This thesis introduces a figure of merit for light trapping with photonic nanostructures and shows how different light trapping methods compare, irrespective of material, absorber thickness or type of nanostructure. It provides an overview of the essential aspects of light trapping, offering a solid basis for future designs. Light trapping with photonic nanostructures is a powerful method of increasing the absorption in thin film solar cells. Many light trapping methods have been studied, but to date there has been no comprehensive figure of merit to compare these different methods quantitatively. This comparison allows us to establish important design rules for highly performing structures; one such rule is the structuring of the absorber layer from both sides, for which the authors introduce a novel and simple layer-transfer technique. A closely related issue is the question of plasmonic vs. dielectric nanostructures; the authors present an experimental demonstration, aided by a detailed theoretical assessment, highlighting the importance of considering the multipass nature of light trapping in a thin film, which is an essential effect that has been neglected in previous work and which allows us to quantify the parasitic losses.
This book focuses on civil service reform within the central administration in Latin America. It analyzes updated versions of the country assessments carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2004 in 16 countries and presents a comparative analysis of the ways in which the countries have evolved during the last decade. The methodology is based on the principles of the Ibero-American Charter for Public Service. In addition, it draws lessons from reform processes, identifying strategies for civil service modernization in the region. Finally, the book proposes a possible future agenda to continue the efforts to further professionalize the civil service in Latin America.
Mimi and Shu are in a race to make history (and dessert) in this inventive and fun reimagining of the origins of the Chinese zodiac. Shu the mouse has his eyes set on making history. His best friend Mimi the cat, on the other hand, has her eyes set on cupcakes. When Emperor Jade invites Mimi, Shu, and a bunch of their animal friends to his big race for a spot in the Chinese zodiac—and a big plate of cupcakes—Shu and Mimi are determined to win. But with their eyes set on different prizes, can Mimi and Shu work together to win Emperor Jade’s great race? Or will the lure of sweet (and sugary) victory come between them for good?
In this thesis, we describe a cogent strategy for discovering the New Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This is unambiguously the most important problem in high energy fundamental physics for the coming decade. Regardless of what is found, the consequences will be far reaching. If electroweak symmetry breaking dynamics is discovered that stabilizes the weak-Plank hierarchy in a natural way, then we will want to understand those dynamics and how it relates to cosmology. If the weak-Plank hierarchy is not stabilized naturally, then the implications are potentially profound, as that will indicate that the string landscape may play a role in low energy physics. As a first step towards answering questions of such basic importance, we describe a coherent strategy and set of tools for reconstructing the fundamental theory of the TeV scale from LHC data. We show that On-Shell Effective Theories (OSETs) effectively characterize hadron collider data in terms of masses, production cross sections, and decay modes of candidate new particles. An OSET description of the data strongly constrains the underlying new physics, and sharply motivates the construction of its Lagrangian. We also discuss two examples of new physics scenarios motivated by the string landscape. A simple and well-motivated explanation for the origin of dark matter is that it consists of thermal relic particles that get their mass entirely through electroweak symmetry breaking. The simplest models implementing this possibility predict a dark matter candidate that consists of a mixture of two Dirac neutrinos with opposite isospin, and so has suppressed coupling to the Z. These models predict dark matter masses of MDM ≈ 45 GeV or MDM ≈ 90--95 GeV and WIMP-neutron spin-independent cross sections sigmaWIMP-n ∼ 10 -6--10-8 pb. The framework further suggests an environmental explanation of the hierarchy between the weak and Planck scales and of the small value of the cosmological constant relative to the weak scale. We also investigate gauge coupling unification in higher dimensional GUT models with split supersymmetry. We focus on 5d and 6d orbifold GUTs, which permit a simple solution to several problems of 4D GUTs as well as control over GUT scale threshold corrections.
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