Effective focusing of electromagnetic (EM) energy to nanoscale regions is one of the major challenges in nano-photonics and plasmonics. The strong localization of the optical energy into regions much smaller than allowed by the diffraction limit, also called nanofocusing, offers promising applications in nano-sensor technology, nanofabrication, near-field optics or spectroscopy. One of the most promising solutions to the problem of efficient nanofocusing is related to surface plasmon propagation in metallic structures. Metallic tapered rods, commonly used as probes in near field microscopy and spectroscopy, are of a particular interest. They can provide very strong EM field enhancement at the tip due to surface plasmons (SP’s) propagating towards the tip of the tapered metal rod. A large number of studies have been devoted to the manufacturing process of tapered rods or tapered fibers coated by a metal film. On the other hand, structures such as metallic V-grooves or metal wedges can also provide strong electric field enhancements but manufacturing of these structures is still a challenge. It has been shown, however, that the attainable electric field enhancement at the apex in the V-groove is higher than at the tip of a metal tapered rod when the dissipation level in the metal is strong. Metallic V-grooves also have very promising characteristics as plasmonic waveguides. This thesis will present a thorough theoretical and numerical investigation of nanofocusing during plasmon propagation along a metal tapered rod and into a metallic V-groove. Optimal structural parameters including optimal taper angle, taper length and shape of the taper are determined in order to achieve maximum field enhancement factors at the tip of the nanofocusing structure. An analytical investigation of plasmon nanofocusing by metal tapered rods is carried out by means of the geometric optics approximation (GOA), which is also called adiabatic nanofocusing. However, GOA is applicable only for analysing tapered structures with small taper angles and without considering a terminating tip structure in order to neglect reflections. Rigorous numerical methods are employed for analysing non-adiabatic nanofocusing, by tapered rod and V-grooves with larger taper angles and with a rounded tip. These structures cannot be studied by analytical methods due to the presence of reflected waves from the taper section, the tip and also from (artificial) computational boundaries. A new method is introduced to combine the advantages of GOA and rigorous numerical methods in order to reduce significantly the use of computational resources and yet achieve accurate results for the analysis of large tapered structures, within reasonable calculation time. Detailed comparison between GOA and rigorous numerical methods will be carried out in order to find the critical taper angle of the tapered structures at which GOA is still applicable. It will be demonstrated that optimal taper angles, at which maximum field enhancements occur, coincide with the critical angles, at which GOA is still applicable. It will be shown that the applicability of GOA can be substantially expanded to include structures which could be analysed previously by numerical methods only. The influence of the rounded tip, the taper angle and the role of dissipation onto the plasmon field distribution along the tapered rod and near the tip will be analysed analytically and numerically in detail. It will be demonstrated that electric field enhancement factors of up to ~ 2500 within nanoscale regions are predicted. These are sufficient, for instance, to detect single molecules using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) with the tip of a tapered rod, an approach also known as tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy or TERS. The results obtained in this project will be important for applications for which strong local field enhancement factors are crucial for the performance of devices such as near field microscopes or spectroscopy. The optimal design of nanofocusing structures, at which the delivery of electromagnetic energy to the nanometer region is most efficient, will lead to new applications in near field sensors, near field measuring technology, or generation of nanometer sized energy sources. This includes: applications in tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS); manipulation of nanoparticles and molecules; efficient coupling of optical energy into and out of plasmonic circuits; second harmonic generation in non-linear optics; or delivery of energy to quantum dots, for instance, for quantum computations.

