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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 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

Temporal feedback control of high-intensity laser pulses to optimize ultrafast heating of atomic clusters

We describe how active feedback routines can be applied at a limited repetition rate (5 Hz) to optimize high-power (>10 TW) laser interactions with clustered gases. Optimization of x-ray production from an argon cluster jet, using a genetic algorithm, approximately doubled the measured energy through temporal modification of the 150 mJ driving laser pulse. This method achieved an increased radiation yield through exploration of a multi-dimensional parameter space, without requiring detailed a priori knowledge of the complex cluster dynamics. The optimized laser pulses exhibited a slow rising edge to the intensity profile, which enhanced the laser energy coupling into the cluster medium, compared to the optimally compressed FWHM pulse (40 fs). This report suggests that this technique can be more widely utilized for control of intense pulsed secondary radiation from petawatt-class laser systems.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Ecohydrologic processes and soil thickness feedbacks control limestone-weathering rates in a karst landscape

Here, chemical weathering of bedrock plays an essential role in the formation and evolution of Earth's critical zone. Over geologic time, the negative feedback between temperature and chemical weathering rates contributes to the regulation of Earth climate. The challenge of understanding weathering rates and the resulting evolution of critical zone structures lies in complicated interactions and feedbacks among environmental variables, local ecohydrologic processes, and soil thickness, the relative importance of which remains unresolved. We investigate these interactions using a reactive-transport kinetics model, focusing on a low-relief, wetland-dominated karst landscape (Big Cypress National Preserve, South Florida, USA) as a case study. Across a broad range of environmental variables, model simulations highlight primary controls of climate and soil biological respiration, where soil thickness both supplies and limits transport of biologically derived acidity. Consequently, the weathering rate maximum occurs at intermediate soil thickness. The value of the maximum weathering rate and the precise soil thickness at which it occurs depend on several environmental variables, including precipitation regime, soil inundation, vegetation characteristics, and rate of groundwater drainage. Simulations for environmental conditions specific to Big Cypress suggest that wetland depressions in this landscape began to form around beginning of the Holocene with gradual dissolution of limestone bedrock and attendant soil development, highlighting large influence of age-varying soil thickness on weathering rates and consequent landscape development. While climatic variables are often considered most important for chemical weathering, our results indicate that soil thickness and biotic activity are equally important. Weathering rates reflect complex interactions among soil thickness, climate, and local hydrologic and biotic processes, which jointly shape the supply and delivery of chemical reactants, and the resulting trajectories of critical zone and karst landscape development.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Feasibility of a feedback control of atomic self-organization in an optical cavity

Many interesting nonlinear effects are based on the strong interaction of motional degrees of freedom of atoms with an optical cavity field. Among them is the spatial self-organization of atoms in a pattern where the atoms group in either odd or even sites of the cavity-induced optical potential. An experimental observation of this effect can be simplified by using, along with the original cavity-induced feedback, an additional electronic feedback based on the detection of light leaking the cavity and the control of the optical potential for the atoms. Following our previous study, we show that this approach is more efficient from the laser power perspective than the original scheme without the electronic feedback.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Simplified feedback control system for scanning tunneling microscopy

A Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) is one of the most important scanning probe tools available to study and manipulate matter at the nanoscale. In a STM, a tip is scanned on top of a surface with a separation of a few Å. Often, the tunneling current between the tip and the sample is maintained constant by modifying the distance between the tip apex and the surface through a feedback mechanism acting on a piezoelectric transducer. This produces very detailed images of the electronic properties of the surface. The feedback mechanism is nearly always made using a digital processing circuit separate from the user computer. Here, we discuss another approach using a computer and data acquisition through the universal serial bus port. We find that it allows successful ultralow noise studies of surfaces at cryogenic temperatures. We show results on different compounds including a type II Weyl semimetal (WTe2), a quasi-two-dimensional dichalcogenide superconductor (2H–NbSe2), a magnetic Weyl semimetal (Co3Sn2S2), and an iron pnictide superconductor (FeSe).

