In this thesis properties of the G&ouml / del spacetime are analyzed and it is explicitly shown that there exist closed timelike curves in this spacetime. Geodesic motions for massive particles and light rays are investigated. One observes the focusing effect as a result of the solution of the geodesic equations. The time it takes for a free particle released from a point to come back to its starting point is calculated. A geometrical interpretation of the G&ouml / del spacetime is given and the question of what the G&ouml / del spacetime looks like is answered.

In this work, structural, electrical and optical characterization of as-grown, Ge-implanted, and annealed GaSe single crystals grown by using 3-zone vertical Bridgman-Stockbarger system, have been studied by carrying out X-ray Diffraction (XRD), electrical conductivity, Hall effect, photoconductivity, and spectral transmission measurements. The temperature dependent electrical conductivity of these samples have been measured between 100 and 400 K. As a result, it was observed that upon implanting GaSe with germanium following annealing process, the resistivity is reduced from 2.1x109 to 6.5x105 &amp / #937 / -cm. Also it was found that Ge-implantation followed by annealing at 500 oC increases the conductivity in exponential fashion. From the temperature dependent conductivities, the activation energies have been found to be 4, 34 and 314 meV for as-grown, 36 and 472 meV for as-implanted, and 39 and 647 meV for implanted and annealed at 500 oC GaSe single crystals. Using XRD measurements it was observed that there is an increase in peak intensities at specific annealing temperatures (300 and 500 C) and a decrease in higher annealing temperatures (700 C). Temperature dependent carrier concentration and Hall mobility measurement were performed in the temperature range of 230 - 410 and 100 - 400 K for as-grown and Ge-implanted and annealed GaSe samples, respectively. All of the samples in this study were found to be p-type with the help Hall measurements. In addition, the density of donor and acceptor atoms are found for each sample and results are compared with each other. In addition, using photoconductivity measurement the relation between photocurrent and illumination intensity and the character of photoconduction were determined. As a result it was found that while at specific temperature intervals impurity scatterings are dominant, in other intervals phonon scatterings start to dominate. Finally, in order to determine annealing dependent change of band gap of unimplanted and Ge-implanted GaSe samples at room temperature, the transmission measurement have been carried out as a optical characterization part of our study. As a consequence of this measurement it was observed that there is almost no considerable change in optical band gap of samples with increasing annealing temperatures for as-grown GaSe samples and a slight shift of optical band gap toward to high energy for Ge-implanted samples with annealing process.

In this study, silicon nanocrystals (NC) were synthesized in silicon dioxide matrix by ion implantation followed by high temperature annealing. Annealing temperature and duration were varied to study their effect on the nanocrystal formation and optical properties. Implantation of silicon ions was performed with different energy and dose depending on the oxide thickness on the silicon substrate. Before device fabrication, photoluminescence (PL) measurement was performed for each sample. From PL measurement it was observed that, PL emission depends on nanocrystal size determined by the parameters of implantation and annealing process. The peak position of PL emission was found to shifts toward higher wavelength when the dose of implanted Si increased. Two PL emission bands were observed in most cases. PL emission around 800 nm originated from Si NC in oxide matrix. Other emissions can be attributed to the luminescent defects in oxide or oxide/NC interface. In order to see electroluminescence properties Light Emitting Devices (LED) were fabricated by using metal oxide semiconductor structure, current-voltage (I-V) and electroluminescence (EL) measurements were conducted. I-V results revealed that, current passing through device depends on both implanted Si dose and annealing parameters. Current increases with increasing dose as one might expect due to the increased amount of defects in the matrix. The current however decreases with increasing annealing temperature and duration, which imply that, NC in oxide behave like a well controlled trap level for charge transport. From EL measurements, few differences were observed between EL and PL results. These differences can be attributed to the different excitation and emission mechanisms in PL and EL process. Upon comparision, EL emission was found to be inefficient due to the asymmetric charge injection from substrate and top contact. Peak position of EL emission was blue shifted with respect to PL one, and approached towards PL peak position as applied voltage increased. From the results of the EL measurements, EL emission mechanisms was attributed to tunneling of electron hole pairs from top contact and substrate to NC via oxide barrier.

