Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “physical rules”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 199 records · Page 11

Update of the Nuclear Criticality Slide Rule: Review of the Estimation of the Number of Fissions

IRSN (France), LLNL (USA) and ORNL (USA) began a long-term collaboration effort in 2015 to update the nuclear criticality Slide Rule (https://ncsp.llnl.gov/analytical-methods/criticality-sliderule) for the emergency response to a nuclear criticality accident. The Slide Rule permits the estimation of neutron and gamma dose rates and integrated doses based upon estimated fission yields, as a function of distance from the fission source, and time after criticality accidents for different critical systems. This paper presents the review of the section “estimation of the number of fissions”, named “fission yield” in the Slide Rule document. This estimation is important because the other information provided by the Slide Rule is directly proportional to the number of fissions. The previous models, based on Hansen and Barbry formulae, will be presented with their associated assumptions and limitations. Then, new proposals will be presented with a comparison to past criticality accidents and experimental data. The new formulae, based on the heat energy equation, cover many types of criticality accidents (solution, dry or low-moderated powder, rods/assemblies in water and dry metal) and require limited information in an emergency situation.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Tailoring Mid–Gap States of Chalcogenide Glass by Pressure–Induced Hypervalent Bonding Towards the Design of Electrical Switching Materials

Phase change memory (PCM) and ovonic threshold switching (OTS) materials using chalcogenide glass are essential elements in advanced 3D memory chips. The mid–gap states, induced by the disorder and defects in the glass, are the physical mechanisms of the electrical switching behavior, while the origin of these trap states is still under debate and the medium–range clusters that break the global octet rule, such as over–coordinated atoms, are known to be responsible in various glass. Here, it is discovered that a large fraction of over–coordinated clusters fails to generate mid–gap states, which are probably caused by hypervalent bonding, a multi–centered covalent bond participated by delocalized lone–pair electrons. This is confirmed by the pressure–driven simulations of amorphous GeSe models, in which it is found that octahedral motifs and hypervalent bonds prevent the over–coordinated medium–range clusters from providing excessive electrons. In practical applications, compatible dopants can be used to change the number of hypervalent bonds, thus controlling the number of mid–gap states and consequently the performance of PCM and OTS materials. Finally, these results reveal the origin of mid–gap states in chalcogenide glasses, enabling extensive control in the development of pioneering electrical switching materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

A critical review on additive manufacturing of refractory alloys from a data analytics perspective- beyond nickel-based superalloys

Refractory alloys (RAs) are promising materials due to their exceptional physicochemical properties, but most research remains at the laboratory scale. For broader adoption, advancements in manufacturing are essential. Because their high stability makes conventional methods like machining and casting difficult, additive manufacturing (AM) is emerging as an effective approach for fabricating refractory alloy components. However, AM's repeated non-equilibrium thermal cycles introduce undesired features (e.g. defects, anisotropic microstructures, and residual stresses), which are magnified due to RAs’ unique properties. This paper comprehensively reviews the state-of-the-art methods of AM for refractory alloys. It explores data analytics techniques to establish design rules based on multi-fidelity experimental and computational methods. Furthermore, it investigates integrated, collaborative efforts to harmonise standalone databases, information, knowledge, and predictive models at multi-physics, multi-stage, and multi-scale. Unlike the existing literature that focuses primarily on material systems or process fundamentals, this work provides an integrated perspective on AM of refractory alloys from a data analytics standpoint, highlighting the roles of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME), verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification (VV&UQ), and digital twin-driven qualification in overcoming data scarcity and accelerating rapid qualification.

