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At least 721 records · Page 40

Simulation of atmospheric temperature effects on cosmic ray muon flux

The collision between a cosmic ray and an atmosphere nucleus produces a set of secondary particles, which will decay or interact with other atmosphere elements. This set of events produced a primary particle is known as an extensive air shower (EAS) and is composed by a muonic, a hadronic and an electromagnetic component. The muonic flux, produced mainly by pions and kaons decays, has a dependency with the atmosphere’s effective temperature: an increase in the effective temperature results in a lower density profile, which decreases the probability of pions and kaons to interact with the atmosphere and, consequently, resulting in a major number of meson decays. Such correlation between the muon flux and the atmosphere’s effective temperature was measured by a set of experiments, such as AMANDA, Borexino, MACRO and MINOS. This phenomena can be investigated by simulating the final muon flux produced by two different parameterizations of the isothermal atmospheric model in CORSIKA, where each parameterization is described by a depth function which can be related to the muon flux in the same way that the muon flux is related to the temperature. This research checks the agreement among different high energy hadronic interactions models and the physical expected behavior of the atmosphere temperature effect by analyzing a set of variables, such as the height of the primary interaction and the difference in the muon flux.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Exotic Photonic Molecules via Lennard-Jones-like Potentials

Ultracold systems offer an unprecedented level of control of interactions between atoms. An important challenge is to achieve a similar level of control of the interactions between photons. Towards this goal, we propose a realization of a novel Lennard-Jones-like potential between photons coupled to the Rydberg states via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). This potential is achieved by tuning Rydberg states to a Förster resonance with other Rydberg states. In this work, we consider few-body problems in 1D and 2D geometries and show the existence of self-bound clusters (“molecules”) of photons. We demonstrate that for a few-body problem, the multibody interactions have a significant impact on the geometry of the molecular ground state. This leads to phenomena without counterparts in conventional systems: For example, three photons in two dimensions preferentially arrange themselves in a line configuration rather than in an equilateral-triangle configuration. Our result opens a new avenue for studies of many-body phenomena with strongly interacting photons.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Finite-size effects on the self-force

Electromagnetic and linear gravitational radiation do not solely propagate on the null cone in 3 + 1 dimensions in curved spacetimes, contrary to their well-known behavior in flat spacetime. Their additional propagation inside the null cone is known as the tail effect. A compact body will produce a signal whose tail will interact with its future worldline, thus producing a tail-induced self-force. In this work, we present new results for the tail-induced scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational self-force for a test mass in orbit around a central mass, including effects from the internal structure of that body.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Advancing Pre-college Science and Mathematics Education

With support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Fusion Energy Sciences, and General Atomics, an educational and outreach program primarily for grades G6-G13 was developed using the basic science of plasma and fusion as the content foundation. The program period was 1994 - 2015 and provided many students and teachers unique experiences such as a visit to the DIII-D National Fusion Facility to tour the nation’s premiere tokamak facility or to interact with interesting and informative demonstration equipment and have the opportunity to increase their understanding of a wide range of scientific content, including states of matter, the electromagnetic spectrum, radiation & radioactivity, and much more. Engaging activities were developed for classroom-size audiences, many made by teachers in Build-it Day workshops. Scientist and engineer team members visited classrooms, participated in science expositions, held workshops, produced informational handouts in paper, video, online, and gaming-CD format. Participants could interact with team members from different institutions and countries and gain a wider view of the world of science and engineering educational and career possibilities. In addition, multiple science stage shows were presented to audiences of up to 700 persons in a formal theatre setting over a several day period at Science & Technology Education Partnership (STEP) Conferences. Annually repeated participation by team members in various classroom and public venue events allowed for the development of excellent interactive skills when working with students, teachers, and educational administrative staff members. We believe this program has had a positive impact in science understanding and the role of the Department of Energy in fusion research on thousands of students, teachers, and members of the general public through various interactive venues.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Directed liquid phase assembly of highly ordered metallic nanoparticle arrays

Directed assembly of nanomaterials is a promising route for the synthesis of advanced materials and devices. We demonstrate the directed-assembly of highly ordered two-dimensional arrays of hierarchical nanostructures with tunable size, spacing and composition. The directed assembly is achieved on lithographically patterned metal films that are subsequently pulse-laser melted; during the brief liquid lifetime, the pattened nanostructures assemble into highly ordered primary and secondary nanoparticles, with sizes below that which was originally patterned. Complementary fluid-dynamics simulations emulate the resultant patterns and show how the competition of capillary forces and liquid metal–solid substrate interaction potential drives the directed assembly. Lastly, as an example of the enhanced functionality, a full-wave electromagnetic analysis has been performed to identify the nature of the supported plasmonic resonances.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

Concept Study of Robotic Camera-Based Foreign Object Detection for EV Wireless Charging

Wireless charging of an electric vehicle (EV) is an emerging charging technology promising convenient, autonomous, and highly efficient EV charging without requiring heavy gauge cables. However, due to the strong electromagnetic field created by this process that surrounds the wireless charger, the presence of foreign objects can detrimentally interact with it, thus affecting wireless power transfer (WPT) performance or leading to harmful and unwanted safety risks. This paper presents the results for a concept study on a robotic camera-based foreign object detection (FOD) system, as a supplement to the industry-existing overlapped FOD coil array method, for EV wireless charging. A Raspberry PI 4 control board and compatible Raspberry PI Camera Module 2 are used to implement camera-based object detection. The FOD program was developed using a state-of-the-art deep learning object detection model with the OpenCV and Pytorch library and is compatible with camera module hardware. A dry-run test with Raspberry PI and a camera module was conducted and the preliminary FOD function was verified. The feasibility assessment is also validated by comparing the performance of five existing state-of-the-art deep learning object detection models for vehicles, animals, persons, and metals subsets, respectively. Satisfactory performance on the benchmark datasets is observed by the tests, but further improvements are needed in future work when detecting small-sized metallic objects. A programable robotic car is also under development as ongoing work for carrying the Raspberry PI and camera module while moving for the maintenance process.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Tetrads in Solids: from Elasticity Theory to Topological Quantum Hall Systems and Weyl Fermions

Theory of elasticity in topological insulators has many common features with relativistic quantum fields interacting with gravitational fields in the tetrad form. Here we discuss several issues in the effective topological (pseudo)electromagnetic response in three-dimensional weak crystalline topological insulators with no time-reversal symmetry that feature elasticity tetrads, including a mixed “axial-gravitational” anomaly. This response has some resemblance to “quasitopological” terms proposed for massless Weyl quasiparticles with separate, emergent fermion tetrads. As an example, we discuss the chiral/axial anomaly in superfluid {sup 3}He-A. We demonstrate the principal difference between the elasticity tetrads and the Weyl fermion tetrads in the construction of the topological terms in the action. In particular, the topological action expressed in terms of the elasticity tetrads cannot be expressed in terms of the Weyl fermion tetrads since in this case the gauge invariance is lost.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Floquet Engineering of Gapped 2D Materials

It is demonstrated theoretically that the interaction of gapped 2D materials (gapped graphene and transition metal dichalchogenide monolayers) with a strong high-frequency electromagnetic field (dressing field) crucially changes the band structure of the materials. As a consequence, the renormalized band structure of the materials drastically depends on the field polarization. Particularly, a linearly polarized dressing field always decreases band gaps, whereas a circularly polarized field breaks the equivalence of band valleys in different points of the Brillouin zone and can both increase and decrease corresponding band gaps. It is shown also that a dressing field can turn both the band gaps and the spin splitting of the bands into zero. As a result, the dressing field can serve as an effective tool to control spin and valley properties of the materials in various optoelectronic applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Quantum Monte Carlo Methods for Astrophysical Applications

In recent years, new astrophysical observations have provided a wealth of exciting input for nuclear physics. For example, the observations of two-solar-mass neutron stars put strong constraints on possible phase transitions to exotic phases in strongly interacting matter at high densities. Furthermore, the recent observation of a neutron-star merger in both the electromagnetic spectrum and gravitational waves has provided compelling evidence that neutron-star mergers are an important site for the production of extremely neutron-rich nuclei within the r-process. In the coming years, an abundance of new observations is expected, which will continue to provide crucial constraints on the nuclear physics of these events. To reliably analyze such astrophysical observations and extract information on nuclear physics, it is very important that a consistent approach to nuclear systems is used. Such an approach consists of a precise and accurate method to solve the nuclear many-body problem in nuclei and nuclear matter, combined with modern nuclear Hamiltonians that allow to estimate the theoretical uncertainties. Quantum Monte Carlo methods are ideally suited for such an approach and have been successfully used to describe atomic nuclei and nuclear matter. In this contribution, I will present a detailed description of Quantum Monte Carlo methods focusing on the application of these methods to astrophysical problems. In particular, I will discuss how to use Quantum Monte Carlo methods to describe nuclear matter of relevance to the physics of neutron stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Producing entangled photon pairs and quantum squeezed states in plasmas

