Multiwavelength optical pyrometer for shock compression experiments

A system for measurement of the spectral radiance of materials shocked to high pressures (~100 GPa) by impact using a light gas gun is described. Thermal radiation from the sample is sampled at six wavelength bands in the visible spectrum, and each signal is separately detected by solid-state photodiodes, and recorded with a time resolution of ~10 ns. Interpretation of the records in terms of temperature of transparent sample materials is discussed. Results of a series of exploratory experiments with metals are also given. Shock temperatures in the range 4000–8000 K have been reliably measured. Spectral radiance and temperatures have been determined with uncertainties of 2%

Shock temperatures in calcite (CaCO3): Implication for shock induced decomposition

The temperatures induced in crystalline calcite upon planar shock compression (95–160 GPa) are reported from two-stage light gas-gun experiments. The temperatures are obtained fitting 6-channel optical pyrometer radiances in the 450 to 900 nm range, to a Planck radiation law temperature varied from 3300 to 5400 K. Calculations demonstrate that the temperatures are some 400 to 1350 K lower than if either shock-induced melting and/or disproportionation of calcite behind the shock front was not occurring. Here calcite is modeled as disproportionating into a molecular liquid, or a solid CaO plus CO2 gas. For temperature calculations, specific heat at constant volume for one mole of CO2 is taken to be 6.7R as compared to 9R in the solid state; whereas calcite and CaO have their solid state values (15R and 6R). Calculations also suggest that the onset of decomposition in calcite to CaO and CO2 during loading occurs at ~75±10 GPa, along the Hugoniot whereas decomposition begins upon unloading from 18 GPa. The 18 GPa value is based on comparison of VISAR measurements of particle velocity profiles induced upon isentropic expansion with one-dimensional numerical simulation

Implementation of a Gauss convoluted Pandel PDF for track reconstruction in Neutrino Telescopes

A probability distribution function is presented which provides a realistic description of the detection of scattered photons. The resulting probabilities can be described analytically by means of a superposition of several special functions. These exact expressions can be evaluated numerically only for small distances and limited time residuals, due to computer accuracy limitations. In this report we provide approximations for the exact expressions in different regions of the distance-time residual space, defined by the detector geometry and the space-time scale of an event. These approximations can be evaluated numerically with a relative error with respect to the exact expression at the boundaries of less than 0.001.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures Revision 1 : extended content 12 pages, 4 figures Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic

Quaternionic spherical harmonics and a sharp multiplier theorem on quaternionic spheres

A sharp $L^p$ spectral multiplier theorem of Mihlin--H\"ormander type is proved for a distinguished sub-Laplacian on quaternionic spheres. This is the first such result on compact sub-Riemannian manifolds where the horizontal space has corank greater than one. The proof hinges on the analysis of the quaternionic spherical harmonic decomposition, of which we present an elementary derivation

Diluted antiferromagnets in a field seem to be in a different universality class than the random-field Ising model

We perform large-scale Monte Carlo simulations using the Machta-Newman-Chayes algorithms to study the critical behavior of both the diluted antiferromagnet in a field with 30% dilution and the random-field Ising model with Gaussian random fields for different field strengths. Analytical calculations by Cardy [Phys. Rev. B 29, 505 (1984)] predict that both models map onto each other and share the same universality class in the limit of vanishing fields. However, a detailed finite-size scaling analysis of both the Binder cumulant and the two-point finite-size correlation length suggests that even in the limit of small fields, where the mapping is expected to work, both models are not in the same universality class. Therefore, care should be taken when interpreting (experimental) data for diluted antiferromagnets in a field using the random-field Ising model. Based on our numerical data, we present analytical expressions for the phase boundaries of both models.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 5 table

