Excited electrons in the conduction band of germanium collect into four energy minima, or valleys, in momentum space. These local minima have highly anisotropic mass tensors which cause the electrons to travel in directions which are oblique to an ap
plied electric field at sub-Kelvin temperatures and low electric fields, in contrast to the more isotropic behavior of the holes. This experiment produces, for the first time, a full two-dimensional image of the oblique electron and hole propagation and the quantum transitions of electrons between valleys for electric fields oriented along the [0,0,1] direction. Charge carriers are excited with a focused laser pulse on one face of a germanium crystal and then drifted through the crystal by a uniform electric field of strength between 0.5 and 6 V/cm. The pattern of charge density arriving on the opposite face is used to reconstruct the trajectories of the carriers. Measurements of the two-dimensional pattern of charge density are compared in detail with Monte Carlo simulations developed for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) to model the transport of charge carriers in high-purity germanium detectors.
We investigate the physical properties of large-scale wind structures around massive hot stars with radiatively-driven winds. We observe Discrete Absorption Components (DACs) in optical He I P Cygni lines of the LBV binary MWC 314 (Porb=60.8 d). The
DACs are observed during orbital phases when the primary is in front of the secondary star. They appear at wind velocities between -100 km/s and -600 km/s in the P Cyg profiles of He I lam5875, lam6678, and lam4471, signaling high-temperature expanding wind regions of enhanced density and variable outflow velocity. The DACs can result from wave propagation linked to the orbital motion near the low-velocity wind base. The He I lines indicate DAC formation close to the primarys surface in high-temperature wind regions in front of its orbit, or in dynamical wind regions confined between the binary stars. We observed the DACs with Mercator-HERMES on 5 Sep 2009, 5 May 2012, and 6 May 2014 when the primary is in front of the secondary star. XMM-Newton observations of 6 May 2014 significantly detected MWC 314 in X-rays at an average rate of ~0.015 cts/s.
An assessment of the recorded integrated luminosity is presented for data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider from June 2006 to September 2011 (Run IIb). In addition, a measurement of the effective cross section for inela
stic interactions, also referred to as the luminosity constant, is reported. This measurement incorporates new features that lead to a substantial improvement in the precision of the result. A luminosity constant of sigma_{LM} = 48.3pm1.9pm0.6 mb is obtained, where the first uncertainty is due to the accuracy of the inelastic cross section used by both CDF and D0, and the second uncertainty is due to D0 sources. The recorded luminosity for the highest E_T jet trigger is L_rec = 9.2 pm 0.4 fb^{-1}, with a relative uncertainty of 4.3%.
We present preliminary results of our analysis on the long-term variations observed in the optical spectrum of the LBV star Eta Carinae. Based on the hydrogen line profiles, we conclude that the physical parameters of the primary star did not change in the last 15 years.
