22,941 research outputs found
Multi-chord fiber-coupled interferometer with a long coherence length laser
This paper describes a 561 nm laser heterodyne interferometer that provides
time-resolved measurements of line-integrated plasma electron density within
the range of 10^15-10^18 cm^(-2). Such plasmas are produced by railguns on the
Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX), which aims to produce \mu s-, cm-, and
Mbar-scale plasmas through the merging of thirty plasma jets in a spherically
convergent geometry. A long coherence length, 320 mW laser allows for a strong,
sub-fringe phase-shift signal without the need for closely-matched probe and
reference path lengths. Thus only one reference path is required for all eight
probe paths, and an individual probe chord can be altered without altering the
reference or other probe path lengths. Fiber-optic decoupling of the probe
chord optics on the vacuum chamber from the rest of the system allows the probe
paths to be easily altered to focus on different spatial regions of the plasma.
We demonstrate that sub-fringe resolution capability allows the interferometer
to operate down to line-integrated densities of order 10^15 cm^(-2).Comment: submitted to Rev. Sci. Instrum. (2011
Tendency of spherically imploding plasma liners formed by merging plasma jets to evolve toward spherical symmetry
Three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations have been performed using smoothed
particle hydrodynamics (SPH) in order to study the effects of discrete jets on
the processes of plasma liner formation, implosion on vacuum, and expansion.
The pressure history of the inner portion of the liner was qualitatively and
quantitatively similar from peak compression through the complete stagnation of
the liner among simulation results from two one dimensional
radiationhydrodynamic codes, 3D SPH with a uniform liner, and 3D SPH with 30
discrete plasma jets. Two dimensional slices of the pressure show that the
discrete jet SPH case evolves towards a profile that is almost
indistinguishable from the SPH case with a uniform liner, showing that
non-uniformities due to discrete jets are smeared out by late stages of the
implosion. Liner formation and implosion on vacuum was also shown to be robust
to Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth. Interparticle mixing for a liner
imploding on vacuum was investigated. The mixing rate was very small until
after peak compression for the 30 jet simulation.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasmas (2012
Coal desulfurization by low temperature chlorinolysis, phase 1
The reported activity covers laboratory scale experiments on twelve bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite coals, and preliminary design and specifications for bench-scale and mini-pilot plant equipment
Synthesis and Characterization of SiO 2
Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology is extensively used in the global planarization of highly value-added and large components in the aerospace industry. A nanopowder of SiO2 was prepared by the sol-gel method and was compounded into polishing slurry for the CMP of steel substrate. The size of the SiO2 abrasives was controlled by varying the sol-gel reaction conditions. The polishing efficacy of nano-SiO2 was studied, and the CMP mechanism with nanosized abrasives was further investigated. The proposed methods can produce SiO2 abrasives whose size can be controlled by varying the sol-gel reaction conditions. The size of the SiO2 abrasives was controlled in the range from 58 to 684 nm. The roughness of the steel substrate strongly depends on the size of the abrasive, and the surface roughness decreases as the abrasive size declines. A super-smooth surface with a roughness of 8.4 nm is obtained with nanosized SiO2. Ideal CMP slurry can be used to produce material surfaces with low roughness, excellent global planarization, high selectivity, an excellent finish, and a low-defected rate
High speed quantum gates with cavity quantum electrodynamics
Cavity quantum electrodynamic schemes for quantum gates are amongst the
earliest quantum computing proposals. Despite continued progress, and the
dramatic recent demonstration of photon blockade, there are still issues with
optimal coupling and gate operation involving high-quality cavities. Here we
show dynamic control techniques that allow scalable cavity-QED based quantum
gates, that use the full bandwidth of the cavities. When applied to quantum
gates, these techniques allow an order of magnitude increase in operating
speed, and two orders of magnitude reduction in cavity Q, over passive
cavity-QED architectures. Our methods exploit Stark shift based Q-switching,
and are ideally suited to solid-state integrated optical approaches to quantum
computing.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, minor revision
Optically Thin Metallic Films for High-radiative-efficiency Plasmonics
Plasmonics enables deep-subwavelength concentration of light and has become
important for fundamental studies as well as real-life applications. Two major
existing platforms of plasmonics are metallic nanoparticles and metallic films.
