This book focuses on the calculus of variations, including fundamental theories and applications. This textbook is intended for graduate and higher-level college and university students, introducing them to the basic concepts and calculation methods used in the calculus of variations. It covers the preliminaries, variational problems with fixed boundaries, sufficient conditions of extrema of functionals, problems with undetermined boundaries, variational problems of conditional extrema, variational problems in parametric forms, variational principles, direct methods for variational problems, variational principles in mechanics and their applications, and variational problems of functionals with vector, tensor and Hamiltonian operators. Many of the contributions are based on the authors' research, addressing topics such as the extension of the connotation of the Hilbert adjoint operator, definitions of the other three kinds of adjoint operators, the extremum function theorem of the complete functional, unified Euler equations in variational methods, variational theories of functionals with vectors, modulus of vectors, arbitrary order tensors, Hamiltonian operators and Hamiltonian operator strings, reconciling the Euler equations and the natural boundary conditions, and the application range of variational methods. The book is also a valuable reference resource for teachers as well as science and technology professionals.

This book discusses non-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics, recently explored in an analog quantum simulator of strongly correlated ultracold atoms. The first part presents a field-theoretical analysis of the experimental observability of the Higgs amplitude mode that emerges as a relativistic collective excitation near a quantum phase transition of superfluid Bose gases in an optical lattice potential. The author presents the dynamical susceptibilities to external driving of the microscopic parameters, taking into account a leading-order perturbative correction from quantum and thermal fluctuations and shows clear signatures of the Higgs mode in these observables. This is the first result that strongly supports the stability of the Higgs mode in three-dimensional optical lattices even in the presence of a spatially inhomogeneous confinement potential and paves the way for desktop observations of the Higgs mode. In the second part, the author applies the semi-classical truncated-Wigner approximation (TWA) to far-from-equilibrium quantum dynamics. Specifically, he considers the recent experiments on quantum-quench dynamics in a Bose-Hubbard quantum simulator. A direct comparison shows remarkable agreement between the numerical results from TWA and the experimental data. This result clearly indicates the potential of such a semi-classical approach in reliably simulating many-body systems using classical computers. The book also includes several chapters providing comprehensive reviews of the recent studies on cold-atomic quantum simulation and various theoretical methods, including the Schwinger-boson approach in strongly correlated systems and the phase-space semi-classical method for far-from-equilibrium quantum dynamics. These chapters are highly recommended to students and young researchers who are interested in semi-classical approaches in non-equilibrium quantum dynamics.

This book systematically reviews the history of lead-free piezoelectric materials, including the latest research. It also addresses a number of important issues, such as new types of materials prepared in a multitude of sizes, structural and physical properties, and potential applications for high-performance devices. Further, it examines in detail the state of the art in lead-free piezoelectric materials, focusing on the pathways to modify different structures and achieve enhanced physical properties and new functional behavior. Lastly, it discusses the prospects for potential future developments in lead-free piezoelectric materials across disciplines and for multifunctional applications. Given its breadth of coverage, the book offers a comprehensive resource for graduate students, academic researchers, development scientists, materials producers, device designers and applications engineers who are working on or are interested in advanced lead-free piezoelectric materials.

The present book focuses on recent advances methods and applications in photovoltaic (PV) systems. The book is divided into two parts: the first part deals with some theoretical, simulation and experiments on solar cells, including efficiency improvement, new materials and behavior performances. While the second part of the book devoted mainly on the application of advanced methods in PV systems, including advanced control, FPGA implementation, output power forecasting based artificial intelligence technique (AI), high PV penetration, reconfigurable PV architectures and fault detection and diagnosis based AI. The authors of the book trying to show to readers more details about some theoretical methods and applications in solar cells and PV systems (eg. advanced algorithms for control, optimization, power forecasting, monitoring and fault diagnosis methods). The applications are mainly carried out in different laboratories and location around the world as projects (Algeria, KSA, Turkey, Morocco, Italy and France). The book will be addressed to scientists, academics, researchers and PhD students working in this topic. The book will help readers to understand some applications including control, forecasting, monitoring, fault diagnosis of photovoltaic plants, as well as in solar cells such as behavior performances and efficiency improvement. It could be also be used as a reference and help industry sectors interested by prototype development.

