HIGH PULSED CURRENTS FROM PHOTO-FIELD EMITTERS

Différent microemitters - single or arrays - with various geometries and kinds of material have been irradiated with pulsed laser beams. These emitters working in photo-field emission regime delivered very high intensity electron bunches. Peak intensities as high as some tens of Amps with less than one ns duration have been obtained with U.V. light. New type of microemitters developed in collaboration with BNL have been tested since last year showing the possibility of obtaining charges above 20 nC with low energy laser puises, (εi = 100µJ). The main parameters affecting the choice of these emitters as quantum yield, photocurrent density, electron pulse length, repetition rate and vacuum system level are here discussed. Good performances obtained with these emitters as well as the absence of cesiation make these microemitters interesting candidates for the new generation of linac injectors as well as for multimegawatt RF sources. At LAL, Orsay efforts have been made since three years to develop such electron sources

Specific detection and quantification of the marine flavobacterial genus Zobellia on macroalgae using novel qPCR and CARD-FISH assays

The flavobacterial genus Zobellia is considered as a model to study macroalgal polysaccharide degradation. The lack of data regarding its prevalence and abundance in coastal habitats constitutes a bottleneck to assess its ecological strategies. To overcome this issue, real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) methods targeting the 16S rRNA gene were optimized to specifically detect and quantify Zobellia on the surface of diverse macroalgae. The newly designed qPCR primers and FISH probes targeted 98 and 100% of the Zobellia strains in silico and their specificity was confirmed using pure bacterial cultures. The dynamic range of the qPCR assay spanned 8 orders of magnitude from 10 to 108 16S rRNA gene copies and the detection limit was 0.01% relative abundance of Zobellia in environmental samples. Zobellia-16S rRNA gene copies were detected on all surveyed brown, green and red macroalgae, in proportion varying between 0.1 and 0.9% of the total bacterial copies. The absolute and relative abundance of Zobellia varied with tissue aging on the kelp Laminaria digitata. Zobellia cells were successfully visualized in Ulva lactuca and stranded Palmaria palmata surface biofilm using CARD-FISH, representing in the latter 10(5) Zobellia cells.cm(2) and 0.43% of total bacterial cells. Overall, qPCR and CARD-FISH assays enabled robust detection, quantification and localization of Zobellia representatives in complex samples, underlining their ecological relevance as primary biomass degraders potentially cross-feeding other microorganisms. (C) 2021 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved

Trace polarizability spectra from Ar2 quasimolecules in collision-induced scattering

International audienceThe experimental Ar 2 trace-polarizability collision-induced scattering spectrum is reported in absolute units and over a large range of Raman frequency shifts, up to Ӎ400 cm Ϫ1. At frequency shifts above 60 cm Ϫ1 , the measured spectral profile falls off exponentially. We were able to record the far wing down to intensities that are two orders of magnitude smaller than those of the previous work. While the long ago predicted insuffi-ciency of the dipole-induced dipole ͑DID͒ or DID-like trace models is confirmed, reliable fully quantum computations based on a modern approach show that the ab initio Dacre's trace ͓P. D. Dacre, Mol. Phys. 45, 1 ͑1982͔͒ accounts well for the frequency dependence of the experimental spectrum differing only by a scaling constant. ͓S1050-2947͑97͒05905-2

A laser triggered electron source for pulsed radiolysis

We present the design of a photo-injector based accelerator for pulsed radiolysis applications. This machine is destined to meet the needs of the physical chemistry community at the Universite de Paris XI. A 4 MeV Energy electron pulse of a few picoseconds duration and with a charge in the range of 1 to 10 nC is produced from a Cs/sub 2 /Te photocathode. The photocathode is placed in the half energy spread cell of a 1-1/2 cell, 3 GHz RF gun, whose design is based on the gun used for the drive beam of the CERN CLIC Test facility. A 4 cell "booster" cavity is then used to accelerate the beam to an energy of 9 MeV. The transport system consists of a quadrupole triplet downsteam of the booster, two rectangular, 30 degree bend, dipoles with a pair of quadrupoles between them and a second triplet downstream of the second dipole. Energy dependent path length effects in the two dipoles allow the possibility of magnetic bunch compression depending on the phase-energy correlation of the bunch exiting the booster cavity. The beam envelope and the bunch length have been calculated through the transport line using TRACE-3d and PARMELA. These codes allow us to verify the required beam parameters at the experimental areas. We discuss the adjustment of the optics, aimed at producing the minimum electron bunch length at the experimental targets. (4 refs)

