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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 325 records · Page 18
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Analysis of Infrastructures for Processing Plastic Waste using Pyrolysis-Based Chemical Upcycling Pathways

Modern mechanical recycling infrastructure for plastic is capable of processing only a small subset of waste plastics, reinforcing the need for parallel disposal methods such as landfilling and incineration. Emerging pyrolysis-based chemical technologies can "upcycle" plastic waste into high-value polymer and chemical products and process a broader range of waste plastics. In this work, we study the economic and environmental benefits of deploying an upcycling infrastructure in the continental United States for producing low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP) from post-consumer mixed plastic waste. Our analysis aims to determine the market size that the infrastructure can create, the degree of circularity that it can achieve, the prices for waste and derived products it can propagate, and the environmental benefits of diverting plastic waste from landfill and incineration facilities it can produce. We apply a computational framework that integrates techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessment, and value chain optimization. Our results demonstrate that the infrastructure generates an economy of nearly 20 billion USD and positive prices for plastic waste, opening opportunities for compensation to residents who provide plastic waste. Our analysis also indicates that the infrastructure can achieve a plastic-to-plastic degree of circularity of 34% and remains viable under various external factors (including technology efficiencies, capital investment budgets, and polymer market values). Finally, we present significant environmental benefits of upcycling over alternative landfill and incineration waste disposal methods, and comment on ongoing work expanding our modeling methodology to other chemical upcycling pathway case studies, including hydroformylation of specific plastics to chemicals.

Interdisciplinary↗
DOE OSTI2022

PV Reference Cells for Outdoor Use: Comparison of First-Year Field Measurements

Reference cells are widely used in the photovoltaic (PV) industry to measure irradiance. For field applications and outdoor use, a variety of products are on the market, and they are often perceived as low-cost alternatives to thermopile pyranometers. But reference cell characteristics, such as directional and spectral response, fundamentally differ from pyranometers, and measurements made by the former cannot be substituted for or directly compared with the latter. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Solar Radiation Research Laboratory is currently in a multiyear effort to develop guidance and recommendations for the design and use of outdoor reference cells, with a view to reducing inconsistencies and measurement uncertainty. The core of this effort is the long-term deployment of multiple products from different manufacturers that are mounted at a fixed tilt, on a single-axis tracker, and on a dual-axis tracker. This report provides an analysis of the data collected during the first year of operation at the NREL location. An overall assessment is made by comparing the total energy measured by each instrument to the other instruments having the same orientation. These totals are calculated for three different scenarios: (1) using the factory calibration factors, (2) using the previously determined NREL Cell Lab calibration factors, and (3) using the newly determined field calibration factors derived from the recorded measurements. Because the true or correct measurement values are unknown, pair-wise comparisons are made. The results show that the difference between the highest and lowest measured energy can exceed 3% when using the factory calibration factors. Consistency among instruments improves when Cell Lab calibrations are used, and it further improves when using field calibration factors.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

A modal wave-packet model for the multi-mode Richtmyer–Meshkov instability

In this work, a model for multimode perturbations subject to the Richtmyer–Meshkov (RM) instability is presented and compared with simulations and experiments for conditions relevant to inertial confinement fusion. The model utilizes the single mode response to the RM impulse whereby its amplitude h(k, t) first grows with an initial velocity V 0 ∝ kh(k, 0) that eventually decays in time as 1/kV 0 t. Both the growth and saturation stages are subject to nonlinearities since they depend explicitly on the initial amplitude. However, rather than using the individual mode amplitude h(k, t), nonlinearity is taken to occur when the root-mean-square amplitude h rms (k, t) of a wave-packet within wavenumbers k ± δk becomes comparable to 1/k. This is done because nearby sidebands can act in unison for an auto-correlation distance 1/δk beyond nonlinearity as observed in the beam-plasma instability. Thus, the nonlinear saturation amplitude for each mode is reduced from the usual 1/k by a phase space factor that depends on the physical dimensionality, as in the Haan model for the Rayleigh–Taylor instability. In addition, for RM, the average value of kh rms for the initial spectrum is used to calculate a nonlinear factor F NL that reduces V 0 , as observed for single modes. For broadband perturbations, the model describes self-similar growth ∝t θ as successively longer wavelength modes reach saturation. The growing and saturated modes must be discerned because only the former promote θ and are enhanced by reshock and spherical convergence. All of these flows are described here by the model in good agreement with simulations and experiments.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ferromagnetic resonators synthesized by metal-organic decomposition epitaxy

