The properties of soft-matter thin films (e.g. liquid films, polymer coatings, Langmuir-Blodgett multilayers) nowadays play an important role in materials science. They are also very exciting with respect to fundamental questions: In thin films, liquids and polymers may be considered as trapped in a quasi-two-dimensional geometry. This confined geometry is expected to alter the properties and structures of these materials considerably. This volume is dedicated to the scattering of x-rays by soft-matter interfaces. X-ray scattering under grazing angles is the only tool to investigating these...

Three-dimensional x-ray diffraction (3DXRD) microscopy is a novel experimental method for structural characterisation of polycrystalline materials. The position, morphology, phase, strain and crystallographic orientation of hundreds of grains or sub-grain embedded within mm-cm thick specimens can be determined simultaneously. Furthermore, the dynamics of the individual structural elements can be monitored during typical processes such as deformation or annealing.

The book gives a comprehensive account of the methodology followed by a summary of selected applications. The...

The growth of regularity from disorder, the evolution from the simple towards the complex, and the spontaneous formation of spatio temporal patterns in general are questions which intrigue everybody. This has been one of the hasic philosophical topics from ancient to modern times. Is nature able to create something fundamentally new by itself? If yes, how does this creation occurs? Or does nature only reproduce something which was already encoded in it, from the very beginning? This remained a topic exclusively for philoso phers until very recently, and it was only a few decades a. go that...

This book is intended to give an introduction to intermolecular forces from an experimental point of view. Within the last 10 years the interest has turned more and more into an understanding of the weak, but important, int- molecular forces. New experimental techniques have been developed which have helped to gain more insight into this interesting topic. This book is intended as an introduction for graduate students who are familiar with the main concepts of n~olecular spectroscopy. Special emphasis will be laid on the theoretical concepts. After a detailed description of experimental...

This monograph deals with ion induced electron emission from crystalline solids bombarded by fast ions. During the past decade, electron spectroscopy combined with the ion channeling technique has revealed various "messages" about ion solid and electron solid interactions carried by the emitted elec trons. While the ion induced electrons produced by binary encounter pro cesses are of primary interest in this book, closely related topics such as the emission of ion induced Auger electrons from crystal targets are also reviewed, with emphasis on their interdisciplinary aspects, for example,...

About three decades after the first experiments on deep inelastic lepton hadron scattering began to investigate the structure of hadrons, the history of this fruitful field of particle physics continues in the broad spectrum of research performed at the electron and positron proton collider HERA at DESY, where the multipurpose detectors ZEUS and H1 access ep scattering at a center of mass energy of 300 GeV and explore as yet uncharted kinematic realms of deep inelastic scattering. After the first years of data taking at HERA, each of the experiments has collected a total of roughly 40 pb 1 of...

This critical overview describes fluid flow driven by the thermocapillary effect in models of crystal growth. Simple models are the floating-zone technique and the open-boat technique. Basic equations, boundary layer scaling, stability analysis, pattern formation and additional buoyancy are discussed. Particular emphasis is given to the understanding of the physics of flow. This reference book gives a state-of-the-art report and reviews the literature available.

This book gives a detailed overview on this new and exciting field at the boundary of physics and chemistry. Laser-induced ultrafast molecuar dynamics is presented for many textbook-like examples of model molecules and clusters. Experimental results on phenomena like wave packet propagation, ultrafast photodissociation and femtosecond structural redistribution are presented and described theoretically.

This book presents recent results of basic research in the field of Raman scattering by optic and acoustic phonons in semiconductors, quantum wells and superlattices. It also describes various new applications for analytical materials research which have emerged alongside with scientific progress. Trends in Raman techniques and instrumentation and their implications for future developments are illustrated.

The Aharonov-Bohm effect is associated with cyclic motion. It is one of a number of anholonomic effects, and this means that the dynamical description depends on the current position of the system and on the path by which it reached that position.
An example of an anholonomic effect is Foucault's famous pendulum, which simply demonstrates the Earth's rotation. The Sagnac effect - a light beam passing around a rotated system of mirrors - is another example. Modern dynamical developments such as Hannay's angle and Berry's phase are further useful examples.