Active matter refers to systems driven out of thermal equilibrium by the uptake and dissipation of energy directly at the level of the individual constituents, which then undergo systematic movement in a direction decided by their own internal state. This category of nonequilibrium systems was defined as the physical model of motile, metabolizing matter, but the definition has a wider application. In this thesis we work with monolayer of macro-scopic granular particles lying on a vibrated surface and show that it provides a faithful realisation of active matter. The vibration feeds energy into the tilting vertical motion of the particles, which transduces it into a horizontal movement via frictional contact with the base in a direction determined by its orientation in the plane. We show that the dynamics of the particles can be easily controlled by manipulating their geometrical shapes. In the second part of the thesis, not addressing active matter, we do experiments on a soft condensed mat-ter system of viscoelastic surfactant gel formed of an entangled network of wormlike micelles and shows shear-thinning and is therefore non-Newtonian. These systems have relaxation times of the order of seconds and we have studied their non-equilibrium response properties when driven out of equilibrium externally by the gravitational sedimentation of objects and rising air-bubbles. Chapter 1 gives a general introduction to the term active matter and emphasize particularly on how these systems are internally driven and work far away from the equilibrium. We then explain in detail how a system of granular particles lying on a vibrating surface acts as active matter. We later give a brief introduction to the field of soft condensed matter and discuss the viscoelastic properties of surfactant solutions and their phase behaviour. We end this chapter by giving a brief introduction to flocking and non-equilibrium fluctuation relations which act as prerequisite to the following chapters. In Chapter 2 we discuss the experimental techniques used by us. We will first describe the shapes and dimensions of the granular particles used in the experiments. Next we introduce the shaker set-up and describe the experimental cell in which the particles are confined and variation in cell’s boundary. We show the dynamics of the particles in a quasi one-dimensional channel and then in two-dimensions. We give a brief account of image analysis and tracking algorithms employed and other data analyses techniques. In Chapter 3, we study the non-equilibrium fluctuations of a self-propelled polar particle moving through a background of non-motile spherical beads in the context of the Gallavotti-Cohen Fluctuation Relation (GCFR), which generalizes the second law of thermodynamics by quantifying the relative probabilities of the instantaneous events of entropy consumption and production. We find a fluctuation relation for a non-thermodynamic quantity, the velocity component along the long axis of the particle. We calculate the Large Deviation Function (LDF) of the velocity fluctuations and find the first experimental evidence for its theoretically predicted slope singularity at zero. We also propose an independent way to estimate the mean phase-space contraction rate. In Chapter 4 we expand the analysis done in Chapter 3 and study the two-dimensional velocity vector of the particle in the context of Isometric Fluctuation Relation (IFR) which measures the relative probability of current fluctuations in different directions in space of dimension >1. We first show that the dynamics of the particle is not isotropic and present a minimal model for its dynamics as a biased random walker, driven by a noise with anisotropic strength and construct an Anisotropic IFR (AIFR). We then show that the velocity statistics of the polar particle agree with the AIFR. We also confirm that the GCFR can be obtained as a special case of AIFR when the velocity vectors point in opposite directions. We calculate the LDF of particle’s velocity vector and find an extended kink in the velocity plane. In Chapter 5 we study the flocking phenomenon of a collection of polar particles when moving through a background of non-motile beads. We show that in the presence of bead medium, polar particles can flock at much lower concentrations, in contrast to the Vicsek model which predicts flocking at high concentrations. We show that the moving rods lead to a bead flow which in turn helps them to communicate their orientations and velocities at much greater distances. We provide a phase diagram in the parameter space of concentrations of beads and polar particles and show power-law spatial correlations as we approach the phase boundary. We also discuss the numerical simulations and theoretical model presented which support the experiments results. In Chapter 6 we experimentally study the angle dependence of the trapping of collection of active granular rods in a chevron shaped geometry. We show the particles undergo a trapping-detrapping transition at θ = 1150. On the contrary, this angle value is θ = 700 for a single rod. We find a substantial decrease in rotational noise for a collection of particles inside a trap as compared to a single rod which explains the increased value of θ for the trapping-detrapping transition. We also show that polar active particles which tend to change their direction of motion do not show the trapping phenomenon. In Chapter 7 we conduct experiments on falling balls and rising air bubbles through a non-Newtonian solution of surfactant CTAT in water, which forms a viscoelastic wormlike micellar gel. We show that the motion of the ball undergoes a transition from a steady state to oscillatory as the diameter of the ball is increased. The oscillations in velocity of the ball are non-sinusoidal, consisting of high-frequency bursts occurring periodically at intervals long compared to the period within the bursts. We present a theoretical model based on a slow relaxation mechanism owing to structural instabilities in the constituent micelles of the viscoelastic gel. For the case of air bubbles, we show that an air bubble rising in the viscoelastic gel shows a discontinuous jump in the velocity beyond a critical volume followed by a drastic change in its shape from a teardrop to almost spherical. We also observe shape oscillations for bigger bubbles with the tail swapping in and out periodically.

