Chalcogenide microsphere fabricated from fibre taper-drawn using resistive heating

Over the last decade extreme interest for microsphere resonators has increased rapidly due to their very high quality Q factors, the ease with which they can be manufactured and their versatility in terms of materials and dopants for plenty of passive and active devices. Furthermore, microsphere resonators have the potential to add significant functionality to planar lightwave circuits when coupled to waveguides where they can provide wavelength filtering, delay and low-power switching, and laser functions [1].Recently, chalcogenides are rapidly establishing themselves technologically superior materials for emerging application in non-volatile memory and high speed switching [2] and have been considered for a range of other optoelectronic technologies. Chalcogenide glasses offer a wide wealth of active properties, an exceptionally high nonlinearity, photosensitivity, the ability to be doped with active elements including lanthanides and transitional metals and are able to form detectors, lasers and amplifiers and offer semiconductor, optical, acousto-optic, superconducting and opto-mechanical properties. Unlike any other optical material, they have been formed in to a multitude of form: such as optical fibres, thin films, bulk optical components, microsphere resonators, metamaterials and nanoparticles, patterned by CMOS compatible processing at the sub micron scale. To date, most studies on microsphere resonators have utilized silica microspheres fabricated by melting the tip of an optical fibre with the resulting stem attached to the microsphere used as a tool to place the sphere in the required location while characterizing the microsphere. In this paper high quality chalcogenide (As2S3) microspheres with diameters down to 74 µm are directly fabricated from the taper-drawn using a resistive heating process. A reasonable high quality factor greater than 105 near the wavelength of 1550 nm is demonstrated with an efficient coupling using a fibre taper with a diameter of 2 µm

High-Q bismuth silicate nonlinear glass microsphere resonators

The fabrication and characterization of a bismuth-silicate glass microsphere resonator has been demonstrated. At wavelengths near 1550 nm, high-modes can be efficiently excited in a 179 µm diameter bismuth-silicate glass microsphere via evanescent coupling using a tapered silica fiber with a waist diameter of circa 2 µm. Resonances with Q-factors as high as were observed. The dependence of the spectral response on variations in the input power level was studied in detail to gain an insight into power-dependent thermal resonance shifts. Because of their high nonlinearity and high- factors, bismuth-silicate glass microspheres offer the potential for robustly assembled fully integrated all-optical switching devices

In-plane magnetic anisotropy of bcc Co on GaAs 001

Y. Z. Wu, H. F. Ding, C. Jing, D. Wu, G. L. Liu, V. Gordon (currently with UT Austin), G. S. Dong, and X. F. Jin are with Fudan T. D. Lee Physics Laboratory and Surface Physics Laboratory, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China -- S. Zhu and K. Sun are with the Beijing Laboratory of Electron Microscopy, Chinese Academy of Science, and Department of Material Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, ChinaEpitaxial growth of Co on GaAs(001) and its in-plane magnetic anisotropy are studied using reflection high-energy electron diffraction, a high-resolution transmission electron microscope, and the magneto-optical Kerr effect. In the initial and final stages of growth, Co exists in single-crystalline body-centered-cubic (bcc) and hexagonal-closed-packed (hcp) phases, respectively, while in the middle stage the coexistence of the bcc and hcp structures is observed. For the bcc Co thin films on GaAs(001), a fourfold in-plane magnetic anisotropy with easy axes along the directions is realized and discussed.Chemistr

Magnetic resonance imaging of glutamate in neuroinflammation

AbstractInflammation in central nervous system (CNS) is one of the most severe diseases, and also plays an impellent role in some neurodegenerative diseases. Glutamate (Glu) has been considered relevant to the pathogenesis of neuroinflammation. In order to diagnose neuroinflammation incipiently and precisely, we review the pathobiological events in the early stages of neuroinflammation, the interactions between Glu and neuroinflammation, and two kinds of magnetic resonance techniques of imaging Glu (chemical exchange saturation transfer and magnetic resonance spectroscopy)

BES3 time of flight monitoring system

A Time of Flight monitoring system has been developed for BES3. The light source is a 442-443 nm laser diode, which is stable and provides a pulse width as narrow as 50 ps and a peak power as large as 2.6 W. Two optical-fiber bundles with a total of 512 optical fibers, including spares, are used to distribute the light pulses to the Time of Flight counters. The design, operation, and performance of the system are described.Comment: 8 pages 16 figures, submitted to NI

Large Thermoelectric Power Factor in TiS2 Crystal with Nearly Stoichiometric Composition