Abstract Metal-organic decomposition epitaxy is an economical wet-chemical approach suitable to synthesize high-quality low-spin-damping films for resonator and oscillator applications. This work reports the temperature dependence of ferromagnetic resonances and associated structural and magnetic quantities of yttrium iron garnet nanofilms that coincide with single-crystal values. Despite imperfections originating from wet-chemical deposition and spin coating, the quality factor for out-of-plane and in-plane resonances approaches 600 and 1000, respectively, at room temperature and 40 GHz. These values increase with temperature and are 100 times larger than those offered by commercial devices based on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor voltage-controlled oscillators at comparable production costs.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Image Characterization of Reactions Generated by an Aeroengine Micromixing Injector for Lean Direct Injection of Hydrogen and Hydrogen/Natural Gas Blend

An aeroengine micromixing injector, originally designed for lean direct injection of jet fuel, was adapted to work with hydrogen, natural gas, and any blend in between. The ultimate goal of the design was to achieve low NOx emissions when operated on pure hydrogen; to better characterize its performance, flame imaging diagnostics was implemented. Three types of cameras mounted parallel to the injector base and pointing towards the quartz combustor cylinder with the same angle were operated simultaneously: Nikon D90, Dynacolor FB-N9-U, and Phantom v7.1, to capture the visible spectrum, OH* chemiluminescence, and dynamic behavior of the flames, respectively. The current work also includes the overlapping of visible spectrum and OH* chemiluminescence, as an effort to qualitatively define the heat release over the flame area, i.e., UV over visible domain. Additionally, a z-type schlieren configuration was employed to reinforce the presence of some small-scale details occurring near the injector outlet ports. Using the airbox pressure drop, preheat temperature, fuel composition and flame temperature as the factors of study, a Box Behnken model was designed yielding into a 16-points matrix for the operability region, at atmospheric pressure. The main responses were extracted from the OH* images, because of its correlation with the flame heat release, these being the flame area and its average brightness, the heat release area and its center of gravity and leading edge. To assess the importance of the main factors and their interactions, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed for each response, considering as significant each contributor with a p-value below 0.05. For these five responses it was found that all four main factors need to be included into the model (most of them because its own significance, others to ensure the model hierarchy), as well as some common interactions as the preheat and flame temperatures or pressure drop and fuel composition, and quadratic terms from fuel composition or flame temperature. Three of the five models presented R2 and coefficient of variance (C.V.) indicators around 0.97 and 5%, respectively; the leading edge ANOVA yielded into R2=0.78 and C.V.=18.88%; and the heat release area showed R2=0.91 and C.V.=24.13%. Lastly, the confinement ratio effect of the combustor over the flame structure was quantified, for three different conditions: the original 80 mm inner diameter and 200 mm length cylinder was compared against a shorter 150 mm tube (same inner diameter) and a narrower 47 mm inner diameter one (same 200 mm length). The length had a smaller effect than the inner diameter, even though both factors were not strong enough to make a significant deviation on most of the flame parameters: the difference was within the repeatability margin of error for the brightness, flame area, and center of gravity and leading edge of the heat release area.

