3,417 research outputs found
Efficient metallic spintronic emitters of ultrabroadband terahertz radiation
Terahertz electromagnetic radiation is extremely useful for numerous
applications such as imaging and spectroscopy. Therefore, it is highly
desirable to have an efficient table-top emitter covering the 1-to-30-THz
window whilst being driven by a low-cost, low-power femtosecond laser
oscillator. So far, all solid-state emitters solely exploit physics related to
the electron charge and deliver emission spectra with substantial gaps. Here,
we take advantage of the electron spin to realize a conceptually new terahertz
source which relies on tailored fundamental spintronic and photonic phenomena
in magnetic metal multilayers: ultrafast photo-induced spin currents, the
inverse spin-Hall effect and a broadband Fabry-P\'erot resonance. Guided by an
analytical model, such spintronic route offers unique possibilities for
systematic optimization. We find that a 5.8-nm-thick W/CoFeB/Pt trilayer
generates ultrashort pulses fully covering the 1-to-30-THz range. Our novel
source outperforms laser-oscillator-driven emitters such as ZnTe(110) crystals
in terms of bandwidth, terahertz-field amplitude, flexibility, scalability and
cost.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Large-scale Nonlinear Variable Selection via Kernel Random Features
We propose a new method for input variable selection in nonlinear regression.
The method is embedded into a kernel regression machine that can model general
nonlinear functions, not being a priori limited to additive models. This is the
first kernel-based variable selection method applicable to large datasets. It
sidesteps the typical poor scaling properties of kernel methods by mapping the
inputs into a relatively low-dimensional space of random features. The
algorithm discovers the variables relevant for the regression task together
with learning the prediction model through learning the appropriate nonlinear
random feature maps. We demonstrate the outstanding performance of our method
on a set of large-scale synthetic and real datasets.Comment: Final version for proceedings of ECML/PKDD 201
Secondary organic aerosol production from diesel vehicle exhaust: impact of aftertreatment, fuel chemistry and driving cycle
Environmental chamber ("smog chamber") experiments were conducted to
investigate secondary organic aerosol (SOA) production from dilute emissions
from two medium-duty diesel vehicles (MDDVs) and three heavy-duty diesel
vehicles (HDDVs) under urban-like conditions. Some of the vehicles were
equipped with emission control aftertreatment devices, including diesel
particulate filters (DPFs), selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and diesel
oxidation catalysts (DOCs). Experiments were also performed with different
fuels (100% biodiesel and low-, medium- or high-aromatic ultralow sulfur
diesel) and driving cycles (Unified Cycle,~Urban Dynamometer Driving
Schedule, and creep + idle). During normal operation, vehicles with a
catalyzed DPF emitted very little primary particulate matter (PM).
Furthermore, photooxidation of dilute emissions from these vehicles produced
essentially no SOA (below detection limit). However, significant primary PM
emissions and SOA production were measured during active DPF regeneration
experiments. Nevertheless, under reasonable assumptions about DPF
regeneration frequency, the contribution of regeneration emissions to the
total vehicle emissions is negligible, reducing PM trapping efficiency by
less than 2%. Therefore, catalyzed DPFs appear to be very effective in
reducing both primary PM emissions and SOA production from diesel vehicles.
For both MDDVs and HDDVs without aftertreatment substantial SOA formed in the
smog chamber â with the emissions from some vehicles generating twice as
much SOA as primary organic aerosol after 3 h of oxidation at typical
urban VOC / NO<sub>x</sub> ratios (3 : 1). Comprehensive organic gas
speciation was performed on these emissions, but less than half of the
measured SOA could be explained by traditional (speciated) SOA precursors.
