10,953 research outputs found
A 1.82 m^2 ring laser gyroscope for nano-rotational motion sensing
We present a fully active-controlled He-Ne ring laser gyroscope, operating in
square cavity 1.35 m in side. The apparatus is designed to provide a very low
mechanical and thermal drift of the ring cavity geometry and is conceived to be
operative in two different orientations of the laser plane, in order to detect
rotations around the vertical or the horizontal direction. Since June 2010 the
system is active inside the Virgo interferometer central area with the aim of
performing high sensitivity measurements of environmental rotational noise. So
far, continuous not attempted operation of the gyroscope has been longer than
30 days. The main characteristics of the laser, the active remote-controlled
stabilization systems and the data acquisition techniques are presented. An
off-line data processing, supported by a simple model of the sensor, is shown
to improve the effective long term stability. A rotational sensitivity at the
level of ten nanoradiants per squareroot of Hz below 1 Hz, very close to the
required specification for the improvement of the Virgo suspension control
system, is demonstrated for the configuration where the laser plane is
horizontal
Direct measurement of diurnal polar motion by ring laser gyroscopes
We report the first direct measurements of the very small effect of forced
diurnal polar motion, successfully observed on three of our large ring lasers,
which now measure the instantaneous direction of Earth's rotation axis to a
precision of 1 part in 10^8 when averaged over a time interval of several
hours. Ring laser gyroscopes provide a new viable technique for directly and
continuously measuring the position of the instantaneous rotation axis of the
Earth and the amplitudes of the Oppolzer modes. In contrast, the space geodetic
techniques (VLBI, SLR, GPS, etc.) contain no information about the position of
the instantaneous axis of rotation of the Earth, but are sensitive to the
complete transformation matrix between the Earth-fixed and inertial reference
frame. Further improvements of gyroscopes will provide a powerful new tool for
studying the Earth's interior.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, agu2001.cl
Transferrin polymorphism of red deer in France: evidence for spatial genetic microstructure of an autochthonous herd
International audienc
Switching the current through molecular wires
The influence of Gaussian laser pulses on the transport through molecular
wires is investigated within a tight-binding model for spinless electrons
including correlation. Motivated by the phenomenon of coherent destruction of
tunneling for monochromatic laser fields, situations are studied in which the
maximum amplitude of the electric field fulfills the conditions for the
destructive quantum effect. It is shown that, as for monochromatic laser
pulses, the average current through the wire can be suppressed. For parameters
of the model, which do not show a net current without any optical field, a
Gaussian laser pulse can establish a temporary current. In addition, the effect
of electron correlation on the current is investigated.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Multifractal analysis of the metal-insulator transition in anisotropic systems
We study the Anderson model of localization with anisotropic hopping in three
dimensions for weakly coupled chains and weakly coupled planes. The eigenstates
of the Hamiltonian, as computed by Lanczos diagonalization for systems of sizes
up to , show multifractal behavior at the metal-insulator transition even
for strong anisotropy. The critical disorder strength determined from the
system size dependence of the singularity spectra is in a reasonable agreement
with a recent study using transfer matrix methods. But the respective spectrum
at deviates from the ``characteristic spectrum'' determined for the
isotropic system. This indicates a quantitative difference of the multifractal
properties of states of the anisotropic as compared to the isotropic system.
Further, we calculate the Kubo conductivity for given anisotropies by exact
diagonalization. Already for small system sizes of only sites we observe
a rapidly decreasing conductivity in the directions with reduced hopping if the
coupling becomes weaker.Comment: 25 RevTeX pages with 10 PS-figures include
Design of small Stirling dynamic isotope power system for robotic space missions
Design of a multihundred-watt Dynamic Isotope Power System (DIPS) based on the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) and small (multihundred-watt) free-piston Stirling engine (FPSE) technology is being pursued as a potential lower cost alternative to radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG's). The design is targeted at the power needs of future unmanned deep space and planetary surface exploration missions ranging from scientific probes to Space Exploration Initiative precursor missions. Power level for these missions is less than a kilowatt. Unlike previous DIPS designs which were based on turbomachinery conversion (e.g. Brayton), this small Stirling DIPS can be advantageously scaled down to multihundred-watt unit size while preserving size and mass competitiveness with RTG's. Preliminary characterization of units in the output power ranges 200-600 We indicate that on an electrical watt basis the GPHS/small Stirling DIPS will be roughly equivalent to an advanced RTG in size and mass but require less than a third of the isotope inventory
Measuring Information Transfer
An information theoretic measure is derived that quantifies the statistical
coherence between systems evolving in time. The standard time delayed mutual
information fails to distinguish information that is actually exchanged from
shared information due to common history and input signals. In our new
approach, these influences are excluded by appropriate conditioning of
transition probabilities. The resulting transfer entropy is able to distinguish
driving and responding elements and to detect asymmetry in the coupling of
subsystems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Figures, Revte
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