Imaging diagnostics, flame characterization, OH* c↗
DOE OSTI2020

Enhancing nuclear data validation analysis by using machine learning

In this work, we demonstrate how machine learning (ML) techniques can be used as an auxiliary tool for nuclear data validation analysis. The output of the ML analysis can inform evaluators and validators on the quality, or lack thereof, of specific nuclear data and benchmark experiments with respect to simulating these experimental benchmark values. To this end, measured and simulated effective neutron multiplication factors, k eff , of 875 selected ICSBEP critical assemblies and the latter's sensitivities with respect to nuclear data as well as benchmarks' features (e.g., material nuclide, core geometry) are used as input for a random forest (RF) regression model. The RF is used to encode the complex inter-dependencies between thousands of nuclear data features (i.e., sensitivity profiles and aspects describing the measurements) and 875 simulated and experimental k eff values in order to understand what nuclear data features are most informative for predicting bias. The complexity of relationships and high-dimensional space is difficult-to-impossible to search fully using simply expert judgment. As a first proof-of-concept—step, it is demonstrated that this technique is able to correctly trace large discrepancies between simulated and experimental k eff back to fabricated shortcomings in nuclear data that were perturbed to simulated k eff values. In a second, real-case scenario, step, the RF algorithm is used to validate the ENDF/B-VIII.0 library in comparison to ENDF/B-VII.1 nuclear data. One case is showcased where the chosen ML algorithms highlighted nuclear data (the 19 F(n,inl) cross section from 0.4–0.9 MeV) that are shown to be problematic by comparing them to associated differential experimental data and nuclear data from other libraries. In addition to that, it is shown that the RF results point towards poor benchmark experiments and associated underestimated uncertainties (e.g., the PU-SOL-THERM-028 series). However, using the RF algorithm for validating nuclear data with respect to k eff is currently limited to pinpointing groups of questionable nuclear data due to the inherent correlations between features introduced by the nuclear data themselves and how k eff is simulated. Due to this, we recommend that the ML methods presented be used to augment—rather than replace—the expert knowledge of evaluators and validators.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Bio-inspired alula-based winglet design for enhanced heat transfer in high temperature fin-and-tube heat exchangers

Fin-and-tube heat exchangers (FTHEs) are widely used for high-temperature flue-gas heat recovery, but their performance is often limited by wake regions and non-uniform fin-surface temperatures. This study proposes and numerically evaluates four bio-inspired longitudinal vortex generator (VG) configurations in a high-temperature FTHE with flue-gas inlet temperature ∼1230 K: double-delta, curved double-delta, alula, and a new curved-alula geometry. The reference fin is not hydraulically plain; it already incorporates leading-edge separation columns and convex protrusions, so the alula-type winglets are assessed as downstream add-ons acting on a strongly disturbed flow. In a second step, perforations (one, two and three circular holes) are introduced into the curved-alula VGs to further tailor the flow field. Three-dimensional simulations with the Shear Stress Transpor (SST) $k - ω$ model, temperature-dependent flue-gas properties and conjugate conduction are carried out for gas-side Reynolds numbers $Re_g ≈ 8.0$ x $10^2 - 3.6$ x $10^3$ (mass flow rates 0.5 – 2.5 g/s), and the designs are compared in terms of surface heat flux, Nusselt number, friction factor and hydrothermal performance factor (HTPF). For this already-promoted fin, the additional downstream winglets provide moderate, incremental hydrothermal gains. At the highest Reynolds number, the best non-perforated design (curved-alula) increases surface heat flux from 1630.9 to 1794.7 kW/m² (∼ 10 % gain) and the Nusselt number from 227.6 to 242.6 (∼ 7 % gain), while the friction factor rises from 0.26 to about 0.30, yielding HTPF values close to unity (∼ 0.9 – 1.0). Introducing circular perforations into the curved-alula winglets acts mainly as a wake-bleeding refinement: the three-hole configuration provides a heat flux of 1824.7 kW/m² and a pressure drop of 127.9 Pa, with HTPF in the range ∼ 1.03 – 1.14 and a small (∼ 1 – 3 %) improvement over the solid curved-alula design. Flow-field analysis shows that the perforated curved-alula VGs shrink tube-wake regions, thin the thermal boundary layer and homogenize the fin-surface temperature (outlet-gas temperature ∼ 510 – 520 K and fin-surface temperature ∼ 420 – 421 K for the three-hole case). An optimal flue-gas mass flow rate of ∼ 1 g/s ($Re_g ≈ 1.5$ x $10^3$) is identified, beyond which additional heat-transfer gains are offset by rapidly increasing pressure losses. Overall, the results highlight that initial fin geometry and VG placement are as important as VG shape: alula-based winglets are expected to yield larger relative gains on simpler flat-fin layouts or when positioned closer to the fin leading edge and tube

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Singular value decomposition and similarity renormalization group evolution of nuclear interactions

