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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 109 records · Page 6

Toward Accurate Spin–Orbit Splittings from Relativistic Multireference Electronic Structure Theory

Most nonrelativistic electron correlation methods can be adapted to account for relativistic effects, as long as the relativistic molecular spinor integrals are available, from either a four-, two-, or one-component mean-field calculation. Furthermore, relativistic multireference correlation methods remain a relatively unexplored area, with mixed evidence regarding the improvements brought by perturbative treatments. We report, for the first time, the implementation of state-averaged four-component relativistic multireference perturbation theories to second and third order based on the driven similarity renormalization group (DSRG). With our methods, named 4c-SA-DSRG-MRPT2 and 3, we find that the dynamical correlation included on top of 4c-CASSCF references can significantly improve the spin-orbit splittings in p-block elements and potential energy surfaces when compared to 4c-CASSCF and 4c-CASPT2 results. We further show that 4c-DSRG-MRPT2 and 3 are applicable to these systems over a wide range of the flow parameter, with systematic improvement from second to third order in terms of both improved error statistics and reduced sensitivity with respect to the flow parameter.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

New Time Integrators and Capabilities in SUNDIALS Versions 6.2.0-7.4.0

SUNDIALS is a well-established numerical library that provides robust and efficient time integrators and nonlinear solvers. This article overviews several significant improvements and new features added over the last 3 years to support scientific simulations run on high-performance computing systems. Notably, three new classes of one-step methods have been implemented: low storage Runge–Kutta, symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta, and operator splitting. In addition, we describe new timestep adaptivity support for multirate methods, adjoint sensitivity analysis capabilities for explicit Runge–Kutta methods, additional options for Anderson acceleration in nonlinear solvers, and improved error handling and logging.

Computer science↗

Electronic circuit for control or coupling of single charges or spins and methods therefor

A quantum dot structure having a split-gate geometry is provided. The quantum dot is configured for incorporation into a quantum dot array of a quantum processing unit. A gap between a reservoir accumulation gate and a quantum dot accumulation gate provides a tunnel barrier between an electric charge reservoir and a quantum dot well. An electrical potential applied to the gates defines a tunnel barrier height, width and charge tunneling rate between the well and the reservoir without relying on any barrier gate to control the charge tunneling rate.

Pioro-Ladriere, Michel↗

Experimental Studies on Wood Pellets Combustion in a Fixed Bed Combustor Using Taguchi Method

The combustion of wood pellets in a fixed bed combustor of a 20 kW capacity domestic pellet boiler was tested according to several factors including Power, Excess Air (EA), Primary/Secondary air Split Ratio (SR) and Grate Area (GA). The Taguchi method was applied to program the experimental design. Several parameters were measured, including gas emissions (CO), fuel bed temperature (measured at 4 different heights), and efficiency. The experimental results show that the lower CO emission and the higher efficiency were obtained at medium thermal loads and the highest temperature on the fuel bed was obtained at about ¼ of its height (15 mm). The results obtained from the analysis of variance (ANOVA) show that the SR and the Power are the most important factors contributing to the CO reduction and also increase the fuel bed temperature.

Castro, Carlos↗

127 Xe quantification method development and intercomparison exercise

Monitoring of the atmosphere for fission products ( 131m Xe, 133m Xe, 133 Xe, and 135 Xe) is performed by various laboratories to detect nuclear explosions. Quantification of 127 Xe is not routinely performed by laboratories measuring atmospheric radioxenon because it is not a fission product. 127 Xe was recently detected by a ground-based beta-gamma air monitoring system. When measured using beta-gamma coincidence detector systems, such as those in use on the International Monitoring System (IMS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), 127 Xe can interfere with the quantification of fission product radioxenon due to overlap of the 127 Xe beta-gamma coincidence signatures with those of fission product radioxenon. Here, this work demonstrates quantification of 127 Xe at different laboratories with different measurement techniques. Production and purification of 127 Xe was performed by neutron activation of enriched 126 Xe. The purified 127 Xe was then split between laboratories, and detection and quantification methods were developed. At Idaho National Laboratory, a quantification method involving high purity germanium detectors was devised that included self-attenuation correction. At AWE, a beta-gamma coincidence counting method, as used in support of the IMS, was modified to enable the measurement and analysis of the 127 Xe samples. Corrections were made for self-attenuation, which showed a strong xenon volume dependency, for some coincidence signatures. The gas sample activity concentration was used as the comparison metric and it showed excellent agreement between the methods.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

