A homopolar disc dynamo experiment with liquid metal contacts

We present experimental results of a homopolar disc dynamo constructed at CICATA-Quer\'etaro in Mexico. The device consists of a flat, multi-arm spiral coil which is placed above a fast-spinning metal disc and connected to the latter by sliding liquid-metal electrical contacts. Theoretically, self-excitation of the magnetic field is expected at the critical magnetic Reynolds number Rm~45, which corresponds to a critical rotation rate of about 10 Hz. We measured the magnetic field above the disc and the voltage drop on the coil for the rotation rate up to 14 Hz, at which the liquid metal started to leak from the outer sliding contact. Instead of the steady magnetic field predicted by the theory we detected a strongly fluctuating magnetic field with a strength comparable to that of Earth's magnetic field which was accompanied by similar voltage fluctuations in the coil. These fluctuations seem to be caused by the intermittent electrical contact through the liquid metal. The experimental results suggest that the dynamo with the actual electrical resistance of liquid metal contacts could be excited at the rotation rate of around 21 Hz provided that the leakage of liquid metal is prevented.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures (to appear in Magnetohydrodynamics

Suppression of electron spin decoherence of the diamond NV center by a transverse magnetic field

We demonstrate that the spin decoherence of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can be suppressed by a transverse magnetic field if the electron spin bath is the primary decoherence source. The NV spin coherence, created in "a decoherence-free subspace" is protected by the transverse component of the zero-field splitting, increasing the spin-coherence time about twofold. The decoherence due to the electron spin bath is also suppressed at magnetic fields stronger than ~25 gauss when applied parallel to the NV symmetry axis. Our method can be used to extend the spin-coherence time of similar spin systems for applications in quantum computing, field sensing, and other metrologies.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Coupled charge and spin dynamics in high-density ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

We studied the spin depolarization of ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in nitrogen-rich single crystal diamonds. We found a strong dependence of the evolution of the polarized state in the dark on the concentration of NV centers. At low excitation power, we observed a simple exponential decay profile in the low-density regime and a paradoxical inverted exponential profile in the high-density regime. At higher excitation power, we observed complex behavior, with an initial sharp rise in luminescence signal after the preparation pulse followed by a slower exponential decay. Magnetic field and excitation laser power-dependent measurements suggest that the rapid initial increase of the luminescence signal is related to recharging of the nitrogen-vacancy centers (from neutral to negatively charged) in the dark. The slow relaxing component corresponds to the longitudinal spin relaxation of the NV ensemble. The shape of the decay profile reflects the interplay between two mechanisms: the NV charge state conversion in the dark and the longitudinal spin relaxation. These mechanisms, in turn, are influenced by ionization, recharging and polarization dynamics during excitation. Interestingly, we found that charge dynamics are dominant in NV-dense samples even at very feeble excitation power. These observations may be important for the use of ensembles of NV centers in precession magnetometry and sensing applications.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Particle-Based Mesoscale Hydrodynamic Techniques

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) and multi-particle collision (MPC) dynamics are powerful tools to study mesoscale hydrodynamic phenomena accompanied by thermal fluctuations. To understand the advantages of these types of mesoscale simulation techniques in more detail, we propose new two methods, which are intermediate between DPD and MPC -- DPD with a multibody thermostat (DPD-MT), and MPC-Langevin dynamics (MPC-LD). The key features are applying a Langevin thermostat to the relative velocities of pairs of particles or multi-particle collisions, and whether or not to employ collision cells. The viscosity of MPC-LD is derived analytically, in very good agreement with the results of numerical simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

A reduced model for shock and detonation waves. II. The reactive case

We present a mesoscopic model for reactive shock waves, which extends a previous model proposed in [G. Stoltz, Europhys. Lett. 76 (2006), 849]. A complex molecule (or a group of molecules) is replaced by a single mesoparticle, evolving according to some Dissipative Particle Dynamics. Chemical reactions can be handled in a mean way by considering an additional variable per particle describing a rate of reaction. The evolution of this rate is governed by the kinetics of a reversible exothermic reaction. Numerical results give profiles in qualitative agreement with all-atom studies