb layer. Based on our experiment with rare-earth metals we discuss required properties for functional transducers, which may allow for novel field-control of the emitted picosecond strain pulses.
Inverted perovskite solar cells still suffer from significant non-radiative recombination losses at the perovskite surface and across the perovskite/C₆₀ interface, limiting the future development of perovskite-based single- and multi-junction photovoltaics. Therefore, more effective inter- or transport layers are urgently required. To tackle these recombination losses, we introduce ortho-carborane as an interlayer material that has a spherical molecular structure and a three-dimensional aromaticity. Based on a variety of experimental techniques, we show that ortho-carborane decorated with phenylamino groups effectively passivates the perovskite surface and essentially eliminates the non-radiative recombination loss across the perovskite/C₆₀ interface with high thermal stability. We further demonstrate the potential of carborane as an electron transport material, facilitating electron extraction while blocking holes from the interface. The resulting inverted perovskite solar cells deliver a power conversion efficiency of over 23% with a low non-radiative voltage loss of 110 mV, and retain >97% of the initial efficiency after 400 h of maximum power point tracking. Overall, the designed carborane based interlayer simultaneously enables passivation, electron-transport and hole-blocking and paves the way toward more efficient and stable perovskite solar cells.
Recurrences in past climates
(2023)
Our ability to predict the state of a system relies on its tendency to recur to states it has visited before. Recurrence also pervades common intuitions about the systems we are most familiar with: daily routines, social rituals and the return of the seasons are just a few relatable examples. To this end, recurrence plots (RP) provide a systematic framework to quantify the recurrence of states. Despite their conceptual simplicity, they are a versatile tool in the study of observational data. The global climate is a complex system for which an understanding based on observational data is not only of academical relevance, but vital for the predurance of human societies within the planetary boundaries. Contextualizing current global climate change, however, requires observational data far beyond the instrumental period. The palaeoclimate record offers a valuable archive of proxy data but demands methodological approaches that adequately address its complexities. In this regard, the following dissertation aims at devising novel and further developing existing methods in the framework of recurrence analysis (RA). The proposed research questions focus on using RA to capture scale-dependent properties in nonlinear time series and tailoring recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) to characterize seasonal variability in palaeoclimate records (‘Palaeoseasonality’).
In the first part of this thesis, we focus on the methodological development of novel approaches in RA. The predictability of nonlinear (palaeo)climate time series is limited by abrupt transitions between regimes that exhibit entirely different dynamical complexity (e.g. crossing of ‘tipping points’). These possibly depend on characteristic time scales. RPs are well-established for detecting transitions and capture scale-dependencies, yet few approaches have combined both aspects. We apply existing concepts from the study of self-similar textures to RPs to detect abrupt transitions, considering the most relevant time scales. This combination of methods further results in the definition of a novel recurrence based nonlinear dependence measure. Quantifying lagged interactions between multiple variables is a common problem, especially in the characterization of high-dimensional complex systems. The proposed ‘recurrence flow’ measure of nonlinear dependence offers an elegant way to characterize such couplings. For spatially extended complex systems, the coupled dynamics of local variables result in the emergence of spatial patterns. These patterns tend to recur in time. Based on this observation, we propose a novel method that entails dynamically distinct regimes of atmospheric circulation based on their recurrent spatial patterns. Bridging the two parts of this dissertation, we next turn to methodological advances of RA for the study of Palaeoseasonality. Observational series of palaeoclimate ‘proxy’ records involve inherent limitations, such as irregular temporal sampling. We reveal biases in the RQA of time series with a non-stationary sampling rate and propose a correction scheme.
In the second part of this thesis, we proceed with applications in Palaeoseasonality. A review of common and promising time series analysis methods shows that numerous valuable tools exist, but their sound application requires adaptions to archive-specific limitations and consolidating transdisciplinary knowledge. Next, we study stalagmite proxy records from the Central Pacific as sensitive recorders of mid-Holocene El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dynamics. The records’ remarkably high temporal resolution allows to draw links between ENSO and seasonal dynamics, quantified by RA. The final study presented here examines how seasonal predictability could play a role for the stability of agricultural societies. The Classic Maya underwent a period of sociopolitical disintegration that has been linked to drought events. Based on seasonally resolved stable isotope records from Yok Balum cave in Belize, we propose a measure of seasonal predictability. It unveils the potential role declining seasonal predictability could have played in destabilizing agricultural and sociopolitical systems of Classic Maya populations.
The methodological approaches and applications presented in this work reveal multiple exciting future research avenues, both for RA and the study of Palaeoseasonality.
Sprache
Englisch
Modern single-particle-tracking techniques produce extensive time-series of diffusive motion in a wide variety of systems, from single-molecule motion in living-cells to movement ecology. The quest is to decipher the physical mechanisms encoded in the data and thus to better understand the probed systems. We here augment recently proposed machine-learning techniques for decoding anomalous-diffusion data to include an uncertainty estimate in addition to the predicted output. To avoid the Black-Box-Problem a Bayesian-Deep-Learning technique named Stochastic-Weight-Averaging-Gaussian is used to train models for both the classification of the diffusionmodel and the regression of the anomalous diffusion exponent of single-particle-trajectories. Evaluating their performance, we find that these models can achieve a wellcalibrated error estimate while maintaining high prediction accuracies. In the analysis of the output uncertainty predictions we relate these to properties of the underlying diffusion models, thus providing insights into the learning process of the machine and the relevance of the output.
International migration has been an increasing phenomenon during the past decades and has involved all the regions of the globe. Together with fertility and mortality rates, net migration rates represent the components that fully define the demographic evolution of the population in a country. Therefore, being able to capture the patterns of international migration flows and to produce projections of how they might change in the future is of relevant importance for demographic studies and for designing policies informed on the potential scenarios. Existing forecasting methods do not account explicitly for the main drivers and processes shaping international migration flows: existing migrant communities at the destination country, termed diasporas, would reduce the costs of migration and facilitate the settling for new migrants, ultimately producing a positive feedback; accounting for the heterogeneity in the type of migration flows, e.g. return and transit Ćows, becomes critical in some specific bilateral migration channels; in low- to middle- income countries economic development could relax poverty constraint and result in an increase of emigration rates.
Economic conditions at both origin and destination are identified as major drivers of international migration. At the same time, climate change impacts have already appeared on natural and human-made systems such as the economic productivity. These economic impacts might have already produced a measurable effect on international migration flows. Studies that provide a quantification of the number of migration moves that might have been affected by climate change are usually specific to small regions, do not provide a mechanistic understanding of the pathway leading from climate change to migration and restrict their focus to the effective induced flows, disregarding the impact that climate change might have had in inhibiting other flows.
Global climate change is likely to produce impacts on the economic development of the countries during the next decades too. Understanding how these impacts might alter future global migration patterns is relevant for preparing future societies and understanding whether the response in migration flows would reduce or increase population's exposure to climate change impacts.
This doctoral research aims at investigating these questions and fill the research gaps outlined above. First, I have built a global bilateral international migration model which accounts explicitly for the diaspora feedback, distinguishes between transit and return flows, and accounts for the observed non-linear effects that link emigration rates to income levels in the country of origin. I have used this migration model within a population dynamic model where I account also for fertility and mortality rates, producing hindcasts and future projections of international migration flows, covering more than 170 countries. Results show that the model reproduces past patterns and trends well. Future projections highlight the fact that,depending on the assumptions regarding future evolution of income levels and between-country inequality, migration at the end of the century might approach net zero or be still high in many countries. The model, parsimonious in the explanatory variables that includes, represents a versatile tool for assessing the impacts of different socioeconomic scenarios on international migration.
I consider then a counterfactual past without climate change impacts on the economic productivity. By prescribing these counterfactual economic conditions to the migration model I produce counterfactual migration flows for the past 30 years. I compare the counterfactual migration flows to factual ones, where historical economic conditions are used to produce migration flows. This provides an estimation of the recent international migration flows attributed to climate change impacts. Results show that a counterfactual world without climate change would have seen less migration globally. This effect becomes larger if I consider separately the increase and decrease in migration moves: a Ągure of net change in the migration flows is not representative of the effective magnitude of the climate change impact on migration. Indeed, in my results climate change produces a divergent effect on richer and poorer countries: by slowing down the economic development, climate change might have reduced international mobility from and to countries of the Global South, and increased it from and to richer countries in the Global North.
I apply the same methodology to a scenario of future 3℃ global warming above pre-industrial conditions. I Ąnd that climate change impacts, acting by reorganizing the relative economic attractiveness of destination countries or by affecting the economic growth in the origin, might produce a substantial effect in international migration flows, inhibiting some moves and inducing others.
Overall my results suggest that climate change might have had and might have in the future a significant effect on global patterns of international migration. It also emerges clearly that, for a comprehensive understanding of the effects of climate change on international migration, we need to go beyond net effects and consider separately induced and inhibited flows.
Anomalous-diffusion, the departure of the spreading dynamics of diffusing particles from the traditional law of Brownian-motion, is a signature feature of a large number of complex soft-matter and biological systems. Anomalous-diffusion emerges due to a variety of physical mechanisms, e.g., trapping interactions or the viscoelasticity of the environment. However, sometimes systems dynamics are erroneously claimed to be anomalous, despite the fact that the true motion is Brownian—or vice versa. This ambiguity in establishing whether the dynamics as normal or anomalous can have far-reaching consequences, e.g., in predictions for reaction- or relaxation-laws. Demonstrating that a system exhibits normal- or anomalous-diffusion is highly desirable for a vast host of applications. Here, we present a criterion for anomalous-diffusion based on the method of power-spectral analysis of single trajectories. The robustness of this criterion is studied for trajectories of fractional-Brownian-motion, a ubiquitous stochastic process for the description of anomalous-diffusion, in the presence of two types of measurement errors. In particular, we find that our criterion is very robust for subdiffusion. Various tests on surrogate data in absence or presence of additional positional noise demonstrate the efficacy of this method in practical contexts. Finally, we provide a proof-of-concept based on diverse experiments exhibiting both normal and anomalous-diffusion.
Following excited-state chemical shifts in molecular ultrafast x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
(2022)
The conversion of photon energy into other energetic forms in molecules is accompanied by charge moving on ultrafast timescales. We directly observe the charge motion at a specific site in an electronically excited molecule using time-resolved x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (TR-XPS). We extend the concept of static chemical shift from conventional XPS by the excited-state chemical shift (ESCS), which is connected to the charge in the framework of a potential model. This allows us to invert TR-XPS spectra to the dynamic charge at a specific atom. We demonstrate the power of TR-XPS by using sulphur 2p-core-electron-emission probing to study the UV-excited dynamics of 2-thiouracil. The method allows us to discover that a major part of the population relaxes to the molecular ground state within 220–250 fs. In addition, a 250-fs oscillation, visible in the kinetic energy of the TR-XPS, reveals a coherent exchange of population among electronic states.
In this work, binding interactions between biomolecules were analyzed by a technique that is based on electrically controllable DNA nanolevers. The technique was applied to virus-receptor interactions for the first time. As receptors, primarily peptides on DNA nanostructures and antibodies were utilized. The DNA nanostructures were integrated into the measurement technique and enabled the presentation of the peptides in a controllable geometrical order. The number of peptides could be varied to be compatible to the binding sites of the viral surface proteins.
Influenza A virus served as a model system, on which the general measurability was demonstrated. Variations of the receptor peptide, the surface ligand density, the measurement temperature and the virus subtypes showed the sensitivity and applicability of the technology. Additionally, the immobilization of virus particles enabled the measurement of differences in oligovalent binding of DNA-peptide nanostructures to the viral proteins in their native environment.
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in 2020, work on binding interactions of a peptide from the hACE2 receptor and the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus revealed that oligovalent binding can be quantified in the switchSENSE technology. It could also be shown that small changes in the amino acid sequence of the spike protein resulted in complete loss of binding. Interactions of the peptide and inactivated virus material as well as pseudo virus particles could be measured. Additionally, the switchSENSE technology was utilized to rank six antibodies for their binding affinity towards the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 for the development of a rapid antigen test device.
