Methods for predicting thermal stress cracking in turbine stator or rotor blades Summary report

Test rig for predicting thermal stress cracking in turbine stator or rotor blade

Nanometers-thick self-organized Fe stripes: bridging the gap between surfaces and magnetic materials

We have fabricated 5nm-high Fe(110) stripes by self-organized (SO) growth on a slightly vicinal R(110)/Al2O3(11-20) surface, with R=Mo, W. Remanence, coercivity and domain patterns were observed at room temperature (RT). This contrasts with conventional SO epitaxial systems, that are superparamagnetic or even non-magnetic at RT due to their flatness. Our process should help to overcome superparamagnetism without compromise on the lateral size if SO systems are ever to be used in applications

Third type of domain wall in soft magnetic nanostrips

Magnetic domain walls (DWs) in nanostructures are low-dimensional objects that separate regions with uniform magnetisation. Since they can have different shapes and widths, DWs are an exciting playground for fundamental research, and became in the past years the subject of intense works, mainly focused on controlling, manipulating, and moving their internal magnetic configuration. In nanostrips with in-plane magnetisation, two DWs have been identified: in thin and narrow strips, transverse walls are energetically favored, while in thicker and wider strips vortex walls have lower energy. The associated phase diagram is now well established and often used to predict the low-energy magnetic configuration in a given magnetic nanostructure. However, besides the transverse and vortex walls, we find numerically that another type of wall exists in permalloy nanostrips. This third type of DW is characterised by a three-dimensional, flux closure micromagnetic structure with an unusual length and three internal degrees of freedom. Magnetic imaging on lithographically-patterned permalloy nanostrips confirms these predictions and shows that these DWs can be moved with an external magnetic field of about 1mT. An extended phase diagram describing the regions of stability of all known types of DWs in permalloy nanostrips is provided.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Tomographic Characterization of Three-Qubit Pure States with Only Two-Qubit Detectors

A tomographic process for three-qubit pure states using only pairwise detections is presented.Comment: 3 pages; revtex4; v2: the focus on tomography was emphasized and the experimental procedure detailed; v3: the text was improved in clarity, some mistakes were correcte

Verifying continuous-variable entanglement in finite spaces

Starting from arbitrary Hilbert spaces, we reduce the problem to verify entanglement of any bipartite quantum state to finite dimensional subspaces. Hence, entanglement is a finite dimensional property. A generalization for multipartite quantum states is also given.Comment: 4 page

Phase diagram of magnetic domain walls in spin valve nano-stripes

We investigate numerically the transverse versus vortex phase diagram of head-to-head domain walls in Co/Cu/Py spin valve nano-stripes (Py: Permalloy), in which the Co layer is mostly single domain while the Py layer hosts the domain wall. The range of stability of the transverse wall is shifted towards larger thickness compared to single Py layers, due to a magnetostatic screening effect between the two layers. An approached analytical scaling law is derived, which reproduces faithfully the phase diagram.Comment: 4 page

The dominant role of structure for solute transport in soil: experimental evidence and modelling of structure and transport in a field experiment

International audienceA classical transport experiment was performed in a field plot of 2.5 m2 using the dye tracer brilliant blue. The measured tracer distribution demonstrates the dominant role of the heterogeneous soil structure for solute transport. As with many other published experiments, this evidences the need of considering the macroscopic structure of soil to predict flow and transport. We combine three different approaches to represent the relevant structure of the specific situation of our experiment: i) direct measurement, ii) statistical description of heterogeneities and iii) a conceptual model of structure formation. The structure of soil layers was directly obtained from serial sections in the field. The sub-scale heterogeneity within the soil horizons was modelled through correlated random fields with estimated correlation lengths and anisotropy. Earthworm burrows played a dominant role at the transition between the upper soil horizon and the subsoil. A model based on percolation theory is introduced that mimics the geometry of earthworm burrow systems. The hydraulic material properties of the different structural units were obtained by direct measurements where available and by a best estimate otherwise. From the hydraulic structure, the 3-dimensional velocity field of water was calculated by solving Richards' Equation and solute transport was simulated. The simulated tracer distribution compares reasonably well with the experimental data. We conclude that a rough representation of the structure and a rough representation of the hydraulic properties might be sufficient to predict flow and transport, but both elements are definitely required

Perturbative description of nuclear double beta decay transitions

A consistent treatment of intrinsic and collective coordinates is applied to the calculation of matrix elements describing nuclear double beta decay transitions. The method, which was developed for the case of nuclear rotations, is adapted to include isospin and number of particles degrees of freedom. It is shown that the uncertainties found in most models, in dealing with these decay modes, are largely due to the mixing of physical and spurious effects in the treatment of isospin dependent interactions.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTe

Dynamical control of two-level system's decay and long time freezing

We investigate with exact numerical calculation coherent control of a two-level quantum system's decay by subjecting the two-level system to many periodic ideal $2\pi$ phase modulation pulses. For three spectrum intensities (Gaussian, Lorentzian, and exponential), we find both suppression and acceleration of the decay of the two-level system, depending on difference between the spectrum peak position and the eigen frequency of the two-level system. Most interestingly, the decay of the two-level system freezes after many control pulses if the pulse delay is short. The decay freezing value is half of the decay in the first pulse delay.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, published in Phys. Rev.