13,598 research outputs found
Helium atom diffraction measurements of the surface structure and vibrational dynamics of CH_3-Si(111) and CD_3-Si(111) surfaces
The surface structure and vibrational dynamics of CH_3âSi(111) and CD_3âSi(111) surfaces were measured using helium atom scattering. The elastic diffraction patterns exhibited a lattice constant of 3.82 Ă
, in accordance with the spacing of the silicon underlayer. The excellent quality of the observed diffraction patterns, along with minimal diffuse background, indicated a high degree of long-range ordering and a low defect density for this interface. The vibrational dynamics were investigated by measurement of the DebyeâWaller attenuation of the elastic diffraction peaks as the surface temperature was increased. The angular dependence of the specular (θ_i=θ_f) decay revealed
perpendicular mean-square displacements of 1.0 x 10^(â5) Ă
^2 K^(â1) for the CH_3âSi(111) surface and 1.2 x 10^(â5) Ă
^2 K^(â1) for the CD_3âSi(111) surface, and a He-surface attractive well depth of ~7 meV. The effective surface Debye temperatures were calculated to be 983 K for the CH_3âSi(111) surface and 824 K for the CD_3âSi(111) surface. These relatively large Debye temperatures suggest that collisional energy accommodation at the surface occurs primarily through
the SiâC local molecular modes. The parallel mean-square displacements were 7.1 x 10^(â4) and 7.2 x 10^(â4) Ă
^2 K^(â1) for the CH_3âSi(111) and CD_3âSi(111) surfaces, respectively. The observed increase in thermal motion is consistent with the interaction between the helium atoms and SiâCH_3 bending modes. These experiments have thus yielded detailed information on the dynamical properties of these robust and technologically interesting semiconductor interfaces
Energy dissipation and ion heating at the heliospheric termination shock
The Los Alamos hybrid simulation code is used to examine heating and the partition of dissipation energy at the perpendicular heliospheric termination shock in the presence of pickup ions. The simulations are one-dimensional in space but three-dimensional in field and velocity components, and are carried out for a range of values of pickup ion relative density. Results from the simulations show that because the solar wind ions are relatively cold upstream, the temperature of these ions is raised by a relatively larger factor than the temperature of the pickup ions. An analytic model for energy partition is developed on the basis of the Rankine-Hugoniot relations and a polytropic energy equation. The polytropic index gamma used in the Rankine-Hugoniot relations is varied to improve agreement between the model and the simulations concerning the fraction of downstream heating in the pickup ions as well as the compression ratio at the shock. When the pickup ion density is less than 20%, the polytropic index is about 5/3, whereas for pickup ion densities greater than 20%, the polytropic index tends toward 2.2, suggesting a fundamental change in the character of the shock, as seen in the simulations, when the pickup ion density is large. The model and the simulations both indicate for the upstream parameters chosen for Voyager 2 conditions that the pickup ion density is about 25% and the pickup ions gain the larger share ( approximately 90%) of the downstream thermal pressure, consistent with Voyager 2 observations near the shock
Improved Error-Scaling for Adiabatic Quantum State Transfer
We present a technique that dramatically improves the accuracy of adiabatic
state transfer for a broad class of realistic Hamiltonians. For some systems,
the total error scaling can be quadratically reduced at a fixed maximum
transfer rate. These improvements rely only on the judicious choice of the
total evolution time. Our technique is error-robust, and hence applicable to
existing experiments utilizing adiabatic passage. We give two examples as
proofs-of-principle, showing quadratic error reductions for an adiabatic search
algorithm and a tunable two-qubit quantum logic gate.Comment: 10 Pages, 4 figures. Comments are welcome. Version substantially
revised to generalize results to cases where several derivatives of the
Hamiltonian are zero on the boundar
Effect of the Centrifugal Force on Domain Chaos in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection
Experiments and simulations from a variety of sample sizes indicated that the
centrifugal force significantly affects rotating Rayleigh-B\'enard
convection-patterns. In a large-aspect-ratio sample, we observed a hybrid state
consisting of domain chaos close to the sample center, surrounded by an annulus
of nearly-stationary nearly-radial rolls populated by occasional defects
reminiscent of undulation chaos. Although the Coriolis force is responsible for
domain chaos, by comparing experiment and simulation we show that the
centrifugal force is responsible for the radial rolls. Furthermore, simulations
of the Boussinesq equations for smaller aspect ratios neglecting the
centrifugal force yielded a domain precession-frequency
with as predicted by the amplitude-equation model for domain
chaos, but contradicted by previous experiment. Additionally the simulations
gave a domain size that was larger than in the experiment. When the centrifugal
force was included in the simulation, and the domain size closely agreed
with experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure
Response and Discrimination Performance of Arrays of Organothiol-Capped Au Nanoparticle Chemiresistive Vapor Sensors
The response and discrimination performance of an array that consisted of 20 different organothiol-capped Au nanoparticle chemiresistive vapor sensors was evaluated during exposure to 13 different organic vapors. The passivating organothiol ligand library consisted of collections of straight-chain alkanethiols, branched alkanethiols, and aromatic thiols. A fourth collection of sensors was formed from composites of 2-phenylethanethiol-capped Au nanoparticles and nonpolymeric aromatic materials that were coembedded in a sensor film. The organic vapors consisted of six hydrocarbons (n-hexane, n-heptane, n-octane, isooctane, cyclohexane, and toluene), three polar aprotic vapors (chloroform, tetrahydrofuran, and ethyl acetate), and four alcohols (methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, and 1-butanol). Trends in the resistance response of the sensors were consistent with expected trends in sorption due to the properties of the test vapor and the molecular structure of the passivating ligands in the sensor films. Classification algorithms including principal components analysis and Fisherâs linear discriminant were used to evaluate the discrimination performance of an array of such sensors. Each collection of sensors produced accurate classification of most vapors, with misclassification occurring primarily for vapors that had mutually similar polarity. The classification performance for an array that contained all of the sensor collections produced nearly perfect discrimination for all vapors studied. The dependence of the array size (i.e., the number of sensors) and the array chemical diversity on the discrimination performance indicated that, for an array of 20 sensors, an array size of 13 sensors or more produced the maximum discrimination performance
The radial evolution of solar wind speeds
The WSA-ENLIL model predicts significant evolution of the solar wind speed. Along a flux tube the solar wind speed at 1.0 AU and beyond is found to be significantly altered from the solar wind speed in the outer corona at 0.1 AU, with most of the change occurring within a few tenths of an AU from the Sun. The evolution of the solar wind speed is most pronounced during solar minimum for solar wind with observed speeds at 1.0 AU between 400 and 500 km/s, while the fastest and slowest solar wind experiences little acceleration or deceleration. Solar wind ionic charge state observations made near 1.0 AU during solar minimum are found to be consistent with a large fraction of the intermediate-speed solar wind having been accelerated or decelerated from slower or faster speeds. This paper sets the groundwork for understanding the evolution of wind speed with distance, which is critical for interpreting the solar wind composition observations near Earth and throughout the inner heliosphere. We show from composition observations that the intermediate-speed solar wind (400-500 km/s) represents a mix of what was originally fast and slow solar wind, which implies a more bimodal solar wind in the corona than observed at 1.0 AU
Conformal Field Theory for the Superstring in a Ramond-Ramond Plane Wave Background
A quantizable worldsheet action is constructed for the superstring in a
supersymmetric plane wave background with Ramond-Ramond flux. The action is
manifestly invariant under all isometries of the background and is an exact
worldsheet conformal field theory.Comment: 13 pages harvma
Defect-Seeded Atomic Layer Deposition of Metal Oxides on the Basal Plane of 2D Layered Materials
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) on mechanically exfoliated 2D layered materials spontaneously produces network patterns of metal oxide nanoparticles in triangular and linear deposits on the basal surface. The network patterns formed under a range of ALD conditions and were independent of the orientation of the substrate in the ALD reactor. The patterns were produced on MoS2 or HOPG when either tetrakis(dimethylamido)titanium or bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)manganese were used as precursors, suggesting that the phenomenon is general for 2D materials. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence, prior to deposition, of dislocation networks along the basal plane of mechanically exfoliated 2D flakes, indicating that periodical basal plane defects related to disruptions in the van der Waals stacking of layers, such as perfect line dislocations and triangular extended stacking faults networks, introduce a surface reactivity landscape that leads to the emergence of patterned deposition
Inelastic collisions of ultra-cold heteronuclear molecules in an optical trap
Ultra-cold RbCs molecules in high-lying vibrational levels of the
a ground electronic state are confined in an optical trap.
Inelastic collision rates of these molecules with both Rb and Cs atoms are
determined for individual vibrational levels, across an order of magnitude of
binding energies. A simple model for the collision process is shown to
accurately reproduce the observed scattering rates
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