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Results for “Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)”

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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41 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Velocity-space Origins of the Pressure–Strain Interaction in Multipopulation Distributions and Its Application to Magnetic Reconnection

A forefront research question is how energy evolves in weakly collisional plasmas for which departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) are significant. The standard approach is studying the terms in the non-LTE energy evolution equation derived by taking the second moment of the Boltzmann equation, but the resultant fluid metrics do not retain information about which particles at which velocities drive energy evolution. A widely studied channel for internal energy density evolution is the pressure–strain interaction. Here, we employ the kinetic pressure–strain, a phase-space diagnostic whose velocity-space integral recovers the pressure–strain interaction to disambiguate the contributions to the pressure–strain interaction from disparate particle populations in composite phase-space densities. We develop phase-space analogs of the pressure–strain interaction decompositions to provide the phase-space origins of normal versus sheared flow. We introduce the “kinetic strain-rate” tensor, the phase-space analog of the strain-rate tensor, which we argue is needed to interpret the phase-space origins of the pressure–strain interaction. To demonstrate the utility of these quantities, we investigate them for composite electron distributions near the electron diffusion region in two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of antiparallel symmetric magnetic reconnection. We find that the phase-space-based diagnostics isolate the roles of distinct populations. These results contribute to a growing body of work providing new methods for quantifying phase-space energy evolution for a broad array of processes, from magnetic reconnection to collisionless shocks and turbulence, opening new pathways for answering longstanding problems of particle energization in weakly collisional plasmas.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state

The past two decades have witnessed tremendous progress in understanding the properties of neutron stars, their maximum mass and radii, and the properties of the dense matter in their cores, made possible by electromagnetic observations of neutron stars and the detection of gravitational waves from their mergers. These observations have provided novel constraints on neutron-star structure that are intimately related to the properties of dense neutron-rich matter described by the nuclear equation of state. Nevertheless, constraining the equation of state over the wide range of densities probed by astrophysical observations is still challenging, as the physics involved is broad and the system spans many orders of magnitude in density. Here, theoretical approaches to calculate and model the neutron-star equation of state in various regimes of densities are reviewed, and the related consequent properties of neutron stars are discussed. How the equation of state at low densities can be calculated from nuclear interactions that are constrained and benchmarked by nuclear experiments is described. Neutron-star observations, with a particular emphasis on information provided by gravitational-wave signals and electromagnetic observations, are reviewed. Finally, future challenges and opportunities in the field are discussed.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Energy Evolution from the Chromosphere to the Heliosphere in the 2021 October 28 Solar Eruption

We perform a detailed study of the energetics for a well-observed solar eruption and flare that occurred on 2021 October 28. This event included a GOES class X1.0 flare, a global extreme-UV (EUV) wave, and a coronal mass ejection (CME) that reached speeds of >2000 km s −1 . The event was observed from a variety of spacecraft in NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory, including multiple missions near Earth, STEREO-A off the Sun-Earth line, and Solar Orbiter, near the Sun-Earth line at about 0.8 au. Using remote sensing, in situ observations, and in some cases scaling laws based on previous observations, we characterize the following quantities: free magnetic energy, energy in nonthermal electrons, energy in nonthermal ions, bolometric energy, energy deposited in the chromosphere, thermal energy radiated in the flare loops, energy dissipated by the EUV wave, CME kinetic and gravitational potential energy, CME energy flux in the heliosphere, and the energy partition in the CME shock. We find that the total energy released during the event is consistent with estimates of the pre-event stored magnetic energy, and the CME kinetic + potential energy dominates the energy partition.

solar coronal mass ejection shocks↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impact of external screening on the valence and core level photoelectron spectra of monolayer W⁢S 2

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) represent an emerging class of layered materials with applications in microelectronics, optoelectronics, photonics, and catalysis. The confinement of charge carriers within the highly anisotropic, quasi-two-dimensional geometry of one-layer (1L) TMDs leads to reduced, variable dielectric screening, giving rise to a quasiparticle band gap that is highly susceptible to the surrounding dielectric environment. Here, exploiting the contrasting external dielectric environments of gold-supported and suspended 1L W⁢S 2 , we show how the electronic states of W⁢S 2 under the effective and ineffective screening environments align at a junction made within the same sheet of material. Photoelectron spectra point to the close alignment of the charge neutrality levels of W⁢S 2 in both environments, and the breakdown of rigid shifts between the valence states and core levels with the core levels shifting more than twice as much as the valence states. Furthermore, the effectively screened W⁢S 2 exhibits a valence state with the photoemission linewidth twice as large as the ineffectively screened suspended W⁢S 2 , presumably originated from the locally varying W⁢S 2 -Au distance and substrate disorders. Collectively, these findings provide key insights into the electronic behavior of W⁢S 2 and its photoemission process with the electronic states renormalized according to the external screening environments.

Dielectric properties↗
DOE OSTI2026

Trivalent titanium in high-titanium lunar ilmenite

Lunar mare basalts are often rich in titanium, hosted predominantly within the mineral ilmenite (Fe 2+ Ti 4+ O 3 ). Here, we examine ilmenite in a ~3.8 billion-year-old mare basalt (Apollo rock 75035) using high-resolution electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy. A key finding is that 75035 ilmenite is itself enriched in Ti, beyond the end member of the conventional solid solution series. Using energy loss near-edge spectroscopy, we determine that the excess Ti is trivalent, with Ti 3+ accounting for 13% of the total Ti content. This discovery confirms the presence of trivalent Ti in lunar ilmenite, long hypothesized based on the Moon’s reducing environment. Accounting for the change in implied stoichiometry, a review of literature data suggests that Ti 3+ may be present in ilmenite across a wide range of lunar samples. We extrapolate known relationships from the literature to connect Ti 3+ to redox conditions, estimating the oxygen fugacity during crystallization of 75035 to be below the iron-wüstite buffer, ΔIW≤ − 1.6. Further quantifying the relationship between Ti valence state and oxygen fugacity would allow Ti 3+ -bearing ilmenite to serve as an oxybarometer able to access the reducing conditions found on many planetary bodies.

mineralogy↗