No Arabic abstract
The behaviour of electron emission under electron impact at very low energy is of great importance in many applications such as high energy physics, satellites, nuclear reactors, etc. However the question of the total electron reflectivity is still in discussion. Our experimental and theoretical studies show that the total reflectivity at very low energy is far from being an obvious fact. Moreover, our results show that the yield is close to zero and not equal to one for low energy incident electron.
Secondary electron emission (SEE) from solids plays an important role in many areas of science and technology.1 In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the experimental and theoretical studies of SEE. A recent study proposed that the reflectivity of very low energy electrons from solid surface approaches unity in the limit of zero electron energy2,3,4, If this was indeed the case, this effect would have profound implications on the formation of electron clouds in particle accelerators,2-4 plasma measurements with electrostatic Langmuir probes, and operation of Hall plasma thrusters for spacecraft propulsion5,6. It appears that, the proposed high electron reflectivity at low electron energies contradicts to numerous previous experimental studies of the secondary electron emission7. The goal of this note is to discuss possible causes of these contradictions.
Surface erosion and secondary electron emission (SEE) have been identified as the most critical life-limiting factors in channel walls of Hall-effect thrusters for space propulsion. Recent wall concepts based on micro-architected surfaces have been proposed to mitigate surface erosion and SEE. The idea behind these designs is to take advantage of very-high surface-to-volume ratios to reduce SEE and ion erosion by internal trapping and redeposition. This has resulted in renewed interest to study electron-electron processes in relevant thruster wall materials. In this work, we present calculations of SEE yields in micro-porous hexagonal BN surfaces using stochastic simulations of electron-material interactions in discretized surface geometries. Our model consists of two complementary parts. First we study SEE as a function of primary electron energy and incidence angle in flat surfaces using Monte Carlo simulations of electron multi-scattering processes. The results are then used to represent the response function of discrete surface elements to individual electron rays generated using a ray-tracing Monte Carlo model. We find that micro-porous surfaces result in SEE yield reductions of over 50% in the energy range experienced in Hall thrusters. This points to the suitability of these micro-architected surface concepts to mitigate SEE-related issues in compact electric propulsion devices.
The uniform electron gas (UEG) at finite temperature has recently attracted substantial interest due to the epxerimental progress in the field of warm dense matter. To explain the experimental data accurate theoretical models for high density plasmas are needed which crucially depend on the quality of the thermodynamic properties of the quantum degenerate correlated electrons. Recent fixed node path integral Monte Carlo (RPIMC) data are the most accurate for the UEG at finite temperature, but they become questionable at high degeneracy when the Brueckner parameter $r_s$ becomes smaller than $1$. Here we present new improved direct fermionic PIMC simulations that are exptected to be more accurate than RPIMC at high densities.
We present the achievements of the last years of the experimental and theoretical groups working on hadronic cross section measurements at the low energy e+e- colliders in Beijing, Frascati, Ithaca, Novosibirsk, Stanford and Tsukuba and on tau decays. We sketch the prospects in these fields for the years to come. We emphasise the status and the precision of the Monte Carlo generators used to analyse the hadronic cross section measurements obtained as well with energy scans as with radiative return, to determine luminosities and tau decays. The radiative corrections fully or approximately implemented in the various codes and the contribution of the vacuum polarisation are discussed.
We present density-functional theory (DFT) and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations designed to resolve experimental and theoretical controversies over the optical properties of H-terminated C nanoparticles (diamondoids). The QMC results follow the trends of well-converged plane-wave DFT calculations for the size dependence of the optical gap, but they predict gaps that are 1-2 eV higher. They confirm that quantum confinement effects disappear in diamondoids larger than 1 nm, which have gaps below that of bulk diamond. Our QMC calculations predict a small exciton binding energy and a negative electron affinity (NEA) for diamondoids up to 1 nm, resulting from the delocalized nature of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital. The NEA suggests a range of possible applications of diamondoids as low-voltage electron emitters.