On the oxidation mechanism of pure tungsten in the temperature range 600-800 ºC

The oxidation behavior of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)-reference tungsten grade has been evaluated in dry air in the temperature range 600-800 °C. At 600 °C , the scale remained protective while the integrity of W₁₈O₄₉ layer was kept. Rapid increase in mass gain resulted from massive cracking at local areas in the W₁₈O₄₉ layer. Then, a coarse non-protective columnar WO₂.₉₂ scale was developed which favoured rapid inward oxygen transport into the alloy. At 700 and 800 °C, growth stresses in the scale were released through local cracking. At this stage, WO₂.₉₂ became progressively transformed into WO₃ when the oxygen partial pressure increased across the scale thickness.This investigation was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ENE2008 06,403 C06 04). The financial support from the Comunidad de Madrid, through the program TECHNOFUSION, Grant S2009/ENE 1679

Influence of processing route and yttria additions on the oxidation behavior of tungsten

This study is for: The Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials (ICFRM-15) was held October 16–22, 2011, at the Charleston Marriott Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina (American United States).The oxidation resistance in dry air of pure tungsten and tungsten reinforced with a dispersion of 0.6 wt.% Y₂O₃ nanoparticles has been evaluated between 873 and 1073 K, temperature range that divertor in fusion power plants should endure during long-term times in the case of loss of coolant accident and/or air ingress in the vessel. Both materials were prepared by a powder metallurgy route involving hot isostatic pressing of ball milled tungsten powders and tungsten with dispersed Y₂O₃ nanoparticles. The results have been compared with those of pure tungsten processed by conventional techniques. Thermogravimetric tests at 873 K revealed that the processing route as well as yttria addition considerably affected the oxidation resistance of pure tungsten. Mass gain of W-0.6Y₂O₃ at 873 K was five and two times lower than that of pure tungsten prepared by conventional processing techniques and by powder metallurgy, respectively. This different behavior was related to changes in the structure and composition of the oxide scale. Above 873 K, the kinetics were significantly accelerated for all materials due to the development of a non-protective oxide scale from the earliest oxidation stages, although the kinetics of Y₂O₃-containing material were still the slowest, specially at 973 K. It was analyzed how yttria additions modify the oxidation mechanism of tungsten.Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid through the program ESTRUMAT-CM S2009MAT-1585 and by the Ministerio de Innovación y Ciencia (Project ENE2008-06403-C06-04). The additional subvention from EURATOM/CIEMAT association through contract EFDA WP11-MAT-WWALLOY.Publicad

Trayectoria de los jugadores de baloncesto del nuevo baloncesto Brasil

El objetivo del estudio es describir la trayectoria de los jugadores de baloncesto que participan en el Nuevo Baloncesto Brasil, el principal campeonato brasileño de baloncesto masculino durante la temporada 2014/2015. Para lograr el objetivo, se llevó a cabo un estudio cuantitativo en el que los datos fueron recogidos a través de cuestionarios cubiertos por 102 jugadores. Se ha tenido en cuenta el lugar de inicio de la práctica, la edad en que empezaron a jugar y cuándo comenzaron a competir, el club en el que jugaron los primeros años y si fueron convocados a la selección en categorías de base o adulta. Los resultados muestran que los jugadores de baloncesto de Brasil no se iniciaron a una edad temprana, además el inicio de la práctica y la competición se produjo alrededor de los 12 años. Cabe destacar un predominio de los clubes de Sao Paulo en el entrenamiento de los deportistas, en especial la ciudad de Franca. El 51,48% de los atletas adultos de la NBB fueron convocados a selecciones de base. Este estudio permite comprender aspectos importantes del deporte de alto nivel en Brasil, principalmente de baloncesto masculino.

Two-domains bulklike Fermi surface of Ag films deposited onto Si(111)-(7x7)

Thick metallic silver films have been deposited onto Si(111)-(7x7) substrates at room temperature. Their electronic properties have been studied by using angle resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES). In addition to the electronic band dispersion along the high-symmetry directions, the Fermi surface topology of the grown films has been investigated. Using ARPES, the spectral weight distribution at the Fermi level throughout large portions of the reciprocal space has been determined at particular perpendicular electron-momentum values. Systematically, the contours of the Fermi surface of these films reflected a sixfold symmetry instead of the threefold symmetry of Ag single crystal. This loss of symmetry has been attributed to the fact that these films appear to be composed by two sets of domains rotated 60$^o$ from each other. Extra, photoemission features at the Fermi level were also detected, which have been attributed to the presence of surface states and \textit{sp}-quantum states. The dimensionality of the Fermi surface of these films has been analyzed studying the dependence of the Fermi surface contours with the incident photon energy. The behavior of these contours measured at particular points along the Ag $\Gamma$L high-symmetry direction puts forward the three-dimensional character of the electronic structure of the films investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Large Extra Dimensions and Decaying KK Recurrences