Plasma is capable of mediating the conversion of two pump photons into two different photons through a relativistic four-wave mixing nonlinearity. Spontaneously created photon pairs are emitted at symmetric angles with respect to the colinear pump direction, and the emission rate is largest if they have identical frequency. Thus, two orthogonally polarized pumps can produce polarization-entangled photon pairs through a millimeter-long homogeneous plasma. Here, the noise from Raman scattering can be avoided if the pump detuning differs from twice the plasma frequency. However, pump detuning exactly equal to twice the plasma frequency can significantly enhance the interaction rate, which allows for the production of strong two-mode squeezed states. Remarkably, the amplified noise from Raman scattering are correlated and hence can be suppressed in one of the output quadratures, thereby maintaining the squeezing magnitude.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Chiral-symmetry breaking and confinement in Minkowski space

We present a model for the quark-antiquark interaction formulated in Minkowski space using the Covariant Spectator Theory. The quark propagators are dressed with the same kernel that describes the interaction between different quarks. By applying the axial-vector Ward-Takahashi identity we show that our model satisfies the Adler-zero constraint imposed by chiral symmetry. For this model, our Minkowski-space results of the dressed quark mass function are compared to lattice QCD data obtained in Euclidean space. The mass function is then used in the calculation of the electromagnetic pion form factor in relativistic impulse approximation, and the results are presented and compared with the experimental data from JLab.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Cylindrical and plane surface electromagnetic waves in laser technology of silicon surface texturing with a double femtosecond pulse

This paper presents experimental results of laser modification of the surface of monocrystalline silicon under the influence of a double femtosecond laser pulse with varying delays less than or close to the electron–phonon interaction time, as well as the results of numerical simulation of the photoexcitation of a semiconductor in the approximation of dielectric constant. It is shown that the excitation of cylindrical surface waves not only precedes the excitation of plane surface electromagnetic waves, but is also a determining factor in the cumulative change in the dielectric constant of the medium and the creation of conditions for the excitation of plane surface electromagnetic waves.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The BDX experiment at Jefferson Laboratory

The Beam Dump Experiment (BDX) at Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) is an electron-beam thick-target experiment to search for Light Dark Matter (LDM) particles in the MeV-GeV mass range. BDX will exploit the high-intensity 10.6 GeV e^-e ? beam from CEBAF accelerator impinging on the beam dump of experimental Hall-A, collecting up to 10^{22}10 22 electrons-on-target (EOT) in a few years time. Any LDM particle produced by the interaction of the primary e^-e ? beam with the beam dump will be detected by measuring their scattering inside the BDX detector, an electromagnetic calorimeter surrounded by an hermetic veto system, which is to be installed in a dedicated underground facility, located 20 m downstream. Thanks to the large detection efficiency and background rejection capabilities, BDX will be able to explore a so-far unknown region in the LDM parameter space, improving current exclusion limits by one order of magnitude in case of a null observation. In preparation to the full experiment, a small-scale version called BDX-MINI, has been built and operated at JLab with a lower energy beam. Despite the small interaction volume, the large accumulated charge of 2.2\times10^{21}2.2×10 21 EOT allowed for the BDX-MINI measurement to set competitive exclusion limits on the LDM parameters space, comparable to those reported by larger-scale efforts.

Celentano, A.↗

Inverse bremsstrahlung absorption rate for super-Gaussian electron distribution functions including plasma screening

Here we provide analytic expressions for the effective Coulomb logarithm for inverse bremsstrahlung absorption which predict significant corrections to the Langdon effect and overall absorption rate compared to previous estimates. The calculation of the collisional absorption rate of laser energy in a plasma by the inverse bremsstrahlung mechanism usually makes the approximation of a constant Coulomb logarithm. We dispense with this approximation and instead take into account the velocity dependence of the Coulomb logarithm, leading to a more accurate expression for the absorption rate valid in both classical and quantum conditions. In contrast to previous work, the laser intensity enters into the Coulomb logarithm. In most laser-plasma interactions the electron distribution function is super-Gaussian [Langdon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 44, 575 (1980)], and we find the absorption rate under these conditions is increased by as much as ≈ 30% compared to previous estimates at low density. In many cases of interest the correction to Langdon's predicted reduction in absorption is large; for example at Z = 6 and Te = 400 eV the Langdon prediction for the absorption is in error by a factor of ≈ 2. However, we also account for the additional effect of plasma screening, which predicts a reduction in absorption by a similar amount (up to ≈ 30%). These two effects compete to determine the overall absorption, which may be increased or decreased, depending on the conditions. The corrections can be incorporated into radiation-hydrodynamics simulation codes by replacing the familiar Coulomb logarithm with an analytic expression which depends on the super-Gaussian order “M” and the screening length.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Prospects and applications of plasmon-exciton interactions in the near-field regime