The technique was furthermore employed to show binding of a non-enveloped virus (adenovirus) and a virus-like particle (norovirus-like particle) to antibodies. Apart from binding interactions, the use of DNA origami levers with a length of around 50 nm enabled the switching of virus material. This proved that the technology is also able to size objects with a hydrodynamic diameter larger than 14 nm.
A theoretical work on diffusion and reaction-limited binding interactions revealed that the technique and the chosen parameters enable the determination of binding rate constants in the reaction-limited regime.
Overall, the applicability of the switchSENSE technique to virus-receptor binding interactions could be demonstrated on multiple examples. While there are challenges that remain, the setup enables the determination of affinities between viruses and receptors in their native environment. Especially the possibilities regarding the quantification of oligo- and multivalent binding interactions could be presented.
The central gas in half of all galaxy clusters shows short cooling times. Assuming unimpeded cooling, this should lead to high star formation and mass cooling rates, which are not observed. Instead, it is believed that condensing gas is accreted by the central black hole that powers an active galactic nuclei jet, which heats the cluster. The detailed heating mechanism remains uncertain. A promising mechanism invokes cosmic ray protons that scatter on self-generated magnetic fluctuations, i.e. Alfvén waves. Continuous damping of Alfvén waves provides heat to the intracluster medium. Previous work has found steady state solutions for a large sample of clusters where cooling is balanced by Alfvénic wave heating. To verify modeling assumptions, we set out to study cosmic ray injection in three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical simulations of jet feedback in an idealized cluster with the moving-mesh code arepo. We analyze the interaction of jet-inflated bubbles with the turbulent magnetized intracluster medium.
Furthermore, jet dynamics and heating are closely linked to the largely unconstrained jet composition. Interactions of electrons with photons of the cosmic microwave background result in observational signatures that depend on the bubble content. Those recent observations provided evidence for underdense bubbles with a relativistic filling while adopting simplifying modeling assumptions for the bubbles. By reproducing the observations with our simulations, we confirm the validity of their modeling assumptions and as such, confirm the important finding of low-(momentum) density jets.
In addition, the velocity and magnetic field structure of the intracluster medium have profound consequences for bubble evolution and heating processes. As velocity and magnetic fields are physically coupled, we demonstrate that numerical simulations can help link and thereby constrain their respective observables. Finally, we implement the currently preferred accretion model, cold accretion, into the moving-mesh code arepo and study feedback by light jets in a radiatively cooling magnetized cluster. While self-regulation is attained independently of accretion model, jet density and feedback efficiencies, we find that in order to reproduce observed cold gas morphology light jets are preferred.
In this thesis, I present my contributions to the field of ultrafast molecular spectroscopy. Using the molecule 2-thiouracil as an example, I use ultrashort x-ray pulses from free- electron lasers to study the relaxation dynamics of gas-phase molecular samples. Taking advantage of the x-ray typical element- and site-selectivity, I investigate the charge flow and geometrical changes in the excited states of 2-thiouracil.
In order to understand the photoinduced dynamics of molecules, knowledge about the ground-state structure and the relaxation after photoexcitation is crucial. Therefore, a part of this thesis covers the electronic ground-state spectroscopy of mainly 2-thiouracil to provide the basis for the time-resolved experiments. Many of the previously published studies that focused on the gas-phase time-resolved dynamics of thionated uracils after UV excitation relied on information from solution phase spectroscopy to determine the excitation energies. This is not an optimal strategy as solvents alter the absorption spec- trum and, hence, there is no guarantee that liquid-phase spectra resemble the gas-phase spectra. Therefore, I measured the UV-absorption spectra of all three thionated uracils to provide a gas-phase reference and, in combination with calculations, we determined the excited states involved in the transitions.
In contrast to the UV absorption, the literature on the x-ray spectroscopy of thionated uracil is sparse. Thus, we measured static photoelectron, Auger-Meitner and x-ray absorption spectra on the sulfur L edge before or parallel to the time-resolved experiments we performed at FLASH (DESY, Hamburg). In addition, (so far unpublished) measurements were performed at the synchrotron SOLEIL (France) which have been included in this thesis and show the spin-orbit splitting of the S 2p photoline and its satellite which was not observed at the free-electron laser.
The relaxation of 2-thiouracil has been studied extensively in recent years with ultrafast visible and ultraviolet methods showing the ultrafast nature of the molecular process after photoexcitation. Ultrafast spectroscopy probing the core-level electrons provides a complementary approach to common optical ultrafast techniques. The method inherits its local sensitivity from the strongly localised core electrons. The core energies and core-valence transitions are strongly affected by local valence charge and geometry changes, and past studies have utilised this sensitivity to investigate the molecular process reflected by the ultrafast dynamics. We have built an apparatus that provides the requirements to perform time-resolved x-ray spectroscopy on molecules in the gas phase. With the apparatus, we performed UV-pump x-ray-probe electron spectroscopy on the S 2p edge of 2-thiouracil using the free-electron laser FLASH2. While the UV triggers the relaxation dynamics, the x-ray probes the single sulfur atom inside the molecule. I implemented photoline self-referencing for the photoelectron spectral analysis. This minimises the spectral jitter of the FEL, which is due to the underlying self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) process. With this approach, we were not only able to study dynamical changes in the binding energy of the electrons but also to detect an oscillatory behaviour in the shift of the observed photoline, which we associate with non-adiabatic dynamics involving several electronic states. Moreover, we were able to link the UV-induced shift in binding energy to the local charge flow at the sulfur which is directly connected to the electronic state. Furthermore, the analysis of the Auger-Meitner electrons shows that energy shifts observed at early stages of the photoinduced relaxation are related to the geometry change in the molecule. More specifically, the observed increase in kinetic energy of the Auger-Meitner electrons correlates with a previously predicted C=S bond stretch.
Anomalous diffusion or, more generally, anomalous transport, with nonlinear dependence of the mean-squared displacement on the measurement time, is ubiquitous in nature. It has been observed in processes ranging from microscopic movement of molecules to macroscopic, large-scale paths of migrating birds. Using data from multiple empirical systems, spanning 12 orders of magnitude in length and 8 orders of magnitude in time, we employ a method to detect the individual underlying origins of anomalous diffusion and transport in the data. This method decomposes anomalous transport into three primary effects: long-range correlations (“Joseph effect”), fat-tailed probability density of increments (“Noah effect”), and nonstationarity (“Moses effect”). We show that such a decomposition of real-life data allows us to infer nontrivial behavioral predictions and to resolve open questions in the fields of single-particle tracking in living cells and movement ecology.
Gravitational-wave (GW) astrophysics is a field in full blossom. Since the landmark detection of GWs from a binary black hole on September 14th 2015, fifty-two compact-object binaries have been reported by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration. Such events carry astrophysical and cosmological information ranging from an understanding of how black holes and neutron stars are formed, what neutron stars are composed of, how the Universe expands, and allow testing general relativity in the highly-dynamical strong-field regime. It is the goal of GW astrophysics to extract such information as accurately as possible. Yet, this is only possible if the tools and technology used to detect and analyze GWs are advanced enough. A key aspect of GW searches are waveform models, which encapsulate our best predictions for the gravitational radiation under a certain set of parameters, and that need to be cross-correlated with data to extract GW signals. Waveforms must be very accurate to avoid missing important physics in the data, which might be the key to answer the fundamental questions of GW astrophysics. The continuous improvements of the current LIGO-Virgo detectors, the development of next-generation ground-based detectors such as the Einstein Telescope or the Cosmic Explorer, as well as the development of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), demand accurate waveform models. While available models are enough to capture the low spins, comparable-mass binaries routinely detected in LIGO-Virgo searches, those for sources from both current and next-generation ground-based and spaceborne detectors must be accurate enough to detect binaries with large spins and asymmetry in the masses. Moreover, the thousands of sources that we expect to detect with future detectors demand accurate waveforms to mitigate biases in the estimation of signals’ parameters due to the presence of a foreground of many sources that overlap in the frequency band. This is recognized as one of the biggest challenges for the analysis of future-detectors’ data, since biases might hinder the extraction of important astrophysical and cosmological information from future detectors’ data. In the first part of this thesis, we discuss how to improve waveform models for binaries with high spins and asymmetry in the masses. In the second, we present the first generic metrics that have been proposed to predict biases in the presence of a foreground of many overlapping signals in GW data.
For the first task, we will focus on several classes of analytical techniques. Current models for LIGO and Virgo studies are based on the post-Newtonian (PN, weak-field, small velocities) approximation that is most natural for the bound orbits that are routinely detected in GW searches. However, two other approximations have risen in prominence, the post-Minkowskian (PM, weak- field only) approximation natural for unbound (scattering) orbits and the small-mass-ratio (SMR) approximation typical of binaries in which the mass of one body is much bigger than the other. These are most appropriate to binaries with high asymmetry in the masses that challenge current waveform models. Moreover, they allow one to “cover” regions of the parameter space of coalescing binaries, thereby improving the interpolation (and faithfulness) of waveform models. The analytical approximations to the relativistic two-body problem can synergically be included within the effective-one-body (EOB) formalism, in which the two-body information from each approximation can be recast into an effective problem of a mass orbiting a deformed Schwarzschild (or Kerr) black hole. The hope is that the resultant models can cover both the low-spin comparable-mass binaries that are routinely detected, and the ones that challenge current models. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to a study about how to best incorporate information from the PN, PM, SMR and EOB approaches in a synergistic way. We also discuss how accurate the resulting waveforms are, as compared against numerical-relativity (NR) simulations. We begin by comparing PM models, whether alone or recast in the EOB framework, against PN models and NR simulations. We will show that PM information has the potential to improve currently-employed models for LIGO and Virgo, especially if recast within the EOB formalism. This is very important, as the PM approximation comes with a host of new computational techniques from particle physics to exploit. Then, we show how a combination of PM and SMR approximations can be employed to access previously-unknown PN orders, deriving the third subleading PN dynamics for spin-orbit and (aligned) spin1-spin2 couplings. Such new results can then be included in the EOB models currently used in GW searches and parameter estimation studies, thereby improving them when the binaries have high spins. Finally, we build an EOB model for quasi-circular nonspinning binaries based on the SMR approximation (rather than the PN one as usually done). We show how this is done in detail without incurring in the divergences that had affected previous attempts, and compare the resultant model against NR simulations. We find that the SMR approximation is an excellent approximation for all (quasi-circular nonspinning) binaries, including both the equal-mass binaries that are routinely detected in GW searches and the ones with highly asymmetric masses. In particular, the SMR-based models compare much better than the PN models, suggesting that SMR-informed EOB models might be the key to model binaries in the future. In the second task of this thesis, we work within the linear-signal ap- proximation and describe generic metrics to predict inference biases on the parameters of a GW source of interest in the presence of confusion noise from unfitted foregrounds and from residuals of other signals that have been incorrectly fitted out. We illustrate the formalism with simple (yet realistic) LISA sources, and demonstrate its validity against Monte-Carlo simulations. The metrics we describe pave the way for more realistic studies to quantify the biases with future ground-based and spaceborne detectors.
In the last century, several astronomical measurements have supported that a significant percentage (about 22%) of the total mass of the Universe, on galactic and extragalactic scales, is composed of a mysterious ”dark” matter (DM). DM does not interact with the electromagnetic force; in other words it does not reflect, absorb or emit light. It is possible that DM particles are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) that can annihilate (or decay) into Standard Model (SM) particles, and modern very- high-energy (VHE; > 100 GeV) instruments such as imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) can play an important role in constraining the main properties of such DM particles, by detecting these products. One of the most privileged targets where to look for DM signal are dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs), as they are expected to be high DM-dominated objects with a clean, gas-free environment. Some dSphs could be considered as extended sources, considering the angular resolution of IACTs; their angu- lar resolution is adequate to detect extended emission from dSphs. For this reason, we performed an extended-source analysis, by taking into account in the unbinned maximum likelihood estimation both the energy and the angular extension dependency of observed events. The goal was to set more constrained upper limits on the velocity-averaged cross-section annihilation of WIMPs with VERITAS data. VERITAS is an array of four IACTs, able to detect γ-ray photons ranging between 100 GeV and 30 TeV. The results of this extended analysis were compared against the traditional spectral analysis. We found that a 2D analysis may lead to more constrained results, depending on the DM mass, channel, and source. Moreover, in this thesis, the results of a multi-instrument project are presented too. Its goal was to combine already published 20 dSphs data from five different experiments, such as Fermi-LAT, MAGIC, H.E.S.S., VERITAS and HAWC, in order to set upper limits on the WIMP annihilation cross-section in the widest mass range ever reported.
