2,886 research outputs found
Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds Inferred From Airborne Flux Measurements over a Megacity
Toluene and benzene are used for assessing the ability to measure disjunct eddy covariance (DEC) fluxes of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) using Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) on aircraft. Statistically significant correlation between vertical wind speed and mixing ratios suggests that airborne VOC eddy covariance (EC) flux measurements using PTR-MS are feasible. City-median midday toluene and benzene fluxes are calculated to be on the order of 14.1&plusmn;4.0 mg/m<sup>2</sup>/h and 4.7&plusmn;2.3 mg/m<sup>2</sup>/h, respectively. For comparison the adjusted CAM2004 emission inventory estimates toluene fluxes of 10 mg/m<sup>2</sup>/h along the footprint of the flight-track. Wavelet analysis of instantaneous toluene and benzene measurements during city overpasses is tested as a tool to assess surface emission heterogeneity. High toluene to benzene flux ratios above an industrial district (e.g. 10–15 g/g) including the International airport (e.g. 3–5 g/g) and a mean flux (concentration) ratio of 3.2&plusmn;0.5 g/g (3.9&plusmn;0.3 g/g) across Mexico City indicate that evaporative fuel and industrial emissions play an important role for the prevalence of aromatic compounds. Based on a tracer model, which was constrained by BTEX (BTEX– Benzene/Toluene/Ethylbenzene/m, p, o-Xylenes) compound concentration ratios, the fuel marker methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether (MTBE) and the biomass burning marker acetonitrile (CH<sub>3</sub>CN), we show that a combination of industrial, evaporative fuel, and exhaust emissions account for >87% of all BTEX sources. Our observations suggest that biomass burning emissions play a minor role for the abundance of BTEX compounds in the MCMA (2–13%)
Upper tropospheric ozone production from lightning NO_x-impacted convection: Smoke ingestion case study from the DC3 campaign
As part of the Deep Convective Cloud and Chemistry (DC3) experiment, the National Science Foundation/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Gulfstream-V (GV) and NASA DC-8 research aircraft probed the chemical composition of the inflow and outflow of two convective storms (north storm, NS, south storm, SS) originating in the Colorado region on 22 June 2012, a time when the High Park wildfire was active in the area. A wide range of trace species were measured on board both aircraft including biomass burning (BB) tracers hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and acetonitrile (ACN). Acrolein, a much shorter lived tracer for BB, was also quantified on the GV. The data demonstrated that the NS had ingested fresh smoke from the High Park fire and as a consequence had a higher VOC OH reactivity than the SS. The SS lofted aged fire tracers along with other boundary layer ozone precursors and was more impacted by lightning NO_x (LNO_x) than the NS. The NCAR master mechanism box model was initialized with measurements made in the outflow of the two storms. The NS and SS were predicted to produce 11 and 14 ppbv of O_3, respectively, downwind of the storm over 2 days. Sensitivity tests revealed that the ozone production potential of the SS was highly dependent on LNO_x. Normalized excess mixing ratios, ΔX/ΔCO, for HCN and ACN were determined in both the fire plume and the storm outflow and found to be 7.0 ± 0.5 and 2.3 ± 0.5 pptv ppbv^(−1), respectively, and 1.4 ± 0.3 pptv ppbv^(−1) for acrolein in the outflow only
Global and regional effects of the photochemistry of CH_3O_2NO_2: evidence from ARCTAS
Using measurements from the NASA Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) experiment, we show that methyl peroxy nitrate (CH_3O_2NO_2) is present in concentrations of ~5–15 pptv in the springtime arctic upper troposphere. We investigate the regional and global effects of CH_3O_2NO_2 by including its chemistry in the GEOS-Chem 3-D global chemical transport model. We find that at temperatures below 240 K inclusion of CH_3O_2NO_2 chemistry results in decreases of up to ~20 % in NO_x, ~20 % in N_2O_5, ~5 % in HNO3, ~2 % in ozone, and increases in methyl hydrogen peroxide of up to ~14 %. Larger changes are observed in biomass burning plumes lofted to high altitude. Additionally, by sequestering NO_x at low temperatures, CH_3O_2NO_2 decreases the cycling of HO_2 to OH, resulting in a larger upper tropospheric HO_2 to OH ratio. These results may impact some estimates of lightning NO_x sources as well as help explain differences between models and measurements of upper tropospheric composition
Effect of topology on the transport properties of two interacting dots
The transport properties of a system of two interacting dots, one of them
directly connected to the leads constituting a side-coupled configuration
(SCD), are studied in the weak and strong tunnel-coupling limits. The
conductance behavior of the SCD structure has new and richer physics than the
better studied system of two dots aligned with the leads (ACD). In the weak
coupling regime and in the case of one electron per dot, the ACD configuration
gives rise to two mostly independent Kondo states. In the SCD topology, the
inserted dot is in a Kondo state while the side-connected one presents Coulomb
blockade properties. Moreover, the dot spins change their behavior, from an
antiferromagnetic coupling to a ferromagnetic correlation, as a consequence of
the interaction with the conduction electrons. The system is governed by the
Kondo effect related to the dot that is embedded into the leads. The role of
the side-connected dot is to introduce, when at resonance, a new path for the
electrons to go through giving rise to the interferences responsible for the
suppression of the conductance. These results depend on the values of the
intra-dot Coulomb interactions. In the case where the many-body interaction is
restricted to the side-connected dot, its Kondo correlation is responsible for
the scattering of the conduction electrons giving rise to the conductance
suppression
Is there a renormalization of the 1D conductance in Luttinger Liquid model?
