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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 559 records · Page 31
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1980

The structure of correlation tensors in homogeneous anisotropic turbulence

The study of turbulence with spatially homogeneous but anisotropic statistical properties has applications in space physics and laboratory plasma physics. The first step in the systematic study of such fluctuations is the elucidation of the kinematic properties of the relevant statistical objects, which are the correlation tensors. The theory of isotropic tensors, developed by Robertson, Chandrasekhar and others, is reviewed and extended to cover the general case of turbulence with a pseudo-vector preferred direction, without assuming mirror reflection invariance. Attention is focused on two point correlation functions and it is shown that the form of the decomposition into proper and pseudo-tensor contributions is restricted by the homogeneity requirement. It is also shown that the vector and pseudo-vector preferred direction cases yield different results. An explicit form of the two point correlation tensor is presented which is appropriate for analyzing interplanetary magnetic fluctuations. A procedure for determining the magnetic helicity from experimental data is presented.

Matthaeus, W. H.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Derivation of phase statistics from the Mueller matrix

Experimental observations show a strong dependence of phase differences of scattering matrix elements on the physical parameters of random media. Here, the statistical behavior of the phase differences is studied for distributed targets. The pdfs of the phase differences are derived from the Mueller matrix of the target. In deriving the density functions, it is assumed that the real and imaginary parts of the copolarized and cross-polarized terms of the scattering matrix are jointly Gaussian and their covariance matrices are found in terms of the Mueller matrix elements. The functional forms of the copolarized and cross-polarized density functions are similar and are obtained independently. It is shown that the density function of the phase difference is completely determined in terms of only two parameters.

Sarabandi, K.↗
DOE OSTI2017

Creating a Face from a DNA Sample

The idea of creating a recognizable face from a sample of DNA is moving closer to reality as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers employ a novel statistical representation of the face and a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to relate facial characteristics to genetic mutations. The reduction in cost of DNA sequencing and genotyping technology is leading to the availability of massive datasets of human genome sequences and human genotypes representing mutational variation among people. These large-scale data provide for the first time the potential to correlate an individual’s specific genetic code with their physical appearance. Using a specialized statistical method for representing the entire 3D shape of faces, ORNL researchers performed a GWAS to discover associations between genetic mutations and aspects of face shape. Data from 3,556 subjects resulted in the discovery of a very large set of statistically significant associations, which is strong evidence for the viability of predicting faces from DNA.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Accelerating quantum optics experiments with statistical learning

Quantum optics experiments, involving the measurement of low-probability photon events, are known to be extremely time-consuming. We present a methodology for accelerating such experiments using physically motivated ansatzes together with simple statistical learning techniques such as Bayesian maximum a posteriori estimation based on few-shot data. We show that it is possible to reconstruct time-dependent data using a small number of detected photons, allowing for fast estimates in under a minute and providing a one-to-two order of magnitude speed-up in data acquisition time. We test our approach using real experimental data to retrieve the second order intensity correlation function, G (2) ($τ$), as a function of time delay τ between detector counts, for thermal light as well as anti-bunched light emitted by a quantum dot driven by periodic laser pulses. The proposed methodology has a wide range of applicability and has the potential to impact the scientific discovery process across a multitude of domains.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2015

Plackett-Burman experimental design to facilitate syntactic foam development

The use of an eight-experiment Plackett–Burman method can assess six experimental variables and eight responses in a polysiloxane-glass microsphere syntactic foam. The approach aims to decrease the time required to develop a tunable polymer composite by identifying a reduced set of variables and responses suitable for future predictive modeling. The statistical design assesses the main effects of mixing process parameters, polymer matrix composition, microsphere density and volume loading, and the blending of two grades of microspheres, using a dummy factor in statistical calculations. Responses cover rheological, physical, thermal, and mechanical properties. The cure accelerator content of the polymer matrix and the volume loading of the microspheres have the largest effects on foam properties. These factors are the most suitable for controlling the gel point of the curing foam, and the density of the cured foam. The mixing parameters introduce widespread variability and therefore should be fixed at effective levels during follow-up testing. Some responses may require greater contrast in microsphere-related factors. As a result, compared to other possible statistical approaches, the run economy of the Plackett–Burman method makes it a valuable tool for rapidly characterizing new foams.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