In X-ray computed tomography (XCT), an X-ray beam of intensity I0 is transmitted through an object and its attenuated intensity I is measured when it exits the object. The attenuation of the beam depends on the attenuation coefficients along its path. The attenuation coefficients provide information about the structure and composition of the object and can be determined through mathematical operations that are referred to as reconstruction.
The standard reconstruction algorithms are based on the filtered backprojection (FBP) of the measured data. While these algorithms are fast and relatively simple, they do not always succeed in computing a precise reconstruction, especially from under-sampled data.
Alternatively, an image or volume can be reconstructed by solving a system of linear equations. Typically, the system of equations is too large to be solved but its solution can be approximated by iterative methods, such as the Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction Technique (SIRT) and the Conjugate Gradient Least Squares (CGLS).
This dissertation focuses on the development of a novel iterative algorithm, the Direct Iterative Reconstruction of Computed Tomography Trajectories (DIRECTT). After its reconstruction principle is explained, its performance is assessed for real parallel- and cone-beam CT (including under-sampled) data and compared to that of other established algorithms. Finally, it is demonstrated how the shape of the measured object can be modelled into DIRECTT to achieve even better reconstruction results.
Isoflux tension propagation (IFTP) theory and Langevin dynamics (LD) simulations are employed to study the dynamics of channel-driven polymer translocation in which a polymer translocates into a narrow channel and the monomers in the channel experience a driving force fc. In the high driving force limit, regardless of the channel width, IFTP theory predicts τ ∝ f βc for the translocation time, where β = −1 is the force scaling exponent. Moreover, LD data show that for a very narrow channel fitting only a single file of monomers, the entropic force due to the subchain inside the channel does not play a significant role in the translocation dynamics and the force exponent β = −1 regardless of the force magnitude. As the channel width increases the number of possible spatial configurations of the subchain inside the channel becomes significant and the resulting entropic force causes the force exponent to drop below unity.
We consider a one-dimensional oscillatory medium with a coupling through a diffusive linear field. In the limit of fast diffusion this setup reduces to the classical Kuramoto–Battogtokh model. We demonstrate that for a finite diffusion stable chimera solitons, namely localized synchronous domain in an infinite asynchronous environment, are possible. The solitons are stable also for finite density of oscillators, but in this case they sway with a nearly constant speed. This finite-density-induced motility disappears in the continuum limit, as the velocity of the solitons is inverse proportional to the density. A long-wave instability of the homogeneous asynchronous state causes soliton turbulence, which appears as a sequence of soliton mergings and creations. As the instability of the asynchronous state becomes stronger, this turbulence develops into a spatio-temporal intermittency.
Cosmic rays (CRs) constitute an important component of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies and are thought to play an essential role in governing their evolution. In particular, they are able to impact the dynamics of a galaxy by driving galactic outflows or heating the ISM and thereby affecting the efficiency of star-formation. Hence, in order to understand galaxy formation and evolution, we need to accurately model this non-thermal constituent of the ISM. But except in our local environment within the Milky Way, we do not have the ability to measure CRs directly in other galaxies. However, there are many ways to indirectly observe CRs via the radiation they emit due to their interaction with magnetic and interstellar radiation fields as well as with the ISM.
In this work, I develop a numerical framework to calculate the spectral distribution of CRs in simulations of isolated galaxies where a steady-state between injection and cooling is assumed. Furthermore, I calculate the non-thermal emission processes arising from the modelled CR proton and electron spectra ranging from radio wavelengths up to the very high-energy gamma-ray regime.
I apply this code to a number of high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of isolated galaxies, where CRs are included. This allows me to study their CR spectra and compare them to observations of the CR proton and electron spectra by the Voyager-1 satellite and the AMS-02 instrument in order to reveal the origin of the measured spectral features.
Furthermore, I provide detailed emission maps, luminosities and spectra of the non-thermal emission from our simulated galaxies that range from dwarfs to Milk-Way analogues to starburst galaxies at different evolutionary stages. I successfully reproduce the observed relations between the radio and gamma-ray luminosities with the far-infrared (FIR) emission of star-forming (SF) galaxies, respectively, where the latter is a good tracer of the star-formation rate. I find that highly SF galaxies are close to the limit where their CR population would lose all of their energy due to the emission of radiation, whereas CRs tend to escape low SF galaxies more quickly. On top of that, I investigate the properties of CR transport that are needed in order to match the observed gamma-ray spectra.
Furthermore, I uncover the underlying processes that enable the FIR-radio correlation (FRC) to be maintained even in starburst galaxies and find that thermal free-free-emission naturally explains the observed radio spectra in SF galaxies like M82 and NGC 253 thus solving the riddle of flat radio spectra that have been proposed to contradict the observed tight FRC.
Lastly, I scrutinise the steady-state modelling of the CR proton component by investigating for the first time the influence of spectrally resolved CR transport in MHD simulations on the hadronic gamma-ray emission of SF galaxies revealing new insights into the observational signatures of CR transport both spectrally and spatially.
Science education researchers have developed a refined understanding of the structure of science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), but how to develop applicable and situation-adequate PCK remains largely unclear. A potential problem lies in the diverse conceptualisations of the PCK used in PCK research. This study sought to systematize existing science education research on PCK through the lens of the recently proposed refined consensus model (RCM) of PCK. In this review, the studies’ approaches to investigating PCK and selected findings were characterised and synthesised as an overview comparing research before and after the publication of the RCM. We found that the studies largely employed a qualitative case-study methodology that included specific PCK models and tools. However, in recent years, the studies focused increasingly on quantitative aspects. Furthermore, results of the reviewed studies can mostly be integrated into the RCM. We argue that the RCM can function as a meaningful theoretical lens for conceptualizing links between teaching practice and PCK development by proposing pedagogical reasoning as a mechanism and/or explanation for PCK development in the context of teaching practice.
Flares are magnetically driven explosions that occur in the atmospheres of all main sequence stars that possess an outer convection zone. Flaring activity is rooted in the magnetic dynamo that operates deep in the stellar interior, propagates through all layers of the atmosphere from the corona to the photosphere, and emits electromagnetic radiation from radio bands to X-ray. Eventually, this radiation, and associated eruptions of energetic particles, are ejected out into interplanetary space, where they impact planetary atmospheres, and dominate the space weather environments of young star-planet systems.
Thanks to the Kepler and the Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) missions, flare observations have become accessible for millions of stars and star-planet systems. The goal of this thesis is to use these flares as multifaceted messengers to understand stellar magnetism across the main sequence, investigate planetary habitability, and explore how close-in planets can affect the host star.
Using space based observations obtained by the Kepler/K2 mission, I found that flaring activity declines with stellar age, but this decline crucially depends on stellar mass and rotation. I calibrated the age of the stars in my sample using their membership in open clusters from zero age main sequence to solar age. This allowed me to reveal the rapid transition from an active, saturated flaring state to a more quiescent, inactive flaring behavior in early M dwarfs at about 600-800 Myr. This result is an important observational constraint on stellar activity evolution that I was able to de-bias using open clusters as an activity-independent age indicator.
The TESS mission quickly superseded Kepler and K2 as the main source of flares in low mass M dwarfs. Using TESS 2-minute cadence light curves, I developed a new technique for flare localization and discovered, against the commonly held belief, that flares do not occur uniformly across their stellar surface: In fast rotating fully convective stars, giant flares are preferably located at high latitudes. This bears implications for both our understanding of magnetic field emergence in these stars, and the impact on the exoplanet atmospheres: A planet that orbits in the equatorial plane of its host may be spared from the destructive effects of these poleward emitting flares.
AU Mic is an early M dwarf, and the most actively flaring planet host detected to date. Its innermost companion, AU Mic b is one of the most promising targets for a first observation of flaring star-planet interactions. In these interactions, the planet influences the star, as opposed to space weather, where the planet is always on the receiving side. The effect reflects the properties of the magnetosphere shared by planet and star, as well as the so far inaccessible magnetic properties of planets. In the about 50 days of TESS monitoring data of AU Mic, I searched for statistically robust signs of flaring interactions with AU Mic b as flares that occur in surplus of the star's intrinsic activity. I found the strongest yet still marginal signal in recurring excess flaring in phase with the orbital period of AU Mic b. If it reflects true signal, I estimate that extending the observing time by a factor of 2-3 will yield a statistically significant detection. Well within the reach of future TESS observations, this additional data may bring us closer to robustly detecting this effect than we have ever been.
This thesis demonstrates the immense scientific value of space based, long baseline flare monitoring, and the versatility of flares as a carrier of information about the magnetism of star-planet systems. Many discoveries still lay in wait in the vast archives that Kepler and TESS have produced over the years. Flares are intense spotlights into the magnetic structures in star-planet systems that are otherwise far below our resolution limits. The ongoing TESS mission, and soon PLATO, will further open the door to in-depth understanding of small and dynamic scale magnetic fields on low mass stars, and the space weather environment they effect.
Cosmic rays (CRs) are a ubiquitous and an important component of astrophysical environments such as the interstellar medium (ISM) and intracluster medium (ICM). Their plasma physical interactions with electromagnetic fields strongly influence their transport properties. Effective models which incorporate the microphysics of CR transport are needed to study the effects of CRs on their surrounding macrophysical media. Developing such models is challenging because of the conceptional, length-scale, and time-scale separation between the microscales of plasma physics and the macroscales of the environment. Hydrodynamical theories of CR transport achieve this by capturing the evolution of CR population in terms of statistical moments. In the well-established one-moment hydrodynamical model for CR transport, the dynamics of the entire CR population are described by a single statistical quantity such as the commonly used CR energy density. In this work, I develop a new hydrodynamical two-moment theory for CR transport that expands the well-established hydrodynamical model by including the CR energy flux as a second independent hydrodynamical quantity. I detail how this model accounts for the interaction between CRs and gyroresonant Alfvén waves. The small-scale magnetic fields associated with these Alfvén waves scatter CRs which fundamentally alters CR transport along large-scale magnetic field lines. This leads to the effects of CR streaming and diffusion which are both captured within the presented hydrodynamical theory. I use an Eddington-like approximation to close the hydrodynamical equations and investigate the accuracy of this closure-relation by comparing it to high-order approximations of CR transport. In addition, I develop a finite-volume scheme for the new hydrodynamical model and adapt it to the moving-mesh code Arepo. This scheme is applied using a simulation of a CR-driven galactic wind. I investigate how CRs launch the wind and perform a statistical analysis of CR transport properties inside the simulated circumgalactic medium (CGM). I show that the new hydrodynamical model can be used to explain the morphological appearance of a particular type of radio filamentary structures found inside the central molecular zone (CMZ). I argue that these harp-like features are synchrotron-radiating CRs which are injected into braided magnetic field lines by a point-like source such as a stellar wind of a massive star or a pulsar. Lastly, I present the finite-volume code Blinc that uses adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) techniques to perform simulations of radiation and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). The mesh of Blinc is block-structured and represented in computer memory using a graph-based approach. I describe the implementation of the mesh graph and how a diffusion process is employed to achieve load balancing in parallel computing environments. Various test problems are used to verify the accuracy and robustness of the employed numerical algorithms.
Beim Resonanzenergietransfer werden Fotonen von einem angeregten Donator über einen Wechselwirkungsabstand auf einen Akzeptor übertragen. Nach der quantenmechanischen Theorie von FÖRSTER kann dieser Abstand mit Hilfe des Überlappungsintegrals von Fluoreszenzspektrum des Donators und Absorp-tionsspektrum des Akzeptors berechnet werden.