Properties of 1D transport strongly depend on the proper choice of boundary
conditions. It has been frequently stated that the Luttinger Liquid (LL)
conductance is renormalized by the interaction as . To
contest this result I develop a model of 1D LL wire with the interaction
switching off at the infinities. Its solution shows that there is no
renormalization of the universal conductance while the electrons have a free
behavior in the source and drain reservoirs.Comment: 5 pages, RevTex 2.0, attempted repair of tex error
Spectral Function in Mott Insulating Surfaces
We show theoretically the fingerprints of short-range spiral magnetic
correlations in the photoemission spectra of the Mott insulating ground states
realized in the triangular silicon surfaces K/Si(111)-B and SiC(0001). The
calculated spectra present low energy features of magnetic origin with a
reduced dispersion ~10-40 meV compared with the center-of-mass spectra
bandwidth ~0.2-0:3 eV. Remarkably, we find that the quasiparticle signal
survives only around the magnetic Goldstone modes. Our findings would position
these silicon surfaces as new candidates to investigate non-conventional
quasiparticle excitations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To be published in Journal of Physics: Condensed
Matte
Biomass burning and urban air pollution over the Central Mexican Plateau
Observations during the 2006 dry season of highly elevated concentrations of cyanides in the atmosphere above Mexico City (MC) and the surrounding plains demonstrate that biomass burning (BB) significantly impacted air quality in the region. We find that during the period of our measurements, fires contribute more than half of the organic aerosol mass and submicron aerosol scattering, and one third of the enhancement in benzene, reactive nitrogen, and carbon monoxide in the outflow from the plateau. The combination of biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions will affect ozone chemistry in the MC outflow
Massive Spin Collective Mode in Quantum Hall Ferromagnet
It is shown that the collective spin rotation of a single Skyrmion in quantum
Hall ferromagnet can be regarded as precession of the entire spin texture in
the external magnetic field, with an effective moment of inertia which becomes
infinite in the zero g-factor limit. This low-lying spin excitation may
dramatically enhance the nuclear spin relaxation rate via the hyperfine
interaction in the quantum well slightly away from filling factor equal one.Comment: 4 page
Transport in an inhomogeneous interacting one--dimensional system
Transport through a one--dimensional wire of interacting electrons connected
to semi--infinite leads is investigated using a bosonization approach. An
incident electron is transmitted as a sequence of partial charges. The dc
conductance is found to be entirely determined by the properties of the leads.
The dynamic nonlocal conductivity is rigorously expressed in terms of the
transmission. For abrupt variations of the interaction parameters at the
junctions the central wire acts as a Fabry--Perot resonator. When one of the
connected wires has a tendency towards superconducting order, partial Andreev
reflection of an incident electron occurs.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX 3.0, 1 postscript figure, everything in a uuencoded
fil
Atmospheric Acetaldehyde: Importance of Air-Sea Exchange and a Missing Source in the Remote Troposphere.
We report airborne measurements of acetaldehyde (CH3CHO) during the first and second deployments of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom). The budget of CH3CHO is examined using the Community Atmospheric Model with chemistry (CAM-chem), with a newly-developed online air-sea exchange module. The upper limit of the global ocean net emission of CH3CHO is estimated to be 34 Tg a-1 (42 Tg a-1 if considering bubble-mediated transfer), and the ocean impacts on tropospheric CH3CHO are mostly confined to the marine boundary layer. Our analysis suggests that there is an unaccounted CH3CHO source in the remote troposphere and that organic aerosols can only provide a fraction of this missing source. We propose that peroxyacetic acid (PAA) is an ideal indicator of the rapid CH3CHO production in the remote troposphere. The higher-than-expected CH3CHO measurements represent a missing sink of hydroxyl radicals (and halogen radical) in current chemistry-climate models
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