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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

JLab eta Factory Experiment in Hall D

The new experiment, JLab Eta Factory (JEF), in the experimental Hall-D at Jefferson Lab will extend the physics potential of the GlueX beyond the main spectroscopy program and study rare decays of eta mesons. Among various physics topics, the experiment will focus on decays of eta mesons to the eta -> pi0 gamma gamma final state. This decay mode provides an important information for higher-order calculations in chiral perturbation theory. The final state is ideal for the search of the leptophobic dark B-boson in the reactions eta -> B gamma, B -> pi0 gamma; and the scaler dark matter mediator S in the channel eta -> pi0 S, S -> gamma gamma. The experiment requires to upgrade the inner part of the forward lead glass calorimeter of the GlueX detector with high-granularity, high-resolution lead tungstate PbWO4 scintillating crystals. The detector will be ready to take data in 2023. I will give an overview of the JEF project.

Somov, Alexander↗

Asthma and Particulate Matter Pollution: Insights from Health Survey and Air Quality Monitoring in the Buzzard Point, Washington, DC Neighborhood

Air pollution, climate change, and other environmental factors contribute to increasing asthma in manycities, including Washington, DC. This work provides a case study of how community input, neighborhood-level health surveys, and air quality monitoring can inform the understanding of asthma and air pollution.A partnership between residents, concerned citizens, scientists, and educators has been working for envi-ronmental health in a DC neighborhood located on a major roadway, next to concrete batch plants andclose to several construction projects. A 2016 Community Health and Safety Study by the DC Departmentof Health, Office of Health Equity, recognized this particular neighborhood as more vulnerable to healthimpacts from recent construction in the area, compared with the surrounding areas, due to lower averageincome and higher percentage of seniors and children. This work presents neighborhood health surveysand air quality monitoring data at a more granular, local level than available from DC governmentagencies. The health surveys documented residents’ experiences around air pollution, asthma,and other health concerns. A key finding was evidence that asthma might be undercounted in thisneighborhood; among residents who did not indicate a diagnosis of asthma, many discussed havingsymptoms that could reflect asthma. Air quality monitoring (particulate matter [PM]) did not indicate thatfederal air quality standards have been violated. Real-time PM data, however,illustrated how current PMstandards, such as 1- and 24-hour averages, may fail to capture shorter duration high PM events that areconsistent with resident concerns.

Shizuka Hsieh↗

Research challenges and directions in HVAC fault prevalence

This study provides a review of the current state of knowledge, gaps, and potential value in research on the prevalence of faults in commercial buildings. Two separate efforts were made in this study: (1) we performed a literature review to determine the extent of currently available fault prevalence data for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, and (2) we conducted dozens of interviews with subject matter experts and stakeholders to determine the HVAC fault data that would be of greatest value. Through the literature review and interviews, we discovered unmet needs for empirical data on the prevalence of faults at the desired level of granularity, consistency, and scale; this lack of data leads us to recommend future work studying commercial buildings’ HVAC fault prevalence, with robust fault taxonomy and a variety of meaningful fault prevalence metrics.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Chapter 3: Suspensions, foams, emulsions, colloids, and granular materials--self-healing, tuning gravity, and life support for exploration

At the suggestion of NASA’s Physical Science Research Program in the Space Life and Physical Science Research and Application Division, Paul Chaikin, Noel Clark, and Sidney Nagel organized a focus session and workshop for the 2020 American Physical Society (APS) March meeting under the auspices of the Division of Soft Matter. Three overarching themes emerged from the workshop and are presented with additional details: • Machines made out of machines • Scalable self-sustaining ecosystems • Active materials and metamaterials This report lays out only some of the potential directions for soft matter dynamics over the next two decades. It also lays out the role that gravity plays in the organization of the basic building blocks of matter. Not only will research on soft matter have tremendous application towards understanding its behavior in our terrestrial environment, but also potentially in other NASA programs such as planetary science, exploration, robotics, etc. Attached is a White Paper for the Decadal Survey that consists of an extended Title along with the previous Introduction and Chapter 2.3 from NASA/CP-20205010493.