Metallic nanoparticles allow efficient coupling to far field radiation, yet
their synthesis typically leads to poor material quality. Metallic films offer
substantially higher quality materials, but their coupling to radiation is
typically jeopardized due to the large momentum mismatch with free space. Here,
we propose and theoretically investigate optically thin metallic films as an
ideal platform for high-radiative-efficiency plasmonics. For far-field
scattering, adding a thin high-quality metallic substrate enables a higher
quality factor while maintaining the localization and tunability that the
nanoparticle provides. For near-field spontaneous emission, a thin metallic
substrate, of high quality or not, greatly improves the field overlap between
the emitter environment and propagating surface plasmons, enabling high-Purcell
(total enhancement > ), high-quantum-yield (> 50 %) spontaneous emission,
even as the gap size vanishes (35 nm). The enhancement has almost
spatially independent efficiency and does not suffer from quenching effects
that commonly exist in previous structures.Comment: Supporting Information not included but freely available from
DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b0085
Nonmagnetic impurity perturbation to the quasi-two-dimensional quantum helimagnet LiCu2O2
A complete phase diagram of Zn substituted quantum quasi-two-dimensional
helimagnet LiCu2O2 has been presented. Helical ordering transition temperature
(T_h) of the original LiCu2O2 follows finite size scaling for less than ~ 5.5%
Zn substitution, which implies the existence of finite helimagnetic domains
with domain boundaries formed with nearly isolated spins. Higher Zn
substitution > 5.5% quenches the long-range helical ordering and introduces an
intriguing Zn level dependent magnetic phase transition with slight thermal
hysteresis and a universal quadratic field dependence for T_c (Zn > 0.055,H).
The magnetic coupling constants of nearest-neighbor (nn) J1 and
next-nearest-neighbor (nnn) J2 (alpha=J2/J1) are extracted from high
temperature series expansion (HTSE) fitting and N=16 finite chain exact
diagonalization simulation. We have also provided evidence of direct
correlation between long-range helical spin ordering and the magnitude of
electric polarization in this spin driven multiferroic material
Continuous-Variable Spatial Entanglement for Bright Optical Beams
A light beam is said to be position squeezed if its position can be
determined to an accuracy beyond the standard quantum limit. We identify the
position and momentum observables for bright optical beams and show that
position and momentum entanglement can be generated by interfering two
position, or momentum, squeezed beams on a beam splitter. The position and
momentum measurements of these beams can be performed using a homodyne detector
with local oscillator of an appropriate transverse beam profile. We compare
this form of spatial entanglement with split detection-based spatial
entanglement.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR
An experimental study on (2) modular symmetry in the quantum Hall system with a small spin-splitting
Magnetic-field-induced phase transitions were studied with a two-dimensional
electron AlGaAs/GaAs system. The temperature-driven flow diagram shows the
features of the (2) modular symmetry, which includes distorted
flowlines and shiftted critical point. The deviation of the critical
conductivities is attributed to a small but resolved spin splitting, which
reduces the symmetry in Landau quantization. [B. P. Dolan, Phys. Rev. B 62,
10278.] Universal scaling is found under the reduction of the modular symmetry.
It is also shown that the Hall conductivity could still be governed by the
scaling law when the semicircle law and the scaling on the longitudinal
conductivity are invalid. *corresponding author:[email protected]: The revised manuscript has been published in J. Phys.: Condens.
Matte
Order parameter of MgB_2: a fully gapped superconductor
We have measured the low-temperature specific heat C(T) for polycrystalline
MgB_2 prepared by high pressure synthesis. C(T) below 10 K vanishes
exponentially, which unambiguously indicates a fully opened superconducting
energy gap. However, this gap is found to be too small to account for Tc of
MgB_2. Together with the small specific heat jump DeltaC/gamma_nTc=1.13,
scenarios like anisotropic s-wave or multi-component order parameter are called
for. The magnetic field dependence of gamma(H) is neither linear for a fully
gapped s-wave superconductor nor H^1/2 for nodal order parameter. It seems that
this intriguing behavior of gamma(H) is associated with the intrinsic
electronic properties other than flux pinning.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; revised text and figures; references updated,
Phys. Rev. Lett., in pres
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