Martín-Vega, Francisco (ORCID:0000000333177833)↗
DOE OSTI2020

Adaptive model tuning studies for non-invasive diagnostics and feedback control of plasma wakefield acceleration at FACET-II

Beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) achieves the same energy gain in a single meter, for which conventional accelerators require several kilometers, however much work is still required to match the beam quality of conventional accelerators. The PWFA processes to be studied at the FACET-II facility will utilize extremely short (down to a few fs) high energy (10 GeV), high charge (few nC) electron and eventually positron bunches. The PWFA process is extremely sensitive to the detailed longitudinal current profiles of these bunches and it would be of great benefit to have precise measurement and control of these profiles. We present an adaptive model tuning technique for FACET-II to adaptively tune online models based on real time accelerator and beam data to continuously provide a non-invasive diagnostic which predicts the longitudinal phase space (LPS) of extremely short and highly compressed electron beams, which otherwise require destructive X-band transverse deflecting cavity (XTCAV)-based measurements. Based on simulation studies, our method has the potential for: (1). The development of a non-invasive longitudinal phase space diagnostic by adaptively tuning models based on non-invasive measurements such as energy spread spectra which could be recorded at all of the bunch compressors in the facility. (2). Utilize these diagnostic to perform model-independent feedback-based to achieve desired longitudinal phase space distributions. (3). Utilize the model-independent feedback approach to maximize energy gain while minimizing emittance growth and energy gain variance of the PWFA process by tuning accelerator parameters, while monitoring what longitudinal phase space the algorithm has found, information that will be useful for further analytical and simulation studies.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2019

Phenolic compounds and black carbon feedback controls on peat decomposition and carbon accumulation in southeastern peatlands under regimes of seasonal drought, drainage and frequent fire

Peatlands store one-third of soil C in terrestrial ecosystems and have persisted through changing climate over millennia from the arctic to the tropics. Approximately one-third of peat stores are found in subtropical and tropical peatlands (STPs) formed from high-lignin woody biomass. In this project, our questions are: 1) why do these non-sphagnum peatlands (STPs) accumulate C under warmer-drier climates and 2) how might insights coming from studying control mechanisms in STPs improve the management and conservation of the vast C stores in boreal peatlands subject to increasing climate forcing. We hypothesized that a dual control or “latch mechanism” reduces decomposition in shrub/tree communities in STPs due to both (1) higher production of polyphenol and aromatic compounds in STPs than found in northern Sphagnum/Carex communities and (2) the buildup of recalcitrant organic matter produced by light fire-drought-warming-adapted communities, together leading to a reduction in the microbial decay rate of peat. After three-years of intensive biological and chemical analysis in a series of field and microcosm experiments along our north to south bog gradient from Minnesota to Peru, we show how previously unrecognized biotic factors, particularly dynamic interlinked above- and belowground attributes control C sequestration in peatlands. Our key findings include (1) phenolics-bridged plant-microbe symbioses, principally slow-growing microbes dominated in higher phenolic wooded STPs, preserving C in peatlands under climate change, 2) phenolics are the overarching factor controlling the relative abundance of slow-and fast-growing microbes, the slow-growing microbes in STPs metabolize C slowly and are inherently resistant to disturbance, 3) global data analysis shows that soil respiration does not increase exponentially from boreal to tropical peatlands, suggesting that slow-growing microbes may have become dominant in most non-boreal peatlands, 4) peat chemistry analysis from over 2000 samples show that across peatlands both from the arctic to tropics and from high to low elevation peatlands recalcitrance increases as aromatic content increases, and 5) peat affected by low-severity wildfires displays a similar pattern of higher aromatic content. Our findings all demonstrate links between peat recalcitrance and increased content of phenolics and other aromatic compounds in plants. Thus, linked plant–microbe symbiotic traits are a key to understanding ecological resilience and resistance developed in peatlands under disturbance. New trait-based approaches that can better link above-and below ground processes are needed to advance both the accuracy and precision of current abiotic-factor-based Earth system models in predicting future soil C responses to climate-change feedbacks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ground vehicle lane-keeping assistance system via differential flatness output feedback control and algebraic derivative estimation

Vehicle run-off-road is one of the most frequent and fatal traffic accidents in the United States. Various lane-keeping assistance (LKA) systems have been developed in the last decade to help drivers stay on the road. Most of them are built upon linear driver–vehicle–road (DVR) models and treat road curvature as a disturbance. Albeit effective, their control performance would degrade if road curvature varies rapidly. Here, this paper proposes a novel nonlinear DVR model by integrating a driver steering model into vehicle–road kinematics, which explicitly considers road curvature. Particularly, this nonlinear DVR system has been proven to be differentially flat, and a flatness-based LKA system is designed. Additionally, Model-Free Control is introduced to compensate for system modeling errors. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations and diver-in-the-loop experiments validate the proposed control framework and demonstrate the performance enhancement with respect to a representative linear robust LKA system.

42 ENGINEERING↗