Low pressure arc electrode

Reducing the pressure in the vicinity of the arc attachment point by allowing the gas to flow through a supersonic nozzle minimizes local heating rates, prevents ablation, and increases the efficiency of coaxial gas-flow arcs

A Poincar\'e section for the general heavy rigid body

A general recipe is developed for the study of rigid body dynamics in terms of Poincar\'e surfaces of section. A section condition is chosen which captures every trajectory on a given energy surface. The possible topological types of the corresponding surfaces of section are determined, and their 1:1 projection to a conveniently defined torus is proposed for graphical rendering.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figure

Cooperative spin decoherence and population transfer

An ensemble of multilevel atoms is a good candidate for a quantum information storage device. The information is encrypted in the collective ground state atomic coherence, which, in the absence of external excitation, is decoupled from the vacuum and therefore decoherence free. However, in the process of manipulation of atoms with light pulses (writing, reading), one inadvertently introduces a coupling to the environment, i.e. a source of decoherence. The dissipation process is often treated as an independent process for each atom in the ensemble, an approach which fails at large atomic optical depths where cooperative effects must be taken into account. In this paper, the cooperative behavior of spin decoherence and population transfer for a system of two, driven multilevel-atoms is studied. Not surprisingly, an enhancement in the decoherence rate is found, when the atoms are separated by a distance that is small compared to an optical wavelength; however, it is found that this rate increases even further for somewhat larger separations for atoms aligned along the direction of the driving field's propagation vector. A treatment of the cooperative modification of optical pumping rates and an effect of polarization swapping between atoms is also discussed, lending additional insight into the origin of the collective decay

Vertical information content of nadir measurements of tropospheric NO2 from satellite

Poster presented at the EGU General Assembly 2014 in Vienna/Austria

The tauola-photos_F environment for versioning the TAUOLA and PHOTOS packages

We present the system for versioning two packages: the TAUOLA of tau lepton decay and PHOTOS for radiative corrections in decays. The following features can be chosen in automatic or semi-automatic way: (1) format of the common block HEPEVT; (2) version of the physics input (for TAUOLA): as published, as initialized by CLEO collaboration, as initialized by ALEPH collaboration (it is suggested to use this version only with the help of the collaboration advice); (3) type of application: stand-alone, universal interface through HEPEVT, interface for KKMC Monte Carlo; (4) random number generators; (5) compiler options.Comment: nine pages, late

Absorption Line Studies in the Halo

Significant progress has been made over the last few years to explore the gaseous halo of the Milky Way by way of absorption spectroscopy. I review recent results on absorption line studies in the halo using various instruments, such as the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, and others. The new studies imply that the infall of low-metallicity gas, the interaction with the Magellanic Clouds, and the Galactic Fountain are responsible for the phenomenon of the intermediate- and high-velocity clouds in the halo. New measurements of highly-ionized gas in the vicinity of the Milky Way indicate that these clouds are embedded in a corona of hot gas that extends deep into the intergalactic space.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure; Invited review at the conference "How does the Galaxy work ?", Granada/Spain, June 200

TRIDENT 1 third stage motor separation system

The third stage engine separation system has shown through test and analysis that it can effectively and reliably perform its function. The weight of the hardware associated with this system is well within the targeted value