Recent experiments have shown that photoluminescence decay of silicon nanocrystals can be described by the stretched exponential function. We show here that the associated decay probability rate is the one-sided Levy stable distribution which describes well the experimental data. The relevance of these conclusions to the underlying stochastic processes is discussed in terms of Levy processes.
We study the dependence of the quantum yield of photoluminescence of a dense, periodic array of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) on the level of doping and NC size. Electrons introduced to NCs via doping quench photoluminescence by the Auger process,
so that practically only NCs without electrons contribute to the photoluminescence. Computer simulation and analytical theory are used to find a fraction of such empty NCs as a function of the average number of donors per NC and NC size. For an array of small spherical NCs, the quantization gap between 1S and 1P levels leads to transfer of electrons from NCs with large number of donors to those without donors. As a result, empty NCs become extinct, and photoluminescence is quenched abruptly at an average number of donors per NC close to 1.8. The relative intensity of photoluminescence is shown to correlate with the type of hopping conductivity of an array of NCs.
We study the higher-order heat-type equation with first time and M-th spatial partial derivatives, M = 2, 3, ... . We demonstrate that its exact solutions for M even can be constructed with the help of signed Levy stable functions. For M odd the same
role is played by a special generalization of Airy Ai function that we introduce and study. This permits one to generate the exact and explicit heat kernels pertaining to these equations. We examine analytically and graphically the spacial and temporary evolution of particular solutions for simple initial conditions.
The photoluminescence spectra of spherical CdTe nanocrystals with zincblende structure are studied by size-selective spectroscopic techniques. We observe a resonant Stokes shift of 15 meV when the excitation laser energy is tuned to the red side of t
he absorption band at 2.236 eV. The experimental data are analyzed within a symmetry-based tight-binding theory of the exciton spectrum, which is first shown to account for the size dependence of the fundamental gap reported previously in the literature. The theoretical Stokes shift presented as a function of the gap shows a good agreement with the experimental data, indicating that the measured Stokes shift indeed arises from the electron-hole exchange interaction.
In a step reinforced random walk, at each integer time and with a fixed probability p $in$ (0, 1), the walker repeats one of his previous steps chosen uniformly at random, and with complementary probability 1 -- p, the walker makes an independent new
step with a given distribution. Examples in the literature include the so-called elephant random walk and the shark random swim. We consider here a continuous time analog, when the random walk is replaced by a L{e}vy process. For sub-critical (or admissible) memory parameters p < p c , where p c is related to the Blumenthal-Getoor index of the L{e}vy process, we construct a noise reinforced L{e}vy process. Our main result shows that the step-reinforced random walks corresponding to discrete time skeletons of the L{e}vy process, converge weakly to the noise reinforced L{e}vy process as the time-mesh goes to 0.
Productivity levels and growth are extremely heterogeneous among firms. A vast literature has developed to explain the origins of productivity shocks, their dispersion, evolution and their relationship to the business cycle. We examine in detail the
distribution of labor productivity levels and growth, and observe that they exhibit heavy tails. We propose to model these distributions using the four parameter L{e}vy stable distribution, a natural candidate deriving from the generalised Central Limit Theorem. We show that it is a better fit than several standard alternatives, and is remarkably consistent over time, countries and sectors. In all samples considered, the tail parameter is such that the theoretical variance of the distribution is infinite, so that the sample standard deviation increases with sample size. We find a consistent positive skewness, a markedly different behaviour between the left and right tails, and a positive relationship between productivity and size. The distributional approach allows us to test different measures of dispersion and find that productivity dispersion has slightly decreased over the past decade.