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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2011

An Optical Streaking Method for Measuring Femtosecond Electron Bunches

The measurement of the ultra-short electron bunch length on the femtosecond time scale constitutes a very challenging problem. In the x-ray free electron laser facilities such as the Linac Coherent Light Source, generation of a sub-ten femtoseconds electron beam with 20pC charge is possible, but direct measurements are very difficult due to the resolution limit of the present diagnostics. We propose a new method here based on the measurement of the electron beam energy modulation induced from laser-electron interaction in a short wiggler. A typical optical streaking method requires a laser wavelength much longer than the electron bunch length. In this paper a laser with its wavelength shorter than the electron bunch length has been adopted, while the slope on the laser intensity envelope is used to distinguish the different periods. With this technique it is possible to reconstruct the bunch longitudinal profile from a single shot measurement. Generation of ultrashort x-ray pulses at femtoseconds (fs) scale is of great interest within synchrotron radiation and free electron laser (FEL) user community. One of the simple methods is to operate the FEL facility at low charge. At the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), we have demonstrated the capability of generating ultrashort electron-beam (e-beam) with a duration of less than 10 fs fwhm using 20 pC charge. The x-ray pulses have been delivered to the x-ray users with a similar or even shorter pulse duration. However, The measurement of such short electron or x-ray pulse length at the fs time-scale constitutes a challenging problem. A standard method using an S-band radio-frequency (rf) transverse deflector has been established at LCLS, which works like a streak camera for electrons and is capable of resolving bunch lengths as short as 25 fs fwhm. With this device, the electrons are transversely deflected by the high-frequency time-variation of the deflecting fields. Increasing the deflecting voltage and rf frequency are the right direction to achieve a better resolution. For example, by choosing an X-band transverse deflecting cavity, the expected resolution for LCLS beam with 4.3 GeV is about 1 fs rms. Typically the rf breakdown threshold and the power source availability prevent going to even higher voltage and frequency. With the highly-developed laser techniques, we can choose to streak the beam at optical frequencies. By jumping from rf to optical frequency, the wavelength is shortening by 4 to 5 orders. With an electron bunch length shorter than half period of the laser, we can apply the similar rf deflecting or zero-phasing method for e-beam bunch length measurements using a high-power laser. A short wiggler is required to provide interaction between the electron and the laser. For example, to measure the e-beam at the order of 1 m rms length, a laser with its wavelength of 10 {mu}m may be considered. For a typical few GeV e-beam, the wiggler period has to be large to satisfy the resonance condition. Also, if the e-beam is longer than one laser period, the different modulation periods will overlap and we cannot distinguish them. So this method is so far limited by the achievable long-wavelength laser power. To get an effective modulation on an e-beam of 4.3 GeV, the required laser power is about a few tens GW. In this paper we propose to adopt a high-power Ti:Sapphire laser (wavelength of 800 nm), and use the slope in the intensity envelope to distinguish the different modulation periods. First an ultrashort electron beam interacts with the Ti:Sapphire laser in a wiggler, where the electron energy is modulated at the same periods of the laser. If the laser pulse is long and the short electron bunch is overlapped (in time) with the middle part of the laser, such as the setup at LCLS laser heater, the different energy modulation periods on the electron beam will be overlapped on the energy profile. In this conditionwe typically have a double-horn distribution of the energy profile, and the electron-bunch length information cannot be retrieved. But if the laser pulse (with a Gaussian temporal shape) is relatively short, we can synchronize the e-beam with the laser at the slope region of the intensity envelope, and the amplitude of each energy modulation period will be different. Then these electrons pass through a dispersive section such as a spectrometer, after that this periodically-modulated energy profile can be observed in a transverse screen. By properly choosing the laser parameters, each modulation period will show as a separate streak on the screen. This modulation period in energy dimension correlates to the laser wavelength in time dimension. Since the laser wavelength is a known parameter, no additional calibration is needed. This provides a single shot, self-calibrated method for ultrashort electron bunch length measurements.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Acceleration of Monte Carlo Criticality Calculations Using Deterministic-Based Starting Sources

A new automatic approach that uses approximate deterministic solutions for providing the starting fission source for Monte Carlo eigenvalue calculations was evaluated in this analysis. By accelerating the Monte Carlo source convergence and decreasing the number of cycles that has to be skipped before the tally's estimation, this approach was found to increase the efficiency of the overall simulation, even with the inclusion of the extra computational time required by the deterministic calculation. This approach was also found to increase the reliability of the Monte Carlo criticality calculations of loosely coupled systems because the use of the better starting source reduces the likelihood of producing an undersampled k eff due to the inadequate source convergence. The efficiency improvement was demonstrated using two of the standard test problems devised by the OECD/NEA Expert Group on Source Convergence in Criticality-Safety Analysis to measure the source convergence in Monte Carlo criticality calculations. For a fixed uncertainty objective, this approach increased the efficiency of the overall simulation by factors between 1.2 and 3 depending on the difficulty of the source convergence in these problems. The reliability improvement was demonstrated in a modified version of the 'k eff of the world' problem that was specifically designed to demonstrate the limitations of the current Monte Carlo power iteration techniques. For this problem, the probability of obtaining a clearly undersampled k eff decreased from 5% with a uniform starting source to zero with a deterministic starting source when batch sizes with more than 15,000 neutron/cycle were used.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2010

