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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 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Unified superfluid dark sector

We present a novel theory of a unified dark sector, where late-time cosmic acceleration emerges from the dark matter superfluid framework. The system is described by a superfluid mixture consisting of two distinguishable states with a small energy gap, such as the ground state and an excited state of dark matter. Given their contact in the superfluid, interaction between those states can happen, converting one state into the other. This long range interaction within the superfluid couples the two superfluid phonon species through a cosine potential motivated by Josephson/Rabi interactions. As a consequence of this potential, a new dynamics of late-time accelerated expansion emerges in this system, without the need of dark energy, coming from a universe containing only this two-state DM superfluid. Because the superfluid species are non-relativistic, their sound speeds remain suitably small throughout the evolution. We calculate the expansion history and growth of linear perturbations, and compare the results to ΛCDM cosmology. For the fiducial parameters studied here, the predicted expansion and growth function are close to those of ΛCDM, but the difference in the predicted growth rate is significant at late times. The present theory nicely complements the recent proposal of dark matter superfluidity to explain the empirical success of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) on galactic scales, thus offering a unified framework for dark matter, dark energy, and MOND phenomenology.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Final Technical Report for Years 1-4 of the Early Career Research Project "Viscosity and equation of state of hot and dense QCD matter" - ARRA portion

The Section below summarizes research activities and achievements during the first four years of the PI’s Early Career Research Project (ECRP). Two main areas have been advanced: i) radiative 3 ↔ 2 radiative transport, via development of a new computer code MPC/Grid that solves the Boltzmann transport equation in full 6+1D (3X+3V+time) on both single-CPU and parallel computers; ii) development of a self-consistent framework to convert viscous fluids to particles, and application of this framework to relativistic heavy-ion collisions, in particular, determination of the shear viscosity. Year 5 of the ECRP is under a separate award number, and therefore it has its own report document ’Final Technical Report for Year 5 of the Early Career Research Project “Viscosity and equation of state of hot and dense QCDmatter”’ (award DE-SC0008028). The PI’s group was also part of the DOE JET Topical Collaboration, a multi-institution project that overlapped in time significantly with the ECRP. Purdue achievements as part of the JET Topical Collaboration are in a separate report “Final Technical Report summarizing Purdue research activities as part of the DOE JET Topical Collaboration” (award DE-SC0004077).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Far-field probing of leaky topological states in all-dielectric metasurfaces

Topological phase transitions in condensed matter systems give rise to exotic states of matter such as topological insulators, superconductors, and superfluids. Photonic topological systems open a whole new realm of research and technological opportunities, exhibiting a number of important distinctions from their condensed matter counterparts. Photonic modes can leak into free space, which makes it possible to probe topological photonic phases by spectroscopic means via Fano resonances. Based on this idea, we develop a technique to retrieve the topological properties of all-dielectric metasurfaces from the measured far-field scattering characteristics. Collected angle-resolved spectra provide the momentum-dependent frequencies and lifetimes of the photonic modes that enable the retrieval of the effective Hamiltonian and extraction of the topological invariant. Our results demonstrate how the topological states of open non-Hermitian systems can be explored via far-field measurements, thus paving a way to the design of metasurfaces with unique scattering characteristics controlled via topological effects.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2012

Effect of bulk Lorentz violation on anisotropic brane cosmologies

The effect of Lorentz invariance violation in cosmology has attracted a considerable amount of attention. By using a dynamical vector field assumed to point in the bulk direction, with Lorentz invariance holding on the brane, we extend the notation of Lorentz violation in four dimensions Jacobson to a five-dimensional brane-world. We obtain the general solution of the field equations in an exact parametric form for Bianchi type I space-time, with perfect fluid as a matter source. We show that the brane universe evolves from an isotropic/anisotropic state to an isotropic de Sitter inflationary phase at late time. The early time behavior of anisotropic brane universe is largely dependent on the Lorentz violating parameters β{sub i},i = 1,2,3 and the equation of state of the matter, while its late time behavior is independent of these parameters.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Electronic structure and relaxation dynamics in a superconducting topological material

