ALTICORE: an initiative for coastal altimetry

ALTICORE (value-added ALTImetry for COastal REgions) is an international initiative whose main objective is to encourage the operational use of altimetry over coastal areas, by improving the quality and availability of coastal altimetry data. The ALTICORE proposal has recently been submitted for funding to the INTAS scheme (www.intas.be) by a consortium of partners from Italy, France, UK, Russia and Azerbaijan. ALTICORE is also meant as a contribution to the ongoing International Altimeter Service effort. In this work we will describe the anticipated project stages, namely: 1) improvement of the most widely distributed, 1 Hz, data by analyzing the corrective terms and providing the best solutions, including those derived from appropriate local modelling; 2) development of a set of algorithms to automate quality control and gap-filling functions for the coastal regions; 3) development of testing strategies to ensure a thorough validation of the data. The improved products will be delivered to ALTICORE users via Grid-compliant technology; this makes it easier to integrate the local data holdings, allows access from a range of services, e.g. directly into model assimilation or GIS systems and should therefore facilitate a widespread and complete assessment of the 1Hz data performance and limitations. We will also outline the design and implementation of the Grid-compliant system for efficient access to distributed archives of data; this consists of regional data centres, each having primary responsibility for regional archives, local corrections and quality control, and operating a set of web-services allowing access to the full functionality of data extraction. We will conclude by discussing a follow-on phase of the project; this will investigate further improvements on the processing strategy, including the use of higher frequency (10 or 20 Hz) data. Phenomena happen at smaller spatial scales near the coast, so this approach is necessary to match the required resolution. The whole project will hopefully promote the 15-year sea surface height from altimetry to the rank of operational record for the coastal areas

Critical Fields and Critical Currents in MgB2

We review recent measurements of upper (Hc2) and lower (Hc1) critical fields in clean single crystals of MgB2, and their anisotropies between the two principal crystallographic directions. Such crystals are far into the "clean limit" of Type II superconductivity, and indeed for fields applied in the c-direction, the Ginzburg-Landau parameter k is only about 3, just large enough for Type II behaviour. Because m0Hc2 is so low, about 3 T for fields in the c-direction, MgB2 has to be modified for it to become useful for high-current applications. It should be possible to increase Hc2 by the introduction of strong electron scattering (but because of the electronic structure and the double gap that results, the scatterers will have to be chosen carefully). In addition, pinning defects on a scale of a few nm will have to be engineered in order to enhance the critical current density at high fields.Comment: BOROMAG Conference Invited paper. To appear in Supercond. Sci. Tec

Spectral signatures of the tropical Pacific dynamics from model and altimetry: a focus on the meso-/submesoscale range

The processes that contribute to the flat sea surface height (SSH) wavenumber spectral slopes observed in the tropics by satellite altimetry are examined in the tropical Pacific. The tropical dynamics are first investigated with a 1∕12° global model. The equatorial region from 10°&thinsp;N to 10°&thinsp;S is dominated by tropical instability waves with a peak of energy at 1000&thinsp;km wavelength, strong anisotropy, and a cascade of energy from 600&thinsp;km down to smaller scales. The off-equatorial regions from 10 to 20° latitude are characterized by a narrower mesoscale range, typical of midlatitudes. In the tropics, the spectral taper window and segment lengths need to be adjusted to include these larger energetic scales. The equatorial and off-equatorial regions of the 1∕12° model have surface kinetic energy spectra consistent with quasi-geostrophic turbulence. The balanced component of the dynamics slightly flattens the EKE spectra, but modeled SSH wavenumber spectra maintain a steep slope that does not match the observed altimetric spectra. A second analysis is based on 1∕36° high-frequency regional simulations in the western tropical Pacific, with and without explicit tides, where we find a strong signature of internal waves and internal tides that act to increase the smaller-scale SSH spectral energy power and flatten the SSH wavenumber spectra, in agreement with the altimetric spectra. The coherent M2 baroclinic tide is the dominant signal at  ∼ 140&thinsp;km wavelength. At short scales, wavenumber SSH spectra are dominated by incoherent internal tides and internal waves which extend up to 200&thinsp;km in wavelength. These incoherent internal waves impact space scales observed by today's along-track altimetric SSH, and also on the future Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission 2-D swath observations, raising the question of altimetric observability of the shorter mesoscale structures in the tropics.</p

Status and Plans for the Array Control and Data Acquisition System of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation atmospheric Cherenkov gamma-ray observatory. CTA will consist of two installations, one in the northern, and the other in the southern hemisphere, containing tens of telescopes of different sizes. The CTA performance requirements and the inherent complexity associated with the operation, control and monitoring of such a large distributed multi-telescope array leads to new challenges in the field of the gamma-ray astronomy. The ACTL (array control and data acquisition) system will consist of the hardware and software that is necessary to control and monitor the CTA arrays, as well as to time-stamp, read-out, filter and store -at aggregated rates of few GB/s- the scientific data. The ACTL system must be flexible enough to permit the simultaneous automatic operation of multiple sub-arrays of telescopes with a minimum personnel effort on site. One of the challenges of the system is to provide a reliable integration of the control of a large and heterogeneous set of devices. Moreover, the system is required to be ready to adapt the observation schedule, on timescales of a few tens of seconds, to account for changing environmental conditions or to prioritize incoming scientific alerts from time-critical transient phenomena such as gamma ray bursts. This contribution provides a summary of the main design choices and plans for building the ACTL system.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.0589