The remainder presumably originates from the large fraction (~30%) of
the nonmethane organic gas emissions that could not be speciated using
traditional one-dimensional gas chromatography. The unspeciated organics â
likely comprising less volatile species such as intermediate volatility
organic compounds â appear to be important SOA precursors; we estimate that
the effective SOA yield (defined as the ratio of SOA mass to reacted
precursor mass) was 9 ± 6% if both speciated SOA precursors and
unspeciated organics are included in the analysis. SOA production from creep
+ idle operation was 3â4 times larger than SOA production from the same
vehicle operated over the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS). Fuel
properties had little or no effect on primary PM emissions or SOA formation
Effects Of Length, Complexity, And Grammatical Correctness On Stuttering In Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children
Purpose: To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Method: Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables, total number of clauses, utterance complexity (i.e., containing no clauses, simple clauses, or subordinate and/or conjoined clauses), and grammatical correctness (i.e., the presence or absence of morphological and syntactical errors) in stuttered and fluent utterances were compared. Results: Findings revealed that stuttered utterances in Spanish tended to be longer and more often grammatically incorrect, and contain more clauses, including more subordinate and/or conjoined clauses. However, when controlling for the interrelatedness of syllable number and clause number and complexity, only utterance length and grammatical incorrectness were significant predictors of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of these Spanish-speaking children. Use of complex utterances did not appear to contribute to the prediction of stuttering when controlling for utterance length. Conclusions: Results from the present study were consistent with many earlier reports of English-speaking children. Both length and grammatical factors appear to affect stuttering in Spanish-speaking children. Grammatical errors, however, served as the greatest predictor of stuttering.Communication Sciences and Disorder
The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG VI: The Curious Case of TrES-4b
We revisit the TrES-4 system parameters based on high-precision HARPS-N
radial-velocity measurements and new photometric light curves. A combined
spectroscopic and photometric analysis allows us to determine a spectroscopic
orbit with an amplitude m s. The derived mass of TrES-4b is
found to be , significantly lower than
previously reported. Combined with the large radius () inferred from our analysis, TrES-4b becomes
the second-lowest density transiting hot Jupiter known. We discuss several
scenarios to explain the puzzling discrepancy in the mass of TrES-4b in the
context of the exotic class of highly inflated transiting giant planets.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Letter accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
Protocheirodon, a new genus of Characidae (Teleostei: Characiformes) with the redescription of the poorly known Protocheirodon pi
GeantV: Results from the prototype of concurrent vector particle transport simulation in HEP
Full detector simulation was among the largest CPU consumer in all CERN
experiment software stacks for the first two runs of the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC). In the early 2010's, the projections were that simulation demands would
scale linearly with luminosity increase, compensated only partially by an
increase of computing resources. The extension of fast simulation approaches to
more use cases, covering a larger fraction of the simulation budget, is only
part of the solution due to intrinsic precision limitations. The remainder
corresponds to speeding-up the simulation software by several factors, which is
out of reach using simple optimizations on the current code base. In this
context, the GeantV R&D project was launched, aiming to redesign the legacy
particle transport codes in order to make them benefit from fine-grained
parallelism features such as vectorization, but also from increased code and
data locality. This paper presents extensively the results and achievements of
this R&D, as well as the conclusions and lessons learnt from the beta
prototype.Comment: 34 pages, 26 figures, 24 table
First Observation of -odd Asymmetry in Polarized Neutron Capture on Hydrogen
We report the first observation of the parity-violating 2.2 MeV gamma-ray
asymmetry in neutron-proton capture using polarized cold
neutrons incident on a liquid parahydrogen target at the Spallation Neutron
Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. isolates the , \mbox{} component of the weak
nucleon-nucleon interaction, which is dominated by pion exchange and can be
directly related to a single coupling constant in either the DDH meson exchange
model or pionless EFT. We measured , which implies a DDH weak coupling of
and a pionless
EFT constant of MeV. We describe the experiment, data
analysis, systematic uncertainties, and the implications of the result.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Multiple glass transitions in star polymer mixtures: Insights from theory and simulations
The glass transition in binary mixtures of star polymers is studied by mode
coupling theory and extensive molecular dynamics computer simulations. In
particular, we have explored vitrification in the parameter space of size
asymmetry and concentration of the small star polymers at
fixed concentration of the large ones. Depending on the choice of parameters,
three different glassy states are identified: a single glass of big polymers at
low and low , a double glass at high and low
, and a novel double glass at high and high which is
characterized by a strong localization of the small particles. At low
and high there is a competition between vitrification and phase
separation. Centered in the -plane, a liquid lake shows up
revealing reentrant glass formation. We compare the behavior of the dynamical
density correlators with the predictions of the theory and find remarkable
agreement between the two.Comment: 15 figures, to be published in Macromolecule
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