Monday, June 30, 2008

Confusing matrix elements

When we discuss about the matrix element of optical transition, we often can use either of the following ways:

1) H1=exE, where e is the electronic charge, E is the electric field
2) H1=epA/m, where p is the momentum of the electron and A is the vector potential.

Following approach 1):

transition rate:
W=|<φi|exE0f>|2 δ(Ei-Ef-
ħω)=e2E02|<φi|x|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

Power:
P=
ħωe2E02|<φi|x|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

Dielectric constant (imaginary part):
ε2=P/(ε0ωE02)=ħe20|<φi|x|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

However, if we use the approach 2)

transition rate:
W=|<φi|
epA/mf>|2 δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)=(e/m)2A02|<φi|p|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

Power:
P=
ħω(e/m)2A02|<φi|p|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

Dielectric constant (imaginary part):
using the relation that E0=
iωA0
ε2=P/(ε0ωE02)=ħ(e/m)2/(ε0ω2)|<φi|p|φf>|2δ(Ei-Ef-ħω)

We can easily see that the
function ε2(ω) in the two cases are very different, which one is correct and why?

In all the books I read, approach 2) seems to be used, why?

Quantization of electromagnetic field:

Vector potential:

An(r)=sqrt(ħ/2ε0ω)(an+an)un(r)

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Useful thermoconductivities



Material

Temperature

Thermoconductivity (W/mK)

Working temperature (K)

Apiezon N

293

0.194

4 - 300

4

0.095

Varnish

300

0.44

423

100

0.24

77

0.22

4.2

0.062

1

0.034

Crycon grease

4.2

0.1

2

0.03

Copper

300

400

Silver

300

429

Gold

300

318

Stainless steel

300

11-- 45

air

300

0.025


Wednesday, June 25, 2008

evaporation

423Kcryoncongrease

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

What I understand for the Mossbauer s...





What I understand for the Mossbauer spectroscopy


1) Recoil-free absorption spectra, similar to the optical absorption spectra.
Here the key is that in a solid, the atoms can not move freely. In fact, the motion of atoms are described by the vibrational spectra as collective phenomena. In this case, the energy involved is quantized, and there is a lower cut off.
We can estimate the lower cut off using

E_{min}~k_BT_{Debye}/N^{1/3}


eq=E_{min}=k_BT_{Debye}/N^{1/3}



For a 300K Debye temperature and N~10^23, we get E_{min}~1e-9 J.

At the same time, we can calculate the recoil energy of a certain nucleus

E_{recoil}=\frac{p^2}{2m}=\frac{1}{2m}(\frac{h}{\lambda})^2


eq=E_{recoil}=\frac{p^2}{2m}=\frac{1}{2m}(\frac{h}{\lambda})^2


Using Fe57 as an example, if it is excited by 100 keV gamma ray, the recoil energy is 3e-20, which means that no phonon can be created. Therefore, the whole crystal will recoil, leaving the recoil speed 1e-21 m/s. In contrast the single nuclear recoil speed can be as high as 500 m/s.

This is the way to get recoil free absorption.

2) discrete peaks due to separate nuclear energy levels

3) nuclear energy levels may change due to .

    A electric interaction

    a) isomer shift, the monopole effect of the environment to the nucleus
     This comes from the interaction between charge of electrons and the nucleus. Because the nucleus is so small, only the s electron that has some density at the center of the atom can have significant interaction. For example, Fe3+ has more isomer shift then Fe2+ because 3d electrons can screen 4s electron, putting them slightly out of the center of the atom.

    b) quadropole splitting, the interaction between the electric quadrapole of nucleus, i.e. the field gradient from the electrons surrounding the nucleus.
   
    B magnetic interaction
    a) Zeeman effect: E=\muB, where \mu is the magnetic moment of the nucleus.


Other remarks,

   Normally, Co57 in Rh is used as source, because Co57 can decay into excited state of Fe57 (I=5/2) state, it will later decay  I=5/2->I=3/2 state and I=3/2->I=1/2. Because the I=1/2 is the ground state of Co57. The real useful radiation source is I=3/2->I=1/2.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Polaron activation energy


In the simplest scenario, we can assume two parabolic functions as the potential wells for the two lattice cites.

V1=(x-x0)2
V2=(x+x0)2

then the activation energy is where the two potential cross: V1=V2.

Here we get E=0 and Ea=V1=V2=x02.

In the case of optical process, we are talking about vertical excitation:
then the excitation is from the bottom of a well to the edge of the other well.