Schwarzenbergs, a noble family coming from Lower Franconia, settled down from 1660 in the end in Czech countries. Jan Adolf Schwarzenberg bought manor Třeboň at that time. At the beginning of eighteenth century split the family to two anchestries. Submitted dissertation insists on the researches in the archive files completed with specialized publicatons. The text is composed of three units. Opening part gives us the specification and characteristics of the used archival resorces and literature. The second part is divided to the several chapters. The first chapter discuss the family history and land effects expansion. The third chapter describes the complicated administrative agency. The fourth chapter introduces patrimonial clerkdom including their personal and professional lives. The fifth chapter is dedicated to Josef Bohdanecký, the principal forester of the forest management in Orlík. He came to be known by his forest crop protection project, so called Orlíks or milimetre thinning. The final part contains the general estimation of the clerkdom place in the Schwarzenbergs service.

The diploma thesis deals with problems connected to the formation of feminine names of occupations in contemporary French. The theoretical part is devoted to the evolution of feminism not only in the French Republic, gender questions, particularly in relation to the language, and the language policies of France. Furthermore, it is aimed at word-formative possibilities of contemporary French for the derivation of names of occupations, functions, degrees and ranks. A part of it deals with the situation in several francophone countries. The objective of the practical part is to assess the relation between the political desiderata of the French Republic and the real language usage on the basis of a corpus analysis effected in the Frantext database and Google Web Search.

The thesis deals with the content of selected phenolic compounds in some species of the genus Amaranthus, in black elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) and buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum M.). Phenolic compounds are a group of natural compounds exclusively vegetable character. Flavonoids represent only one group of phenolic compounds. Flavonoids show many positive biological effects, in particular act as antioxidants. Natural flavonoids may cause to prevent from coronary- heard diseases and other diseases associated with older age. In recent years the increased attention is paid to flavonoid investigation due to its biological effects. For the determination of phenolic substances there were used two independent analytical methods. There are the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MECC). The MECC method was used for determination rutin and free quercetin. The highest content of rutin was found in leaves of buckwheat (76,400 mg/kg of dry weight) and the lowest content of rutin was determined in buckwheat hulls. The highest content of rutin was observed in teas from buckwheat leaves and inflorescence. This amount of rutin corresponds with rutin content in more than two pills of Ascorutin (the most favourite flavonoid medicament in the Czech Republic) The HPLC method was used for quantitative determination of phenolic acids. The content of free quercetin was monitored in all samples. No free quercetin was found both in plant material and in samples of teas. The ethanolic extract from the elderberry inflorescence didn´t contain any free quercetin. Free quercetin wasn?t found in any further samples of teas, which were prepared by described methods.

My thesis Bohemika in the castle library collection in Český Krumlov is devoted to the processing of the Czech collection of the castle library in Český Krumlov. The primary source are Czech books, which are now stored in the castle library. The Czech collection was developed by the aristocratic family of Schwarzenberg. In my thesis I deal not only with the general evaluation of this part of the collection, but also with the attitude of individual book owners towards the Czech language and literature. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter briefly describes the development of Český Krumlov Castle and the castle library, the second chapter is devoted to the general evaluation of the Czech collection in the library. The third chapter outlines the historical development of Schwarzenberg family in the concept of the castle library. There is a significant point of view of the owners of the Czech books and the access of the individual members to the Czech language and literature. The fourth chapter focuses in detail on the area of artistic literature and its presence in the castle library. The fifth chapter deals with the Czech collection of the castle library in Vrchotovy Janovice and its owners, particularly with the baroness Sidonie Nádherná from Borutín. The book collections of both the libraries are compared in the end of the thesis. The thesis also includes the catalogue of the Czech books, which I prepared and organized.

