Dense blocks of energetic ions driven by multi-petawatt lasers

Laser-driven ion accelerators have the advantages of compact size, high density, and short bunch duration over conventional accelerators. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to simultaneously enhance the yield and quality of laser-driven ion beams for practical applications. Here we propose a scheme to address this challenge via the use of emerging multi-petawatt lasers and a density-modulated target. The density-modulated target permits its ions to be uniformly accelerated as a dense block by laser radiation pressure. In addition, the beam quality of the accelerated ions is remarkably improved by embedding the target in a thick enough substrate, which suppresses hot electron refluxing and thus alleviates plasma heating. Particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that almost all ions in a solid-density plasma of a few microns can be uniformly accelerated to about 25% of the speed of light by a laser pulse at an intensity around 1022 W/cm2. The resulting dense block of energetic ions may drive fusion ignition and more generally create matter with unprecedented high energy density.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Quantum Statistical Entropy and Minimal Length of 5D Ricci-flat Black String with Generalized Uncertainty Principle

In this paper, we study the quantum statistical entropy in a 5D Ricci-flat black string solution, which contains a 4D Schwarzschild-de Sitter black hole on the brane, by using the improved thin-layer method with the generalized uncertainty principle. The entropy is the linear sum of the areas of the event horizon and the cosmological horizon without any cut-off and any constraint on the bulk's configuration rather than the usual uncertainty principle. The system's density of state and free energy are convergent in the neighborhood of horizon. The small-mass approximation is determined by the asymptotic behavior of metric function near horizons. Meanwhile, we obtain the minimal length of the position $\Delta x$ which is restrained by the surface gravities and the thickness of layer near horizons.Comment: 11pages and this work is dedicated to the memory of Professor Hongya Li

Quasi-local energy and the choice of reference

A quasi-local energy for Einstein's general relativity is defined by the value of the preferred boundary term in the covariant Hamiltonian formalism. The boundary term depends upon a choice of reference and a time-like displacement vector field (which can be associated with an observer) on the boundary of the region. Here we analyze the spherical symmetric cases. For the obvious analytic choice of reference based on the metric components, we find that this technique gives the same quasi-local energy values using several standard coordinate systems and yet can give different values in some other coordinate systems. For the homogeneous-isotropic cosmologies, the energy can be non-positive, and one case which is actually flat space has a negative energy. As an alternative, we introduce a way to determine the choice of both the reference and displacement by extremizing the energy. This procedure gives the same value for the energy in different coordinate systems for the Schwarzschild space, and a non-negative value for the cosmological models, with zero energy for the dynamic cosmology which is actually Minkowski space. The timelike displacement vector comes out to be the dual mean curvature vector of the two-boundary.Comment: 21 pages; revised version to appear in CQ

Performance Analysis of Iteratively Decoded Variable-Length Space-Time Coded Modulation

It is demonstrated that iteratively Decoded Variable Length Space Time Coded Modulation (VL-STCM-ID) schemes are capable of simultaneously providing both coding gain as well as multiplexing and diversity gain. The VL-STCM-ID arrangement is a jointly designed iteratively decoded scheme combining source coding, channel coding, modulation as well as spatial diversity/multiplexing. In this contribution, we analyse the iterative decoding convergence of the VL-STCM-ID scheme using symbol-based three-dimensional EXIT charts. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme is shown to be about 14.6 dB better than that of the Fixed Length STCM (FL-STCM) benchmarker at a source symbol error ratio of 10?4, when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme when communicating over correlated Rayleigh fading channels using imperfect channel state information is also studied

DsJD_{sJ}(2317) meson production at RHIC

Production of $D_{sJ}$(2317) mesons in relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC is studied. Using the quark coalescence model, we first determine the initial number of $D_{sJ}$(2317) mesons produced during hadronization of created quark-gluon plasma. The predicted $D_{sJ}$(2317) abundance depends sensitively on the quark structure of the $D_{sJ}$(2317) meson. An order-of-magnitude larger yield is obtained for a conventional two-quark than for an exotic four-quark $D_{sJ}$(2317) meson. To include the hadronic effect on the $D_{sJ}$(2317) meson yield, we have evaluated the absorption cross sections of the $D_{sJ}$(2317) meson by pion, rho, anti-kaon, and vector anti-kaon in a phenomenological hadronic model. Taking into consideration the absorption and production of $D_{sJ}$(2317) mesons during the hadronic stage of heavy ion collisions via a kinetic model, we find that the final yield of $D_{sJ}$(2317) mesons remains sensitive to its initial number produced from the quark-gluon plasma, providing thus the possibility of studying the quark structure of the $D_{sJ}$(2317) meson and its production mechanism in relativistic heavy ion collisions.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure