Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “absolute scattering intensity”

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 37 records · Page 2

Remote water quality measurements with a lidar polarimeter

A lidar polarimeter system utilizing a 5 mw He-Ne laser has been constructed and used for laboratory and day light backscatter measurements from suspensions of teflon particles and absorbing dye in water. The results of this study have shown that a lidar polarimeter system can measure 'volume reflectance' without interference of peripheral effects such as sky reflections. The polarization ratio appears to be less affected by surface waves than does the total intensity or individual polarizations. The cross polarized return is the most sensitive to changes in the single scatter albedo and absolute concentrations of absorbing and scattering materials. A criterion is indicated which states that finite beam effects must be considered when the total extinction length is greater than the incident beam width.

Wilhelmi, G. J.↗

Collisional-rate coefficients for sodiumlike Ar VIII ions.

Determination of collisional-excitation-rate coefficients for sodium-like Ar VIII ions theoretically using the Coulomb-Born approximation as well as experimentally from the absolute intensities of lines emitted by these ions in well-diagnosed plasmas whose parameters were obtained from the analysis of scattered laser light. These plasmas were produced in a theta-pinch device. The agreement between theory and experiment is within the estimated accuracy of plus or minus 50% for excitation from the ground state to the n = 3 and n = 4 levels, whereas some deviations are observed for two transitions to the n = 5 levels at lower temperatures. A rate coefficient for ionization was obtained from the time dependence of the ionization.

Datla, R. U.↗

Angular dependence of electron impact excitation cross sections of O2.

Study of the electron-impact excitation spectrum of O2 at 20 and 45 eV impact energies and at scattering angles ranging from 10 to 90 deg. The angular behavior of the differential scattering cross sections for excitation of the a super 1 delta sub g, b super 1 sigma sub g (+), B super 3 sigma sub u (-) states for the 9.97-eV ('longest' band) and the 10.29-eV ('second' band) transitions, for the broad feature at 6.1 eV energy-loss, and for elastic scattering is determined. The experimentally measured relative differential and integral cross sections for these processes are approximately normalized to the absolute scale. The intensities of the different transitions in optical and electron-impact spectra are compared, and the importance of spin-orbit coupling and exchange processes is discussed. It is found that the energy-loss feature at 6.1 eV in the electron-impact spectrum is mostly due to the excitation of the c super 1 sigma sub u (-) state, and not the A super 3 sigma sub u (+) state, as had been previously thought.

Trajmar, S.↗

A rocket-borne instrument for the measurement of nighttime atmospheric densities.

A rocket instrument has been designed for the determination of nighttime atmospheric densities by means of resonant scattering. By illuminating the atmosphere with an intense parallel beam of light at the resonant wavelength of an atmospheric gas and observing the back scattering, it is possible to determine either relative or absolute atmospheric densities. In particular, the measurement of atomic hydrogen densities from 70 to 110 km will be considered.

Quessette, J.-A.↗

Ca II H and K measurements made at Mount Wilson Observatory, 1966-1983

Summaries are presented of the photoelectric measurements of stellar Ca II H and K line intensity made at Mount Wilson Observatory during the years 1966-1983. These results are derived from 65,263 individual observations of 1296 stars. For each star, for each observing season, the maximum, minimum, mean, and variation of the instrumental H and K index 'S' are given, as well as a measurement of the accuracy of observation. A total of 3110 seasonal summaries are reported. Factors which affect the ability to detect stellar activity variations and accurately measure their amplitudes, such as the accuracy of the H and K measurements and scattered light contamination, are discussed. Relations are given which facilitate intercomparison of 'S' values with residual intensities derived from ordinary spectrophotometry, and for converting measurements to absolute fluxes.

Duncan, Douglas K.↗

Measurements of atmospheric nitric oxide from Nimbus 7 SBUV ultraviolet spectral scan data

Results are given of SBUV (solar backscattered ultraviolet instrument) measurements from Nimbus 7, when - one day per month - it is operated in a spectral scan mode, scanning from 160 nm to 400 nm in 0.2-nm steps. By measuring the intensity of a series of nitric oxide (NO) gamma band fluorescence features in this wavelength range, it has been possible to estimate the amount of NO in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere. The background of atmospherically scattered sunlight normally masks the much weaker NO gamma band emission, but these emission features are discriminated by subtracting a synthetic spectrum calculated for a model atmosphere that includes only Rayleigh scattering and absorption by ozone and oxygen. The resulting difference plot clearly reveals features resulting from processes not included in the simple model, such as NO gamma band emission. Nitric oxide is inferred by measuring the absolute intensity of various bands relative to the adjacent background and relating this intensity to total NO above an altitude determined by the backscattering contribution function for that band. NO observations near the solstice and at various latitudes are reported.

Mcpeters, R. D.↗

Polarity dependent heating at the phase interface in metal-insulator transitions

We show that in a model of a metal photoexcited by a transient pump pulse resonant with a phonon mode, the absolute dc conductivity may become negative, depending on the interplay between the electronic structure, the phonon frequency, and the pump intensity. The analysis includes the effects of inelastic scattering and thermal relaxation. Results for the time evolution of the negative conductivity state are presented; the associated nonequilibrium physics may persist for long times after the pulse. Furthermore, our findings provide a theoretical justification for previously proposed phenomenology and indicate new routes to the generation and exploration of intrinsically nonequilibrium states.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Early stages of the oxidation of metal surfaces

Photoemission cross sections were calculated for the ZnO4(-6) cluster using the self consistent-chi alpha- scattered wave theory to display the main features of the ultraviolet and X-ray photoemission data from ZnO. A solid model is suggested for an absolute photoemission intensity comparison resulting in chi alpha intensities which are roughly 70% of the experimental values. Together with the experimental data, the calculations allow a complete determination of the electronic structure of a ZnO surface.

Gatos, H. C.↗

Spray characterization with a nonintrusive technique using absolute scattered light

A technique to measure the size and velocity of particles is discussed, and results are presented. In this technique two small laser beams of one color identify the center of a laser beam of a different color. This defines a region of almost uniform intensity where the light scattered by the individual particles can be related to their sizes. A variation of this technique that uses two polarizations of the same color of laser beam is also presented. Results are presented for monodisperse, bimodal, trimodal, and polydisperse sprays produced by the Berglund-Liu droplet generator and a pressure nozzle. Size distributions obtained at three different ranges for the same spray show excellent self-consistency in the overlapping regions. Measurements of a spray of known characteristics exhibit errors in the order of 10 percent.

Hess, C. F.↗

Comparing Machine Learning and Physics-Based Nanoparticle Geometry Determinations Using Far-Field Spectral Properties

Anisotropic metal nanostructures exhibit polarization-dependent light scattering, a property which has been widely studied and exploited to determine orientations of subwavelength structures using far-field microscopy. Here we explore the use of variational autoencoders (VAEs) to determine the geometries of gold nanorods (NRs) such as in-plane orientation and aspect ratio under linearly polarized dark-field illumination in an optical microscope. We enforce a shared latent space to connect two VAEs trained separately with polarized dark-field scattering spectra and electron microscopy images and achieve image prediction (shape, orientation, and size) of Au NRs using only polarized dark-field scattering spectra. We determine the geometrical parameters of orientational angle and aspect ratio quantitatively via both our dual-VAE and physics-based analysis on the input scattering spectra. We show that orientational angle prediction by dual-VAE performs well with only a small (~300 particle) training set, yielding a mean absolute error (MAE) of 14.4° and a concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) of 0.95. This performance is only marginally worse than the physics-based cos(2?) fitting approach between the scattering intensity and the polarizing angle, which achieves MAE of 8.78° and CCC of 0.99. Aspect ratio determination is also comparable for the dual-VAE and physics-based fitting comparison (MAE of 0.21 vs. 0.23 and CCC of 0.53 vs. 0.68). Here, this dual encoder-decoder architecture effectively exploits the structure-property relationships of plasmonic nanostructures to construct a cross-modal machine learning (ML) approach, providing a pathway to employ ML approaches to address other structure-property relationships in materials science.

