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At least 1,369 records · Page 76

Seismic Bracing Development for the Moore 3 Diamond Turning Machine at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

To allow for on-site Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate (KDP) crystal finishing capabilities, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) acquired the Moore 3 diamond turning machine. Equipment such as the Moore 3 is required by LLNL to have adequate seismic bracing before permanent installation to reduce the risk of personnel injury or machine damage during an earthquake. The purpose of this project was to design a bracket that can withstand seismic forces induced by the machine without hindering function. To develop a solution, background research—including stakeholder identification, stakeholder interviews, and a literature survey—was conducted. Based on LLNL site and stakeholder requirements, several approaches were developed for bracing the Moore 3. Ideations were evaluated based on a weighted decision matrix and a final design strategy was selected. This design was an L-shaped weldment that featured provisions for four HILTI concrete anchors, three triangular gussets, and a steel construction.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Jets from shocked metal surfaces with grooves: Missing experiments

Many studies have investigated the mass outflows generated when a planar shock transits an imperfect (“defected”) metal surface, where the defects are symmetric triangular or sinusoidal grooves. Yet a fundamental question remains unanswered: how does the quantity of outflow mass and its maximum velocity vary as a function of the groove cross-sectional aspect ratio? We identify two sets of missing experiments that must be addressed to answer the question. The aspect ratio (groove depth over width) is equivalently represented by θ, the cross sectional half angle, or by η 0 k, the amplitude multiplied by an effective wavenumber. Low θ (high η 0 k) grooves comprise the first set of missing experiments, which are necessary to determine the validity of theoretical predictions of the nonlinear regime (η 0 k ≥ 1, θ < 57.5°). The second set of missing experiments are those in which the volume of the groove (or equivalently, the axial cross-sectional area) has been held constant as θ or η 0 k are varied. Such experiments are necessary to independently measure the effects of variations in groove volume and groove aspect ratio on the resulting jets.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Integral Experiment Request 305: CED-3b Summary Report

Under IER-305, critical experiments were done with and without molybdenum sleeves on 7uPCX fuel rods. The experiments were done in new critical assembly hardware designed to support the 7uPCX fuel in a 1.55 cm triangular-pitched array.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Microwave and rf Spectroscopy of 2D Carrier Systems and Bilayers (Final Technical Report)

We performed microwave spectroscopic studies of two dimensional electron systems (2DES) exhibiting the quantum Hall effect (QHE) in GaAs/Al${_x}$Ga$_{1-x}$As heterostructures. A common theme of the proposed work is electron solids, of which the simplest is the Wigner crystal, a triangular lattice of individual carriers. The solids are stabilized by carrier-carrier interaction and occur under conditions when the kinetic energy of the system is "frozen out" by high magnetic field, $B$. One of the main reasons for microwave spectroscopic study of 2DES is that the solid phases have striking microwave or rf spectra. In the low wave vector ($q$) limit these spectra exhibit a resonance that is understood as a pinning mode, a small collective oscillation of pieces of the solid within the disorder potential. Pinning modes can be very sharp, with quality factors up to around 30, and are valuable as signatures of the electron solids, and can reveal a solid even when standard dc transport shows an insulator, an integer QHE, or even a fractional QHE The pinning mode also is sensitive to the solid properties, and can reveal transitions between solids.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Integral Experiments Request 441 CED-3b Summary Report

Under IER-441, critical experiments were done with and without tantalum test rods within a central test region surrounded by 7uPCX fuel rods. The experiments were done in new critical assembly hardware designed to support the 7uPCX fuel in a 1.02 cm triangular-pitched array. Appendix I is a draft of section 1 of the ICSBEP benchmark evaluation of the experiments.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Integral Experiment Request 441 CED-4a Summary Report

Under IER-441, critical experiments were done with and without tantalum test rods within a central test region surrounded by 7uPCX fuel rods. The experiments were done in new critical assembly hardware designed to support the 7uPCX fuel in a 1.02 cm triangular-pitched array

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Verification of the REBUS Software