Eine andere Möglichkeit der Bestimmung erhält man mit Hilfe von statistischen Modellen, die in einem Überblick zusammengestellt sind. Dabei kann der Abstand durch Auswertung der Löschkurve bestimmt werden.
In dieser Arbeit wird dazu eine weitere statistische Variante der Bestimmung des Wechselwirkungsradius hinzugefügt und an einem Beispiel ausführlich demonstriert.
Beim Resonanzenergietransfer werden Fotonen von einem angeregten Donator über einen Wechselwirkungsabstand auf einen Akzeptor übertragen. Nach der quantenmechanischen Theorie von FÖRSTER kann dieser Abstand mit Hilfe des Überlappungsintegrals von Fluoreszenzspektrum des Donators und Absorp-tionsspektrum des Akzeptors berechnet werden.
Eine andere Möglichkeit der Bestimmung erhält man mit Hilfe von statistischen Modellen, die in einem Überblick zusammengestellt sind. Dabei kann der Abstand durch Auswertung der Löschkurve bestimmt werden.
In dieser Arbeit wird dazu eine weitere statistische Variante der Bestimmung des Wechselwirkungsradius hinzugefügt und an einem Beispiel ausführlich demonstriert.
X-rays are integral to furthering our knowledge of exoplanetary systems. In this work we discuss the use of X-ray observations to understand star-planet interac- tions, mass-loss rates of an exoplanet’s atmosphere and the study of an exoplanet’s atmospheric components using future X-ray spectroscopy.
The low-mass star GJ 1151 was reported to display variable low-frequency radio emission, which is an indication of coronal star-planet interactions with an unseen exoplanet. In chapter 5 we report the first X-ray detection of GJ 1151’s corona based on XMM-Newton data. Averaged over the observation, we detect the star with a low coronal temperature of 1.6 MK and an X-ray luminosity of LX = 5.5 × 1026 erg/s. This is compatible with the coronal assumptions for a sub-Alfvénic star- planet interaction origin of the observed radio signals from this star.
In chapter 6, we aim to characterise the high-energy environment of known ex- oplanets and estimate their mass-loss rates. This work is based on the soft X-ray instrument on board the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) mission, eROSITA, along with archival data from ROSAT, XMM-Newton, and Chandra. We use these four X-ray source catalogues to derive X-ray luminosities of exoplanet host stars in the 0.2-2 keV energy band. A catalogue of the mass-loss rates of 287 exoplan- ets is presented, with 96 of these planets characterised for the first time using new eROSITA detections. Of these first time detections, 14 are of transiting exoplanets that undergo irradiation from their host stars that is of a level known to cause ob- servable evaporation signals in other systems, making them suitable for follow-up observations.
In the next generation of space observatories, X-ray transmission spectroscopy of an exoplanet’s atmosphere will be possible, allowing for a detailed look into the atmospheric composition of these planets. In chapter 7, we model sample spectra using a toy model of an exoplanetary atmosphere to predict what exoplanet transit observations with future X-ray missions such as Athena will look like. We then estimate the observable X-ray transmission spectrum for a typical Hot Jupiter-type exoplanet, giving us insights into the advances in X-ray observations of exoplanets in the decades to come.
A task-based parallel elliptic solver for numerical relativity with discontinuous Galerkin methods
(2022)
Elliptic partial differential equations are ubiquitous in physics. In numerical relativity---the study of computational solutions to the Einstein field equations of general relativity---elliptic equations govern the initial data that seed every simulation of merging black holes and neutron stars. In the quest to produce detailed numerical simulations of these most cataclysmic astrophysical events in our Universe, numerical relativists resort to the vast computing power offered by current and future supercomputers. To leverage these computational resources, numerical codes for the time evolution of general-relativistic initial value problems are being developed with a renewed focus on parallelization and computational efficiency. Their capability to solve elliptic problems for accurate initial data must keep pace with the increasing detail of the simulations, but elliptic problems are traditionally hard to parallelize effectively.
In this thesis, I develop new numerical methods to solve elliptic partial differential equations on computing clusters, with a focus on initial data for orbiting black holes and neutron stars. I develop a discontinuous Galerkin scheme for a wide range of elliptic equations, and a stack of task-based parallel algorithms for their iterative solution. The resulting multigrid-Schwarz preconditioned Newton-Krylov elliptic solver proves capable of parallelizing over 200 million degrees of freedom to at least a few thousand cores, and already solves initial data for a black hole binary about ten times faster than the numerical relativity code SpEC. I also demonstrate the applicability of the new elliptic solver across physical disciplines, simulating the thermal noise in thin mirror coatings of interferometric gravitational-wave detectors to unprecedented accuracy. The elliptic solver is implemented in the new open-source SpECTRE numerical relativity code, and set up to support simulations of astrophysical scenarios for the emerging era of gravitational-wave and multimessenger astronomy.
The complex hierarchical structure of bone undergoes a lifelong remodeling process, where it adapts to mechanical needs. Hereby, bone resorption by osteoclasts and bone formation by osteoblasts have to be balanced to sustain a healthy and stable organ. Osteocytes orchestrate this interplay by sensing mechanical strains and translating them into biochemical signals. The osteocytes are located in lacunae and are connected to one another and other bone cells via cell processes through small channels, the canaliculi. Lacunae and canaliculi form a network (LCN) of extracellular spaces that is able to transport ions and enables cell-to-cell communication. Osteocytes might also contribute to mineral homeostasis by direct interactions with the surrounding matrix. If the LCN is acting as a transport system, this should be reflected in the mineralization pattern. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that osteocytes are actively changing their material environment. Characterization methods of material science are used to achieve the aim of detecting traces of this interaction between osteocytes and the extracellular matrix. First, healthy murine bones were characterized. The properties analyzed were then compared with three murine model systems: 1) a loading model, where a bone of the mouse was loaded during its life time; 2) a healing model, where a bone of the mouse was cut to induce a healing response; and 3) a disease model, where the Fbn1 gene is dysfunctional causing defects in the formation of the extracellular tissue.
The measurement strategy included routines that make it possible to analyze the organization of the LCN and the material components (i.e., the organic collagen matrix and the mineral particles) in the same bone volumes and compare the spatial distribution of different data sets. The three-dimensional network architecture of the LCN is visualized by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) after rhodamine staining and is then subsequently quantified. The calcium content is determined via quantitative backscattered electron imaging (qBEI), while small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS) are employed to determine the thickness and length of local mineral particles.
First, tibiae cortices of healthy mice were characterized to investigate how changes in LCN architecture can be attributed to interactions of osteocytes with the surrounding bone matrix. The tibial mid-shaft cross-sections showed two main regions, consisting of a band with unordered LCN surrounded by a region with ordered LCN. The unordered region is a remnant of early bone formation and exhibited short and thin mineral particles. The surrounding, more aligned bone showed ordered and dense LCN as well as thicker and longer mineral particles. The calcium content was unchanged between the two regions.
In the mouse loading model, the left tibia underwent two weeks of mechanical stimulation, which results in increased bone formation and decreased resorption in skeletally mature mice. Here the specific research question addressed was how do bone material characteristics change at (re)modeling sites? The new bone formed in response to mechanical stimulation showed similar properties in terms of the mineral particles, like the ordered calcium region but lower calcium content compared to the right, non-loaded control bone of the same mice. There was a clear, recognizable border between mature and newly formed bone. Nevertheless, some canaliculi went through this border connecting the LCN of mature and newly formed bone.
Additionally, the question should be answered whether the LCN topology and the bone matrix material properties adapt to loading. Although, mechanically stimulated bones did not show differences in calcium content compared to controls, different correlations were found between the local LCN density and the local Ca content depending on whether the bone was loaded or not. These results suggest that the LCN may serve as a mineral reservoir.
For the healing model, the femurs of mice underwent an osteotomy, stabilized with an external fixator and were allowed to heal for 21 days. Thus, the spatial variations in the LCN topology with mineral properties within different tissue types and their interfaces, namely calcified cartilage, bony callus and cortex, could be simultaneously visualized and compared in this model. All tissue types showed structural differences across multiple length scales. Calcium content increased and became more homogeneous from calcified cartilage to bony callus to lamellar cortical bone. The degree of LCN organization increased as well, while the lacunae became smaller, as did the lacunar density between these different tissue types that make up the callus. In the calcified cartilage, the mineral particles were short and thin. The newly formed callus exhibited thicker mineral particles, which still had a low degree of orientation. While most of the callus had a woven-like structure, it also served as a scaffold for more lamellar tissue at the edges. The lamelar bone callus showed thinner mineral particles, but a higher degree of alignment in both, mineral particles and the LCN. The cortex showed the highest values for mineral length, thickness and degree of orientation. At the same time, the lacunae number density was 34% lower and the lacunar volume 40% smaller compared to bony callus. The transition zone between cortical and callus regions showed a continuous convergence of bone mineral properties and lacunae shape. Although only a few canaliculi connected callus and the cortical region, this indicates that communication between osteocytes of both tissues should be possible. The presented correlations between LCN architecture and mineral properties across tissue types may suggest that osteocytes have an active role in mineralization processes of healing.
A mouse model for the disease marfan syndrome, which includes a genetic defect in the fibrillin-1 gene, was investigated. In humans, Marfan syndrome is characterized by a range of clinical symptoms such as long bone overgrowth, loose joints, reduced bone mineral density, compromised bone microarchitecture, and increased fracture rates. Thus, fibrillin-1 seems to play a role in the skeletal homeostasis. Therefore, the present work studied how marfan syndrome alters LCN architecture and the surrounding bone matrix. The mice with marfan syndrome showed longer tibiae than their healthy littermates from an age of seven weeks onwards. In contrast, the cortical development appeared retarded, which was observed across all measured characteristics, i. e. lower endocortical bone formation, looser and less organized lacuno-canalicular network, less collagen orientation, thinner and shorter mineral particles.
In each of the three model systems, this study found that changes in the LCN architecture spatially correlated with bone matrix material parameters. While not knowing the exact mechanism, these results provide indications that osteocytes can actively manipulate a mineral reservoir located around the canaliculi to make a quickly accessible contribution to mineral homeostasis. However, this interaction is most likely not one-sided, but could be understood as an interplay between osteocytes and extra-cellular matrix, since the bone matrix contains biochemical signaling molecules (e.g. non-collagenous proteins) that can change osteocyte behavior. Bone (re)modeling can therefore not only be understood as a method for removing defects or adapting to external mechanical stimuli, but also for increasing the efficiency of possible osteocyte-mineral interactions during bone homeostasis. With these findings, it seems reasonable to consider osteocytes as a target for drug development related to bone diseases that cause changes in bone composition and mechanical properties. It will most likely require the combined effort of materials scientists, cell biologists, and molecular biologists to gain a deeper understanding of how bone cells respond to their material environment.
In the present thesis I investigate the lattice dynamics of thin film hetero structures of magnetically ordered materials upon femtosecond laser excitation as a probing and manipulation scheme for the spin system. The quantitative assessment of laser induced thermal dynamics as well as generated picosecond acoustic pulses and their respective impact on the magnetization dynamics of thin films is a challenging endeavor. All the more, the development and implementation of effective experimental tools and comprehensive models are paramount to propel future academic and technological progress.
In all experiments in the scope of this cumulative dissertation, I examine the crystal lattice of nanoscale thin films upon the excitation with femtosecond laser pulses. The relative change of the lattice constant due to thermal expansion or picosecond strain pulses is directly monitored by an ultrafast X-ray diffraction (UXRD) setup with a femtosecond laser-driven plasma X-ray source (PXS). Phonons and spins alike exert stress on the lattice, which responds according to the elastic properties of the material, rendering the lattice a versatile sensor for all sorts of ultrafast interactions. On the one hand, I investigate materials with strong magneto-elastic properties; The highly magnetostrictive rare-earth compound TbFe2, elemental Dysprosium or the technological relevant Invar material FePt. On the other hand I conduct a comprehensive study on the lattice dynamics of Bi1Y2Fe5O12 (Bi:YIG), which exhibits high-frequency coherent spin dynamics upon femtosecond laser excitation according to the literature. Higher order standing spinwaves (SSWs) are triggered by coherent and incoherent motion of atoms, in other words phonons, which I quantified with UXRD. We are able to unite the experimental observations of the lattice and magnetization dynamics qualitatively and quantitatively. This is done with a combination of multi-temperature, elastic, magneto-elastic, anisotropy and micro-magnetic modeling.
