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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 37 records · Page 2

Investigation of relationships between linears, total and hazy areas, and petroleum production in the Williston Basin: An ERTS approach

The author has identified the following significant results. ERTS-1 imagery in a variety of formats was used to locate linear, tonal, and hazy features and to relate them to areas of hydrocarbon production in the Williston Basin of North Dakota, eastern Montana, and northern South Dakota. Derivative maps of rectilinear, curvilinear, tonal, and hazy features were made using standard laboratory techniques. Mapping of rectilinears on both bands 5 and 7 over the entire region indicated the presence of a northeast-southwest and a northwest-southeast regional trend which is indicative of the bedrock fracture pattern in the basin. Curved lines generally bound areas of unique tone, maps of tonal patterns repeat many of the boundaries seen on curvilinear maps. Tones were best analyzed on spring and fall imagery in the Williston Basin. It is postulated that hazy areas are caused by atmospheric phenomena. The ability to use ERTS imagery as an exploration tool was examined where petroleum and gas are presently produced (Bottineau Field, Nesson and Antelope anticlines, Redwing Creek, and Cedar Creek anticline). It is determined that some tonal and linear features coincide with location of present production in Redwing and Cedar Creeks. In the remaining cases, targets could not be sufficiently well defined to justify this method.

Erickson, J. M.↗

A deep H-alpha image of faint Balmer-line filaments in the northeast Cygnus Loop supernova remnant

A deep H-alpha image of a field outside the optically bright northeast limb of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant is presented. Two filaments which are just visible on the red POSS print form part of two long and unbroken lines of filaments which generally bound a region of diffuse emission and fainter filaments. However, the diffuse emission extends out to a newly detected line of extremely faint filaments 3 arcmin to the northeast. The brightest filaments are resolved into multiple components with widths less than 2 arcsec. Comparison with the POSS print leads to a rough estimate of the proper motion of 6 arcsec per century, although temporal variations in the relative brightnesses of the components of a filament could confuse attempts to more accurately measure the true proper motion. The morphology of the emission strongly suggests that it arises in a single large sheet. No direct evidence is found favoring the existence of the dense cloud cores which have been hypothesized as a way of evaporatively enhancing the X-ray emissivity and producing forbidden line emission in the filaments.

Hester, J. J.↗

Pattern recognition techniques for failure trend detection in SSME ground tests

The Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) is a complex power plant. To evaluate its performance 1200 hot-wire ground tests have been conducted, varying in duration from 0 to 500 secs. During the test some 500 sensors are sampled every 20 ms. The sensors are generally bounded by red lines so that an excursion beyond could lead to premature shutdown. In 27 tests it was not possible to effect an orderly premature shutdown, resulting in major incidents with serious damage to the SSME and test stand. The application of pattern recognition are investigated to detect SSME performance trends that may lead to major incidents. Based on the sensor data a set of (n) features is defined. At any time during the test, the state of the SSME is given by a point in the n-dimensional feature space. The history of a test can now be represented as a trajectory in the n-dimensional feature space. Portions of the normal trajectories and failed test trajectories would lie in different regions of the n-dimensional feature space. The latter can now be partitioned into regions of normal and failed tests. Thus, it is possible to examine the trajectory of a test in progress and predict if it is going into the normal or failure region.

Choudry, A.↗

Supersymmetric dark matter above the W mass

The cosmological consequences are studied for the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model in the case that the neutralino is heavier than W. The cross section was calculated for annihilation of heavy neutralinos into final states containing gauge and Higgs bosons (XX yields WW, ZZ, HH, HW, HZ), where X is the lightest, nth neutralino and the results are compared with the results with those previously obtained for annihilation into fermions to find the relic cosmological abundance for the most general neutralino. The new channels are particularly important for the Higgsino-like and mixed-state neutralinos, but are sub-dominant (to the fermion-antifermion annihilation channels) in the case that the neutralino is mostly a gaugino. The effect of the top quark mass is also considered. Using these cross sections and the cosmological constraint omega(sub X)h squared is less than or approximately 1, the entire range of cosmologically acceptable supersymmetric parameter space is mapped and a very general bound on the neutralino mass is discovered. For a top quark mass of less than 180 GeV, neutralinos heavier than 3200 GeV are cosmologically inconsistent, and if the top quark mass is less than 120 GeV, the bound is lowered to 2600 GeV. Neutralino states that are mostly gaugino are constrained to be lighter than 550 GeV. It is found that a heavy neutralino that contributes omega(sub X) is approximately 1 arises for a very wide range of model parameters and makes, therefore, a very natural and attractive dark matter candidate.

Griest, Kim↗

Summary of results from the testing of three prototype thermal bus systems for Space Station Freedom

Three Space Station Freedom (SSF) prototype two-phase thermal bus systems, utilizing ammonia as the working fluid, underwent extensive evaluation during 1988 and 1989. All three test articles were exercised in a similar ambient test program to characterize performance under simulated SSF operating conditions. Additionally, thermal buses were integrated with heat pipe radiators and tested in a thermal vacuum (T/V) environment. Testing has shown that two-phase thermal bus performance can be generally bound in an ambient test program; however, integrated T/V testing with heat pipe radiators similar to those that will be used on SSF is required to fully characterize system performance.

