Spin Waves in Ferromagnetic Metals and the Dynamical Form of the Landau Quasi-particle Theory

Spin waves in ferromagnetic metals dynamical form of Landau quasi-particle theor

Inclusion of an Introduction to Infrastructure Course in a Civil and Environmental Engineering Curriculum

Civil infrastructure refers to the built environment (sometimes referred to as public works) and consists of roads, bridges, buildings, dams, levees, drinking water treatment facilities, wastewater treatment facilities, power generation and transmission facilities, communications, solid waste facilities, hazardous waste facilities, and other sectors. Although there is a need to train engineers who have a holistic view of infrastructure, there is evidence that civil and environmental engineering (CEE) programs have not fully addressed this increasingly recognized need. One effective approach to address this educational gap is to incorporate a course related to infrastructure into the curriculum for first-year or second-year civil and environmental engineering students. Therefore, this study assesses the current status of teaching such courses in the United States and identifies the incentives for, and the barriers against, incorporating an introduction to infrastructure course into schools’ current CEE curricula. Two distinct activities enabled these objectives. First, a questionnaire was distributed to CEE programs across the United States, to which 33 responses were received. The results indicated that although the majority of participants believe that offering such a course will benefit students by increasing the breadth of the curriculum and by providing a holistic view of CEE, barriers such as the maximum allowable credits for graduation, the lack of motivation within a department—either because such a course did not have a champion or because the department had no plans to revise their curriculum—and a lack of expertise among faculty members inhibited inclusion of the course in curricula. Second, three case studies demonstrating successful inclusion of an introduction to infrastructure course into the CEE curriculum were evaluated. Cases were collected from Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and West Point CEE programs, and it was found that the key to success in including such a course is a motivated team of faculty members who are committed to educating students about different aspects of infrastructure. The results of the study can be used as a road map to help universities successfully incorporate an introduction to infrastructure course in their CEE programs

Transport and Spectra in the Half-filled Hubbard Model: A Dynamical Mean Field Study

We study the issues of scaling and universality in spectral and transport properties of the infinite dimensional particle--hole symmetric (half-filled) Hubbard model within dynamical mean field theory. One of the simplest and extensively used impurity solvers, namely the iterated perturbation theory approach is reformulated to avoid problems such as analytic continuation of Matsubara frequency quantities or calculating multi-dimensional integrals, while taking full account of the very sharp structures in the Green's functions that arise close to the Mott transitions and in the Mott insulator regime. We demonstrate its viability for the half-filled Hubbard model. Previous known results are reproduced within the present approach. The universal behavior of the spectral functions in the Fermi liquid regime is emphasized, and adiabatic continuity to the non-interacting limit is demonstrated. The dc resistivity in the metallic regime is known to be a non-monotonic function of temperature with a `coherence peak'. This feature is shown to be a universal feature occurring at a temperature roughly equal to the low energy scale of the system. A comparison to pressure dependent dc resistivity experiments on Selenium doped NiS$_2$ yields qualitatively good agreement. Resistivity hysteresis across the Mott transition is shown to be described qualitatively within the present framework. A direct comparison of the thermal hysteresis observed in V$_2$O$_3$ with our theoretical results yields a value of the hopping integral, which we find to be in the range estimated through first-principle methods. Finally, a systematic study of optical conductivity is carried out and the changes in absorption as a result of varying interaction strength and temperature are identified.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure

Effect of Optical Coating and Surface Treatments on Mechanical Loss in Fused Silica

We report on the mechanical loss in fused silica samples with various surface treatments and compare them with samples having an optical coating. Mild surface treatments such as washing in detergent or acetone were not found to affect the mechanical loss of flame-drawn fused silica fibers stored in air. However, mechanical contact (with steel calipers) significantly increased the loss. The application of a high-reflective optical coating of the type used for the LIGO test masses was found to greatly increase the mechanical loss of commercially polished fused silica microscope slides. We discuss the implications for the noise budget of interferometers.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Third Eduardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, July 12-16, 1999. Updated version contains a correction of Eq. 3 and an estimate for the loss angle of a LIGO coating. (Neither of these revisions are included in the version published in the conference proceedings.

