Measurement by FIB on the ISS: Two Emissions of Solar Neutrons Detected?

A new type of solar neutron detector (FIB) was launched onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on July 16, 2009, and it began collecting data at the International Space Station (ISS) on August 25, 2009. This paper summarizes the three years of observations obtained by the solar neutron detector FIB until the end of July 2012. The solar neutron detector FIB can determine both the energy and arrival direction of neutrons. We measured the energy spectra of background neutrons over the SAA region and elsewhere, and found the typical trigger rates to be 20 counts/sec and 0.22 counts/sec, respectively. It is possible to identify solar neutrons to within a level of 0.028 counts/sec, provided that directional information is applied. Solar neutrons were observed in association with the M-class solar flares that occurred on March 7 (M3.7) and June 7 (M2.5) of 2011. This marked the first time that neutrons were observed in M-class solar flares. A possible interpretaion of the prodcution process is provided.Comment: 36 pages, 16 figures, and 3 Tables; Advanced in Astronmy, 2012, Special issue on Cosmic Ray Variablity:Century of Its Obseravtion

YOLO-ET: a machine learning model for detecting, localising and classifying anthropogenic contaminants and extraterrestrial microparticles optimised for mobile processing systems

Imminent robotic and human activities on the Moon and other planetary bodies would benefit from advanced in situ Computer Vision and Machine Learning capabilities to identify and quantify microparticle terrestrial contaminants, lunar regolith disturbances, the flux of interplanetary dust particles, possible interstellar dust, -meteoroids, and secondary impact ejecta. The YOLO-ET (ExtraTerrestrial) algorithm, an innovation in this field, fine-tunes Tiny-YOLO to specifically address these challenges. Designed for coreML model transference to mobile devices, the algorithm facilitates edge computing in space environment conditions. YOLO-ET is deployable as an app on an iPhone with LabCam® optical enhancement, ready for space application ruggedisation. Training on images from the Tanpopo aerogel panels returned from Japan’s Kibo module of the International Space Station, YOLO-ET demonstrates a 90% detection rate for surface contaminant microparticles on the aerogels, and shows promising early results for detection of both microparticle contaminants on the Moon and for evaluating asteroid return samples. YOLO-ET’s application to identifying spacecraft-derived microparticles in lunar regolith simulant samples and SEM images of asteroid Ryugu samples returned by Hayabusa2 and curated by JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences indicate strong model performance and transfer learning capabilities for future extraterrestrial applications

Time-optimal CNOT between indirectly coupled qubits in a linear Ising chain

We give analytical solutions for the time-optimal synthesis of entangling gates between indirectly coupled qubits 1 and 3 in a linear spin chain of three qubits subject to an Ising Hamiltonian interaction with equal coupling $J$ plus a local magnetic field acting on the intermediate qubit. The energy available is fixed, but we relax the standard assumption of instantaneous unitary operations acting on single qubits. The time required for performing an entangling gate which is equivalent, modulo local unitary operations, to the $\mathrm{CNOT}(1, 3)$ between the indirectly coupled qubits 1 and 3 is $T=\sqrt{3/2} J^{-1}$, i.e. faster than a previous estimate based on a similar Hamiltonian and the assumption of local unitaries with zero time cost. Furthermore, performing a simple Walsh-Hadamard rotation in the Hlibert space of qubit 3 shows that the time-optimal synthesis of the $\mathrm{CNOT}^{\pm}(1, 3)$ (which acts as the identity when the control qubit 1 is in the state $\ket{0}$, while if the control qubit is in the state $\ket{1}$ the target qubit 3 is flipped as $\ket{\pm}\rightarrow \ket{\mp}$) also requires the same time $T$.Comment: 9 pages; minor modification

Measurement of the transverse asymmetry of γ\gamma-rays in the 117^{117}Sn(n,γ\gamma)118^{118}Sn reaction

Largely enhanced parity-violating effects observed in compound resonances induced by epithermal neutrons are currently attributed to the mixing of parity-unfavored partial amplitudes in the entrance channel of the compound states. Furthermore, it is proposed that the same mechanism that enhances the parity-violation also enhances the breaking of time-reversal-invariance in the compound nucleus. The entrance-channel mixing induces energy-dependent spin-angular correlations of individual $\gamma$-rays emitted from the compound nuclear state. For a detailed study of the mixing model, a $\gamma$-ray yield in the reaction of $^{117}$Sn(n,$\gamma$)$^{118}$Sn was measured using the pulsed beam of polarized epithermal neutrons and Ge detectors. An angular dependence of asymmetric $\gamma$-ray yields for the orientation of the neutron polarization was observed.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figure