Topological superconductors host new states of quantum matter which show a pairing gap in the bulk and gapless surface states providing a platform to realize Majorana fermions. Recently, alkaline-earth metal Sr intercalated Bi2Se3 has been reported to show superconductivity with a Tc~3K and a large shielding fraction. Here we report systematic normal state electronic structure studies of Sr0.06Bi2Se3 (Tc~2.5K) by performing photoemission spectroscopy. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we observe a quantum well confined two-dimensional (2D) state coexisting with a topological surface state in Sr0.06Bi2Se3. Furthermore, our time-resolved ARPES reveals the relaxation dynamics showing different decay mechanism between the excited topological surface states and the two-dimensional states. Our experimental observation is understood by considering the intra-band scattering for topological surface states and an additional electron phonon scattering for the 2D states, which is responsible for the superconductivity. Our first-principles calculations agree with the more effective scattering and a shorter lifetime of the 2D states. In conclusion, our results will be helpful in understanding low temperature superconducting states of these topological materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Impact of dark matter on tidal signatures in neutron star mergers with the Einstein Telescope

If dark matter (DM) accumulates inside neutron stars (NS), it changes their internal structure and causes a shift of the tidal deformability from the value predicted by the dense-matter equation of state (EOS). In principle, this shift could be observable in the gravitational-wave (GW) signal of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. We investigate the effect of fermionic, noninteracting DM when observing a large number of GW events from DM-admixed BNSs with the precision of the proposed Einstein telescope (ET). Specifically, we study the impact on the recovery of the baryonic EOS and whether DM properties can be constrained. For this purpose, we create event catalogs of BNS mock events with DM fraction up to 1%, from which we reconstruct the posterior uncertainties with the Fisher matrix approach. Using this data, we perform joint Bayesian inference on the baryonic EOS, DM particle mass, and DM particle fraction in each event. Here, our results reveal that when falsely ignoring DM effects, the EOS posterior is biased toward softer EOSs, though the offset is rather small. Further, we find that within our assumptions of our DM model and population, ET will likely not be able to test the presence of DM in BNSs, even when combining many events and adding Cosmic Explorer (CE) to the next-generation detector network. Likewise, the potential constraints on the DM particle mass will remain weak because of degeneracies with the fraction and EOS.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Can tonne-scale direct detection experiments discover nuclear dark matter?

Models of nuclear dark matter propose that the dark sector contains large composite states consisting of dark nucleons in analogy to Standard Model nuclei. We examine the direct detection phenomenology of a particular class of nuclear dark matter model at the current generation of tonne-scale liquid noble experiments, in particular DEAP-3600 and XENON1T. In our chosen nuclear dark matter scenario distinctive features arise in the recoil energy spectra due to the non-point-like nature of the composite dark matter state. We calculate the number of events required to distinguish these spectra from those of a standard point-like WIMP state with a decaying exponential recoil spectrum. In the most favourable regions of nuclear dark matter parameter space, we find that a few tens of events are needed to distinguish nuclear dark matter from WIMPs at the 3 σ level in a single experiment. Given the total exposure time of DEAP-3600 and XENON1T we find that at best a 2 σ distinction is possible by these experiments individually, while 3 σ sensitivity is reached for a range of parameters by the combination of the two experiments. We show that future upgrades of these experiments have potential to distinguish a large range of nuclear dark matter models from that of a WIMP at greater than 3 σ .

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Condensate dark matter stars

We investigate the structure and stability properties of compact astrophysical objects that may be formed from the Bose-Einstein condensation of dark matter. Once the critical temperature of a boson gas is less than the critical temperature, a Bose-Einstein Condensation process can always take place during the cosmic history of the universe. Therefore we model the dark matter inside the star as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In the condensate dark matter star model, the dark matter equation of state can be described by a polytropic equation of state, with polytropic index equal to one. We derive the basic general relativistic equations describing the equilibrium structure of the condensate dark matter star with spherically symmetric static geometry. The structure equations of the condensate dark matter stars are studied numerically. The critical mass and radius of the dark matter star are given by M{sub crit} ≈ 2(l{sub a}/1fm){sup 1/2}(m{sub χ}/1 GeV){sup −3/2}M{sub s}un and R{sub crit} ≈ 1.1 × 10{sup 6}(l{sub a}/1 fm){sup 1/2}(m{sub χ}/1 GeV){sup −3/2} cm respectively, where l{sub a} and m{sub χ} are the scattering length and the mass of dark matter particle, respectively.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2018

Organic Matter Preserved in 3-Billion-Year-Old Mudstones at Gale Crater, Mars

Establishing the presence and state of organic matter, including its possible biosignatures, in martian materials has been an elusive quest, despite limited reports of the existence of organic matter on Mars. We report the in situ detection of organic matter preserved in lacustrine mudstones at the base of the ~3.5-billion-year-old Murray formation at Pahrump Hills, Gale crater, by the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite onboard the Curiosity rover. Diverse pyrolysis products, including thiophenic, aromatic, and aliphatic compounds released at high temperatures (500° to 820°C), were directly detected by evolved gas analysis. Thiophenes were also observed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Their presence suggests that sulfurization aided organic matter preservation. At least 50 nanomoles of organic carbon persists, probably as macromolecules containing 5% carbon as organic sulfur molecules.