Let x=x0, V2=4*x02=4Ea, this is where the Eopt=4*Ea comes from.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Operation of Bruker 113V

Turn on

Bolometer

Change diamond filter to position 2 before pumping

Connect pump station to the bolometer

Pump overnight using roughing pump according to instruction

Switch to turbo to get better vacuum

Precool bolometer using liquid nitrogen (fill twice to make sure it is full in both chamber) (see manual)

Precool for 15 minutes

Close the valve that connects the pumping station to the bolometer

Shutdown the pumping station according to the instruction and move it away

Blow out the liquid nitrogen from the Helium reservoir using He gas

Transport liquid He to the reservoir

Turn the diamond filter to position 1 for measurement

Turn the 3 switches on the preamplifier on


Spectrometer

Open the nitrogen gas valve (main, scanner and vent) on the wall

Close the valve that connects spectrometer to the pump

Vent the system (by ordering vent optics from the control panel)

Fire the Hg lamp

Turn on the scanner

Put in the sample assembly

Do a few test runs on the mirror and the sample to check if the level is consistent with previous runs

Evacuate the system by ordering so from the control panel

Close the vent valve

Open the valve that connects the spectrometer to the pump slowly

Do a few test runs to check if the system is stabilized to run the real experiement


Masurement…

Shut down

Turn off the three switches of the bolometer


Open the vent valve

Close the valve that connects spectrometer to the pump

Vent the system


Take the sample assembly out and put back the original lid

Close nitrogen gas valves (main, scanner and vent) on the wall

Evacuate the system by ordering so from the control panel

Open the valve that connects the spectrometer to the pump slowly


Monday, June 2, 2008

Magnet Lab manual is now posted to the Xpy.Daov space.
The link is:
http://xpydaov.spaces.live.com/

Thursday, May 29, 2008

vibrational modes for WS2

We can solve the vibrational modes from the Hamiltonian of classical mechanics.

Assuming:

1) There is one spring constant k, and two kinds of masses: m for S and M for W.

2) The coordinates are (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) for S and (x3,y3) for W.

Using {x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3} as basis, we can get the matrix:


,






Mode set one:







Mode set two (translation):









Mode set three:

Monday, May 19, 2008

DC conductivity of metal

σ = nq2τ/m

where n is the density of carrier, q is the charge of the carriers, tau is the
τ time, m is the effective mass.

The temperature dependence of
σ comes from the temperature dependence of τ.

τ can be found from scattering theory. It turns out that

1/
τ ~ A2, where A is the amplitude of the vibration.

A2 ~ n, where n is the number of phonons.

As we know that <n>=1/(exp(h
ω/kBT)-1).

At hight T, <n> ~ T, which is the linear relation found for 1/
τ or σ.

At low T, we have to consider not only the number of vibrational modes excited, but also the scattering effect of these mode.

The former gives T-3 relation and the latter gives T2. So the total relation will be T-5.



Thursday, May 1, 2008

sum rule in SI


neff=
0ωσ1dω/(π/2*ωp2)

where
ωp2=e2/(V0*m*ε0), V0 is the volume for the unit cell.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Making a pellet with correct density and thickness: As we know the mean free path of a pellet is: lambda=4*R/3/rou, where R is the particle radius, rou is volume density. We want to make a pellet because our sing crystal sample is too thick to transmit light. Then we want to grind sample to small particles that can transmit light and put them into pellets. The keys are: 1) pellet thickness d should be slightly larger than the mean free path: d > lambda =4*R/3/rou 2) effective thickness (deff) should be small enough so that light can penetrate: deff =d*rou < 1/alpha, where alpha is the absorption coefficient. Thus the correct thickness is: 4R/3/rou < d < 1/alpha/rou is the real condition that we want to meet. There is a implicit condition here: R < 3/alpha/4, which is very important. In conclusion, to make a good pellet: 1) particle size has to be R < 3/alpha/4 2) sample thickness 4R/3/rou < d < 1/alpha/rou, which can be tuned by the volume concentration rou. Example: If we have alpha=1e7 m^{-1}, then the condition of a good pellet is : 1) R < 75 nm. 2) d < 1e7/rou This condition can not be realized because the particle size needs to be very small.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

where is the most color of the world coming from?

All the colors of insulators are decided by transmittance instead of reflectance. This has been a huge confusion that I just make it clear myself not so long ago. In most insulators, the refractive index n is between 1 and 3, therefore the reflectance R=(1-n)2/(1+n)2 is between 10% and 20%. This is not a small amount of light, however, this part of light is normally not so colorful either. That's because n is not rapidly frequency dependent. We can see this from our everyday experience. Any flat surface will reflect white light, no matter what color the surface is.

If everything reflects white light, how come we see a colorful world? The reason is that surface roughness disperses reflection, making this part of light only important when you have a flat surface and you are looking at a appropriate angle. So, the colorful light we see on normal stuff is actually from double transmittance, because it does not care about the surface roughness. Remember, this part of light can be as much as 80-90% of the total light illuminated on the material. It acts like reflectance because it is transmitted twice. It is colorful because the color is filtered by the media. (As we know, absorption is truly a strong frequency dependent quantity.)