Soft matter↗

Acoustic Properties of Aerogels: Current Status and Prospects

Noise reduction remains an important priority in the modern society, in particular, for urban areas and highly populated cities. Insulation of buildings and transport systems such as cars, trains, and airplanes has accelerated the need to develop advanced materials. Various porous materials, such as commercially available foams and granular and fibrous materials, are commonly used for sound mitigating applications. In this review, a special class of advanced porous materials, aerogels, is examined, and an overview of the current experimental and theoretical status of their acoustic properties is provided. Aerogels can be composed of inorganic matter, synthetic or natural polymers, as well as organic/inorganic composites and hybrids. Aerogels are highly porous nanostructured materials with a large number of meso‐ and small macropores; the mechanisms of sound absorption partly differ from those of traditional porous absorbers possessing large macropores. The understanding of the acoustic properties of aerogels is far from being complete, and experimental results remain scattered. It is demonstrated that the structure of the aerogel provides a complex three‐dimensional architecture ideally suited for promising high‐performance materials for acoustic mitigation systems. This is in addition to the numerous other desirable properties that include low density, low thermal conductivity, and low refractive index.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Signatures of two-dimensional superconductivity emerging within a three-dimensional host superconductor

Significance We report signatures of a new phenomenon wherein a hidden “interdimensional” order emerges from a bulk three-dimensional superconductor tuned to approach a phase transition to an insulator. Prior electrical transport measurements found that the superconductor–insulator transition of BaPb 1− x Bi x O 3 demonstrated critical scaling behavior but inexplicably required parameters consistent only with two dimensions. Here, we directly image the three-dimensional superconducting state as it approaches an insulating phase and discover that signatures of a two-dimensional granular superconducting phase spontaneously emerge at the transition. Moreover, the properties of this phase precisely match the theory of emergent electronic granularity specific to two-dimensional materials. These findings posit that a three-dimensional superconductor electronically reorganizes itself into a two-dimensional granular superconductor before ultimately transforming to an insulator.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

The contribution of galaxy clusters to the soft X-ray background

The present paper examines models for the expected contribution to the X-ray background (XRB) from clusters of galaxies in a flat universe with a spectrum of fluctuations corresponding to the standard cold dark matter picture and for a power-law spectrum P(k) varies as k sup n with n = -2. A self-similar scaling model for clusters proposed by Kaiser (1986) is presented, along with several variants. Photon statistics from synthesized maps of deep Einstein fields show a granularity similar to that deduced by Hamilton and Helfand (1987) from the Einstein data but overproduces by a large factor the number of discrete sources observed as clusters, and the fluctuation limit derived from the recent correlation analyses of the background. Two alternative models are designed to be consistent with the local luminosity function data; for these, expected deep images for the Rosat satellite are generated. Clusters of galaxies should be a significant source of background at energies around 2 keV, and it is proposed that clusters of galaxies contribute up to 30 percent of the unresolved component.

Blanchard, A.↗

Multifield ultralight dark matter

Ultralight dark matter (ULDM) is usually taken to be a single scalar field. Here we explore the possibility that ULDM consists of N light scalar fields with only gravitational interactions. This configuration is more consistent with the underlying particle physics motivations for these scenarios than a single ultralight field. ULDM halos have a characteristic granular structure that increases stellar velocity dispersion and can be used as observational constraints on ULDM models. In multifield simulations, we find that inside a halo the amplitude of the total density fluctuations decreases as $1/\sqrt{N}$ and that the fields do not become significantly correlated over cosmological timescales. Smoother halos heat stellar orbits less efficiently, reducing the velocity dispersion relative to the single field case and thus weakening the observational constraints on the field mass. Analytically, we show that for N equal-mass fields with mass m the ULDM contribution to the stellar velocity dispersion scales as 1/(Nm 3 ). Finally, lighter fields heat the most efficiently and if the smallest mass mL is significantly below the other field masses the dispersion scales as $1/(N^{2}m^3_L$).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Methods of forming structures and fissile fuel materials by additive manufacturing

