arXiv subjects

Menglin Huang

Publications and source records attributed to Menglin Huang.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array data release I. Single pulsar noise analysis

The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) has collected observations from 57 millisecond pulsars using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) for close to three years, for the purpose of searching for gravitational waves (GWs). To robustly search for ultra-low-frequency GWs, pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) need to use models to describe the noise from the individual pulsars. We report on the results from the single pulsar noise analysis of the CPTA data release I (DR1). Conventionally, power laws in the frequency domain are used to describe pulsar red noise and dispersion measurement (DM) variations over time. Employing Bayesian methods, we found the choice of number and range of frequency bins with the highest evidence for each pulsar individually. A comparison between a dataset using DM piecewise measured (DMX) values and a power-law Gaussian process to describe the DM variations shows strong Bayesian evidence in favour of the power-law model. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the constraints obtained from four independent software packages are very consistent with each other. The short time span of the CPTA DR1, paired with the large sensitivity of FAST, has proved to be a challenge for the conventional noise model using a power law. This mainly shows in the difficulty to separate different noise terms due to their covariances with each other. Nineteen pulsars are found to display covariances between the short-term white noise and long-term red and DM noise. With future CPTA datasets, we expect that the degeneracy can be broken. Finally, we compared the CPTA DR1 results against the noise properties found by other PTA collaborations. While we can see broad agreement, there is some tension between different PTA datasets for some of the overlapping pulsars. This could be due to the differences in the methods and frequency range compared to the other PTAs.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

The Chinese pulsar timing array data release I. Polarimetry for 56 millisecond pulsars

We present polarization pulse profiles for 56 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) monitored by the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) collaboration using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The observations centered at 1.25 GHz with a raw bandwidth of 500 MHz. Due to the high sensitivity ($\sim$16 K/Jy) of the FAST telescope and our long integration time, the high signal-to-noise ratio polarization profiles show features hardly detected before. Among 56 pulsars, the polarization profiles of PSRs J0406$+$3039, J1327$+$3423, and J2022$+$2534 were not previously reported. 80\% of MSPs in the sample show weak components below 3\% of peak flux, 25\% of pulsars show interpulse-like structures, and most pulsars show linear polarization position angle jumps. Six pulsars seem to be emitting for full rotation phase, with another thirteen pulsars being good candidates for such a 360$^\circ$ radiator. We find that the distribution of the polarization percentage in our sample is compatible with the normal pulsar distribution. Our detailed evaluation of the MSP polarization properties suggests that the wave propagation effects in the pulsar magnetosphere are important in shaping the MSP polarization pulse profiles.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

Carrier Emission and Capture Competition mediated A(n)BC Recombination Model in Semiconductors with Multi-Level Defects

The ABC model has been widely used to describe the carrier recombination rate, in which the rate of non-radiative recombination assisted by deep-level defects is assumed to depend linearly on excess carrier density $Δn$, leading to a constant recombination coefficient A. However, for multi-level defects that are prevalent in semiconductors, we demonstrate here that the rate should depend nonlinearly on $Δn$. When $Δn$ varies, the carrier capture and emission of defects can change the defect density distribution in different charge states, which can further change the carrier capture and emission rates of the defects and thus make the recombination rate depend non-linearly on $Δn$, leading to an $A(n)$ function. However, in many recent calculation studies on carrier recombination rate of multi-level defects, only carrier capture was considered while carrier emission from defect levels was neglected, causing incorrect charge-state distribution and misleading linear dependence of the rate on $Δn$. For $\text{V}_{\text{Ga}}$-$\text{O}_{\text{N}}$ in GaN and $\text{Pb}_\text{I}$ in CsPbI$_3$, our calculations showed that neglecting the carrier emission can cause the recombination rate underestimation by more than 8 orders of magnitude when $Δn$ is $10^{15}$ cm$^{-3}$. Our findings suggest that the recent studies on carrier recombination assisted by multi-level defects should be revisited with carrier emission considered, and the widely-used $ABC$ model should be reformed into the $A(n)BC$ model.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Defect Phonon Renormalization during Nonradiative Multiphonon Transitions in Semiconductors

As a typical nonradiative multiphonon transition in semiconductors, carrier capture at defects is critical to the performance of semiconductor devices. Its transition rate is usually calculated using the equal-mode approximation, which assumes that phonon modes and frequencies remain unchanged before and after the transition. Using the carbon substitutional defect ($\text{C}_\text{N}$) in GaN as a benchmark, here we demonstrate that the phonon renormalization can be significant during defect relaxation, which causes errors as large as orders of magnitude in the approximation. To address this issue, we consider (i) Duschinsky matrix connecting the initial-state and final-state phonons, which accounts for the changes in phonon modes and frequencies; and (ii) the off-diagonal contributions in total transition matrix element, which incorporates the cross terms of electron-phonon interactions between different modes. With this improvement, the calculated transition rates show agreements with experimental results within an order of magnitude. We believe the present method makes one step forward for the accurate calculation of multiphonon transition rate, especially in cases with large defect relaxations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Si/SiO$_\text{2}$ MOSFET Reliability Physics: From Four-State Model to All-State Model