The collective data from UXRD, to probe the lattice, and time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect (tr-MOKE) measurements, to monitor the magnetization, were previously collected at different experimental setups. To improve the precision of the quantitative assessment of lattice and magnetization dynamics alike, our group implemented a combination of UXRD and tr-MOKE in a singular experimental setup, which is to my knowledge, the first of its kind. I helped with the conception and commissioning of this novel experimental station, which allows the simultaneous observation of lattice and magnetization dynamics on an ultrafast timescale under identical excitation conditions. Furthermore, I developed a new X-ray diffraction measurement routine which significantly reduces the measurement time of UXRD experiments by up to an order of magnitude. It is called reciprocal space slicing (RSS) and utilizes an area detector to monitor the angular motion of X-ray diffraction peaks, which is associated with lattice constant changes, without a time-consuming scan of the diffraction angles with the goniometer. RSS is particularly useful for ultrafast diffraction experiments, since measurement time at large scale facilities like synchrotrons and free electron lasers is a scarce and expensive resource. However, RSS is not limited to ultrafast experiments and can even be extended to other diffraction techniques with neutrons or electrons.
Elementary particle physics is a contemporary topic in science that is slowly being integrated into high-school education. These new implementations are challenging teachers’ professional knowledge worldwide. Therefore, physics education research is faced with two important questions, namely, how can particle physics be integrated in high-school physics curricula and how best to support teachers in enhancing their professional knowledge on particle physics. This doctoral research project set up to provide better guidelines for answering these two questions by conducting three studies on high-school particle physics education.
First, an expert concept mapping study was conducted to elicit experts’ expectations on what high-school students should learn about particle physics. Overall, 13 experts in particle physics, computing, and physics education participated in 9 concept mapping rounds. The broad knowledge base of the experts ensured that the final expert concept map covers all major particle physics aspects. Specifically, the final expert concept map includes 180 concepts and examples, connected with 266 links and crosslinks. Among them are also several links to students’ prior knowledge in topics such as mechanics and thermodynamics. The high interconnectedness of the concepts shows possible opportunities for including particle physics as a context for other curricular topics. As such, the resulting expert concept map is showcased as a well-suited tool for teachers to scaffold their instructional practice.
Second, a review of 27 high-school physics curricula was conducted. The review uncovered which concepts related to particle physics can be identified in most curricula. Each curriculum was reviewed by two reviewers that followed a codebook with 60 concepts related to particle physics. The analysis showed that most curricula mention cosmology, elementary particles, and charges, all of which are considered theoretical particle physics concepts. None of the experimental particle physics concepts appeared in more than half of the reviewed curricula. Additional analysis was done on two curricular subsets, namely curricula with and curricula without an explicit particle physics chapter. Curricula with an explicit particle physics chapter mention several additional explicit particle physics concepts, namely the Standard Model of particle physics, fundamental interactions, antimatter research, and particle accelerators. The latter is an example of experimental particle physics concepts. Additionally, the analysis revealed that, overall, most curricula include Nature of Science and history of physics, albeit both are typically used as context or as a tool for teaching, respectively.
Third, a Delphi study was conducted to investigate stakeholders’ expectations regarding what teachers should learn in particle physics professional development programmes. Over 100 stakeholders from 41 countries represented four stakeholder groups, namely physics education researchers, research scientists, government representatives, and high-school teachers. The study resulted in a ranked list of the 13 most important topics to be included in particle physics professional development programmes. The highest-ranked topics are cosmology, the Standard Model, and real-life applications of particle physics. All stakeholder groups agreed on the overall ranking of the topics. While the highest-ranked topics are again more theoretical, stakeholders also expect teachers to learn about experimental particle physics topics, which are ranked as medium importance topics.
The three studies addressed two research aims of this doctoral project. The first research aim was to explore to what extent particle physics is featured in high-school physics curricula. The comparison of the outcomes of the curricular review and the expert concept map showed that curricula cover significantly less than what experts expect high-school students to learn about particle physics. For example, most curricula do not include concepts that could be classified as experimental particle physics. However, the strong connections between the different concept show that experimental particle physics can be used as context for theoretical particle physics concepts, Nature of Science, and other curricular topics. In doing so, particle physics can be introduced in classrooms even though it is not (yet) explicitly mentioned in the respective curriculum.
The second research aim was to identify which aspects of content knowledge teachers are expected to learn about particle physics. The comparison of the Delphi study results to the outcomes of the curricular review and the expert concept map showed that stakeholders generally expect teachers to enhance their school knowledge as defined by the curricula. Furthermore, teachers are also expected to enhance their deeper school knowledge by learning how to connect concepts from their school knowledge to other concepts in particle physics and beyond. As such, professional development programmes that focus on enhancing teachers’ school knowledge and deeper school knowledge best support teachers in building relevant context in their instruction.
Overall, this doctoral research project reviewed the current state of high-school particle physics education and provided guidelines for future enhancements of the particle physics content in high-school student and teacher education. The outcomes of the project support further implementations of particle physics in high-school education both as explicit content and as context for other curricular topics. Furthermore, the mixed-methods approach and the outcomes of this research project lead to several implications for professional development programmes and science education research, that are discussed in the final chapters of this dissertation.
How do different reset protocols affect ergodicity of a diffusion process in single-particle-tracking experiments? We here address the problem of resetting of an arbitrary stochastic anomalous-diffusion process (ADP) from the general mathematical points of view and assess ergodicity of such reset ADPs for an arbitrary resetting protocol. The process of stochastic resetting describes the events of the instantaneous restart of a particle’s motion via randomly distributed returns to a preset initial position (or a set of those). The waiting times of such resetting events obey the Poissonian, Gamma, or more generic distributions with specified conditions regarding the existence of moments. Within these general approaches, we derive general analytical results and support them by computer simulations for the behavior of the reset mean-squared displacement (MSD), the new reset increment-MSD (iMSD), and the mean reset time-averaged MSD (TAMSD). For parental nonreset ADPs with the MSD(t)∝ tμ we find a generic behavior and a switch of the short-time growth of the reset iMSD and mean reset TAMSDs from ∝ _μ for subdiffusive to ∝ _1 for superdiffusive reset ADPs. The critical condition for a reset ADP that recovers its ergodicity is found to be more general than that for the nonequilibrium stationary state, where obviously the iMSD and the mean TAMSD are equal. The consideration of the new statistical quantifier, the iMSD—as compared to the standard MSD—restores the ergodicity of an arbitrary reset ADP in all situations when the μth moment of the waiting-time distribution of resetting events is finite. Potential applications of these new resetting results are, inter alia, in the area of biophysical and soft-matter systems.
Over the past decades, there has been a growing interest in ‘extreme events’ owing to the increasing threats that climate-related extremes such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, etc., pose to society. While extreme events have diverse definitions across various disciplines, ranging from earth science to neuroscience, they are characterized mainly as dynamic occurrences within a limited time frame that impedes the normal functioning of a system. Although extreme events are rare in occurrence, it has been found in various hydro-meteorological and physiological time series (e.g., river flows, temperatures, heartbeat intervals) that they may exhibit recurrent behavior, i.e., do not end the lifetime of the system. The aim of this thesis to develop some
sophisticated methods to study various properties of extreme events.
One of the main challenges in analyzing such extreme event-like time series is that they have large temporal gaps due to the paucity of the number of observations of extreme events. As a result, existing time series analysis tools are usually not helpful to decode the underlying
information. I use the edit distance (ED) method to analyze extreme event-like time series in their unaltered form. ED is a specific distance metric, mainly designed to measure the similarity/dissimilarity between point process-like data. I combine ED with recurrence plot techniques to identify the recurrence property of flood events in the Mississippi River in the United States. I also use recurrence quantification analysis to show the deterministic properties
and serial dependency in flood events.
After that, I use this non-linear similarity measure (ED) to compute the pairwise dependency in extreme precipitation event series. I incorporate the similarity measure within the framework of complex network theory to study the collective behavior of climate extremes. Under this architecture, the nodes are defined by the spatial grid points of the given spatio-temporal climate dataset. Each node is associated with a time series corresponding to the temporal evolution
of the climate observation at that grid point. Finally, the network links are functions of the pairwise statistical interdependence between the nodes. Various network measures, such as degree, betweenness centrality, clustering coefficient, etc., can be used to quantify the network’s topology. We apply the methodology mentioned above to study the spatio-temporal coherence pattern of extreme rainfall events in the United States and the Ganga River basin, which reveals its relation to various climate processes and the orography of the region.
The identification of precursors associated with the occurrence of extreme events in the near future is extremely important to prepare the masses for an upcoming disaster and mitigate the potential risks associated with such events. Under this motivation, I propose an in-data prediction recipe for predicting the data structures that typically occur prior to extreme events using the Echo state network, a type of Recurrent Neural Network which is a part of the reservoir
computing framework. However, unlike previous works that identify precursory structures in the same variable in which extreme events are manifested (active variable), I try to predict these structures by using data from another dynamic variable (passive variable) which does not show large excursions from the nominal condition but carries imprints of these extreme events. Furthermore, my results demonstrate that the quality of prediction depends on the magnitude
of events, i.e., the higher the magnitude of the extreme, the better is its predictability skill. I show quantitatively that this is because the input signals collectively form a more coherent pattern for an extreme event of higher magnitude, which enhances the efficiency of the machine to predict the forthcoming extreme events.
There is a large variety of goals instructors have for laboratory courses, with different courses focusing on different subsets of goals. An often implicit, but crucial, goal is to develop students’ attitudes, views, and expectations about experimental physics to align with practicing experimental physicists. The assessment of laboratory courses upon this one dimension of learning has been intensively studied in U.S. institutions using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). However, there is no such an instrument available to use in Germany, and the influence of laboratory courses on students views about the nature of experimental physics is still unexplored at German-speaking institutions. Motivated by the lack of an assessment tool to investigate this goal in laboratory courses at German-speaking institutions, we present a translated version of the E-CLASS adapted to the context at German-speaking institutions. We call the German version of the E-CLASS, the GE-CLASS. We describe the translation process and the creation of an automated web-based system for instructors to assess their laboratory courses. We also present first results using GE-CLASS obtained at the University of Potsdam. A first comparison between E-CLASS and GE-CLASS results shows clear differences between University of Potsdam and U.S. students’ views and beliefs about experimental physics.
We introduce and study a Lévy walk (LW) model of particle spreading with a finite propagation speed combined with soft resets, stochastically occurring periods in which an harmonic external potential is switched on and forces the particle towards a specific position. Soft resets avoid instantaneous relocation of particles that in certain physical settings may be considered unphysical. Moreover, soft resets do not have a specific resetting point but lead the particle towards a resetting point by a restoring Hookean force. Depending on the exact choice for the LW waiting time density and the probability density of the periods when the harmonic potential is switched on, we demonstrate a rich emerging response behaviour including ballistic motion and superdiffusion. When the confinement periods of the soft-reset events are dominant, we observe a particle localisation with an associated non-equilibrium steady state. In this case the stationary particle probability density function turns out to acquire multimodal states. Our derivations are based on Markov chain ideas and LWs with multiple internal states, an approach that may be useful and flexible for the investigation of other generalised random walks with soft and hard resets. The spreading efficiency of soft-rest LWs is characterised by the first-passage time statistic.