This significantly extended second edition addresses the important physical phenomenon of Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) or Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP) in thin metal films, a phenomenon which is exploited in the design of a large variety of physico-chemical optical sensors. In this treatment, crucial materials aspects for design and optimization of SPR sensors are investigated and described in detail. The text covers a selection of nanometer thin metal films, ranging from free-electron to the platinum-type conductors, along with their combination with a large variety of dielectric substrate materials, and associated individual layer and opto-geometric arrangements. Whereas the first edition treated solely the metal-liquid interface, the SP-resonance conditions considered here are expanded to cover the metal-gas interface in the angular and wavelength interrogation modes, localized and long-range SP's and the influence of native oxidic ad-layers in the case of non-noble metals. Furthermore, a selection of metal grating structures that allow SP excitation is presented, as are features of radiative SP's. Finally, this treatise includes as-yet hardly explored SPR features of selected metal-metal and metal-dielectric superlattices. An in-depth multilayer Fresnel evaluation provides the mathematical tool for this optical analysis, which otherwise relies solely on experimentally determined electro-optical materials parameters.

This monograph presents an intuitive theory of trial wave functions for strongly interacting fermions in fractional quantum Hall states. The correlation functions for the proposed fermion interactions follow a novel algebraic approach that harnesses the classical theory of invariants and semi-invariants of binary forms. This approach can be viewed as a fitting and far-reaching generalization of Laughlin's approach to trial wave functions. Aesthetically viewed, it illustrates an attractive symbiosis between the theory of invariants and the theory of correlations. Early research into numerical diagonalization computations for small numbers of electrons shows strong agreement with the constructed trial wave functions.The monograph offers researchers and students of condensed matter physics an accessible discussion of this interesting area of research.

This textbook provides a sound foundation in physical optics by covering key concepts in a rigorous but accessible manner. Propagation of electromagnetic waves is examined from multiple perspectives, with explanation of which viewpoints and methods are best suited to different situations. After an introduction to the theory of electromagnetism, reflection, refraction, and dispersion, topics such as geometrical optics, interference, diffraction, coherence, laser beams, polarization, crystallography, and anisotropy are closely examined. Optical elements, including lenses, mirrors, prisms, classical and Fabry-Perot interferometers, resonant cavities, multilayer dielectric structures, interference and spatial filters, diffraction gratings, polarizers, and birefringent plates, are treated in depth. The coverage also encompasses such seldom-covered topics as modeling of general astigmatism via 4x4 matrices, FFT-based numerical methods, and bianisotropy, with a relativistic treatment of optical activity and the Faraday and Fresnel-Fizeau effects. Finally, the history of optics is discussed.

This book presents research dedicated to solving scientific and technological problems in many areas of electronics, photonics and renewable energy. Energy and information are interconnected and are essential elements for the development of human society. Transmission, processing and storage of information requires energy consumption, while the efficient use and access to new energy sources requires new information (ideas and expertise) and the design of novel systems such as photovoltaic devices, fuel cells and batteries. Semiconductor physics creates the knowledge base for the development of information (computers, cell phones, etc.) and energy (photovoltaic) technologies. The exchange of ideas and expertise between these two technologies is critical and expands beyond semiconductors. Continued progress in information and renewable energy technologies requires miniaturization of devices and reduction of costs, energy and material consumption. The latest generation of electronic devices is now approaching nanometer scale dimensions, new materials are being introduced into electronics manufacturing at an unprecedented rate, and alternative technologies to mainstream CMOS are evolving. Nanotechnology is widely accepted as a source of potential solutions in securing future progress for information and energy technologies. Semiconductor Nanotechnology features chapters that cover the following areas: atomic scale materials design, bio- and molecular electronics, high frequency electronics, fabrication of nanodevices, magnetic materials and spintronics, materials and processes for integrated and subwave optoelectronics, nanoCMOS, new materials for FETs and other devices, nanoelectronics system architecture, nano optics and lasers, non-silicon materials and devices, chemical and biosensors, quantum effects in devices, nano science and technology applications in the development of novel solar energy devices, and fuel cells and batteries.