The CMS data analysis school experience

The CMS Data Analysis School is an official event organized by the CMS Collaboration to teach students and post-docs how to perform a physics analysis. The school is coordinated by the CMS schools committee and was first implemented at the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab in 2010. As part of the training, there are a number of “short” exercises on physics object reconstruction and identification, Monte Carlo simulation, and statistical analysis, which are followed by “long” exercises based on physics analyses. Some of the long exercises go beyond the current state of the art of the corresponding CMS analyses. This paper describes the goals of the school, the preparations for a school, the structure of the training, and student satisfaction with the experience as measured by surveys.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

SDSS-IV MaNGA: the physical origin of off-galaxy H α blobs in the local Universe

ABSTRACT H α blobs are off-galaxy emission-line regions with weak or no optical counterparts. They are mostly visible in H α line, appearing as concentrated blobs. Such unusual objects have been rarely observed and studied, and their physical origin is still unclear. We have identified 13 H α blobs in the public data of MaNGA survey, by visually inspecting both the optical images and the spatially resolved maps of H α line for ∼4600 galaxy systems. Among the 13 H α blobs, 2 were reported in previously MaNGA-based studies and 11 are newly discovered. This sample, though still small in size, is by far the largest sample with both deep imaging and integral field spectroscopy. Therefore, for the first time we are able to perform statistical studies to investigate the physical origin of H α blobs. We examine the physical properties of these H α blobs and their associated galaxies, including their morphology, environments, gas-phase metallicities, kinematics of ionized gas, and ionizing sources. We find that the H α blobs in our sample can be broadly divided into two groups. One is associated with interacting/merging galaxy systems, of which the ionization is dominated by shocks or diffuse ionized gas. It is likely that these H α blobs used to be part of their nearby galaxies, but were stripped away at some point due to tidal interactions. The other group is found in gas-rich systems, appearing as low-metallicity star-forming regions that are visually detached from the main galaxy. These H α blobs could be associated with faint discs, spiral arms, or dwarf galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Theory and modeling of molecular modes in the NMR relaxation of fluids

Traditional theories of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) autocorrelation function for intra-molecular dipole pairs assume a single-exponential decay, yet the calculated autocorrelation of realistic systems displays a rich, multi-exponential behavior, resulting in anomalous NMR relaxation dispersion (i.e., frequency dependence). We develop an approach to model and interpret the multi-exponential intra-molecular autocorrelation using simple, physical models within a rigorous statistical mechanical development that encompasses both rotational diffusion and translational diffusion in the same framework. Here, we recast the problem of evaluating the autocorrelation in terms of averaging over a diffusion propagator whose evolution is described by a Fokker–Planck equation. The time-independent part admits an eigenfunction expansion, allowing us to write the propagator as a sum over modes. Each mode has a spatial part that depends on the specified eigenfunction and a temporal part that depends on the corresponding eigenvalue (i.e., correlation time) with a simple, exponential decay. The spatial part is a probability distribution of the dipole pair, analogous to the stationary states of a quantum harmonic oscillator. Drawing inspiration from the idea of inherent structures in liquids, we interpret each of the spatial contributions as a specific molecular mode. These modes can be used to model and predict the NMR dipole–dipole relaxation dispersion of fluids by incorporating phenomena on the molecular level. We validate our statistical mechanical description of the distribution in molecular modes with molecular dynamics simulations interpreted without any relaxation models or adjustable parameters: the most important poles in the Padé–Laplace transform of the simulated autocorrelation agree with the eigenvalues predicted by the theory

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

An ALMA survey of sub-millimeter galaxies in the extended Chandra deep field south: Physical properties derived from ultraviolet-to-radio modeling