The primary aim of this research was to investigate the bending behaviour of helically wound steel cables of various types (i.e. normal spiral strands, sheathed spiral strands and locked coil cables) in the presence of friction and to propose more efficient computational models for their analysis under combined tension and bending. The proposed model fully takes into account interwire contact forces both in the radial direction (point contact between wires in different layers) and hoop direction (line contact within the wires in the same layer). Extensive theoretical parametric studies have been undertaken on a variety of cable constructions covering a wide range of geometrical and material parameters. Explicit formulations have been developed for the smooth transition of the bending stiffness from no-slip to full slip regimes, as a function of cable curvature. Based on these formulations, it is now possible to calculate the relative displacements of the wires, as well as the tensile, bending and hoop stresses in the individual wires of the cable. Furthermore, bending stiffness of the cable is shown to decrease by a factor of 2 to 16, depending upon the friction coefficient between wires and the type of cable construction. Wherever possible, the theoretical results have been compared with experimental results from the available literature and are found in very good agreement with them. A simple method for the determination of the bending stiffness of large diameter multi-layered cable has been developed. The simplified method is further shown to provide estimates of the bending stiffness which are very close to those calculated by the original theory, allowing hand calculations for an easier use in industry. The proposed formulations have been extended to cater for the effects of external hydrostatic pressure on sheathed spiral strands in deep water applications. These forces are shown to have a great influence on the pattern of interwire contact forces and hence the interlayer slippage between the wires in the strand. Numerical results have been obtained and analysed for three different 127 mm diameter strands with lay angles of 12°, 18° and 24° respectively, experiencing a wide range of external hydrostatic pressures of 0 to 2,000 metres. The significant increase in normal contact force between wires is shown to suppress the slippage of wires in the cable. However, the no-slip and full slip values of the effective bending stiffness of the cable is shown to be independent of the level of hydrostatic pressure. A theoretical model is also proposed for estimating wire kinematics, pattern of interwire slippage, contact forces as well as the flexural rigidity of locked coil cables with outer layers made of shaped wires. In order to validate this model, numerical results are reported for two different locked coil cables. It is shown that the shaped wires in the outer layers of locked coil cables play an important role in the distribution of contact forces, slip initiation and cable unwinding.

Ce travail est une contribution à l'étude du comportement des joints en translation. Un modèle numérique, basé sur la théorie inverse, est développé pour en prédire les performances. La principale contribution consiste dans le traitement des effets hydrodynamiques liés à la région d'entrée du contact. Les résultats numériques sont ensuite validés par comparaison avec lesmesures expérimentales. Ces dernières sont obtenues sur un dispositif original, conçu et réalisé au laboratoire INOE 2000 IHP de Bucarest. Ce banc reproduit les conditions réelles de fonctionnement d'un joint hydraulique et permet de mesurer la force de frottement à pression et vitesse constantes. La comparaison des résultats numériques et expérimentaux a été effectuéepour un joint de tige en forme de "U" à des pressions de service comprises entre 4 MPa et 20 MPa et pour deux vitesses de translation. Dans un premier temps, on a idéalisé le problème en considérant que les surfaces en contact tige-joint sont lisses. Si l'épaisseur du film est supérieure à la rugosité de la tige, les résultats numériques qu'on a obtenus sont en bonne corrélation avecles résultats expérimentaux. Dans le cas contraire, le modèle doit être amélioré. Cette amélioration a été entreprise de manière originale. En effet, la théorie inverse est appliquée à la distribution de pression statique du contact obtenue à partir de la simulation par éléments finis de l'assemblage d'un joint rugueux et d'un arbre lisse. La rugosité moyenne (Ra) de la surface dujoint en contact avec la tige a été choisie égale à la rugosité moyenne mesurée du joint étudié. Les résultats ainsi obtenus améliorent sensiblement la corrélation avec les mesures e / This work is a contribution to the study of reciprocating seals behavior. A numerical model, based on the inverse hydrodynamic lubrication theory, is developed to predict their performances. The main contribution consists in the treatment of the hydrodynamic effects in the entry region of contact. The numerical results are validated by comparison with experimentalones, obtained on an original experimental device, design and conceived in the laboratory INOE 2000 IHP of Bucharest. This bench reproduces actual operating conditions of a hydraulic seal and measures the friction force at constant pressure and speed. The comparison of experimental and numerical results was carried out for a "U" type rod seal at different operating pressuresvarying from 4 MPa up to 20 MPa and for two reciprocating speeds. Initially, we idealized the problem by assuming that the surfaces in contact are smooth. The numerical results obtained are in good correlation with experimental ones if the film thickness is greater than the rod roughness. Otherwise, the model must be improved. This improvement was undertaken in an original way. The inverse lubrication theory is applied to the dry frictionless contact pressure distribution, obtained from a FEM simulation of a rough seal and a smooth rod assembly. The average roughness (Ra) of the seal surface in contact with the rod is chosen equal to the measured average roughness of the studied seal. The results obtained significantly improve the correlationwith experimental measurements. The roughness distribution on the entry region of contact appears to have an important influence on the numerical results.