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the 20th International Symposium on Optomechatronic Technologies (ISOT 2019), held in Goa, India. The symposium brought together students, researchers, professionals, and academicians in the field of optomechatronics and related areas on a common platform conducive to academic interaction with business professionals.

ESC is the premature initiation of cracking and embrittlement of a plastic due to the simultaneous action of stress and strain and contact with specific fluids. This definition provides the key to the problem of predictability. Failure is due to a combination of influences, which would not cause the same problems if encountered individually.
Approximately 15% of all failures of plastics components in service are caused by ESC. Such failures may be costly or life threatening, and consequently the phenomenon has been the subject of intensive research for more than 40 years. This research has revealed a great deal about the casual mechanism, but has not yet brought us to the ideal position of being able to predict and prevent the occurrence of ESC in all situations.

The extended and revised edition of this textbook provides essential information for a comprehensive upper-level graduate course on the crystalline growth of semiconductor heterostructures. Heteroepitaxy is the basis of today's advanced electronic and optoelectronic devices, and it is considered one of the most important fields in materials research and nanotechnology. The book discusses the structural and electronic properties of strained epitaxial layers, the thermodynamics and kinetics of layer growth, and it describes the major growth techniques: metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy, molecular-beam epitaxy, and liquid-phase epitaxy. It also examines in detail cubic and hexagonal semiconductors, strain relaxation by misfit dislocations, strain and confinement effects on electronic states, surface structures, and processes during nucleation and growth. Requiring only minimal knowledge of solid-state physics, it provides natural sciences, materials science and electrical engineering students and their lecturers elementary introductions to the theory and practice of epitaxial growth, supported by references and over 300 detailed illustrations. In this second edition, many topics have been extended and treated in more detail, e.g. in situ growth monitoring, application of surfactants, properties of dislocations and defects in organic crystals, and special growth techniques like vapor-liquid-solid growth of nanowires and selective-area epitaxy.

This book takes a fresh look at the work, thoughts, and life of 1956 Nobel Prize winner William B. Shockley. It reconstructs Shockley's upbringing, his patriotic achievements during World War II, his contribution to semiconductor physics - culminating with the epoch-making invention of the transistor - and his views on the social issues of his time. The author's unparalleled access to Shockley's personal documents provides insight into a colorful, yet controversial, man, and also sheds light on the attitudes of other prominent scientists of that era. Shockley was not only an outstanding scientist in his own right but also a fiercely independent thinker in perpetual search of the truth. His contributions to the field known today as microelectronics are enormous and unmatched. This book explores the critical facets of Shockley's life, replete with never-before-published photos and excerpts from his private correspondence and personal notebooks. The book also delves into Shockley's views on genetics and human intelligence. It tells the story of a man beset by an unrelenting rationality, slandered by the popular media, and ultimately alienated by his peers. It discusses his controversial, although sometimes prescient, ideas regarding human genetics, putting these into the context of modern research findings. Today, William Shockley is perhaps just as enigmatic as his work and accomplishments. The author presents a convincing argument that Shockley still has much to say about the issues of our age, and many of his ideas deserve evaluation in the public forum.

This book puts forward a modern classification theory for superconducting gap nodes, whose structures can be observed by experiments and are essential for understanding unconventional superconductivity. In the first part of the book, the classification method, based on group theory and K theory, is introduced in a step-by-step, pedagogical way. In turn, the latter part presents comprehensive classification tables, which include various nontrivial gap (node) structures, which are not predicted by the Sigrist-Ueda method, but are by the new method. The results obtained here show that crystal symmetry and/or angular momentum impose critical constraints on the superconducting gap structures. Lastly, the book lists a range of candidate superconductors for the nontrivial gap nodes. The classification methods and tables presented here offer an essential basis for further investigations into unconventional superconductivity. They indicate that previous experimental studies should be reinterpreted, while future experiments should reflect the new excitation spectrum.