The ALESS survey has followed up on a sample of 122 sub-millimeter sources in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South at 870 μm with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), allowing us to pinpoint the positions of sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs) to ∼0.3 arcsec and to find their precise counterparts at different wavelengths. This enabled the first compilation of the multi-wavelength spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of a statistically reliable survey of SMGs. In this paper, we present a new calibration of the magphys SED modeling code that is optimized to fit these ultraviolet-to-radio SEDs of z>1 star-forming galaxies using an energy balance technique to connect the emission from stellar populations, dust attenuation, and dust emission in a physically consistent way. We derive statistically and physically robust estimates of the photometric redshifts and physical parameters (such as stellar masses, dust attenuation, star formation rates (SFRs), and dust masses) for the ALESS SMGs. We find that the ALESS SMGs have median stellar mass M{sub ∗}=8.9±0.1×10{sup 10} M{sub ⊙}, median SFR = 280±70 M{sub ⊙} yr{sup −1}, median overall V-band dust attenuation A{sub V}=1.9±0.2 mag, median dust mass M{sub dust}=(5.6±1.0)×10{sup 8} M{sub ⊙}, and median average dust temperature T{sub dust}≃40 K. We find that the average intrinsic SED of the ALESS SMGs resembles that of local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in the infrared range, but the stellar emission of our average SMG is brighter and bluer, indicating lower dust attenuation, possibly because they are more extended. We explore how the average SEDs vary with different parameters (redshift, sub-millimeter flux, dust attenuation, and total infrared luminosity), and we provide a new set of SMG templates that can be used to interpret other SMG observations. To put the ALESS SMGs into context, we compare their stellar masses and SFRs with those of less actively star-forming galaxies at the same redshifts. We find that at z≃2, about half of the SMGs lie above the star-forming main sequence (with SFRs three times larger than normal galaxies of the same stellar mass), while half are consistent with being at the high-mass end of the main sequence. At higher redshifts (z≃3.5), the SMGs tend to have higher SFRs and stellar masses, but the fraction of SMGs that lie significantly above the main sequence decreases to less than a third.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Recovering Interstellar Gas Properties with Hi Spectral Lines: A Comparison between Synthetic Spectra and 21-SPONGE

We analyze synthetic neutral hydrogen (H i) absorption and emission spectral lines from a high-resolution, three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation to quantify how well observational methods recover the physical properties of interstellar gas. We present a new method for uniformly decomposing H i spectral lines and estimating the properties of associated gas using the Autonomous Gaussian Decomposition (AGD) algorithm. We find that H i spectral lines recover physical structures in the simulation with excellent completeness at high Galactic latitude, and this completeness declines with decreasing latitude due to strong velocity-blending of spectral lines. The temperature and column density inferred from our decomposition and radiative transfer method agree with the simulated values within a factor of <2 for the majority of gas structures. We next compare synthetic spectra with observations from the 21-SPONGE survey at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array using AGD. We find more components per line of sight in 21-SPONGE than in synthetic spectra, which reflects insufficient simulated gas scale heights and the limitations of local box simulations. In addition, we find a significant population of low-optical depth, broad absorption components in the synthetic data which are not seen in 21-SPONGE. This population is not obvious in integrated or per-channel diagnostics, and reflects the benefit of studying velocity-resolved components. The discrepant components correspond to the highest spin temperatures (1000<T{sub s}<4000 K), which are not seen in 21-SPONGE despite sufficient observational sensitivity. We demonstrate that our analysis method is a powerful tool for diagnosing neutral interstellar medium conditions, and future work is needed to improve observational statistics and implementation of simulated physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Anharmonic densities of states: A general dynamics-based solution

Density of states is a fundamental physical characteristic that lies at the foundation of statistical mechanics and theoretical constructs that derive from them (e.g., kinetic rate theories, phase diagrams, and others). Even though most real physical systems are anharmonic, the vibrational density of states is customarily treated within the harmonic approximation, or with some partial, often limited, account for anharmonicity. The reason for this is that the problem of anharmonic densities of states stubbornly resisted a general and exact, yet convenient and straightforward in applications, solution. Here we formulate such a solution within both classical and quantum mechanics. It is based on actual dynamical behavior of systems as a function of energy and as observed, or monitored, on a chosen time scale, short or long. As a consequence, the resulting anharmonic densities of states are fully dynamically informed and, in general, time-dependent. As such, they lay the ground for formulation of new statistical mechanical frameworks that incorporate time and are ergodic, by construction, with respect to actual dynamical behavior of systems.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

Additive effects in high-voltage layered-oxide cells: A statistics of mixtures approach

Li 1.03 (Ni 0.5 Mn 0.3 Co 0.2 ) 0.97 O 2 (NMC)-based coin cells containing the electrolyte additives vinylene carbonate (VC) and tris(trimethylsilyl)phosphite (TMSPi) in the range of 0-2 wt% were cycled between 3.0 and 4.4 V. The changes in capacity at rates of C/10 and C/1 and resistance at 60% state of charge were found to follow linear-with-time kinetic rate laws. Further, the C/10 capacity and resistance data were amenable to modeling by a statistics of mixtures approach. Applying physical meaning to the terms in the empirical models indicated that the interactions between the electrolyte and additives were not simple. For example, there were strong, synergistic interactions between VC and TMSPi affecting C/10 capacity loss, as expected, but there were other, more subtle interactions between the electrolyte components. In conclusion, the interactions between these components controlled the C/10 capacity decline and resistance increase.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Mean-field control for efficient mixing of energy loads

