Calibration of the Ames Anechoic Facility. Phase 1: Short range plan

A calibration was made of the acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of a small, open-jet wind tunnel in an anechoic room. The jet nozzle was 102 mm diameter and was operated subsonically. The anechoic-room dimensions were 7.6 m by 5.5 m by 3.4 m high (wedge tip to wedge tip). Noise contours in the chamber were determined by various jet speeds and exhaust collector positions. The optimum nozzle/collector separation from an acoustic standpoint was 2.1 m. Jet velocity profiles and turbulence levels were measured using pressure probes and hot wires. The jet was found to be symmetric, with no unusual characteristics. The turbulence measurements were hampered by oil mist contamination of the airflow

Regrowth-related defect formation and evolution in 1 MeV amorphized (001) Ge

Geimplanted with 1MeV Si⁺ at a dose of 1×10¹⁵cm⁻² creates a buried amorphous layer that, upon regrowth, exhibits several forms of defects–end-of-range (EOR), regrowth-related, and clamshell defects. Unlike Si, no planar {311} defects are observed. The minimal EOR defects are small dotlike defects and are very unstable, dissolving between 450 and 550°C. This is in contrast to Si, where the EOR defects are very stable. The amorphous layer results in both regrowth-related defects and clamshell defects, which were more stable than the EOR damage.This work is supported by Semiconductor Research Corporation Contract No. 00057787

Gravity Wave Ducting in the Upper Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere Duct System

We report on a numerical study of gravity wave propagation in a pair of ducts located in a region where dramatic changes in the airglow most likely associated with ducted wave trains are observed. We examine ducting in an upper mesosphere inversion (INV) and an always present lower thermosphere stable layer (LTD) for a range of phase speeds and horizontal wavelengths characteristic of ducting events. We analyze the propagation and modal structure of ducted waves for backgrounds with increasing realism, starting with a climatological temperature profile where only the LTD is present. In succession, we add the INV based on the work of Smith et al. (2003), climatological winds, and winds in the upper mesosphere based on the work of Smith et al. (2003). We examine ducting for phase speeds between 40 and 100 m s¯¹ and horizontal wavelengths between 20 and 60 km. We find that without winds, only the LTD supports ducting of waves forced from below. When observed winds and temperatures are included, strong ducting is evident in both regions. For waves forced from below, the strongest ducted modes are those with slower phase speeds, and of these the third gravest agree reasonably well with the observed phase speeds and wavelengths, indicating that the observations are consistent with linear ducted waves. For waves forced in the INV, we find an intense and strongly dominant fundamental mode. This is a fast mode having phase speeds ~100 m s¯¹ for a horizontal wavelength of 30 km in the INV and much faster in the LTD. That the fundamental is not seen in Smith et al.’s (2003) observations indicates that the waves were forced from below and that the lowest mode was blocked by an evanescent barrier below the INV. Our results show that the two ducts communicate: the upward extensions of waves ducted in the INV are seen in the LTD. This is particularly significant in the case of in situ forcing, where the fundamentals combine to give amplification exceeding a factor of 10 in the LTD

Wave-modified Mean Exothermic Heating in the Mesopause Region

We employ a model of wave-driven OH nightglow fluctuations to calculate the effects of gravity waves on the chemical exothermic heating due to reactions involving odd hydrogen and odd oxygen species in the mesopause region. Using a model based on time means and deviations from those means, it is demonstrated that gravity waves contribute to the time-average exothermic heating. The effect can be significant because the fractional fluctuations in minor species density can be substantially greater than the fractional fluctuation of the major gas density. Our calculations reveal that the waves mitigate the exothermic heating, demonstrating their potential importance in the heat budget of the mesopause region

One-gas Models with Height-dependent Mean Molecular Weight: Effects on Gravity Wave Propagation

Many models of the thermosphere employ the one-gas approximation where the governing equations apply only to the total gas and the physical properties of the gas that depend on composition (mean molecular weight and specific heats) are height-dependent. It is further assumed that the physical properties of the gas are locally constant; thus motion-induced perturbations are nil. However, motion in a diffusively separated atmosphere perturbs local values of mean molecular weight and specific heats. These motion-induced changes are opposed by mutual diffusion of the constituent gases, which attempts to restore diffusive equilibrium. Assuming that composition is locally constant is equivalent to assuming that diffusion instantaneously damps the changes that winds attempt to produce. This is the limit of fast diffusion. In the limit of slow diffusion, gas properties are constant (conserved) following the motion but are perturbed locally by advection. An analysis of the static stability shows that composition effects significantly change the static stability, with greater changes for the slow-diffusion limit than for the fast-diffusion limit. We have used a one-gas full-wave model to examine the effects of wave-perturbed composition on gravity waves propagating through the lower thermosphere. We have augmented the conventional system (fixed gas properties) with predictive equations for composition-dependent gas properties. These equations include vertical advection and mutual diffusion. The latter is included in parameterized form as second-order scale-dependent diffusion. We have found that the fast diffusion implied by locally fixed properties has a significant effect on the dynamics. Predicted temperatures are larger for locally fixed composition than for conserved composition. The simulations with parameterized mutual diffusion gave results that are much closer to the results for conserved gas properties than for fixed properties. We found that the divergence between the fast and slow limits was greatest for fast waves and for colder thermospheres. This is because the propagation characteristics of fast waves are sensitive to changes in the static stability and because compositional gradients are stronger for colder thermospheres. We conclude that future models that use the one-gas approximation for fast waves in the lower thermosphere should include, at minimum, the simplification of conserved rather than fixed properties, especially for colder thermospheres