Additive manufacturing↗

A Projected Network Model of Online Disinformation Cascades

Within the past half-decade, it has become overwhelmingly clear that suppressing the spread of deliberate false and misleading information is of the utmost importance for protecting democratic institutions. Disinformation has been found to come from both foreign and domestic actors, but the effects from either can be disastrous. From the simple encouragement of unwarranted distrust to conspiracy theories promoting violence, the results of disinformation have put the functionality of American democracy under direct threat. Present scientific challenges posed by this problem include detecting disinformation, quantifying its potential impact, and preventing its amplification. We present a model on which we can experiment with possible strategies toward the third challenge: the prevention of amplification. This is a social contagion network model, which is decomposed into layers to represent physical, ''offline'', interactions as well as virtual interactions on a social media platform. Along with the topological modifications to the standard contagion model, we use state-transition rules designed specifically for disinformation, and distinguish between contagious and non-contagious infected nodes. We use this framework to explore the effect of grassroots social movements on the size of disinformation cascades by simulating these cascades in scenarios where a proportion of the agents remove themselves from the social platform. We also test the efficacy of strategies that could be implemented at the administrative level by the online platform to minimize such spread. These top-down strategies include banning agents who disseminate false information, or providing corrective information to individuals exposed to false information to decrease their probability of believing it. We find an abrupt transition to smaller cascades when a critical number of random agents are removed from the platform, as well as steady decreases in the size of cascades with increasingly more convincing corrective information. Finally, we compare simulated cascades on this framework with real cascades of disinformation recorded on Whatsapp surrounding the 2019 Indian election. We find a set of hyperparameter values that produces a distribution of cascades matching the scaling exponent of the distribution of actual cascades recorded in the dataset. We acknowledge the available future directions for improving the performance of the framework and validation methods, as well as ways to extend the model to capture additional features of social contagion.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Cyber Physical Grid-Interactive Distributed Energy Resources Control for VPP Dispatch and Regulation

This paper presents a cyber-physical algorithm for grid-interactive Distributed Energy Resource (DER) control to enable two features of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) dispatch and grid voltage regulation, considering the communication and security impacts. We first formulate the DER dispatch problem as a real-time, iterative, and grid-interactive DER control problem. Thereafter, we consider a probabilistic traffic model to characterize packet delays and loss in a communication network, and study how the delays enter the process of information exchange among the grid measurement units, local DER controllers and the grid control center that coordinately execute this dispatch algorithm. Finally, a strategy combining delay threshold and modified message update rules is proposed to immune the asynchrony resulting from the communications network traffic and it avoids possible numerical instabilities and sensitivities of the tracking and regulation capabilities of this DER control algorithm. By implementing the proposed cyber-physical algorithm on the modified IEEE 37-node system, our preliminary results exhibit that the uncertainties of the underlying communications infrastructure must be considered for the VPP tracking and regulation capabilities of any DER in a generic Cyber-Physical System (CPS), because the delayed voltage measurements in the uplink/bi-link cases result in the off-track in VPP dispatch and jittery in voltage regulation.

cyber-physical algorithm↗

Direct CP violation and the ΔI=1/2 rule in K→ππ decay from the standard model

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the Δ I = 1 / 2 , K → π π decay amplitude A 0 and ϵ ' , the measure of direct C P violation in K → π π decay, improving our 2015 calculation [1] of these quantities. Both calculations were performed with physical kinematics on a 32 3 × 64 lattice with an inverse lattice spacing of a - 1 = 1.3784 ( 68 ) GeV . However, the current calculation includes nearly 4 times the statistics and numerous technical improvements allowing us to more reliably isolate the π π ground state and more accurately relate the lattice operators to those defined in the standard model. We find Re ( A 0 ) = 2.99 ( 0.32 ) ( 0.59 ) × 10 - 7 GeV and Im ( A 0 ) = - 6.98 ( 0.62 ) ( 1.44 ) × 10 - 11 GeV , where the errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. The former agrees well with the experimental result Re ( A 0 ) = 3.3201 ( 18 ) × 10 - 7 GeV . These results for A 0 can be combined with our earlier lattice calculation of A 2 [2] to obtain Re ( ϵ ' / ϵ ) = 21.7 ( 2.6 ) ( 6.2 ) ( 5.0 ) × 10 - 4 , where the third error represents omitted isospin breaking effects, and Re ( A 0 ) / Re ( A 2 ) = 19.9 ( 2.3 ) ( 4.4 ) . The first agrees well with the experimental result of Re ( ϵ ' / ϵ ) = 16.6 ( 2.3 ) × 10 - 4 . A comparison of the second with the observed ratio Re ( A 0 ) / Re ( A 2 ) = 22.45 ( 6 ) , demonstrates the standard model origin of this “ Δ I = 1 / 2 rule” enhancement.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A proposed method for addressing large unphysical uncertainties in mubar