One of the main challenges for ab initio nuclear many-body theory is the growth of computational and storage costs as calculations are extended to heavy, exotic, and structurally complex nuclei. Here, we investigate the factorization of nuclear interactions as a means to address this issue. We perform Singular Value Decompositions of nucleon-nucleon interactions in partial wave representation and study the dependence of the singular value spectrum on interaction characteristics like regularization scheme and resolution scales. We develop and implement the Similarity Renormalization Group (SRG) evolution of the factorized interaction, and demonstrate that this SVD-SRG approach accurately preserves two-nucleon observables. We find that low-resolution interactions allow the truncation of the SVD at low rank, and that a small number of relevant components is sufficient to capture the nuclear interaction and perform an accurate SRG evolution, while the Coulomb interaction requires special consideration. The rank is uniform across all partial waves, and almost independent of the basis choice in the tested cases. This suggests an interpretation of the relevant singular components as mere representations of a small set of abstract operators that can describe the interaction and its SRG flow. Following the traditional workflow for nuclear interactions, we discuss how the transformation between the center-of-mass and laboratory frames creates redundant copies of the partial wave components when implemented in matrix representation, and we discuss strategies for mitigation. Lastly, we test the low-rank approximation to the SRG-evolved interactions in many-body calculations using the In-Medium SRG. By including nuclear radii in our analysis, we verify that the implementation of the SRG using the singular vectors of the interaction does not spoil the evolution of other observables.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Ecosystem Water‐Saving Timescale Varies Spatially With Typical Drydown Length

Abstract Stomatal optimization theory is a commonly used framework for modeling how plants regulate transpiration in response to the environment. Most stomatal optimization models assume that plants instantaneously optimize a reward function such as carbon gain. However, plants are expected to optimize over longer timescales given the rapid environmental variability they encounter. There are currently no observational constraints on these timescales. Here, a new stomatal model is developed and is used to analyze the timescales over which stomatal closure is optimized. The proposed model assumes plants maximize carbon gain subject to the constraint that they cannot draw down soil moisture below a critical value. The reward is integrated over time, after being weighted by a discount factor that represents the timescale ( τ ) that a plant considers when optimizing stomatal conductance to save water. The model is simple enough to be analytically solvable, which allows the value of τ to be inferred from observations of stomatal behavior under known environmental conditions. The model is fitted to eddy covariance data in a range of ecosystems, finding the value of τ that best predicts the dynamics of evapotranspiration at each site. Across 82 sites, the climate metrics with the strongest correlation to τ are measures of the average number of dry days between rainfall events. Values of τ are similar in magnitude to the longest such dry period encountered in an average year. The results here shed light on which climate characteristics shape spatial variations in ecosystem‐level water use strategy.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Opportunities for green hydrogen production with land-based wind in the United States

Hydrogen (H 2 ) is an efficient energy carrier and storage mechanism that can supply both stationary and transport energy demand. Rapidly declining renewable energy generation costs; technology innovations in wind, solar, battery storage, and electrolysis; and a global push for more sustainable and secure energy have driven increased interest in green H 2 production. In this study, we develop an H 2 scenario analysis tool to assist in rapid, high-resolution insights into future, green H 2 pathways to achieve policy goals and market competitiveness. Using this tool, we estimate H 2 production and costs for U.S., off-grid scenarios given varying policy and cost scenarios from 2025–2035. Results indicate that achieving economically competitive green H 2 production (below $\$$2/kg) is possible in 2030 with no policy incentives (one site achieves this target), while increasing policy support to include wind and green H 2 production tax credits enables widespread economic viability sooner, with sub-$\$$2/kg LCOH targets achieved by 2025 and 51.7% of sites achieving this target by 2035. Maximizing policy support through prevailing wage and apprenticeship credit multipliers enable widespread economic viability, including sub-$\$$2/kg of green H 2 by 2025 and even negative pricing by 2035. Regions with lowest LCOH values correspond to high wind resource areas and capacity factors. Achieving decarbonization goals with green H 2 depends on technology cost reductions and policy support, with a maximum average LCOH reduction of $\$$23.10 between no and maximum policy support scenarios, and a maximum average LCOH reduction of $\$$25.86 between current, conservative technology costs and 2035 projected technology cost assumptions.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2022

