Energy utilization and emission mitigation
Research on non-equilibrium phenomena in inhomogeneous superconductors was
focussed on effects that result from the generation and destruction of
Cooper pairs by Andreev reflection at the phase boundaries between
superconducting (S) and normal (N) or semiconducting regions. The
influences of these effects on vortex motion in type II superconductors,
Josephson currents in current- or voltage-biased mesoscopic superconducting
heterocontacts, and microwave absorption spectra of superconducting
multilayers were computed. Of special interest was the cooperation of
Andreev reflections, Bloch oscillations, and Zener tunneling with normal
scattering from coventional scalar potentials in mesoscopic
superconducting contacts. The resulting structures in the
current-voltage-characteristics were computed. How exchange-correlation
effects in contacts with high temperature superconductors can be taken
into account was investigated.
Research in energy science is dedicated to thermoeconomic,
system-analytical
studies on the potentials of energy conservation and emission
mitigation by optimum combinations of technologies for the utilization of
renewable energies with those of the rational use of energy and the
conventional combustion of fossil fuels. Furthermore, economic growth and
technological progress in industrial countries is analyzed with the help of
a model that takes energy into account as a third factor of production,
besides capital and labor. This model reproduces well economic growth in
Germany, Japan, and the USA and reveals that energy's productive power is
much larger than its cost share, while for (routine) labor just the
opposite is true. The production factor energy accounts for most of the
growth
that neoclassical economics attributes to "technological progress", while
practically ignoring energy as a factor of production. Creativity,
modeled by time-dependent technology parameters, complements energy in
growth dynamics. It wil be decisive for responding successfully to the
challenges that arise from the limits to growth that are imposed on
finite systems by the laws of nature.
|