677 research outputs found
Doing-it-All with Bounded Work and Communication
We consider the Do-All problem, where cooperating processors need to
complete similar and independent tasks in an adversarial setting. Here we
deal with a synchronous message passing system with processors that are subject
to crash failures. Efficiency of algorithms in this setting is measured in
terms of work complexity (also known as total available processor steps) and
communication complexity (total number of point-to-point messages). When work
and communication are considered to be comparable resources, then the overall
efficiency is meaningfully expressed in terms of effort defined as work +
communication. We develop and analyze a constructive algorithm that has work
and a nonconstructive
algorithm that has work . The latter result is close to the
lower bound on work. The effort of each of
these algorithms is proportional to its work when the number of crashes is
bounded above by , for some positive constant . We also present a
nonconstructive algorithm that has effort
Surface plasmon resonance based measurement of the dielectric function of a thin metal film
A spectral method based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in air is used to measure the dielectric function of a thin metal film. The method utilizes the spectral dependence of the ratio of the reflectances of p- and s-polarized waves measured in the Kretschmann configuration at different angles of incidence. By processing these dependences in the vicinity of a dip, or equivalently near the resonance wavelength, and using the dispersion characteristics of a metal film according to a proposed physical model, the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function of the metal can be determined. The corresponding dielectric function of the metal is obtained by a least squares method for such a thickness minimizing the difference between the measured and theoretical dependence of the resonance wavelength on the the angle of incidence. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated in measuring the dielectric function of a gold film of an SPR structure comprising an SF10 glass prism and a gold coated SF10 slide with an adhesion film of chromium. The dielectric function according to the Drude-Lorentz model with two additional Lorentzian terms was determined in a wavelength range from 534 to 908 nm, and the results show that the gold film is composed of homogenous and rough layers with thicknesses 42.8 nm and 2.0 nm, respectively. This method is particularly useful in measuring the thickness and dielectric function of a thin metal film of SPR structures, directly in the Kretschmann configuration.Web of Science1811art. no. 369
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