Brady, T. K.↗

Simulating the Clamped Tapered Beam Specimen Under Quasi-Static and Fatigue Loading Using Floating Node Method

As part of the NASA Advanced Composites Project (ACP), a sub-element has been designed to provide validation data for progressive damage analysis models. The clamped tapered beam is a cross-ply laminated composite specimen designed to validate the simulation of the onset of matrix cracks and their interaction with delaminations, including delamination migration. A tapered geometry was used to localize the first damage occurrence in the tapered region, without prescribing an initial crack. The boundary and loading conditions were chosen to favor delamination growth and subsequent migration after the first damage occurrence. The typical sequence of events consists of a matrix crack located at the tapered region, leading to delamination onset, followed by delamination growth and subsequent delamination migration to a different interface via a dominant matrix crack. The Clamped Tapered Beam (CTB) was tested in both quasi-static and fatigue regimes. The results obtained are used in this study to assess and validate a methodology based on the Floating Node Method (FNM) implemented as an Extended Interface Element. In this methodology, quasi-static and fatigue damage formation and development are modeled by combining FNM to represent crack networks, with Directional Cohesive Zone Elements (DCZE) and Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT), respectively. Qualitatively, the methodology is capable of predicting the sequence of events and overall failure morphology. Quantitatively, the simulation results generally bound the experimental data, based on the range of the characterization data used. In this paper, the results from quasi static and fatigue simulations are compared and correlated with experimental data.

Seshadri, B. R.↗

Entanglement Requirements for Coherent Enhancement in Detectors

Coherent enhancement is a powerful mechanism for improving the sensitivity of a wide range of detectors, but its practical use is often limited by the difficulty of preparing the required quantum states. We show that this difficulty has a fundamental origin: coherent enhancement of a signal interacting with a detector is quantitatively constrained by entanglement. We prove general bounds on how the strength of coherent effects can scale with system size, as a function of the single-mode entanglement entropy of the detector. These bounds smoothly interpolate between the incoherent and fully coherent regimes, and apply both to parameter-estimation problems and to scattering processes. We discuss these results from two complementary perspectives: First, they appear as bounds on the quantum Fisher information of many-body states, which translate directly into limits on parameter sensitivity via the quantum Cramér-Rao bound. Second, they can be interpreted as limits on a class of scattering cross sections, leading to predictions for how minimum detectable interaction strengths scale with target size. Together, these results provide a unified view of coherent enhancement in metrology and scattering experiments, and motivate the development of new techniques for generating entangled detector states.

Bogorad, Zachary [Fermilab] (ORCID:000000019913647↗

A General Framework for Bounding Approximate Dynamic Programming Schemes

For years, there has been interest in approximation methods for solving dynamic programming problems, because of the inherent complexity in computing optimal solutions characterized by Bellman’s principle of optimality. A wide range of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods now exists. It is of great interest to guarantee that the performance of an ADP scheme be at least some known fraction, say ß , of optimal. This letter introduces a general approach to bounding the performance of ADP methods, in this sense, in the stochastic setting. The approach is based on new results for bounding greedy solutions in string optimization problems, where one has to choose a string (ordered set) of actions to maximize an objective function. This bounding technique is inspired by submodularity theory, but submodularity is not required for establishing bounds. Instead, the bounding is based on quantifying certain notions of curvature of string functions; the smaller the curvatures the better the bound. The key insight is that any ADP scheme is a greedy scheme for some surrogate string objective function that coincides in its optimal solution and value with those of the original optimal control problem. The ADP scheme then yields to the bounding technique mentioned above, and the curvatures of the surrogate objective determine the value ß of the bound. The surrogate objective and its curvatures depend on the specific ADP.

discrete event systems↗

Combined Uncertainty and A-Posteriori Error Bound Estimates for General CFD Calculations: Theory and Software Implementation

This workshop presentation discusses the design and implementation of numerical methods for the quantification of statistical uncertainty, including a-posteriori error bounds, for output quantities computed using CFD methods. Hydrodynamic realizations often contain numerical error arising from finite-dimensional approximation (e.g. numerical methods using grids, basis functions, particles) and statistical uncertainty arising from incomplete information and/or statistical characterization of model parameters and random fields. The first task at hand is to derive formal error bounds for statistics given realizations containing finite-dimensional numerical error [1]. The error in computed output statistics contains contributions from both realization error and the error resulting from the calculation of statistics integrals using a numerical method. A second task is to devise computable a-posteriori error bounds by numerically approximating all terms arising in the error bound estimates. For the same reason that CFD calculations including error bounds but omitting uncertainty modeling are only of limited value, CFD calculations including uncertainty modeling but omitting error bounds are only of limited value. To gain maximum value from CFD calculations, a general software package for uncertainty quantification with quantified error bounds has been developed at NASA. The package provides implementations for a suite of numerical methods used in uncertainty quantification: Dense tensorization basis methods [3] and a subscale recovery variant [1] for non-smooth data, Sparse tensorization methods[2] utilizing node-nested hierarchies, Sampling methods[4] for high-dimensional random variable spaces.