Dark-field scattering↗

Oil Spill Thickness Determination from L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar

Efficient and effective oil spill response requires accurate information regarding slick location, extent, and thickness to direct remediation activities. Of these three, the most challenging to determine is thickness. Ideally, the needed information would be provided by remote sensing instruments, particularly those operating from space. In this study we consider the capability of L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for identifying oil layer thickness for slicks in open water given the range of oil properties and environmental conditions typical in this setting. The goal is to determine layer thickness with precision equivalent to that of the Bonn Agreement Oil Appearance Code. Here we report preliminary results of an ongoing study to determine whether either relative or absolute slick thickness can be determined from L-band SAR. The study has an experimental component, which uses low noise airborne SAR data acquired over slicks to evaluate the capability to determine relative thickness, i.e., to differentiate sheen from zones of varying thicker oil within a slick. The component of the study to evaluate whether absolute thickness can be determined from SAR uses backscatter simulations within a physics- based model of electromagnetic scattering from slicked and unslicked ocean surfaces accounting for oil properties, meteorological conditions, and sea state. As part of the theoretical component of the study, we evaluate the backscatter sensitivity to oil characteristics to determine which properties most influenced the SAR measurements. These results are used to determine whether the oil-to-water ratio or the oil thickness can be quantified with reasonable accuracy based upon SAR backscatter intensities alone or whether it requires calibration to go from relative to absolute thickness. The ratio of the backscatter contrast between clean and slicked ocean surfaces is shown to be sensitive to variations within slicks that well correlate with the oil layer thickness. Determination of absolute thickness is much more challenging given the variation of oil properties as the oil weathers on the sea surface.

Holt, Benjamin↗

Surveyor observations of lunar horizon-glow

Each of the Surveyor 7, 6, and 5 spacecraft observed a line of light along its western lunar horizon following local sunset. It has been suggested that this horizon-glow (HG) is sunlight, which is forward-scattered by dust grains present in a tenuous cloud formed temporarily just above sharp sunlight/shadow boundaries in the terminator zone. Electrically charged grains could be levitated into the cloud by intense electrostatic fields extending across the sunlight/shadow boundaries. Detailed analysis of the HG absolute luminance, temporal decay, and morphology confirm the cloud model. The levitation mechanism must eject 10,000,000 more particles per unit time into the cloud than could micrometeorites. Electrostatic transport is probably the dominant local transport mechanism of lunar surface fines.

Rennilson, J. J.↗

Suppressing parametric instabilities in direct-drive inertial-confinement-fusion plasmas using broadband laser light

It has long been recognized that broadband laser light has the potential to control parametric instabilities in inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) plasmas. Here, we use results from laser-plasma-interaction simulations to estimate the bandwidth requirements for mitigating the three predominant classes of instabilities in direct-drive ICF implosions: cross-beam energy transfer (CBET), two-plasmon decay (TPD), and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). We find that for frequency-tripled, Nd:glass laser light, a bandwidth of 8.5 THz can significantly increase laser absorption by suppressing CBET, while ∼13 THz is needed to mitigate absolute TPD and SRS on an ignition-scale platform. None of the glass lasers used in contemporary ICF experiments, however, possess a bandwidth greater than 1 THz and reaching larger values requires the use of an auxiliary broadening technique such as optical parametric amplification or stimulated-rotational-Raman scattering. An arguably superior approach is the adoption of an argon-fluoride (ArF) laser as an ICF driver. Besides having a broad bandwidth of ∼10 THz, the ArF laser also possesses the shortest wavelength (193 nm) that can scale to the high energy/power required for ICF—a feature that helps to mitigate parametric instabilities even further. We show that these native properties of ArF laser light are sufficient to eliminate nearly all CBET scattering in a direct-drive target and also raise absolute TPD and SRS thresholds well above those for broadband glass lasers. The effective control of parametric instabilities with broad bandwidth is potentially a “game changer” in ICF because it would enable higher laser intensities and ablation pressures in future target designs.

