The Effect of Strain Rate on Diffusion Flames

Several steady state and time-dependent solutions to the compressible conservation laws describing direct one-step near-equilibrium irreversible exothermic burning of initially unmixed gaseous reactants, with Lewis-Semenov number unity, are presented. The quantitative investigation first establishes the Burke-Schumann thin-flame solution using the Shvab-Zeldovich formulation. Real flames do not have the indefinitely thin reaction zone associated with the Burke-Schumann solution. Singular perturbation analysis is used to provide a modification of the thin-flame solution which includes a more realistic reaction zone of small but finite thickness. The particular geometry emphasized is the un bounded counterflow such that there exists a spatially constant rate of strain along the flame. While the solutions for diffusion flames under a finite tangential strain rate may be of interest in and of themselves for laminar flow, the problems are motivated by the authors' belief that they are pertinent to the study of diffusion-flame burning in transitional and turbulent shear flows

Recurrence Formulas for Fully Exponentially Correlated Four-Body Wavefunctions

Formulas are presented for the recursive generation of four-body integrals in which the integrand consists of arbitrary integer powers (>= -1) of all the interparticle distances r_ij, multiplied by an exponential containing an arbitrary linear combination of all the r_ij. These integrals are generalizations of those encountered using Hylleraas basis functions, and include all that are needed to make energy computations on the Li atom and other four-body systems with a fully exponentially correlated Slater-type basis of arbitrary quantum numbers. The only quantities needed to start the recursion are the basic four-body integral first evaluated by Fromm and Hill, plus some easily evaluated three-body "boundary" integrals. The computational labor in constructing integral sets for practical computations is less than when the integrals are generated using explicit formulas obtained by differentiating the basic integral with respect to its parameters. Computations are facilitated by using a symbolic algebra program (MAPLE) to compute array index pointers and present syntactically correct FORTRAN source code as output; in this way it is possible to obtain error-free high-speed evaluations with minimal effort. The work can be checked by verifying sum rules the integrals must satisfy.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. A (January 2009

Non-Gaussianity from extragalactic point-sources

The population of compact extragalactic sources contribute to the non-Gaussianity at Cosmic Microwave Background frequencies. We study their non-Gaussianity using publicly available full-sky simulations. We introduce a parametrisation to visualise efficiently the bispectrum and we describe the scale and frequency dependences of the bispectrum of radio and IR point-sources. We show that the bispectrum is well fitted by an analytical prescription. We find that the clustering of IR sources enhances their non-Gaussianity by several orders of magnitude, and that their bispectrum peaks in the squeezed triangles. Examining the impact of these sources on primordial non-Gaussianity estimation, we find that radio sources yield an important positive bias to local fNL at low frequencies but this bias is efficiently reduced by masking detectable sources. IR sources produce a negative bias at high frequencies, which is not dimmed by the masking, as their clustering is dominated by faint sources.Comment: 4pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Contribution to the proceedings of the International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, Goa, December 201

Bipolar spin filter in a quantum dot molecule

We show that the tunable hybridization between two lateral quantum dots connected to non-magnetic current leads in a `hanging-dot' configuration that can be used to implement a bipolar spin filter. The competition between Zeeman, exchange interaction, and interdot tunneling (molecular hybridization) yields a singlet-triplet transition of the double dot {\it ground state} that allows spin filtering in Coulomb blockade experiments. Its generic nature should make it broadly useful as a robust bidirectional spin polarizer.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures (to appear in Appl. Phys. Lett.

On the correction of anomalous phase oscillation in entanglement witnesses using quantum neural networks

Entanglement of a quantum system depends upon relative phase in complicated ways, which no single measurement can reflect. Because of this, entanglement witnesses are necessarily limited in applicability and/or utility. We propose here a solution to the problem using quantum neural networks. A quantum system contains the information of its entanglement; thus, if we are clever, we can extract that information efficiently. As proof of concept, we show how this can be done for the case of pure states of a two-qubit system, using an entanglement indicator corrected for the anomalous phase oscillation. Both the entanglement indicator and the phase correction are calculated by the quantum system itself acting as a neural network

Self-aligning rod prevents eccentric loading of tensile specimens

Tensile specimens can be tested in liquid nitrogen without subjecting the cryostat to tilting during assembly of the specimen in the liquid nitrogen-filled cryostat. A universal joint with a semielliptical head and socket reduces misalignment and permits only limited side travel

Four pi-recoil proportional counter used as neutron spectrometer

Study considers problems encountered in using 4 pi-recoil counters for neutron spectra measurement. Emphasis is placed on calibration, shape discrimination, variation of W, the average energy loss per ion pair, and the effects of differentiation on the intrinsic counter resolution

Flowmeter measures low gas-flow rates

Positive-displacement flowmeter measures low gas-flow rates by gaging the time required for a slug of mercury to pass between two reference levels in a tube of known volume