CFD↗

The Lovasz bound and some generalizations

The zero error capacity of a discrete memoryless channel is defined as the largest rate at which information can be transmitted over the channel with zero error probability. One channel with five inputs and outputs whose zero capacity remained unsolved until very recently is considered. An extremely powerful and general technique phased in terms of graph theory, for studying combinatorial packing problems is presented. In particular, Delsarte's linear programming bound for cliques in association schemes appears as a special case of the Lovasz bound.

Mceliece, R. J.↗

Mutual information bounded by Fisher information

We derive a general upper bound to mutual information in terms of the Fisher information. The bound may be further used to derive a lower bound for the Bayesian quadratic cost. These two provide alternatives to other inequalities in the literature (e.g., the van Trees inequality) that are useful also for cases where the latter ones give trivial bounds. We then generalize them to the quantum case, where they bound the Holevo information in terms of the quantum Fisher information. We illustrate the usefulness of our bounds with a case study in quantum phase estimation. Here, they allow us to adapt to mutual information (useful for global strategies where the prior plays an important role), the known and highly nontrivial bounds for the Fisher information in the presence of noise. The results are also useful in the context of quantum communication, both for continuous and discrete alphabets. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A general analysis of anti-jam communication systems

A general error bound is derived for a general anti-jam communication system which will serve as the basis for evaluating the performance of all such complex communication systems. The two most common spread spectrum techniques, coherent DS/BPSK and noncoherent FH/MFSK, are analyzed. Pulse jamming represents the worst type of jammer for DS/BPSK systems, and several receiver structures against such a jammer are examined. It is found that for low values of chip energy-to-noise ratios of O dB or less there is little difference between having or not having jammer state knowledge with a hard decision receiver. Soft decision receivers are shown to be useless against very narrow pulses without jammer state knowledge. Partial band jammers are close to the worst case jammer for FH/MFSK systems. The conclusions found for these systems are similar to those for the DS/BPSK systems.

Omura, J. K.↗

Generalized geometric speed limits for quantum observables

Leveraging quantum information geometry, we derive generalized quantum speed limits on the rate of change of the expectation values of observables. These bounds subsume and, for Hilbert space dimension ≥3, tighten existing bounds—in some cases by an arbitrarily large multiplicative constant. Our theoretical results are supported by illustrative examples and an experimental demonstration using a superconducting qutrit. We also derive two upper bounds on the generalized quantum Fisher information in terms of the condition number of the density matrix. One of these bounds applies only to coherent dynamics and depends also on the variance of the Hamiltonian. The other bound depends also on the so-called Wigner-Yanase skew information. These bounds generalize well-known bounds on the symmetric logarithmic derivative quantum Fisher information and are tighter than the existing bounds for sufficiently mixed states (e.g., for sufficiently high temperature thermal states).

open quantum systems & decoherence↗

A Globally Convergent Augmented Lagrangian Pattern Search Algorithm for Optimization with General Constraints and Simple Bounds

We give a pattern search adaptation of an augmented Lagrangian method due to Conn, Gould, and Toint. The algorithm proceeds by successive bound constrained minimization of an augmented Lagrangian. In the pattern search adaptation we solve this subproblem approximately using a bound constrained pattern search method. The stopping criterion proposed by Conn, Gould, and Toint for the solution of this subproblem requires explicit knowledge of derivatives. Such information is presumed absent in pattern search methods; however, we show how we can replace this with a stopping criterion based on the pattern size in a way that preserves the convergence properties of the original algorithm. In this way we proceed by successive, inexact, bound constrained minimization without knowing exactly how inexact the minimization is. So far as we know, this is the first provably convergent direct search method for general nonlinear programming.

Lewis, Robert Michael↗

Crossing Symmetric Dispersion Relations in Quantum Field Theories

For 2-2 scattering in quantum field theories, the usual fixed t dispersion relation exhibits only two-channel symmetry. This Letter considers a crossing symmetric dispersion relation, reviving certain old ideas from the 1970s. Rather than the fixed t dispersion relation, this needs a dispersion relation in a different variable z, which is related to the Mandelstam invariants s, t, u via a parametric cubic relation making the crossing symmetry in the complex z plane a geometric rotation. The resulting dispersion is manifestly three-channel crossing symmetric. We give simple derivations of certain known positivity conditions for effective field theories, including the null constraints, which lead to two sided bounds and derive a general set of new nonperturbative inequalities. We show how these inequalities enable us to locate the first massive string state from a low energy expansion of the four dilaton amplitude in type II string theory. We also show how a generalized (numerical) Froissart bound, valid for all energies, is obtained from this approach.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A unification of Cramer-Rao type bounds

This correspondence examines multiparameter generalizations of the Cramer-Rao (C-R) bound and related bounds from a new viewpoint. We derive a general class of bounds and show that Rao's generalization is the tightest (best) of the class. A bound reported by Zacks is another member of the class. This derivation of the C-R bound emphasizes its optimum nature. The relationship of the general class to Barankin bounds is also discussed.

Rife, D. C.↗