This book covers ALL aspects of projected capacitive touch sensors including basic principles, the physics of PCAP, capacitance measurements, touch sensor materials and construction, electrical noise, software drivers, and testing. It is targeted at working engineers who are implementing touch into their products as well as anyone else with an interest in how touch screens work. * Offers readers the first book on the use of projected capacitive (PCAP) touch technology for touch screens; * Explains not only how PCAP touch works, but also addresses the implementation details an engineer needs when incorporating PCAP into their product; * Includes explanations of different cover lens materials, cover lens coatings, software drivers, touch testing, and many other areas of general knowledge that would be useful to a design engineer.

For one or two-semester courses in Microprocessors or Intel 16-32 Bit Chips. Future designers of microprocessor-based electronic equipment need a systems-level understanding of the 80x86 microcomputer. This text offers thorough, balanced, and practical coverage of both software and hardware topics. Basic concepts are developed using the 8088 and 8086 microprocessors, but the 32-bit versions of the 80x86 family are also discussed. The authors examine how to assemble, run, and debug programs, and how to build, test, and troubleshoot interface circuits.

"Semiconductors and Semimetals" has distinguished itself through the careful selection of well-known authors, editors, and contributors. Originally widely known as the "Willardson and Beer" Series, it has succeeded in publishing numerous landmark volumes and chapters. The series publishes timely, highly relevant volumes intended for long-term impact and reflecting the truly interdisciplinary nature of the field. The volumes in "Semiconductors and Semimetals" have been and will continue to be of great interest to physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and device engineers in academia, scientific laboratories and modern industry.
The series publishes timely, highly relevant volumes intended for long-term impact and reflecting the truly interdisciplinary nature of the field.

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the International Conference on Optics and Electro-optics, ICOL-2019, held at Dehradun in India. It brings together leading researchers and professionals in the field of optics/optical engineering/optical materials and provides a platform to present and establish collaborations in this important area, with the theme "Trends in Electro-optics Instrumentation for Strategic Applications". Topics covered but not limited to are Optical Engineering, Optical Thin Films, Optical Materials, IR Sensors, Image Processing & Systems, Photonic Band Gap Materials, Adaptive Optics, Optical Image Processing & Holography, Lasers, Fiber Lasers & its Applications, Diffractive Optics, Innovative packaging of Optical Systems, Nanophotonics Devices and Applications, Optical Interferometry & Metrology, Terahertz, Millimeter Wave & Microwave Photonics, Fiber, Integrated & Nonlinear Optics and Optics and Electro-optics for Strategic Applications.

This book studies the dynamics of fundamental collective excitations in quantum materials, focusing on the use of state-of-the-art ultrafast broadband optical spectroscopy. Collective behaviour in solids lies at the origin of several cooperative phenomena that can lead to profound transformations, instabilities and phase transitions. Revealing the dynamics of collective excitations is a topic of pivotal importance in contemporary condensed matter physics, as it provides information on the strength and spatial distribution of interactions and correlation. The experimental framework explored in this book relies on setting a material out-of-equilibrium by an ultrashort laser pulse and monitoring the photo-induced changes in its optical properties over a broad spectral region in the visible or deep-ultraviolet. Collective excitations (e.g. plasmons, excitons, phonons...) emerge either in the frequency domain as spectral features across the probed range, or in the time domain as coherent modes triggered by the pump pulse. Mapping the temporal evolution of these collective excitations provides access to the hierarchy of low-energy phenomena occurring in the solid during its path towards thermodynamic equilibrium. This methodology is used to investigate a number of strongly interacting and correlated materials with an increasing degree of internal complexity beyond conventional band theory.