Ongoing design activities at Argonne National Laboratory are requiring a thorough verification of the Argonne Reactor Computation codes be performed. REBUS is central to this system. The driver for this effort requires the Triangular-Z and hexagonal-Z core geometry options of REBUS to be verified. Previous work identified the REBUS features required to be verified to support current design activities, features of which are generally applicable to hexagonal-Z fast reactor designs. The scope of this verification effort includes verifying REBUS’s ability to correctly intepret the user input model, verifying that the features identified yield the intended results, and verifying the correctness of the REBUS output tables. The REBUS software verification relies heavily upon the accuracy of the embedded DIF3D software, the verification of which was completed and documented elsewhere. Given that DIF3D produces an accurate solution, the primary focus of the verification in the REBUS software is to ensure that it properly uses the DIF3D solution and that the depletion system (Bateman equations) are correctly implemented. This manuscript reiterates the verification tasks and displays results with respect to the features needed for current design activities. Analytic solutions of the Batemen equations are displayed and the results calculated with REBUS are displayed demonstrating the accuracy. Since coupled Bateman and neutron diffusion/transport solutions are extremely difficult to obtain, much of the focus is placed on how REBUS uses a given DIF3D solution assuming the accuracy of the DIF3D solution. The verification effort identified no issues that are debilitating or otherwise impactful to the design usage of REBUS, and thus REBUS version 11.0, release 3012 is considered verified. It is important to note that several outputs of REBUS are identified to be inaccurate, such as burnup in MWD/MT. Most of the relevant ones for VTR are generally accurate with 10-20% errors which is not impactful as all regular REBUS users are aware of this issue and know how to hand calculate the results. The REBUS manual further makes it clear that these values are consistent with the methodology being used by REBUS and thus the “errors” are more of an inconsistent definition with respect to what a user would expect given a definition in literature. Other issues that were identified included unclear documentation and software bugs all of which were inconsequential to the final results.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Third Integer Resonant Extraction Transit Time Simulation Studies

In this work, we present the investigation of transit time of particles in the non-linear third-integer resonant extraction process. Transit time is defined as the number of turns a particle takes to get extracted once it is in the unstable region in the phase space, i.e., outside the triangular separatrix in case of third-integer resonance. The study of transit time is important because transit time directly contributes to the beam response time during resonant extraction and thus knowing it apriori would be practically useful in designing of the extraction system. In this work, we shall investigate the analytical derivation of the transit time of particles (to the first order Kobayashi Hamiltonian) in different parts of the phase space distribution and compare against the analytical results. We also compare the simulation result of the transit time of particles (with higher statistics) for the static as well as dynamic extraction conditions cases, particularly in the context of resonant extraction parameters for Mu2e experiment at Fermilab.

Narayanan, Aakaash [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000157944↗

A New Route Toward Atomically Flat and Defect-Free Ge/SiGe Planar Heterostructures

Germanium-based planar heterostructures are emerging as versatile platforms for realizing quantum devices. In particular, planar Ge/SiGe quantum wells (QWs) host hole states with exceptionally high mobility and strong, electrically tunable spin–orbit interactions, enabling full electrical control of quantum information. A key requirement for these systems is the growth of microscopic, defect-free, atomically flat Ge QW heterostructures on relaxed or reverse-graded SiGe buffer layers, as well as on commercial Ge substrates. While several physical deposition techniques have demonstrated high-quality planar Ge/SiGe QWs, a major challenge remains: minimizing defect density typically requires high growth temperatures, which are incompatible with standard CMOS process flows. Here, we present a convenient low-temperature process for realizing high-quality planar SiGe/Ge heterostructures using a combination of thermal and electron-beam evaporation. We systematically map the effects of ex-situ and in-situ substrate preparation protocols, growth temperature, and post-deposition annealing conditions, and correlate these parameters with surface roughness and defect density. We find that in-situ oxide desorption conditions and post-annealing parameters have the most pronounced impact on improving surface quality. Under optimized conditions, we achieve atomically smooth surfaces with root-mean-square roughness σrms​ ≤ 10 Å and negligible defect density. Interestingly, thermally evaporated Ge layers exhibit oriented triangular crystallites that elongate upon post-annealing in the presence of high Ge vapor pressure. These results demonstrate that this simple, low-temperature deposition approach is a viable and effective route for achieving high-quality Ge QW heterostructures, with strong potential for scalable quantum computing and sensing applications.