Reorganization Energy of Electron Transfer in Ionic Liquids

We report bandshape analysis of charge-transfer optical bands in room-temperature ionic liquids (ILs) is performed to extract reorganization energy of electron transfer. Remarkably, the reorganization energies in ILs are close to those in cyclohexane. This result runs against common wisdom in the field since conducting ILs, characterized by an infinite static dielectric constant, and nonpolar cyclohexane fall to the opposite ends of the polarity scale based on their dielectric constants. Theoretical calculations employing structure factors of ILs from molecular dynamics simulations support low values of the reorganization energy. Standard dielectric arguments do not apply to solvation in ILs and nonergodic reorganization energies are required for a quantitative analysis.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Direct Optoelectronic Imaging of 2D Semiconductor–3D Metal Buried Interfaces

The semiconductor-metal junction is one of the most critical factors for high performance electronic devices. In two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor devices, minimizing voltage drop at this junction is of particularly challenging and important. Despite numerous studies on contact resistance in 2D semiconductors, the exact nature of the buried interface under a 3D metal remains elusive and unclear. Herein, we report the direct observation of 2D semiconductor-metal buried interface using recently developed metal-assisted transfer technique to expose the buried interface which is then directly investigated using scanning probe techniques. We characterize the spatially varying electronic and optical properties of this buried interface with < 20 nm resolution. To be specific, potential, conductance and photoluminescence at the buried metal/MoS 2 interface are correlated under variety of metal deposition conditions as well as type of metal contacts. We observe that direct evaporation of Au on MoS 2 induces large strain of ~5% in the MoS 2 which coupled with charge transfer leads to degenerate doping of the MoS 2 underneath the contact. These factors lead to improvement of contact resistance to record values of 138 kΩ μm measured using local conductance probes. This approach was adopted to investigate MoS 2 -In/Au alloy interface, which records lowest contact resistance of 63 kΩ μm. Overall, our results highlight that the MoS 2 /Metal interface is very sensitive to method of contact making and provides a universal strategy to characterize buried contact interfaces involving 2D semiconductors.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Plasmon-enhanced ultralow-threshold solid-state triplet fusion upconversion

Triplet fusion upconversion has potential applications in solar cells, photoredox catalysis, additive manufacturing and bioimaging. However, solid-state upconversion systems have struggled to measure up to their solution-phase counterparts, often requiring enormous optical power densities to operate at the maximum efficiency. Here we substantially improve the performance of upconversion films through excitation with surface plasmons that propagate along a planar silver-film interface, leading to an absorption enhancement that reduces the intensity threshold I th by a factor of 19 and enhances the external quantum efficiency by a factor of 17. From this, we achieve I th values as low as 3.4 mW cm −2 and an external quantum efficiency up to 0.094%. To demonstrate real-world viability, we couple the upconversion film to plasmons generated by the near-field of excitons in an organic light-emitting diode. As a result, this scheme is then used to fabricate a white-emitting organic light-emitting diode where blue emission sources from plasmon-excited upconversion, achieving a high colour rendering index of 86.2 and setting precedent for blue emission in the absence of high-energy polarons or triplets.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Serpent and MCNP Calculations of the Energy Deposition in the Transformational Challenge Reactor

This paper focuses on the calculation of the energy deposition in the Transformational Challenge Reactor by two major Monte Carlo codes: Serpent and MCNP. The first software computation relies on Kinetic Energy Released per unit Mass (KERMA) factors while the second one relies on Q-values. The results from these two independent computation methodologies are in very good agreement; however, Serpent runs much faster than MCNP (for the same computational model) and allows for a detailed energy deposition distribution from a 1-mm-side square mesh with a relative statistical error between 0.5% and 1%. This detailed energy deposition is suitable for multiphysics analyses aimed at design optimizations. In order to calculate the energy deposition, Serpent needs enhanced ACE files (distributed by the software developers). Unlike other Monte Carlo software that uses inputs based on Python or Java languages, the Serpent input syntax is very similar to that of MCNP; a Python script can convert a MCNP input to a Serpent input in seconds. For simulations not requiring the calculation of the energy deposition, Serpent can also read nuclear data from MCNP ACE files, which eventually improves the comparison of the results of the two codes.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