Stellar interferometry is the only method in observational astronomy for obtaining the highest resolution images of astronomical targets. This method is based on combining light from two or more separate telescopes to obtain the complex visibility that contains information about the brightness distribution of an astronomical source. The applications of stellar interferometry have made significant contributions in the exciting research areas of astronomy and astrophysics, including the precise measurement of stellar diameters, imaging of stellar surfaces, observations of circumstellar disks around young stellar objects, predictions of Einstein's General relativity at the galactic center, and the direct search for exoplanets to name a few. One important related technique is aperture masking interferometry, pioneered in the 1960s, which uses a mask with holes at the re-imaged pupil of the telescope, where the light from the holes is combined using the principle of stellar interferometry. While this can increase the resolution, it comes with a disadvantage. Due to the finite size of the holes, the majority of the starlight (typically > 80 %) is lost at the mask, thus limiting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output images. This restriction of aperture masking only to the bright targets can be avoided using pupil remapping interferometry - a technique combining aperture masking interferometry and advances in photonic technologies using single-mode fibers. Due to the inherent spatial filtering properties, the single-mode fibers can be placed at the focal plane of the re-imaged pupil, allowing the utilization of the whole pupil of the telescope to produce a high-dynamic range along with high-resolution images. Thus, pupil remapping interferometry is one of the most promising application areas in the emerging field of astrophotonics.
At the heart of an interferometric facility, a beam combiner exists whose primary function is to combine light to obtain high-contrast fringes. A beam combiner can be as simple as a beam splitter or an anamorphic lens to combine light from 2 apertures (or telescopes) or as complex as a cascade of beam splitters and lenses to combine light for > 2 apertures. However, with the field of astrophotonics, interferometric facilities across the globe are increasingly employing some form of photonics technologies by using single-mode fibers or integrated optics (IO) chips as an efficient way to combine light from several apertures. The state-of-the-art instrument - GRAVITY at the very large telescope interferometer (VLTI) facility uses an IO-based beam combiner device reaching visibilities accuracy of better than < 0.25 %, which is roughly 50× as precise as a few decades back.
Therefore, in the context of IO-based components for applications in stellar interferometry, this Thesis describes the work towards the development of a 3-dimensional (3-D) IO device - a monolithic astrophotonics component containing both the pupil remappers and a discrete beam combiner (DBC). In this work, the pupil remappers are 3-D single-mode waveguides in a glass substrate collecting light from the re-imaged pupil of the telescope and feeding the light to a DBC, where the combination takes place. The DBC is a lattice of 3-D single-mode waveguides, which interact through evanescent coupling. By observing the output power of single-mode waveguides of the DBC, the visibilities are retrieved by using a calibrated transfer matrix ({U}) of the device.
The feasibility of the DBC in retrieving the visibilities theoretically and experimentally had already been studied in the literature but was only limited to laboratory tests with monochromatic light sources. Thus, a part of this work extends these studies by investigating the response of a 4-input DBC to a broad-band light source. Hence, the objectives of this Thesis are the following: 1) Design an IO device for broad-band light operation such that accurate and precise visibilities could be retrieved experimentally at astronomical H-band (1.5-1.65 μm), and 2) Validation of the DBC as a possible beam combination scheme for future interferometric facilities through on-sky testing at the William Herschel Telescope (WHT).
This work consisted of designing three different 3-D IO devices. One of the popular methods for fabricating 3-D photonic components in a glass substrate is ultra-fast laser inscription (ULI). Thus, manufacturing of the designed devices was outsourced to Politecnico di Milano as part of an iterative fabrication process using their state-of-the-art ULI facility. The devices were then characterized using a 2-beam Michelson interferometric setup obtaining both the monochromatic and polychromatic visibilities. The retrieved visibilities for all devices were in good agreement as predicted by the simulation results of a DBC, which confirms both the repeatability of the ULI process and the stability of the Michelson setup, thus fulfilling the first objective.
The best-performing device was then selected for the pupil-remapping of the WHT using a different optical setup consisting of a deformable mirror and a microlens array. The device successfully collected stellar photons from Vega and Altair. The visibilities were retrieved using a previously calibrated {U} but showed significant deviations from the expected results. Based on the analysis of comparable simulations, it was found that such deviations were primarily caused by the limited SNR of the stellar observations, thus constituting a first step towards the fulfillment of the second objective.
Understanding the changes that follow UV-excitation in thionucleobases is of great importance for the study of light-induced DNA lesions and, in a broader context, for their applications in medicine and biochemistry. Their ultrafast photophysical reactions can alter the chemical structure of DNA - leading to damages to the genetic code - as proven by the increased skin cancer risk observed for patients treated with thiouracil for its immunosuppressant properties.
In this thesis, I present four research papers that result from an investigation of the ultrafast dynamics of 2-thiouracil by means of ultrafast x-ray probing combined with electron spectroscopy. A molecular jet in the gas phase is excited with a uv pulse and then ionized with x-ray radiation from a Free Electron Laser. The kinetic energy of the emitted electrons is measured in a magnetic bottle spectrometer. The spectra of the measured photo and Auger electrons are used to derive a picture of the changes in the geometrical and electronic configurations. The results allow us to look at the dynamical processes from a new perspective, thanks to the element- and site- sensitivity of x-rays. The custom-built URSA-PQ apparatus used in the experiment is described. It has been commissioned and used at the FL24 beamline of the FLASH2 FEL, showing an electron kinetic energy resolution of ∆E/E ~ 40 and a pump-probe timing resolution of 190 f s. X-ray only photoelectron and Auger spectra of 2-thiouracil are extracted from the data and used as reference. Photoelectrons following the formation a 2p core hole are identified, as well as resonant and non-resonant Auger electrons. At the L 1 edge, Coster-Kronig decay is observed from the 2s core hole.
The UV-induced changes in the 2p photoline allow the study the electronic-state dynamics. With the use of an Excited-State Chemical Shift (ESCS) model, we observe a ultrafast ground-state relaxation within 250 f s. Furthermore, an oscillation with a 250 f s period is observed in the 2p binding energy, showing a coherent population exchange between electronic states. Auger electrons from the 2p core hole are analyzed and used to deduce a ultrafast C −S bond expansion on a sub 100 f s scale. A simple Coulomb-model, coupled to quantum chemical calculations, can be used to infer the geometrical changes in the molecular structure.
Organic solar cells offer an efficient and cost-effective alternative for solar energy harvesting. This type of photovoltaic cell typically consists of a blend of two organic semiconductors, an electron donating polymer and a low molecular weight electron acceptor to create what is known as a bulk heterojunction (BHJ) morphology. Traditionally, fullerene-based acceptors have been used for this purpose. In recent years, the development of new acceptor molecules, so-called non-fullerene acceptors (NFA), has breathed new life into organic solar cell research, enabling record efficiencies close to 19%. Today, NFA-based solar cells are approaching their inorganic competitors in terms of photocurrent generation, but lag in terms of open circuit voltage (V_OC). Interestingly, the V_OC of these cells benefits from small offsets of orbital energies at the donor-NFA interface, although previous knowledge considered large energy offsets to be critical for efficient charge carrier generation. In addition, there are several other electronic and structural features that distinguish NFAs from fullerenes.
My thesis focuses on understanding the interplay between the unique attributes of NFAs and the physical processes occurring in solar cells. By combining various experimental techniques with drift-diffusion simulations, the generation of free charge carriers as well as their recombination in state-of-the-art NFA-based solar cells is characterized. For this purpose, solar cells based on the donor polymer PM6 and the NFA Y6 have been investigated. The generation of free charge carriers in PM6:Y6 is efficient and independent of electric field and excitation energy. Temperature-dependent measurements show a very low activation energy for photocurrent generation (about 6 meV), indicating barrierless charge carrier separation. Theoretical modeling suggests that Y6 molecules have large quadrupole moments, leading to band bending at the donor-acceptor interface and thereby reducing the electrostatic Coulomb dissociation barrier. In this regard, this work identifies poor extraction of free charges in competition with nongeminate recombination as a dominant loss process in PM6:Y6 devices. Subsequently, the spectral characteristics of PM6:Y6 solar cells were investigated with respect to the dominant process of charge carrier recombination. It was found that the photon emission under open-circuit conditions can be almost entirely attributed to the occupation and recombination of Y6 singlet excitons. Nevertheless, the recombination pathway via the singlet state contributes only 1% to the total recombination, which is dominated by the charge transfer state (CT-state) at the donor-acceptor interface. Further V_OC gains can therefore only be expected if the density and/or recombination rate of these CT-states can be significantly reduced. Finally, the role of energetic disorder in NFA solar cells is investigated by comparing Y6 with a structurally related derivative, named N4. Layer morphology studies combined with temperature-dependent charge transport experiments show significantly lower structural and energetic disorder in the case of the PM6:Y6 blend. For both PM6:Y6 and PM6:N4, disorder determines the maximum achievable V_OC, with PM6:Y6 benefiting from improved morphological order. Overall, the obtained findings point to avenues for the realization of NFA-based solar cells with even smaller V_OC losses. Further reduction of nongeminate recombination and energetic disorder should result in organic solar cells with efficiencies above 20% in the future.
We study the probability density function (PDF) of the first-reaction times between a diffusive ligand and a membrane-bound, immobile imperfect target region in a restricted 'onion-shell' geometry bounded by two nested membranes of arbitrary shapes. For such a setting, encountered in diverse molecular signal transduction pathways or in the narrow escape problem with additional steric constraints, we derive an exact spectral form of the PDF, as well as present its approximate form calculated by help of the so-called self-consistent approximation. For a particular case when the nested domains are concentric spheres, we get a fully explicit form of the approximated PDF, assess the accuracy of this approximation, and discuss various facets of the obtained distributions. Our results can be straightforwardly applied to describe the PDF of the terminal reaction event in multi-stage signal transduction processes.
Weather extremes pose a persistent threat to society on multiple layers. Besides an average of ~37,000 deaths per year, climate-related disasters cause destroyed properties and impaired economic activities, eroding people's livelihoods and prosperity. While global temperature rises – caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – the direct impacts of climatic extreme events increase and will further intensify without proper adaptation measures. Additionally, weather extremes do not only have local direct effects. Resulting economic repercussions can propagate either upstream or downstream along trade chains causing indirect effects. One approach to analyze these indirect effects within the complex global supply network is the agent-based model Acclimate. Using and extending this loss-propagation model, I focus in this thesis on three aspects of the relation between weather extremes and economic repercussions.
First, extreme weather events cause direct impacts on local economic performance. I compute daily local direct output loss time series of heat stress, river floods, tropical cyclones, and their consecutive occurrence using (near-future) climate projection ensembles. These regional impacts are estimated based on physical drivers and local productivity distribution. Direct effects of the aforementioned disaster categories are widely heterogeneous concerning regional and temporal distribution. As well, their intensity changes differently under future warming. Focusing on the hurricane-impacted capital, I find that long-term growth losses increase with higher heterogeneity of a shock ensemble.
Second, repercussions are sectorally and regionally distributed via economic ripples within the trading network, causing higher-order effects. I use Acclimate to identify three phases of those economic ripples. Furthermore, I compute indirect impacts and analyze overall regional and global production and consumption changes. Regarding heat stress, global consumer losses double while direct output losses increase by a factor 1.5 between 2000 – 2039. In my research I identify the effect of economic ripple resonance and introduce it to climate impact research. This effect occurs if economic ripples of consecutive disasters overlap, which increases economic responses such as an enhancement of consumption losses. These loss enhancements can even be more amplified with increasing direct output losses, e.g. caused by climate crises.
Transport disruptions can cause economic repercussions as well. For this, I extend the model Acclimate with a geographical transportation route and expand the decision horizon of economic agents. Using this, I show that policy-induced sudden trade restrictions (e.g. a no-deal Brexit) can significantly reduce the longer-term economic prosperity of affected regions. Analyses of transportation disruptions in typhoon seasons indicate that severely affected regions must reduce production as demand falls during a storm. Substituting suppliers may compensate for fluctuations at the beginning of the storm, which fails for prolonged disruptions.
