Multi-chord fiber-coupled interferometer with a long coherence length laser

This paper describes a 561 nm laser heterodyne interferometer that provides time-resolved measurements of line-integrated plasma electron density within the range of 10^15-10^18 cm^(-2). Such plasmas are produced by railguns on the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX), which aims to produce \mu s-, cm-, and Mbar-scale plasmas through the merging of thirty plasma jets in a spherically convergent geometry. A long coherence length, 320 mW laser allows for a strong, sub-fringe phase-shift signal without the need for closely-matched probe and reference path lengths. Thus only one reference path is required for all eight probe paths, and an individual probe chord can be altered without altering the reference or other probe path lengths. Fiber-optic decoupling of the probe chord optics on the vacuum chamber from the rest of the system allows the probe paths to be easily altered to focus on different spatial regions of the plasma. We demonstrate that sub-fringe resolution capability allows the interferometer to operate down to line-integrated densities of order 10^15 cm^(-2).Comment: submitted to Rev. Sci. Instrum. (2011

Tendency of spherically imploding plasma liners formed by merging plasma jets to evolve toward spherical symmetry

Three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations have been performed using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) in order to study the effects of discrete jets on the processes of plasma liner formation, implosion on vacuum, and expansion. The pressure history of the inner portion of the liner was qualitatively and quantitatively similar from peak compression through the complete stagnation of the liner among simulation results from two one dimensional radiationhydrodynamic codes, 3D SPH with a uniform liner, and 3D SPH with 30 discrete plasma jets. Two dimensional slices of the pressure show that the discrete jet SPH case evolves towards a profile that is almost indistinguishable from the SPH case with a uniform liner, showing that non-uniformities due to discrete jets are smeared out by late stages of the implosion. Liner formation and implosion on vacuum was also shown to be robust to Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth. Interparticle mixing for a liner imploding on vacuum was investigated. The mixing rate was very small until after peak compression for the 30 jet simulation.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasmas (2012

Bounce-free spherical hydrodynamic implosion

In a bounce-free spherical hydrodynamic implosion, the post-stagnation hot core plasma does not expand against the imploding flow. Such an implosion scheme has the advantage of improving the dwell time of the burning fuel, resulting in a higher fusion burn-up fraction. The existence of bounce-free spherical implosions is demonstrated by explicitly constructing a family of self-similar solutions to the spherically symmetric ideal hydrodynamic equations. When applied to a specific example of plasma liner driven magneto-inertial fusion, the bounce-free solution is found to produce at least a factor of four improvement in dwell time and fusion energy gain.Comment: accepted by Phys. Plasmas (Nov. 7, 2011); for Ref. 11, please see ftp://ftp.lanl.gov/public/kagan/liner_evolution.gi

MAGIC observations of Mkn 421 in 2008, and related optical/X-ray/TeV MWL study

The HBL-type blazar Markarian 421 is one of the brightest TeV gamma-ray sources of the Northern sky. From December 2007 until June 2008 it was intensively observed in the VHE (E>100 GeV) band by the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope. The source showed intense and prolonged activity during the whole period. In some nights the integral flux rose up to 3.6 Crab units (E>200 GeV). Intra-night rapid flux variations were observed. We compared the optical (KVA) and X-ray (RXTE-ASM, Swift-XRT) data with the MAGIC VHE data, investigating the correlations between different energy bands.Comment: 4 pages,4figures, Contribution to the 31st ICRC, Lodz, Poland, July 200

Avalanche-Induced Current Enhancement in Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes under high electric field stress (~10 V/um) display a striking, exponential current increase due to avalanche generation of free electrons and holes. Unlike in other materials, the avalanche process in such 1D quantum wires involves access to the third sub-band, is insensitive to temperature, but strongly dependent on diameter ~exp(-1/d^2). Comparison with a theoretical model yields a novel approach to obtain the inelastic optical phonon emission length, L_OP,ems ~ 15d nm. The combined results underscore the importance of multi-band transport in 1D molecular wires

The Determinants of Price in Online Auctions: More Evidence from Quantile Regression

This study explores how seller reputations affect auction prices, and concludes that earlier findings may be biased due to the misspecification of seller reputation. This paper contributes to the literature by offering significant empirical evidence using Taiwanese Internet auction data. Our study reveals that the influence of seller reputations on auction prices is significant, irrespective of the assumptions of linear and non-linear relationships with price. However, failure to consider the non-linear setting of seller reputation would have led us to overestimate the impact of reputations on prices because marginal returns to an incremental increase in reputation declines rapidly for sellers who have more than 15 scores. In addition, using quantile regression, this study finds evidence of considerable differences in their impact on auction prices dependent on the distribution of price levels