Proton irradiation of simple gas mixtures: Influence of irradiation parameters

In order to get information about the influence of irradiation parameters on radiolysis processes of astrophysical interest, methane gas targets were irradiated with 6.5 MeV protons at a pressure of 1 bar and room temperature. Yields of higher hydrocarbons like ethane or propane were found by analysis of irradiated gas samples using gas chromatography. The handling of the proton beam was of great experimental importance for determining the irradiation parameters. In a series of experiments current density of the proton beam and total absorbed energy were shown to have a large influence on the yields of produced hydrocarbons. Mechanistic interpretations of the results are given and conclusions are drawn with regard to the chemistry and the simulation of various astrophysical systems

On the challenge to improve the density response with unusual gradient approximations

Certain excitations, especially ones of long-range charge transfer character, are poorly described by time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) when typical (semi-)local functionals are used. A proper description of these excitations would require an exchange-correlation response differing substantially from the usual (semi-)local one. It has recently been shown that functionals of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) type can yield unusual potentials, mimicking features of the exact exchange derivative discontinuity and showing divergences on orbital nodal surfaces. We here investigate whether these unusual potential properties translate into beneficial response properties. Using the Sternheimer formalism we closely investigate the response obtained with the 2013 exchange approximation by Armiento and K\"ummel (AK13) and the 1988 exchange approximation by Becke (B88), both of which show divergences on orbital nodal planes. Numerical calculations for Na2 as well as analytical and numerical calculations for the hydrogen atom show that the response of AK13 behaves qualitatively different from usual semi local functionals. However, the AK13 functional leads to fundamental instabilities in the asymptotic region that prevent its practical application in TDDFT. Our findings may help the development of future improved functionals, and corroborate that the frequency-dependent Sternheimer formalism is excellently suited for running and analyzing TDDFT calculations

Statistical fluctuations for the fission process on its decent from saddle to scission

We reconsider the importance of statistical fluctuations for fission dynamics beyond the saddle in the light of recent evaluations of transport coefficients for average motion. The size of these fluctuations are estimated by means of the Kramers-Ingold solution for the inverted oscillator, which allows for an inclusion of quantum effects.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 5 Postscript figures; submitted to PRC e-mail: [email protected] www home page: http://www.physik.tu-muenchen.de/tumphy/e/T36/hofmann.htm

Ozone profile measurements at McMurdo Station Antarctica during the spring of 1987

During the Antarctic spring of 1986, 33 ozone soundings were conducted from McMurdo Station. These data indicated that the springtime decrease in ozone occurred rapidly between the altitudes of 12 and 20 km. During 1987, these measurements were repeated with 50 soundings between 29 August and 9 November. Digital conversions of standard electrochemical cell ozonesondes were again employed. The ozonesonde pumps were individually calibrated for flow rate as the high altitude performance of these pumps have been in question. While these uncertainties are not large in the region of the ozone hole, they are significant at high altitude and apparently resulted in an underestimate of total ozone of about 7 percent (average) as compared to the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) in 1986, when the flow rate recommended by the manufacturer was used. At the upper altitudes (approx. 30 km) the flow rate may be overestimated by as much as 15 percent using recommended values (see Harder et al., The UW Digital Ozonesonde: Characteristics and Flow Rate Calibration, poster paper, this workshop). These upper level values are used in the extrapolation, at constant mixing ratio, required to complete the sounding for total ozone. The first sounding was on 29 August, prior to major ozone depletion, when 274 DU total ozone (25 DU extrapolated) was observed. By early October total ozone had decreased to the 150 DU range; it then increased during mid-October owing to motion of the vortex and returned to a value of 148 DU (29 DU extrapolated) on 27 October

Finite resolution measurement of the non-classical polarization statistics of entangled photon pairs

By limiting the resolution of quantum measurements, the measurement induced changes of the quantum state can be reduced, permitting subsequent measurements of variables that do not commute with the initially measured property. It is then possible to experimentally determine correlations between non-commuting variables. The application of this method to the polarization statistics of entangled photon pairs reveals that negative conditional probabilities between non-orthogonal polarization components are responsible for the violation of Bell's inequalities. Such negative probabilities can also be observed in finite resolution measurements of the polarization of a single photon. The violation of Bell's inequalities therefore originates from local properties of the quantum statistics of single photon polarization.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures and 1 table, new figure to illustrate results, improved explanation of statistical analysi

Microscopic Enhancement of Heavy-Element Production

Realistic fusion barriers are calculated in a macroscopic-microscopic model for several soft-fusion heavy-ion reactions leading to heavy and superheavy elements. The results obtained in such a realistic picture are very different from those obtained in a purely macroscopic model. For reactions on 208:Pb targets, shell effects in the entrance channel result in fusion-barrier energies at the touching point that are only a few MeV higher than the ground state for compound systems near Z = 110. The entrance-channel fragment-shell effects remain far inside the touching point, almost to configurations only slightly more elongated than the ground-state configuration, where the fusion barrier has risen to about 10 MeV above the ground-state energy. Calculated single-particle level diagrams show that few level crossings occur until the peak in the fusion barrier very close to the ground-state shape is reached, which indicates that dissipation is negligible until very late in the fusion process. Whereas the fission valley in a macroscopic picture is several tens of MeV lower in energy than is the fusion valley, we find in the macroscopic-microscopic picture that the fission valley is only about 5 MeV lower than the fusion valley for soft-fusion reactions leading to compound systems near Z = 110. These results show that no significant ``extra-extra-push'' energy is needed to bring the system inside the fission saddle point and that the typical reaction energies for maximum cross section in heavy-element synthesis correspond to only a few MeV above the maximum in the fusion barrier.Comment: 7 pages. LaTeX. Submitted to Zeitschrift fur Physik A. 5 figures not included here. Complete preprint, including device-independent (dvi), PostScript, and LaTeX versions of the text, plus PostScript files of the figures, available at http://t2.lanl.gov/publications/publications.html or at ftp://t2.lanl.gov/pub/publications/mehe

Optimized phase switching using a single atom nonlinearity

We show that a nonlinear phase shift of pi can be obtained by using a single two level atom in a one sided cavity with negligible losses. This result implies that the use of a one sided cavity can significantly improve the pi/18 phase shift previously observed by Turchette et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4710 (1995)].Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, added comments on derivation and assumption