The langasites are a class of geometrically frustrated compounds with the formula A3XY3Z2O14 where A,X,Y,Z are cationic sites and site A is occupied by a magnetic ion. The interactions of the magnetic ions form a star shaped pattern called the Kagomé lattice. The langasites have been widely studied by the solid state community because of their functional properties such as piezoelectricity, multiferroicity, ferroelectricity, dielectricity and for use in the telecommunication industry. It was also realized that some langasite materials exhibit exotic magnetic ground states at low temperatures. A thorough understanding of their ground state is limited by the difficulty in synthesizing new members belonging to this series due to the formation of competing phases such as the garnets. In this study, four new magnetic langasites A3Ga3Ge2BeO14 (A= Pr, Nd, Sm and Eu) and a non-magnetic lattice standard La3Ga3Ge2BeO14 were synthesized. These were further structurally characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, Rietveld refinement and bond valence analysis. Further characterization of the low-temperature magnetism was done by performing magnetization, magnetic susceptibility (field cooled and zero field cooled) and heat capacity measurements. The low temperature spin dynamics were probed using muon spin resonance performed at TRIUMF (Vancouver) and elastic and inelastic neutron scattering measurements performed at the DCS (NIST) and D7 (ILL). From all the above measurements it can be concluded that the new Be langasites exhibit net antiferromagnetic interactions at low-temperatures with clear signs of diffuse scattering for Nd3Ga3Ge2BeO14 using inelastic neutron scattering measurements. There was no evidence of magnetic long-range ordering down to as low as 0.025 K. Based on the obtained measurements these new Be-langasite compounds can be classified as potential spin liquid candidates. / February 2017

In his seminal work, Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming provided American corporations with a direction and method for improving both man and machine in an effort to transform the way in which these corporations performed and managed both service and industry functions. His ideas for statistical control have taken hold within the workplace and are becoming increasingly popular among managers and corporate executives who are intent on improving the bottom line. However, most companies have limited their incorporation of Deming's methods and failed to include Deming's approach to improved leadership and employee involvement. This study will review the human aspects of Deming's ideas and their convergence with an existing theory on employee engagement. Additionally, the impacts of employee engagement will be reviewed to better understand the potential gains that may be had by corporations when they implement Deming's Total Quality Management to the extent that he originally intended. / Contract number: N62271-97-G-0059

In this work we investigate themes related to many-body systems in which multiple ground states are accessible, a condition known as frustration. Frustration can arise in a number of contexts, and we consider the consequences of this situation with some examples from condensed-matter physics. In some magnetic materials interactions between spins are such that no single spin configuration provides a unique ground state. In the class of frustrated magnets where the number of ground states is extensive, thermal fluctuations are strong even at temperatures significantly below the interaction strength. At such temperatures spins are highly correlated, and small perturbations may have profound consequences. In this thesis we provide an example of this. By considering classical n-component spins with nearest-neigbour exchange on a frustrated octahedral lattice we show that – in the limit where exchange interactions are large – the system is in a disordered, correlated phase where correlations have the form of a dipole field. This is termed a Coulomb phase. From this phase we induce an ordering transition, lifting the degeneracy with weak, additional short-range interactions. By studying the transition in the solvable limit of n → ∞, we discover that the transition has identical thermodynamics to that of a magnetic system interacting through long-range, dipolar forces. Finally, we provide a more apposite characterisation of the transition, where the high-temperature side of the transition is described through the fluctuations of solenoidal fields, and the ordering corresponds to a condensation of these fields. In a separate part of the thesis, we investigate the influence of disorder on frustrated lattices. We study a two-dimensional tight-binding model with nearest-neighbour hopping and on-site disorder. Restricting the allowed states to being those from the low-lying manifold of ground states, the disorder feeds through to act as effective disorder in the hopping terms, which decay algebraically with distance. The quasi-long range nature of this effective hopping leads to a situation in which the resultant single-particle eigenstates are critical, and we probe their behaviour numerically with a transfer matrix calculation.

The extended kagome lattice, composed of alternating kagome and triangular layers, provides a novel geometry for frustrated magnetism. In this thesis, we study the properties of Heisenberg spins with nearest-neighbour antiferromagnetic interactions on this lattice. In common with many other models of frustrated magnets, this system has highly degenerate classical ground states. It is set apart from other examples, however, by the strong interlayer correlations between triangular layer spins. We study the implications of such correlations in both the statics and dynamics. We characterise classical ground states using a flux picture for a single layer of kagome spins, a theoretical description that sets geometrical bounds on correlations. We quantify the divergent but sub-extensive ground state degeneracy by a Maxwellian counting argument, and verify this calculation by analysing the energy eigenvalues of numerical ground states. We explore the ground state connectedness but do not reach firm conclusions on this issue. We use the self-consistent Gaussian approximation (SCGA) to calculate static spin correlations at finite temperature. The results of these calculations agree well with elastic neutron scattering experiments. We derive an expression for the effective interlayer interaction between kagome spins by integrating out the triangular lattice spins. We use linear spinwave theory to compute the spin excitation spectrum numerically. This shows encouraging similarity with inelastic neutron scattering data on a single-crystal YBaCo$_4$O$_7$ sample, for a wide range of wavevector and frequency. This agreement shows that our spin model is a reasonable description of the physics, and suggests that this numerical technique might be useful for other geometrically frustrated magnets. We study the dynamics analytically using the stochastic SCGA recently developed for the pyrochlore lattice. For technical reasons, we apply this technique on a related model, the stacked kagome lattice, rather than on the extended kagome lattice itself. From this we find slow relaxation at low temperature, with a rate ~ T² compared to the faster ~ T scaling for the pyrochlore. Strikingly, in simulations of the dynamics on the extended kagome lattice by numerical integration of the semiclassical equations of motion, we find two different relaxation rates. Kagome layer spins relax more quickly than the triangular layer spins, having ~ T.

