Design of an instrumented smart cutting tool and its implementation and application perspectives

This paper presents an innovative design of a smart cutting tool, using two surface acoustic wave (SAW) strain sensors mounted onto the top and the side surface of the tool shank respectively, and its implementation and application perspectives. This surface acoustic wave-based smart cutting tool is capable of measuring the cutting force and the feed force in a real machining environment, after a calibration process under known cutting conditions. A hybrid dissimilar workpiece is then machined using the SAW-based smart cutting tool. The hybrid dissimilar material is made of two different materials, NiCu alloy (Monel) and steel, welded together to form a single bar; this can be used to simulate an abrupt change in material properties. The property transition zone is successfully detected by the tool; the sensor feedback can then be used to initiate a change in the machining parameters to compensate for the altered material properties.The UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB) for supporting this research (SEEM Project, contract No. BD266E

Direct CP violation in two-body hadronic charmed meson decays

Motivated by the recent observation of CP violation in the charm sector by LHCb, we study direct CP asymmetries in the standard model (SM) for the singly Cabibbo-suppressed two-body hadronic decays of charmed mesons using the topological-diagram approach. In this approach, the magnitude and the phase of topological weak annihilation amplitudes which arise mainly from final-state rescattering can be extracted from the data. Consequently, direct CP asymmetry $a_{dir}^{\rm (tree)}$ at tree level can be reliably estimated. In general, it lies in the range $10^{-4}<a_{dir}^{\rm (tree)}<10^{-3}$. Short-distance QCD penguins and penguin annihilation are calculated using QCD factorization. Their effects are generally small, especially for $D\to VP$ modes. Since weak penguin annihilation receives long-distance contributions from the color-allowed tree amplitude followed by final-state rescattering, it is expected to give the dominant contribution to the direct CP violation in the decays $D^0\to K^+K^-$ and $D^0\to \pi^+\pi^-$ in which $a_{dir}^{\rm (tree)}$ is absent. The maximal $\Delta a_{CP}^{\rm dir}$, the direct CP asymmetry difference between the above-mentioned two modes, allowed in the SM is around -0.25%, more than $2\sigma$ away from the current world average of $-(0.645\pm 0.180)$.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; typos correcte

Coexistence and competition of multiple charge-density-wave orders in rare-earth tri-telluride RTe3

The occurrences of collective quantum states, such as superconductivity (SC) and charge- or spin-densitywaves (CDWs or SDWs), are among the most fascinating phenomena in solids. To date much effort has been made to explore the interplay between different orders, yet little is known about the relationship of multiple orders of the same type. Here we report optical spectroscopy study on CDWs in the rare-earth tri-telluride compounds RTe3 (R = rare earth elements). Besides the prior reported two CDW orders, the study reveals unexpectedly the presence of a third CDW order in the series which evolves systematically with the size of R element. With increased chemical pressure, the first and third CDW orders are both substantially suppressed and compete with the second one by depleting the low energy spectral weight. A complete phase diagram for the multiple CDW orders in this series is established.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Impact of self-heating on the statistical variability in bulk and SOI FinFETs

In this paper for the first time we study the impact of self-heating on the statistical variability of bulk and SOI FinFETs designed to meet the requirements of the 14/16nm technology node. The simulations are performed using the GSS ‘atomistic’ simulator GARAND using an enhanced electro-thermal model that takes into account the impact of the fin geometry on the thermal conductivity. In the simulations we have compared the statistical variability obtained from full-scale electro-thermal simulations with the variability at uniform room temperature and at the maximum or average temperatures obtained in the electro-thermal simulations. The combined effects of line edge roughness and metal gate granularity are taken into account. The distributions and the correlations between key figures of merit including the threshold voltage, on-current, subthreshold slope and leakage current are presented and analysed