Coherent control of Snell's law

We demonstrate coherent control of the generalized Snell's law in ultrathin gradient metasurfaces constructed by an array of V-shaped slot nanoantennas

Creep-fatigue Crack Growth Assessments of Elbow end Welds

AbstractElbows are highly stressed components and are critical to the integrity of the pipework systems and important to the safety of plants. In this paper, a local collapse solution for elbow end welds has been developed and subsequently used in defect assessments. A creep-fatigue crack growth assessment of the elbow end weld has been carried out assuming a defect initiated in the weld under the loading conditions of internal pressure, system moment, high temperature and welding residual stress. For the elbow end weld, the limiting defect calculation has been conducted using R6 procedures and the creep-fatigue crack growth assessments have been performed using R5.Furthermore, appropriate combinations of creep deformation and creep crack growth used for the R5 assessment are detailed in the paper. A surface breaking circumferential semi-elliptical defect postulated on the external surface has been assessed. After presenting the detailed assessment result, conclusions are drawn

Experimental method for biaxial tensile strength of fabrics and preliminary investigations

This paper presents a novel experimental approach to determine the biaxial strength of fabrics. A double-layer cruciform specimen was proposed based on the improvement of previous test specimen. The design and manufacture process of the novel specimen was described in detail. Uniaxial and biaxial tests of a specific material were performed subsequently. Based on numerical simulation, the biaxial strength of the fabrics was preliminary investigated. And the correlation between uniaxial and biaxial strength of the material was discussed. The proposed experiments could characterize the biaxial strength of fabrics, and the biaxial strength of the fabrics at 1:1 tension is higher than the weft strength and little lower than the warp strength

Rapid analysis of pyrethroid insecticides in aquaculture seawater samples via membrane-assisted solvent extraction coupled with gas chromatography-electron capture detection

A simple, efficient, and environmentally friendly membrane-assisted solvent extraction (MASE) method for the extraction and preconcentration of six pyrethroid insecticides from aquaculture seawater samples followed by gas chromatography-electron capture detection (GC-ECD) was successfully proposed. The operating conditions for MASE, such as the extraction solvent, solvent volume, NaCl concentration, stirring rate, extraction time, and temperature, were optimized. Compared to conventional Florisil-solid phase extraction (SPE), higher extraction recoveries (85.9% to 105.9%) of three spiked levels of the six pyrethroid pesticides in aquaculture seawater were obtained using MASE, and the RSD values were lower than 7.9%. The limits of detection (LOD, signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)=3) and quantification (LOQ, S/N = 10) were in the range of 0.037–0.166 and 0.12–0.55 µg L-1, respectively. The results demonstrate the excellent applicability of the MASE method in analyzing the six pyrethroid pesticides in aqueous samples. The proposed method exhibited a high potential for routine monitoring analysis of pyrethroid insecticides in seawater samples

Entanglement-Assisted Communication Surpassing the Ultimate Classical Capacity

Entanglement underpins a variety of quantum-enhanced communication, sensing, and computing capabilities. Entanglement-assisted communication (EACOMM) leverages entanglement pre-shared by communication parties to boost the rate of classical information transmission. Pioneering theory works showed that EACOMM can enable a communication rate well beyond the ultimate classical capacity of optical communications, but an experimental demonstration of any EACOMM advantage remains elusive. Here, we report the implementation of EACOMM surpassing the classical capacity over lossy and noisy bosonic channels. We construct a high-efficiency entanglement source and a phase-conjugate quantum receiver to reap the benefit of pre-shared entanglement, despite entanglement being broken by channel loss and noise. We show that EACOMM beats the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland capacity of classical communication by up to 14.6%, when both protocols are subject to the same power constraint at the transmitter. As a practical performance benchmark, a classical communication protocol without entanglement assistance is implemented, showing that EACOMM can reduce the bit-error rate by up to 69% over the same bosonic channel. Our work opens a route to provable quantum advantages in a wide range of quantum information processing tasks.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Comments are welcom

Methods for Partitioning Data to Improve Parallel Execution Time for Sorting on Heterogeneous Clusters

International audienceThe aim of the paper is to introduce general techniques in order to optimize the parallel execution time of sorting on a distributed architectures with processors of various speeds. Such an application requires a partitioning step. For uniformly related processors (processors speeds are related by a constant factor), we develop a constant time technique for mastering processor load and execution time in an heterogeneous environment and also a technique to deal with unknown cost functions. For non uniformly related processors, we use a technique based on dynamic programming. Most of the time, the solutions are in O(p) (p is the number of processors), independent of the problem size n. Consequently, there is a small overhead regarding the problem we deal with but it is inherently limited by the knowing of time complexity of the portion of code following the partitioning