Intrabeam scattering analysis of measurements at KEK's ATF damping ring

We derive a simple relation for estimating the relative emittance growth in x and y due to intrabeam scattering (IBS) in electron storage rings. We show that IBS calculations for the ATF damping ring, when using the formalism of Bjorken-Mtingwa, a modified formalism of Piwinski (where eta squared divided by beta has been replaced by the dispersion invariant), or a simple high-energy approximate formula all give results that agree well. Comparing theory, including the effect of potential well bunch lengthening, with a complete set of ATF steady-state beam size vs. current measurements we find reasonably good agreement for energy spread and horizontal emittance. The measured vertical emittance, however, is larger than theory in both offset (zero current emittance) and slope (emittance change with current). The slope error indicates measurement error and/or additional current-dependent physics at the ATF; the offset error, that the assumed Coulomb log is correct to within a factor of 1.75.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, .bbl fil

Exceptional Flux Compactifications

We consider type II (non-)geometric flux backgrounds in the absence of brane sources, and construct their explicit embedding into maximal gauged D=4 supergravity. This enables one to investigate the critical points, mass spectra and gauge groups of such backgrounds. We focus on a class of type IIA geometric vacua and find a novel, non-supersymmetric and stable AdS vacuum in maximal supergravity with a non-semisimple gauge group. Our construction relies on a non-trivial mapping between SL(2) x SO(6,6) fluxes, SU(8) mass spectra and gaugings of E7(7) subgroups.Comment: 51 pages, 2 figures and 4 tables. v3: change of SO(6,6) spinorial conventions, published versio

Duality Invariant M-theory: Gauged supergravities and Scherk-Schwarz reductions

We consider the reduction of the duality invariant approach to M-theory by a U-duality group valued Scherk-Schwarz twist. The result is to produce potentials for gauged supergravities that are normally associated with non-geometric compactifications. The local symmetry reduces to gauge transformations with the gaugings exactly matching those of the embedding tensor approach to gauged supergravity. Importantly, this approach now includes a nontrivial dependence of the fields on the extra coordinates of the extended space.Comment: 22 pages Latex; v2: typos corrected and references adde

Cosmological Dark Energy: Prospects for a Dynamical Theory

We present an approach to the problem of vacuum energy in cosmology, based on dynamical screening of Lambda on the horizon scale. We review first the physical basis of vacuum energy as a phenomenon connected with macroscopic boundary conditions, and the origin of the idea of its screening by particle creation and vacuum polarization effects. We discuss next the relevance of the quantum trace anomaly to this issue. The trace anomaly implies additional terms in the low energy effective theory of gravity, which amounts to a non-trivial modification of the classical Einstein theory, fully consistent with the Equivalence Principle. We show that the new dynamical degrees of freedom the anomaly contains provide a natural mechanism for relaxing Lambda to zero on cosmological scales. We consider possible signatures of the restoration of conformal invariance predicted by the fluctuations of these new scalar degrees of freedom on the spectrum and statistics of the CMB, in light of the latest bounds from WMAP. Finally we assess the prospects for a new cosmological model in which the dark energy adjusts itself dynamically to the cosmological horizon boundary, and therefore remains naturally of order H^2 at all times without fine tuning.Comment: 50 pages, Invited Contribution to New Journal of Physics Focus Issue on Dark Energ

Ecological succession of a Jurassic shallow-water ichthyosaur fall.

After the discovery of whale fall communities in modern oceans, it has been hypothesized that during the Mesozoic the carcasses of marine reptiles created similar habitats supporting long-lived and specialized animal communities. Here, we report a fully documented ichthyosaur fall community, from a Late Jurassic shelf setting, and reconstruct the ecological succession of its micro- and macrofauna. The early 'mobile-scavenger' and 'enrichment-opportunist' stages were not succeeded by a 'sulphophilic stage' characterized by chemosynthetic molluscs, but instead the bones were colonized by microbial mats that attracted echinoids and other mat-grazing invertebrates. Abundant cemented suspension feeders indicate a well-developed 'reef stage' with prolonged exposure and colonization of the bones prior to final burial, unlike in modern whale falls where organisms such as the ubiquitous bone-eating worm Osedax rapidly destroy the skeleton. Shallow-water ichthyosaur falls thus fulfilled similar ecological roles to shallow whale falls, and did not support specialized chemosynthetic communities