The development of high efficiency perovskite solar cells has sparked a multitude of measurements on the optical properties of these materials. For the most studied methylammonium(MA)PbI3 perovskite, a large range (6–55 meV) of exciton binding energies has been reported by various experiments. The existence of excitons at room temperature is unclear. For the MAPbX3 perovskites we report on relativistic Bethe-Salpeter Equation calculations (GW-BSE). This method is capable to directly calculate excitonic properties from first-principles. At low temperatures it predicts exciton binding energies in agreement with the reported ‘large’ values. For MAPbI3, phonon modes present in this frequency range have a negligible contribution to the ionic screening. By calculating the polarization in time from finite temperature molecular dynamics, we show that at room temperature this does not change. We therefore exclude ionic screening as an explanation for the experimentally observed reduction of the exciton binding energy at room temperature and argue in favor of the formation of polarons.

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Linear optical properties can be calculated by solving the time-dependent density functional theory equations. Linearization of the equation of motion around the ground state orbitals results in the so-called Casida equation, which is formally very similar to the Bethe-Salpeter equation. Alternatively one can determine the spectral functions by applying an infinitely short electric field in time and then following the evolution of the electron orbitals and the evolution of the dipole moments. The long wavelength response function is then given by the Fourier transformation of the evolution of the dipole moments in time. In this work, we compare the results and performance of these two approaches for the projector augmented wave method. To allow for large time steps and still rely on a simple difference scheme to solve the differential equation, we correct for the errors in the frequency domain, using a simple analytic equation. In general, we find that both approaches yield virtually indistinguishable results. For standard density functionals, the time evolution approach is, with respect to the computational performance, clearly superior compared to the solution of the Casida equation. However, for functionals including nonlocal exchange, the direct solution of the Casida equation is usually much more efficient, even though it scales less beneficial with the system size. We relate this to the large computational prefactors in evaluating the nonlocal exchange, which renders the time evolution algorithm fairly inefficient.

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The interface characteristics of porous rooted cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloy (Co-Cr-Mo) dental implants which had been in free standing function in canine mandibles for a period of two years were investigated. The displacement of the implants and of points on the adjacent mandibular cortex were determined by mechanical testing. Bone ingrowth was quantified, and the structure of the bone-implant interface and mandibular cortex were characterized using histologic and microradiographic analyses. Displacement characteristics were correlated with determinations of the tissue structure adjacent to and growth within the implant to provide information about the biological attachment. A correlation was found between the thickness of the buccal and lingual cortical plates and implant displacements; implants having the greatest displacement response were in mandibles with the thinnest cortical plates. A relationship could not be established between the implant displacement response and the quantitative tissue structure data. Differences observed in the displacement response of the implant by mechanical testing were not observed by clinical measurements of mobility. It was concluded that implant retention mechanical behavior results from both interfacial displacement and deflection of the adjacent mandibular structures.

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We identify the auxiliary fields in the hypermultiplets of type IIB string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold, using a combination of worldsheet and supergravity techniques.The SUSY-breaking squark and gaugino masses in type IIB models depend on these auxiliary fields, which parametrize deformations away from a pure Calabi-Yau compactification to one with NS-NS 3-form flux and SU (3) × SU (3) structure. Worldsheet arguments show that such compactifications are generically globally nongeometric. Our results, combined with earlier results for type IIA compactifications, imply that these deformations are the mirrors of NS-NS 3-form flux, in accord with work from the supergravity point of view.Using the worldsheet current algebra, we explain why mirror symmetry may continue to hold in the presence of fluxes breaking the symmetries (e.g., (2,2) SUSY) on which mirror symmetry is typically taken to depend. Finally, we give evidence that nonperturbative worldsheet effects (such as worldsheet instantons) provide important corrections to the supergravity picture in the presence of auxiliary fields for Kähler moduli.