Fiber-based two-wavelength heterodyne laser interferometer

Displacement measuring interferometry is a crucial component in metrology applications. In this paper, we propose a fiber-based two-wavelength heterodyne interferometer as a compact and highly sensitive displacement sensor that can be used in inertial sensing applications. In the proposed design, two individual heterodyne interferometers are constructed using two different wavelengths, 1064 nm and 1055 nm; one of which measures the target displacement and the other monitors the common-mode noise in the fiber system. A narrow-bandwidth spectral filter separates the beam paths of the two interferometers, which are highly common and provide a high rejection ratio to the environmental noise. The preliminary test shows a sensitivity floor of 7.5pm/rtHz at 1Hz when tested in an enclosed chamber. We also investigated the effects of periodic errors due to imperfect spectral separation on the displacement measurement and propose algorithms to mitigate these effects

A multicomponent assembly approach for the design of deep desulfurization heterogeneous catalysts

Deep desulfurization is a challenging task and global efforts are focused on the development of new approaches for the reduction of sulfur-containing compounds in fuel oils. In this work, we have proposed a new design strategy for the development of deep desulfurization heterogeneous catalysts. Based on the adopted design strategy, a novel composite material of polyoxometalate (POM)-based ionic liquid-grafted layered double hydroxides (LDHs) was synthesized by an exfoliation/grafting/assembly process. The structural properties of the as-prepared catalyst were characterized using FT-IR, XRD, TG, NMR, XPS, BET, SEM and HRTEM. The heterogeneous catalyst exhibited high activity in deep desulfurization of DBT (dibenzothiophene), 4,6-DMDBT (4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene) and BT (benzothiophene) at 70 °C in 25, 30 and 40 minutes, respectively. The catalyst can be easily recovered and reused at least ten times without obvious decrease of its catalytic activity. Such excellent sulfur removal ability as well as the cost efficiency of the novel heterogeneous catalyst can be attributed to the rational design, where the spatial proximity of the substrate and the active sites, the immobilization of ionic liquid onto the LDHs via covalent bonding and the recyclability of the catalyst are carefully considered

QoS-Aware Resource Management for Multi-phase Serverless Workflows with Aquatope

Multi-stage serverless applications, i.e., workflows with many computation and I/O stages, are becoming increasingly representative of FaaS platforms. Despite their advantages in terms of fine-grained scalability and modular development, these applications are subject to suboptimal performance, resource inefficiency, and high costs to a larger degree than previous simple serverless functions. We present Aquatope, a QoS-and-uncertainty-aware resource scheduler for end-to-end serverless workflows that takes into account the inherent uncertainty present in FaaS platforms, and improves performance predictability and resource efficiency. Aquatope uses a set of scalable and validated Bayesian models to create pre-warmed containers ahead of function invocations, and to allocate appropriate resources at function granularity to meet a complex workflow's end-to-end QoS, while minimizing resource cost. Across a diverse set of analytics and interactive multi-stage serverless workloads, Aquatope significantly outperforms prior systems, reducing QoS violations by 5x, and cost by 34% on average and up to 52% compared to other QoS-meeting methods

Optomechanical cooling and inertial sensing at low frequencies

An inertial sensor design is proposed in this paper to achieve high sensitivity and large dynamic range in the sub-Hz frequency regime. High acceleration sensitivity is obtained by combining optical cavity readout systems with monolithically fabricated mechanical resonators. A high-sensitivity heterodyne interferometer simultaneously monitors the test mass with an extensive dynamic range for low-stiffness resonators. The bandwidth is tuned by optical feedback cooling to the test mass via radiation pressure interaction using an intensity-modulated laser. The transfer gain of the feedback system is analyzed to optimize system parameters towards the minimum cooling temperature that can be achieved. To practically implement the inertial sensor, we propose a cascaded cooling mechanism to improve cooling efficiency while operating at low optical power levels. The overall system layout presents an integrated design that is compact and lightweight

Reduced Reaction Mechanisms for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): Isoparaffinic Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (AtJ-SPK) and Its Blends with Jet A

Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (AtJ-SPK), an approved sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by blending with conventional Jet A fuel, has recently been experimentally studied, and detailed mechanisms have been developed to describe its combustion behavior. The present study aims to develop reduced mechanisms of AtJ-SPK and its blends with Jet A for high-fidelity and computationally affordable computational fluid dynamics. Specifically, two reduced mechanisms were developed for pure AtJ-SPK and its blends with Jet A from LLNL-AtJ-SPK [Richter et al. Combust. Flame 2022, 240, 111994] and POLIMI detailed mechanisms [Ranzi et al. Prog. Energy Combust. Sci. 2012, 38 (4), 468-501], respectively, using a combined reduction method. The reduced mechanisms can achieve 80%/92.4% and 92%/90% reductions of the species/reaction numbers, respectively, compared with those of the master detailed mechanisms. The developed reduced mechanisms were further validated under various conditions by comparing the predicted ignition delay times, laminar flame speeds, and temporal/spatial profiles with those predicted using the master detailed mechanisms as well as experimental data. Finally, the computational cost comparison in the two-dimensional direct numerical simulation demonstrated that the developed reduced mechanisms can impressively accelerate the calculation speed by more than 5000 and 529 times, respectively

Analytically-Driven Resource Management for Cloud-Native Microservices

Resource management for cloud-native microservices has attracted a lot of recent attention. Previous work has shown that machine learning (ML)-driven approaches outperform traditional techniques, such as autoscaling, in terms of both SLA maintenance and resource efficiency. However, ML-driven approaches also face challenges including lengthy data collection processes and limited scalability. We present Ursa, a lightweight resource management system for cloud-native microservices that addresses these challenges. Ursa uses an analytical model that decomposes the end-to-end SLA into per-service SLA, and maps per-service SLA to individual resource allocations per microservice tier. To speed up the exploration process and avoid prolonged SLA violations, Ursa explores each microservice individually, and swiftly stops exploration if latency exceeds its SLA. We evaluate Ursa on a set of representative and end-to-end microservice topologies, including a social network, media service and video processing pipeline, each consisting of multiple classes and priorities of requests with different SLAs, and compare it against two representative ML-driven systems, Sinan and Firm. Compared to these ML-driven approaches, Ursa provides significant advantages: It shortens the data collection process by more than 128x, and its control plane is 43x faster than ML-driven approaches. At the same time, Ursa does not sacrifice resource efficiency or SLAs. During online deployment, Ursa reduces the SLA violation rate by 9.0% up to 49.9%, and reduces CPU allocation by up to 86.2% compared to ML-driven approaches

Optical Truss Interferometer for the LISA Telescope

The LISA telescopes must exhibit an optical path length stability of $\frac{\mathrm{pm}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}}$ in the mHz observation band to meet mission requirements. The optical truss interferometer is a proposed method to aid in the ground testing of the telescopes, as well as a risk-mitigation plan for the flight units. This consists of three Fabry-Perot cavities mounted to the telescope which are used to monitor structural displacements. We have designed and developed a fiber-based cavity injection system that integrates fiber components, mode-matching optics, and a cavity input mirror into a compact input stage. The input stages, paired with return mirror stages, can be mounted to the telescope to form the optical truss cavities. We performed a thorough sensitivity analysis using various simulation methods to support the fabrication and assembly of three first-generation prototype cavities, each of which exhibited a satisfactory performance based on our models.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, 13 pdf figures attache

A Mini Review on Sewage Sludge and Red Mud Recycling for Thermal Energy Storage

Sewage sludge and red mud, as common industrial waste, have become a research hotspot in the field of achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, reducing carbon emissions, and solving environmental problems. However, their treatment and disposal have always been a difficult problem in the environmental field. Utilizing these two materials for thermal energy storage can not only improve energy utilization efficiency but also further reduce carbon emissions during their treatment process, providing a new approach for sustainable development in the industrial sector. This article summarizes the research progress for the resource recovery of sewage sludge and red mud for direct thermal energy recovery and composite phase change energy storage. After proper treatment, sludge and red mud can be directly used as energy storage materials. In addition, sludge and red mud can be combined with phase change materials to prepare composite materials with an excellent energy storage performance. This composite has broad application prospects in fields such as solar energy utilization and building energy efficiency. However, there are still some challenges and issues in this resource recovery and utilization, such as potential environmental pollution during the treatment process, the long-term stability of energy storage materials, and cost-effectiveness, which require further research and resolution. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the potential of sewage sludge and red mud as energy storage materials, to explore their feasibility and advantages in practical applications, and to reveal the research progress, technical challenges, and future development directions of these two materials in the field of thermal energy storage