Exploring, tailoring, and traversing the solution landscape of a phase-shaped CARS process

Pulse shaping techniques are used to improve the selectivity of broadband CARS experiments, and to reject the overwhelming background. Knowledge about the fitness landscape and the capability of tailoring it is crucial for both fundamental insight and performing an efficient optimization of phase shapes. We use an evolutionary algorithm to find the optimal spectral phase of the broadband pump and probe beams in a background-suppressed shaped CARS process. We then investigate the shapes, symmetries, and topologies of the landscape contour lines around the optimal solution and also around the point corresponding to zero phase. We demonstrate the significance of the employed phase bases in achieving convex contour lines, suppressed local optima, and high optimization fitness with a few (and even a single) optimization parameter

A Comparative Assessment of Insulated Concrete Wall Technologies and Wood-frame Walls in Residential Buildings: A Multi-Criteria Analysis of Hygrothermal Performance, Cost, and Environmental Footprints

Utilizing appropriate materials and assemblies in building envelope components could lead to energy savings, increased durability, and sustainability gains. This study aims at providing an integrated assessment framework to compare three different types of exterior wall systems: wood frame, insulated concrete forms (ICFs), and pre-cast insulated concrete panel (PICP). The focus will be on assessing the building envelope performance, cost efficiency, and environmental impacts of these technologies. Such an assessment will influence the decisions on design characteristics of exterior walls as well as the selection of required materials. In doing so, first, the exterior wall technologies will be compared in terms of hygrothermal performance according to ASHREA standards and other relevant literature. Then, a life cost analysis is conducted in order to establish the cost profile of each technology in buildings including capital costs as well as space heating costs over their service life. Finally, we will turn to assessing the environmental footprints of each technology and its components through life cycle assessment (LCA) using Simapro software. The proposed framework incorporates multiple performance assessment criteria including well-being aspects, hygrothermal performance, life cycle assessment (LCA), and life cycle cost (LCC). Using these criteria, a decision making framework is developed to compare and rank the alternative exterior wall technologies, identifying the one that is best suited to particular case study buildings

Tailoring a coherent control solution landscape by linear transforms of spectral phase basis

Finding an optimal phase pattern in a multidimensional solution landscape becomes easier and faster if local optima are suppressed and contour lines are tailored towards closed convex patterns. Using wideband second harmonic generation as a coherent control test case, we show that a linear combination of spectral phase basis functions can result in such improvements and also in separable phase terms, each of which can be found independently. The improved shapes are attributed to a suppressed nonlinear shear, changing the relative orientation of contour lines. The first order approximation of the process shows a simple relation between input and output phase profiles, useful for pulse shaping at ultraviolet wavelengths