The relationship between the radio and gamma-ray emission of blazars

Blazars are active galaxies with a jet closely oriented to our line of sight. They are powerful, variable emitters from radio to gamma-ray wavelengths. Although the general picture of synchrotron emission at low energies and inverse Compton at high energies is well established, important aspects of blazars are not well understood. In particular, the location of the gamma-ray emission region is not clearly established, with some theories favoring a location close to the central engine, while others place it at parsec scales in the radio jet.

We developed a program to locate the gamma-ray emission site in blazars, through the study of correlated variations between their gamma-ray and radio-wave emission. Correlated variations are expected when there is a relation between emission processes at both bands, while delays tell us about the relative location of their energy generation zones. Monitoring at 15 GHz using the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40 meter telescope started in mid-2007. The program monitors 1593 blazars twice per week, including all blazars detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) north of -20 degrees declination. This program complements the continuous monitoring of gamma-rays by Fermi.

Three year long gamma-ray light curves for bright Fermi blazars are cross-correlated with four years of radio monitoring. The significance of cross-correlation peaks is investigated using simulations that account for the uneven sampling and noise properties of the light curves, which are modeled as red-noise processes with a simple power-law power spectral density. We found that out of 86 sources with high quality data, only three show significant correlations (AO 0235+164, B2 2308+34 and PKS 1502+106). Additionally, we find a significant correlation for Mrk 421 when including the strong gamma-ray/radio flare of late 2012. In all four cases radio variations lag gamma-ray variations, suggesting that the gamma-ray emission originates upstream of the radio emission. For PKS 1502+106 we locate the gamma-ray emission site parsecs away from the central engine, thus disfavoring the model of Blandford and Levinson (1995), while other cases are inconclusive. These findings show that continuous monitoring over long time periods is required to understand the cross-correlation between gamma-ray and radio-wave variability in most blazars.

Hall coefficient and resistivity of an amorphous palladium-silicon alloy

The Hall coefficient and resistance in several specimens of an amorphous metallic alloy containing 80 at.% palladium and 20 at.% silicon have been investigated at temperatures between 4.2°K and room temperature. An ideal limiting behavior of these transport coefficients was analyzed on the basis of the nearly free electron model to yield a carrier density of 9 x 10²² cm.^-3, or about 1.7 electrons per palladium atom, and a mean free path of about 9Å which is almost constant with temperature. The deviations of the individual specimens from this ideal behavior, which were small but noticeable in the relative resistivity and much greater in the Hall coefficient, can be explained by invoking disk-shaped crystalline regions with low resistivity and a positive Hall coefficient. A detailed calculation shows how a volume fraction of such crystalline material too small to be noticed in X-ray diffraction could have a significant effect on the resistivity and a much greater effect on the Hall coefficient.

Coulomb drag and tunneling studies in quantum Hall bilayers

The bilayer quantum Hall state at total filling factor ν_T=1, where the total electron density matches the degeneracy of the lowest Landau level, is a prominent example of Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons. A macroscopically ordered state is realized where an electron in one layer is tightly bound to a "hole" in the other layer. If exciton transport were the only bulk transportmechanism, a current driven in one layer would spontaneously generate a current of equal magnitude and opposite sign in the other layer. The Corbino Coulomb drag measurements presented in this thesis demonstrate precisely this phenomenon.

Excitonic superfluidity has been long sought in the ν_T=1 state. The tunneling between the two electron gas layers exihibit a dc Josephson-like effect. A simple model of an overdamped voltage biased Josephson junction is in reasonable agreement with the observed tunneling I-V. At small tunneling biases, it exhibits a tunneling "supercurrent". The dissipation is carefully studied in this tunneling "supercurrent" and found to remain small but finite.

Thermopower in Two-Dimensional Electron Systems

The subject of this thesis is the measurement and interpretation of thermopower in high-mobility two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs). These 2DESs are realized within state-of-the-art GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures that are cooled to temperatures as low as T = 20 mK. Much of this work takes place within strong magnetic fields where the single-particle density of states quantizes into discrete Landau levels (LLs), a regime best known for the quantum Hall effect (QHE). In addition, we review a novel hot-electron technique for measuring thermopower of 2DESs that dramatically reduces the influence of phonon drag.

Early chapters concentrate on experimental materials and methods. A brief overview of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures and device fabrication is followed by details of our cryogenic setup. Next, we provide a primer on thermopower that focuses on 2DESs at low temperatures. We then review our experimental devices, temperature calibration methods, as well as measurement circuits and protocols.

Latter chapters focus on the physics and thermopower results in the QHE regime. After reviewing the basic phenomena associated with the QHE, we discuss thermopower in this regime. Emphasis is given to the relationship between diffusion thermopower and entropy. Experimental results demonstrate this relationship persists well into the fractional quantum Hall (FQH) regime.

Several experimental results are reviewed. Unprecedented observations of the diffusion thermopower of a high-mobility 2DES at temperatures as high as T = 2 K are achieved using our hot-electron technique. The composite fermion (CF) effective mass is extracted from measurements of thermopower at LL filling factor ν = 3/2. The thermopower versus magnetic field in the FQH regime is shown to be qualitatively consistent with a simple entropic model of CFs. The thermopower at ν = 5/2 is shown to be quantitatively consistent with the presence of non-Abelian anyons. An abrupt collapse of thermopower is observed at the onset of the reentrant integer quantum Hall effect (RIQHE). And the thermopower at temperatures just above the RIQHE transition suggests the existence of an unconventional conducting phase.