Population Redistribution among Multiple Electronic States of Molecular Nitrogen Ions in Strong Laser Fields

We carry out a combined theoretical and experimental investigation on the population distributions in the ground and excited states of tunnel ionized N2 molecules at various driver wavelengths in the near- and mid-infrared range. Our results reveal that efficient couplings (i.e., population exchanges) between the ground state and the excited states occur in strong laser fields. The couplings result in the population inversion between the ground and the excited states at the wavelengths near 800 nm, which is verified by our experiment by observing the amplification of a seed at ~391 nm. The result provides insight into the mechanism of free-space nitrogen ion lasers generated in remote air with strong femtosecond laser pulses.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

First-principles generalized gradient approximation (GGA) +Ud+Up studies of electronic structures and optical properties in cubic HfO2

The electronic structures and optical properties of cubic HfO2 are calculated by means of generalized gradient approximation (GGA) +U approach. Without on-site Coulomb interactions, the band gap of cubic HfO2 is 2.92eV, much lower than the experimental value (5.7eV). Introducing the Coulomb interactions of 5d orbitals on Hf atom (Ud) and of 2p orbitals on O atom (Up), we can reproduce the experimental value of the band gap. The calculated dielectric function of cubic HfO2 by the GGA+ Ud + Up approach predicts the presence of a shoulder structure below the main peak of the absorption spectrum. These indicate that the GGA +Ud +UP approach is a convenient and powerful method to calculate and predict the electronic structures and the optical properties of wide-gap optical materials.Comment: 11 pages and 5 figure

An Efficient ΣΔ-STAP Detector for Radar Seeker using RPCA Post-processing

Adaptive detection of moving targets in sea clutter environment is considered as one of the crucial tasks for radar seekers. Due to the severe spreading of the sea clutter spectrum, the ability of space-time adaptive processing with sum and difference beams (ΣΔ-STAP) algorithms to suppress the sea clutter is very limited. This paper, investigated the low-rank property of the range-Doppler data matrix according to the eigenvalue distribution from the eigen spectrum, and proposed an efficient ΣΔ-STAP detector based on the robust principle component analysis (RPCA) algorithm to detect moving targets, which meets the low-rank matrix recovery conditions. The proposed algorithm first adopts ΣΔ-STAP algorithm to preprocess the sea clutter, then separates the sparse matrix of target component from the range-Doppler data matrix through the RPCA algorithm, and finally, effectively detects moving targets in the range-Doppler plane. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm in the low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios.Defence Science Journal, Vol. 64, No. 4, July 2014, pp. 344-349, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.64.486

Review: optical fiber sensors for civil engineering applications

Optical fiber sensor (OFS) technologies have developed rapidly over the last few decades, and various types of OFS have found practical applications in the field of civil engineering. In this paper, which is resulting from the work of the RILEM technical committee “Optical fiber sensors for civil engineering applications”, different kinds of sensing techniques, including change of light intensity, interferometry, fiber Bragg grating, adsorption measurement and distributed sensing, are briefly reviewed to introduce the basic sensing principles. Then, the applications of OFS in highway structures, building structures, geotechnical structures, pipelines as well as cables monitoring are described, with focus on sensor design, installation technique and sensor performance. It is believed that the State-of-the-Art review is helpful to engineers considering the use of OFS in their projects, and can facilitate the wider application of OFS technologies in construction industry

Dynamic responses analysis of submerged floating tunnel under impact load

Submerged floating tunnel (SFT) may be subjected to sudden impact loads such as submarine and shipwreck. Besides the local damage caused by impact, the overall transient dynamic response may also affect its driving safety. Based on the dynamic impact finite element software, the full-length model and the locally truncated accurate model with solid element of the SFT are established respectively. By applying different spring stiffness constraints on the boundary of the truncated model, its first three modes are consistent with the full-length model, thus their dynamic characteristics are basically the same. The truncated model is further used to simulate the impact of a massive object on the SFT under different impact velocities, impact mass, impact angles and impact positions. The velocity and mass of the impact object have positive influences on the peak contact force, the displacement amplitude of the tube and the length of the damaged area. When the impact angle is perpendicular to the SFT tube, the contact force, displacement amplitude and the damaged area are the largest. The change of the impact position has little effect on the contact force and the damage area, but it will affect the distribution of displacement amplitude

LMBAO: A Landmark Map for Bundle Adjustment Odometry in LiDAR SLAM

LiDAR odometry is one of the essential parts of LiDAR simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). However, existing LiDAR odometry tends to match a new scan simply iteratively with previous fixed-pose scans, gradually accumulating errors. Furthermore, as an effective joint optimization mechanism, bundle adjustment (BA) cannot be directly introduced into real-time odometry due to the intensive computation of large-scale global landmarks. Therefore, this letter designs a new strategy named a landmark map for bundle adjustment odometry (LMBAO) in LiDAR SLAM to solve these problems. First, BA-based odometry is further developed with an active landmark maintenance strategy for a more accurate local registration and avoiding cumulative errors. Specifically, this paper keeps entire stable landmarks on the map instead of just their feature points in the sliding window and deletes the landmarks according to their active grade. Next, the sliding window length is reduced, and marginalization is performed to retain the scans outside the window but corresponding to active landmarks on the map, greatly simplifying the computation and improving the real-time properties. In addition, experiments on three challenging datasets show that our algorithm achieves real-time performance in outdoor driving and outperforms state-of-the-art LiDAR SLAM algorithms, including Lego-LOAM and VLOM.Comment: 9 pages, 3 tables, 6 figure