Rice University Research Repository


The Rice Research Repository (R-3) provides access to research produced at Rice University, including theses and dissertations, journal articles, research center publications, datasets, and academic journals. Managed by Fondren Library, R-3 is indexed by Google and Google Scholar, follows best practices for preservation, and provides DOIs to facilitate citation. Woodson Research Center collections, including Rice Images and Documents and the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice, have moved here.



 

Recent Submissions

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Chopin's Études, Op. 10: Historical Context, Musical Analysis, Kinesthetic Insight, and Practice Strategies
(2024-04-19) Jeong, Seolyeong; Jalbert, Pierre
The study provides a comprehensive guide for improving the performance of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, revered as the seminal concert études in nineteenth-century piano literature. Chapter 1 delves into the historical evolution of piano études, contextualizing the emergence of Chopin’s compositions within the broader context of keyboard literature and mechanical advancements in piano. This exploration reveals the influence of early nineteenth-century piano études on Chopin, particularly through similar motifs that highlight the unique technical challenges of each étude. Chapter 2 analyzes Chopin’s Études, Op. 10. It commences with a concise overview of the historical context surrounding the composition of Chopin’s études, followed by an exploration of their structural framework. This chapter thoroughly examines the formal, motivic, and harmonic elements in the études. This analysis demonstrates how Chopin innovatively adapted the ternary form to articulate his unique musical narratives, thereby illustrating the potential for musical depth and complexity within the constraints of the étude genre. The comprehensive analysis in Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the following performance insights. Chapter 3 focuses on practical approaches, recommending ways to refine the execution of Chopin’s études through Body Mapping, a concept that Barbara and William Conable developed. This method emphasizes kinesthetic awareness and leverages the detailed analyses from Chapter 2 to offer practical advice tailored for pianists. It aims to improve both technical execution and the depth of interpretation, enabling performers to approach these challenging pieces with greater understanding and physical awareness. Thus, this study illuminates the historical and analytical aspects of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, and connects these findings with concrete performance techniques, promoting a comprehensive method for mastering these essential works in the piano repertoire.
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Chopin's Études, Op. 10: Historical Context, Musical Analysis, Kinesthetic Insight, and Practice Strategies
(2024-04-19) Jeong, Seolyeong; Jalbert, Pierre
The study provides a comprehensive guide for improving the performance of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, revered as the seminal concert études in nineteenth-century piano literature. Chapter 1 delves into the historical evolution of piano études, contextualizing the emergence of Chopin’s compositions within the broader context of keyboard literature and mechanical advancements in piano. This exploration reveals the influence of early nineteenth-century piano études on Chopin, particularly through similar motifs that highlight the unique technical challenges of each étude. Chapter 2 analyzes Chopin’s Études, Op. 10. It commences with a concise overview of the historical context surrounding the composition of Chopin’s études, followed by an exploration of their structural framework. This chapter thoroughly examines the formal, motivic, and harmonic elements in the études. This analysis demonstrates how Chopin innovatively adapted the ternary form to articulate his unique musical narratives, thereby illustrating the potential for musical depth and complexity within the constraints of the étude genre. The comprehensive analysis in Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the following performance insights. Chapter 3 focuses on practical approaches, recommending ways to refine the execution of Chopin’s études through Body Mapping, a concept that Barbara and William Conable developed. This method emphasizes kinesthetic awareness and leverages the detailed analyses from Chapter 2 to offer practical advice tailored for pianists. It aims to improve both technical execution and the depth of interpretation, enabling performers to approach these challenging pieces with greater understanding and physical awareness. Thus, this study illuminates the historical and analytical aspects of Chopin’s Études, Op. 10, and connects these findings with concrete performance techniques, promoting a comprehensive method for mastering these essential works in the piano repertoire.
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Domain decomposition-based reduced-order models using nonlinear-manifolds and interpolatory projections
(2024-04-17) Diaz, Alejandro N.; Heinkenschloss, Matthias
This thesis integrates nonlinear-manifold and interpolatory projection model reduction with domain decomposition (DD) to reduce the offline costs of training reduced-order models (ROMs). In the neural network-based nonlinear-manifold ROM (NM-ROM) setting, the number of parameters requiring training scales with the full-order model (FOM) size. By applying DD, subdomain NM-ROMs can be trained in parallel with significantly fewer parameters compared to a global NM-ROM, resulting in less computationally expensive training. The DD NM-ROM approach algebraically decomposes a fully discretized FOM into algebraic subdomains, computes an NM-ROM for each subdomain, and minimizes the residual for each subdomain ROM while coupling them via compatibility constraints. This thesis begins with the steady-state setting, providing the algebraic DD formulation, developing the subdomain NM-ROM approach, detailing a Lagrange-Gauss-Newton sequential