An efficient approach to unstructured mesh hydrodynamics on the cell broadband engine (u)

Unstructured mesh physics for the Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) has received little or no attention to date, largely because the CBE architecture poses particular challenges for unstructured mesh algorithms. SPU memory management strategies such as data preloading cannot be applied to the irregular memory storage patterns of unstructured meshes; and the SPU vector instruction set does not support the indirect addressing needed by connectivity arrays. This paper presents an approach to unstructured mesh physics that addresses these challenges, by creating a new mesh data structure and reorganizing code to give efficient CBE performance. The approach is demonstrated on the FLAG production hydrodynamics code using standard test problems, and results show an average speedup of more than 5x over the original code.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2013

SCORPIO: A Scalable Two-Phase Parallel I/O Library With Application To A Large Scale Subsurface Simulator

Inefficient parallel I/O is known to be a major bottleneck among scientific applications employed on supercomputers as the number of processor cores grows into the thousands. Our prior experience indicated that parallel I/O libraries such as HDF5 that rely on MPI-IO do not scale well beyond 10K processor cores, especially on parallel file systems (like Lustre) with single point of resource contention. Our previous optimization efforts for a massively parallel multi-phase and multi-component subsurface simulator (PFLOTRAN) led to a two-phase I/O approach at the application level where a set of designated processes participate in the I/O process by splitting the I/O operation into a communication phase and a disk I/O phase. The designated I/O processes are created by splitting the MPI global communicator into multiple sub-communicators. The root process in each sub-communicator is responsible for performing the I/O operations for the entire group and then distributing the data to rest of the group. This approach resulted in over 25X speedup in HDF I/O read performance and 3X speedup in write performance for PFLOTRAN at over 100K processor cores on the ORNL Jaguar supercomputer. This research describes the design and development of a general purpose parallel I/O library, SCORPIO (SCalable block-ORiented Parallel I/O) that incorporates our optimized two-phase I/O approach. The library provides a simplified higher level abstraction to the user, sitting atop existing parallel I/O libraries (such as HDF5) and implements optimized I/O access patterns that can scale on larger number of processors. Performance results with standard benchmark problems and PFLOTRAN indicate that our library is able to maintain the same speedups as before with the added flexibility of being applicable to a wider range of I/O intensive applications.

High Performance Computing↗
DOE OSTI2015

Moment Closures on Two-Dimensional Cartesian Grids

Some moment methods for kinetic equations are complicated and take time to develop. Over the course of a couple years, this software was developed to test different closures on standard test problems in the literature. With this software, researchers in the field of moment closures will be able to rapidly test new methods.

Garrett, Charles K.↗
DOE OSTI2016

Uncertainty Analysis in Signal Timing

Presentation discusses applications of the standard detection problem to Time of Arrival (ToA) and Neutron Time of Flight (NToF).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

We develop Microcanonical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (MCHMC), a class of models that follow fixed energy Hamiltonian dynamics, in contrast to Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC), which follows canonical distribution with different energy levels. MCHMC tunes the Hamiltonian function such that the marginal of the uniform distribution on the constant-energy-surface over the momentum variables gives the desired target distribution. We show that MCHMC requires occasional energy-conserving billiard-like momentum bounces for ergodicity, analogous to momentum resampling in HMC. We generalize the concept of bounces to a continuous version with partial direction preserving bounces at every step, which gives energy-conserving underdamped Langevin-like dynamics with non-Gaussian noise (MCLMC). MCHMC and MCLMC exhibit favorable scalings with condition number and dimensionality. We develop an efficient hyperparameter tuning scheme that achieves high performance and consistently outperforms NUTS HMC on several standard benchmark problems, in some cases by orders of magnitude.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2010

