Charmonium Physics with PANDA at FAIR

One component of the future international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research - FAIR is directed towards studies of hadronic matter at the sub-nuclear level with beams of antiprotons. These studies focus on two key aspects: confinement of quarks and the generation of the hadron masses. These goals will be pursued by performing precision measurements of charged and neutral decay products from antiproton-proton annihilation in the charmonium mass region. In this report an overview of the charmonium issues relevant to PANDA will be presented.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of HQL06, Munich, October 16th-20th 200

Studies of the effects of gravitational and inertial forces on cardiovascular and respiratory dynamics

The current status and application are described of the biplane video roentgen densitometry, videometry and video digitization systems. These techniques were developed, and continue to be developed for studies of the effects of gravitational and inertial forces on cardiovascular and respiratory dynamics in intact animals and man. Progress is reported in the field of lung dynamics and three-dimensional reconstruction of the dynamic thoracic contents from roentgen video images. It is anticipated that these data will provide added insight into the role of shape and internal spatial relationships (which is altered particularly by acceleration and position of the body) of these organs as an indication of their functional status

Application of the time-dependent charge asymmetry method for longitudinal position determination in prototype proportional chambers for the PANDA experiment

The PANDA collaboration intends to build a state-of-the-art detector to study the physics of antiproton annihilation in the charm mass region at the future FAIR facility at GSI, Darmstadt. One major part of the PANDA detector is the straw tube tracker. It will consist of about 6000 individual straws grouped in 11 double layers and filled with an Ar+10%CO_2 gas mixture. The required radial spatial resolution is about 150 micron. Two different methods are considered for longitudinal coordinate measurements - skewed double layers and a novel method based on the time-dependent charge asymmetry. The latter method is presented in this article.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, Preprint submitted to NIM

Spatial imaging of modifications to fluorescence lifetime and intensity by individual Ag nanoparticles

Highly ordered periodic arrays of silver nanoparticles have been fabricated which exhibit surface plasmon resonances in the visible spectrum. We demonstrate the ability of these structures to alter the fluorescence properties of vicinal dye molecules by providing an additional radiative decay channel. Using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), we have created high resolution spatial maps of the molecular lifetime components; these show an order of magnitude increase in decay rate from a localized volume around the nanoparticles, resulting in a commensurate enhancement in the fluorescence emission intensity.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, submitted Applied Physics Letter

Plasmonic engineering of metal nanoparticles for enhanced fluorescence and Raman scattering

We have investigated the effects of tuning the localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) of silver nanoparticles on the fluorescence intensity, lifetime, and Raman signal from nearby fluorophores. The presence of a metallic structure can alter the optical properties of a molecule by increasing the excitation field, and by modifying radiative and non-radiative decay mechanisms. By careful choice of experimental parameters we have been able to decouple these effects. We observe a four-fold increase in fluorescence enhancement and an almost 30-fold increase in decay rate from arrays of Ag nanoparticles, when the LSPR is tuned to the emission wavelength of a locally situated fluorophore. This is consistent with a greatly increased efficiency for energy transfer from fluorescence to surface plasmons. Additionally, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) measurements show a maximum enhancement occurs when both the incident laser light and the Raman signal are near resonance with the plasmon energy. Spatial mapping of the SERS signal from a nanoparticle array reveals highly localized differences in the excitation field resulting from small differences in the LSPR energy.Comment: Submitted to Plasmonics (Springer

Application of NASTRAN for stress analysis of left ventricle of the heart

Knowing the stress and strain distributions in the left ventricular wall of the heart is a prerequisite for the determination of the muscle elasticity and contractility in the process of assessing the functional status of the heart. NASTRAN was applied for the calculation of these stresses and strains and to help in verifying the results obtained by the computer program FEAMPS which was specifically designed for the plane-strain finite-element analysis of the left ventricular cross sections. Adopted for the analysis are the true shape and dimensions of the cross sections reconstructed from multiplanar X-ray views of a left ventricle which was surgically isolated from a dog's heart but metabolically supported to sustain its beating. A preprocessor was prepared to accommodate both FEAMPS and NASTRAN, and it has also facilitated the application of both the triangular element and isoparameteric quadrilateral element versions of NASTRAN. The stresses in several crucial regions of the left ventricular wall calculated by these two independently developed computer programs are found to be in good agreement. Such confirmation of the results is essential in the development of a method which assesses the heart performance

Empirical Parameterization of Nucleon-Nucleon Elastic Scattering Amplitude at High Beam Momenta for Glauber Calculations and Monte Carlo Simulations

A parameterization of the nucleon-nucleon elastic scattering amplitude is needed for future experiments with nucleon and nuclear beams in the beam momentum range of 2 -- 50 GeV/c/nucleon. There are many parameterizations of the amplitude at $P_{lab} >$ 25--50 GeV/c, and at $P_{lab} \leq$ 5 GeV/c. Our paper is aimed to cover the range between 5 -- 50 GeV/c. The amplitude is used in Glauber calculations of various cross sections and Monte Carlo simulations of nucleon-nucleon scatterings. Usually, the differential nucleon-nucleon elastic scattering cross sections are described by an exponential expression. Corresponding experimental data on $pp$ interactions at $|t|>$ 0.005 (GeV/c)$^2$ and $|t|\leq$ 0.125 (GeV/c)$^2$ have been fit. We propose formulae to approximate the beam momentum dependence of these parameters in the momentum range considered. The same was done for $np$ interactions at $|t|\leq$ 0.5 (GeV/c)$^2$. Expressions for the momentum dependence of the total and elastic cross sections, and the ratio of real to imaginary parts of the amplitude at zero momentum transfer are also given for $pp$ and $np$ collisions. These results are sufficient for a first approximation of the Glauber calculations. For more exact calculations we fit the data at $|t|>$ 0.005 (GeV/c)$^2$ without restrictions on the maximum value of $|t|$ using an expression based on two coherent exponential. The parameters of the fits are found for the beam momentum range 2 -- 50 GeV/c.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure