The Civil War Gulf Blockade: The Unpublished Journal of a U.S. Navy Warrant Officer Aboard the USS Vincennes, 1861-1864

“This paper attempts to (1) describe the unpublished journal of Nicholas Lynch, Warrant Officer (Sailmaker), U.S. Navy; (2) expand upon the most remarkable incident in the journal, the Affair at the Passes of the Mississippi River, a minor disaster for the Union navy in the first year of the war; (3) discuss the thoughts and moods of Sailmaker Lynch during the Union blockade from 1861 through 1864. The journal offers rare insights about naval warfare from the point of view of a sailor of the line. It also reveals that officers and crew were unable to maintain discipline and esprit de corps when faced with years of monotony and inaction on blockade duty aboard a sailing vessel.”—Introduction to article

Book Reviews: If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy—From the American Revolution to the War of 1812; The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British & French Navies, 1650-1815; Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy

This document is Dr. Oxley\u27s review of three books: If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy--From the American Revolution to the War of 1812, by George C. Daughan. Basic Books, 2008. 563 pp. Maps, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-465-01607-5 30; The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British & French Navies, 1650-1815, by Jonathan R. Dull. University of Nebraska Press, 2009. 260 pp. Maps, diagrams, notes, index. ISBN 978-0-8032-1930-4 29.95; and Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, by Ian W. Toll. W.W. Norton, 2006. 560 pp. Illustrations, chronology, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-393-33032-8 $16.9

Novel thermal management of power electronic devices: high power high frequency planar gunn diodes

Thermal management of next generation of semiconductor devices is becoming more challenging, as the device power increases and device dimensions decrease. The work is addressing novel thermal measurement and management for planar heterostructure Gunn diodes, which will be of strategic importance for UK technology and industry

Dark energy records in lensed cosmic microwave background

We consider the weak lensing effect induced by linear cosmological perturbations on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization anisotropies. We find that the amplitude of the lensing peak in the BB mode power spectrum is a faithful tracer of the dark energy dynamics at the onset of cosmic acceleration. This is due to two reasons. First, the lensing power is non-zero only at intermediate redshifts between the observer and the source, keeping record of the linear perturbation growth rate at the corresponding epoch. Second, the BB lensing signal is expected to dominate over the other sources. The lensing distortion on the TT and EE spectra do exhibit a similar dependence on the dark energy dynamics, although those are dominated by primary anisotropies. We investigate and quantify the effect by means of exact tracking quintessence models, as well as parameterizing the dark energy equation of state in terms of the present value ($w_{0}$) and its asymptotic value in the past ($w_{\infty}$); in the interval allowed by the present constraints on dark energy, the variation of $w_{\infty}$ induces a significant change in the BB mode lensing amplitude. A Fisher matrix analysis, under conservative assumptions concerning the increase of the sample variance due to the lensing non-Gaussian statistics, shows that a precision of order 10% on both $w_{0}$ and $w_{\infty}$ is achievable by the future experiments probing a large sky area with angular resolution and sensitivity appropriate to detect the lensing effect on the CMB angular power spectrum. These results show that the CMB can probe the differential redshift behavior of the dark energy equation of state, beyond its average.Comment: New version including substantial text change, three more figures and two more table

A Millimeter-Wave Achromatic Half Wave Plate

We have constructed an achromatic half wave plate (AHWP) suitable for the millimeter wavelength band. The AHWP was made from a stack of three sapphire a-cut birefringent plates with the optical axes of the middle plate rotated by 50.5 degrees with respect to the aligned axes of the other plates. The measured modulation efficiency of the AHWP at 110 GHz was $96 \pm 1.5$%. In contrast, the modulation efficiency of a single sapphire plate of the same thickness was $43 \pm 4$%. Both results are in close agreement with theoretical predictions. The modulation efficiency of the AHWP was constant as a function of incidence angles between 0 and 15 degrees. We discuss design parameters of an AHWP in the context of astrophysical broad band polarimetry at the millimeter wavelength band.Comment: In print - Applied Optics, 14 pages, 7 figure

On Local Equivalence, Surface Code States and Matroids

Recently, Ji et al disproved the LU-LC conjecture and showed that the local unitary and local Clifford equivalence classes of the stabilizer states are not always the same. Despite the fact this settles the LU-LC conjecture, a sufficient condition for stabilizer states that violate the LU-LC conjecture is missing. In this paper, we investigate further the properties of stabilizer states with respect to local equivalence. Our first result shows that there exist infinitely many stabilizer states which violate the LU-LC conjecture. In particular, we show that for all numbers of qubits $n\geq 28$, there exist distance two stabilizer states which are counterexamples to the LU-LC conjecture. We prove that for all odd $n\geq 195$, there exist stabilizer states with distance greater than two which are LU equivalent but not LC equivalent. Two important classes of stabilizer states that are of great interest in quantum computation are the cluster states and stabilizer states of the surface codes. To date, the status of these states with respect to the LU-LC conjecture was not studied. We show that, under some minimal restrictions, both these classes of states preclude any counterexamples. In this context, we also show that the associated surface codes do not have any encoded non-Clifford transversal gates. We characterize the CSS surface code states in terms of a class of minor closed binary matroids. In addition to making connection with an important open problem in binary matroid theory, this characterization does in some cases provide an efficient test for CSS states that are not counterexamples.Comment: LaTeX, 13 pages; Revised introduction, minor changes and corrections mainly in section V

Preliminary report on the analysis of the stresses in a die-bolster combination

An analysis is presented of the stresses in a carbide die-steel bolster combination. Results from a computer treatment of this analysis are given in tabular and graphical form. Suggestions are made as to the choice of interface diameters, and a nomogram is drawn enabling the maximum allowable interference to be selected

Thermal profiles within the channel of planar gunn diodes using micro-particle sensors

The paper describes the use of a novel microparticle sensor (~3 μm diameter) and infra-red (IR) microscopy to measure the temperature profile within the active channel (typically 3 μm length and 120 μm width) of planar Gunn diodes. The method has enabled detailed temperature measurements showing an asymmetrical temperature profile along the active width of these devices. The asymmetrical temperature profile suggests a similar behaviour in the channel current density, which may contribute to the lower than expected RF output power

Micro-cooler Enhancements by Barrier Interface Analysis

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Calculating the shear angle in orthogonal metal cutting from fundamental stress-strain-strain rate properties of the work material

An analysis of the orthogonal metal cutting process is made which enables the shear angle to be calculated from certain fundamental properties of the work material and the specified cutting conditions. Shear angles are calculated for a range of cutting conditions and good agreement is shown between theory and experiment. In particular, such trends as the decrease in shear angle with decrease in cutting speed and the tendency for the chip to become discontinuous at slow cutting speeds which are found experimentally and cannot be explained in terms of previous shear angle analyses, are shown to be consistent with the present analysis