Massless particles in S-Matrix theory

Imperial Users onl

Prediction of PWR fuel cladding failure strain in a loss-of-coolant accident

Imperial Users onl

Microwave cavity light shining through a wall optimization and experiment

It has been proposed that microwave cavities can be used in a photon regeneration experiment to search for hidden sector photons. Using two isolated cavities, the presence of hidden sector photons could be inferred from a 'light shining through a wall' phenomenon. The sensitivity of the experiment has strong a dependence on the geometric construction and electromagnetic mode properties of the two cavities. In this paper we perform an in depth investigation to determine the optimal setup for such an experiment. We also describe the results of our first microwave cavity experiment to search for hidden sector photons. The experiment consisted of two cylindrical copper cavities stacked axially inside a single vacuum chamber. At a hidden sector photon mass of 37.78 micro eV we place an upper limit on the kinetic mixing parameter chi = 2.9 * 10^(-5). Whilst this result lies within already established limits our experiment validates the microwave cavity `light shining through a wall' concept. We also show that the experiment has great scope for improvement, potentially able to reduce the current upper limit on the mixing parameter chi by several orders of magnitude.Comment: To be published in PR

'Makings of the self and of the sun': Modernist Poetics of Climate Change

This thesis aims to formulate a critical methodology and a poetics that engage with climate change. It critiques the Romantic and social justice premises of literary ecocriticism, arguing that a modernist poetics more capably articulates the complexities exacerbated in anthropogenic climate change. Analysing the form of a range of modernist work, I assess its expression of the human–climate relations at the root of the planet's present state, and trace this work's influence on contemporary climate change poetry. Ecocriticism's topical approaches to nature and the environment have been constitutively unable to grapple with climate change until the discipline's recent synthesis of literary theory, and the emergence of a 'material ecocriticism' informed by developments in environmental sociology, ethics and philosophy. Modernist aesthetics has an array of concerns in common with this critical thinking on climate change, and the reciprocity of the two prompts my rereading here of key modernist texts. T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' is seen to reveal civilisation's inability to suppress or surpass its environment; Wallace Stevens's opus exposes the necessarily fictive quality of our relations with nature; Basil Bunting extends Stevens's reconsideration of Romanticism with the diminishment of selfhood and breakdown of order in his poetry; while David Jones's 'The Anathemata' employs the scope of modernist poetics to understand the prehistoric climate change that enabled the emergence of civilisation. By being conscious of modernist traditions, new work – as exemplified here by Jorie Graham's 'Sea Change' – acknowledges the role of human culture in creating the world imaginatively and phenomenally. As contemporary climate change poetry moves away from using culturally familiar elegiac modes, it benefits from a fuller range of resources to articulate the entanglement and hybridity of nature and culture in the twenty-first century

Facile synthesis of 7-alkyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1,8-naphthyridines as arginine mimetics using a Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons-based approach

Integrin inhibitors based on the tripeptide sequence Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) are potential therapeutics for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Herein, we describe an expeditious three-step synthetic sequence of Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons olefination, diimide reduction, and global deprotection to synthesise cores for these compounds in high yields (63-83% over 3 steps) with no need for chromatography. Key to this transformation is the phosphoramidate protecting group, which is stable to metalation steps

Morphology of small-scale submarine mass movement events across the northwest United Kingdom

A review of multibeam echo sounder (MBES) survey data from five locations around the United Kingdom northwest coast has led to the identification of a total of 14 separate subaqueous mass movement scars and deposits within the fjords (sea lochs) and coastal inlets of mainland Scotland, and the channels between the islands of the Inner Hebrides. In these areas, Quaternary sediment deposition was dominated by glacial and glaciomarine processes. Analysis of the morphometric parameters of each submarine mass movement has revealed that they fall into four distinct groups of subaqueous landslides; Singular Slumps, Singular Translational, Multiple Single-Type, and Complex (translational & rotational) failures. The Singular Slump Group includes discrete, individual subaqueous slumps that exhibit no evidence of modification through the merging of several scars. The Singular Translational Group comprise a single slide that displays characteristics associated with a single translational (planar) failure with no merging of multiple events. The Multiple Single-Type Group incorporates scars and deposits that displayed morphometric features consistent with the amalgamation of several failure events of the same type (e.g. debris flows or slumps). Finally, the Complex (translational & rotational) Group comprises landslides that exhibited complex styles of failures, including both translational and rotational mechanisms controlling the same slide. The submarine mass movements that comprise this dataset are then discussed in relation to global fjordic and glaciomarine nearshore settings, and slope failure trigger mechanisms associated with these environments are described with tentative links to individual submarine landslides from the database, where appropriate. It is acknowledged that additional MBES data are needed not only to expand this database, but also in order to create a more statistically robust study. However, this initial study provides the basis for a much wider investigation of subaqueous mass movements and correlations between their morphometric parameters

On the timing of retreat of the Loch Lomond (‘Younger Dryas’) Readvance icefield in the SW Scottish Highlands and its wider significance

It has long been assumed that the last glacier expansion in the Scottish Highlands, the Loch Lomond Readvance (LLR), resulted from a cold reversal that was broadly coeval with the ‘Younger Dryas’ episode. This view has recently been challenged, with the suggestion that glacier ice had disappeared from Rannoch Moor, one of the main ice accumulation centres in the SW Scottish Highlands, by as early as 12.5 ka, i.e. within the first half of the ‘Younger Dryas’. Here we present new radiocarbon, tephrostratigraphical and pollen-stratigraphical evidence from one of the key sites on Rannoch Moor, the results of an experiment designed to test this hypothesis. Our results not only contradict that concept, but are fully compatible with other evidence from the SW Scottish Highlands that suggests that the LLR glaciers in this area continued to expand until towards the end of the ‘Younger Dryas’ period, and may have persisted in some places after the onset of the Holocene. We consider the possible reasons for this marked divergence in chronology, a matter that is crucial to resolve because the precise timing of the demise of the LLR glaciers has important palaeoclimatic and other implications. In the wider context, we also draw attention to problems with the general use of the term ‘Younger Dryas’ and why we regard the Greenland stratotype unit and term ‘Greenland Stadial 1’ (GS-1) a more secure stratigraphic comparator

Microwave cavity hidden sector photon threshold crossing

Hidden sector photons are a weakly interacting slim particle arising from an additional U(1) gauge symmetry predicted by many standard model extensions. We present and demonstrate a new experimental method using a single microwave cavity to search for hidden sector photons. Only photons with a great enough energy are able to oscillate into hidden sector photons of a particular mass. If our cavity is driven on resonance and tuned over the corresponding threshold frequency, there is an observable drop in the circulating power signifying the creation of hidden sector photons. This approach avoids the problems of microwave leakage and frequency matching inherent in photon regeneration techniques