We suggest the possibility that in ADD type brane-world scenarios, the higher KK excitations of the graviton may decay to lower ones owing to a breakdown of the conservation of extra dimensional ``momenta'' and study its implications for astrophysics and cosmology. We give an explicit realization of this idea with a bulk scalar field $\Phi$, whose nonzero KK modes acquire vacuum expectation values. This scenario helps to avoid constraints on large extra dimensions that come from gamma ray flux bounds in the direction of nearby supernovae as well as those coming from diffuse cosmological gamma ray background. It also relaxes the very stringent limits on reheat temperature of the universe in ADD models.Comment: 16 pages, late

Two-body Z′Z' decays in the minimal 331 model

The two-body decays of the extra neutral boson Z_2 predicted by the minimal 331 model are analyzed. At the three-level it can decay into standard model particles as well as exotic quarks and the new gauge bosons predicted by the model. The decays into a lepton pair are strongly suppressed, with $Br(Z_2 --> l^+l^-) ~ 10^{-2}$ and $Br(Z_2 --> \bar{\nu}_l \nu) ~ 10^{-3}$. In the bosonic sector, Z_2 would decay mainly into a pair of bilepton gauge bosons, with a branching ratio below the 0.1 level. The Z_2 boson has thus a leptophobic and bileptophobic nature and it would decay dominantly into quark pairs. The anomaly-induced decays $Z_2 --> Z_1\gamma$ and $Z_2 --> Z_1Z_1$, which occurs at the one-loop level are studied. It is found that $Br(Z_2 --> Z_1\gamma) ~ 10^{-9}$ and $Br(Z_2 --> Z_1Z_1) ~ 10^{-6}$ at most. As for the $Z_2 --> W^+W^-$ and $Z_2 --> Z_1H$ decays, with H a relatively light Higgs boson, they are induced via Z'-Z mixing. It is obtained that $Br(Z_2 --> W^+W^-) ~ 10^{-2}$ and $Br (Z_2 --> Z_1H) ~ 10^{-5}$. We also examine the flavor changing neutral current decays $Z_2 --> tc$ and $Z_2 --> tu$, which may have branching fractions as large as $10^{-3}$ and $10^{-5}$, respectively, and thus may be of phenomenological interest.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Review

An improved method for measuring muon energy using the truncated mean of dE/dx

The measurement of muon energy is critical for many analyses in large Cherenkov detectors, particularly those that involve separating extraterrestrial neutrinos from the atmospheric neutrino background. Muon energy has traditionally been determined by measuring the specific energy loss (dE/dx) along the muon's path and relating the dE/dx to the muon energy. Because high-energy muons (E_mu > 1 TeV) lose energy randomly, the spread in dE/dx values is quite large, leading to a typical energy resolution of 0.29 in log10(E_mu) for a muon observed over a 1 km path length in the IceCube detector. In this paper, we present an improved method that uses a truncated mean and other techniques to determine the muon energy. The muon track is divided into separate segments with individual dE/dx values. The elimination of segments with the highest dE/dx results in an overall dE/dx that is more closely correlated to the muon energy. This method results in an energy resolution of 0.22 in log10(E_mu), which gives a 26% improvement. This technique is applicable to any large water or ice detector and potentially to large scintillator or liquid argon detectors.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure

All-particle cosmic ray energy spectrum measured with 26 IceTop stations

We report on a measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum with the IceTop air shower array, the surface component of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. The data used in this analysis were taken between June and October, 2007, with 26 surface stations operational at that time, corresponding to about one third of the final array. The fiducial area used in this analysis was 0.122 km^2. The analysis investigated the energy spectrum from 1 to 100 PeV measured for three different zenith angle ranges between 0{\deg} and 46{\deg}. Because of the isotropy of cosmic rays in this energy range the spectra from all zenith angle intervals have to agree. The cosmic-ray energy spectrum was determined under different assumptions on the primary mass composition. Good agreement of spectra in the three zenith angle ranges was found for the assumption of pure proton and a simple two-component model. For zenith angles {\theta} < 30{\deg}, where the mass dependence is smallest, the knee in the cosmic ray energy spectrum was observed between 3.5 and 4.32 PeV, depending on composition assumption. Spectral indices above the knee range from -3.08 to -3.11 depending on primary mass composition assumption. Moreover, an indication of a flattening of the spectrum above 22 PeV were observed.Comment: 38 pages, 17 figure

Model-independent search for CP violation in D0→K−K+π−π+ and D0→π−π+π+π− decays

A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states K−K+π−π+ and π−π+π+π− is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the K−K+π−π+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the π−π+π+π− final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity

Measurement of the Bs0→J/ψKS0B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0 branching fraction

The $B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ branching fraction is measured in a data sample corresponding to 0.41$fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions affecting the sin2$\beta$ measurement from $B^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ The time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be $BF(B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0)=(1.83\pm0.28)\times10^{-5}$. This is the most precise measurement to date