Eigenbrode, Jennifer L.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Simulation of a strong steady-state plasma shock in a warm dense matter regime

The structure of collisional plasma shocks has been subject to an extensive, multi-decadal investigation—in the hydrodynamic, hybrid kinetic ion/electron fluid, and fully kinetic ion/electron limits. Despite this thoroughness, all of these studies apply exclusively to classical, weakly coupled plasmas. Here, we report the first results for a planar hydrodynamic simulation of a strong, steady-state shock in a subspace of the warm dense matter (WDM) regime. Specifically, we consider a plasma of fully degenerate electrons with moderate-to-strongly coupled ions. Since the WDM ion and electron transport coefficients and equation of state differ markedly from their non-degenerate, weak-coupling equivalents, we find that the structure of a WDM plasma shock notably deviates from the ideal plasma picture.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling Strong Light-Matter Coupling in Correlated Systems: State-Averaged Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics Complete Active Space Self-Consistent Field Theory

The description of strongly correlated systems interacting with quantized cavity modes poses significant theoretical challenges due to the combinatorial scaling of electronic and photonic degrees of freedom. Recent advances addressing this complexity include cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) generalizations of complete active space configuration interaction and density matrix renormalization group methods. In this work, we introduce a QED extension of state-averaged complete active space self-consistent field theory, which incorporates cavity-induced correlations through a second-order orbital optimization framework with robust convergence properties. The method is implemented using both photon number state and coherent state representations, with the latter showing robust origin invariance in the energies regardless of the completeness of the photonic Fock space. The implementation enables symmetry-free orbital relaxations to account for photon-mediated symmetry breaking in polaritonic systems. Numerical validation on lithium hydride, hydroxide anion, and magnesium hydride cation demonstrates that this method achieves significantly improved accuracy in modeling ground-state and polariton potential energy surfaces compared to QED-CASCI in a fixed orbital basis. In these studies, we reach sub-kcal/mol accuracy in potential energy surface in much smaller active spaces than are required for QED-CASCI. This advancement provides a more robust approach for studying cavity-altered chemical landscapes for ground and exited strongly coupled systems.

CASSCF↗
DOE OSTI2017

Simultaneous Constraints on the Mass and Radius of Aql X–1 from Quiescence and X-Ray Burst Observations

The measurement of neutron star mass and radius is one of the most direct ways to distinguish between various dense matter equations of state. The mass and radius of accreting neutron stars hosted in low-mass X-ray binaries can be constrained by several methods, including photospheric radius expansion from type I X-ray bursts and from quiescent spectra. In this paper, we apply for the first time these two methods simultaneously to constrain the mass and radius of Aql X–1. The quiescent spectra from Chandra and XMM-Newton , and photospheric radius expansion bursts from RXTE are used. The determination of the mass and radius of Aql X–1 is also used to verify the consistency between the two methods and to narrow down the uncertainties of the neutron star mass and radius. It is found that the distance to Aql X–1 should be in the range of 4.0–5.75 kpc, based on the overlapping confidence regions between photospheric radius expansion burst and quiescent spectra methods. In addition, we show that the mass and radius determined for the compact star in Aql X–1 are compatible with strange star equations of state and conventional neutron star models.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1993

A quasi-steady state cosmological model with creation of matter

A universe is envisioned in which there was a major creation episode when the mean universal density was about 10 to the -27 g/cu cm. Explicit equations are given for the creation of matter; in a cosmological approximation, these equations lead to expressions for the time-dependence of the cosmological scale factor S(t), but do not entail, as big bang cosmology does, that S(t) tend to zero at some finite time t. The equations therefore possess a universality that is absent from big bang cosmology. Creation occurs when certain conservation equations involving the gradient of a scalar field C(i) are satisfied.

Hoyle, F.↗