Mubar uncertainties in Section MF 34 MT 2 of ENDF/B-VIII.0 data are sometimes too large. Physical limitations of the bounds of mubar limit the maximum uncertainty to be < 1.0 and usually $\ll$ 1.0. Two ad hoc methods are proposed to artificially constrain the randomly sampled values of mubar to allowable values. The application of NJOY’s mubar covariance matrix to the “sandwich rule” is also discussed and a consistent way to apply sensitivity coefficients is described. Mubar uncertainties for the Jezebel k eff were found to be 156 pcm – a value comparable to other evaluated cross section uncertainties.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A technical analog of the cosmological constant problem and a solution thereof

The near vanishing of the cosmological constant is one of the most puzzling open problems in theoretical physics. We consider a system, the so-called framid, that features a technically similar problem. Its stress-energy tensor has a Lorentz-invariant expectation value on the ground state, yet there are no standard, symmetry-based selection rules enforcing this, since the ground state spontaneously breaks boosts. We verify the Lorentz invariance of the expectation value in question with explicit one-loop computations. These, however, yield the expected result only thanks to highly nontrivial cancellations, which are quite mysterious from the low-energy effective theory viewpoint.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Learning stochastic dynamics and predicting emergent behavior using transformers

We show that a neural network originally designed for language processing can learn the dynamical rules of a stochastic system by observation of a single dynamical trajectory of the system, and can accurately predict its emergent behavior under conditions not observed during training. We consider a lattice model of active matter undergoing continuous-time Monte Carlo dynamics, simulated at a density at which its steady state comprises small, dispersed clusters. We train a neural network called a transformer on a single trajectory of the model. The transformer, which we show has the capacity to represent dynamical rules that are numerous and nonlocal, learns that the dynamics of this model consists of a small number of processes. Forward-propagated trajectories of the trained transformer, at densities not encountered during training, exhibit motility-induced phase separation and so predict the existence of a nonequilibrium phase transition. Transformers have the flexibility to learn dynamical rules from observation without explicit enumeration of rates or coarse-graining of configuration space, and so the procedure used here can be applied to a wide range of physical systems, including those with large and complex dynamical generators.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Correlations in the Initial Conditions of Heavy-Ion Collisions

Ultracentral collisions of heavy nuclei, in which the impact parameter is nearly zero, are especially sensitive to the details of the initial state model and the microscopic mechanism for collective flow. In a hydrodynamic “flow” picture, the final state momentum correlations are a direct response to the fluctuating initial geometry, although models of the initial geometry differ widely. Alternatively, dynamical mechanisms based in the color glass condensate (CGC) formalism can naturally lead to many-body correlations with very different systematics. Here we present a calculation of event-by-event elliptic flow in both the hydrodynamic and CGC paradigms and show that they can be qualitatively distinguished in ultracentral collisions of deformed nuclei. Specifically, the multiplicity dependence in such collisions is qualitatively opposite, with the CGC correlations increasing with multiplicity while the hydrodynamic correlations decrease. The consistency of the latter with experimental data on UU collisions appears to rule out a CGC-mediated explanation. We find that these qualitative features also persist in small deformed systems and can therefore be a valuable test of the microscopic physics in that regime.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