A method of forming one or more structures by additive manufacturing comprises introducing a first layer of a powder mixture comprising graphite and a fuel on a surface of a substrate. The first layer is at least partially compacted and then exposed to laser radiation to form a first layer of material comprising the fuel dispersed within a graphite matrix material. At least a second layer of the powder mixture is provided over the first layer of material and exposed to laser radiation to form inter-granular bonds between the second layer and the first layer. Related structures and methods of forming one or more structures are also disclosed.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Superconductor-to-metal transition in overdoped cuprates

Abstract We present a theoretical framework for understanding the behavior of the normal and superconducting states of overdoped cuprate high temperature superconductors in the vicinity of the doping-tuned quantum superconductor-to-metal transition. The key ingredients on which we focus are d -wave pairing, a flat antinodal dispersion, and disorder. Even for homogeneous disorder, these lead to effectively granular superconducting correlations and a superconducting transition temperature determined in large part by the superfluid stiffness rather than the pairing scale.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Grand Challenges in Soft Matter Science: Prospects for Microgravity Research

At the suggestion of NASA’s Physical Science Research Program in the Space Life and Physical Science Research and Application Division, Paul Chaikin, Noel Clark, and Sidney Nagel organized a focus session and workshop for the 2020 American Physical Society (APS) March meeting under the auspices of the Division of Soft Matter. Three overarching themes emerged from the workshop and are presented with additional details: •Machines made out of machines •Scalable self-sustaining ecosystems •Active materials and metamaterials This report lays out only some of the potential directions for soft matter dynamics over the next two decades. It also lays out the role that gravity plays in the organization of the basic building blocks of matter. Not only will research on soft matter have tremendous application towards understanding its behavior in our terrestrial environment, but also potentially in other NASA programs such as planetary science, exploration, robotics, etc.

Microgravity↗

Patternable Mesoporous Thin Film Quantum Materials via Block Copolymer Self-Assembly: An Emergent Technology?

Recent developments in quantum materials hold promise for revolutionizing energy and information technologies. The use of soft matter self-assembly, for example, by employing block copolymers (BCPs) as structure directing or templating agents, offers facile pathways toward quantum metamaterials with highly tunable mesostructures via scalable solution processing. Here, we report the preparation of patternable mesoporous niobium carbonitride-type thin film superconductors through spin-coating of a hybrid solution containing an amphiphilic BCP swollen by niobia sol precursors and subsequent thermal processing in combination with photolithography. Spin-coated as-made BCP-niobia hybrid thin films on silicon substrates after optional photolithographic definition are heated in air to produce a porous oxide, and subsequently converted in a multistep process to carbonitrides via treatment with high temperatures in reactive gases including ammonia. Grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering suggests the presence of ordered mesostructures in as-made BCP-niobia films without further annealing, consistent with a distorted alternating gyroid morphology that is retained upon thermal treatments. Wide-angle X-ray scattering confirms the synthesis of phase-pure niobium carbonitride nanocrystals with rock-salt lattices within the mesoscale networks. Electrical transport measurements of unpatterned thin films show initial exponential rise in resistivity characteristic of thermal activation in granular systems down to 12.8 K, at which point resistivity drops to zero into a superconducting state. Magnetoresistance measurements determine the superconducting upper critical field to be over 16 T, demonstrating material quality on par with niobium carbonitrides obtained from traditional solid-state synthesis methods. Here. we discuss how such cost-effective and scalable solution-based quantum materials fabrication approaches may be integrated into existing microelectronics processing, promising the emergence of a technology with tremendous academic and industrial potential by combining the capabilities of soft matter self-assembly with quantum materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Volume IV. The DUNE far detector single-phase technology

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay -- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. DUNE is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. Central to achieving DUNE's physics program is a far detector that combines the many tens-of-kiloton fiducial mass necessary for rare event searches with sub-centimeter spatial resolution in its ability to image those events, allowing identification of the physics signatures among the numerous backgrounds. In the single-phase liquid argon time-projection chamber (LArTPC) technology, ionization charges drift horizontally in the liquid argon under the influence of an electric field towards a vertical anode, where they are read out with fine granularity. A photon detection system supplements the TPC, directly enhancing physics capabilities for all three DUNE physics drivers and opening up prospects for further physics explorations. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. Volume IV presents an overview of the basic operating principles of a single-phase LArTPC, followed by a description of the DUNE implementation. Each of the subsystems is described in detail, connecting the high-level design requirements and decisions to the overriding physics goals of DUNE.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Structure, Kinematics, and Observability of the Large Magellanic Cloud’s Dynamical Friction Wake in Cold versus Fuzzy Dark Matter