Third, possible coping mechanisms and adaptation strategies arise from direct and indirect economic responses to weather extremes. Analyzing annual trade changes due to typhoon-induced transport disruptions depict that overall exports rise. This trade resilience increases with higher network node diversification. Further, my research shows that a basic insurance scheme may diminish hurricane-induced long-term growth losses due to faster reconstruction in disasters aftermaths. I find that insurance coverage could be an economically reasonable coping scheme towards higher losses caused by the climate crisis. Indirect effects within the global economic network from weather extremes indicate further adaptation possibilities. For one, diversifying linkages reduce the hazard of sharp price increases. Next to this, close economic interconnections with regions that do not share the same extreme weather season can be economically beneficial in the medium run. Furthermore, economic ripple resonance effects should be considered while computing costs. Overall, an increase in local adaptation measures reduces economic ripples within the trade network and possible losses elsewhere. In conclusion, adaptation measures are necessary and potential present, but it seems rather not possible to avoid all direct or indirect losses.
As I show in this thesis, dynamical modeling gives valuable insights into how direct and indirect economic impacts arise from different categories of weather extremes. Further, it highlights the importance of resolving individual extremes and reflecting amplifying effects caused by incomplete recovery or consecutive disasters.
In this thesis, the dependencies of charge localization and itinerance in two classes of aromatic molecules are accessed: pyridones and porphyrins. The focus lies on the effects of isomerism, complexation, solvation, and optical excitation, which are concomitant with different crucial biological applications of specific members of these groups of compounds. Several porphyrins play key roles in the metabolism of plants and animals. The nucleobases, which store the genetic information in the DNA and RNA are pyridone derivatives. Additionally, a number of vitamins are based on these two groups of substances.
This thesis aims to answer the question of how the electronic structure of these classes of molecules is modified, enabling the versatile natural functionality. The resulting insights into the effect of constitutional and external factors are expected to facilitate the design of new processes for medicine, light-harvesting, catalysis, and environmental remediation.
The common denominator of pyridones and porphyrins is their aromatic character. As aromaticity was an early-on topic in chemical physics, the overview of relevant theoretical models in this work also mirrors the development of this scientific field in the 20th century. The spectroscopic investigation of these compounds has long been centered on their global, optical transition between frontier orbitals.
The utilization and advancement of X-ray spectroscopic methods characterizing the local electronic structure of molecular samples form the core of this thesis. The element selectivity of the near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) is employed to probe the unoccupied density of states at the nitrogen site, which is key for the chemical reactivity of pyridones and porphyrins. The results contribute to the growing database of NEXAFS features and their interpretation, e.g., by advancing the debate on the porphyrin N K-edge through systematic experimental and theoretical arguments. Further, a state-of-the-art laser pump – NEXAFS probe scheme is used to characterize the relaxation pathway of a photoexcited porphyrin on the atomic level.
Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) provides complementary results by accessing the highest occupied valence levels including symmetry information. It is shown that RIXS is an effective experimental tool to gain detailed information on charge densities of individual species in tautomeric mixtures. Additionally, the hRIXS and METRIXS high-resolution RIXS spectrometers, which have been in part commissioned in the course of this thesis, will gain access to the ultra-fast and thermal chemistry of pyridones, porphyrins, and many other compounds.
With respect to both classes of bio-inspired aromatic molecules, this thesis establishes that even though pyridones and porphyrins differ largely by their optical absorption bands and hydrogen bonding abilities, they all share a global stabilization of local constitutional changes and relevant external perturbation. It is because of this wide-ranging response that pyridones and porphyrins can be applied in a manifold of biological and technical processes.
Proteine sind an praktisch allen Prozessen in lebenden Zellen maßgeblich beteiligt. Auch in der Biotechnologie werden Proteine in vielfältiger Weise eingesetzt.
Ein Protein besteht aus einer Kette von Aminosäuren. Häufig lagern sich mehrere dieser Ketten zu größeren Strukturen und Funktionseinheiten, sogenannten Proteinkomplexen,
zusammen. Kürzlich wurde gezeigt, dass eine Proteinkomplexbildung bereits während der Biosynthese der Proteine (co-translational) stattfinden kann
und nicht stets erst danach (post-translational) erfolgt. Da Fehlassemblierungen von Proteinen zu Funktionsverlusten und adversen Effekten führen, ist eine präzise und verlässliche Proteinkomplexbildung sowohl für zelluläre Prozesse als auch für biotechnologische Anwendungen essenziell. Mit experimentellen Methoden lassen sich zwar u.a. die Stöchiometrie und die Struktur von Proteinkomplexen bestimmen,
jedoch bisher nicht die Dynamik der Komplexbildung auf unterschiedlichen Zeitskalen. Daher sind grundlegende Mechanismen der Proteinkomplexbildung noch nicht vollständig verstanden. Die hier vorgestellte, auf experimentellen Erkenntnissen aufbauende, computergestützte Modellierung der Proteinkomplexbildung erlaubt eine umfassende Analyse des Einflusses physikalisch-chemischer Parameter
auf den Assemblierungsprozess. Die Modelle bilden möglichst realistisch die experimentellen Systeme der Kooperationspartner (Bar-Ziv, Weizmann-Institut, Israel; Bukau und Kramer, Universität Heidelberg) ab, um damit die Assemblierung von Proteinkomplexen einerseits in einem quasi-zweidimensionalen synthetischen Expressionssystem (in vitro) und andererseits im Bakterium Escherichia coli (in vivo) untersuchen zu können. Mit Hilfe eines vereinfachten Expressionssystems, in dem die Proteine nur an die Chip-Oberfläche, aber nicht aneinander binden können, wird das theoretische Modell parametrisiert. In diesem vereinfachten in-vitro-System durchläuft die Effizienz der Komplexbildung drei Regime – ein bindedominiertes Regime, ein Mischregime und ein produktionsdominiertes Regime. Ihr Maximum erreicht die Effizienz dabei kurz nach dem Übergang vom bindedominierten ins Mischregime und fällt anschließend monoton ab. Sowohl im nicht-vereinfachten in-vitro- als auch im in-vivo-System koexistieren je zwei konkurrierende Assemblierungspfade: Im in-vitro-System erfolgt die Komplexbildung entweder spontan in wässriger Lösung (Lösungsassemblierung) oder aber in einer definierten Schrittfolge an der Chip-Oberfläche (Oberflächenassemblierung); Im in-vivo-System konkurrieren hingegen die co- und die post-translationale Komplexbildung. Es zeigt sich, dass die Dominanz der Assemblierungspfade im in-vitro-System zeitabhängig ist und u.a. durch die Limitierung und Stärke der Bindestellen auf der Chip-Oberfläche beeinflusst werden kann. Im in-vivo-System hat der räumliche Abstand zwischen den Syntheseorten der beiden Proteinkomponenten nur dann einen Einfluss auf die Komplexbildung, wenn die Untereinheiten schnell degradieren. In diesem Fall dominiert die co-translationale Assemblierung auch auf kurzen Zeitskalen deutlich, wohingegen es bei stabilen Untereinheiten zu einem Wechsel von der Dominanz der post- hin zu einer geringen Dominanz der co-translationalen Assemblierung kommt. Mit den in-silico-Modellen lässt sich neben der Dynamik u.a. auch die Lokalisierung der Komplexbildung und -bindung darstellen, was einen Vergleich der theoretischen Vorhersagen mit experimentellen Daten und somit eine Validierung der Modelle ermöglicht. Der hier präsentierte in-silico Ansatz ergänzt die experimentellen Methoden, und erlaubt so, deren Ergebnisse zu interpretieren und neue Erkenntnisse davon abzuleiten.
Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-based homo-, co- and ter-polymers are well-known for their ferroelectric and relaxor-ferroelectric properties. Their semi-crystalline morphology consists of crystalline and amorphous phases, plus interface regions in between, and governs the relevant electro-active properties. In this work, the influence of chemical, thermal and mechanical treatments on the structure and morphology of PVDF-based polymers and on the related ferroelectric/relaxor-ferroelectric properties is investigated. Polymer films were prepared in different ways and subjected to various treatments such as annealing, quenching and stretching. The resulting changes in the transitions and relaxations of the polymer samples were studied by means of dielectric, thermal, mechanical and optical techniques. In particular, the origin(s) behind the mysterious mid-temperature transition (T_{mid}) that is observed in all PVDF-based polymers was assessed. A new hypothesis is proposed to describe the T_{mid} transition as a result of multiple processes taking place within the temperature range of the transition. The contribution of the individual processes to the observed overall transition depends on both the chemical structure of the monomer units and the processing conditions which also affect the melting transition. Quenching results in a decrease of the overall crystallinity and in smaller crystallites. On samples quenched after annealing, notable differences in the fractions of different crystalline phases have been observed when compared to samples that had been slowly cooled. Stretching of poly(vinylidene fluoride-tetrafluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TFE)) films causes an increase in the fraction of the ferroelectric β-phase with simultaneous increments in the melting point (T_m) and the crystallinity (\chi_c) of the copolymer. While an increase in the stretching temperature does not have a profound effect on the amount of the ferroelectric phase, its stability appears to improve.
Measurements of the non-linear dielectric permittivity \varepsilon_2^\prime in a poly(vinylidenefluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE- CFE)) relaxor-ferroelectric (R-F) terpolymer reveal peaks at 30 and 80 °C that cannot be identified in conventional dielectric spectroscopy. The former peak is associated with T_{mid}\ and may help to understand the non-zero \varepsilon_2^\prime values that are found for the paraelectric terpolymer phase. The latter peak can also be observed during cooling of P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer samples at 100 °C and is due to conduction processes and space-charge polarization as a result of the accumulation of real charges at the electrode-sample interface. Annealing lowers the Curie-transition temperature of the terpolymer as a consequence of its smaller ferroelectric-phase fraction, which by default exists even in terpolymers with relatively high CFE content. Changes in the transition temperatures are in turn related to the behavior of the hysteresis curves observed on differently heat-treated samples. Upon heating, the hysteresis curves evolve from those known for a ferroelectric to those of a typical relaxor-ferroelectric material. Comparing dielectric-hysteresis loops obtained at various temperatures, we find that annealed terpolymer films show higher electric-displacement values and lower coercive fields than the non-annealed samples − irrespective of the measurement temperature − and also exhibit ideal relaxor-ferroelectric behavior at ambient temperatures, which makes them excellent candidates for related applications at or near room temperature. However, non-annealed films − by virtue of their higher ferroelectric activity − show a larger and more stable remanent polarization at room temperature, while annealed samples need to be poled below 0 °C to induce a well-defined polarization. Overall, by modifying the three phases in PVDF-based polymers, it has been demonstrated how the preparation steps and processing conditions can be tailored to achieve the desired properties that are optimal for specific applications.
The current generation of ground-based instruments has rapidly extended the limits of the range accessible to us with very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-rays, and more than a hundred sources have now been detected in the Milky Way. These sources represent only the tip of the iceberg, but their number has reached a level that allows population studies. In this work, a model of the global population of VHE gamma-ray sources based on the most comprehensive census of Galactic sources in this energy regime, the H.E.S.S. Galactic plane survey (HGPS), will be presented. A population synthesis approach was followed in the construction of the model. Particular attention was paid to correcting for the strong observational bias inherent in the sample of detected sources. The methods developed for estimating the model parameters have been validated with extensive Monte Carlo simulations and will be shown to provide unbiased estimates of the model parameters. With these methods, five models for different spatial distributions of sources have been constructed. To test the validity of these models, their predictions for the composition of sources within the sensitivity range of the HGPS are compared with the observed sample. With one exception, similar results are obtained for all spatial distributions, showing that the observed longitude profile and the source distribution over photon flux are in fair agreement with observation. Regarding the latitude profile and the source distribution over angular extent, it becomes apparent that the model needs to be further adjusted to bring its predictions in agreement with observation. Based on the model, predictions of the global properties of the Galactic population of VHE gamma-ray sources and the prospects of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be presented.