From AMANDA to IceCube

The first string of the neoteric high energy neutrino telescope IceCube successfully began operating in January 2005. It is anticipated that upon completion the new detector will vastly increase the sensitivity and extend the reach of AMANDA to higher energies. A discussion of the IceCube's discovery potential for extra-terrestrial neutrinos, together with the prospects of new physics derived from the ongoing AMANDA research will be the focus of this paper. Preliminary results of the first antarctic high energy neutrino telescope AMANDA searching in the muon neutrino channel for localized and diffuse excess of extra-terrestrial neutrinos will be reviewed using data collected between 2000 and 2003. Neutrino flux limits obtained with the all-flavor dedicated UHE and cascade analyses will be described. A first neutrino spectrum above one TeV in agreement with atmospheric neutrino flux expectations and no extra-terrestrial contribution will be presented, followed by a discussion of a limit for neutralino CDM candidates annihilating in the center of the Sun.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures Invited talk contribution at 5th International Conference on Non-accelerator New Physics (NANP 05), Dubna, Russia, 20-25 Jun 200

Mass spectrometer calibration of Cosmic Dust Analyzer

The time of flight mass spectrometer of the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft, is expected to be placed in orbit about Saturn to sample the ring material and satellite impact ejecta. Upon impact of an incident dust particle against the target plate at velocities of 5-100 km/s, some 10–8 to 10–5 times the particle mass of positive valence, single-charged ions is induced. These are analyzed via a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Initial experiments employing a pulsed N2 laser (>300 µJ/pulse, 4ns, 337nm) acting on a suite of samples are described. The laser beam is focussed to deliver the light pulses onto a laser power density (1011 W/cm2) to simulate the impact of particles. Laser ionization produced a charge of 4.6 pC per pulse for aluminum alloy. Estimating that each Al+1 ion require energy of 5.98 eV ionization energy/ion implies that 10–5% of the laser energy produced ions and the present system has a 5% efficiency of collecting the laser-irradiation induced ions. Employing a multi-channel plate detector in this mass spectrometer yields for Al-Mg-Cu alloy and kamacite (Fe-Ni mineral) targets well defined peaks at 24 (Mg+1), 27 (Al+1) and 64 (Cu+1), and 56 (Fe+1), 58 (Ni+1) and 60 (Ni+1) dalton, respectively

Electromagnetic break-up of nuclei with A = 3 - 7

This talk contains a short review of some of the progresses made in the last three years in the calculations of electromagnetic cross sections of light nuclei up to A=7. Since many of them have been possible thanks to the use of the Lorentz Integral Transform (LIT) method, both for inclusive and exclusive reactions, I will first make a few remarks on the method, stressing its essential points and then show results for different nuclei. One of the interesting outcomes is e.g. the appearing of typical collective motion features from ab initio six-body calculations. When a comparison with available experimental data is attempted, it is rather disappointing to realize that low-energy data are old, incomplete and not accurate enough to disantangle interesting effects, showing the need of a major experimental program in this direction, together with more theoretical efforts to implement modern realistic forces in continuum calculations of $A\geq 4$ systems.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, invited talk at the FB17 - Durham (N.C) June 5-10 200

On Optimal Partitioning For Sparse Matrices In Variable Block Row Format

The Variable Block Row (VBR) format is an influential blocked sparse matrix format designed to represent shared sparsity structure between adjacent rows and columns. VBR consists of groups of adjacent rows and columns, storing the resulting blocks that contain nonzeros in a dense format. This reduces the memory footprint and enables optimizations such as register blocking and instruction-level parallelism. Existing approaches use heuristics to determine which rows and columns should be grouped together. We adapt and optimize a dynamic programming algorithm for sequential hypergraph partitioning to produce a linear time algorithm which can determine the optimal partition of rows under an expressive cost model, assuming the column partition remains fixed. Furthermore, we show that the problem of determining an optimal partition for the rows and columns simultaneously is NP-Hard under a simple linear cost model. To evaluate our algorithm empirically against existing heuristics, we introduce the 1D-VBR format, a specialization of VBR format where columns are left ungrouped. We evaluate our algorithms on all 1626 real-valued matrices in the SuiteSparse Matrix Collection. When asked to minimize an empirically derived cost model for a sparse matrix-vector multiplication kernel, our algorithm produced partitions whose 1D-VBR realizations achieve a speedup of at least 1.18 over an unblocked kernel on 25% of the matrices, and a speedup of at least 1.59 on 12.5% of the matrices. The 1D-VBR representation produced by our algorithm had faster SpMVs than the 1D-VBR representations produced by any existing heuristics on 87.8% of the test matrices