UNDESIRABLE FLOW BEHAVIOR IN A PROPOSED VALIDATION DATA SET

The next generation nuclear plant (NGNP), whose development is supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, will be a very high temperature reactor (VHTR). The VHTR is a single-phase helium-cooled reactor that will provide helium at up to 1000 °C. The prospect of a coolant at these temperatures circulating in the reactor vessel demands that careful analysis be performed to ensure that excessively hot spots are not created and that sufficient mixing of the coolant is obtained. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled with heat transfer will be used to perform the desired analyses. However, primarily because of the imperfect nature of modeling turbulent flow, any CFD calculations used to perform nuclear reactor safety analysis must be validated against experimental data. Experimental data have been taken in a scaled section of the lower plenum of a prismatic VHTR at the matched index of refraction (MIR) facility at the Idaho National Laboratory. These data were taken with the intent that they be examined for use as validation data. A series of investigations have been conducted to assess the MIR data. Issues that have already been examined include the extent of the required computational domain, the outlet boundary condition, the inlet data and the effect of the turbulence model. One of the jets that flow into the model impacts on a wedge, which represents a portion of a hexagonal graphite block that is part of the inner wall of the lower plenum. The nature of the flow below this particular jet is such that a randomly varying recirculation zone is created. This recirculation zone is seen to change in size, causing a relatively long-time scale of motion or disturbance on the flow downstream. It is concluded that such a feature is undesirable in a validation data set, firstly because of its apparent random nature and, secondly, because to obtain an appropriate long-time average would be impractical because of the compute time required. It is found that by eliminating the first of the four inlet jets into the scaled model, the resulting recirculation zone is rendered stable.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum Sensors for High Energy Physics

Strong motivation for investing in quantum sensing arises from the need to investigate phenomena that are very weakly coupled to the matter and fields well described by the Standard Model. These can be related to the problems of dark matter, dark sectors not necessarily related to dark matter (for example sterile neutrinos), dark energy and gravity, fundamental constants, and problems with the Standard Model itself including the Strong CP problem in QCD. Resulting experimental needs typically involve the measurement of very low energy impulses or low power periodic signals that are normally buried under large backgrounds. This report documents the findings of the 2023 Quantum Sensors for High Energy Physics workshop which identified enabling quantum information science technologies that could be utilized in future particle physics experiments, targeting high energy physics science goals.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Second-Order Uncertainty Analysis for Radiation Shielding Problems Using MCNP

Standard uncertainty propagation is based on a first-order Taylor expansion. This approximation is usually justified by assuming that 'uncertainties are very small numbers compared with the values of their corresponding quantities'. Furthermore, the second derivatives needed for a second-order analysis are not usually available, and a second-order analysis requires more knowledge regarding the distribution of the random variables. For radiation shielding problems, the MCNP6 Monte Carlo code computes first and second derivatives of a response with respect to nuclide density or reaction cross section. This paper explores the application of these derivatives to second-order uncertainty analysis.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Aspherical nucleosynthesis in a core-collapse supernova with 25 M {sub ☉} standard progenitor

The problem of nucleosynthesis was studied within an aspherical supernova model. The explosive burning was computed in a star of 25 M {sub ☉} initial mass on its final stage of evolution. The chemical composition of a presupernova was taken from realistic evolutionary computations. A piecewise parabolic method on a local stencil was applied to simulate the hydrodynamics of the explosion. The gravity was recomputed by a Poisson solver on a fine grid as the explosion developed. A detailed yield of chemical elements was performed as a post-processing step using the tracer particles method. The produced nuclei formed a layer-like structure enclosing large fragments of nickel and iron-group isotopes that were pushed away from the central region by an explosion along the polar direction. The light nuclei were preferentially moving along the equatorial plane forming a torus-like structure.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

A homogeneous model for monotone mixed horizontal linear complementarity problems

In this paper, we propose a homogeneous model for the class of mixed horizontal linear complementarity problems. The proposed homogeneous model is always solvable and provides the solution of the original problem if it exists, or a certificate of infeasibility otherwise. Our formulation preserves the sparsity of the original formulation and does not reduce to the homogeneous model of the equivalent standard linear complementarity problem. We study the properties of the model and show that interior-point methods can be used efficiently for the numerical solutions of the homogeneous problem. Finally, numerical experiments show convincingly that it is more efficient to use the proposed homogeneous model for the mixed horizontal linear complementarity problem than to use known homogeneous models for the equivalent standard linear complementarity problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

ON THE PERSISTENCE OF TWO SMALL-SCALE PROBLEMS IN ΛCDM

We investigate the degree to which the inclusion of baryonic physics can overcome two long-standing problems of the standard cosmological model on galaxy scales: (1) the problem of satellite planes around Local Group galaxies, and (2) the “too big to fail” problem. By comparing dissipational and dissipationless simulations, we find no indication that the addition of baryonic physics results in more flattened satellite distributions around Milky-Way-like systems. Recent claims to the contrary are shown to derive in part from a non-standard metric for the degree of flattening, which ignores the satellites’ radial positions. If the full 3D positions of the satellite galaxies are considered, none of the simulations we analyze reproduce the observed flattening nor the observed degree of kinematic coherence of the Milky Way satellite system. Our results are consistent with the expectation that baryonic physics should have little or no influence on the structure of satellite systems on scales of hundreds of kiloparsecs. Claims that the “too big to fail” problem can be resolved by the addition of baryonic physics are also shown to be problematic.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2018