A gauge-compatible Hamiltonian splitting algorithm for particle-in-cell simulations using finite element exterior calculus

A particle-in-cell algorithm is derived with a canonical Poisson structure in the formalism of finite element exterior calculus. The resulting method belongs to the class of gauge-compatible splitting algorithms, which exactly preserve gauge symmetries and their associated conservation laws via the momentum map. We numerically demonstrate this time invariance of the momentum map and its usefulness in establishing precise initial conditions with a desired initial electric field and fixed background charge. The restriction of this canonical, finite element Poisson structure to the 1X2P $1\frac {1}{2}$ -dimensional phase space is also considered and simulated numerically.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Application of Quantum Computing to Biochemical Systems: A Look to the Future

Chemistry is considered as one of the more promising applications to science of near-term quantum computing. Recent work in transitioning classical algorithms to a quantum computer has led to great strides in improving quantum algorithms and illustrating their quantum advantage. Because of the limitations of near-term quantum computers, the most effective strategies split the work over classical and quantum computers. There is a proven set of methods in computational chemistry and materials physics that has used this same idea of splitting a complex physical system into parts that are treated at different levels of theory to obtain solutions for the complete physical system for which a brute force solution with a single method is not feasible. These methods are variously known as embedding, multi-scale, and fragment techniques and methods. We review these methods and then propose the embedding approach as a method for describing complex biochemical systems, with the parts not only treated with different levels of theory, but computed with hybrid classical and quantum algorithms. Such strategies are critical if one wants to expand the focus to biochemical molecules that contain active regions that cannot be properly explained with traditional algorithms on classical computers. While we do not solve this problem here, we provide an overview of where the field is going to enable such problems to be tackled in the future.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Lattice-QCD Computable Quark Correlation Functions at Three-Loop Order and Extraction of Splitting Functions

We present the first complete next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-order calculation of the matching coefficients that link unpolarized flavor nonsinglet parton distribution functions with lattice QCD computable correlation functions. By using this high-order result, we notice a reduction in theoretical uncertainties compared to relying solely on previously known lower-order matching coefficients. Furthermore, based on this result we have extracted the three-loop unpolarized flavor nonsinglet splitting function, which is in agreement with the state-of-the-art result. Because of the simplicity of our method, it has the potential to advance the calculation of splitting functions to the desired four-loop order.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

An unconditionally stable, time-implicit algorithm for solving the one-dimensional Vlasov–Poisson system

The development of an implicit, unconditionally stable, numerical method for solving the Vlasov–Poisson system in one dimension using a phase-space grid is presented. The algorithm uses the Crank–Nicolson discretization scheme and operator splitting allowing for direct solution of the finite difference equations. This method exactly conserves particle number, enstrophy and momentum. A variant of the algorithm which does not use splitting also exactly conserves energy but requires the use of iterative solvers. This algorithm has no dissipation and thus fine-scale variations can lead to oscillations and the production of negative values of the distribution function. We find that overall, the effects of negative values of the distribution function are relatively benign. We consider a variety of test cases that have been used extensively in the literature where numerical results can be compared with analytical solutions or growth rates. We examine higher-order differencing and construct higher-order temporal updates using standard composition methods.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Long term durability test and post mortem for metal-supported solid oxide electrolysis cells

Hydrogen is a renewable energy carrier, and electrolysis to split water is the most environmentally friendly method to produce hydrogen. This work reports long-term durability and degradation mode analysis for metal-supported solid oxide electrolysis cells (MS-SOECs). Catalyst screening showed that MS-SOECs with composite electrode catalysts (samarium-doped ceria-nickel [SDC-Ni] serving as a fuel electrode catalyst, and praseodymium oxide [PrO x ]-SDC or La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3 [LSCF]-SDC serving as an air electrode catalyst) exhibit the highest electrochemical performance at 700 °C. The degradation rate of cells with LSCF-SDC as the air electrode catalyst was as low as 1.3%/100 h in long term durability tests at a current density of 0.33 A cm -2 , in contrast to rapid degradation observed for a cell with a PrO x -SDC air electrode. Furthermore, post-mortem analysis reveals the degradation is dependent on the primary modes of fuel electrode catalyst coarsening and Cr poisoning on the air electrode catalyst, as well as secondary modes of oxidation of the metal support and local elemental accumulation of Ni. Other degradation modes reported in conventional anode-supported SOECs, such as Ni migration, foreign element contamination, delamination of the cell, and nano-voids on the electrolyte, are not observed in the present MS-SOECs.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