The major problem investigated was to ascertain the extent to which a training program designed specifically to increase frustration tolerance would reduce selected behavioral problems in institutionalized mentally retarded children. Of lesser importance was the problem of examining the extent to which the prescribed training program had differential effects on brain-injured and non-brain-injured retarded children.

The investigation sought to examine resistance to extinction (Rn) as a function of previous experience with downward shifts in reward magnitude. It was suggested that previous research conducted within the framework of the Spence-Amsel frustration hypothesis and the sequential hypothesis failed to administer sufficient postshift trials to adequately establish the relationships that may exist. Under one condition, four groups of rats received twenty extinction trials following forty postshift trials. Under another condition, four groups were extinguished following eighty postshift trials. An inverse magnitude of reward effect occurred in the preshift phases, however, which prevented an adequate analysis of either the shift or the Rn data, This unexpected effect was discussed within the framework of Black's incentive-motivation interpretation of reinforcement.

The thesis is focused on issues of motivation for learning of pupils at the end of primary school. The first part of the thesis elaborates theoretical solutations to the process of the motivation for learning of pupils at school. It explains the definition of motivation in the pedagogical and psychological point of view. The thesis also introduces internal and external factors which are considered to create the motivation for learning. For the support of the motivation a teacher has to know the age specifics of the children, orientation of their personality and their learning style. The crucial sources of the motivation for learning are cognitive needs, social needs and achievement needs which participate in individual motivation orientation of children. In the case the needs are not developed or satisfied they may happen to be frustrated and manifested as boredom or fear. The action research in the second part ot the thesis watch which methods the class teacher uses to actualizate and develop the needs of her pupils. The complementary research is made with other teachers of the pupils at this age and investigates the competence to react to the motivation requirements of their pupils. This research also finds the subjective reactions of these pupils. The results of the research proved that pupils...

Computers have become an indispensable resource in assisting us in our daily life. While they do a good job most of the time, sometimes they can create a seemingly endless nightmare. Horrible user interfaces, bugs, errors, hardware issues and other factors are various causes of user frustration. The current approach is to either prevent it from happening or to fix the issue after it has appeared. In this study, an alternative approach is explored which makes use of distraction through mood induction. By using cute images of infantile animals it was argued that this could alleviate computer frustration. For this study, 60 participants were used to test this theory by first doing a frustrating task and a consequent treatment or control exposure. Mood and frustration levels were collected throughout the test and later analyzed. Additionally, opinions and reactions were collected using a follow-up interview and observations. Findings suggest that looking at cute images helps alleviate frustration caused by computers.

Cette thèse traite des propriétés des glaces de spins artificielles de type kagomé. Il s'agit de réseaux de nano-aimants magnétiques que nous avons fabriqués par dépôt d'un film mince, lithographie électronique et gravure ionique. Les éléments de la maille appelés brins possèdent des tailles typiques que 500 nm de long, 100 nm de large et 10nm d'épaisseur. L'intérêt de ces brins mésoscopiques repose sur la possibilité d'en déterminer la configuration magnétique par imagerie. Les caractérisations réalisées après désaimantation nous ont permis de mettre en évidence l'impact des différents types de désaimantation et de faire apparaître pour la première fois un polycristal de charges. Pour approfondir notre compréhension de ce système, nous avons aussi réalisé une étude numérique. Nous avons montré que les brins ne se comportent pas comme des spins d'Ising. En effet, la configuration d'aimantation d'un brin peut s'apparenter à une configuration homogène avec un domaine de fermeture aux deux extrémités. Nous avons étudié l'impact de ces configurations de bout de brins dans le renversement de l'aimantation des réseaux. Nous montrons également expérimentalement que le renversement peut être très anisotrope. L'origine de cette anisotropie a été étudiée. Enfin, nous montrons numériquement que lorsqu'une configuration interdite est stabilisée, les domaines de fermeture ferment le flux laissant apparaître deux chiralités qui possèdent des champs de disparition différents lorsque le champ est appliqué hors axe de la nanostructure. D'un point de vue expérimental, nous avons tenté de mettre en évidence l'existence de cette chiralité des monopoles / The subject of this thesis is the study of artificial kagome spin ices which are frustrated networks of nanomagnets. These arrays are made using thin film deposition, electron beam lithography and ion beam etching. The typical sizes of each nanomagnet are a length of 500nm, a width of 100nm and a thickness of 10nm with a separation between nanomagnets of 50nm. The interest of these frustrated networks relies on the possibility to measure the magnetic configurations by imagery and extract the macrospin configurations. In this work we have especially compared different demagnetization procedures (field and thermal) that allowed us to highlight their impact on the configurations and we have shown for the first time an emergent polycristal of charges. To have a better understanding of our system, we have also conducted a numerical study using finite difference methods. We have shown that nanomagnets do not behave like Ising spin. Indeed, the magnetic configuration is shown to be homogeneous with domains at extremities. In the array, the domains close the flux at a vertex and the effects of those domains on the magnetization reversal of our networks have been studied. We have also shown experimentally that the reversal can be anisotropic. The origin of this anisotropy has been studied. Finally, we have numerically shown that, when a forbidden configuration is stabilized, the closure of the flux at the vertex leads to chiralities of the forbidden state. These chiralities possess different annihilation fields when the fields are applied out of the nanostructure axis. From an experimental point of view, we tried to show the existence of this monopole chirality using adapted field histories

