5,739 research outputs found
Facility for interferometric testing of 1.25-m mirrors at liquid helium temperatures
A concept is presented for a national cryogenic optics test facility capable of optical characterization of 1.25 m diameter optics having focal lengths up to 6.2 m at temperatures from 300 K to near 4 K. The facility will be comprised of a large Dewar with a phase shift interferometer, a two stage vacuum system employing a turbomolecular pump, and an integral vibration isolation system. The entire facility will be housed in a concrete site with a massive floor to assist in reducing vibration during optical tests. By providing interchangeable sections, the overall height of the Dewar can be adjusted to provide for testing of shorter focal length optics. The background for the facility is discussed along with the facility location, and the requirements and the performance considerations which drive the Dewar design with respect to the vibration isolation system, vacuum system, and optical interferometry
Coating thickness and coverage effects on the forces between silica nanoparticles in water
The structure and interactions of coated silica nanoparticles have been
studied in water using molecular dynamics simulations. For 5 nm diameter
amorphous silica nanoparticles we studied the effects of varying the chain
length and grafting density of polyethylene oxide (PEO) on the nanoparticle
coating's shape and on nanoparticle-nanoparticle effective forces. For short
ligands of length and repeat units, the coatings are radially
symmetric while for longer chains () the coatings are highly
anisotropic. This anisotropy appears to be governed primarily by chain length,
with coverage playing a secondary role. For the largest chain lengths
considered, the strongly anisotropic shape makes fitting to a simple radial
force model impossible. For shorter ligands, where the coatings are isotropic,
we found that the force between pairs of nanoparticles is purely repulsive and
can be fit to the form where is the separation
between the center of the nanoparticles, is the radius of the
silica core, and is measured to be between 2.3 and 4.1.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure
Soliton ratchets induced by ac forces with harmonic mixing
The ratchet dynamics of a kink (topological soliton) of a dissipative
sine-Gordon equation in the presence of ac forces with harmonic mixing (at
least bi-harmonic) of zero mean is studied. The dependence of the kink mean
velocity on system parameters is investigated numerically and the results are
compared with a perturbation analysis based on a point particle representation
of the soliton. We find that first order perturbative calculations lead to
incomplete descriptions, due to the important role played by the soliton-phonon
interaction in establishing the phenomenon. The role played by the temporal
symmetry of the system in establishing soliton ratchets is also emphasized. In
particular, we show the existence of an asymmetric internal mode on the kink
profile which couples to the kink translational mode through the damping in the
system. Effective soliton transport is achieved when the internal mode and the
external force get phase locked. We find that for kinks driven by bi-harmonic
drivers consisting of the superposition of a fundamental driver with its first
odd harmonic, the transport arises only due to this {\it internal mode}
mechanism, while for bi-harmonic drivers with even harmonic superposition, also
a point-particle contribution to the drift velocity is present. The phenomenon
is robust enough to survive the presence of thermal noise in the system and can
lead to several interesting physical applications.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figure
Correlated Component Analysis for diffuse component separation with error estimation on simulated Planck polarization data
We present a data analysis pipeline for CMB polarization experiments, running
from multi-frequency maps to the power spectra. We focus mainly on component
separation and, for the first time, we work out the covariance matrix
accounting for errors associated to the separation itself. This allows us to
propagate such errors and evaluate their contributions to the uncertainties on
the final products.The pipeline is optimized for intermediate and small scales,
but could be easily extended to lower multipoles. We exploit realistic
simulations of the sky, tailored for the Planck mission. The component
separation is achieved by exploiting the Correlated Component Analysis in the
harmonic domain, that we demonstrate to be superior to the real-space
application (Bonaldi et al. 2006). We present two techniques to estimate the
uncertainties on the spectral parameters of the separated components. The
component separation errors are then propagated by means of Monte Carlo
simulations to obtain the corresponding contributions to uncertainties on the
component maps and on the CMB power spectra. For the Planck polarization case
they are found to be subdominant compared to noise.Comment: 17 pages, accepted in MNRA
Gaze gesture based human robot interaction for laparoscopic surgery
While minimally invasive surgery offers great benefits in terms of reduced patient trauma, bleeding, as well as faster recovery time, it still presents surgeons with major ergonomic challenges. Laparoscopic surgery requires the surgeon to bimanually control surgical instruments during the operation. A dedicated assistant is thus required to manoeuvre the camera, which is often difficult to synchronise with the surgeon’s movements. This article introduces a robotic system in which a rigid endoscope held by a robotic arm is controlled via the surgeon’s eye movement, thus forgoing the need for a camera assistant. Gaze gestures detected via a series of eye movements are used to convey the surgeon’s intention to initiate gaze contingent camera control. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are used for real-time gaze gesture recognition, allowing the robotic camera to pan, tilt, and zoom, whilst immune to aberrant or unintentional eye movements. A novel online calibration method for the gaze tracker is proposed, which overcomes calibration drift and simplifies its clinical application. This robotic system has been validated by comprehensive user trials and a detailed analysis performed on usability metrics to assess the performance of the system. The results demonstrate that the surgeons can perform their tasks quicker and more efficiently when compared to the use of a camera assistant or foot switches
Multi-component gap solitons in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates
We model the nonlinear behaviour of spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs)
with repulsive spin-independent interactions and either ferromagnetic or
anti-ferromagnetic (polar) spin-dependent interactions, loaded into a
one-dimensional optical lattice potential. We show that both types of BECs
exhibit dynamical instabilities and may form spatially localized
multi-component structures. The localized states of the spinor matter waves
take the form of vector gap solitons and self-trapped waves that exist only
within gaps of the linear Bloch-wave band-gap spectrum. Of special interest are
the nonlinear localized states that do not exhibit a common spatial density
profile shared by all condensate components, and consequently cannot be
described by the single mode approximation (SMA), frequently employed within
the framework of the mean-field treatment. We show that the non-SMA states can
exhibits Josephson-like internal oscillations and self-magnetisation, i.e.
intrinsic precession of the local spin. Finally, we demonstrate that
non-stationary states of a spinor BEC in a lattice exhibit coherent undamped
spin-mixing dynamics, and that their controlled conversion into a stationary
state can be achieved by the application of an external magnetic field.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure
- …