Challenges Beyond the Standard Model: An Examination and Evaluation of Alternatives with Respect to Unsolved Problems in Energetics and Signaling

The standard model of particle physics is regarded as one of the greatest achievements of modern physics. It has successfully predicted the existence of numerous hadrons; e.g. the Higgs Boson, the W and Z Bosons, B mesons, etc. Moreover it accurately models many phenomena such as Beta and Radioactive decay, pair production, hadron mass splitting, and others. In spite of this, the standard model has many shortfalls. For example it fails to account for or explain the presence of dark matter and dark energy. Many alternative models of the substructure of matter etc. have been proposed. Some of these are examined. In addition the strongly related standard model of cosmology, that is the big bang theory, accounts for all observed celestial phenomena. What it cannot do is satisfactorily justify all astrophysical events. As noted, dark matter and dark energy are not well understood yet they are core elements of the big bang model. Many elements of this standard model of cosmology are challenged regularly, yet somehow the community always fits the problems with the model into another mysterious element. This model and others are examined for consistency and reconciliation. Evidence of particles that move faster than the speed of light has long been sought, but remains elusive. Some of the known space-like observations of physics are examined. Potential consequences of such particles are likewise investigated. Some conclusions are drawn with respect to the framework of tachyons in a rational but non-rigorous sense. Finally, some of my ideas are presented, concerning all of the above material. The framework of theories of everything is examined, considering what such a theory requires for validity. Sociological notes on the structure of research in physics are given.

Coxe, Alexander M.↗
NASA NTRS2010

New ASTM Standards for Nondestructive Testing of Aerospace Composites

Problem: Lack of consensus standards containing procedural detail for NDE of polymer matrix composite materials: I. Flat panel composites. II. Composite components with more complex geometries a) Pressure vessels: 1) composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs). 2) composite pressure vessels (CPVs). III. Sandwich core constructions. Metal and brittle matrix composites are a possible subject of future effort.

Waller, Jess M.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Reflective Occultation Mask for Evaluation of Occulter Designs for Planet Finding

Advanced formation flying occulter designs utilize a large occulter mask flying in formation with an imaging telescope to block and null starlight to allow imaging of faint planets in exosolar systems. A paper describes the utilization of subscale reflective occultation masks to evaluate formation flying occulter designs. The use of a reflective mask allows mounting of the occulter by conventional means and simplifies the test configuration. The innovation alters the test set-up to allow mounting of the mask using standard techniques to eliminate the problems associated with a standard configuration. The modified configuration uses a reflective set-up whereby the star simulator reflects off of a reflective occulting mask and into an evaluation telescope. Since the mask is sized to capture all rays required for the imaging test, it can be mounted directly to a supporting fixture without interfering with the beam. Functionally, the reflective occultation mask reflects light from the star simulator instead of transmitting it, with a highly absorptive carbon nanotube layer simulating the occulter blocking mask. A subscale telescope images the star source and companion dim source that represents a planet. The primary advantage of this is that the occulter can be mounted conventionally instead of using diffractive wires or magnetic levitation.

Hagopian, John↗
DOE OSTI2019

WIMP dark matter in the parity solution to the strong CP problem

We extend the Standard Model (SM) with parity symmetry, motivated by the strong CP problem and dark matter. In our model, parity symmetry is conserved at high energy by introducing a mirror sector with the extra gauge symmetry, SU(2) R × U(1) R . The charges of SU(2) R × U(1) R are assigned to the mirror fields in the same way as in the SM, but the chiralities of the mirror fermions are opposite to respect the parity symmetry. The strong CP problem is resolved, since the mirror quarks are also charged under the SU(3) c in the SM. In the minimal setup, the mirror gauge symmetry leads to stable colored particles which would be inconsistent with the observed data, so that we introduce two scalars in order to deplete the stable colored particles. Interestingly, one of the scalars becomes stable because of the gauge symmetry and therefore can be a good dark matter candidate. We especially study the phenomenology relevant to the dark matter, i.e. thermal relic density, direct and indirect searches for the dark matter. The bounds from the LHC experiment and the Landau pole are also taken into account. As a result, we find that a limited region is viable: the mirror up quark mass is around [600 GeV, 3 TeV] and the relative mass difference between the dark matter and the mirror up quark or electron is about O(1–10%). We also discuss the neutrino sector and show that the right-handed neutrinos in the mirror sector can increase the effective number of neutrinos or dark radiation by 0.14.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