This book presents the most important advances in the class of topological materials and discusses the topological characterization, modeling and metrology of materials. Further, it addresses currently emerging characterization techniques such as optical and acoustic, vibrational spectroscopy (Brillouin, infrared, Raman), electronic, magnetic, fluorescence correlation imaging, laser lithography, small angle X-ray and neutron scattering and other techniques, including site-selective nanoprobes. The book analyzes the topological aspects to identify and quantify these effects in terms of topology metrics. The topological materials are ubiquitous and range from (i) de novo nanoscale allotropes of carbons in various forms such as nanotubes, nanorings, nanohorns, nanowalls, peapods, graphene, etc. to (ii) metallo-organic frameworks, (iii) helical gold nanotubes, (iv) Moebius conjugated polymers, (v) block co-polymers, (vi) supramolecular assemblies, to (vii) a variety of biological and soft-matter systems, e.g. foams and cellular materials, vesicles of different shapes and genera, biomimetic membranes, and filaments, (viii) topological insulators and topological superconductors, (ix) a variety of Dirac materials including Dirac and Weyl semimetals, as well as (x) knots and network structures. Topological databases and algorithms to model such materials have been also established in this book. In order to understand and properly characterize these important emergent materials, it is necessary to go far beyond the traditional paradigm of microscopic structure-property-function relationships to a paradigm that explicitly incorporates topological aspects from the outset to characterize and/or predict the physical properties and currently untapped functionalities of these advanced materials. Simulation and modeling tools including quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, 3D visualization and tomography are also indispensable. These concepts have found applications in condensed matter physics, materials science and engineering, physical chemistry and biophysics, and the various topics covered in the book have potential applications in connection with novel synthesis techniques, sensing and catalysis. As such, the book offers a unique resource for graduate students and researchers alike.

This book discusses the new roles that the VLSI (very-large-scale integration of semiconductor circuits) is taking for the safe, secure, and dependable design and operation of electronic systems. The book consists of three parts. Part I, as a general introduction to this vital topic, describes how electronic systems are designed and tested with particular emphasis on dependability engineering, where the simultaneous assessment of the detrimental outcome of failures and cost of their containment is made. This section also describes the related research project "Dependable VLSI Systems," in which the editor and authors of the book were involved for 8 years. Part II addresses various threats to the dependability of VLSIs as key systems components, including time-dependent degradations, variations in device characteristics, ionizing radiation, electromagnetic interference, design errors, and tampering, with discussion of technologies to counter those threats. Part III elaborates on the design and test technologies for dependability in such applications as control of robots and vehicles, data processing, and storage in a cloud environment and heterogeneous wireless telecommunications. This book is intended to be used as a reference for engineers who work on the design and testing of VLSI systems with particular attention to dependability. It can be used as a textbook in graduate courses as well. Readers interested in dependable systems from social and industrial-economic perspectives will also benefit from the discussions in this book.

This book explores emerging topics in atomic- and nano-scale electronics after the era of Moore's Law, covering both the physical principles behind, and technological implementations for many devices that are now expected to become key elements of the future of nanoelectronics beyond traditional complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS). Moore's law is not a physical law itself, but rather a visionary prediction that has worked well for more than 50 years but is rapidly coming to its end as the gate length of CMOS transistors approaches the length-scale of only a few atoms. Thus, the key question here is: "What is the future for nanoelectronics beyond CMOS?" The possible answers are found in this book. Introducing novel quantum devices such as atomic-scale electronic devices, ballistic devices, memristors, superconducting devices, this book also presents the reader with the physical principles underlying new ways of computing, as well as their practical implementation. Topics such as quantum computing, neuromorphic computing are highlighted here as some of the most promising candidates for ushering in a new era of atomic-scale electronics beyond CMOS.

This monograph is intended for researchers and professionals in the fields of computer science and cybernetics. Nowadays, the areas of computer science and cybernetics (mainly its artificial intelligence branches) are subject to an immense degree of study and are applied in a wide range of technical and industrial projects. The individual chapters of this monograph were developed from a series of invited lectures at the Brno University of Technology in the years 2018 and 2019. The main aim of these lectures was to create an opportunity for students, academics, and professionals to exchange ideas, novel research methods, and new industrial applications in the fields related to soft computing and cybernetics. The authors of these chapters come from around the world and their works cover both new theoretical and application-oriented results from areas such as automation, control, robotics, optimization, statistics, reinforcement learning, image processing, and evolutionary algorithms.