Tripathi, Malvika [Fermilab] (ORCID:00000001989251↗

A New Route Toward Atomically Flat and Defect-Free Ge/SiGe Planar Heterostructures

Germanium-based planar heterostructures are emerging as versatile platforms for realizing quantum devices. In particular, planar Ge/SiGe quantum wells (QWs) host hole states with exceptionally high mobility and strong, electrically tunable spin–orbit interactions, enabling full electrical control of quantum information. A key requirement for these systems is the growth of microscopic, defect-free, atomically flat Ge QW heterostructures on relaxed or reverse-graded SiGe buffer layers, as well as on commercial Ge substrates. While several physical deposition techniques have demonstrated high-quality planar Ge/SiGe QWs, a major challenge remains: minimizing defect density typically requires high growth temperatures, which are incompatible with standard CMOS process flows. Here, we present a convenient low-temperature process for realizing high-quality planar SiGe/Ge heterostructures using a combination of thermal and electron-beam evaporation. We systematically map the effects of ex-situ and in-situ substrate preparation protocols, growth temperature, and post-deposition annealing conditions, and correlate these parameters with surface roughness and defect density. We find that in-situ oxide desorption conditions and post-annealing parameters have the most pronounced impact on improving surface quality. Under optimized conditions, we achieve atomically smooth surfaces with root-mean-square roughness σrms​ ≤ 10 Å and negligible defect density. Interestingly, thermally evaporated Ge layers exhibit oriented triangular crystallites that elongate upon post-annealing in the presence of high Ge vapor pressure. These results demonstrate that this simple, low-temperature deposition approach is a viable and effective route for achieving high-quality Ge QW heterostructures, with strong potential for scalable quantum computing and sensing applications.

Tripathi, Malvika [Fermilab] (ORCID:00000001989251↗

High-Resolution Regional Atmosphere–Ocean–Wave Coupled Simulations of Hurricane Henri (2021)

To explore the integrated effects of ocean and ocean surface wave related physical processes on TC simulations, a set of three model simulations is performed. * In experiment 'A', the event is modeled using the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model alone with prescribed Sea Surface Temperature (SST) at 6-hour intervals. * In experiment ‘AO,’ WRF is coupled with the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), enabling variable exchange between atmosphere and ocean, but without considering ocean surface wave-related physical processes. * In experiment ‘AOW’, WRF, FVCOM, and Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) exchange variables with each other every hour through the OASIS3-MCT Coupler to allow direct and indirect atmosphere-ocean-wave interactions. * Observational data are also included in this dataset (Dropsonde, HRD-Radar, NDBC_wave). All simulations are initialized at 18:00 UTC on August 19, 2021, within a domain encompassing the western North Atlantic Ocean. The atmospheric domain features a horizontal resolution of 3 km. The ocean domain, which covers a substantial portion of the WRF ocean domain, employs an unstructured triangular grid with resolutions ranging from 3 km near the coast to 9 km in the open ocean, effectively resolving the complex coastline of the U.S. Northeast Coast. Initial and boundary conditions for the atmosphere model are obtained from the 6-hourly 0.25° NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Global Forecast System (GFS; NCEP, 2015) data.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

High-Resolution Regional Atmosphere–Ocean–Wave Coupled Simulations of Hurricane Henri (2021)

To explore the integrated effects of ocean and ocean surface wave related physical processes on TC simulations, a set of three model simulations is performed. * In experiment 'A', the event is modeled using the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model alone with prescribed Sea Surface Temperature (SST) at 6-hour intervals. * In experiment ‘AO,’ WRF is coupled with the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), enabling variable exchange between atmosphere and ocean, but without considering ocean surface wave-related physical processes. * In experiment ‘AOW’, WRF, FVCOM, and Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) exchange variables with each other every hour through the OASIS3-MCT Coupler to allow direct and indirect atmosphere-ocean-wave interactions. * Observational data are also included in this dataset (Dropsonde, HRD-Radar, NDBC_wave). All simulations are initialized at 18:00 UTC on August 19, 2021, within a domain encompassing the western North Atlantic Ocean. The atmospheric domain features a horizontal resolution of 3 km. The ocean domain, which covers a substantial portion of the WRF ocean domain, employs an unstructured triangular grid with resolutions ranging from 3 km near the coast to 9 km in the open ocean, effectively resolving the complex coastline of the U.S. Northeast Coast. Initial and boundary conditions for the atmosphere model are obtained from the 6-hourly 0.25° NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Global Forecast System (GFS; NCEP, 2015) data.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

