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At least 757 records · Page 42

Validation of seismic velocity models in southern California with full-waveform simulations

SUMMARY Crustal seismic velocity models provide essential information for many applications including earthquake source properties, simulations of ground motion and related derivative products. We present a systematic workflow for assessing the accuracy of velocity models with full-waveform simulations. The framework is applied to four regional seismic velocity models for southern California: CVM-H15.11, CVM-S4.26, CVM-S4.26.M01 that includes a shallow geotechnical layer, and the model of Berg et al. For each model, we perform 3-D viscoelastic wave propagation simulations for 48 virtual seismic noise sources (down to 2 s) and 44 moderate-magnitude earthquakes (down to 2 s generally and 0.5 s for some cases) assuming a minimum shear wave velocity of 200 m s–1. The synthetic waveforms are compared with observations associated with both earthquake records and noise cross-correlation data sets. We measure, at multiple period bands for well-isolated seismic phases, traveltime delays and normalized zero-lag cross-correlation coefficients between the synthetic and observed data. The obtained measurements are summarized using the mean absolute derivation of time delay and the mean correlation coefficient. These two metrics provide reliable statistical representations of model quality with consistent results in all data sets. In addition to assessing the overall (average) performance of different models in the entire study area, we examine spatial variations of the models’ quality. All examined models show good phase and waveform agreements for surface waves at periods longer than 5 s, and discrepancies at shorter periods reflecting small-scale heterogeneities and near-surface structures. The model performing best overall is CVM-S4.26.M01. The largest misfits for both body and surface waves are in basin structures and around large fault zones. Inaccuracies generated in these areas may affect tomography and model simulation results at other regions. The seismic velocity models for southern California can be improved by adding better resolved structural representations of the shallow crust and volumes around the main faults.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Understanding Air-Sea Feedbacks to the MJO through Process Evaluation of Observations and Models (Final Report)

The goal of our project was to enhance our understanding of the role of coupling in the simulation of the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) in coupled climate models. We developed diagnostics of precipitation and Sea Surface Temperature variability in climate models and investigated how they are related to metrics of MJO simulation performance. We found a relationship between models with a high spatial coherence of precipitation and a good propagation of the MJO through the Maritime Continent region, but no relationship between metrics of precipitation organisation and intensity. Analysis of coupled and uncoupled model simulations from the Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) shows that coupling systematically improved the MJO simulation in both metrics that we investigated. We analysed the role of background moisture gradients in the MJO simulation performance following Lim et al. (2018) and found that although the model to model variation in moisture gradients to the west of Indonesia was related to model MJO performance, in general no single moisture gradient was as good at explaining a large fraction of MJO performance across the models as compared to a linear combination of those metrics, which was able to explain a significant fraction of the variance in the MJO performance. Those relationships were much stronger for coupled simulations than uncoupled simulations and stronger for those metrics that measured propagation of the MJO across the Maritime Continent than for overall MJO activity.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A new technique for X-ray spectroscopy of laser-plasmas with simultaneous 2D spatial resolution over a broad spectral range

Over the past few years, a new X-ray diagnostic technique has been developed by the group of the Intense Laser Irradiation Laboratory of the CNR in Pisa. Here we give a brief description of this new diagnostic tool, which basically allows X-ray spectroscopy of laser-produced plasmas to be performed over a broad photon energy range with a simultaneous 2D spatial resolution. An outline of recent results will be also given in order to assess the diagnostic capabilities.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Experimental Studies with Spatial Gaussian-Cut Laser for the LCLS Photocathode Gun