In the present study, the effect of S and Se substitution on structural, electrical and optical properties of AgGa(Se2-xSx) thin films has been investigated. AgGa(Se0.5S0.5 )2 thin films were prepared by using the thermal evaporation method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis has revealed that the transformation from amorphous to polycrystalline structure took place at about 450 oC. The detailed information about the stoichometry and the segregation mechanisms of the constituent elements in the structure has been obtained by performing both energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDXA) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. AgGaSe2 thin films were deposited by using both electron-beam (e-beam) and sputtering techniques. In e-beam evaporated thin films, the effect of annealing on the structural and morphological properties of the deposited films has been studied by means of XRD, XPS, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and EDXA measurements. Structural analysis has shown that samples annealed between 300 and 600 oC were in polycrystalline structure with co-existance of Ag, Ga2Se3, GaSe, and AgGaSe2. The variation of surface morphology, chemical composition and bonding nature of constituent elements on post-annealing has been determined by EDXA and XPS analyses. AgGaSe2 thin films were also prepared by using sputtering technique. XRD measurements have shown that the mono-phase AgGaSe2 structure is formed at annealing temperature of 600 oC. The crystal-field and spin-orbit splitting levels were resolved. These levels around 2.03 and 2.30 eV were also detected from the photospectral response measurements. Thin films of Ag-Ga-S (AGS) compound were prepared by using AgGaS2 single crystalline powder and deposition of the excess silver (Ag) intralayer with double source thermal evaporation method. As a consequence of systematic optimization of thickness of Ag layer, Ag(Ga,S) with the stoichiometry of AgGa5S8 and AgGaS2 were obtained and systematic study to obtain structural, electrical and optical properties was carried out.

Trapping centres in as-grown TlInS2 layered single crystals have been studied by using a thermally stimulated current (TSC) technique. TSC measurements have been performed in the temperature range of 10-300 K with various heating rates. Experimental evidence has been found for the presence of five trapping centres with activation energies 12, 14, 400, 570 and 650 meV. Their capture cross-sections and concentrations were also determined. It is concluded that in these centres retrapping is negligible as confirmed by the good agreement between the experimental results and the theoretical predictions of the model that assumes slow retrapping. An exponential distribution of traps was revealed from the analysis of the TSC data obtained at different light excitation temperatures. The transmission and reflection spectra of TlInS2 crystals were measured over the spectral region of 400-1100 nm to determine the absorption coefficient and refractive index. The analysis of the room temperature absorption data revealed the coexistence of the indirect and direct transitions. The absorption edge was observed to shift toward the lower energy values as temperature increases from 10 to 300 K. The oscillator and the dispersion energies, and the zero-frequency refractive index were also reported. Furthermore, the chemical composition of TlInS2 crystals was determined from energy dispersive spectroscopic analysis. The parameters of monoclinic unit cell were found by studying the x-ray powder diffraction.

Interference filters are multilayer thin film devices. They use interference effects between the incident and reflected radiation waves at each layer interface to select wavelengths. The production of interference filters depend on the precise deposition of thin material layers on substrates which have suitable optical properties. In this thesis, the main target is to design and produce two optical filters (short-pass filter and long-pass filter) for the CCDs that will be used in the electronics of a space camera. By means of these filters, it is possible to take image in different bands (RGB and NIR) by identical two CCDs. The filters will be fabricated by plasma ion-assisted deposition technique.

In this thesis, the properties of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in low dimensions are reviewed. Three dimensional weakly interacting Bose systems are examined by the variational method. The effects of both the attractive and the repulsive interatomic forces are studied. Thomas-Fermi approximation is applied to find the ground state energy and the chemical potential. The occurrence of the BEC in low dimensional systems, is studied for ideal gases confined by both harmonic and power-law potentials. The properties of BEC in highly anisotropic trap are investigated and the conditions for reduced dimensionality are derived.

ABSTRACT CONSERVED CHARGES IN ASYMPTOTICALLY (ANTI)-DE SITTER SPACETIME G&Uuml / LL&Uuml / , iBRAHiM M.S., Department of Physics Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bayram Tekin August 2005, 77 pages. In this master&rsquo / s thesis, the Killing vectors are introduced and the Killing equation is derived. Also, some information is given about the cosmological constant. Then, the Abbott-Deser (AD) energy is reformulated by linearizing the Einstein equation with cosmological constant. From the linearized Einstein equation, Killing charges are derived by using the properties of Killing vectors. Using this formulation, energy is calculated for some specific cases by using the Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric. Last, the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet model is studied. The equations of motion are calculated by solving the generic action at quadratic order. Following this, all energy calculations are renewed for this model. Some useful relations and calculations are shown in Appendix (A-B) parts. &Ouml / Z ASiMPTOTiK (ANTi)-DE SITTER UZAYZAMANINDA KORUNAN Y&Uuml / KLER G&Uuml / LL&Uuml / , iBRAHiM Y&uuml / ksek Lisans, Fizik B&ouml / l&uuml / m&uuml / Tez Y&ouml / neticisi: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bayram Tekin Agustos 2005, 77 sayfa. Bu master &ccedil / aliSmasinda, Killing vekt&ouml / rler tanimlandi ve Killing denklemi &ccedil / ikarildi. Ayrica evrenbilimsel sabit, de-Sitter ve Anti-de Sitter uzaylari hakkinda bilgi verildi. Sonra, Abbott-Deser (AD) enerjisi, evrenbilimsel sabitli Einstein denklemi dogrusallaStirilarak yeniden form&uuml / le edildi. DogrusallaStirilmiS Einstein denkleminden, Killing vekt&ouml / rlerin &ouml / zellikleri kullanilarak Killing y&uuml / kleri (Deser-Tekin denklemi) &ccedil / ikarildi. Schwarzschild-de Sitter metrigi kullanilarak &ouml / zel durumlar i&ccedil / in enerji hesaplandi. Son olarak Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (GB) modeli &ccedil / aliSildi. ikinci dereceden genel eylem &ccedil / &ouml / z&uuml / lerek hareket denklemleri hesaplandi. Bundan sonra, t&uuml / m enerji hesaplamalari bu model i&ccedil / in tekrarlandi. Bazi faydali hesaplamalar ek (A-B) kisimlarinda g&ouml / sterilmiStir.

