Broadband terahertz heterodyne spectrometer exploiting synchrotron radiation at megahertz resolution

International audienceA new spectrometer allowing both high resolution and broadband coverage in the terahertz (THz) domain is proposed. This instrument exploits the heterodyne technique between broadband synchrotron radiation and a quantum cascade laser (QCL) based molecular THz laser that acts as the local oscillator (LO). Proof of principle for exploitation for spectroscopy is provided by the recording of molecular absorptions of hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) and methanol (CH 3 OH) around 1.073 THz. Ultimately, the spectrometer will enable to cover the 1-4 THz region in 5 GHz windows at Doppler resolution

Housing Arrangement and Location Determine the Likelihood of Housing Loss Due to Wildfire

Surging wildfires across the globe are contributing to escalating residential losses and have major social, economic, and ecological consequences. The highest losses in the U.S. occur in southern California, where nearly 1000 homes per year have been destroyed by wildfires since 2000. Wildfire risk reduction efforts focus primarily on fuel reduction and, to a lesser degree, on house characteristics and homeowner responsibility. However, the extent to which land use planning could alleviate wildfire risk has been largely missing from the debate despite large numbers of homes being placed in the most hazardous parts of the landscape. Our goal was to examine how housing location and arrangement affects the likelihood that a home will be lost when a wildfire occurs. We developed an extensive geographic dataset of structure locations, including more than 5500 structures that were destroyed or damaged by wildfire since 2001, and identified the main contributors to property loss in two extensive, fire-prone regions in southern California. The arrangement and location of structures strongly affected their susceptibility to wildfire, with property loss most likely at low to intermediate structure densities and in areas with a history of frequent fire. Rates of structure loss were higher when structures were surrounded by wildland vegetation, but were generally higher in herbaceous fuel types than in higher fuel-volume woody types. Empirically based maps developed using housing pattern and location performed better in distinguishing hazardous from non-hazardous areas than maps based on fuel distribution. The strong importance of housing arrangement and location indicate that land use planning may be a critical tool for reducing fire risk, but it will require reliable delineations of the most hazardous locations

Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges: Table 1.

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management challenges for countries that have diminishing fire knowledge, but for whom global climate change will bring new fire problems. Finally, we assessed major fire challenges that transcend national political boundaries, including the health burden of smoke plumes and the climate consequences of wildfires. It is clear that to best address the broad range of fire problems, a holistic wildfire scholarship must develop common agreement in working terms and build across disciplines. We must also communicate our understanding of fire and its importance to the media, politicians and the general public. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’

Preparação e caracterização de um biocompósito obtido pela mistura de hidreto de titânio com nitrato de cálcio para implantes dentários

RESUMO Neste trabalho foram realizados estudos sobre a fabricação de um biocompósito à base de titânio para implantes dentários a partir da mistura de pó de hidreto de titânio (92%) com nitrato de cálcio (8% em volume). O pó de hidreto de titânio foi adicionado na solução aquosa de nitrato de cálcio, dissolvido por agitação mecânica, e em seguida os precursores foram misturados e dispersados/homogeneizados por ultrassom. Posteriormente, a mistura foi secada em evaporador rotativo, compactada com 600 MPa à temperatura ambiente, desmoldada e sinterizada em alto vácuo a 1200 oC durante 2 horas. Foi analisada a microestrutrura e fases formadas, as propriedades mecânicas, a rugosidade da superfície, a porosidade aberta, a molhabilidade da superfície e a citotoxicidade do biocompósito. As fases identificadas após a sinterização foram α-Ti e CaTiO3. O limite de resistência em compressão, o módulo de Young (E) e o ângulo de contato do biocompósito diminuíram significativamente com relação ao hidreto de titânio puro sinterizado nas mesmas condições. O limite médio de resistência em compressão do hidreto de titânio foi de 1794,67 MPa e do biocompósito foi de 481,36 MPa. O módulo de Young e o ângulo de contato do hidreto de titânio e do biocompósito foram de aproximadamente 112 GPa e 94 graus, e de 75 GPa e 83 graus, respectivamente. A rugosidade de superfície foi da mesma ordem de grandeza entre os materiais e ficou aproximadamente entre 1,4 e 1,5 µm (Ra) e 1,4 e 1,9 µm (Ra e Sa), medidas com rugosímetro de contato e com microscópio confocal a laser, respectivamente. A porosidade aberta do biocompósito sinterizado foi de aproximadamente três vezes maior do que aquela do hidreto de titânio sinterizado. Nos ensaios de citotoxicidade a porcentagem de células viáveis do biocompósito foi superior àquela do controle negativo e àquela do hidreto de titânio sinterizado

Dependence of the carrier lifetime on acceptor concentration in LT-GaAs grown at low-temperature under different growth and annealing conditions

International audienceUsing the transient reflectivity technique, we have measured the carrier lifetime in low-temperature-grown GaAs (LT-GaAs) samples as a function of growth temperature and annealing conditions. We confirm the role of the deep donor as the dominant nonradiative recombination center, but we show here that the acceptor concentration is equally crucial for the determination of the carrier lifetime as the deep donor concentration. Using the number of acceptors as the only adjustable parameter in our model, we are able to simulate the carrier lifetime for the growth and annealing conditions used in our experiments and to reproduce all the characteristics of the carrier recombination dynamics in LT-GaAs, such as nonexponential transients and the influence of the illumination intensity. The implications for the use of LT-GaAs for optoelectronic applications are discussed. Cop. 2000 American Institute of Physics

High emission and detection efficiency of terahertz beam with heavy-ion-irradiated InP material excited at 0.8 mu m

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A 285 GHz sub-harmonic injection locked oscillator in 65nm CMOS technology

A 285 GHz Sub Harmonic Injection Locked Oscillator (SHILO) is presented using a standard 65nm CMOS process. The architecture of this oscillator is based on the differential LC tank with push-push but adapted to obtain a third harmonic oscillation. The output power is -19 dBm at 285 GHz for a dc power of 70 mW. This oscillator offers a measured phase noise of -96.3 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz and -80.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz, and a tuning range from 284.2 GHz to 289 GHz. The SHILO can be locked all along the tuning range with an injection signal corresponding to one sixth of the output frequency. The chip size is 921x451 μm2

Resonant cavities for efficient LT-GaAs photoconductors operating at λ = 1550 nm

We show that photoconductors based on low-temperature-grown GaAs (LT-GaAs) can be efficiently operated by 1.55 μm telecom wavelength by using metallic mirror based optical cavities. Two different semi-transparent front mirrors are compared: the first one is a thin gold layer, whereas the second one consists of a gold grating. Light absorption in grating mirror based optical cavities is numerically, analytically, and experimentally investigated allowing for an appropriate optical design. We show a 3 times improvement of the LT-GaAs photoconductor photoresponse by using, as front mirror, the gold grating once compared with the thin gold layer. It reaches around 0.5 mA/W under continuous wave, whereas a transient photoresistivity (Ron) as low as 5 Ω is deduced from dc photocurrents measured under femtosecond pulsed laser excitation. This work paves the way to efficient and reliable optoelectronics systems for GHz or THz waves sampling driven by 1.55 μm pulsed lasers widely available