A variable temperature dewar has been designed and built at the solid state laboratory of the University of British Columbia for infra-red absorption experiments at low temperatures. The dewar features a rotatable sample holder which brings any one of three samples into the light beam for comparison measurements. A removable tail section permits easy access to the samples. The dewar has been successfully operated over the 4°K to 50°K range. It can maintain sample temperatures to within 1°K for periods up to two hours. Approximately ten minutes is required to achieve any desired temperature in the operating range. The construction and calibration of a copper vs. constantan thermocouple is described. The thermocouple was used to measure the sample temperatures to an accuracy of about 1°K. Temperature variations of a few tenths of a degree could be detected. As a demonstration of the dewar's capabilities, an experiment was performed to measure the line width dependence of hole transitions from the ground state of the P3/2 band to the first excited state in the P1/2 band in boron doped silicon. The experiment showed that the line broadening starts at about 20°K and increases at higher temperatures. Several methods of improving the performance of the dewar are suggested. / Science, Faculty of / Physics and Astronomy, Department of / Graduate

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1938 G51

An excited nucleus may undergo a transition to its ground state by the emission of a gamma ray. The nucleus, if free to do so, will recoil and take some of the transition energy as recoil energy leaving less energy for the emitted gamma ray. This gamma ray does not have enough energy to excite a similar nucleus and will, therefore, not by resonantly absorbed due to the fact that the natural linewidth of the gamma ray is so much smaller than the energy taken by the emitting atom and the similar energy needed by the absorbing atom. In 1958 a new effort in the emission and absorption processes of low energy gamma rays was announced by Rudolph L. Mössbauer. His discovery was made while he was doing graduate work at Heidelberg, Germany. Since that time this effect, not known as the Mössbauer effect, has been studied and confirmed in many laboratories. By 1961 the significance and usefulness of this effect was so widely recognized that Rudolph Mössbauer was awarded the Nobel Prize. The new effect involves recoil free emission and resonant absorption of low energy gamma rays by atoms tightly bound in a crystalline lattice. The characteristics of the Mössbauer effect have led to the feasibility of studies previously not possible in nuclear-. Solid taste-, and atomic physics; chemistry; and biology. It is the purpose of this research project to design and build a Mössbauer effect apparatus.