Digital control of magnetic bearings supporting a multimass flexible rotor

The characteristics of magnetic bearings used to support a three mass flexible rotor operated at speeds up to 14,000 RPM are discussed. The magnetic components of the bearing are of a type reported in the literature previously, but the earlier analog controls were replaced by digital ones. Analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters and digital control software were installed in an AT&T PC. This PC-based digital controller was used to operate one of the magnetic bearings on the test rig. Basic proportional-derivative control was applied to the bearings, and the bearing stiffness and damping characteristics were evaluated. Particular attention is paid to the frequency dependent behavior of the stiffness and damping properties, and comparisons are made between the actual controllers and ideal proportional-derivative control

Attosecond pulse shaping around a Cooper minimum

High harmonic generation (HHG) is used to measure the spectral phase of the recombination dipole matrix element (RDM) in argon over a broad frequency range that includes the 3p Cooper minimum (CM). The measured RDM phase agrees well with predictions based on the scattering phases and amplitudes of the interfering s- and d-channel contributions to the complementary photoionization process. The reconstructed attosecond bursts that underlie the HHG process show that the derivative of the RDM spectral phase, the group delay, does not have a straight-forward interpretation as an emission time, in contrast to the usual attochirp group delay. Instead, the rapid RDM phase variation caused by the CM reshapes the attosecond bursts.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Carrier and Light Trapping in Graded Quantum Well Laser Structures

We investigated the carrier and light trapping in GaInAs/AlGaAs single quantum well laser structures by means of time resolved photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy. The influence of the shape and depth of the confinement potential and of the cavity geometry was studied by using different AlGaAs/GaAs short-period superlattices as barriers. Our results show that grading the optical cavity improves considerably both carrier and light trapping in the quantum well, and that the trapping efficiency is enhanced by increasing the graded confining potential.Comment: PDF-format, 15 pages (including 4 figures), Applied Physics Letters (June 2000

Above threshold ionization by few-cycle spatially inhomogeneous fields

We present theoretical studies of above threshold ionization (ATI) produced by spatially inhomogeneous fields. This kind of field appears as a result of the illumination of plasmonic nanostructures and metal nanoparticles with a short laser pulse. We use the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation (TDSE) in reduced dimensions to understand and characterize the ATI features in these fields. It is demonstrated that the inhomogeneity of the laser electric field plays an important role in the ATI process and it produces appreciable modifications to the energy-resolved photoelectron spectra. In fact, our numerical simulations reveal that high energy electrons can be generated. Specifically, using a linear approximation for the spatial dependence of the enhanced plasmonic field and with a near infrared laser with intensities in the mid- 10^{14} W/cm^{2} range, we show it is possible to drive electrons with energies in the near-keV regime. Furthermore, we study how the carrier envelope phase influences the emission of ATI photoelectrons for few-cycle pulses. Our quantum mechanical calculations are supported by their classical counterparts

Comparison of techniques for handling missing covariate data within prognostic modelling studies: a simulation study

Background: There is no consensus on the most appropriate approach to handle missing covariate data within prognostic modelling studies. Therefore a simulation study was performed to assess the effects of different missing data techniques on the performance of a prognostic model. Methods: Datasets were generated to resemble the skewed distributions seen in a motivating breast cancer example. Multivariate missing data were imposed on four covariates using four different mechanisms; missing completely at random (MCAR), missing at random (MAR), missing not at random (MNAR) and a combination of all three mechanisms. Five amounts of incomplete cases from 5% to 75% were considered. Complete case analysis (CC), single imputation (SI) and five multiple imputation (MI) techniques available within the R statistical software were investigated: a) data augmentation (DA) approach assuming a multivariate normal distribution, b) DA assuming a general location model, c) regression switching imputation, d) regression switching with predictive mean matching (MICE-PMM) and e) flexible additive imputation models. A Cox proportional hazards model was fitted and appropriate estimates for the regression coefficients and model performance measures were obtained. Results: Performing a CC analysis produced unbiased regression estimates, but inflated standard errors, which affected the significance of the covariates in the model with 25% or more missingness. Using SI, underestimated the variability; resulting in poor coverage even with 10% missingness. Of the MI approaches, applying MICE-PMM produced, in general, the least biased estimates and better coverage for the incomplete covariates and better model performance for all mechanisms. However, this MI approach still produced biased regression coefficient estimates for the incomplete skewed continuous covariates when 50% or more cases had missing data imposed with a MCAR, MAR or combined mechanism. When the missingness depended on the incomplete covariates, i.e. MNAR, estimates were biased with more than 10% incomplete cases for all MI approaches. Conclusion: The results from this simulation study suggest that performing MICE-PMM may be the preferred MI approach provided that less than 50% of the cases have missing data and the missing data are not MNAR

Extension of random-phase approximation preserving energy weighted sum rules: an application to a 3-level Lipkin model

A limitation common to all extensions of random-phase approximation including only particle-hole configurations is that they violate to some extent the energy weighted sum rules. Considering one such extension, the improved RPA (IRPA), already used to study the electronic properties of metallic clusters, we show how it can be generalized in order to eliminate this drawback. This is achieved by enlarging the configuration space, including also elementary excitations corresponding to the annihilation of a particle (hole) and the creation of another particle (hole) on the correlated ground state. The approach is tested within a solvable 3-level model.Comment: 2 figure

BCS-Bose Crossover in Color Superconductivity

It is shown that the onset of the color superconducting phase occurs in the BCS-BE crossover region.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX, references adde