247 research outputs found
Safety of Spaceflight Participants Aboard Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles
The anticipated advent of the U.S. Government sponsoring human-tended research on commercial suborbital flights necessitates the establishment of safety review procedures for federal agencies to allow government-sponsored spaceflight participants (SFPs) aboard these vehicles. Safety practices for National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) personnel aboard aircraft, orbital rockets and platforms, and a non- NASA vehicle, the Soyuz, are summarized. The valuable Recommended Practices for Human Space Flight Occupant Safety, published by the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA-AST) in 2014, are summarized. Medical recommendations for operationally critical flight crewmembers, published by the Aerospace Medical Association Commercial Spaceflight Working Group, are reviewed. FAA-AST approved SFP training available at three U.S. commercial companies is summarized. Activities of ASTM International Committee F47 on Commercial Spaceflight, formed in 2016, are reviewed. Finally, safety comparisons are made with another challenging environment, deep sea submersibles
Local temperature perturbations in the boundary layer in regime of free viscous-inviscid interaction
We analyze the disturbed flow in the supersonic laminar boundary layer when
local heated elements are placed on the surface. It is exhibited that these
flows are described in terms of free interaction theory for specific sizes of
thermal sources. We construct the numerical solution for flat supersonic
problem in the viscous asymptotic layer in which the flow is described by
nonlinear equations for vorticity, temperature with the interaction condition
which provides influence of perturbations to the pressure in the main order.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
The seed laser system of the FERMI free-electron laser: design, performance and near future upgrades
Abstract
An important trend in extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray free-electron laser (FEL) development in recent years has been the use of seeding by an external laser, aimed to improve the coherence and stability of the generated pulses. The high-gain harmonic generation seeding technique was first implemented at FERMI and provided FEL radiation with high coherence as well as intensity and wavelength stability comparable to table-top ultrafast lasers. At FERMI, the seed laser has another very important function: it is the source of external laser pulses used in pump–probe experiments allowing one to achieve a record-low timing jitter. This paper describes the design, performance and operational modes of the FERMI seed laser in both single- and double-cascade schemes. In addition, the planned upgrade of the system to meet the challenges of the upgrade to echo-enabled harmonic generation mode is presented
Two-colour generation in a chirped seeded Free-Electron Laser
We present the experimental demonstration of a method for generating two
spectrally and temporally separated pulses by an externally seeded, single-pass
free-electron laser operating in the extreme-ultraviolet spectral range. Our
results, collected on the FERMI@Elettra facility and confirmed by numerical
simulations, demonstrate the possibility of controlling both the spectral and
temporal features of the generated pulses. A free-electron laser operated in
this mode becomes a suitable light source for jitter-free, two-colour
pump-probe experiments
Frequency locking of modulated waves
We consider the behavior of a modulated wave solution to an
-equivariant autonomous system of differential equations under an
external forcing of modulated wave type. The modulation frequency of the
forcing is assumed to be close to the modulation frequency of the modulated
wave solution, while the wave frequency of the forcing is supposed to be far
from that of the modulated wave solution. We describe the domain in the
three-dimensional control parameter space (of frequencies and amplitude of the
forcing) where stable locking of the modulation frequencies of the forcing and
the modulated wave solution occurs.
Our system is a simplest case scenario for the behavior of self-pulsating
lasers under the influence of external periodically modulated optical signals
A novel free-electron laser single-pulse Wollaston polarimeter for magneto-dynamical studies
Here, we report on the conceptual design, the hardware realization, and the first experimental results of a novel and compact x-ray polarimeter capable of a single-pulse linear polarization angle detection in the extreme ultraviolet photon energy range. The polarimeter is tested by performing time resolved pump-probe experiments on a Ni80Fe20 Permalloy film at the M-2,M-3 Ni edge at an externally seeded free-electron laser source. Comparison with similar experiments reported in the literature shows the advantages of our approach also in view of future experiments
All-optical spin injection in silicon investigated by element-specific time-resolved Kerr effect
Understanding howa spin current flows across metal-semiconductor interfaces at pico- and femtosecond time scales is of paramount importance for ultrafast spintronics, data processing, and storage applications. However, the possibility to directly access the propagation of spin currents, within such time scales, has been hampered by the simultaneous lack of both ultrafast element-specific magnetic sensitive probes and tailoredwell-built and characterized metal-semiconductor interfaces. Here, by means of a novel free-electron laser-based element-sensitive ultrafast time-resolved Kerr spectroscopy, we reveal different magnetodynamics for the Ni M-2;3 and Si L-2;3 absorption edges. These results are assumed to be the experimental evidence of photoinduced spin currents propagating at a speed of similar to 0.2 nm/fs across the Ni/Si interface
Ultrafast relaxation of photoexcited superfluid He nanodroplets
The relaxation of photoexcited nanosystems is a fundamental process of light-matter interaction. Depending on the couplings of the internal degrees of freedom, relaxation can be ultrafast, converting electronic energy in a few fs, or slow, if the energy is trapped in a metastable state that decouples from its environment. Here, we study helium nanodroplets excited resonantly by femtosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) pulses from a seeded free- electron laser. Despite their superfluid nature, we find that helium nanodroplets in the lowest electronically excited states undergo ultrafast relaxation. By comparing experimental pho- toelectron spectra with time-dependent density functional theory simulations, we unravel the full relaxation pathway: Following an ultrafast interband transition, a void nanometer-sized bubble forms around the localized excitation (He ) within 1 ps. Subsequently, the bubble collapses and releases metastable He at the droplet surface. This study highlights the high level of detail achievable in probing the photodynamics of nanosystems using tunable XUV pulses
Microbunching instability characterization via temporally modulated laser pulses
High-brightness electron bunches, such as those generated and accelerated in
free-electron lasers (FELs), can develop small-scale structure in the
longitudinal phase space. This causes variations in the slice energy spread and
current profile of the bunch which then undergo amplification, in an effect
known as the microbunching instability. By imposing energy spread modulations
on the bunch in the low-energy section of an accelerator, using an undulator
and a modulated laser pulse in the centre of a dispersive chicane, it is
possible tomanipulate the bunch longitudinal phase space. This allows for the
control and study of the instability in unprecedented detail. We report
measurements and analysis of such modulated electron bunches in the
2Dspectro-temporal domain at the FERMI FEL, for three different bunch
compression schemes. We also perform corresponding simulations of these
experiments and show that the codes are indeed able to reproduce the
measurements across a wide spectral range. This detailed experimental
verification of the ability of codes to capture the essential beam dynamics of
the microbunching instability will benefit the design and performance of future
FELs
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