A TiS$_{2}$ crystal with a layered structure was found to have a large thermoelectric power factor.The in-plane power factor $S^{2}/ \rho$ at 300 K is 37.1~$\mu$W/K$^{2}$cm with resistivity ($\rho$) of 1.7 m$\Omega$cm and thermopower ($S$) of -251~$\mu$V/K, and this value is comparable to that of the best thermoelectric material, Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ alloy. The electrical resistivity shows both metallic and highly anisotropic behaviors, suggesting that the electronic structure of this TiS$_{2}$ crystal has a quasi-two-dimensional nature. The large thermoelectric response can be ascribed to the large density of state just above the Fermi energy and inter-valley scattering. In spite of the large power factor, the figure of merit, $ZT$ of TiS$_{2}$ is 0.16 at 300 K, because of relatively large thermal conductivity, 68~mW/Kcm. However, most of this value comes from reducible lattice contribution. Thus, $ZT$ can be improved by reducing lattice thermal conductivity, e.g., by introducing a rattling unit into the inter-layer sites.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physical Review

MODELING COUPLED PROCESSES OF MULTIPHASE FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN UNSATURATED FRACTURED ROCK

A mountain-scale, thermal-hydrologic (TH) numerical model is developed for investigating unsaturated flow behavior in response to decay heat from the radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, USA. The TH model, consisting of three-dimensional (3-D) representations of the unsaturated zone, is based on the current repository design, drift layout, and thermal loading scenario under estimated current and future climate conditions. More specifically, the TH model implements the current geological framework and hydrogeological conceptual models, and incorporates the most updated, best-estimated input parameters. This mountain-scale TH model simulates the coupled TH processes related to mountain-scale multiphase fluid flow, and evaluates the impact of radioactive waste heat on the hydrogeological system, including thermally perturbed liquid saturation, gas- and liquid-phase fluxes, and water and rock temperature elevations, as well as the changes in water flux driven by evaporation/condensation processes and drainage between drifts. For a better description of the ambient geothermal condition of the unsaturated zone system, the TH model is first calibrated against measured borehole temperature data. The ambient temperature calibration provides the necessary surface and water table boundary as well as initial conditions. Then, the TH model is used to obtain scientific understanding of TH processes in the Yucca Mountain unsaturated zone under the designed schedule of repository thermal load

Smectic ordering in liquid crystal - aerosil dispersions I. X-ray scattering

Comprehensive x-ray scattering studies have characterized the smectic ordering of octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined in the hydrogen-bonded silica gels formed by aerosil dispersions. For all densities of aerosil and all measurement temperatures, the correlations remain short range, demonstrating that the disorder imposed by the gels destroys the nematic (N) to smectic-A (SmA) transition. The smectic correlation function contains two distinct contributions. The first has a form identical to that describing the critical thermal fluctuations in pure 8CB near the N-SmA transition, and this term displays a temperature dependence at high temperatures similar to that of the pure liquid crystal. The second term, which is negligible at high temperatures but dominates at low temperatures, has a shape given by the thermal term squared and describes the static fluctuations due to random fields induced by confinement in the gel. The correlation lengths appearing in the thermal and disorder terms are the same and show strong variation with gel density at low temperatures. The temperature dependence of the amplitude of the static fluctuations further suggests that nematic susceptibility become suppressed with increasing quenched disorder. The results overall are well described by a mapping of the liquid crystal-aerosil system into a three dimensional XY model in a random field with disorder strength varying linearly with the aerosil density.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

Dynamical Decoupling Using Slow Pulses: Efficient Suppression of 1/f Noise

The application of dynamical decoupling pulses to a single qubit interacting with a linear harmonic oscillator bath with $1/f$ spectral density is studied, and compared to the Ohmic case. Decoupling pulses that are slower than the fastest bath time-scale are shown to drastically reduce the decoherence rate in the $1/f$ case. Contrary to conclusions drawn from previous studies, this shows that dynamical decoupling pulses do not always have to be ultra-fast. Our results explain a recent experiment in which dephasing due to $1/f$ charge noise affecting a charge qubit in a small superconducting electrode was successfully suppressed using spin-echo-type gate-voltage pulses.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. v2: Many changes and update

Analyzing Unsatirated Flow Patterns in Fractured Rock Using an Integrated Modeling Approach

Characterizing percolation patterns in unsaturated fractured rock has posed a greater challenge to modeling investigations than comparable saturated zone studies, because of the heterogeneous nature of unsaturated media and the great number of variables impacting unsaturated flow. This paper presents an integrated modeling methodology for quantitatively characterizing percolation patterns in the unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a proposed underground repository site for storing high-level radioactive waste. The modeling approach integrates a wide variety of moisture, pneumatic, thermal, and isotopic geochemical field data into a comprehensive three-dimensional numerical model for modeling analyses. It takes into account the coupled processes of fluid and heat flow and chemical isotopic transport in Yucca Mountain's highly heterogeneous, unsaturated fractured tuffs. Modeling results are examined against different types of field-measured data and then used to evaluate different hydrogeological conceptualizations and their results of flow patterns in the unsaturated zone. In particular, this model provides a much clearer understanding of percolation patterns and flow behavior through the unsaturated zone, both crucial issues in assessing repository performance. The integrated approach for quantifying Yucca Mountain's flow system is demonstrated to provide a practical modeling tool for characterizing flow and transport processes in complex subsurface systems