The collisional particle-in-cell method for the Vlasov–Maxwell–Landau equations

We introduce an extension of the particle-in-cell method that captures the Landau collisional effects in the Vlasov–Maxwell–Landau equations. The method arises from a regularisation of the variational formulation of the Landau equation, leading to a discretisation of the collision operator that conserves mass, charge, momentum and energy, while increasing the (regularised) entropy. The collisional effects appear as a fully deterministic effective force, thus the method does not require any transport–collision splitting. The scheme can be used in arbitrary dimension, and for a general interaction, including the Coulomb case. We validate the scheme on scenarios such as the Landau damping, the two-stream instability and the Weibel instability, demonstrating its effectiveness in the numerical simulation of plasma.

Bailo, Rafael (ORCID:0000000180183799)↗

Exact wave solver for nonparaxial laser beam propagation

Simulations of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments require high-fidelity models for laser beam propagation in a nonuniform plasma with varying index of refraction. We describe a new numerical wave solver that is applicable to centimeter-scale length plasmas encountered in indirect drive ICF applications. The one-way Helmholtz equation (OHE) generalizes the time-harmonic paraxial wave equation to large angles. Here, we present a methodology to numerically evaluate the exact solution to the OHE. This solution is computed by analytically advancing eigenfunctions of the one-way Helmholtz operator along a propagation direction and is applicable to any given index of a refraction profile. We compare our exact method with a commonly used approximate split-step technique for solving the OHE. As a test problem, we consider nonparaxial propagation of Gaussian and speckled beams in a plasma density channel with internal reflection. We find that the split-step approach incurs significant errors compared to the exact solution computed using the novel algorithm.

Belyaev, Mikhail A. (ORCID:0000000224908887)↗

Computationally Accelerated Discovery and Experimental Demonstration of Gd0.5La0.5Co0.5Fe0.5O3 for Solar Thermochemical Hydrogen Production

Solar thermochemical hydrogen (STCH) production is a promising method to generate carbon neutral fuels by splitting water utilizing metal oxide materials and concentrated solar energy. The discovery of materials with enhanced water-splitting performance is critical for STCH to play a major role in the emerging renewable energy portfolio. While perovskite materials have been the focus of many recent efforts, materials screening can be time consuming due to the myriad chemical compositions possible. This can be greatly accelerated through computationally screening materials parameters including oxygen vacancy formation energy, phase stability, and electron effective mass. In this work, the perovskite Gd 0.5 La 0.5 Co 0.5 Fe 0.5 O 3 (GLCF), was computationally determined to be a potential water splitter, and its activity was experimentally demonstrated. During water splitting tests with a thermal reduction temperature of 1,350°C, hydrogen yields of 101 μmol/g and 141 μmol/g were obtained at re-oxidation temperatures of 850 and 1,000°C, respectively, with increasing production observed during subsequent cycles. This is a significant improvement from similar compounds studied before (La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3 and LaFe 0.75 Co 0.25 O 3 ) that suffer from performance degradation with subsequent cycles. Confirmed with high temperature x-ray diffraction (HT-XRD) patterns under inert and oxidizing atmosphere, the GLCF mainly maintained its phase while some decomposition to Gd 2-x La x O 3 was observed.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Thermal feedback coupling in a transient Monte Carlo high-order/low-order scheme

Transient simulations of nuclear systems face the computational challenge of resolving both space and time during reactivity changes. A common strategy for tackling this issue is to split the neutron flux into shape and amplitude functions. This split can be solved with high- order/low-order methods. While this multi-fidelity approach has traditionally been reserved for deterministic methods, it is also possible to implement in Monte Carlo as an efficient alternative to Dynamic Monte Carlo. This work implements the frequency transform method with thermal feedback in high-order/low-order Monte Carlo by blending static coupling methods such as single-batch Monte Carlo, with a simple thermal-fluids calculation. While previous work focused solely on prescribed transients, the addition of time-dependent thermal-fluids allows transients to be self-propagating. Tests were run in a fluids-initiated transient to showcase the basic functionalities of this methodology. Preliminary results behave as expected, paving the way for studying more sophisticated thermal-fluids coupling methods. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Photocatalytic water splitting for large-scale solar-to-chemical energy conversion and storage

