Space station integrated wall design and penetration damage control. Task 3: Theoretical analysis of penetration mechanics

The efforts to provide a penetration code called PEN4 version 10 is documented for calculation of projectile and target states for the impact of 2024-T3 aluminum, R sub B 90 1018 steel projectiles and icy meteoroids onto 2024-T3 aluminum plates at impact velocities from 0 to 16 km/s. PEN4 determines whether a plate is perforated by calculating the state of fragmentation of projectile and first plate. Depth of penetration into the second to n sup th plate by fragments resulting from first plate perforation is determined by multiple cratering. The results from applications are given

Flash of photons from the early stage of heavy-ion collisions

The dynamics of partonic cascades may be an important aspect for particle production in relativistic collisions of nuclei at CERN SPS and BNL RHIC energies. Within the Parton-Cascade Model, we estimate the production of single photons from such cascades due to scattering of quarks and gluons q g -> q gamma, quark-antiquark annihilation q qbar -> g gamma, or gamma gamma, and from electromagnetic brems-strahlung of quarks q -> q gamma. We find that the latter QED branching process plays the dominant role for photon production, similarly as the QCD branchings q -> q g and g -> g g play a crucial role for parton multiplication. We conclude therefore that photons accompanying the parton cascade evolution during the early stage of heavy-ion collisions shed light on the formation of a partonic plasma.Comment: 4 pages including 3 postscript figure

Analysis of reaction dynamics at RHIC in a combined parton/hadron transport approach

We introduce a transport approach which combines partonic and hadronic degrees of freedom on an equal footing and discuss the resulting reaction dynamics. The initial parton dynamics is modeled in the framework of the parton cascade model, hadronization is performed via a cluster hadronization model and configuration space coalescence, and the hadronic phase is described by a microscopic hadronic transport approach. The resulting reaction dynamics indicates a strong influence of hadronic rescattering on the space-time pattern of hadronic freeze-out and on the shape of transverse mass spectra. Freeze-out times and transverse radii increase by factors of 2 - 3 depending on the hadron species.Comment: 10 pages, 4 eps figures include

Reflection and interference of electromagnetic waves in inhomogeneous media

Solutions were obtained of the wave equation for a plane horizontally polarized electro-magnetic wave incident on a semi infinite two dimensional inhomogeneous medium. Two problems were considered: An inhomogeneous half space, and an inhomogeneous layer of arbitrary thickness. Solutions of the wave equation were obtained in terms of Hankel functions with complex arguments. Numerical calculations were made of the reflection coefficient R at the interface of the homogeneous medium. The startling results show that the reflection coefficient for a complex dielectric constant with gradient, can be less than that of the same medium with zero gradient

Specifics about Specific Ion Adsorption from Heterodyne-Detected Second Harmonic Generation

Ion specific outcomes at aqueous interfaces remain among the most enigmatic phenomena in interfacial chemistry. Here, charged fused silica/water interfaces have been probed by homodyne- and heterodyne-detected (HD) second harmonic generation (SHG) spectroscopy at pH 7 and pH 5.8 and for concentrations of LiCl, NaCl, NaBr, NaI, KCl, RbCl, and CsCl ranging from 10 mc microM to several 100 mM. For ionic strengths around 0.1 mM to 1 mM, SHG intensities increase reversibly by up to 15% compared to the condition of zero added salt because of optical phase matching and electrical double layer. For ionic strengths above 1 mM, use of any combination of cations and anions produces decreases in SHG response by as much as 50%, trending with ion softness when compared to the condition of zero added salt. Gouy- Chapman model fits to homodyned SHG intensities for the alkali halides studied here show charge densities increase significantly with decreasing cation size. HD-SHG measurements indicate diffuse layer properties probed by the SHG process are invariant with ion identity, while Stern layer properties, as reported by chi(2), are subject to ion specificity for the ions surveyed in this work in the order of chi(2)RbCl = 1/2 chi(2)NaCl = 1/4 chi(2)NaI .Comment: Pre-edited version, 15 manuscript pages, 2 tables, 5 figures. Supporting Information available up request to the corresponding autho

MoodBar: Increasing new user retention in Wikipedia through lightweight socialization

Socialization in online communities allows existing members to welcome and recruit newcomers, introduce them to community norms and practices, and sustain their early participation. However, socializing newcomers does not come for free: in large communities, socialization can result in a significant workload for mentors and is hard to scale. In this study we present results from an experiment that measured the effect of a lightweight socialization tool on the activity and retention of newly registered users attempting to edit for the first time Wikipedia. Wikipedia is struggling with the retention of newcomers and our results indicate that a mechanism to elicit lightweight feedback and to provide early mentoring to newcomers improves their chances of becoming long-term contributors.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for presentation at CSCW'1

Quantum Field Kinetics

Using the general framework of quantum field theory, we derive basic equations of quantum field kinetics. The main goal of this approach is to compute the observables associated with a quark-gluon plasma at different stages of its evolution. We start by rewriting the integral equations for the field correlators in different forms, depending on the relevant dynamical features at each different stage. Next, two versions of perturbation expansion are considered. The first is best suited for the calculation of electromagnetic emission from chaotic, but not equilibrated, strongly interacting matter. The second version allows one to derive evolution equations, which are generalizations of the familiar QCD evolution equations, and provide a basis for the calculation of the initial quark and gluon distributions after the first hard interaction of the heavy ions.Comment: 13 pages, REVTeX, 2 postscript figures appende

Parton Equilibration in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

We investigate the processes leading to phase-space equilibration of parton distributions in nuclear interactions at collider energies. We derive a set of rate equations describing the chemical equilibration of gluons and quarks including medium effects on the relevant QCD transport coefficients, and discuss their consequences for parton equilibration in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 6 Figures appended as uuencoded PostScript files, (no changes in the previously submitted manuscript), DUKE-TH-93-4

Effect of baryon density on parton production, chemical equilibration and thermal photon emission from quark gluon plasma

The effect of baryon density on parton production processes of $gg\rightleftharpoons ggg$ and $gg\rightleftharpoons q{\bar q}$ is studied using full phase space distribution function and also with inclusion of quantum statistics i.e. Pauli blocking and Bose enhancement factors, in the case of both saturated and unsaturated quark gluon plasma. The rate for the process $gg \rightleftharpoons q{\bar q}$ is found to be much less as compared to the most commonly used factorized result obtained on the basis of classical approximation. This discrepancy, which is found both at zero as well as at finite baryon densities, however, is not due to the lack of quantum statistics in the classical approximation, rather due to the use of Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein distribution functions for partons instead of Boltzmann distribution which is appropriate under such approximation. Interestingly, the rates of parton production are found to be insensitive to the baryo-chemical potential particularly when the plasma is unsaturated although the process of chemical equilibration strongly depends on it. The thermal photon yields, have been calculated specifically from unsaturated plasma at finite baryon density. The exact results obtained numerically are found to be in close agreement with the analytic expression derived using factorized distribution functions appropriate for unsaturated plasma. Further, it is shown that in the case of unsaturated plasma, the thermal photon production is enhanced with increasing baryon density both at fixed temperature and fixed energy density of the quark gluon plasma.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, 6 postscript figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Inelastic Multiple Scattering of Interacting Bosons in Weak Random Potentials

We develop a diagrammatic scattering theory for interacting bosons in a three-dimensional, weakly disordered potential. We show how collisional energy transfer between the bosons induces the thermalization of the inelastic single-particle current which, after only few collision events, dominates over the elastic contribution described by the Gross-Pitaevskii ansatz.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, very close to published versio