To simplify the LCLS operation and further enhance the injector performances, we are evaluating the various parameters including the photocathode drive laser system. Extensive simulations show that both the projected and time-sliced emittances with spatial Gaussian profiles having reasonable tail-cut are better than those with uniform one. The simulated results are also supported by theoretical analyses. In the LCLS, the spatial uniform or Gaussian-cut laser profiles are conveniently obtained by adjusting the optics of the telescope upstream of an iris, used to define laser size on the cathode. Preliminary beam studies at the LCLS injector show that both the projected and time-sliced emittances with spatial Gaussian-cut laser are almost as good as, although not better than, those with uniform one. In addition, the laser transmission through the iris with the Gaussian-cut profile is twice with uniform one, which can significantly ease LCLS copper cathode/laser operations and thus improve the LCLS operation efficiency. More beam studies are planned to measure FEL performances with the Gaussian-cut in comparison with the uniform one. All simulations and measurements are presented in the paper.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

NON-NEUTRALIZED ELECTRIC CURRENT PATTERNS IN SOLAR ACTIVE REGIONS: ORIGIN OF THE SHEAR-GENERATING LORENTZ FORCE

Using solar vector magnetograms of the highest available spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, we perform a detailed study of electric current patterns in two solar active regions (ARs): a flaring/eruptive and a flare-quiet one. We aim to determine whether ARs inject non-neutralized (net) electric currents in the solar atmosphere, responding to a debate initiated nearly two decades ago that remains inconclusive. We find that well-formed, intense magnetic polarity inversion lines (PILs) within ARs are the only photospheric magnetic structures that support significant net current. More intense PILs seem to imply stronger non-neutralized current patterns per polarity. This finding revises previous works that claim frequent injections of intense non-neutralized currents by most ARs appearing in the solar disk but also works that altogether rule out injection of non-neutralized currents. In agreement with previous studies, we also find that magnetically isolated ARs remain globally current-balanced. In addition, we confirm and quantify the preference of a given magnetic polarity to follow a given sense of electric currents, indicating a dominant sense of twist in ARs. This coherence effect is more pronounced in more compact ARs with stronger PILs and must be of sub-photospheric origin. Our results yield a natural explanation of the Lorentz force, invariably generating velocity and magnetic shear along strong PILs, thus setting a physical context for the observed pre-eruption evolution in solar ARs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Investigation of proton damage in III-V semiconductors by optical spectroscopy

We studied the damage produced by 2 MeV proton radiation on epitaxially grown InGaP/GaAs structure by means of spatially resolved Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The irradiation was performed parallel to the sample surface in order to determine the proton penetration range in both compounds. An increase in the intensity of longitudinal optical phonons and a decrease in the luminescence were observed. We associate these changes with the creation of defects in the damaged region, also responsible for the observed change of the carrier concentration in the GaAs layer, determined by the shift of the phonon-plasmon coupled mode frequency. From the spatially resolved profile of the PL and phonon intensities, we obtained the proton range in both materials and we compared them with stopping and range of ions in matter simulations. The comparison between the experimentally obtained proton range and simulations shows a very good agreement for GaAs but a discrepancy of 20% for InGaP. This discrepancy can be explained in terms of limitations of the model to simulate the electronic orbitals and bonding structure of the simulated compound. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose an increase in 40% in the electronic stopping power for InGaP.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The infrared imaging video bolometer at Wendelstein 7-X

The radiated power distribution is a crucial aspect of heat transport, heat load mitigation, and plasma exhaust performance. An imaging video bolometer camera has been installed to measure the plasma radiated power in the divertor region of the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator. This diagnostic offers a wide-angle (40° × 68°) sampling of the plasma volume in both the poloidal and toroidal directions. The field-of-view is covered with a large number (> 500) of bolometer channels, providing imaging capability. The diagnostic design is introduced here together with its data analysis procedure. A set of laboratory experiments is performed to assess the thermal properties of the gold absorber foil and their spatial uniformity. Following installation, a heat source originating from the inertially cooled front of the diagnostic is identified and filtered out. The discharge data indicate a satisfactory signal-to-noise ratio as well as spatiotemporal resolution. These represent the first toroidally resolved images of the line-integrated radiated power in the W7-X island divertor. The diagnostic was then upgraded with a thinner platinum absorber and adjusted mirrors. Early data from the most recent experimental campaign employing the upgraded design show a considerable improvement in the diagnostic performance with more bolometer channels (> 1400), extended coverage, and increased spatial resolution.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Optimizing the performance of reactive molecular dynamics simulations for many-core architectures