Acoustic Waves Generated by Gusty Flow over Hilly Terrain

We examine the generation of acoustic waves by gusty flow over hilly terrain. We use simple theoretical models of the interaction between terrain and eddies and a linear model of acoustic-gravity wave propagation. The calculations presented here suggest that over a dense array of geographically extensive sources orographically generated vertically propagating acoustic waves can be a significant cause of thermospheric heating. This heating may account in good part for the thermospheric hot spot near the Andes reported by Meriwether et al. (1996, 1997)

Gravity Wave Propagation in a Diffusively Separated Gas: Effects on the Total Gas

We present a full-wave model that simulates acoustic-gravity wave propagation in a binary-gas mixture of atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen, including molecular viscosity and thermal conductivity appropriately partitioned between the two gases. Compositional effects include the collisional transfer of heat and momentum by mutual diffusion between the two gases. An important result of compositional effects is that the velocity and temperature summed over species can be significantly different from the results of one-gas models with the same height dependent mean molecular weight (M(z)). We compare the results of our binary-gas model to two one-gas full-wave models: one where M is fixed and fluctuations of M (M′) are zero and the other where M is conserved following parcel displacement (whence M′ is nonzero). The former is the usual approach and is equivalent to assuming that mutual diffusion acts instantaneously to restore composition to its ambient value. In all cases we considered, the single gas model results obtained assuming that M is conserved following parcels gave significantly better agreement with the binary-gas model. This implies that compositional effects may be included in one-gas models by simply adding a conservation equation for M and for the specific gas at constant pressure, which depends on M

Group Velocity and Energy Flux in the Thermosphere: Limits on the Validity of Group Velocity in a Viscous Atmosphere

The response to wave forcing of finite duration comprises a transient forerunner and the steady state signal (or simply the signal). It is the latter that carries information on the spectral content of the forcing, and the signal velocity is the velocity at which wave energy flows. To the extent that group velocity is a good measure of the energy flow velocity, the ray‐tracing formalism is a valid description of signal propagation. We have examined vertical group velocities as a measure of vertical energy flow velocity for gravity and acoustic waves propagating into the dissipative lower thermosphere. We find that the effects of dissipation on gravity waves can cause group velocity to become a meaningless measure of the energy flow velocity. When certain terms originating in the diffusion of heat and momentum are neglected, the validity of group velocity can be extended to F region altitudes. For acoustic waves, group velocity can be a good measure of energy flow velocity throughout the lower thermosphere because acoustic waves are far less subject to dissipation

Calibrating Type Ia Supernovae using the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function I. Initial Results

We report the results of an [O III] lambda 5007 survey for planetary nebulae (PN) in five galaxies that were hosts of well-observed Type Ia supernovae: NGC 524, NGC 1316, NGC 1380, NGC 1448 and NGC 4526. The goals of this survey are to better quantify the zero-point of the maximum magnitude versus decline rate relation for supernovae Type Ia and to validate the insensitivity of Type Ia luminosity to parent stellar population using the host galaxy Hubble type as a surrogate. We detected a total of 45 planetary nebulae candidates in NGC 1316, 44 candidates in NGC 1380, and 94 candidates in NGC 4526. From these data, and the empirical planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF), we derive distances of 17.9 +0.8/-0.9 Mpc, 16.1 +0.8/-1.1 Mpc, and 13.6 +1.3/-1.2 Mpc respectively. Our derived distance to NGC 4526 has a lower precision due to the likely presence of Virgo intracluster planetary nebulae in the foreground of this galaxy. In NGC 524 and NGC 1448 we detected no planetary nebulae candidates down to the limiting magnitudes of our observations. We present a formalism for setting realistic distance limits in these two cases, and derive robust lower limits of 20.9 Mpc and 15.8 Mpc, respectively. After combining these results with other distances from the PNLF, Cepheid, and Surface Brightness Fluctuations distance indicators, we calibrate the optical and near-infrared relations for supernovae Type Ia and we find that the Hubble constants derived from each of the three methods are broadly consistent, implying that the properties of supernovae Type Ia do not vary drastically as a function of stellar population. We determine a preliminary Hubble constant of H_0 = 77 +/- 3 (random) +/- 5 (systematic) km/s/Mpc for the PNLF, though more nearby galaxies with high-quality observations are clearly needed.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal. Figures degraded to comply with limit. Full paper is available at: http://www.as.ysu.edu/~jjfeldme/pnlf_Ia.pd