High-Resolution Regional Atmosphere–Ocean–Wave Coupled Simulations of Hurricane Henri (2021)

To explore the integrated effects of ocean and ocean surface wave related physical processes on tropical cyclone simulations, a set of three model simulations is performed. * In experiment 'A', the event is modeled using the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model alone with prescribed Sea Surface Temperature (SST) at 6-hour intervals. * In experiment ‘AO,’ WRF is coupled with the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM), enabling variable exchange between atmosphere and ocean, but without considering ocean surface wave-related physical processes. * In experiment ‘AOW’, WRF, FVCOM, and Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) exchange variables with each other every hour through the OASIS3-MCT Coupler to allow direct and indirect atmosphere-ocean-wave interactions. * Observational data are also included in this dataset (Dropsonde, HRD-Radar, NDBC_wave). All simulations are initialized at 18:00 UTC on August 19, 2021, within a domain encompassing the western North Atlantic Ocean. The atmospheric domain features a horizontal resolution of 3 km. The ocean domain, which covers a substantial portion of the WRF ocean domain, employs an unstructured triangular grid with resolutions ranging from 3 km near the coast to 9 km in the open ocean, effectively resolving the complex coastline of the U.S. Northeast Coast. Initial and boundary conditions for the atmosphere model are obtained from the 6-hourly 0.25° NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Global Forecast System (GFS; NCEP, 2015) data. These CSV files are derived from the NetCDF files in the c0 dataset. Unlike the original format, where geographic coordinates were stored in a separate file, each CSV now embeds the corresponding latitude and longitude values alongside the measured or simulated variables.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Universal correlation between CP phase $\delta$ and the non-unitarity $\alpha$ parameter phases

The non-unitarity of the neutrino mixing matrix is a problem related with a more fundamental question about the origin of the neutrino mass. After a brief discussion on the questions ``why do we need model-independent framework for unitarity test?'', we show interesting properties present in the oscillation probabilities of neutrinos propagating in matter with non-unitarity. That is, (1) partial unitarity and (2) universal phase correlation. %To illuminate these points, we formulate a perturbative framework with the two expansion parameters $\epsilon \equiv \Delta m^2_{21} / \Delta m^2_{31}$ and $\alpha$ matrix elements. The complex triangular $\alpha$ matrix is introduced through the definition of $3 \times 3$ non-unitary flavor mixing matrix $N$ as %\begin{eqnarray} N &=& \left( \bf{1} - \alpha \right) U = \left\{ \bf{1} - \left[ \begin{array}{ccc}\alpha_{ee} & 0 & 0 \\\alpha_{\mu e} & \alpha_{\mu \mu} & 0 \\\alpha_{\tau e} & \alpha_{\tau \mu} & \alpha_{\tau \tau} \\\end{array}\right] \right\}U \label{alpha-matrix-def}\end{eqnarray}%where $U$ is the unitary MNS mixing matrix, and hence $\alpha$ characterizes the size and the flavor dependence of unitarity violation (UV)\footnote{%%%%%%%%%%%%%Despite that in the physics literature UV usually means ``ultraviolet'', we use UV in this manuscript as an abbreviation for ``unitarity violation'' or ``unitarity violating''.}~~caused by new physics (NP) at low- or high-scales.~~~~The point (1) above essentially means that despite non-unitary mixing, neutrino evolution must be unitary because the three active neutrinos span a complete state space of neutral leptons. The {\em phase correlation} mentioned in the point (2) refers an intriguing property that the complex $\alpha$ parameters and $\nu$Standard Model CP phase $\delta$ always come into the oscillation probabilities in a correlated way, $e^{- i \delta } \alpha_{\mu e}$, $\alpha_{\tau e}$, and $e^{i \delta} \alpha_{\tau \mu}$, universally in all the oscillation channels. The physical meaning of this result is briefly discussed. }

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Energy-momentum tensor in the 2D Ising CFT in full modular space

