17,751 research outputs found
Proton irradiation of simple gas mixtures: Influence of irradiation parameters
In order to get information about the influence of irradiation parameters on radiolysis processes of astrophysical interest, methane gas targets were irradiated with 6.5 MeV protons at a pressure of 1 bar and room temperature. Yields of higher hydrocarbons like ethane or propane were found by analysis of irradiated gas samples using gas chromatography. The handling of the proton beam was of great experimental importance for determining the irradiation parameters. In a series of experiments current density of the proton beam and total absorbed energy were shown to have a large influence on the yields of produced hydrocarbons. Mechanistic interpretations of the results are given and conclusions are drawn with regard to the chemistry and the simulation of various astrophysical systems
On the challenge to improve the density response with unusual gradient approximations
Certain excitations, especially ones of long-range charge transfer character,
are poorly described by time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) when
typical (semi-)local functionals are used. A proper description of these
excitations would require an exchange-correlation response differing
substantially from the usual (semi-)local one. It has recently been shown that
functionals of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) type can yield
unusual potentials, mimicking features of the exact exchange derivative
discontinuity and showing divergences on orbital nodal surfaces. We here
investigate whether these unusual potential properties translate into
beneficial response properties. Using the Sternheimer formalism we closely
investigate the response obtained with the 2013 exchange approximation by
Armiento and K\"ummel (AK13) and the 1988 exchange approximation by Becke
(B88), both of which show divergences on orbital nodal planes. Numerical
calculations for Na2 as well as analytical and numerical calculations for the
hydrogen atom show that the response of AK13 behaves qualitatively different
from usual semi local functionals. However, the AK13 functional leads to
fundamental instabilities in the asymptotic region that prevent its practical
application in TDDFT. Our findings may help the development of future improved
functionals, and corroborate that the frequency-dependent Sternheimer formalism
is excellently suited for running and analyzing TDDFT calculations
Statistical fluctuations for the fission process on its decent from saddle to scission
We reconsider the importance of statistical fluctuations for fission dynamics
beyond the saddle in the light of recent evaluations of transport coefficients
for average motion. The size of these fluctuations are estimated by means of
the Kramers-Ingold solution for the inverted oscillator, which allows for an
inclusion of quantum effects.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 5 Postscript figures; submitted to PRC e-mail:
[email protected] www home page:
http://www.physik.tu-muenchen.de/tumphy/e/T36/hofmann.htm
Ozone profile measurements at McMurdo Station Antarctica during the spring of 1987
During the Antarctic spring of 1986, 33 ozone soundings were conducted from McMurdo Station. These data indicated that the springtime decrease in ozone occurred rapidly between the altitudes of 12 and 20 km. During 1987, these measurements were repeated with 50 soundings between 29 August and 9 November. Digital conversions of standard electrochemical cell ozonesondes were again employed. The ozonesonde pumps were individually calibrated for flow rate as the high altitude performance of these pumps have been in question. While these uncertainties are not large in the region of the ozone hole, they are significant at high altitude and apparently resulted in an underestimate of total ozone of about 7 percent (average) as compared to the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) in 1986, when the flow rate recommended by the manufacturer was used. At the upper altitudes (approx. 30 km) the flow rate may be overestimated by as much as 15 percent using recommended values (see Harder et al., The UW Digital Ozonesonde: Characteristics and Flow Rate Calibration, poster paper, this workshop). These upper level values are used in the extrapolation, at constant mixing ratio, required to complete the sounding for total ozone. The first sounding was on 29 August, prior to major ozone depletion, when 274 DU total ozone (25 DU extrapolated) was observed. By early October total ozone had decreased to the 150 DU range; it then increased during mid-October owing to motion of the vortex and returned to a value of 148 DU (29 DU extrapolated) on 27 October
Finite resolution measurement of the non-classical polarization statistics of entangled photon pairs
By limiting the resolution of quantum measurements, the measurement induced
changes of the quantum state can be reduced, permitting subsequent measurements
of variables that do not commute with the initially measured property. It is
then possible to experimentally determine correlations between non-commuting
variables. The application of this method to the polarization statistics of
entangled photon pairs reveals that negative conditional probabilities between
non-orthogonal polarization components are responsible for the violation of
Bell's inequalities. Such negative probabilities can also be observed in finite
resolution measurements of the polarization of a single photon. The violation
of Bell's inequalities therefore originates from local properties of the
quantum statistics of single photon polarization.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures and 1 table, new figure to illustrate results,
improved explanation of statistical analysi
Microscopic Enhancement of Heavy-Element Production
Realistic fusion barriers are calculated in a macroscopic-microscopic model
for several soft-fusion heavy-ion reactions leading to heavy and superheavy
elements. The results obtained in such a realistic picture are very different
from those obtained in a purely macroscopic model. For reactions on 208:Pb
targets, shell effects in the entrance channel result in fusion-barrier
energies at the touching point that are only a few MeV higher than the ground
state for compound systems near Z = 110. The entrance-channel fragment-shell
effects remain far inside the touching point, almost to configurations only
slightly more elongated than the ground-state configuration, where the fusion
barrier has risen to about 10 MeV above the ground-state energy. Calculated
single-particle level diagrams show that few level crossings occur until the
peak in the fusion barrier very close to the ground-state shape is reached,
which indicates that dissipation is negligible until very late in the fusion
process. Whereas the fission valley in a macroscopic picture is several tens of
MeV lower in energy than is the fusion valley, we find in the
macroscopic-microscopic picture that the fission valley is only about 5 MeV
lower than the fusion valley for soft-fusion reactions leading to compound
systems near Z = 110. These results show that no significant
``extra-extra-push'' energy is needed to bring the system inside the fission
saddle point and that the typical reaction energies for maximum cross section
in heavy-element synthesis correspond to only a few MeV above the maximum in
the fusion barrier.Comment: 7 pages. LaTeX. Submitted to Zeitschrift fur Physik A. 5 figures not
included here. Complete preprint, including device-independent (dvi),
PostScript, and LaTeX versions of the text, plus PostScript files of the
figures, available at http://t2.lanl.gov/publications/publications.html or at
ftp://t2.lanl.gov/pub/publications/mehe
Optimized phase switching using a single atom nonlinearity
We show that a nonlinear phase shift of pi can be obtained by using a single
two level atom in a one sided cavity with negligible losses. This result
implies that the use of a one sided cavity can significantly improve the pi/18
phase shift previously observed by Turchette et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4710
(1995)].Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, added comments on derivation and assumption
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