Combustion Limits and Efficiency of Turbojet Engines

Combustion must be maintained in the turbojet-engine combustor over a wide range of operating conditions resulting from variations in required engine thrust, flight altitude, and flight speed. Furthermore, combustion must be efficient in order to provide the maximum aircraft range. Thus, two major performance criteria of the turbojet-engine combustor are (1) operatable range, or combustion limits, and (2) combustion efficiency. Several fundamental requirements for efficient, high-speed combustion are evident from the discussions presented in chapters III to V. The fuel-air ratio and pressure in the burning zone must lie within specific limits of flammability (fig. 111-16(b)) in order to have the mixture ignite and burn satisfactorily. Increases in mixture temperature will favor the flammability characteristics (ch. III). A second requirement in maintaining a stable flame -is that low local flow velocities exist in the combustion zone (ch. VI). Finally, even with these requirements satisfied, a flame needs a certain minimum space in which to release a desired amount of heat, the necessary space increasing with a decrease in pressure (ref. 1). It is apparent, then, that combustor design and operation must provide for (1) proper control of vapor fuel-air ratios in the combustion zone at or near stoichiometric, (2) mixture pressures above the minimum flammability pressures, (3) low flow velocities in the combustion zone, and (4) adequate space for the flame

Difficulty of distinguishing product states locally

Non-locality without entanglement is a rather counter-intuitive phenomenon in which information may be encoded entirely in product (unentangled) states of composite quantum systems in such a way that local measurement of the subsystems is not enough for optimal decoding. For simple examples of pure product states, the gap in performance is known to be rather small when arbitrary local strategies are allowed. Here we restrict to local strategies readily achievable with current technology; those requiring neither a quantum memory nor joint operations. We show that, even for measurements on pure product states there can be a large gap between such strategies and theoretically optimal performance. Thus even in the absence of entanglement physically realizable local strategies can be far from optimal for extracting quantum information.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

N/P GaAs concentrator solar cells with an improved grid and bushbar contact design

The major requirements for a solar cell used in space applications are high efficiency at AMO irradiance and resistance to high energy radiation. Gallium arsenide, with a band gap of 1.43 eV, is one of the most efficient sunlight to electricity converters (25%) when the the simple diode model is used to calculate efficiencies at AMO irradiance, GaAs solar cells are more radiation resistant than silicon solar cells and the N/P GaAs device has been reported to be more radiation resistant than similar P/N solar cells. This higher resistance is probably due to the fact that only 37% of the current is generated in the top N layer of the N/P cell compared to 69% in the top layer of a P/N solar cell. This top layer of the cell is most affected by radiation. It has also been theoretically calculated that the optimized N/P device will prove to have a higher efficiency than a similar P/N device. The use of a GaP window layer on a GaAs solar cell will avoid many of the inherent problems normally associated with a GaAlAs window while still proving good passivation of the GaAs surface. An optimized circular grid design for solar cell concentrators has been shown which incorporates a multi-layer metallization scheme. This multi-layer design allows for a greater current carrying capacity for a unit area of shading, which results in a better output efficiency

AlGaAs top solar cell for mechanical attachment in a multi-junction tandem concentrator solar cell stack

The AstroPower self-supporting, transparent AlGaAs top solar cell can be stacked upon any well-developed bottom solar cell for improved system performance. This is an approach to improve the performance and scale of space photovoltaic power systems. Mechanically stacked tandem solar cell concentrator systems based on the AlGaAs top concentrator solar cell can provide near term efficiencies of 36 percent (AMO, 100x). Possible tandem stack efficiencies greater than 38 percent (100x, AMO) are feasible with a careful selection of materials. In a three solar cell stack, system efficiencies exceed 41 percent (100x, AMO). These device results demonstrate a practical solution for a state-of-the-art top solar cell for attachment to an existing, well-developed solar cell

Cavity-enabled high-dimensional quantum key distribution

High-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) offers the possibility of encoding multiple bits of key on a single entangled photon pair. An experimentally promising approach to realizing this is to use energy–time entanglement. Currently, however, the control of very high-dimensional entangled photons is challenging. We present a simple and experimentally compact approach, which is based on a cavity that allows one to measure two different bases: the time of arrival and another that is approximately mutually unbiased to the arrival time. We quantify the errors in the setup, due both to the approximate nature of the mutually unbiased measurement and as a result of experimental errors. It is shown that the protocol can be adapted using a cut-off so that it is robust against the considered errors, even within the regime of up to 10 bits per photon pair

Quantum Cryptography with Coherent States

The safety of a quantum key distribution system relies on the fact that any eavesdropping attempt on the quantum channel creates errors in the transmission. For a given error rate, the amount of information that may have leaked to the eavesdropper depends on both the particular system and the eavesdropping strategy. In this work, we discuss quantum cryptographic protocols based on the transmission of weak coherent states and present a new system, based on a symbiosis of two existing ones, and for which the information available to the eavesdropper is significantly reduced. This system is therefore safer than the two previous ones. We also suggest a possible experimental implementation.Comment: 20 pp. Revtex, Figures available from the authors upon request, To be published in PRA (March 95

Dydrogesterone and norethisterone regulate expression of lipoprotein lipase and hormones-sensitive lipase in human subcutaneous abdominal adipocytes

Aim: In premenopausal women, hyper-androgenicity is associated with central obesity and an increased cardiovascular risk. We investigated the effects of dydrogesterone (DYD)(a non-androgenic progestogen) and norethisterone (NET)(an androgenic progestogen) on lipoprotein lipase (LPL), hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) and glycerol release in adipocytes isolated from subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue. Methods: Adipose tissue was obtained from 12 non-diabetic women, mean age 51 years (range 37-78) and mean BMI 25.4kg/m2 (range 20.3-26.4). Adipocytes were treated with increasing doses of DYD and NET for 48 hours prior to protein extraction. Effects on lipogenesis and lipolysis were assessed using western blotting to determine the expression of key enzymes, LPL (56kDa) and HSL (84kDa) respectively. Measurement of glycerol release into the medium provided an assessment of lipolytic activity. Results: Expression of LPL was increased by DYD and NET (mean protein expression relative to control ± SEM); with greatest effect at 10-8M for DYD: 2.32±0.51(p0.05). Conclusions: DYD and NET significantly increased LPL expression relative to control whilst significantly reducing HSL expression. At the concentrations studied, similar effects were observed with the androgenic NET and the non-androgenic DYD despite differing effects on the lipid profile when taken in combination with estrogen. Further work in this area may improve knowledge about the effects of different progestogens on body fat distribution and enable progestogen use to be tailored to the individual to achieve maximal benefits

Production of superpositions of coherent states in traveling optical fields with inefficient photon detection

We develop an all-optical scheme to generate superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable coherent states in traveling optical fields. It non-deterministically distills coherent state superpositions (CSSs) with large amplitudes out of CSSs with small amplitudes using inefficient photon detection. The small CSSs required to produce CSSs with larger amplitudes are extremely well approximated by squeezed single photons. We discuss some remarkable features of this scheme: it effectively purifies mixed initial states emitted from inefficient single photon sources and boosts negativity of Wigner functions of quantum states.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Probing the quantumness of channels with mixed states

We present an alternative approach to the derivation of benchmarks for quantum channels, such as memory or teleportation channels. Using the concept of effective entanglement and the verification thereof, a testing procedure is derived which demands very few experimental resources. The procedure is generalized by allowing for mixed test states. By constructing optimized measure & re-prepare channels, the benchmarks are found to be very tight in the considered experimental regimes.Comment: 11 Pages, 9 Figures, published versio