CTA will significantly increase our knowledge of VHE gamma-ray sources by lowering the threshold for source detection, primarily through a larger detection area compared to current-generation instruments. In ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, the sensitivity of an instrument depends strongly, in addition to the detection area, on the ability to distinguish images of air showers produced by gamma-rays from those produced by cosmic rays, which are a strong background. This means that the number of detectable sources depends on the background rejection algorithm used and therefore may also be increased by improving the performance of such algorithms. In this context, in addition to the population model, this work presents a study on the application of deep-learning techniques to the task of gamma-hadron separation in the analysis of data from ground-based gamma-ray instruments. Based on a systematic survey of different neural-network architectures, it is shown that robust classifiers can be constructed with competitive performance compared to the best existing algorithms. Despite the broad coverage of neural-network architectures discussed, only part of the potential offered by the
application of deep-learning techniques to the analysis of gamma-ray data is exploited in the context of this study. Nevertheless, it provides an important basis for further research on this topic.
Computation of the instantaneous phase and amplitude via the Hilbert Transform is a powerful tool of data analysis. This approach finds many applications in various science and engineering branches but is not proper for causal estimation because it requires knowledge of the signal’s past and future. However, several problems require real-time estimation of phase and amplitude; an illustrative example is phase-locked or amplitude-dependent stimulation in neuroscience. In this paper, we discuss and compare three causal algorithms that do not rely on the Hilbert Transform but exploit well-known physical phenomena, the synchronization and the resonance. After testing the algorithms on a synthetic data set, we illustrate their performance computing phase and amplitude for the accelerometer tremor measurements and a Parkinsonian patient’s beta-band brain activity.
In the frame of a world fighting a dramatic global warming caused by human-related activities, research towards the development of renewable energies plays a crucial role. Solar energy is one of the most important clean energy sources and its role in the satisfaction of the global energy demand is set to increase. In this context, a particular class of materials captured the attention of the scientific community for its attractive properties: halide perovskites. Devices with perovskite as light-absorber saw an impressive development within the last decade, reaching nowadays efficiencies comparable to mature photovoltaic technologies like silicon solar cells. Yet, there are still several roadblocks to overcome before a wide-spread commercialization of this kind of devices is enabled. One of the critical points lies at the interfaces: perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are made of several layers with different chemical and physical features. In order for the device to function properly, these properties have to be well-matched.
This dissertation deals with some of the challenges related to interfaces in PSCs, with a focus on the interface between the perovskite material itself and the subsequent charge transport layer. In particular, molecular assemblies with specific properties are deposited on the perovskite surface to functionalize it. The functionalization results in energy level alignment adjustment, interfacial losses reduction, and stability improvement.
First, a strategy to tune the perovskite’s energy levels is introduced: self-assembled monolayers of dipolar molecules are used to functionalize the surface, obtaining simultaneously a shift in the vacuum level position and a saturation of the dangling bonds at the surface. A shift in the vacuum level corresponds to an equal change in work function, ionization energy, and electron affinity. The direction of the shift depends on the direction of the collective interfacial dipole. The magnitude of the shift can be tailored by controlling the deposition parameters, such as the concentration of the solution used for the deposition. The shift for different molecules is characterized by several non-invasive techniques, including in particular Kelvin probe. Overall, it is shown that it is possible to shift the perovskite energy levels in both directions by several hundreds of meV. Moreover, interesting insights on the molecules deposition dynamics are revealed.
Secondly, the application of this strategy in perovskite solar cells is explored. Devices with different perovskite compositions (“triple cation perovskite” and MAPbBr3) are prepared. The two resulting model systems present different energetic offsets at the perovskite/hole-transport layer interface. Upon tailored perovskite surface functionalization, the devices show a stabilized open circuit voltage (Voc) enhancement of approximately 60 meV on average for devices with MAPbBr3, while the impact is limited on triple-cation solar cells. This suggests that the proposed energy level tuning method is valid, but its effectiveness depends on factors such as the significance of the energetic offset compared to the other losses in the devices.
Finally, the above presented method is further developed by incorporating the ability to interact with the perovskite surface directly into a novel hole-transport material (HTM), named PFI. The HTM can anchor to the perovskite halide ions via halogen bonding (XB). Its behaviour is compared to that of another HTM (PF) with same chemical structure and properties, except for the ability of forming XB. The interaction of perovskite with PFI and PF is characterized through UV-Vis, atomic force microscopy and Kelvin probe measurements combined with simulations. Compared to PF, PFI exhibits enhanced resilience against solvent exposure and improved energy level alignment with the perovskite layer. As a consequence, devices comprising PFI show enhanced Voc and operational stability during maximum-power-point tracking, in addition to hysteresis reduction. XB promotes the formation of a high-quality interface by anchoring to the halide ions and forming a stable and ordered interfacial layer, showing to be a particularly interesting candidate for the development of tailored charge transport materials in PSCs.
Overall, the results exposed in this dissertation introduce and discuss a versatile tool to functionalize the perovskite surface and tune its energy levels. The application of this method in devices is explored and insights on its challenges and advantages are given. Within this frame, the results shed light on XB as ideal interaction for enhancing stability and efficiency in perovskite-based devices.
Organic solar cells (OSCs), in recent years, have shown high efficiencies through the development of novel non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs). Fullerene derivatives have been the centerpiece of the accepting materials used throughout organic photovoltaic (OPV) research. However, since 2015 novel NFAs have been a game-changer and have overtaken fullerenes. However, the current understanding of the properties of NFAs for OPV is still relatively limited and critical mechanisms defining the performance of OPVs are still topics of debate.
In this thesis, attention is paid to understanding reduced-Langevin recombination with respect to the device physics properties of fullerene and non-fullerene systems. The work is comprised of four closely linked studies. The first is a detailed exploration of the fill factor (FF) expressed in terms of transport and recombination properties in a comparison of fullerene and non-fullerene acceptors. We investigated the key reason behind the reduced FF in the NFA (ITIC-based) devices which is faster non-geminate recombination relative to the fullerene (PCBM[70]-based) devices. This is then followed by a consideration of a newly synthesized NFA Y-series derivative which exhibits the highest power conversion efficiency for OSC at the time. Such that in the second study, we illustrated the role of disorder on the non-geminate recombination and charge extraction of thick NFA (Y6-based) devices. As a result, we enhanced the FF of thick PM6:Y6 by reducing the disorder which leads to suppressing the non-geminate recombination toward non-Langevin system. In the third work, we revealed the reason behind thickness independence of the short circuit current of PM6:Y6 devices, caused by the extraordinarily long diffusion length of Y6. The fourth study entails a broad comparison of a selection of fullerene and non-fullerene blends with respect to charge generation efficiency and recombination to unveil the importance of efficient charge generation for achieving reduced recombination.
I employed transient measurements such as Time Delayed Collection Field (TDCF), Resistance dependent Photovoltage (RPV), and steady-state techniques such as Bias Assisted Charge Extraction (BACE), Temperature-Dependent Space Charge Limited Current (T-SCLC), Capacitance-Voltage (CV), and Photo-Induce Absorption (PIA), to analyze the OSCs.
The outcomes in this thesis together draw a complex picture of multiple factors that affect reduced-Langevin recombination and thereby the FF and overall performance. This provides a suitable platform for identifying important parameters when designing new blend systems. As a result, we succeeded to improve the overall performance through enhancing the FF of thick NFA device by adjustment of the amount of the solvent additive in the active blend solution. It also highlights potentially critical gaps in the current experimental understanding of fundamental charge interaction and recombination dynamics.
Extending synchrotron X-ray refraction techniques to the quantitative analysis of metallic materials
(2022)
In this work, two X-ray refraction based imaging methods, namely, synchrotron X-ray refraction radiography (SXRR) and synchrotron X-ray refraction computed tomography (SXRCT), are applied to analyze quantitatively cracks and porosity in metallic materials. SXRR and SXRCT make use of the refraction of X-rays at inner surfaces of the material, e.g., the surfaces of cracks and pores, for image contrast. Both methods are, therefore, sensitive to smaller defects than their absorption based counterparts X-ray radiography and computed tomography. They can detect defects of nanometric size. So far the methods have been applied to the analysis of ceramic materials and fiber reinforced plastics. The analysis of metallic materials requires higher photon energies to achieve sufficient X-ray transmission due to their higher density. This causes smaller refraction angles and, thus, lower image contrast because the refraction index depends on the photon energy. Here, for the first time, a conclusive study is presented exploring the possibility to apply SXRR and SXRCT to metallic materials. It is shown that both methods can be optimized to overcome the reduced contrast due to smaller refraction angles. Hence, the only remaining limitation is the achievable X-ray transmission which is common to all X-ray imaging methods. Further, a model for the quantitative analysis of the inner surfaces is presented and verified.
For this purpose four case studies are conducted each posing a specific challenge to the imaging task. Case study A investigates cracks in a coupon taken from an aluminum weld seam. This case study primarily serves to verify the model for quantitative analysis and prove the sensitivity to sub-resolution features. In case study B, the damage evolution in an aluminum-based particle reinforced metal-matrix composite is analyzed. Here, the accuracy and repeatability of subsequent SXRR measurements is investigated showing that measurement errors of less than 3 % can be achieved. Further, case study B marks the fist application of SXRR in combination with in-situ tensile loading. Case study C is out of the highly topical field of additive manufacturing. Here, porosity in additively manufactured Ti-Al6-V4 is analyzed with a special interest in the pore morphology. A classification scheme based on SXRR measurements is devised which allows to distinguish binding defects from keyhole pores even if the defects cannot be spatially resolved. In case study D, SXRCT is applied to the analysis of hydrogen assisted cracking in steel. Due to the high X-ray attenuation of steel a comparatively high photonenergy of 50 keV is required here. This causes increased noise and lower contrast in the data compared to the other case studies. However, despite the lower data quality a quantitative analysis of the occurance of cracks in dependence of hydrogen content and applied mechanical load is possible.
Ground-based astronomy is set to employ next-generation telescopes with apertures larger than 25 m in diameter before this decade is out. Such giant telescopes observe their targets through a larger patch of turbulent atmosphere, demanding that most of the instruments behind them must also grow larger to make full use of the collected stellar flux. This linear scaling in size greatly complicates the design of astronomical instrumentation, inflating their cost quadratically. Adaptive optics (AO) is one approach to circumvent this scaling law, but it can only be done to an extent before the cost of the corrective system itself overwhelms that of the instrument or even that of the telescope. One promising technique for miniaturizing the instruments and thus driving down their cost is to replace some, or all, of the free space bulk optics in the optical train with integrated photonic components.
Photonic devices, however, do their work primarily in single-mode waveguides, and the atmospherically-distorted starlight must first be efficiently coupled into them if they are to outperform their bulk optic counterparts. This is doable by two means: AO systems can again help control the angular size and motion of seeing disks to the point where they will couple efficiently into astrophotonic components, but this is only feasible for the brightest of objects and over limited fields of view. Alternatively, tapered fiber devices known as photonic lanterns — with their ability to convert multimode into single-mode optical fields — can be used to feed speckle patterns into single-mode integrated optics. They, nonetheless, must conserve the degrees of freedom, and the number of output waveguides will quickly grow out of control for uncorrected large telescopes. An AO-assisted photonic lantern fed by a partially corrected wavefront presents a compromise that can have a manageable size if the trade-off between the two methods is chosen carefully. This requires end-to-end simulations that take into account all the subsystems upstream of the astrophotonic instrument, i.e., the atmospheric layers, the telescope, the AO system, and the photonic lantern, before a decision can be made on sizing the multiplexed integrated instrument.
The numerical models that simulate atmospheric turbulence and AO correction are presented in this work. The physics and models for optical fibers, arrays of waveguides, and photonic lanterns are also provided. The models are on their own useful in understanding the behavior of the individual subsystems involved and are also used together to compute the optimum sizing of photonic lanterns for feeding astrophotonic instruments. Additionally, since photonic lanterns are a relatively new concept, two novel applications are discussed for them later in this thesis: the use of mode-selective photonic lanterns (MSPLs) to reduce the multiplicity of multiplexed integrated instruments and the combination of photonic lanterns with discrete beam combiners (DBCs) to retrieve the modal content in an optical waveguide.