Reactive molecular dynamics simulations are computationally demanding. Reaching spatial and temporal scales where interesting scientific phenomena can be observed requires efficient and scalable implementations on modern hardware. In this article, we focus on optimizing the performance of the widely used LAMMPS/ReaxC package for many-core architectures. As hybrid parallelism allows better leverage of the increasing on-node parallelism, we adopt thread parallelism in the construction of bonded and nonbonded lists and in the computation of complex ReaxFF interactions. To mitigate the I/O overheads due to large volumes of trajectory data produced and to save users the burden of post-processing, we also develop a novel in situ tool for molecular species analysis. We analyze the performance of the resulting ReaxC-OMP package on two different architectures: (i) Mira, an IBM Blue Gene/Q system and (ii) Cori-II, a Cray XC-40 sytem with Knights Landing processors. For Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) systems of sizes ranging from 32 thousand to 16.6 million particles, we observe speedups in the range of 1.5-4.5x. We observe sustained performance improvements for up to 262,144 cores (1,048,576 processes) of Mira and a weak scaling efficiency of 91.5% in large simulations containing 16.6 million particles. Finally, the in situ molecular species analysis tool incurs only insignificant overheads across various system sizes and runs configurations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Fiber optic computing using distributed feedback

Abstract The widespread adoption of machine learning and other matrix intensive computing algorithms has renewed interest in analog optical computing, which has the potential to perform large-scale matrix multiplications with superior energy scaling and lower latency than digital electronics. However, most optical techniques rely on spatial multiplexing, requiring a large number of modulators and detectors, and are typically restricted to performing a single kernel convolution operation per layer. Here, we introduce a fiber-optic computing architecture based on temporal multiplexing and distributed feedback that performs multiple convolutions on the input data in a single layer. Using Rayleigh backscattering in standard single mode fiber, we show that this technique can efficiently apply a series of random nonlinear projections to the input data, facilitating a variety of computing tasks. The approach enables efficient energy scaling with orders of magnitude lower power consumption than GPUs, while maintaining low latency and high data-throughput.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Information content of spatially distributed ground-based measurements for hydrologic-parameter calibration in mixed rain-snow mountain headwaters

Parameters in hydrologic models used in mixed rain-snow regions are often uncertain to calibrate and overfitted on streamflow. To contribute addressing these challenges, we used an algorithm that assesses modeling performances through time (Dynamic Identifiability Analysis) to quantify the information content of spatially distributed ground-based measurements for identifying optimal parameter values in the Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) model. Including spatially distributed ground-based measurements in Identifiability Analysis allowed us to unambiguously estimate more parameter values than only using streamflow (seven parameters instead of two out of a pool of thirty-three). Peaks in information gain were obtained when using dew-point temperature to identify precipitation phase-partitioning parameters. Multi-attribute identifiability analysis also yielded optimal parameter values that were temporally less variable than those estimated using streamflow alone. Overall, identifying parameter values using ground-based measurements improved the simulation of key drivers of the surface-water budget, such as air temperature and precipitation-phase partitioning. However, parameters simulating surface-to-subsurface mass fluxes like snow accumulation and melt or evapotranspiration were poorly identified by any attribute and so emerged as key sources of predictive uncertainty for this distributed-parameter hydrologic model. In conclusion, this work demonstrates the value of expanded ground-based measurements for identifying parameters in distributed-parameter hydrologic models and so diagnosing their conceptual uncertainty across the water budget.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Majorana modes with side features in magnet-superconductor hybrid systems

