Graphene, a two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb structure allotrope of carbon atoms, has a long history since the invention of the pencil [Petroski (1989)] and the linear dispersion band structure proposed by Wallace [Wal]; however, only after Novoselov et al. successively isolated graphene from graphite [Novoselov et al. (2004)], it has been studied intensively during the recent years. It draws so much attentions not only because of its potential application in future electronic devices but also because of its fundamental properties: its quasiparticles are governed by the two-dimensional Dirac equation, and exhibit a variety of phenomena such as the anomalous integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) [Novoselov et al. (2005)] measured experimentally, a minimal conductivity at vanishing carrier concentration [Neto et al. (2009)], Kondo effect with magnetic element doping [Hentschel and Guinea (2007)], Klein tunneling in p-n junctions [Cheianov and Fal’ko (2006), Beenakker (2008)], Zitterbewegung [Katsnelson (2006)], and Schwinger pair production [Schwinger (1951); Dora and Moessner (2010)]. Although both electron-phonon coupling and photoconductivity in graphene also draws great attention [Yan et al. (2007); Satou et al. (2008); Hwang and Sarma (2008); Vasko and Ryzhii (2008); Mishchenko (2009)], the nonequilibrium behavior based on the combination of electronphonon coupling and Schwinger pair production is an …

Undergraduate thesis exploring modern American racism as the result of the nation's legacy of theological white supremacy and its deep-rooted racial issues that remain unresolved because of the theo-mythologies embedded at the core of the nation's foundational fabric that have been and continue to be largely unaccounted for in corrective racial discourse through a case study of Denton, Texas. By employing localized interdisciplinary methodological approaches aimed at unveiling the theo-myth which underscores the modern American racial ontology, this study examines how theological white supremacy was homogenized into popular culture in Denton County Texas following the Civil War via neo-Confederate Ku Klux Klan movement, which the author calls Ku Klux Konfederatism, that continues its influence today through localized theo-political institutions, sociocultural systems and cultural 'norms.'

Over the past ten years, methods have been developed to construct discrete nanostructures using nanocrystals and biomolecules. While these frequently consist of gold nanocrystals and DNA, semiconductor nanocrystals as well as antibodies and enzymes have also been used. One example of discrete nanostructures is dimers of gold nanocrystals linked together with complementary DNA. This type of nanostructure is also known as a nanocrystal molecule. Discrete nanostructures of this kind have a number of potential applications, from highly parallel self-assembly of electronics components and rapid read-out of DNA computations to biological imaging and a variety of bioassays. My research focused in three main areas. The first area, the refinement of electrophoresis as a purification and characterization method, included application of agarose gel electrophoresis to the purification of discrete gold nanocrystal/DNA conjugates and nanocrystal molecules, as well as development of a more detailed understanding of the hydrodynamic behavior of these materials in gels. The second area, the development of methods for quantitative analysis of transmission electron microscope data, used computer programs written to find pair correlations as well as higher order correlations. With these programs, it is possible to reliably locate and measure nanocrystal molecules in TEM images. The final area of …

The series of projects described in this dissertation was stimulated by the discovery of high temperature superconductivity. Our goal was to develop useful applications which would be competitive with the current state of technology. The high-{Tc} microbolometer was developed into the most sensitive direct detector of millimeter waves, when operated at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The thermal boundary resistance of thin YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}0{sub 7-{delta}} films was subsequently measured and provided direct evidence for the bolometric response of high-{Tc} films to fast (ns) laser pulses. The low-{Tc} microbolometer was developed and used to make the first direct measurements of the frequency dependent optical efficiency of planar lithographed antennas. The hot-electron microbolometer was invented less than a year prior to the writing of this dissertation. Our analysis, presented here, indicates that it should be possible to attain up to two orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than that of the best available direct detectors when operated at the same temperature. The temperature readout scheme for this device could also be used to measure the intrinsic interaction between electrons and phonons in a metal with a sensitivity that is five orders of magnitude better than in previous measurements. Preliminary measurements of quasiparticle trapping effects …

The use of the ReaxFF force field to correlate with NMR mobilities of amine catalytic substituents on a mesoporous silica nanosphere surface is considered. The interfacing of the ReaxFF force field within the Surface Integrated Molecular Orbital/Molecular Mechanics (SIMOMM) method, in order to replicate earlier SIMOMM published data and to compare with the ReaxFF data, is discussed. The development of a new correlation consistent Composite Approach (ccCA) is presented, which incorporates the completely renormalized coupled cluster method with singles, doubles and non-iterative triples corrections towards the determination of heats of formations and reaction pathways which contain biradical species.

