3,705 research outputs found
Effects of carbon/graphite fiber contamination on high voltage electrical insulation
The contamination mechanics and resulting failure modes of high voltage electrical insulation due to carbon/graphite fibers were examined. The high voltage insulation vulnerability to carbon/graphite fiber induced failure was evaluated using a contamination system which consisted of a fiber chopper, dispersal chamber, a contamination chamber, and air ducts and suction blower. Tests were conducted to evaluate the effects of fiber length, weathering, and wetness on the insulator's resistance to carbon/graphite fibers. The ability of nuclear, fossil, and hydro power generating stations to maintain normal power generation when the surrounding environment is contaminated by an accidental carbon fiber release was investigated. The vulnerability assessment included only the power plant generating equipment and its associated controls, instrumentation, and auxiliary and support systems
A model for the UHE gamma-rays from Hercules X-1
An outburst of gamma rays with energies E gamma 10 to the 12th power eV was recently detected from the X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1. The outburst had a 3 minute duration and occurred at a time during the 35 day X-ray modulation that is associated with X-ray turnon. The gamma rays also have the same 1.24 second modulation that is observed at X-ray energies. Subsequently a 40 minute outburst was detected at E gamma 10 to the 14th power eV. The interaction of ultrahigh energy particles with a precessing accretion disk explain the observed gamma ray light curve. The constraints one can place on acceleration mechanisms and the possibility that the UHE particles are accelerated by shocks in an accretion flow are explained
Probing the Production of Actinides under Different r-process Conditions
Several extremely metal-poor stars are known to have an enhanced thorium abundance. These actinide-boost stars have likely inherited material from an r-process that operated under different conditions than the r-process that is reflected in most other metal-poor stars with no actinide enhancement. In this article, we explore the sensitivity of actinide production in r-process calculations to the hydrodynamical conditions as well as the nuclear physics. We find that the initial electron fraction Y e is the most important factor determining the actinide yields and that the abundance ratios between long-lived actinides and lanthanides like europium can vary for different conditions in our calculations. In our setup, conditions with high entropies systematically lead to lower actinide abundances relative to other r-process elements. Furthermore, actinide-enhanced ejecta can also be distinguished from the "regular" composition in other ways, most notably in the second r-process peak abundances.Peer reviewe
Ultrasensitive mechanical detection of magnetic moment using a commercial disk drive write head
Sensitive detection of weak magnetic moments is an essential capability in
many areas of nanoscale science and technology, including nanomagnetism,
quantum readout of spins, and nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging. Here, we
show that the write head of a commercial hard drive may enable significant
advances in nanoscale spin detection. By approaching a sharp diamond tip to
within 5 nm from the pole and measuring the induced diamagnetic moment with a
nanomechanical force transducer, we demonstrate a spin sensitivity of 0.032
Bohr magnetons per root Hz, equivalent to 21 proton magnetic moments. The high
sensitivity is enabled in part by the pole's strong magnetic gradient of up to
28 million Tesla per meter and in part by the absence of non-contact friction
due to the extremely flat writer surface. In addition, we demonstrate
quantitative imaging of the pole field with about 10 nm spatial resolution. We
foresee diverse applications for write heads in experimental condensed matter
physics, especially in spintronics, ultrafast spin manipulation, and mesoscopic
physics.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Twisted Elliptic Genera of N=2 SCFTs in Two Dimensions
The elliptic genera of two-dimensional N=2 superconformal field theories can
be twisted by the action of the integral Heisenberg group if their U(1) charges
are fractional. The basic properties of the resulting twisted elliptic genera
and the associated twisted Witten indices are investigated with due attention
to their behaviors in orbifoldization. Our findings are illustrated by and
applied to several concrete examples. We give a better understanding of the
duality phenomenon observed long before for certain Landau-Ginzburg models. We
revisit and prove an old conjecture of Witten which states that every ADE
Landau-Ginzburg model and the corresponding minimal model share the same