Bates, J. W. (ORCID:0000000188087240)↗

An analysis of scattered light in low dispersion IUE spectra

A detailed numerical simulation of light scattering from the low-resolution grating in the short wavelength spectrograph of the IUE Observatory was developed, in order to quantitatively analyze the effects of scattering on both continuum and line emission spectra. It is found that: (1) the redistribution of light by grating scattering did not appreciably alter either the shape or the absolute flux level of continuum spectra for A-F stars; (2) late-type stellar continua showed a tendency to flatten when observed in scattered light toward the shorter wavelengths; and (3) the effect of grating scattering on emission lines is to decrease measured line intensities by an increasing percentage toward the shorter wavelengths. The spectra obtained from scattering experiments for solar-type and late type stars are reproduced in graphic form.

Basri, G.↗

Elastic scattering and vibrational excitation of CO2 by 4, 10, 20 and 50 eV electrons

Elastic and vibrationally inelastic differential, integral and momentum-transfer cross sections for electrons scattered by CO2 molecules are reported at 4, 10, 20 and 50 eV impact energies. The elastic cross sections are placed on an absolute scale by means of a relative flow technique. The inelastic cross sections are normalised to the elastic ones by using the inelastic to elastic intensity ratios. Data are reported for up to ten features in the 0.0 to 0.4 eV energy-loss region.

Register, D. F.↗

Surveyor observations of lunar horizon-glow.

Each of the Surveyor 7, 6, and 5 spacecraft observed a line of light along its western lunar horizont following local sunset. This horizon-glow (HG) is sunlight, which is forward scattered by dust grains present in a tenuous cloud formed temporarily (less than 3 hrs duration) just above sharp sunlight/shadow boundaries in the terminator zone. Electrically charged grains are levitated into the cloud by intense electrostatic fields (above 500 volts per centimeter) extending across the sunlight/shadow boundaries. Detailed analysis of the HG absolute luminance, temporal decay, and morphology confirm the cloud-model. This electrostatic mechanism ejects 10 million more particles per unit time into the cloud than could micro-meteorites. Electrostatic transport is probably the dominant local transport mechanism of lunar surface fines.

Rennilson, J. J.↗

Energetic electrons in the Jovian magnetosphere

Results are reported for a detailed analysis of Pioneer 10 data on energetic particle species in the magnetodisk region of Jupiter's magnetosphere. It is shown that the observed counting rates in the magnetodisk (beyond 20 Jupiter radii) were caused primarily by electrons with energies exceeding 0.06 MeV. Absolute omnidirectional electron intensities in the magnetodisk are presented for five integral energy ranges, and a model electron differential energy spectrum is found to fit the intensities throughout most of the encounter trajectory. It is suggested that the observed spectral shape results from losses of high-energy electrons by pitch-angle scattering. Observed equatorial energy spectra are used to compute distribution functions for several values of the first adiabatic invariant, mu. The radial profiles of the functions are found to have maxima at about 50 Jupiter radii inbound as well as at about 90 radii outbound and to diminish strongly for lesser radii. The large decreases in density are shown to require strong losses, and resonant electron whistler-mode pitch-angle scattering is suggested as a loss mechanism.

Baker, D. N.↗

Quantitative spectroscopy for the analysis of GOME data

Accurate analysis of the global ozone monitoring experiment (GOME) data to obtain atmospheric constituents requires reliable, traceable spectroscopic parameters for atmospheric absorption and scattering. Results are summarized for research that includes: the re-determination of Rayleigh scattering cross sections and phase functions for the 200 nm to 1000 nm range; the analysis of solar spectra to obtain a high-resolution reference spectrum with excellent absolute vacuum wavelength calibration; Ring effect cross sections and phase functions determined directly from accurate molecular parameters of N2 and O2; O2 A band line intensities and pressure broadening coefficients; and the analysis of absolute accuracies for ultraviolet and visible absorption cross sections of O3 and other trace species measurable by GOME.

Chance, K.↗