In this work, we pose an engineering challenge of controlling an ensemble of energy devices via coordinated, implementation-light, and randomized on/off switching as a problem in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. We show that mean-field control with nonlinear feedback on the cumulative consumption, assumed available to the aggregator via direct physical measurements of the energy flow, allows the ensemble to recover from its use in the demand response regime, i.e., transition to a statistical steady state, significantly faster than in the case of the fixed feedback. Moreover when the nonlinearity is sufficiently strong, one observes the phenomenon of “super-relaxation,” where the total instantaneous energy consumption of the ensemble transitions to the steady state much faster than the underlying probability distribution of the devices over their state space, while also leaving almost no devices outside of the comfort zone.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Optical fibres and fibre tapers with an array of Bragg gratings

The properties of optical fibres with an array of fibre Bragg gratings written directly during the fibre drawing are considered. Such optical fibres offer new possibilities for producing new types of active and passive fibre elements due to the enhanced back-reflected signal of the so-called artificial Rayleigh scattering, and are of interest for modelling physical phenomena associated with the statistics of reflecting centres in optical fibres, such as, e.g., localisation of photons. We studied fibres with an array of Bragg gratings written in photosensitive fibres, ordinary single-mode optical fibre of the SMF-28 type and in fibre with a core doped with erbium ions. To control the spectrum width of the reflected signal, we used chirped phase masks, as well as writing arrays of gratings in tapered optical fibres. (paper)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Efficient high-fidelity TRISO statistical failure analysis using Bison: Applications to AGR-2 irradiation testing

The ability of tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel to contain fission products is largely dictated by the quality of the manufacturing process, since most of the fission product release is expected to occur due to coating layer failure in a small number of particles containing defects. The Bison fuel performance code has capabilities to predict failure in individual particles, accounting for the presence of defects, and to apply statistical analysis methods to compute the probability of failure in a set of fuel particles. Bison has recently undergone significant development both to improve its physical representations of fuel particle behavior and to improve the efficiency of its statistical failure calculations. Physical model improvements include new capabilities to account for the pressure generated by fission gases on inner pyrolytic carbon (IPyC) crack surfaces and to use local material coordinate orientation to accurately incorporate the anisotropy in the material properties in aspherical particles. To improve statistical modeling efficiency, a direct integration approach which involves directly integrating the failure probability function associated with statistically varying parameters has been developed. The direct integration approach is much more efficient than the Monte Carlo (MC) schemes commonly employed, and allows Bison to directly run high-dimensional fuel performance models, which improves the accuracy of failure probability calculations. Finally, a set of benchmark problems is considered here to compare the MC and direct integration approaches, and a statistical failure analysis of compacts in the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR)-2 experiments is performed using the direct integration approach.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Impact of baryonic physics on intrinsic alignments

We explore the effects of specific assumptions in the subgrid models of star formation and stellar and AGN feedback on intrinsic alignments of galaxies in cosmological simulations of "MassiveBlack-II" family. Using smaller volume simulations, we explored the parameter space of the subgrid star formation and feedback model and found remarkable robustness of the observable statistical measures to the details of subgrid physics. The one observational probe most sensitive to modeling details is the distribution of misalignment angles. We hypothesize that the amount of angular momentum carried away by the galactic wind is the primary physical quantity that controls the orientation of the stellar distribution. Finally, our results are also consistent with a similar study by the EAGLE simulation team.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Stochastic nature of magnetic processes studied by full-field soft X-ray microscopy

In nanomagnetism, one of the crucial scientific questions is whether magnetic behaviors are deterministic or stochastic on a nanoscale. Apart from the exciting physical issue, this question is also of paramount highest relevance for using magnetic materials in a wealth of technological applications such as magnetic storage and sensor devices. In the past, the research on the stochasticity of a magnetic process has been mainly done by macroscopic measurements, which only offer ensemble-averaged information. To give more accurate answer for the question and to fully understand related underlying physics, the direct observation of statistical behaviors in magnetic structures and magnetic phenomena utilizing advanced characterization techniques is highly required. One of the ideal tools for such study is a full-field soft X-ray microscope since it enables imaging of magnetic structures on the large field of view within a few seconds. Here in this paper, we review the stochastic behaviors of various magnetic processes including magnetization reversal process in thin films, magnetic domain wall motions in nanowires, and magnetic vortex formations in nanodisks studied by full-field soft X-ray microscopy. The origin triggering the stochastic nature witnessed in each magnetic process and the way to control the intrinsic nature are also discussed.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