Dissociation of high-pressure solid molecular hydrogen: Quantum Monte Carlo and anharmonic vibrational study

A theoretical study is reported of the molecular-to-atomic transition in solid hydrogen at high pressure. We use the diffusion quantum Monte Carlo method to calculate the static lattice energies of the competing phases and a density-functional-theory-based vibrational self-consistent field method to calculate anharmonic vibrational properties. We find a small but significant contribution to the vibrational energy from anharmonicity. A transition from the molecular Cmca-12 direct to the atomic I4_1/amd phase is found at 374 GPa. The vibrational contribution lowers the transition pressure by 91 GPa. The dissociation pressure is not very sensitive to the isotopic composition. Our results suggest that quantum melting occurs at finite temperature.Comment: Accepted for publication by Phys. Rev. Let

Tensor products of partial algebras

In this paper we introduce the tensor product of partial algebras w.r.t. a quasi-primtive class of partial algebras, and we prove some of its main properties. This construction generalizes the well-known tensor product of total algebras w.r.t. varieties

MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF A LONG-SPAN RAIWAY BRIDGE USING SENTINEL-1 DATA

This paper is focused on displacement monitoring of a bridge, which is one of the key aspects of its structural health monitoring. A simplified Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) approach is used to monitor the displacements of the Nanjing Dashengguan Yangtze River High-speed Railway Bridge (China). This bridge is 1272 m long and hosts a total of 6 railway lines. The analysis was based on a set of twenty-nine Sentinel-1A images, acquired from April 2015 to August 2016. A dense set of measurement points were selected on the bridge. The PSI results show a maximum longitudinal displacement of 150 mm, on each side of the bridge. The displacements are strongly correlated with the temperature, showing that they are due to thermal expansion. Using the PSI results, the Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) of the whole bridge was estimated. The result agrees well with the CTE of the bridge materials. Using a regression model, the PSI-measured displacements were compared with in-situ measurements. The paper proposes a procedure to assess the performance of the movable bearings of the bridge, which is based on the PSI measurements

Algebraic transformation of unary partial algebras II: Single-pushout approach

AbstractThe single-pushout approach to graph transformation is extended to the algebraic transformation of partial many-sorted unary algebras. Such a generalization has been motivated by the need to model the transformation of structures which are richer and more complex than graphs and hypergraphs.The main result presented in this article is an algebraic characterization of the single-pushout transformation in the categories of all conformisms, all closed quomorphisms, and all closed-domain closed quomorphisms of unary partial algebras over a given signature, together with a corresponding operational characterization that may serve as a basis for implementation.Moreover, all three categories are shown to satisfy all of the HLR (high-level replacement) conditions for parallelism, taking as occurrences the total morphisms in each category. Another important result presented in this article is the definition of HLR conditions for amalgamation, which are also satisfied by the categories of partial homomorphisms considered here, taking again the corresponding total morphisms as occurrences

Sentinel-1A/B imagery for terrain deformation monitoring: a strategy for Atmospheric Phase Screening (APS) estimation

This work focus on terrain deformation monitoring by means of C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Sentinel-1A/B imagery exploiting the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) technique. The deformation monitoring strategy described in this article is related to a specific monitoring scenario where a relatively small urban area is potentially affected by deformation and its surroundings are stable. In the case study considered in this work, the scenario corresponds to an area of potential subsidence induced by underground water pumping covering an area of interest with a radius of approximately 1 km. The proposed monitoring strategy takes advantage of the specific scenario at hand and, in particular, of the availability of stable areas in the vicinity of the area potentially affected by ground deformation, to estimate the Atmospheric Phase Screen (APS), i.e. signal propagation delay caused by the Earth's atmosphere, in an attempt to minimize the underestimation of the deformation rate

ANALYSIS OF X-BAND VERY HIGH RESOLUTION PERSISTENT SCATTERER INTERFEROMETRY DATA OVER URBAN AREAS

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is a satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing technique used to measure and monitor land deformation from a stack of interferometric SAR images. This work concerns X-band PSI and, in particular, PSI based on very high resolution (VHR) StripMap CosmoSkyMed and TerraSAR-X SAR imagery. In fact, it mainly focuses on the technical aspects of deformation measurement and monitoring over urban areas. A key technical aspect analysed in this paper is the thermal expansion component of PSI observations, which is a result of temperature differences in the imaged area between SAR acquisitions. This component of PSI observations is particularly important in the urban environment. This is an interesting feature of PSI, which can be surely used to illustrate the high sensitivity of X-band PSI to very subtle displacements. Thermal expansion can have a strong impact on the PSI products, especially on the deformation velocity maps and deformation time series, if not properly handled during the PSI data processing and analysis, and a comprehensive discussion of this aspect will be provided in this paper. The importance of thermal expansion is related to the fact that the PSI analyses are often performed using limited stacks of images, which may cover a limited time period, e.g. several months only. These two factors (limited number of images and short period) make the impact of a non-modelled thermal expansion particularly critical. This issue will be illustrated considering different case studies based on TerraSAR-X and CosmoSkyMed PSI data. Besides, an extended PSI model which alleviates this problem will be described and case studies from the Barcelona metropolitan area will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy

Antiferroelectric Topological Insulators in Orthorhombic AMgBi Compounds (A=Li, Na, K).

We introduce antiferroelectric topological insulators as a new class of functional materials in which an electric field can be used to control topological order and induce topological phase transitions. Using first principles methods, we predict that several alkali-MgBi orthorhombic members of an ABC family of compounds are antiferroelectric topological insulators. We also show that epitaxial strain and hydrostatic pressure can be used to tune the topological order and the band gap of these ABC compounds. Antiferroelectric topological insulators could enable precise control of topology using electric fields, enhancing the applicability of topological materials in electronics and spintronics