Abstract The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) will induce a dynamical friction (DF) wake on infall to the Milky Way (MW). The MW’s stellar halo will respond to the gravity of the LMC and the dark matter (DM) wake, forming a stellar counterpart to the DM wake. This provides a novel opportunity to constrain the properties of the DM particle. We present a suite of high-resolution, windtunnel-style simulations of the LMC's DF wake that compare the structure, kinematics, and stellar tracer response of the DM wake in cold DM (CDM), with and without self-gravity, versus fuzzy DM (FDM) with m a = 10 −23 eV. We conclude that the self-gravity of the DM wake cannot be ignored. Its inclusion raises the wake’s density by ∼10%, and holds the wake together over larger distances (∼50 kpc) than if self-gravity is ignored. The DM wake’s mass is comparable to the LMC’s infall mass, meaning the DM wake is a significant perturber to the dynamics of MW halo tracers. An FDM wake is more granular in structure and is ∼20% dynamically colder than a CDM wake, but with comparable density. The granularity of an FDM wake increases the stars’ kinematic response at the percent level compared to CDM, providing a possible avenue of distinguishing a CDM versus FDM wake. This underscores the need for kinematic measurements of stars in the stellar halo at distances of 70–100 kpc.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The effect of Cu additions in FePt–BN–SiO 2 heat-assisted magnetic recording media

Structural and chemical order impact magnetic properties of solids, which are governed by spin–orbit coupling and exchange interaction. The ordered L1 0 phase of FePt is a key material to heat-assisted magnetic recording; to enable high storage density, a solid understanding is needed of structural and chemical disorder at small length scales, as well as associated modifications of the electronic band structure. Here, we investigate the effect of boron and copper additions (≲6 mol% Cu) on structural and magnetic properties of L1 0 FePt granular media. Two copper-driven mechanisms, although competing, can lead to improvements in both structural and magnetic properties. In particular, the Cu substitution on the Fe-site leads to a degradation of magnetic properties due to the delocalized electron orbitals originating from a larger Cu d -orbital occupancy. At the same time, Cu substitution leads to an enhanced crystallographic order and consequently magneto-crystalline anisotropy, which offsets the former effect to a large extent. Our study is based on magnetometry, x-ray absorption spectroscopy, ab-initio calculations and a phenomenological theory of disordered FePt granular media. We do not observe a sizable modification to Fe moments and electronic configuration; Cu reveals two different resonances associated with the presence and absence of Cu–B bonds that vary with total Cu concentration.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Design of functional materials based on new principles of disorder

The main goal of the project for many years was to study and understand the jamming transition and the properties of the marginally jammed state, and to apply that understanding to real systems, including atomic, molecular, metallic and polymeric glasses, colloidal suspensions, granular materials, foams and emulsions, as well as the dynamics of systems driven away from the static jammed state by applying temperature or strain. As we gained greater insight into the jamming problem, we applied it to other big problems that had not previously been recognized as being related to jamming, such as memory formation, metamaterials design and learning.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Supercapacitance and superinductance of TiN and NbTiN films in the vicinity of superconductor-to-insulator transition

