[en] The inclusion of solar thermal energy into energy systems requires storage possibilities to overcome the gap between supply and demand. Storage of thermal energy with closed sorption thermal energy systems has the advantage of low thermal losses and high energy density. However, the efficiency of these systems needs yet to be increased to become competitive on the market. In this paper, the so-called “charge boost technology” is developed and tested via experiments as a new concept for the efficiency increase of compact thermal energy storages. The main benefit of the charge boost technology is that it can reach a defined state of charge for sorption thermal energy storages at lower temperature levels than classic pure desorption processes. Experiments are conducted to provide a proof of principle for this concept. The results show that the charge boost technology does function as predicted and is a viable option for further improvement of sorption thermal energy storages. Subsequently, a new process application is developed by the author with strong focus on the utilization of the advantages of the charge boost technology over conventional desorption processes. After completion of the conceptual design, the theoretical calculations are validated via experiments. (paper)

[en] The Higgs boson was postulated nearly five decades ago within the framework of the standard model of particle physics and has been the subject of numerous searches at accelerators around the world. Its discovery would verify the existence of a complex scalar field thought to give mass to three of the carriers of the electroweak force - the W⁺, W^-, and Z⁰ bosons - as well as to the fundamental quarks and leptons. The CMS Collaboration has observed, with a statistical significance of five standard deviations, a new particle produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The evidence is strongest in the di-photon and four-lepton (electrons and/or muons) final states, which provide the best mass resolution in the CMS detector. The probability of the observed signal being due to a random fluctuation of the background is about 1 in 3 * 10⁶. The new particle is a boson with spin not equal to 1 and has a mass of about 125 giga-electron volts. Although its measured properties are, within the uncertainties of the present data, consistent with those expected of the Higgs boson, more data are needed to elucidate the precise nature of the new particle. (authors)

[en] Results are presented from a search for heavy, right-handed muon neutrinos, N_μ, and right-handed W_R bosons, which arise in the left-right symmetric extensions of the standard model. The analysis is based on a 5.0 fb^-1 sample of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, collected by the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No evidence is observed for an excess of events over the standard model expectation. For models with exact left-right symmetry, heavy right-handed neutrinos are excluded at 95% confidence level for a range of neutrino masses below the W_R mass, dependent on the value of M_WR. The excluded region in the two-dimensional (M_WR, M_Nμ) mass plane extends to M_WR = 2.5 TeV. (authors)

[en] We report an investigation of the invariant mass spectrum of the two jets with highest transverse momentum in pp → W + 2-jet and W + 3-jet events to look for resonant enhancement. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb^-1 collected with the CMS detector at √s=7 TeV. We find no evidence for the anomalous structure reported by the CDF Collaboration, and establish an upper limit of 5.0 pb at 95% confidence level on the production cross section for a generic Gaussian signal with mass near 150 GeV. Additionally, we exclude two theoretical models that predict a CDF-like dijet resonance near 150 GeV. (authors)