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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 1,747 records · Page 97
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2021

New giant planet beyond the snow line for an extended MOA exoplanet microlens sample

Characterizing a planet detected by microlensing is hard if the planetary signal is weak or the lens-source relative trajectory is far from caustics. However, statistical analyses of planet demography must include those planets to accurately determine occurrence rates. As part of a systematic modelling effort in the context of a >10-yr retrospective analysis of MOA’s survey observations to build an extended MOA statistical sample, we analyse the light curve of the planetary microlensing event MOA-2014-BLG-472. This event provides weak constraints on the physical parameters of the lens, as a result of a planetary anomaly occurring at low magnification in the light curve. We use a Bayesian analysis to estimate the properties of the planet, based on a refined Galactic model and the assumption that all Milky Way’s stars have an equal planet-hosting probability. We find that a lens consisting of a 1.9(+2.2,−1.2)M(J) giant planet orbiting a 0.31(+0.36,−0.19)Mꙩ host at a projected separation of 0.75±0.24au is consistent with the observations and is most likely, based on the Galactic priors. The lens most probably lies in the Galactic bulge, at 7.2(+0.6,−1.7)kpc from Earth. The accurate measurement of the measured planet-to-host star mass ratio will be included in the next statistical analysis of cold planet demography detected by microlensing.

Clément Ranc↗
DOE OSTI2023

Generating Synthetic Time Series Photovoltaic Data with Real-World Physical Challenges and Noise for Use in Algorithm Test and Validation

The PV Fleet Data Initiative and other projects seek the develop algorithms for automated analysis of PV time series data for extraction of statistical information and other parameters of the data such as degradation rates, soiling loss information, tracker performance, clipping or curtailment, system availability and other valuable information. While there is a vast body of PV data available for application of said extraction algorithms it is difficult to validate these algorithms because the true parameters to be extracted are not known. There has been a wide use of synthetic data in the literature for algorithm validation but this synthetic data is typically very bounded by the problem or topic at hand. The PV Fleet Data Initiative project has demonstrated that real time series PV data almost always includes a host of data quality and physical problems that, in reality, any automated PV abstraction algorithm must handle appropriately. For this reason, this work describes the development of a complex synthetic PV times series data set that includes data quality and physical problems that have been experienced in real world PV data. The various quality and physical problems are documented in the synthetic data so that users can test the validity of various PV extraction algorithms as well as develop new algorithms to solve problems this data set can support.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Enantioselective Intramolecular Allylic Substitution via Synergistic Palladium/Chiral Phosphoric Acid Catalysis: Insight into Stereoinduction through Statistical Modeling

The mode of asymmetric induction in an enantioselective intramolecular allylic substitution reaction catalyzed by a combination of palladium and a chiral phosphoric acid was investigated by a combined experimental and statistical modeling approach. Experiments to probe nonlinear effects, the reactivity of deuterium-labeled substrates, and control experiments revealed that nucleophilic attack to the π-allylpalladium intermediate is the enantio-determining step, in which the chiral phosphate anion is involved in stereoinduction. Here, using multivariable linear regression analysis, we determined that multiple noncovalent interactions with the chiral environment of the phosphate anion are integral to enantiocontrol in the transition state. The synthetic protocol to form chiral pyrrolidines was further applied to the asymmetric construction of C-O bonds at fully substituted carbon centers in the synthesis of chiral 2,2-disubstituted benzomorpholines.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

A hybrid data-driven and model-based approach for computationally efficient stochastic unit commitment and economic dispatch under wind and solar uncertainty

