Experiment E36 is planned to run at the J-PARC K1.1BR kaon beamline in 2014-15 using a stopped kaon beam along with the TREK target and detector setup. The decay products of stopped positive kaons will be observed with a large-acceptance toroidal spectrometer capable of tracking charged particles with high resolution, combined with a photon calorimeter with large solid angle and redundant particle identification systems. With the aim to test lepton universality in the Ke2/K mu2 ratio with high precision, the experiment is highly sensitive to new physics beyond the Standard Model. A further goal of E36 is to search for a heavy sterile neutrino in two-body kaon decay, along with additional searches for exotic decay modes including the possibility to produce a dark photon and to observe its decay into an e +e - pair. An overview of the planned measurements with E36 will be presented.

The static and dynamic performance of a new kind of linear microactuators of 4 × 4 × 0.1 mm3 size is presented, providing large work outputs. The actuators consist of a stress-optimized active microdevice of a shape memory alloy with one-way effect connected to a biasing device. The biasing device is either a superelastic microspring or a second active device with opposite actuation direction. For a maximum strain of 1.3%, strokes of 570 μm and maximum forces of 110 mN are achieved. Time-resolved experiments with an optical transmission scheme reveal for a driving power of 190 mW heating and cooling times of 300 ms and 1.5 s, respectively. Considerably shorter switching times down to 50 ms are achieved by making use of partial phase transformations.

A broad spectrum of metal/dielectric composite materials for solar absorber coatings has been investigated in the past. In order to find a cost-effective coating which is easy to manufacture, the material combination Al/Al 2O 3 was investigated. The coatings were produced by simultaneous evaporation of Al and Al 2 O 3 from two separate electron gun sources as well as reactively by evaporation of Al in oxygen. The results of both procedures are compared for layers with a homogeneous and a graded filling factor of the metal. A solar absorptance of 0.96 at a thermal emittance (373 K) of 0.12 was achieved. The thermal stability of the coatings was investigated by annealing in air and under high vacuum conditions. The stability was poor in both cases. The changes of the material composition due to the degradation was investigated by Auger depth profiling

We investigate the wavelength and magnetic-field dependence of the Faraday rotation in Cd1-xMnxTe/CdTe superlattices in order to probe the strength of the spin-exchange interaction between the excited carriers and the Mn2+ ions in these systems. Using a modulation technique we are able to optically record changes of the density of aligned Mn2+ spin states in the order of /S(sat) = 6 x 10(-5), where S(sat) is the saturation density. We observe a steplike behavior at the absorption edge reflecting the density of states and a strong excitonic resonance, which is difficult to resolve by conventional spectroscopic methods like photoluminescence excitation or transmission spectroscopy. With decreasing barrier width L(B) we observe below L(B) = 4 nm a decrease of the strength of the spin-exchange interaction indicating the effects of reduced dimensionality.