Sunlight-driven water splitting allows renewable hydrogen to be produced from abundant and environmentally benign water. Large-scale societal implementation of this green fuel production technology within energy generation systems is essential for the establishment of sustainable future societies. Among various technologies, photocatalytic water splitting using particulate semiconductors has attracted increasing attention as a method to produce large amounts of green fuels at low cost. The key to making this technology practical is the development of photocatalysts capable of splitting water with high solar-to-fuel energy conversion efficiency. Furthermore, advances that enable the deployment of water-splitting photocatalysts over large areas are necessary, as is the ability to recover hydrogen safely and efficiently from the produced oxyhydrogen gas. This lead article describes the key discoveries and recent research trends in photosynthesis using particulate semiconductors and photocatalyst sheets for overall water splitting, via one-step excitation and two-step excitation (Z-scheme reactions), as well as for direct conversion of carbon dioxide into renewable fuels using water as an electron donor. We describe the latest advances in solar water-splitting and carbon dioxide reduction systems and pathways to improve their future performance, together with challenges and solutions in their practical application and scalability, including the fixation of particulate photocatalysts, hydrogen recovery, safety design of reactor systems, and approaches to separately generate hydrogen and oxygen from water.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Huzinaga projection embedding for efficient and accurate energies of systems with localized spin-densities

We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the restricted open-shell and unrestricted formulation of the absolutely localized Huzinaga projection operator embedding method. Restricted open-shell and unrestricted Huzinaga projection embedding in the full system basis is formally exact to restricted open-shell and unrestricted Kohn–Sham density functional theory, respectively. By utilizing the absolutely localized basis, we significantly improve the efficiency of the method while maintaining high accuracy. Furthermore, the absolutely localized basis allows for high accuracy open-shell wave function methods to be embedded into a closed-shell density functional theory environment. The open-shell embedding method is shown to calculate electronic energies of a variety of systems to within 1 kcal/mol accuracy of the full system wave function result. For certain highly localized reactions, such as spin transition energies on transition metals, we find that very few atoms are necessary to include in the wave function region in order to achieve the desired accuracy. This extension further broadens the applicability of our absolutely localized Huzinaga level-shift projection operator method to include open-shell species. Here, we apply our method to several representative examples, such as spin splitting energies, catalysis on transition metals, and radical reactions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Advanced Finite-Volume Numerics and Source Term Assumptions for Kernel and G-Equation Modelling of Propane/Air Flames

Here G-Equation models represent propagating flame fronts with an implicit two-dimensional surface representation (level-set). Level-set methods are fast, as transport source terms for the implicit surface can be solved with finite-volume operators on the finite-volume domain, without having to build the actual surface. However, they include approximations whose practical effects are not properly understood. In this study, we improved the numerics of the FRESCO CFD code’s G-Equation solver and developed a new method to simulate kernel growth using signed distance functions and the analytical sphere-mesh overlap. We analyzed their role for simulating propane/air flames, using three well-established constant-volume configurations: a one-dimensional, freely propagating laminar flame; a disc-shaped, constant-volume swirl combustor; and torch-jet flame development through an orifice from a two-chamber device. We tested the explicit (sub-cycled) vs. implicit formulation for the standard transport operators (advection, diffusion, compressibility). In addition to the accurate flame swept-volume method for chemistry and species source term, we developed a more accurate estimator for the burnt/unburnt split cell composition. Then, we developed a signed-distance-function (SDF) based method which provides a more stable reinitialization of the level-set field at every time-step. We found that simplifying assumptions common to several G-Equation implementations, for straightforward terms such as compressibility and advection, lead to large errors in predicting the propagation of even laminar flames, with deviations up to ~300% in simulated vs. formulated flame speed. Conversely, the enhanced numerics enabled through the SDF field reinitialization and improved chemistry source term improve simulation stability and smooth flame propagation even with significantly larger solver time-steps.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Parallel exponential time differencing methods for geophysical flow simulations

Two ocean models are considered for geophysical flow simulations: the multilayer shallow water equations and the multilayer primitive equations. For the former, we investigate the parallel performance of exponential time differencing (ETD) methods, including exponential Rosenbrock–Euler, ETD2wave, and B-ETD2wave. For the latter, we take advantage of the splitting of barotropic and baroclinic modes and propose a new two-level method in which an ETD method is applied to solve the fast barotropic mode. Furthermore, these methods could improve the computational efficiency of numerical simulations because ETD methods allow for much larger time step sizes than traditional explicit time-stepping techniques that are commonly used in existing computational ocean models. Several standard benchmark tests for ocean modeling are performed and comparison of the numerical results demonstrates a great potential of applying the parallel ETD methods for simulating real-world geophysical flows.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