New constraints on ultraheavy dark matter from the LZ experiment

Searches for dark matter with liquid xenon time projection chamber experiments have traditionally focused on the region of the parameter space that is characteristic of weakly interacting massive particles, ranging from a few GeV / c 2 to a few TeV / c 2 . Models of dark matter with a mass much heavier than this are well motivated by early production mechanisms different from the standard thermal freeze-out, but they have generally been less explored experimentally. In this work, we present a reanalysis of the first science run of the LZ experiment, with an exposure of 0.9 tonne × yr , to search for ultraheavy particle dark matter. The signal topology consists of multiple energy deposits in the active region of the detector forming a straight line, from which the velocity of the incoming particle can be reconstructed on an event-by-event basis. Zero events with this topology were observed after applying the data selection calibrated on a simulated sample of signal-like events. New experimental constraints are derived, which rule out previously unexplored regions of the dark matter parameter space of spin-independent interactions beyond a mass of 10 17 GeV / c 2 . Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Detecting dark matter substructures on small scales with fast radio bursts

The matter power spectrum is only weakly constrained on subgalactic scales, while physics beyond the Standard Model can leave unique imprints, especially on sub-parsec scales. We propose measuring the arrival-time difference of fast radio bursts (FRBs) along two adjacent sightlines as a new probe to dark matter substructures on scales down to ∼ 1 AU . We discuss two observational scenarios in which it may be possible to place interesting constraints on such models through the monitoring of repeating FRB sources: (i) By sending radio receivers to space to form a baseline of tens of AU or more and measuring the temporal variation of the arrival-time difference between receivers. (ii) By measuring the temporal variation of the arrival-time difference between two lensed images of one strongly lensed repeater. In both scenarios, obtaining interesting constraints requires correlating the voltage time series to measure the radio signal arrival time to sub-nanosecond precision. We find that two radio dishes separated by 20 AU may be sensitive to the enhancement of small-scale structures at ∼ 10 - 8 M ⊙ masses in the QCD axion dark matter scenario, or from an early epoch of matter domination with a reheating temperature up to 60 MeV. Other dark matter models, such as those composed of ∼ 10 - 13 M ⊙ primordial black holes produced during inflation, would also be probed by this method. We further show that a strong lensing situation of multiple images provides an equivalent ∼ 2000 AU ( σ v / 10 3 km s - 1 ) ( δ t / 10 yr ) baseline, for a typical velocity of dark matter substructures σ v and an observational time span δ . This is much more sensitive, but with the uncertainty that intervening decoherence from the interstellar medium may degrade the timing precision, and that spatial variation in the FRB emission spot may result in confounding signals. We show that the lensing magnifications of Type Ia supernovae constrain a similar quantity to such FRB timing, with present limits being equivalent to ruling out the same parameter space that would be probed by a 0.14 AU baseline.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Semi-Abelian gauge theories, non-invertible symmetries, and string tensions beyond N -ality

We study a 3d lattice gauge theory with gauge group U(1) N– 1 &ltimes; S N , which is obtained by gauging the S N global symmetry of a pure U(1) N– 1 gauge theory, and we call it the semi-Abelian gauge theory. We compute mass gaps and string tensions for both theories using the monopole-gas description. We find that the effective potential receives equal contributions at leading order from monopoles associated with the entire SU( N ) root system. Even though the center symmetry of the semi-Abelian gauge theory is given by &Zopf; N , we observe that the string tensions do not obey the N -ality rule and carry more detailed information on the representations of the gauge group. We find that this refinement is due to the presence of non-invertible topological lines as a remnant of U(1) N– 1 one-form symmetry in the original Abelian lattice theory. Upon adding charged particles corresponding to W -bosons, such non-invertible symmetries are explicitly broken so that the N -ality rule should emerge in the deep infrared regime.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Hidden-charm and bottom tetra- and pentaquarks with strangeness in the hadro-quarkonium and compact tetraquark models

In two recent papers, we used the hadro-quarkonium model to study the properties of hiddencharm and bottom tetraquarks and pentaquarks. Here, we extend the previous results and calculate the masses of heavy-quarkonium-kaon/hyperon systems. We also compute the spectrum of hiddencharm and bottom tetraquarks with strangeness in the compact tetraquark (diquark-antidiquark) model. If heavy-light exotic systems with non-null strangeness content were to be observed experimentally, it might be possible to distinguish among the large variety of available theoretical pictures for tetra- and pentaquark states and, possibly, rule out those which are not compatible with the data.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