Soft X-ray seeding studies for the SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source II

We present the results from studies of soft X-ray seeding options for the LCLS-II X-ray free electron laser (FEL) at SLAC. The LCLS-II will use superconducting accelerator technology to produce X-ray pulses at up to 1 MHz repetition rate using 4 GeV electron beams. If properly seeded, these pulses will be nearly fully coherent, and highly stable in photon energy, bandwidth, and intensity, thus enabling unique experiments with intense high-resolution soft X-rays. Given the expected electron beam parameters from start to end simulations and predicted FEL performance, our studies reveal echo enabled harmonic generation (EEHG) and soft X-ray self-seeding (SXRSS) as promising and complementary seeding methods. We find that SXRSS has the advantage of simplicity and will deliver 5-35 times higher spectral brightness than EEHG in the 1-2 nm range, but lacks some of the potential for phase-stable multipulse and multicolor FEL operations enabled by external laser seeding with EEHG

Phenotypically determined resistance of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to normal human serum: environmental factors in subcutaneous chambers in guinea pigs

Some gonococci obtained from human urethral exudate or from subcutaneously implanted chambers in guinea pigs show a resistance to killing by human serum which is lost on subculture in vitro after a few generations. The environmental factors which may influence the phenotypic expression of resistance to serum killing were investigated in guinea pig chambers and in chamber fluid in vitro. The redox potential in chambers before and after infection was lower than that of heart blood but conditions were not anaerobic; H2O2 increased the redox potential but did not decrease gonococcal serum resistance. The chambers were slightly alkaline before and after infection. When the concentration of glucose (depleted in infected chambers by the abundant polymorphonuclear cells) was restored to excess, the serum resistance of the gonococci was unaffected. Concentrations of free amino acids in chambers changed little during infection. Gonococci adapted to growth in chambers and subsequently rendered serum-sensitive by growing once on agar reverted to serum-resistance after 0.5 to 1 h incubation in chamber fluid in vitro at 37°C but not at 25°C or 4°C. After 16 to 24 h growth at 37°C, resistance was again lost. The reversion to serum resistance did not occur in a complex laboratory medium. Examination of the chamber fluid after growth of gonococci in vitro showed depletion of lactate, glutamine and proline

Thermoelastic dissipation in inhomogeneous media: loss measurements and displacement noise in coated test masses for interferometric gravitational wave detectors

The displacement noise in the test mass mirrors of interferometric gravitational wave detectors is proportional to their elastic dissipation at the observation frequencies. In this paper, we analyze one fundamental source of dissipation in thin coatings, thermoelastic damping associated with the dissimilar thermal and elastic properties of the film and the substrate. We obtain expressions for the thermoelastic dissipation factor necessary to interpret resonant loss measurements, and for the spectral density of displacement noise imposed on a Gaussian beam reflected from the face of a coated mass. The predicted size of these effects is large enough to affect the interpretation of loss measurements, and to influence design choices in advanced gravitational wave detectors.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figures, uses REVTeX

Solution Growth and Characterization of Single Crystals on Earth and in Microgravity

Crystal growth has been of interest to physicists and engineers for a long time because of their unique properties. Single crystals are utilized in such diverse applications as pharmaceuticals, computers, infrared detectors, frequency measurements, piezoelectric devices, a variety of high-technology devices, and sensors. Solution crystal growth is one of the important techniques to grow a variety of crystals when the material decomposes at the melting point and a suitable solvent is available to make a saturated solution at a desired temperature. In this Technical Memorandum (TM) an attempt is made to give the fundamentals of growing crystals from solution including improved designs of various crystallizers. Since the same solution crystal growth technique could not be used in microgravity, the authors proposed a new cooled-sting technique to grow crystals in space. The authors experience from conducting two Space Shuttle solution crystal growth experiments are also detailed in this TM and the complexity of solution growth experiments to grow crystals in space are also discussed. These happen to be some of the early experiments performed in space, and various lessons learned are described. A brief discussion of protein crystal growth that shares basic principles of the solution growth technique is given, along with some flight hardware information for growth in microgravity