Electronic structure of a Si δ-doped layer in a GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs/GaAs quantum barrier

We present a theoretical study of the electronic structure of a heavily Si d-doped layer in a GaAs/ AlxGa1-xAs/GaAs quantum barrier. In this class of structures the effect of DX centers on the electronic properties can be tuned by changing the AlxGa1-xAs barrier width and/or the Al concentration, which leads to a lowering of the DX level with respect to the Fermi energy without disturbing the wave functions much. A self-consistent approach is developed in which the effective confinement potential and the Fermi energy of the system, the energies, the wave functions, and the electron densities of the discrete subbands have been obtained as a function of both the material parameters of the samples and the experimental conditions. The effect of DX centers on such structures at nonzero temperature and under an external pressure is investigated for three different models: (1) the DXnc0 model with no correlation effects, (2) the d+/DX0 model, and (3) the d+/DX- model with inclusion of correlation effects. In the actual calculation, influences of the background acceptors, the discontinuity of the effective mass of the electrons at the interfaces of the different materials, band nonparabolicity, and the exchange-correlation energy of the electrons have been taken into account. We have found that (1) introducing a quantum barrier into d-doped GaAs makes it possible to control the energy gaps between different electronic subbands; (2) the electron wave functions are more spread out when the repellent effect of the barriers is increased as compared to those in d-doped GaAs; (3) increasing the quantum-barrier height and/or the application of hydrostatic pressure are helpful to experimentally observe the effect of the DX centers through a decrease of the total free-electron density; and (4) the correlation effects of the charged impurities are important for the systems under study

Stepwise addition of chemical reagents for enhancing electrokinetic removal of cu from real site contaminated soils

In this study, a circulation-enhanced electrokinetics (CEEK) system integrated with the stepwise addition of chemical reagents was used to remediate copper-contaminated soils collected from a real site. At first, an optimal extraction process of different chemical reagents was found to obtain the highest copper removal efficiency by conducting batch extraction experiments. The chemical reagents served as extracts including EDTA, NaOH, and sodium dithionite + sodium citrate. Then, CEEK integrated this optimal extraction, that is, the treatment of 6-day EDTA, NaOH, EDTA, sodium dithionite + sodium citrate, and EDTA in a series. According to experimental results, the NaOH and sodium dithionite + sodium citrate could effectively facilitate the copper removal during the extraction and electrokinetics (EK) processes. The optimal extraction process for this real contaminated soil (94% copper removal efficiency) was the alternative extraction of EDTA, NaOH, and sodium dithionite + sodium citrate. The copper removal efficiency of the real contaminated soil could reach around 55% after 30-day CEEK treatment. The continuous decline of soil copper concentration of this integrated EK technique could be achieved as the remediation time was extended sufficiently

Er-doped sapphire fibre temperature sensors using upconversion emission

We report the production of Er:Al2O3 and Er:Yb:Al2O3 fibres using the LHPG method for application as fibre temperature sensors. Intense upconversion emission in the blue, green and red was observed from these fibres when pumped with a laser diode at 965nm. The lifetime and the integrated intensity of the upconversion signal was characterised as function of laser power and temperature. Results indicate the ratiometric analysis of the integrated intensities provides a suitable transduction mechanism for temperatures up to 1000K

Microstructure modelling of hot deformation of Al–1%Mg alloy

This study presents the application of the finite elementmethod and intelligent systems techniques to the prediction of microstructural mapping for aluminium alloys. Here, the material within each finite element is defined using a hybrid model. The hybrid model is based on neuro-fuzzy and physically based components and it has been combined with the finite element technique. The model simulates the evolution of the internal state variables (i.e. dislocation density, subgrain size and subgrain boundary misorientation) and their effect on the recrystallisation behaviour of the stock. This paper presents the theory behind the model development, the integration between the numerical techniques, and the application of the technique to a hot rolling operation using aluminium, 1 wt% magnesium alloy. Furthermore, experimental data from plane strain compression (PSC) tests and rolling are used to validate the modelling outcome. The results show that the recrystallisation kinetics agree well with the experimental results for different annealing times. This hybrid approach has proved to be more accurate than conventional methods using empirical equations