The goal of this dissertation is twofold. The first part concerns the development of a numerical method for solving Maxwell's equations on unstructured hexahedral grids that employs both high order spatial and high order temporal discretizations. The second part involves the use of this method as a computational tool to perform high fidelity simulations of various electromagnetic devices such as optical transmission lines and photonic crystal structures to yield a level of accuracy that has previously been computationally cost prohibitive. This work is based on the initial research of Daniel White who developed a provably stable, charge and energy conserving method for solving Maxwell's equations in the time domain that is second order accurate in both space and time. The research presented here has involved the generalization of this procedure to higher order methods. High order methods are capable of yielding far more accurate numerical results for certain problems when compared to corresponding h-refined first order methods , and often times at a significant reduction in total computational cost. The first half of this dissertation presents the method as well as the necessary mathematics required for its derivation. The second half addresses the implementation of the method in a parallel …

Knowledge discovery from large and complex collections of today's scientific datasets is a challenging task. With the ability to measure and simulate more processes at increasingly finer spatial and temporal scales, the increasing number of data dimensions and data objects is presenting tremendous challenges for data analysis and effective data exploration methods and tools. Researchers are overwhelmed with data and standard tools are often insufficient to enable effective data analysis and knowledge discovery. The main objective of this thesis is to provide important new capabilities to accelerate scientific knowledge discovery form large, complex, and multivariate scientific data. The research covered in this thesis addresses these scientific challenges using a combination of scientific visualization, information visualization, automated data analysis, and other enabling technologies, such as efficient data management. The effectiveness of the proposed analysis methods is demonstrated via applications in two distinct scientific research fields, namely developmental biology and high-energy physics.Advances in microscopy, image analysis, and embryo registration enable for the first time measurement of gene expression at cellular resolution for entire organisms. Analysis of high-dimensional spatial gene expression datasets is a challenging task. By integrating data clustering and visualization, analysis of complex, time-varying, spatial gene expression patterns and their formation …

Methods are presented for synthesizing nanocrystal heterostructures comprised of two semiconductor materials epitaxially attached within individual nanostructures. The chemical transformation of cation exchange, where the cations within the lattice of an ionic nanocrystal are replaced with a different metal ion species, is used to alter the chemical composition at specific regions ofa nanocrystal. Partial cation exchange was performed in cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanorods of well-defined size and shape to examine the spatial organization of materials within the resulting nanocrystal heterostructures. The selectivity for cation exchange to take place at different facets of the nanocrystal plays an important role in determining the resulting morphology of the binary heterostructure. The exchange of copper (I) (Cu+) cations in CdS nanorods occurs preferentially at the ends of the nanorods. Theoretical modeling of epitaxial attachments between different facets of CdS and Cu2S indicate that the selectivity for cation exchange at the ends of the nanorods is a result of the low formation energy of the interfaces produced. During silver (I) (Ag+) cation exchange in CdS nanorods, non-selective nucleation of silver sulfide (Ag2S), followed by partial phase segregation leads to significant changes in the spatial arrangement of CdS and Ag2S regions at the exchange reaction proceeds …

Optical microbunches with a spacing of 800 nm have been produced for laser acceleration research. The microbunches are produced using a inverse Free-Electron-Laser (IFEL) followed by a dispersive chicane. The microbunched electron beam is characterized by coherent optical transition radiation (COTR) with good agreement to the analytic theory for bunch formation. In a second experiment the bunches are accelerated in a second stage to achieve for the first time direct net acceleration of electrons traveling in a vacuum with visible light. This dissertation presents the theory of microbunch formation and characterization of the microbunches. It also presents the design of the experimental hardware from magnetostatic and particle tracking simulations, to fabrication and measurement of the undulator and chicane magnets. Finally, the dissertation discusses three experiments aimed at demonstrating the IFEL interaction, microbunch production, and the net acceleration of the microbunched beam. At the close of the dissertation, a separate but related research effort on the tight focusing of electrons for coupling into optical scale, Photonic Bandgap, structures is presented. This includes the design and fabrication of a strong focusing permanent magnet quadrupole triplet and an outline of an initial experiment using the triplet to observe wakefields generated by an electron …

Better devices are needed for the detection of aerosolized biological warfare agents. Advances in the ongoing development of one such device, the BioAerosol Mass Spectrometry (BAMS) system, are described here in detail. The system samples individual, micrometer-sized particles directly from the air and analyzes them in real-time without sample preparation or use of reagents. At the core of the BAMS system is a dual-polarity, single-particle mass spectrometer with a laser based desorption and ionization (DI) system. The mass spectra produced by early proof-of-concept instruments were highly variable and contained limited information to differentiate certain types of similar biological particles. The investigation of this variability and subsequent changes to the DI laser system are described. The modifications have reduced the observed variability and thereby increased the usable information content in the spectra. These improvements would have little value without software to analyze and identify the mass spectra. Important improvements have been made to the algorithms that initially processed and analyzed the data. Single particles can be identified with an impressive level of accuracy, but to obtain significant reductions in the overall false alarm rate of the BAMS instrument, alarm decisions must be made dynamically on the basis of multiple analyzed particles. …