The question immediately follows is that if what we see is transmittance, why most of the stuff is not transparent at all. This is another confusing phenomenon that took me a long time to understand. Actually this has to do with scattering again. If you have a big piece of NaCl single crystal, it should be transparent. But if you grind it into powder, it will keep the color, but become not transparent due to too much scattering at the powder surface. In everyday life, the stuff we see all contain so called pigments, which are colorful transparent small particles. They act like powders, which keeps the color, but not the transparency. If you look everything under optical microscopy, you can see that. Another easy way to verify this is that there is no opaque and colorful (not black) single crystal.

Back to the transition metal oxides. Their band gap is often large enough to leave all the visible range in the gap. In that case, in principle, all the visible lights should go through, making these oxides white or colorless. However this is only true for Sc2O3 and TiO2 when there is not 3d electrons left on the metal ion. Other oxides are normally black and their powder shows colors. The reason is there is the d-d transition. For example, NiO, the electronic configuration is 3d8, (5t2g,3eg), which can be excited to 3d8* (4t2g, 3eg). The energy is in the visible range. The oscillator strength (the absolute value of the absorption) is however much smaller (normally 2 to 3 order of magnitude) than the O-p to Ni-d charge transfer excitation, simply because these kind of excitations are symmetry forbidden.

If it is so small, should it be so important? The answer is yes, because the absorption does not need to be large to make a 1 mm thick sample colorful or even black. We can easily estimate this: to make a 1mm thick sample black, the absorption coeffcient
α> 1/1mm = 1000 1/m. (definition of alpha is that transmitted light intensity I=I0*exp(-α*d), where d is the thickness). If we take one step further, we can estimate extinction coefficient: k=α*c/(ω*2), where c is the speed of light, ω is the angular frequency. For a light with wave length 500 nm, α = 100 /m corresponds to k= 4e-3. This is so small that you can not it in a figure that is scaled to a charge transfer excitations. In fact, you have to use logarithmic scale to bring this detail up. This also explains why the powder is colorful. Because the transmittance depends on the absorption coefficient alpha and sample thickness. As long as the sample is small enough, it is not black anymore. Instead it will show the intrinsic color which corresponds to the small excitation in the visible range. After all, green color for NiO, red color for Fe2O3 (the rust) are their intrinsic properties.


Saturday, April 5, 2008

bandgap_and _colors














Color and band gap of 3d transition metal oxides


mateials
Band
gap
(eV)
IBulk
Film
(100 nm)
Powder
(10 micron)
alpha
Fe2O3
(Hametite)
2.34


black


Fe3O4
0.05
black

BiFeO3
2.7
black

yellow


NiO
3.4
black

TiO2
3.03colorless










Monday, March 24, 2008

People often use interference between the reflected light from front and back surface to measure the thickness of a film. However, there is this a very important formula:

d=nu/(2*n)*), where nu is the frequency difference (difference of 1/lambda ), n is the refractive index, and d is the film thickness.

The caveat is that, we should watch out for the absorption (or the extinction coefficient k).

The formula comes from interference between reflection of from and back surface of a material. However, it does not consider the phase shift of the reflectance, and besides, it does not consider the phaseshift of the transmission of the back-surface reflection.

The problem only goes away when k is very small.

Because the phaseshift dependce on

tan(theta)=epsilon2/epsilon1=2nk/(n^2-k^2),

where theta is the phase shift.

If k<<n, theta~0. Then there is no problem, fortunately, it is the case most of the time.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Interesting color


If the material is has a single band (band gap Eg), the color depends on that only.

Eg
Tranmission/ color
reflection/ color
color of powder

>3.2 eVlarge transmission / no color
small reflection / no color
white!

1.6eV< <3.2 eVdepends on thickness
depends on thickness
change color with powder size

<1.6 eVnone
metallic lusters
may have different color (e.g. copper: red)
never change color with size



The color is very interesting and confusing. Actually, all the color we see is the color of transmittance color!!

Some may say, there are a lot of non-transparent colorful stuff. That's illusion of color. Let's use paint as an example. The paint contains many small transparent small particles (which is also called pigments). It is the reflection between interfaces makes the light not able to go all the way through, and in turn make the paint not transparent. The real color we normally see is the double transmitted light from the back surface.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Relation between optical functions

We measure reflection R in the expreiment.

Using R we can calculation the phase shift:

θ(ω) = ω/π ∫ log(√(R/R0))/(ω022)dω0

Given R and θ as functions of ω, one can calculate all the optical functions.