Magnet-superconductor hybrid (MSH) systems represent promising platforms to host Majorana zero modes (MZMs), the elemental building blocks for fault-tolerant quantum computers. Theoretical description of such MSH structures is mostly based on simplified models, not accounting for the complexity of real materials. Here, based on density functional theory, we derive a superconducting 80-band model to study an MSH system consisting of a magnetic manganese chain on the s wave superconductor niobium. For a wide range of values of the superconducting order parameter, the system is a topological superconductor, with MZMs exhibiting non-universal spatial patterns and a drastic accumulation of spectral weight on both sides along the magnetic chain. These side feature states can be explained by an effective model which is guided by the ab initio results. Performing scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments on the same system, we observe a spatial structure in the low-energy local density of states that is consistent with the theoretical findings. Our results open a first-principle approach to the discovery of topological superconductors.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Evaluation of Two-Dimensional to One-Dimensional Site Response for Idaho National Laboratory

We perform two-dimensional (2D) site response analyses accounting for spatial variability of soil properties and subsurface geometry of the Eastern Snake River Plane (ESRP), and quantify their effects on ground surface motion relative to one-dimensional (1D) site response analyses at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). We first present the development of random field idealizations of the repeated basalt lava flows, heterogeneously inter-layered with sediments, from seismic velocity data collected over four decades in the ESRP. Using realizations of the stochastic fields mapped on 2D deterministic finite element models, we perform 2D viscoelastic and equivalent-linear wave propagation simulations, and quantify the mean and variance of site response aggravation factors, defined as the response spectral ratio of 2D to 1D analyses on the ground surface. Results are shown to be insensitive to the constitutive material behavior considered here, for strains induced by rock outcrop peak ground acceleration (PGA) as high as 0.7g: viscoelastic and equivalent-linear analyses predict peak mean 2D/1D aggravation factor 1.05 at period T=0.075 sec (i.e. the 2D response spectrum is 5% higher than the corresponding 1D at that period, on average), which corresponds to the wavelength of the horizontal correlation length of the random field (50m). For periods longer than the fundamental period of the site (here, T 1 =0.3125 sec), the propagating wavelengths are too long to be affected by the 1D site response and the aggravation factor becomes equal to 1. The standard deviation of the natural logarithms of the 2D/1D aggravation factors is ~0.15 for periods shorter than the fundamental period of the site, and decays thereafter at a steady rate.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A kiloelectron-volt ultrafast electron micro-diffraction apparatus using low emittance semiconductor photocathodes

We report the design and performance of a time-resolved electron diffraction apparatus capable of producing intense bunches with simultaneously single digit micrometer probe size, long coherence length, and 200 fs rms time resolution. We measure the 5d (peak) beam brightness at the sample location in micro-diffraction mode to be 7×1013 A/m2 rad2. To generate high brightness electron bunches, the system employs high efficiency, low emittance semiconductor photocathodes driven with a wavelength near the photoemission threshold at a repetition rate up to 250 kHz. We characterize spatial, temporal, and reciprocal space resolution of the apparatus. We perform proof-of-principle measurements of ultrafast heating in single crystal Au samples and compare experimental results with simulations that account for the effects of multiple scattering.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

An Approach to Enhance pnetCDF Performance in Environmental Modeling Applications

I/O has been considered as a bottleneck in parallel applications. The software package, pnetCDF which works with parallel file systems, was developed to address this issue and provide parallel I/O capability. This study examines the performance of a novel approach which performs data aggregation along either row or column dimension of the spatial domain, and then applies the pnetCDF parallel I/O paradigm. The test was done with three different domain sizes which represents small, moderately large and large data domains, using a small scale Community Multi-scale Air Quality model (CMAQ) mocked up code. The examination includes comparing I/O performance with traditional serial I/O technique, straight application of pnetCDF, and the data aggregation along row and column dimension before applying pnetCDF. After the comparison, “optimal” I/O configurations for this new novel approach were quantified. Data aggregation along the row dimension (pnetCDFcr) works better than along the column dimension (pnetCDFcc) although it may perform slightly worse than straight the pnetCDF method with a small number of processors. When the number of processors becomes larger, pnetCDFcr out performs pnetCDF significantly. If the number of processors keeps increasing, pnetCDF reaches a point that the performance is even worse than the serial I/O technique. This new approach has also been tested on a real application where it performs two times better than the straight pnetCDF paradigm.

