Effects of carbon/graphite fiber contamination on high voltage electrical insulation

The contamination mechanics and resulting failure modes of high voltage electrical insulation due to carbon/graphite fibers were examined. The high voltage insulation vulnerability to carbon/graphite fiber induced failure was evaluated using a contamination system which consisted of a fiber chopper, dispersal chamber, a contamination chamber, and air ducts and suction blower. Tests were conducted to evaluate the effects of fiber length, weathering, and wetness on the insulator's resistance to carbon/graphite fibers. The ability of nuclear, fossil, and hydro power generating stations to maintain normal power generation when the surrounding environment is contaminated by an accidental carbon fiber release was investigated. The vulnerability assessment included only the power plant generating equipment and its associated controls, instrumentation, and auxiliary and support systems

A model for the UHE gamma-rays from Hercules X-1

An outburst of gamma rays with energies E gamma 10 to the 12th power eV was recently detected from the X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1. The outburst had a 3 minute duration and occurred at a time during the 35 day X-ray modulation that is associated with X-ray turnon. The gamma rays also have the same 1.24 second modulation that is observed at X-ray energies. Subsequently a 40 minute outburst was detected at E gamma 10 to the 14th power eV. The interaction of ultrahigh energy particles with a precessing accretion disk explain the observed gamma ray light curve. The constraints one can place on acceleration mechanisms and the possibility that the UHE particles are accelerated by shocks in an accretion flow are explained

Probing the Production of Actinides under Different r-process Conditions

Several extremely metal-poor stars are known to have an enhanced thorium abundance. These actinide-boost stars have likely inherited material from an r-process that operated under different conditions than the r-process that is reflected in most other metal-poor stars with no actinide enhancement. In this article, we explore the sensitivity of actinide production in r-process calculations to the hydrodynamical conditions as well as the nuclear physics. We find that the initial electron fraction Y e is the most important factor determining the actinide yields and that the abundance ratios between long-lived actinides and lanthanides like europium can vary for different conditions in our calculations. In our setup, conditions with high entropies systematically lead to lower actinide abundances relative to other r-process elements. Furthermore, actinide-enhanced ejecta can also be distinguished from the "regular" composition in other ways, most notably in the second r-process peak abundances.Peer reviewe

Ultrasensitive mechanical detection of magnetic moment using a commercial disk drive write head

Sensitive detection of weak magnetic moments is an essential capability in many areas of nanoscale science and technology, including nanomagnetism, quantum readout of spins, and nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging. Here, we show that the write head of a commercial hard drive may enable significant advances in nanoscale spin detection. By approaching a sharp diamond tip to within 5 nm from the pole and measuring the induced diamagnetic moment with a nanomechanical force transducer, we demonstrate a spin sensitivity of 0.032 Bohr magnetons per root Hz, equivalent to 21 proton magnetic moments. The high sensitivity is enabled in part by the pole's strong magnetic gradient of up to 28 million Tesla per meter and in part by the absence of non-contact friction due to the extremely flat writer surface. In addition, we demonstrate quantitative imaging of the pole field with about 10 nm spatial resolution. We foresee diverse applications for write heads in experimental condensed matter physics, especially in spintronics, ultrafast spin manipulation, and mesoscopic physics.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Twisted Elliptic Genera of N=2 SCFTs in Two Dimensions

The elliptic genera of two-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories can be twisted by the action of the integral Heisenberg group if their U(1) charges are fractional. The basic properties of the resulting twisted elliptic genera and the associated twisted Witten indices are investigated with due attention to their behaviors in orbifoldization. Our findings are illustrated by and applied to several concrete examples. We give a better understanding of the duality phenomenon observed long before for certain Landau-Ginzburg models. We revisit and prove an old conjecture of Witten which states that every ADE Landau-Ginzburg model and the corresponding minimal model share the same elliptic genus. Mathematically, we establish ADE generalizations of the quintuple product identity.Comment: 28 pages; v2 refs adde