elliptic genus. Mathematically, we establish ADE generalizations of the
quintuple product identity.Comment: 28 pages; v2 refs adde
Nucleosynthesis in 2D Core-Collapse Supernovae of 11.2 and 17.0 M Progenitors: Implications for Mo and Ru Production
Core-collapse supernovae are the first polluters of heavy elements in the
galactic history. As such, it is important to study the nuclear compositions of
their ejecta, and understand their dependence on the progenitor structure
(e.g., mass, compactness, metallicity). Here, we present a detailed
nucleosynthesis study based on two long-term, two-dimensional core-collapse
supernova simulations of a 11.2 M and a 17.0 M star. We
find that in both models nuclei well beyond the iron group (up to ) can be produced, and discuss in detail also the nucleosynthesis of the
p-nuclei Mo and Ru. While we observe the production of
Mo and Mo in slightly neutron-rich conditions in both
simulations, Ru can only be produced efficiently via the
p-process. Furthermore, the production of Ru in the p-process heavily
depends on the presence of very proton-rich material in the ejecta. This
disentanglement of production mechanisms has interesting consequences when
comparing to the abundance ratios between these isotopes in the solar system
and in presolar grains.Comment: 48 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in: J. Phys. G: Nucl.
Part. Phy
Exploring Interacting Quantum Many-Body Systems by Experimentally Creating Continuous Matrix Product States in Superconducting Circuits
Improving the understanding of strongly correlated quantum many body systems
such as gases of interacting atoms or electrons is one of the most important
challenges in modern condensed matter physics, materials research and
chemistry. Enormous progress has been made in the past decades in developing
both classical and quantum approaches to calculate, simulate and experimentally
probe the properties of such systems. In this work we use a combination of
classical and quantum methods to experimentally explore the properties of an
interacting quantum gas by creating experimental realizations of continuous
matrix product states - a class of states which has proven extremely powerful
as a variational ansatz for numerical simulations. By systematically preparing
and probing these states using a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) system
we experimentally determine a good approximation to the ground-state wave
function of the Lieb-Liniger Hamiltonian, which describes an interacting Bose
gas in one dimension. Since the simulated Hamiltonian is encoded in the
measurement observable rather than the controlled quantum system, this approach
has the potential to apply to exotic models involving multicomponent
interacting fields. Our findings also hint at the possibility of experimentally
exploring general properties of matrix product states and entanglement theory.
The scheme presented here is applicable to a broad range of systems exploiting
strong and tunable light-matter interactions.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure
The Role of Fission in Neutron Star Mergers and Its Impact on the r-Process Peaks
Comparing observational abundance features with nucleosynthesis predictions of stellar evolution or explosion simulations, we can scrutinize two aspects: (a) the conditions in the astrophysical production site and (b) the quality of the nuclear physics input utilized. We test the abundance features of r-process nucleosynthesis calculations for the dynamical ejecta of neutron star merger simulations based on three different nuclear mass models: The Finite Range Droplet Model, the (quenched version of the) Extended Thomas Fermi Model with Strutinsky Integral, and the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mass model. We make use of corresponding fission barrier heights and compare the impact of four different fission fragment distribution models on the final r-process abundance distribution. In particular, we explore the abundance distribution in the second r-process peak and the rare-earth sub-peak as a function of mass models and fission fragment distributions, as well as the origin of a shift in the third r-process peak position. The latter has been noticed in a number of merger nucleosynthesis predictions. We show that the shift occurs during the r-process freeze-out when neutron captures and β-decays compete and an (n,γ)-(γ,n) equilibrium is no longer maintained. During this phase neutrons originate mainly from fission of material above A = 240. We also investigate the role of β-decay half-lives from recent theoretical advances, which lead either to a smaller amount of fissioning nuclei during freeze-out or a faster (and thus earlier) release of fission neutrons, which can (partially) prevent this shift and has an impact on the second and rare-earth peak as well.Peer reviewe
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