Slip Effects in Compressible Turbulent Channel Flow

The direct numerical simulation of compressible fully developed turbulent Couette flow between two parallel plates with equal temperatures moving in opposite directions with some velocity was performed. The algorithm was tested on well known numerical solution for incompressible Poiseuille channel flow and found to provide its well description. The slip effects in studied flow are found to be negligibly small at the values of accommodation coefficients for velocity and temperature of the order of unity. The considerable increase of mean temperature with decreasing the accommodation coefficient for temperature was discovered. The effect may be important in the problems of heat exchange in compressible turbulent boundary layer for some combinations of flowing gas, surface and adsorbing gas.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the Proceedings of RGD28 ( 28th International Symposium on Rarefied Gas Dynamics, Zaragoza, Spain, July 9-13, 2012

Atom interferometry measurement of the electric polarizability of lithium

Using an atom interferometer, we have measured the static electric polarizability of $^7$Li $\alpha =(24.33 \pm 0.16)\times10^{-30}$ m$^3$ $= 164.19\pm 1.08$ atomic units with a 0.66% uncertainty. Our experiment, which is similar to an experiment done on sodium in 1995 by D. Pritchard and co-workers, consists in applying an electric field on one of the two interfering beams and measuring the resulting phase-shift. With respect to D. Pritchard's experiment, we have made several improvements which are described in detail in this paper: the capacitor design is such that the electric field can be calculated analytically; the phase sensitivity of our interferometer is substantially better, near 16 mrad/$\sqrt{Hz}$; finally our interferometer is species selective it so that impurities present in our atomic beam (other alkali atoms or lithium dimers) do not perturb our measurement. The extreme sensitivity of atom interferometry is well illustrated by our experiment: our measurement amounts to measuring a slight increase $\Delta v$ of the atom velocity $v$ when it enters the electric field region and our present sensitivity is sufficient to detect a variation $\Delta v/v \approx 6 \times 10^{-13}$.Comment: 14 page

Parallel Temperatures in Supersonic Beams: Ultra Cooling of Light Atoms seeded in a Heavier Carrier Gas

We have found recently that, in a supersonic expansion of a mixture of two monoatomic gases, the parallel temperatures of the two gases can be very different. This effect is large if the seeded gas is highly diluted and if its atomic mass is considerably smaller than the one of the carrier gas. In the present paper, we present a complete derivation of our theoretical analysis of this effect. Our calculation is a natural extension of the existing theory of supersonic cooling to the case of a gas mixture, in the high dilution limit. Finally, we describe a set of temperature measurements made on a beam of lithium seeded in argon. Our experimental results are in very good agreement with the results of our calculation.Comment: 24 novembre 200

[Photograph 2012.201.B1327.0280]

Photograph used for a newspaper owned by the Oklahoma Publishing Company. Caption: "Van Poelgeest Basketball from Nebraska player

Outflow of Gas from Supersonic Nozzle with Screen into Vacuum

Abstract. The outflow of gas into a vacuum from a supersonic nozzle with a screen mounted at the nozzle exit has been investigated both experimentally and numerically. The level of back flux was estimated by the pressure inside the probe placed in the backflow region. The obtained results indicate a possibility to decrease the back flux by putting a screen on the exit part of the nozzle, though improper screen geometry may cause even the back flux to increase