As implemented in the commercialized device modeling software, the four-state nonradiative multi-phonon model has attracted intensive attention in the past decade for describing the physics in negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and other reliability issues of Si/SiO$_\text{2}$ MOSFET devices. It was proposed initially based on the assumption that the oxygen vacancy defects (V$_\text{O}$) in SiO$_\text{2}$ dielectric layer are bistable in the Si-dimer and back-projected structures during carrier capture and emission. Through high-throughput first-principles structural search, we found V$_\text{O}$ on non-equivalent O sites in amorphous SiO$_\text{2}$ can take 4 types of structural configurations in neutral state and 7 types of configurations in +1 charged state after capturing holes, which produce a wide range of charge-state transition levels for trapping holes. The finding contrasts the structural-bistability assumption and makes the four-state model invalid for most of O sites. To describe the reliability physics accurately, we propose an all-state model to consider all these structural configurations as well as all the carrier capture/emission transitions and thermal transitions between them. With the all-state model, we show that the V$_\text{O}$ defects play important roles in causing NBTI, which challenges the recent studies that discarded V$_\text{O}$ as a possible hole trap in NBTI. Our systematical calculations on the diversified V$_\text{O}$ properties and the all-state model provide the microscopic foundation for describing the reliability physics of MOSFETs and other transistors accurately.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Metastability and anharmonicity enhance defect-assisted nonradiative recombination in low-symmetry semiconductors

Strong nonradiative recombination has been observed in quasi-one-dimensional antimony selenide, which runs counter to the simple intuition that claims high defect tolerance exists in semiconductors with antibonding state in the valence band and bonding state in the conduction band. Here we reveal such a defect intolerance actually stems from the richness of structural metastability and vibrational anharmonicity owing to the low-symmetry atomic structure. Taking the deep defect V$_{\rm Se}$ as a benchmark, we show the defect with its ground-state configuration alone does not act as a recombination center. Instead, we identify three different configurations with different formation energies, such richness of metastability offers a higher probability to accomplish a rapid recombination cycle. Another contributing factor is the anharmonicity in the potential energy surfaces that is caused by the large atomic relaxation, which elevates the total capture coefficient by 2-3 orders of magnitude compared with harmonic approximation. Therefore, the unique properties from both crystals and phonons in quasi-one-dimensional system enhance the nonradiative recombination, making the traditional intuition of defect tolerance invalid. These results highlight the importance of the correct identification of metastable defects and phonon anharmonicity in the nonradiative recombination in low-symmetry semiconductors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Searching for the nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational wave background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I

Observing and timing a group of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) with high rotational stability enables the direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). The GW signals can be identified from the spatial correlations encoded in the times-of-arrival of widely spaced pulsar-pairs. The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) is a collaboration aiming at the direct GW detection with observations carried out using Chinese radio telescopes. This short article serves as a `table of contents' for a forthcoming series of papers related to the CPTA Data Release 1 (CPTA DR1) which uses observations from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Here, after summarizing the time span and accuracy of CPTA DR1, we report the key results of our statistical inference finding a correlated signal with amplitude $\log A_{\rm c}= -14.4 \,^{+1.0}_{-2.8}$ for spectral index in the range of $α\in [-1.8, 1.5]$ assuming a GW background (GWB) induced quadrupolar correlation. The search for the Hellings-Downs (HD) correlation curve is also presented, where some evidence for the HD correlation has been found that a 4.6-$σ$ statistical significance is achieved using the discrete frequency method around the frequency of 14 nHz. We expect that the future International Pulsar Timing Array data analysis and the next CPTA data release will be more sensitive to the nHz GWB, which could verify the current results.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Effective Lifetime of Non-Equilibrium Carriers in Semiconductors from Non-Adiabatic Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The lifetime of non-equilibrium electrons and holes in semiconductors is crucial for solar cell and optoelectronic applications. Non-adiabatic molecular dynamics (NAMD) simulations based on time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) are widely used to study excited-state carrier dynamics. However, the calculated carrier lifetimes are often different from experimental results by orders of magnitude. In this work, by revisiting the definition of carrier lifetime and considering different recombination mechanisms, we report a systematic procedure for calculating the effective carrier lifetime in realistic semiconductor crystals that can be compared directly to experimental measurements. The procedure shows that considering all recombination mechanisms and using reasonable densities of carriers and defects are crucial in calculating the effective lifetime. When NAMD simulations consider only Shockey-Read-Hall (SRH) defect-assisted and band-to-band non-radiative recombination while neglect band-to-band radiative recombination, and the densities of non-equilibrium carriers and defects in supercell simulations are much higher than those in realistic semiconductors under solar illumination, the calculated lifetimes are ineffective and thus differ from experiments. Using our procedure, the calculated effective lifetime of the halide perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 agrees with experiments. It is mainly determined by band-to-band radiative and defect-assisted non-radiative recombination, while band-to-band non-radiative recombination is negligible. These results indicate that it is possible to calculate carrier lifetimes accurately based on NAMD simulations, but the directly calculated values should be converted to effective lifetimes for comparison to experiments. The revised procedure can be widely applied in future carrier lifetime simulations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