High critical current STAR ® wires with REBCO tapes by advanced MOCVD

RE–Ba–Cu–O (REBCO, RE = rare earth) symmetric tape round (STAR ® ) wires of 1.5–2.5 mm diameter have been fabricated with 4–12 strands of symmetric REBCO tape made by advanced metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). 1.5 mm diameter STAR ® wires made with just four advanced MOCVD tape strands are able to sustain nearly the same critical current (I c ) as 2.5 mm diameter wires made with 12 commercial-grade tape strands. An I c of 1070 A, corresponding to an engineering current density (J e ) of 597 A mm –2 , has been demonstrated at 4.2 K, 30 T in 1.5 mm diameter, four-strand wire at a bend radius of 15 mm. This I c value exactly matches the Ic expected from the lift factor of the tape strands used in the wire. The 2.5 mm diameter STAR ® wires made with 12 advanced MOCVD tape strands exhibit an I c of 1075 A at 77 K, self-field and sustained currents of 2500–2750 A at 4.2 K, 30 T before burnout, corresponding to a J e greater than 500 A mm –2 . Finally, these results show that the cost of STAR ® wires can be substantially reduced using fewer tape strands of high-performance advanced MOCVD tapes and that the superior bend performance of STAR ® wires can be maintained, even using 12 strands of advanced MOCVD tapes with 4 μm thick REBCO films.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2025

Evolution of in-medium baryon-baryon scattering cross sections and stiffness of dense nuclear matter from Bayesian analyses of FOPI proton-flow excitation functions

Within a Bayesian statistical framework using a Gaussian process (GP) emulator for an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (IBUU) transport model simulator of heavy-ion reactions with momentum-independent Skyrme interactions, we infer from the proton directed and elliptical flow in mid-central Au + Au reactions, measured at beam energies from 150 to 1200 MeV/nucleon by the FOPI Collaboration, the posterior probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the in-medium baryon-baryon scattering cross section (BBSCS) modification factor 𝑋 (with respect to their free-space values) and the stiffness parameter 𝐾 of dense nuclear matter. Here, we find that the most probable value of 𝑋 evolves from around 0.7 to 1.0 as the beam energy 𝐸 beam /𝐴 increases. On the other hand, the posterior PDF⁡(𝐾) may have dual peaks having roughly the same height or extended shoulders at high 𝐾 values. More quantitatively, the posterior PDF⁡(𝐾) changes from having a major peak around 220 MeV, characterizing a soft EOS in the reaction at 𝐸 beam /𝐴 = 150 MeV, to one that peaks around 320 MeV, indicating a stiff EOS in the reactions at 𝐸 beam /𝐴 higher than about 600 MeV. The transition from soft to stiff happens in mid-central Au + Au reactions at beam energies around 250 MeV/nucleon in which 𝐾 = 220 MeV and 𝐾 = 320 MeV are approximately equally probable. Altogether, the FOPI proton-flow excitation function data indicate a gradual hardening of hot and dense nuclear matter as its density and temperature increase in reactions with higher beam energies.

nuclear matter↗
DOE OSTI2026

Impact of absorption due to zero-field splitting on loss in dielectrics: A case study in sapphire

The coherence times of superconducting qubits are limited by loss mechanisms, whose microscopic origins have remained elusive. We propose a mechanism caused by transitions between zero-field-split states of paramagnetic impurities or defects. We derive the absorption cross section for a magnetic dipole transition and apply it to calculate the bulk loss tangent. For Cr, Fe, and V impurities in sapphire, we find loss tangents at 4.5 GHz in the range of 10 −9 –10 −8 , comparable to the loss measured in experiments. This value suggests that magnetic loss may be a limiting factor in the coherence times of superconducting qubits.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity deficit reduction via finite nuclear size

We revisit the extraction of the |𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑑 | Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element from the superallowed transition decay rate of 26⁢𝑚 Al → 26 Mg, focusing on finite nuclear size effects. The decay rate dependence on the 26⁢𝑚 Al charge radius is found to be four times higher than previously believed, necessitating precise determination. However, for a short-lived isotope of an odd 𝑍 element such as 26⁢𝑚 Al , radius extraction relies on challenging many-body atomic calculations. We performed the needed calculations, finding an excellent agreement with previous ones, which used a different methodology. This sets a new standard for the reliability of isotope shift factor calculations in many-electron systems. The ℱ⁡𝑡 value obtained from our analysis is lower by 2.2𝜎 than the corresponding value in the previous critical survey, resulting in an increase in |𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑑 | 2 by 0.9𝜎. Adopting |𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑑 | from this decay alone reduces the CKM unitarity deficit by one standard deviation, irrespective of the choice of |𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑠 |.

beta-decay↗