This communication reports a unique ultra-large sheet formation through hierarchical self-assembly of a rod–coil graft copolymer containing a rigid polyphenylene backbone and flexible poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) side chains. The hierarchical self-assembly process involved a distinctive morphological transition of 1D helical to 2D superstructures. The graft copolymer offers a new chance for the challenging bottom-up fabrication of ultra-large self-assembled nanosheets in solution, as well as a novel system for fundamental studies on 2D self-assembly of polymers.

Due to their diversity, soft matter systems provide a convenient platform to study a variety of physical phenomena like phase transitions and collective motion. Encompassing a wide range of equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, they often provide significant insight into the statistical mechanics of different kinds of many-body systems. Though large scale properties of such systems are of fundamental interest in their own accord, since most experimental realizations of soft matter systems are finite sized, there is a growing need to understand the effects of confinement or boundary conditions on the collective behaviour of such systems. The primary purpose of this thesis is to study the effects of boundary conditions or confinement on both equilibrium and non-equilibrium soft matter systems via theoretical modelling. For equilibrium systems we have studied a system of colloidal particles in harmonic confinement, and for non-equilibrium systems we consider a system of self-propelled rods in both harmonic and hard wall confinement. In Chapter 1 we first lay down some basic concepts of stochastic dynamics and Brownian motion, before discussing some of the recent results on confinement effects on colloidal systems, showing how the properties of a finite sized colloidal system can be very different from those of large, un confined systems. Thereafter turning to non-equilibrium active systems, we discuss various fundamental problems posed by these systems due to their unique ability to generate and dissipate energy on their own. We also point out some instances of observed confinement effects in such systems, such as boundary aggregation and transient hedgehog-like clusters near the boundary. Chapter 2 deals with the effect of harmonic confinement on a finite sized colloidal assembly, where we show that such finite size effects coupled with a confining potential can give rise to special features like initial position dependent expulsion of dopant particles. First we model experimentally studied small two-dimensional colloidal assemblies trapped by a defocussed laser beam by Langevin dynamics simulations in the presence of harmonic confinement and demonstrate how the system shows a crossover from liquid state to crystalline state as a function of the stiffness of the confinement. We also show that in the crystalline state the system can be effectively modelled as a rigid body under small force perturbations. Notably, while studying the dynamics of a defect particle inside these crystallites, we found evidence for the occurrence of self purification by the crystallites. In this process, a dopant is spontaneously expelled out of the crystallite. Surprisingly, this phenomena has a strong dependence on the initial position of the dopant, which turns out to be the consequence of the non monotonic spatial variation of the free energy of the system as a function of the dopant position. This is caused by a difference in the rate of change of internal energy and entropy with the dopant position, with the entropy decreasing faster when the dopant is closer to the centre. This can be attributed to the amount of disruption of crystalline order in the assembly due to the incommensurate dimensions of the defect particle. In order to put these results in a general perspective, we verify in the last part of this chapter that the presence of this free energy barrier is independent of the exact functional forms of the confining potential and the interaction of a defect particle with the host particles, as well as the shape and size of the defect particle. Moving to non-equilibrium systems, we consider, in Chapter 3, the effect of harmonic and hard wall confinement on a two-dimensional system of self-propelled rods (SPRs). Though there have been very limited studies of confinement effects on such systems, existing studies are adequate to show that their behaviour near a boundary wall can be very different, e.g. formation of hedgehog like clusters near a boundary wall. First we show that for harmonic confinement small systems show polar order, which decays with system size, eventually going away for large systems. But the effect of hard wall confinement turns out to be rather different, where the system shows isotropic and clustered states depending on the values of activity and density. We construct a complete activity-density phase diagram showing four distinct phases. For high density and high activity, the rods spontaneously arrange themselves into a stable vortex structure in which the rods exhibit global radial polar order. Surprisingly this order does not decay with system size: the radial orientation of the rods exhibit strong spatial correlation even in large systems, ruling out the possibility that the radial order is a finite-size effect. Using other geometrical shapes of the hard wall boundary, we confirm this phase to be independent of the shape of the boundary. We also demonstrate how small modifications of the boundary conditions at the hard wall can collapse the clustered and vortex phases to a global flocking phase similar to that found in earlier studies of hydrodynamic active particles under confinement. Based on these observations, we conclude that the bulk of the system is strongly affected by the subjected boundary condition, which is rather unusual for large systems. In Chapter 4 this thesis concludes with a summary of the main results and suggestions for future work along similar lines