Nucleosynthesis in 2D Core-Collapse Supernovae of 11.2 and 17.0 M⊙_{\odot} Progenitors: Implications for Mo and Ru Production

Core-collapse supernovae are the first polluters of heavy elements in the galactic history. As such, it is important to study the nuclear compositions of their ejecta, and understand their dependence on the progenitor structure (e.g., mass, compactness, metallicity). Here, we present a detailed nucleosynthesis study based on two long-term, two-dimensional core-collapse supernova simulations of a 11.2 M$_{\odot}$ and a 17.0 M$_{\odot}$ star. We find that in both models nuclei well beyond the iron group (up to $Z \approx 44$) can be produced, and discuss in detail also the nucleosynthesis of the p-nuclei $^{92,94}$Mo and $^{96,98}$Ru. While we observe the production of $^{92}$Mo and $^{94}$Mo in slightly neutron-rich conditions in both simulations, $^{96,98}$Ru can only be produced efficiently via the $\nu$p-process. Furthermore, the production of Ru in the $\nu$p-process heavily depends on the presence of very proton-rich material in the ejecta. This disentanglement of production mechanisms has interesting consequences when comparing to the abundance ratios between these isotopes in the solar system and in presolar grains.Comment: 48 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in: J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phy

Exploring Interacting Quantum Many-Body Systems by Experimentally Creating Continuous Matrix Product States in Superconducting Circuits

Improving the understanding of strongly correlated quantum many body systems such as gases of interacting atoms or electrons is one of the most important challenges in modern condensed matter physics, materials research and chemistry. Enormous progress has been made in the past decades in developing both classical and quantum approaches to calculate, simulate and experimentally probe the properties of such systems. In this work we use a combination of classical and quantum methods to experimentally explore the properties of an interacting quantum gas by creating experimental realizations of continuous matrix product states - a class of states which has proven extremely powerful as a variational ansatz for numerical simulations. By systematically preparing and probing these states using a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) system we experimentally determine a good approximation to the ground-state wave function of the Lieb-Liniger Hamiltonian, which describes an interacting Bose gas in one dimension. Since the simulated Hamiltonian is encoded in the measurement observable rather than the controlled quantum system, this approach has the potential to apply to exotic models involving multicomponent interacting fields. Our findings also hint at the possibility of experimentally exploring general properties of matrix product states and entanglement theory. The scheme presented here is applicable to a broad range of systems exploiting strong and tunable light-matter interactions.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

The Role of Fission in Neutron Star Mergers and Its Impact on the r-Process Peaks

Comparing observational abundance features with nucleosynthesis predictions of stellar evolution or explosion simulations, we can scrutinize two aspects: (a) the conditions in the astrophysical production site and (b) the quality of the nuclear physics input utilized. We test the abundance features of r-process nucleosynthesis calculations for the dynamical ejecta of neutron star merger simulations based on three different nuclear mass models: The Finite Range Droplet Model, the (quenched version of the) Extended Thomas Fermi Model with Strutinsky Integral, and the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mass model. We make use of corresponding fission barrier heights and compare the impact of four different fission fragment distribution models on the final r-process abundance distribution. In particular, we explore the abundance distribution in the second r-process peak and the rare-earth sub-peak as a function of mass models and fission fragment distributions, as well as the origin of a shift in the third r-process peak position. The latter has been noticed in a number of merger nucleosynthesis predictions. We show that the shift occurs during the r-process freeze-out when neutron captures and β-decays compete and an (n,γ)-(γ,n) equilibrium is no longer maintained. During this phase neutrons originate mainly from fission of material above A = 240. We also investigate the role of β-decay half-lives from recent theoretical advances, which lead either to a smaller amount of fissioning nuclei during freeze-out or a faster (and thus earlier) release of fission neutrons, which can (partially) prevent this shift and has an impact on the second and rare-earth peak as well.Peer reviewe