I/O↗

Testing cloud microphysics parameterizations in NCAR CAM5 with ISDAC and M-PACE observations

Arctic clouds simulated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmospheric Model version 5 (CAM5) are evaluated with observations from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC) and Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (M-PACE), which were conducted at its North Slope of Alaska site in April 2008 and October 2004, respectively. Model forecasts for the Arctic spring and fall seasons performed under the Cloud-Associated Parameterizations Testbed framework generally reproduce the spatial distributions of cloud fraction for single-layer boundary-layer mixed-phase stratocumulus and multilayer or deep frontal clouds. However, for low-level stratocumulus, the model significantly underestimates the observed cloud liquid water content in both seasons. As a result, CAM5 significantly underestimates the surface downward longwave radiative fluxes by 20-40 W m{sup -2}. Introducing a new ice nucleation parameterization slightly improves the model performance for low-level mixed-phase clouds by increasing cloud liquid water content through the reduction of the conversion rate from cloud liquid to ice by the Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process. The CAM5 single-column model testing shows that changing the instantaneous freezing temperature of rain to form snow from -5 C to -40 C causes a large increase in modeled cloud liquid water content through the slowing down of cloud liquid and rain-related processes (e.g., autoconversion of cloud liquid to rain). The underestimation of aerosol concentrations in CAM5 in the Arctic also plays an important role in the low bias of cloud liquid water in the single-layer mixed-phase clouds. In addition, numerical issues related to the coupling of model physics and time stepping in CAM5 are responsible for the model biases and will be explored in future studies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Current data are consistent with flat spatial hypersurfaces in the Λ CDM cosmological model but favor more lensing than the model predicts

Here, we study the performance of three pairs of tilted, and a pair of untilited, ΛCDM cosmological models, with three of these four pairs allowing for non-flat spatial hypersurfaces, against cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization power spectrum data (P18), measurements of the Planck 2018 lensing potential power spectrum (lensing), and a large compilation of non-CMB data (non-CMB). For the eight models, we measure cosmological parameters and study whether or not pairs of the data sets (as well as subsets of them) are mutually consistent in these models. Half of these models allow the lensing consistency parameter A L , which re-scales the gravitational potential power spectrum, to be an additional free parameter to be determined from data, while the other three have A L = 1 which is the theoretically expected value. The pair of untilted non-flat ΛCDM models are incompatible with P18 data. The tilted spatially-flat models assume the usual primordial spatial inhomogeneity power spectrum that is a power law in wave number. The tilted non-flat models assume either the primordial power spectrum used in the Planck group anal yses [Planck P(q)], that has recently been numerically shown to be a good approximation to what is quantum-mechanically generated from a particular choice of closed inflation model initial conditions, or a recently computed power spectrum [new P(q)] that quantum-mechanically follows from a different set of non-flat inflation model initial conditions. In the tilted non-flat models with A L = 1 we find differences between P18 data and non-CMB data cosmological parameter constraints, which are large enough to rule out the Planck P(q) model at 3σ but not the new P(q) model. No significant differences are found when cosmological parameter constraints obtained with two different data sets are compared within the standard tilted flat ΛCDM model. While both P18 data and non-CMB data separately favor a closed geometry, with spatial curvature density parameter Ω k < 0, when P18+non-CMB data are jointly analyzed the evidence in favor of non-flat hypersurfaces subsides. Differences between P18 data and non-CMB data cosmological constraints subside when A L is allowed to vary. From the most restrictive P18+lensing+non-CMB data combination we get almost model-independent constraints on the cosmological parameters and find that the A L > 1 option is preferred over the Ω k < 0 one, with the A L parameter, for all models, being larger than unity by ~ 2.5σ. According to the deviance information criterion, in the P18+lensing+non-CMB analysis, the varying A L option is on the verge of being strongly favored over the A L = 1 one, which could indicate a problem for the standard tilted flat ΛCDM model. These data are consistent with flat spatial hypersurfaces but more and better data could improve the constraints on Ω k and might alter this conclusion. Error bars on some cosmological parameters are significantly reduced when non-CMB data are used jointly with P18+lensing data. For example, in the tilted flat ΛCDM model for P18+lensing+non-CMB data the Hubble constant H 0 = 68.09 ± 0.38 km s -1 Mpc -1 , which is consistent with that from a median statistics analysis of a large compilation of H 0 measurements as well as with a number of local measurements of the cosmological expansion rate. This H 0 error bar is 31% smaller than that from P18+lensing data alone.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

