Self-assembled nanostructuring of a-Si:H films with ultrashort light pulses

For several decades, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) has been playing a significant role in the world's production of photovoltaic modules. In this work, we investigate different types of modifications induced by a femtosecond laser in a-Si:H thin films. We demonstrate that several distinctive modification regimes with peculiar optical properties can be obtained in a narrow range of the laser pulse energies

On fractionality of the path packing problem

In this paper, we study fractional multiflows in undirected graphs. A fractional multiflow in a graph G with a node subset T, called terminals, is a collection of weighted paths with ends in T such that the total weights of paths traversing each edge does not exceed 1. Well-known fractional path packing problem consists of maximizing the total weight of paths with ends in a subset S of TxT over all fractional multiflows. Together, G,T and S form a network. A network is an Eulerian network if all nodes in N\T have even degrees. A term "fractionality" was defined for the fractional path packing problem by A. Karzanov as the smallest natural number D so that there exists a solution to the problem that becomes integer-valued when multiplied by D. A. Karzanov has defined the class of Eulerian networks in terms of T and S, outside which D is infinite and proved that whithin this class D can be 1,2 or 4. He conjectured that D should be 1 or 2 for this class of networks. In this paper we prove this conjecture.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures in .eps format, 2 latex files, main file is kc13.tex Resubmission due to incorrectly specified CS type of the article; no changes to the context have been mad

Parametric frequency mixing in the magneto-elastically driven FMR-oscillator

We demonstrate the nonlinear frequency conversion of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) frequency by optically excited elastic waves in a thin metallic film on dielectric substrates. Time-resolved probing of the magnetization directly witnesses magneto-elastically driven second harmonic generation, sum- and difference frequency mixing from two distinct frequencies, as well as parametric downconversion of each individual drive frequency. Starting from the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations, we derive an analytical equation of an elastically driven nonlinear parametric oscillator and show that frequency mixing is dominated by the parametric modulation of FMR frequency

Distributed Minimum Cut Approximation

We study the problem of computing approximate minimum edge cuts by distributed algorithms. We use a standard synchronous message passing model where in each round, $O(\log n)$ bits can be transmitted over each edge (a.k.a. the CONGEST model). We present a distributed algorithm that, for any weighted graph and any $\epsilon \in (0, 1)$, with high probability finds a cut of size at most $O(\epsilon^{-1}\lambda)$ in $O(D) + \tilde{O}(n^{1/2 + \epsilon})$ rounds, where $\lambda$ is the size of the minimum cut. This algorithm is based on a simple approach for analyzing random edge sampling, which we call the random layering technique. In addition, we also present another distributed algorithm, which is based on a centralized algorithm due to Matula [SODA '93], that with high probability computes a cut of size at most $(2+\epsilon)\lambda$ in $\tilde{O}((D+\sqrt{n})/\epsilon^5)$ rounds for any $\epsilon>0$. The time complexities of both of these algorithms almost match the $\tilde{\Omega}(D + \sqrt{n})$ lower bound of Das Sarma et al. [STOC '11], thus leading to an answer to an open question raised by Elkin [SIGACT-News '04] and Das Sarma et al. [STOC '11]. Furthermore, we also strengthen the lower bound of Das Sarma et al. by extending it to unweighted graphs. We show that the same lower bound also holds for unweighted multigraphs (or equivalently for weighted graphs in which $O(w\log n)$ bits can be transmitted in each round over an edge of weight $w$), even if the diameter is $D=O(\log n)$. For unweighted simple graphs, we show that even for networks of diameter $\tilde{O}(\frac{1}{\lambda}\cdot \sqrt{\frac{n}{\alpha\lambda}})$, finding an $\alpha$-approximate minimum cut in networks of edge connectivity $\lambda$ or computing an $\alpha$-approximation of the edge connectivity requires $\tilde{\Omega}(D + \sqrt{\frac{n}{\alpha\lambda}})$ rounds

Simulations of full impact of the Large Hadron Collider beam with a solid graphite target

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will operate with 7TeV/c protons with a luminosity of 1034cm−2s−1. This requires two beams, each with 2808 bunches. The nominal intensity per bunch is 1.15×1011 protons and the total energy stored in each beam is 362 MJ. In previous papers, the mechanisms causing equipment damage in case of a failure of the machine protection system was discussed, assuming that the entire beam is deflected onto a copper target. Another failure scenario is the deflection of beam, or part of it, into carbon material. Carbon collimators and beam absorbers are installed in many locations around the LHC close to the beam, since carbon is the material that is most suitable to absorb the beam energy without being damaged. In case of a failure, it is very likely that such absorbers are hit first, for example, when the beam is accidentally deflected. Some type of failures needs to be anticipated, such as accidental firing of injection and extraction kicker magnets leading to a wrong deflection of a few bunches. Protection of LHC equipment relies on the capture of wrongly deflected bunches with beam absorbers that are positioned close to the beam. For maximum robustness, the absorbers jaws are made out of carbon materials. It has been demonstrated experimentally and theoretically that carbon survives the impact of a few bunches expected for such failures. However, beam absorbers are not designed for major failures in the protection system, such as the beam dump kicker deflecting the entire beam by a wrong angle. Since beam absorbers are closest to the beam, it is likely that they are hit first in any case of accidental beam loss. In the present paper we present numerical simulations using carbon as target material in order to estimate the damage caused to carbon absorbers in case of major beam impac