Guest-host interaction has long been a subject of interest in many disciplines. Emphasis is often on how a small amount of guest substance could significantly affect the properties of a host material. This thesis describe our work in studying a guest-host effect where dye-doping of liquid crystalline materials greatly enhances the optical Kerr nonlinearity of the material. The dye molecules, upon excitation and via intermolecular interaction, provides an extra torque to reorient the host molecules, leading to the enhanced optical Kerr nonlinearity. We carried out a comprehensive study on the dynamics of the photoexcited dye-doped liquid crystalline medium. Using various experimental techniques, we separately characterized the dynamical responses of the relevant molecular species present in the medium following photo-excitation, and thus were able to follow the transient process in which photo-excitation of the dye molecules exert through guest-host interaction a net torque on the host LC material, leading to the observed enhanced molecular reorientation. We also observed for the first time the enhanced reorientation in a pure liquid crystal system, where the guest population is created through photoexcitation of the host molecules themselves. Experimental results agree quantitatively with the time-dependent theory based on a mean-field model of the guest-host interaction.

This dissertation presents the research on the development of mesoporous silica based nanotechnology for applications in biofuels and plant science. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have been the subject of great interest in the last two decades due to their unique properties of high surface area, tunable pore size and particle morphology. The robust nature of the silica framework is easily functionalized to make the MSNs a promising option for selective separations. Also, the independent channels that form the pores of MSN have been exploited in the use of particles as platforms for molecular delivery. Pore size and organic functionality are varied to identify the ideal adsorbent material for free fatty acids (FFAs). The resulting material is able to sequester FFAs with a high degree of selectivity from a simulated solution and microalgal oil. The recyclability and industrial implications are also explored. A continuation of the previous material, further tuning of MSN pore size was investigated. Particles with a smaller diameter selectively sequester polyunsaturated free fatty acids (PUFAs) over monounsaturated FFAs and saturated FFAs. The experimental results were verified with molecular modeling. Mesoporous silica nanoparticle materials with a pore diameter of 10 nm (MSN-10) were decorated with small gold nanoparticles. The …

A laboratory investigation was undertaken to determine the effect of microbe generated gas bubbles in controlled, saturated sediment columns utilizing a novel technique involving acoustic wave propagation. Specifically, the effect of denitrifying bacteria on saturated flow conditions was evaluated in light of the stimulated production of N{sub 2} gas and the resulting plugging of the pore throats. The propagation of high frequency acoustic waves through the sediment columns was used to locate those regions in the column where gas accumulation occurred. Over a period of six weeks, regions of gas accumulation resulted in the attenuation of acoustic wave energies with the decreases in amplitude typically greater than one order of magnitude.

The morphology of craters resulting from high irradiance laser ablation of silicon was measured using a white light interferometry microscope. The craters show a dramatic increase in their depth and volume at a certain irradiance, indicating a change in the primary mechanism for mass removal. Laser shadowgraph imaging was used to characterize and differentiate the mass ejection processes for laser irradiances above and below the threshold value. Time-resolved images show distinct features of the mass ejected at irradiances above the threshold value including the presence of micron-sized particulates; this begins at approximately 300 {approx} 400 ns after the start of laser heating. The analysis of the phenomena was carried out by using two models: a thermal evaporation model and a phase explosion model. Estimation of the crater depth due to the thermally evaporated mass led to a large underestimation of the crater depth for irradiances above the threshold. Above the threshold irradiance, the possibility of phase explosion was analyzed. Two important results are the thickness of the superheated liquid layer that is close to the critical temperature and the time for vapor bubbles that are generated in the superheated liquid to achieve a critical size. After reaching the critical size, …

Deuteron photodisintegration is a benchmark process for the investigation of the role of quarks and gluons in nuclei. Existing theoretical models of this process describe the available cross sections with the same degree of success. Therefore, spin-dependent observables are crucial for a better understanding of the underlying dynamical mechanisms. However, data on the induced polarization (P{sub y}), along with the polarization transfers (C{sub x'} and C{sub z'} ), have been shown to be insensitive to differences between theoretical models. On the other hand, the beam-spin asymmetry {Sigma} is predicted to have a large sensitivity and is expected to help in identifying the energy at which the transition from the hadronic to the quark-gluon picture of the deuteron takes place. Here, the work done to determine the experimental values of the beam-spin asymmetry in deuteron photodisintegration for photon energies between 1.1 – 2.3 GeV is presented. The data were taken with the CLAS at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility during the g13 experiment. Photons with linear polarization of ~80% were produced using the coherent bremsstrahlung facility in Hall B. The work done by the author to calibrate a specific detector system, select deuteron photodisintegration events, study the degree of photon …