SU-G-IeP4-03: Cone Beam X-Ray Luminescence Computed Tomography Based On Generalized Gaussian Markov Random Field

Purpose: Cone beam X-ray luminescence computed tomography (CB-XLCT), which aims to achieve molecular and functional imaging by X-rays, has recently been proposed as a new imaging modality. However, the inverse problem of CB-XLCT is seriously ill-conditioned, hindering us to achieve good image quality. In this work, a novel reconstruction method based on Bayesian theory is proposed to tackle this problem Methods: Bayesian theory provides a natural framework for utilizing various kinds of available prior information to improve the reconstruction image quality. A generalized Gaussian Markov random field (GGMRF) model is proposed here to construct the prior model of the Bayesian theory. The most important feature of GGMRF model is the adjustable shape parameter p, which can be continuously adjusted from 1 to 2. The reconstruction image tends to have more edge-preserving property when p is slide to 1, while having more noise tolerance property when p is slide to 2, just like the behavior of L1 and L2 regularization methods, respectively. The proposed method provides a flexible regularization framework to adapt to a wide range of applications. Results: Numerical simulations were implemented to test the performance of the proposed method. The Digimouse atlas were employed to construct a three-dimensional mouse model, and two small cylinders were placed inside to serve as the targets. Reconstruction results show that the proposed method tends to obtain better spatial resolution with a smaller shape parameter, while better signal-to-noise image with a larger shape parameter. Quantitative indexes, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and full-width at half-maximum (FWHM), were used to assess the performance of the proposed method, and confirmed its effectiveness in CB-XLCT reconstruction. Conclusion: A novel reconstruction method for CB-XLCT is proposed based on GGMRF model, which enables an adjustable performance tradeoff between L1 and L2 regularization methods. Numerical simulations were conducted to demonstrate its performance.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

A Surface‐Strained and Geometry‐Tailored Nanoreactor that Promotes Ammonia Electrosynthesis

Abstract A surface‐strained and geometry‐optimized TiO 2 nanoreactor enhances the performance of electrocatalytic nitrogen fixation. The nanotubular confinement allows spatial regulation of the mass transport of nitrogen during the NRR process and offers an enlarged surface area, thus boosting the ammonia production with high selectivity. Both experimental and theoretical evidence support strained Ti 3+ sites, demonstrating a more favorable pathway for the N 2 activation and selective NH 3 production with a faster kinetic rate than the pristine TiO 2 . The TiO 2 ‐based nanoreactor with surface and bulk structure tailoring delivered an NH 3 yield rate up to 5.50 μg h −1 cm −2 (16.67 μg h −1 mg cat −1 ) and high faradaic efficiency of 26 % under ambient aqueous conditions. Our findings highlight the concept of lattice strain and geometry modified nanoreactors, which will have broad implications in the renewable energy catalysis and electrosynthesis of valuable products.

Li, Panpan↗