Plasmonics is a rapidly developing field at the boundary of fundamental sciences and device engineering, which exploits the ability of metal nanostructures to concentrate electromagnetic radiation. The principal challenge lies in achieving an efficient conversion of the plasmon-concentrated field into some form of useful energy. To date, a substantial progress has been made within the scientific community in identifying the major pathways of the plasmon energy conversion. Strategies based on the hot electron injection and the near-field energy transfer have already shown promise in a number of proof-of-principle plasmonic architectures. Nevertheless, there are several fundamental questions that need to be addressed in the future to facilitate the transition of plasmonics to a variety of applications in both light amplification and optical detection. Of particular interest is a plasmon-induced resonance energy transfer (PIRET) process that couples the plasmon evanescent field to a semiconductor absorber via dipole-dipole interaction. This relatively unexplored mechanism has emerged as a promising light conversion strategy in the areas of photovoltaics and photocatalysis and represents the main focus of the present minireview. Along these lines, we highlight the key advances in this area and review some of the challenges associated with applications of the PIRET mechanism in nanostructured systems.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Gauge invariance of light-matter interactions in first-principle tight-binding models

In this work, we study the different ways of introducing light-matter interaction in first-principle tight-binding (TB) models. The standard way of describing optical properties is the velocity gauge, defined by linear coupling to the vector potential. In finite systems a transformation to represent the electromagnetic radiation by the electric field instead is possible, albeit subtleties arise in periodic systems. The resulting dipole gauge is a multi-orbital generalization of the Peierls substitution. In this work we investigate the accuracy for both pathways, with particular emphasis on gauge invariance, for TB models constructed from maximally localized Wannier functions. This approach accurately captures the light-matter interaction close to the Fermi level. Focusing on paradigmatic two-dimensional materials, we construct first-principle models and calculate the response to electromagnetic fields in linear response and for strong excitations. Benchmarks against fully converged first-principle calculations allow for ascertaining the accuracy of the TB models. We find that the dipole gauge provides a more accurate description than the velocity gauge in all cases. The main deficiency of the velocity gauge is an imperfect cancellation of paramagnetic and diamagnetic current. Formulating a corresponding sum rule however provides a way to explicitly enforce this cancellation. This procedure corrects the TB models in the velocity gauge, yielding excellent agreement with dipole gauge and thus restoring gauge invariance.

2-dimensional systems↗

Ferromagnetic resonance in a system of magnetic films with different Curie temperatures

The peculiarities of absorption of rf electromagnetic radiation (ferromagnetic resonance) in multilayer NiFe/Ni{sub 0.65}Cu{sub 0.35}(d)/CoFe structures in a wide temperature range are analyzed. It is shown that the type of interaction of the NiFe and CoFe ferromagnetic films via a “weak” ferromagnetic Ni{sub 0.65}Cu{sub 0.35} interlayer changes from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic upon cooling and a decrease in interlayer thickness d. The detected temperature dependence of the interlayer interaction indicates the possibility of observation of a strong magnetocaloric effect in the structures under investigation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Optimization using pathwise algorithmic derivatives of electromagnetic shower simulations

Among the well-known methods to approximate derivatives of expectancies computed by Monte-Carlo simulations, averages of pathwise derivatives are often the easiest one to apply. Computing them via algorithmic differentiation typically does not require major manual analysis and rewriting of the code, even for very complex programs like simulations of particle-detector interactions in high-energy physics. However, the pathwise derivative estimator can be biased if there are discontinuities in the program, which may diminish its value for applications. This work integrates algorithmic differentiation into the electromagnetic shower simulation code HepEmShow based on G4HepEm, allowing us to study how well pathwise derivatives approximate derivatives of energy depositions in a sampling calorimeter with respect to parameters of the beam and geometry. We found that when multiple scattering is disabled in the simulation, means of pathwise derivatives converge quickly to their expected values, and these are close to the actual derivatives of the energy deposition. Additionally, we demonstrate the applicability of this novel gradient estimator for stochastic gradient-based optimization in a model example.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