1) n and k (refractive index and extinction factor):

because R=((n-1)2+k2)/((n+1)2+k2)

k2=4n/(1-R)-(n+1)2

therefore:

n=(1-R)/(1+R+2*√(R)cos(θ))

hence:

k=√(R(n+1)2-(n-1)2)/√(1-R)

2) other functions:

ε1=n2-k2;

ε2=2nk

σ12*ω*ε0

α=k*ω/c, where c is the speed of light


Friday, February 29, 2008

Mean free path as a function of density in volume and particle size:

assuming a unit volume for KCl, then the density will be:

rou=V0, where V0 is the volume of the sample.

Number of particles will be:

Np=V0/V, where V=4pi/3*R^3 is the volume of the particles,

then Np=V0/(4pi/3*R^3)

The mean free path will be:

lambda=1/simga/Np, where sigma=pi*R^2 is the crossection of the particle.

Therefore lambda=4R/3/rou

Example:

rou=0.01, R=1e-6 meter

then the mean free path is:

lambda=1.3e-4 meter which is 0.13 mm.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Xpy log

2007/10/18

1) uiplot
X 2) dataoperationframe: we need to add reset group, reset all. and put save at the beginning.
X 3) write the part to load two files to calculate ratio
X 4) export to ascii
X 7) data explorer for everything
X 8) put "group" operation to the ui
9) load data with time
10) calculate the time constant
X 11) put file and datainfo on printed pages
X 12) dataoperation need to be able to rego.
X 13) make XpyFigure a DataFigure
14) copy and paste
Bugs to fix
* too slow opening data explorer
v * memory leak (looks like it is still leaking, but better)
X * data saving can not update


==========================================
2007/10/25
I decided to switch to python2.5 in order to fix the memory leak problem.
Python2.5 package I have:

python-2.5.1.msi
scipy-0.6.0.win32-py2.5.exe
PIL-1.1.6.win32-py2.5.exe
numpy-1.0.3.1.win32-py2.5.exe
matplotlib-0.90.1-py2.5-win32.egg
matplotlib-0.90.1.win32-py2.5.exe
ipython-0.8.1.win32.exe
basemap-0.9.5.win32-py2.5.exe
==========================================


2007/10/26

I started the programming on Sep 16 2007, it has been 40 days and I finally have version 1.0 released. This version is not perfect at all. But for the time being, it is already very useful for data analysis. There are a lot of to do including bugs to fix, more gui tools to make and make data analysis functions to add. However, the infrastructure is built. So all we have to do is to add on stuff.

To do
add date
finish date
comments

functions




uiplot2007/10/26
N/A any more since I have separated plotcontrol


progress bar
2007/10/26


copy and paste
2007/10/2611/02/2007


xpyfigure hold on/off
2007/10/26
done


new numeric/string
new arbitrary member


can be done using copy/paste


exlporer window as subwin

N/A


to be able to explore unlimited number of layers (two listboxes, like window style)

10/28/2007



peak analysis

11/03 partly done







xyz plot

image done 11/19


py2exe

11/19/2007
1) cd current version dicrectory
2) import xpygui
3) cd ..
4) change setup.py to match current version
5)copy image folder to dist folder
6) run setup py2exe

separate figure control window

11/23/2007


balloon help

11/22/2007


pmw and py2exe

11/23/2007
change bundlepmw:
regsub.gsub to re.sub
run bundlepmw
copy pmw.py pmwblt.py pmwcolor.py to xpy1.26

put on internet space to be downloaded

11/27/2007


log operation of dataobject

11/29/2007


fix label to support real inline latex


this is not trivial at all. I tried twice, this time I failed again. What happens is Pylab only accept the entire text as Latex string. You can not embed some Latex in normal text.
I guess I can live without this inline Latex support.






complete support for physical units




plot numsheet?



add single analysis to plotfig
idea: make ageneric analysis procedure that can take a spectrum and some input and plot the result



unit of plotting as a check box in plotcontrolwindow
done


















make list working as well as dataobject








Tix progressbar



Tix tree



tktable



wxpython investigation








new object menu in the data explorer



command window (shell)




spread sheet for displaying data








new object in the right click menu




fix the loading problem
























bug fixing or efficiency improvment




too slow opening explorer
2007/10/26fixed for new explorer


memory leak
2007/10/26the memory leak may come from pylab
partly fixed by switching to python 2.51

newfig after saving




date missing

done 10/31


compress data

done using pick and gzip


slow garbage collection




explorer for figure doesn't have context menu
















Xpy to do list

Learn





Python





Package






wxPython





root window (console)













Do





GUI





Shell



Spreadsheet










Data analysis

physical units, physical quantity representation










Data organization












Data visualization

com for microsoft spreadsheet



contextmenu and explorermenu for an object