Data compression for the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope

The First Geiger-mode Avalanche photodiode (G-APD) Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) has been operating on the Canary island of La Palma since October 2011. Operations were automated so that the system can be operated remotely. Manual interaction is required only when the observation schedule is modified due to weather conditions or in case of unexpected events such as a mechanical failure. Automatic operations enabled high data taking efficiency, which resulted in up to two terabytes of FITS files being recorded nightly and transferred from La Palma to the FACT archive at ISDC in Switzerland. Since long term storage of hundreds of terabytes of observations data is costly, data compression is mandatory. This paper discusses the design choices that were made to increase the compression ratio and speed of writing of the data with respect to existing compression algorithms. Following a more detailed motivation, the FACT compression algorithm along with the associated I/O layer is discussed. Eventually, the performances of the algorithm is compared to other approaches.Comment: 17 pages, accepted to Astronomy and Computing special issue on astronomical file format

Retention of Two-Band Superconductivity in Highly Carbon-Doped MgB2

Tunneling data on MgB_{1.8}C_{0.2} show a reduction in the energy gap of the pi-bands by a factor of two from undoped MgB2 that is consistent with the Tc reduction, but inconsistent with the expectations of the dirty limit. Dirty-limit theory for undoped MgB2 predicts a single gap about three times larger than measured and a reduced Tc comparable to that measured. Our heavily-doped samples exhibit a uniform dispersion of C suggestive of significantly enhanced scattering, and we conclude that the retention of two-band superconductivity in these samples is caused by a selective suppression of interband scattering.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; added one figure, added one reference, minor changes to the text, manuscript accepted for publication as a Phys. Rev. B Rapid Communicatio

Penetration depth anisotropy in two-band superconductors

The anisotropy of the London penetration depth is evaluated for two-band superconductors with arbitrary inter- and intra-band scattering times. If one of the bands is clean and the other is dirty in the absence of inter-band scattering, the anisotropy is dominated by the Fermi surface of the clean band and is weakly temperature dependent. The inter-band scattering also suppress the temperature dependence of the anisotropy

Anisotropy of the upper critical field in superconductors with anisotropic gaps. Anisotropy parameters of MgB2

The upper critical field Hc2 is evaluated for weakly-coupled two-band superconductors. By modeling the actual bands and the gap distribution of MgB2 by two Fermi surface spheroids with average parameters of the real material, we show that H_{c2,ab}/H_{c2,c} increases with decreasing temperature in agreement with available data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Accuracy Assessment of Global Internal-Tide Models Using Satellite Altimetry

Altimeter measurements are corrected for several geophysical parameters in order to access ocean signals of interest, like mesoscale or sub-mesoscale variability. The ocean tide is one of the most critical corrections due to the amplitude of the tidal elevations and to the aliasing phenomena of high-frequency signals into the lower-frequency band, but the internal-tide signatures at the ocean surface are not yet corrected globally. Internal tides can have a signature of several centimeters at the surface with wavelengths of about 50–250 km for the first mode and even smaller scales for higher-order modes. The goals of the upcoming Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and other high-resolution ocean measurements make the correction of these small-scale signals a challenge, as the correction of all tidal variability becomes mandatory to access accurate measurements of other oceanic signals. In this context, several scientific teams are working on the development of new internal-tide models, taking advantage of the very long altimeter time series now available, which represent an unprecedented and valuable global ocean database. The internal-tide models presented here focus on the coherent internal-tide signal and they are of three types: empirical models based upon analysis of existing altimeter missions, an assimilative model and a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model. A detailed comparison and validation of these internal-tide models is proposed using existing satellite altimeter databases. The analysis focuses on the four main tidal constituents: M2, K1, O1 and S2. The validation process is based on a statistical analysis of multi-mission altimetry including Jason-2 and Cryosphere Satellite-2 data. The results show a significant altimeter variance reduction when using internal-tide corrections in all ocean regions where internal tides are generating or propagating. A complementary spectral analysis also gives some estimation of the performance of each model as a function of wavelength and some insight into the residual non-stationary part of internal tides in the different regions of interest. This work led to the implementation of a new internal-tide correction (ZARON\u27one) in the next geophysical data records version-F (GDR-F) standards

Calibration and performance of the photon sensor response of FACT -- The First G-APD Cherenkov telescope

The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is the first in-operation test of the performance of silicon photo detectors in Cherenkov Astronomy. For more than two years it is operated on La Palma, Canary Islands (Spain), for the purpose of long-term monitoring of astrophysical sources. For this, the performance of the photo detectors is crucial and therefore has been studied in great detail. Special care has been taken for their temperature and voltage dependence implementing a correction method to keep their properties stable. Several measurements have been carried out to monitor the performance. The measurements and their results are shown, demonstrating the stability of the gain below the percent level. The resulting stability of the whole system is discussed, nicely demonstrating that silicon photo detectors are perfectly suited for the usage in Cherenkov telescopes, especially for long-term monitoring purpose