A set of lattice operators for the energy-momentum (EM) tensor in the Ising CFT is derived in the spin variables. Our expression works under arbitrary affine transformation both on triangular and hexagonal lattices (where the former includes the rectangular lattices). The correctness of the operators is numerically confirmed in Monte Carlo calculations by comparing the results with the conformal Ward identity, including the operator normalization. In the derivation of the EM tensor, a staggered structure of the affine-transformed hexagonal lattice is analyzed, which shows a peculiar shift from the circumcenter dual lattice and appears as a mixing angle between the holomorphic part $T(z)$ and the antiholomorphic part $\tilde T(\bar z)$. The details of this contribution will appear in a subsequent paper.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

FPGA Acceleration of GCN in Light of the Symmetry of Graph Adjacency Matrix

Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCNs) are widely used to process large-scale graph data. Different from deep neural networks (DNNs), GCNs are sparse, irregular, and unstructured, posing unique challenges to hardware acceleration with regular processing elements (PEs). In particular, the adjacency matrix of a GCN is extremely sparse, leading to frequent but irregular memory access, low spatial/temporal data locality and poor data reuse. Furthermore, a realistic graph usually consists of unstructured data (e.g., unbalanced distributions), creating significantly different processing times and imbalanced workload for each node in GCN acceleration. To overcome these challenges, we propose an end-to-end hardware-software co-design to accelerate GCNs on resource-constrained FPGAs with the features including: (1) A custom dataflow that leverages symmetry along the diagonal of the adjacency matrix to accelerate feature aggregation for undirected graphs. We utilize either the upper or the lower triangular matrix of the adjacency matrix to perform aggregation in GCN to improve data reuse. (2) Unified compute cores for both aggregation and transform phases, with full support to the symmetry-based dataflow. These cores can be dynamically reconfigured to the systolic mode for transformation or as individual accumulators for aggregation in GCN processing. (3) Preprocessing of the graph in software to rearrange the edges and features to match the custom dataflow. This step improves the regularity in memory access and data reuse in the aggregation phase. Moreover, we quantize the GCN precision from FP32 to INT8 to reduce the memory footprint without losing the inference accuracy. We implement our accelerator design in Intel Stratix10 MX FPGA board with HBM2, and demonstrate 1.3x-110.5x improvement in end-to-end GCN latency as compared to the state-of the-art FPGA implementations, on the graph datasets of Cora, Pubmed, Citeseer and Reddit.

Nair, Gopikrishnan R.↗

The Development of a Finite Volume Method for Modeling Sound in Coastal Ocean Environment

: As the rapid growth of marine renewable energy and off-shore wind energy, there have been concerns that the noises generated from construction and operation of the devices may interfere marine animals’ communication. In this research, a underwater sound model is developed to simulate sound prorogation generated by marine-hydrokinetic energy (MHK) devices or offshore wind (OSW) energy platforms. Finite volume and finite difference methods are developed to solve the 3D Helmholtz equation of sound propagation in the coastal environment. For finite volume method, the grid system consists of triangular grids in horizontal plane and sigma-layers in vertical dimension. A 3D sparse matrix solver with complex coefficients is formed for solving the resulting acoustic pressure field. The Complex Shifted Laplacian Preconditioner (CSLP) method is applied to efficiently solve the matrix system iteratively with MPI parallelization using a high performance cluster. The sound model is then coupled with the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) for simulating sound propagation generated by human activities in a range-dependent setting, such as offshore wind energy platform constructions and tidal stream turbines. As a proof of concept, initial validation of the finite difference solver is presented for two coastal wedge problems. Validation of finite volume method will be reported separately.

Coastal↗

Cutting Corners: Curvilinear-Surface-Based Gravity Models for Asteroids and Comets

We report that asteroids and comets are often highly irregular in shape and can contain large density inhomogenities. For such bodies, the simple point-mass gravity model does not capture the dynamics of the environment and this has driven a need for higher fidelity alternatives. A number of approaches have been developed with one of the most popular being the analytic polyhedral model. The analytic polyhedral model approximates the irregular shaped body as a polyhedron, typically consisting of triangular facets, with some assumed internal density distribution. Several analytic formulations have been derived for the gravitational fields of a constant-density polyhedron. A thorough history of the model is provided in Ref. [6] as well as a comparison of the implementations of Refs. [2–4]. The three versions provide near identical accuracy with the implementation of Werner requiring the fewest transcendental function evaluations suggesting its superior efficiency. Implementations with linear density contrasts and arbitrary polynomial density contrasts have also been developed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