This work presents macroscopic and microscopic experiments of the disordered hexagonal double perovskite BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3, in order to characterize its electronic, magnetic and structural properties to support the possibility that this system hosts a spin liquid phase. Such assumption is based on the absence of a transition to a magnetically ordered phase in the magnetic and thermodynamic measurements, which points to a strong magnetic frustration in this material. In addition, it is observed the formation of a correlated spin state. To characterize this correlation, we resorted to Muon Spin Resonance (µSR) experiments to measure the low temperature spin dynamics. The zero field µSR relaxation regime displays dynamic magnetism down to T = 0.019 K and longitudinal field experiments support as well that dynamic magnetism persists at low temperatures, a behavior expected for a spin liquid system. The magnetic behavior of BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3 consists in the high temperature physics being dominated by the presence of magnetic trimers, magnetic dimers, and orphan spins. At lower temperatures, the effective magnetic degrees of freedom, composed by orphan spins and magnetic trimers, are correlated but no phase transition is detected down to T = 0.1 K, despite the effective exchange couplings between magnetic trimers and orphan spins being -8.5 K, resulting in a magnetic frustration parameter of at least 85. The possibility that disorder is responsible for the spin liquid ground state is discussed, however, other scenarios are not totally discarded. For example, the possibility that the measured state is not the true ground state, which could lie at even lowers temperatures or the possible formation of a spin glass state. This work raises questions that are not easy to answer. Ultimately, the growth of a single crystal is necessary to continue the characterization of BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3. Besides, theoretical and experimental developments in this field of research are needed to find a more direct and conclusive way to characterize the magnetic phases in this complex material. / Neste trabalho apresento dados experimentais macroscópicos e microscópicos da peroviskita hexagonal dupla BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3, a fim de caracterizar sua estrutura eletrônica, magnética e cristalina para embasar a possibilidade deste sistema apresentar uma fase de líquido de spin. Esta hipótese está baseada na ausência de transição para uma fase magneticamente ordenada nas medidas magnéticas e termodinâmicas, que apontam para uma forte frustração magnética neste material. Além disso, é observada a formação de um estado de spins correlacionados. Para caracterizar esta correlação, recorremos para experimentos de ressonância de múons (µSR) para medir a dinâmica de spins em baixas temperaturas. Dados de µSR para campo magnético nulo mostram em seu regime de relaxamento um magnetismo dinâmico para temperaturas tão baixas quanto T = 0.019 K, adicionalmente, experimentos com campo magnético longitudinal aplicado apontam também que o magnetismo dinâmico persiste em baixas temperaturas, um comportamento esperado para um sistema de líquido de spin. O comportamento magnético do BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3 consiste na física de altas temperaturas sendo dominada pela presença de trimers magnéticos, dimers magnéticos e spins órfãos. Para temperaturas mais baixas, os graus de liberdade magnéticos são efetivamente compostos por spins órfãos e trimers magnéticos, que estão correlacionados mas nenhuma transição de fase é detectada para temperaturas tão baixas quanto T = 0.1 K, mesmo que a constante de interação efetiva entre os spins órfãos e os trimers magnéticos seja -8.5 K, resultando num fator de frustração magnética de ao menos 85. A possibilidade da desordem ser responsável pelo estado fundamental de líquido de spin é discutida, no entanto, outros cenários não estão totalmente descartados, por exemplo, a possibilidade de que o estado medido não seja o verdadeiro estado fundamental, e que este estaria em temperaturas ainda mais baixas ou a possível formação de um estado de vidro de spin. Este trabalho levanta questões que não são fáceis de responder. Por fim, o crescimento de uma amostra monocristalina é necessário para continuar a caracterização do BaTi1/2Mn1/2O3. Ademais, desenvolvimentos de cunho teórico e experimental neste campo de pesquisa são necessários para encontrar um método mais direto e conclusivo para caracterizar a fase magnética neste material complexo.