2,647 research outputs found
Development of dry coal feeders
Design and fabrication of equipment of feed coal into pressurized environments were investigated. Concepts were selected based on feeder system performance and economic projections. These systems include: two approaches using rotating components, a gas or steam driven ejector, and a modified standpipe feeder concept. Results of development testing of critical components, design procedures, and performance prediction techniques are reviewed
Evidence of several dipolar quasi-invariants in Liquid Crystals
In a closed quantum system of N coupled spins with magnetic quantum number I,
there are about (2I + 1)^N constants of motion. However, the possibility of
observing such quasi-invariant (QI) states in solid-like spin systems in
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is not a strictly exact prediction. The aim of
this work is to provide experimental evidence of several QI, in the proton NMR
of small spin clusters, besides those already known Zeeman, and dipolar orders
(strong and weak). We explore the spin states prepared with the
Jeener-Broekaert pulse sequence by analyzing the time-domain signals yielded by
this sequence as a function of the preparation times, in a variety of dipolar
networks. We observe that the signals can be explained with two dipolar QIs
only within a range of short preparation times. At longer times the time-domain
signals have an echo-like behaviour. We study their multiple quantum coherence
content on a basis orthogonal to the z-basis and see that such states involve a
significant number of correlated spins. Then we show that the whole preparation
time-scale can only be reconstructed by assuming the occurrence of multiple QI
which we isolate experimentally
A lattice of double wells for manipulating pairs of cold atoms
We describe the design and implementation of a 2D optical lattice of double
wells suitable for isolating and manipulating an array of individual pairs of
atoms in an optical lattice. Atoms in the square lattice can be placed in a
double well with any of their four nearest neighbors. The properties of the
double well (the barrier height and relative energy offset of the paired sites)
can be dynamically controlled. The topology of the lattice is phase stable
against phase noise imparted by vibrational noise on mirrors. We demonstrate
the dynamic control of the lattice by showing the coherent splitting of atoms
from single wells into double wells and observing the resulting double-slit
atom diffraction pattern. This lattice can be used to test controlled neutral
atom motion among lattice sites and should allow for testing controlled
two-qubit gates.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures Accepted for publication in Physical Review
The excluded 3-minors for vf-safe delta-matroids
Vf-safe delta-matroids have the desirable property of behaving well under
certain duality operations. Several important classes of delta-matroids are known to be
vf-safe, including the class of ribbon-graphic delta-matroids, which is related to the class
of ribbon graphs or embedded graphs in the same way that graphic matroids correspond
to graphs. In this paper, we characterize vf-safe delta-matroids and ribbon-graphic deltamatroids by finding the minimal obstructions, called excluded 3-minors, to membership in
the class. We find the unique (up to twisted duality) excluded 3-minor within the class of
set systems for the class of vf-safe delta-matroids. In the literature, binary delta-matroids
appear in many different guises, with appropriate notions of minor operations equivalent
to that of 3-minors, perhaps most notably as graphs with vertex minors. We give a direct
explanation of this equivalence and show that some well-known results may be expressed
in terms of 3-minors
Atom interferometry measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium
Using an atom interferometer, we have measured the static electric
polarizability of Li m atomic units with a 0.66% uncertainty. Our experiment, which
is similar to an experiment done on sodium in 1995 by D. Pritchard and
co-workers, consists in applying an electric field on one of the two
interfering beams and measuring the resulting phase-shift. With respect to D.
Pritchard's experiment, we have made several improvements which are described
in detail in this paper: the capacitor design is such that the electric field
can be calculated analytically; the phase sensitivity of our interferometer is
substantially better, near 16 mrad/; finally our interferometer is
species selective it so that impurities present in our atomic beam (other
alkali atoms or lithium dimers) do not perturb our measurement. The extreme
sensitivity of atom interferometry is well illustrated by our experiment: our
measurement amounts to measuring a slight increase of the atom
velocity when it enters the electric field region and our present
sensitivity is sufficient to detect a variation .Comment: 14 page
Quasi-equilibrium states in thermotropic liquid crystals studied by multiple quantum NMR
We study the nature of the quasiinvariants in nematic 5CB and measure their
relaxation times by encoding the multiple quantum coherences of the states
following the JB pulse pair on two orthogonal bases, Z and X. The experiments
were also performed in powder adamantane at 301 K which is used as a reference
compound having only one dipolar quasiinvariant. We show that the evolution of
the quantum states during the build up of the quasi-equilibrium state in 5CB
prepared under the S condition is similar to the case of adamantane and that
their quasi-equilibrium density operators have the same tensor structure. In
contrast, the second constant of motion, whose explicit operator form is not
known, involves a richer composition of multiple quantum coherences on the X
basis of even order, in consistency with the truncation inherent in its
definition. We exploited the exclusive presence coherences 4, 6, 8, besides 0
and 2 under the W condition to measure the spin-lattice relaxation time T_{W}
accurately, so avoiding experimental difficulties that usually impair dipolar
order relaxation measurement such as Zeeman contamination at high fields, and
also superposition of the different quasiinvariants. This procedure opens the
possibility of measuring the spin-lattice relaxation of a quasiinvariant
independent of the Zeeman and S reservoirs, so incorporating a new relaxation
parameter useful for studying the complex molecular dynamics in mesophases. In
fact, we report the first measurement of T_{W} in a liquid crystal at high
magnetic fields. The comparison of the obtained value with the one
corresponding to a lower field (16 MHz) points out that the relaxation of the
W-order strongly depends on the intensity of the external magnetic field,
similarly to the case of the S reservoir, indicating that the relaxation of the
W-quasiinvariant is also governed by the cooperative molecular motions.Comment: 7 figures. http://www.famaf.unc.edu.ar/series/AFis2005.ht
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