4,284 research outputs found
A feasibility study for a remote laser water turbidity meter
A technique to remotely determine the attenuation coefficient (alpha) of the water was investigated. The backscatter energy (theta = 180 deg) of a pulse laser (lambda = 440 - 660 nm) was found directly related to the water turbidity. The greatest sensitivity was found to exist at 440 nm. For waters whose turbidity was adjusted using Chesapeake Bay sediment, the sensitivity in determining alpha at 440 nm was found to be approximately 5 - 10%. A correlation was also found to exist between the water depth (time) at which the peak backscatter occurs and alpha
Double crystal x-ray diffraction simulations of diffusion in semiconductor microstructures
Diffusion in group IV, III-V and II-VI semiconductors is an interesting problem not only from a fundamental physics viewpoint but also in practical terms, since it could determine the useful lifetime of a device. Any attempt to control the amount of diffusion in a semiconductor device, whether it be a quantum well structure or not, requires an accurate determination of the diffusion coefficient. The present theoretical study shows that this could be achieved via x-ray diffraction studies in quantum well structures. It is demonstrated that the rocking curves of single quantum wells are not sensitive to diffusion. However the intensity of the first order satellite, which is characteristic of superlattice rocking curves, is strongly dependent upon diffusion and it is proposed that this technique could be used to measure the diffusion coefficient D. © 1998 American Institute of Physics
The critical current of YBa2Cu3O7-d Low Angle Grain Boundaries
Transport critical current measurements have been performed on 5 degree
[001]-tilt thin film YBa2Cu3O7-delta single grain boundaries with magnetic
field rotated in the plane of the film, phi. The variation of the critical
current has been determined as a function of the angle between the magnetic
field and the grain boundary plane. In applied fields above 1 T the critical
current, j_c, is found to be strongly suppressed only when the magnetic field
is within an angle phi_k of the grain boundary. Outside this angular range the
behavior of the artificial grain boundary is dominated by the critical current
of the grains. We show that the phi dependence of j_c in the suppressed region
is well described by a flux cutting model.Comment: To be published in PRL, new version with minor changes following
referees report
On gravity currents driven by constant fluxes of saline and particle-laden fluid in the presence of a uniform flow
Experiments are reported on the sustained release of saline and particle-laden fluid\ud
into a long, but relatively narrow, flume, filled with fresh water. The dense fluid rapidly\ud
spread across the flume and flowed away from the source: the motion was then essentially\ud
two-dimensional. In the absence of a background flow in the flume, the motion\ud
was symmetric, away from the source. However, in the presence of a background\ud
flow the upstream speed of propagation was slowed and the downstream speed was\ud
increased. Measurements of this motion are reported and, when the excess density was\ud
due to the presence of suspended sediment, the distribution of the deposited particles\ud
was also determined. Alongside this experimental programme, new theoretical models\ud
of the motion were developed. These were based upon multi-layered depth-averaged\ud
shallow-water equations, in which the interfacial drag and mixing processes were\ud
explicitly modelled. While the early stages of the motion are independent of these\ud
interfacial phenomena to leading order, they play an increasingly important dynamical\ud
role as the the flow is slowed, or even arrested. In addition a new integral model is\ud
proposed. This does not resolve the interior dynamics of the flow, but may be readily\ud
integrated and obviates the need for more lengthy numerical calculations. It is shown\ud
that the predictions from both the shallow-layer and integral models are in close\ud
agreement with the experimental observations
Adiabatic Quantum Computing for Random Satisfiability Problems
The discrete formulation of adiabatic quantum computing is compared with
other search methods, classical and quantum, for random satisfiability (SAT)
problems. With the number of steps growing only as the cube of the number of
variables, the adiabatic method gives solution probabilities close to 1 for
problem sizes feasible to evaluate via simulation on current computers.
However, for these sizes the minimum energy gaps of most instances are fairly
large, so the good performance scaling seen for small problems may not reflect
asymptotic behavior where costs are dominated by tiny gaps. Moreover, the
resulting search costs are much higher than for other methods. Variants of the
quantum algorithm that do not match the adiabatic limit give lower costs, on
average, and slower growth than the conventional GSAT heuristic method.Comment: added discussion of discrete adiabatic method, and simulations with
30 bits 8 pages, 8 figure
Direct Observation of Sub-Poissonian Number Statistics in a Degenerate Bose Gas
We report the direct observation of sub-Poissonian number fluctuation for a
degenerate Bose gas confined in an optical trap. Reduction of number
fluctuations below the Poissonian limit is observed for average numbers that
range from 300 to 60 atoms.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Diffuse HI Disks in Isolated Galaxies
In order to investigate the contribution of diffuse components to their total
HI emission, we have obtained high precision HI line flux densities with the
100m Green Bank Telescope for a sample of 100 isolated spiral and irregular
galaxies which we have previously observed with the 43m telescope. A comparison
of the observed HI line fluxes obtained with the two different telescopes,
characterized by half-power beam widths of 9 arcmin and 21 arcmin respectively,
exploits a ``beam matching'' technique to yield a statistical determination of
the occurrence of diffuse HI components in their disks. A simple model of the
HI distribution within a galaxy well describes ~75 % of the sample and accounts
for all of the HI line flux density. The remaining galaxies are approximately
evenly divided into two categories: ones which appear to possess a
significantly more extensive HI distribution than the model predicts, and ones
for which the HI distribution is more centrally concentrated than predicted.
Examples of both extremes can be found in the literature but little attention
has been paid to the centrally concentrated HI systems. Our sample has
demonstrated that galaxies do not commonly possess extended regions of low
surface brightness HI gas which is not accounted for by our current
understanding of the structure of HI disks. Eight HI-rich companions to the
target objects are identified, and a set of extragalactic HI line flux density
calibrators is presented.Comment: 26 page
Quantum Portfolios
Quantum computation holds promise for the solution of many intractable
problems. However, since many quantum algorithms are stochastic in nature they
can only find the solution of hard problems probabilistically. Thus the
efficiency of the algorithms has to be characterized both by the expected time
to completion {\it and} the associated variance. In order to minimize both the
running time and its uncertainty, we show that portfolios of quantum algorithms
analogous to those of finance can outperform single algorithms when applied to
the NP-complete problems such as 3-SAT.Comment: revision includes additional data and corrects minor typo
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