Study of solid 4He in two dimensions. The issue of zero-point defects and study of confined crystal

Defects are believed to play a fundamental role in the supersolid state of 4He. We report on studies by exact Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations at zero temperature of the properties of solid 4He in presence of many vacancies, up to 30 in two dimensions (2D). In all studied cases the crystalline order is stable at least as long as the concentration of vacancies is below 2.5%. In the 2D system for a small number, n_v, of vacancies such defects can be identified in the crystalline lattice and are strongly correlated with an attractive interaction. On the contrary when n_v~10 vacancies in the relaxed system disappear and in their place one finds dislocations and a revival of the Bose-Einstein condensation. Thus, should zero-point motion defects be present in solid 4He, such defects would be dislocations and not vacancies, at least in 2D. In order to avoid using periodic boundary conditions we have studied the exact ground state of solid 4He confined in a circular region by an external potential. We find that defects tend to be localized in an interfacial region of width of about 15 A. Our computation allows to put as upper bound limit to zero--point defects the concentration 0.003 in the 2D system close to melting density.Comment: 17 pages, accepted for publication in J. Low Temp. Phys., Special Issue on Supersolid

On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM

Momentum distributions in superfluid helium: bose condensate fraction

We have measured the momentum distributions in superfluid and normal Helium 4 at identical densities using inelastic neutron scattering as a function of temperature and density. At large enough momentum transfers Q the Impulse Approximation is valid and the single particle momentum distribution n(anti p) can be extracted from the inelastic scattering spectrum. Results are reported. (WHK

Studies of particle interactions in bubble chamber, spark chambers and counter experiments. Annual progress report

During the past six years we have carried out and planned experiments which predominantly studied the production and decay of particles containing charmed quarks. A series of photoproduction and neutron production experiments started with the very early observation of the production of J/psi by neutrons and by photons at Fermilab. From subsequent experiments using these neutral beams and the basic detecting system, we have reported results on the photoproduction of the ..lambda../sub c/ charmed baryon and the D and D* charmed mesons. More recent runs are studying the high energy photoproduction of vector mesons including the psi'. The present experiment in this sequence is using neutrons to produce a large number of D mesons. Another series of experiments at Fermilab set out to study the hadronic production of charmed mesons. The Chicago Cyclotron facility was modified with a detector sensitive to various possible production mechanisms. The experiments were a success; clean signals of D mesons were observed to be produced by pions, and also the production of chi/sub c/ with the subsequent decay via a ..gamma..-ray to psi was observed. The charmonium experiments run this year have better photon resolution for measuring the decays of chi/sub c/ to psi. We are part of a collaboration which is working on the Collider Detector Facility for Fermilab. The CDF at Fermilab is a possible source of (weak) intermediate vector bosons from the collisions of protons and anti-protons. Our responsibilities in the CDF include both the construction of the muon detector and the designing, planning, and testing of the FASTBUS electronics. The second part of our weak interaction program is the Neutrino Oscillation experiment which is now under construction at Brookhaven