We investigate the low-temperature complex impedance of disordered insulating thin TiN and NbTiN films in the frequency region 400 Hz–1 MHz in close proximity to the superconductor–insulator transition (SIT). The frequency, temperature, and magnetic field dependencies of the real and imaginary parts of the impedance indicate that in full accord with the theoretical predictions and earlier observations, the films acquire self-induced electronic granularity and become effectively random arrays of superconducting granules coupled via Josephson links. Accordingly, the inductive component of the response is due to superconducting droplets, while the capacitive component results from the effective Josephson junctions capacitances. The impedance crosses over from capacitive to inductive behavior as films go across the transition.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Novel usage of deep learning and high-performance computing in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorDeep-learning methods are playing a crucial role in numerous scientific and industrialapplications. Over the past two decades, these techniques have helped in the collection,reconstruction, and analysis of large data samples in particle physics experiments. Themain topic of this PhD research is the study of deep-learning techniques in long-baselineneutrino oscillation experiments. Neutrinos are mysterious light elementary particles,and their investigation is essential to shed light on some of the remaining open questionsin physics. The work presented here describes an algorithm based on a convolutionalneural network developed to provide highly accurate and efficient selections of electronneutrino and muon neutrino interactions in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment(DUNE). With this algorithm, the electron neutrino (antineutrino) selection efficiencypeaks at 90% (94%) and exceeds 85% (90%) for reconstructed neutrino energies between2-5 GeV. The selection efficiency for muon neutrino (antineutrino) interactions is foundto have a maximum of 96% (97%) and exceeds 90% (95%) efficiency for reconstructedneutrino energies above 2 GeV. When considering all electron neutrino and antineutrinointeractions as signal (both those appearing from oscillations and those intrinsic tothe beam), a selection purity of 90% is achieved. These event selections are criticalto maximise the sensitivity of the experiment to CP-violating effects, key to furtherunderstand the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe.In high-energy physics experiments, deep learning has also been explored for producingfast simulations and physically-motivated manipulations of simulated images. Some ofthose simulations, such as the light production and detection, are very computationallyexpensive and require novel methods to produce the necessary samples while controllingthe varied underlying physics model parameters. To do so, we invented the model-assistedgenerative adversarial network (MAGAN), first validated on simple generic case studiesand then successfully applied to the DUNE photon-detector simulation.Moreover, we also developed graph neural networks for 3D-voxel classification ofambiguities and optical crosstalk for a different particle physics experiment, most preciselyfor the proposed SuperFGD. This novel 3D-granular plastic-scintillator neutrino detectorwill be used to upgrade the near detector of the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment, and our method reports efficiencies and purities of 94-96% per event in the classificationof particle track voxels.Due to the growth and complexity of deep neural networks, researchers have beeninvestigating techniques to train those networks in a more computationally-efficient way.Many efforts have been made by the community to optimise deep-learning models byparallelising or distributing their training computation across multiple devices. In thisthesis, we study an approach based on data locality for those neural networks that cannotbenefit from scaling their computation due to a significant bottleneck in the data I/O.The research also includes a detailed study on the performance of deep neural networkson hardware accelerator boards.Los métodos de aprendizaje profundo son cada vez más utilizados en numerosas aplicacionescientíficas e industriales hoy en día. Durante las dos últimas décadas, estastécnicas se han empleado en la recolección, reconstrucción y análisis de la gran cantidadde datos generados por experimentos de física de partículas. El tema principal de estatesis doctoral es el uso de estos modelos de aprendizaje profundo en experimentos defísica de neutrinos, en concreto en los experimentos de larga distancia DUNE y T2K. Losneutrinos, partículas fundamentales neutras, de las más ligeras del Universo, pueden serclave para explicar algunas de las cuestiones todavía sin resolver en física fundamental.Entre las diferentes contribuciones que esta tesis ha hecho a su estudio, cabe destacar eldesarrollo de un algoritmo basado en una red de neuronas convolucional para seleccionarcon gran eficiencia y precisión las interacciones de neutrinos electrónicos y muónicos enel Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). La eficiencia de selección obtenidapara neutrinos (antineutrinos) electrónicos alcanza un máximo del 90% (94%) y supera el85% (90%) para neutrinos con energías reconstruidas en el rango 2-5 GeV. La selección deneutrinos (antineutrinos) muónicos tiene una eficiencia máxima del 96% (97%) y excedeel 90% (95%) para neutrinos con energías reconstruidas de más de 2 GeV. Considerandocomo señal todas las interacciones de neutrinos y antineutrinos electrónicos (procedentestanto de oscilaciones como intrínsecos en el haz inicial), se logra una pureza en la seleccióndel 90%. Dichas selecciones de eventos son fundamentales para maximizar la sensibilidaddel experimento a los efectos de violació...

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