This study was aimed to explore the interaction between effective physics teacher characteristics, from teachers&rsquo / and students&rsquo / shared perceptions and students&rsquo / motivation. The thesis included two main parts. The first part was quantitative and the characteristics were identified. The second part was qualitative and the characteristics were used as criteria to select two case teachers and the interaction between their characteristics and students&rsquo / motivation was investigated. The questionnaire, in the quantitative part, was administered in 3 regions of Turkey and 3 cities for each region including 214 high school physics teachers. There were two different questionnaires, derived from the quantitative part, to select the two case teachers for the qualitative part. The qualitative data included interviews with the two case teachers and their students, field notes, and videos. The data in the quantitative part was analyzed by descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that there were 38 effective physics teacher characteristics affecting students&rsquo / motivation in physics within 8 categories as perceived by teachers and students. The characteristics were important in terms of students&rsquo / motivation as perceived by teachers more than as perceived by students. The teachers&rsquo / subject matter knowledge and their personal characteristics were the two categories that mostly affected the students&rsquo / motivation. The data in the qualitative part was analyzed by cross case analysis. The findings revealed that the positive characteristics increased students&rsquo / motivation, when the teachers exhibited them. When the teachers did not display the positive characteristics, the students&rsquo / motivation decreased. If teachers exhibited the negative characteristics in a positive way it was likely to increase students&rsquo / motivation. The qualitative part enhanced results of the quantitative part in that it enlightened the way that those characteristics affected students&rsquo / motivation and what would cause if those characteristics were not exhibited or were exhibited negatively.

This thesis reports the development of Vanadium Tungsten Oxide (VWO) film as an active detector material for uncooled infrared detectors by using the reactive DC magnetron co-sputtering method. VWO is a doped form of the Vanadium Oxide (VOx) which is known as a prominent material for uncooled infrared detectors with its high TCR, low resistivity, and low noise properties. VOx is a widely preferred material for commercialized uncooled infrared detectors along with its drawbacks. Fabrication is fairly difficult due to its unstable material properties and the need for low process temperatures for a monolithic, CMOS compatible surface micromachining process. Hence, a new material with high performance and easier fabrication is needed. This thesis is the first study at METU on the development of high-performance VWO as an active detector material for uncooled infrared detectors. Deposition studies of VWO primarily started by measuring the effects of deposition parameters upon the magnetron sputtering system. Because the high effectiveness of the tungsten doping has been obtained for the doping level below 10% according to literary information, maximum vanadium (V) deposition rate together with minimum tungsten (W) deposition rate has been initially aimed. TCR of the VWO films has been measured between -2.48 %/K and -3.31 %/K, and the variation of noise corner frequency from 0.6 kHz to 8 kHz has been observed. In addition to these results of VWO, a favorable VOx recipe which has the highest performance done at METU in terms of resistance, TCR, noise and uniformity has also attained during the studies. Structural characterization of VWO is achieved using XPS, XRD, and AFM characterization techniques. Other than the sputtering parameters, post-annealing process and oxygen plasma exposure was examined as well. A general observation of the post-annealing is that it decreases not merely the TCR but also the noise of the deposited film. A short-period oxygen plasma exposure has a constructive effect on the noise behavior. Fabricated vanadium tungsten oxide with sandwich type resistor structure shows very close but better bolometric properties when compared with the yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), which is another material being studied in scope of other theses at METU. XPS, XRD and AFM characterization methods have been used for the structural characterization of vanadium-tungsten-oxide.