DASP: Defect and Dopant ab-initio Simulation Package

In order to perform automated calculations of defect and dopant properties in semiconductors and insulators, we developed a software package, Defect and Dopant ab-initio Simulation Package (DASP), which is composed of four modules for calculating: (i) elemental chemical potentials, (ii) defect (dopant) formation energies and transition energy levels, (iii) defect and carrier densities and (iv) carrier dynamics properties of high-density defects. DASP uses the materials genome database for quick determination of competing secondary phases and calculation of the energy above convex hull when calculating the elemental chemical potential that stabilizes compound semiconductors, so it can perform high-throughput prediction of thermodynamic stability of multinary compounds. DASP calls the ab-initio softwares to perform the total energy, structural relaxation and electronic structure calculations of the defect supercells with different structure configurations and charge states, based on which the defect formation energies and transition energy levels are calculated and the corrections for electrostatic potential alignment and image charge interaction can be included. Then DASP can calculate the equilibrium densities of defects and electron and hole carriers as well as the Fermi level in semiconductors under different chemical potential conditions and different growth/working temperature. For high-density defects, DASP can calculate the carrier dynamics properties such as the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum, defect-related radiative and non-radiative carrier capture cross sections, and recombination lifetime of non-equilibrium carriers.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

A Generalized Tunneling Current Formula for Metal/Insulator Heterojunctions under Large Bias and Finite Temperature

The Fowler-Nordheim tunneling current formula has been widely used in the design of devices based on metal/insulator (metal/semiconductor) heterojunctions with triangle potential barriers, such as the flash memory. Here we adopt the model that was used to derive the Landauer formula at finite temperature, the nearly-free electron approximation to describe the electronic states in semi-infinite metal electrode and the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation to describe the transmission coefficient, and derive a tunneling current formula for metal/insulator heterojunctions under large bias and electric field. In contrast to the Fowler-Nordheim formula which is the limit at zero temperature, our formula is generalized to the finite temperature (with the thermal excitation of electrons in metal electrode considered) and the potential barriers beyond triangle ones, which may be used for the design of more complicated heterojunction devices based on the carrier tunneling.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

A Fast Radio Burst discovered in FAST drift scan survey

We report the discovery of a highly dispersed fast radio burst, FRB~181123, from an analysis of $\sim$1500~hr of drift-scan survey data taken using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The pulse has three distinct emission components, which vary with frequency across our 1.0--1.5~GHz observing band. We measure the peak flux density to be $>0.065$~Jy and the corresponding fluence $>0.2$~Jy~ms. Based on the observed dispersion measure of 1812~cm$^{-3}$~pc, we infer a redshift of $\sim 1.9$. From this, we estimate the peak luminosity and isotropic energy to be $\lesssim 2\times10^{43}$~erg~s$^{-1}$ and $\lesssim 2\times10^{40}$~erg, respectively. With only one FRB from the survey detected so far, our constraints on the event rate are limited. We derive a 95\% confidence lower limit for the event rate of 900 FRBs per day for FRBs with fluences $>0.025$~Jy~ms. We performed follow-up observations of the source with FAST for four hours and have not found a repeated burst. We discuss the implications of this discovery for our understanding of the physical mechanisms of FRBs.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

First-Principles Exploration of Defect-Pairs in GaN

Using first-principles calculations, we explored all the 21 defect-pairs in GaN and considered 6 configurations with different defect-defect distances for each defect-pair. 15 defect-pairs with short defect-defect distances are found to be stable during structural relaxation, so they can exist in the GaN lattice once formed during the irradiation of high-energy particles. 9 defect-pairs have formation energies lower than 10 eV in the neutral state. The vacancy-pair VN-VN is found to have very low formation energies, as low as 0 eV in p-type and Ga-rich GaN, and act as efficient donors producing two deep donor levels, which can limit the p-type doping and minority carrier lifetime in GaN. VN-VN has been overlooked in the previous study of defects in GaN. Most of these defect-pairs act as donors and produce a large number of defect levels in the band gap. Their formation energies and concentrations are sensitive to the chemical potentials of Ga and N, so their influences on the electrical and optical properties of Ga-rich and N-rich GaN after irradiation should differ significantly. These results about the defect-pairs provide fundamental data for understanding the radiation damage mechanism in GaN and simulating the defect formation and diffusion behavior under irradiation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

A PRESTO-based Parallel Pulsar Search Pipeline Used for FAST Drift Scan Data

We developed a pulsar search pipeline based on PRESTO (PulsaR Exploration and Search Toolkit). This pipeline simply runs dedispersion, FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation), and acceleration search in process-level parallel to shorten the processing time. With two parallel strategies, the pipeline can highly shorten the processing time in both the normal searches or acceleration searches. This pipeline was first tested with PMPS (Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survery) data and discovered two new faint pulsars. Then, it was successfully used in processing the FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope) drift scan data with tens of new pulsar discoveries up to now. The pipeline is only CPU-based and can be easily and quickly deployed in computing nodes for testing purposes or data processes.

astro-ph.IM↗