quadratic programming solver to evaluate the DD NM-ROM, and providing an a posteriori error analysis. The time-dependent extension is developed analogously to the steady-state case. The DD NM-ROM approach is compared with a closely related DD Proper Orthogonal Decomposition approach using the 2D Burgers' equation as a benchmark example for both the steady and unsteady cases. The DD NM-ROM approach is constructed to approximate the FOM solution on each subdomain. Alternatively, one can apply ROM approaches that approximate the input-to-output map of a FOM, e.g., through interpolatory projection. For interpolatory ROMs, ROM training involves several evaluations of the resolvent of a dynamical system per interpolation point, thus requiring repeated, computationally expensive inversions of very large matrices. Applying DD lets one compute interpolatory ROMs for each subdomain in parallel, which only requires evaluating resolvents at the subdomain level, thus decreasing the ROM training cost. However, in the DD approach, the transmission conditions between subdomains introduce additional input-to-output maps that must be approximated. Additionally, applying an algebraic DD to a quadratic-bilinear (QB) system results in subdomain QB systems with bilinear outputs. This thesis provides a framework for computing interpolatory ROMs in the more general case of QB systems with QB outputs, and provides initial theoretical results for using interpolatory ROMs in the DD context.
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Unraveling exciton photo-physics in low-dimensional perovskites towards classical and quantum light emissions
(2024-04-11) Zhang, Hao; Mohite, Aditya
Organic-inorganic (hybrid) halide perovskite, an arising class of low-cost semiconductor materials, has gained great research interest due to the intriguing photo-physical properties as well as great potentials in photovoltaics and light emitting applications. Such chemically-altered semiconductor platforms enable physical tunability of charge carriers in different dimensionalities, ranging from 3D bulk materials to 0D quantum dots, resulting in novel physical behaviors and light emission properties. Despite great research attention and wide applications in opto-electronics, the fundamental physical properties of the electron-hole pair quasiparticles termed excitons, such as exciton-phonon interactions in 2D perovskites, and the fine structures in perovskite nanocrystals, are still underexplored. In this thesis, we will focus on the exciton properties in two specific type of perovskites systems: two-dimensional perovskites and zero-dimensional perovskite quantum dots. Using a series of spectroscopic and structural characterizations, we will investigate how excitons in 2D perovskites interact with the lattice vibrations and structural dynamics, and the intrinsic exciton behaviors in buried quantum dots, such as fine structure splitting and quantum light emissions at the single-dot level. In the first part, we study the exciton-phonon coupling and carrier dynamics using the ultrafast spectroscopy and stead-state cryogenic spectroscopies, which provides a correlated prospective of the light-induced structural dynamics and origin of exciton-phono couplings in multi-layered 2D perovskites. We suggest that the creation of a dense electron–hole plasma triggers the relaxation of lattice distortion at shorter timescales by modulating the crystal cohesive energy. We also demonstrate close to 3D like exciton-LO phonon coupling, as well as unique light-matter interactions such as exciton-polaritons and lasing properties in 2D perovskites. In the second part, we will demonstrate a novel material platform of perovskite-based quantum emitters, by embedding FAPbI3 based perovskite quantum dots (QDs) into the wide-bandgap 3D perovskite FAPbBr3 using one-step solution processed technique. Spectroscopic characterizations reveal the quantum nature of light emission from the buried QDs, as well as rich exciton fine structures such as triplets and singlets with assistance of magneto-spectroscopy. Such buried QDs exhibit a clear photon-antibunching signature, with second-order correlation function g2(0) to be ~0.15 at T = 6K. Photoluminescence suggests ultra narrow emissions lines with 130 μeV FWHM. High-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) confirms the presence of nanometer-sized domains, which indicates the formation of quantum dots during the rapid crystallization of the precursor solvent. The embedded emitters exhibit a mono-exponential radiative decay (τ = 300 ps), with additional multi-exciton states from bi-excitons and trions, as well as temperature-dependent linewidth broadening and phonon sidebands, expected for colloidal FA-based nanocrystals. In addition, direct spectroscopic signatures of the exciton fine states - such as triplets splitting and singlet states brightening - are clearly resolved under magnetic field, revealing the spectral origin and rich photo-physics from the embedded QDs. Furthermore, we have firstly demonstrated the capability of electrical-driven single-photon emission in perovskite by sandwiching the system between electron-transport and hole-transport layers. Our results may pave the pathway of on-chip integration of low-cost single-photon sources for quantum optical systems.
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Outside: The Philosophical Methods of Nick Land
(2024-04-09) Southey, Matthew; Kripal, Jeffrey
This dissertation argues that Nick Land’s philosophical project involves two pairs of contradictions: he is a scientific esotericist and a Kantian Nietzschean. However, this is not a straightforward synthesis of opposites, nor a completely successful one. Land’s core motivation comes from his esoteric insights about the future, but he often frames them in a way that is amenable to a scientific age. Philosophically, he inherits the transcendental framework from Kant, and the insistence on nature from Nietzsche. Land is left with a transcendentalism that is esoterically porous to the outside, and a vision of nature that rejects human morals in favor of an absolute valuing of intelligence regardless of embodiment.