Convective flow during dendritic growth

A review is presented of the major experimental findings obtained from recent ground-based research conducted under the SPAR program. Measurements of dendritic growth at small supercoolings indicate that below approximately 1.5 K a transition occurs from diffusive control to convective control in succinonitrile, a model system chosen for this study. The key theoretical ideas concerning diffusive and convective heat transport during dendritic growth are discussed, and it is shown that a transition in the transport control should occur when the characteristic length for diffusion becomes larger than the characteristic length for convection. The experimental findings and the theoretical ideas discussed suggest that the Fluid Experiment System could provide appropriate experimental diagnostics for flow field visualization and quantification of the fluid dynamical effects presented here

Bioinspired electrohydrodynamic ceramic patterning of curved metallic substrates

Template-assisted electrohydrodynamic atomisation (TAEA) has been used for the first time to pattern curved metallic surfaces. Parallel lines of ceramic titania (TiO2) were produced on titanium substrates, convex and concave with diameters of ~25 mm, at the ambient temperature. Optimal results were obtained with 4 wt% TiO2 in ethanol suspension deposited over 300 s during stable cone-jetting at 20 µl/min, 10kV and collection distance 80 mm. A high degree of control over pattern line width, interline spacing and thickness were achieved. Nanoindentation load-displacement curves were continuous for the full loading and unloading cycle, indicating good adhesion between pattern and substrate. At a loading rate of 1 μN/s and a hold time of 1 s, pattern hardness decreased as load increased up to 7 μN and remained at 0·1 GPa up to higher loads. Elastic modulus behaved similarly, and both were not sensitive to loading rate. The effect of heat treatment to further consolidate the patterned deposits was also investigated. Hardness of the patterns was not markedly affected by heating. This work shows that TAEA is highly controllable and compatible on a range of substrate geometries. Extending TAEA capabilities from flat to curved surfaces, enabling the bioactive patterning of different surface geometries, takes this technology closer to orthopaedic engineering applications

An Implication on the Pion Distribution Amplitude from the Pion-Photon Transition Form Factor with the New BABAR Data

The new BABAR data on the pion-photon transition form factor arouses people's new interests on the determination of pion distribution amplitude. To explain the data, we take both the leading valence quark state's and the non-valence quark states' contributions into consideration, where the valence quark part up to next-to-leading order is presented and the non-valence quark part is estimated by a phenomenological model based on its limiting behavior at both $Q^2\to 0$ and $Q^2\to\infty$. Our results show that to be consistent with the new BABAR data at large $Q^2$ region, a broader other than the asymptotic-like pion distribution amplitude should be adopted. The broadness of the pion distribution amplitude is controlled by a parameter $B$. It has been found that the new BABAR data at low and high energy regions can be explained simultaneously by setting $B$ to be around 0.60, in which the pion distribution amplitude is closed to the Chernyak-Zhitnitsky form.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Slightly changed, references updated. To be published in Phys.Rev.

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes as Shadow Masks for Nanogap Fabrication

We describe a technique for fabricating nanometer-scale gaps in Pt wires on insulating substrates, using individual single-walled carbon nanotubes as shadow masks during metal deposition. More than 80% of the devices display current-voltage dependencies characteristic of direct electron tunneling. Fits to the current-voltage data yield gap widths in the 0.8-2.3 nm range for these devices, dimensions that are well suited for single-molecule transport measurements

Phase diagrams of a p-Wave superconductor inside a mesoscopic disc-shaped sample

We study the finite-size and boundary effects on a time-reversal-symmetry breaking p-wave superconducting state in a mesoscopic disc geometry using Ginzburg-Landau theory. We show that, for a large parameter range, the system exhibits multiple phase transitions. The superconducting transition from the normal state can also be reentrant as a function of external magnetic field.Comment: Revised version published in Physical Review

Heliospheric plasma sheets

[1] As a high-beta feature on scales of hours or less, the heliospheric plasma sheet (HPS) encasing the heliospheric current sheet shows a high degree of variability. A study of 52 sector boundaries identified in electron pitch angle spectrograms in Wind data from 1995 reveals that only half concur with both high-beta plasma and current sheets, as required for an HPS. The remaining half lack either a plasma sheet or current sheet or both. A complementary study of 37 high-beta events reveals that only 5 contain sector boundaries while nearly all (34) contain local magnetic field reversals, however brief. We conclude that high-beta plasma sheets surround current sheets but that most of these current sheets are associated with fields turned back on themselves. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that high-beta plasma sheets, both at and away from sector boundaries, are the heliospheric counterparts of the small coronal transients observed at the tips of helmet streamers, in which case the proposed mechanism for their release, interchange reconnection, could be responsible for the field inversions