A Prototype Method for the Detection and Recognition of Pigments in the Environment Based on Optical Property Simulation

The possibility of pigment detection and recognition in different environments such as solvents or proteins is a challenging, and at the same time demanding, task. It may be needed in very different situations: from the nondestructive in situ identification of pigments in paintings to the early detection of fungal infection in major agro-industrial crops and products. So, we propose a prototype method, the key feature of which is a procedure analyzing the lineshape of a spectrum. The shape of the absorption spectrum corresponding to this transition strongly depends on the immediate environment of a pigment and can serve as a marker to detect the presence of a particular pigment molecule in a sample. Considering carotenoids as an object of study, we demonstrate that the combined operation of the differential evolution algorithm and semiclassical quantum modeling of the optical response based on a generalized spectral density (the number of vibronic modes is arbitrary) allows us to distinguish quantum models of the pigment for different solvents. Moreover, it is determined that to predict the optical properties of monomeric pigments in protein, it is necessary to create a database containing, for each pigment, in addition to the absorption spectra measured in a predefined set of solvents, the parameters of the quantum model found using differential evolution

Large CMS cathode strip chambers: design and performance

Presented are the main design features of the large cathode strip chambers (CSCs) for the CMS endcap muon system as well as the performance results obtained with the two full-scale 3.4 * 1.5 m/sup 2/ six-plane prototypes. The prototype performance was within the baseline requirements: (a) higher than 99% efficiency of muon track finding at the trigger level with more than 92% probability for bunch crossing identification and better than 2 mm spatial resolution, and (b) better than 150 mu m spatial resolution in off-line. (6 refs)