Stochastic unit commitment (UC) and economic dispatch (ED) are imperative in dealing with uncertainty in renewable forecast for power system operation and planning such that the overall expected production cost is minimized over the planning horizon. However, accurate calculation of the expected production cost requires assessment of a very large number of different scenarios of uncertain renewable resources, such as solar and wind, which is practically infeasible to simulate in real time. This article proposes a hybrid datadriven and physics-based model-predictive paradigm to efficiently solve for stochastic unit commitment and economic dispatch considering uncertainty in wind and solar power forecasts. Here, the novelty of the approach lies in decoupling the production cost estimation from the unit commitment and economic dispatch optimization problems under uncertainty without compromising on the fidelity of the solutions. A data-driven machine learning model is first developed to predict the mean optimal production cost. A physics-based inverse problem is then solved to get the stochastic UC and ED profiles from the expected cost. The presented approach considers, for the first time, solar uncertainty in UC/ED determination and enables efficient and accurate propagation of wind and solar uncertainty to estimate the statistics of the production cost. The effectiveness of the developed approach is demonstrated systematically on a stylized RTS-GMLC single-node system. The overall framework predicts the expected cost 62.5% more accurately than the existing state-of-the-art, on unforeseen days during the entire year, and yields, for the first time, the associated physically consistent UC and ED profiles. The solutions are also shown to be flexible in providing adequate daily reserves to address any statistical deviations from probabilistic power forecasts. The computational time associated with the presented method is only about 10 s compared to over 24 h needed for a conventional stochastic UC/ED determination under uncertainty on an Intel Core i9 processor with 32 GB of RAM.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Nanocluster building blocks of artificial square spin ice: Stray-field studies of thermal dynamics

We present measurements of the thermal dynamics of a Co-based single building block of an artificial square spin ice fabricated by focused electron-beam-induced deposition. We employ micro-Hall magnetometry, an ultra-sensitive tool to study the stray field emanating from magnetic nanostructures, as a new technique to access the dynamical properties during the magnetization reversal of the spin-ice nanocluster. The obtained hysteresis loop exhibits distinct steps, displaying a reduction of their “coercive field” with increasing temperature. Therefore, thermally unstable states could be repetitively prepared by relatively simple temperature and field protocols allowing one to investigate the statistics of their switching behavior within experimentally accessible timescales. For a selected switching event, we find a strong reduction of the so-prepared states' “survival time” with increasing temperature and magnetic field. Besides the possibility to control the lifetime of selected switching events at will, we find evidence for a more complex behavior caused by the special spin ice arrangement of the macrospins, i.e., that the magnetic reversal statistically follows distinct “paths” most likely driven by thermal perturbation.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2016

Effect of flexibility on the growth of concentration fluctuations in a suspension of sedimenting fibers: Particle simulations

Three-dimensional numerical simulations are performed to study the stability of a sedimenting suspension of weakly flexible fibers. It is well known that a suspension of rigid rods sedimenting under gravity at low Reynolds number is unstable to concentration fluctuations owing to hydrodynamic interactions. Flexible fibers, however, reorient while settling and even weak flexibility can alter their collective dynamics. In our recent work [Manikantan et al., “The instability of a sedimenting suspension of weakly flexible fibres,” J. Fluid Mech. 756, 935–964 (2014)], we developed a mean-field theory to predict the linear stability of such a system. Here, we verify these predictions using accurate and efficient particle simulations based on a slender-body model. We also demonstrate the mechanisms by which flexibility-induced reorientation alters suspension microstructure, and through it, its stability. Specifically, we first show that the anisotropy of the base state in the case of a suspension of flexible fibers has a destabilizing effect compared to a suspension of rigid rods. Second, a conflicting effect of flexibility is also shown to suppress particle clustering and slow down the growth of the instability. The relative magnitude of filament flexibility and rotational Brownian motion dictates which effect dominates, and our simulations qualitatively follow theoretically predicted trends. The mechanism for either effects is tied to the flexibility-induced reorientation of particles, which we illustrate using velocity and orientation statistics from our simulations. Finally, we also show that, in the case of an initially homogeneous and isotropic suspension, flexibility always acts to suppress the growth of the instability.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
NASA NTRS2015

Preliminary Statistics from the NASA Alphasat Beacon Receiver in Milan, Italy

NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) and the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) have initiated a joint propagation campaign within the framework of the Alphasat propagation experiment to characterize rain attenuation, scintillation, and gaseous absorption effects of the atmosphere in the 40 gigahertz band. NASA GRC has developed and installed a K/Q-band (20/40 gigahertz) beacon receiver at the POLIMI campus in Milan, Italy, which receives the 20/40 gigahertz signals broadcast from the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni TDP no. 5 beacon payload. The primary goal of these measurements is to develop a physical model to improve predictions of communications systems performance within the Q-band. Herein, we provide an overview of the design and data calibration procedure, and present 6 months of preliminary statistics of the NASA propagation terminal, which has been installed and operating in Milan since May 2014. The Q-band receiver has demonstrated a dynamic range of 40 decibels at an 8-hertz sampling rate. A weather station with an optical disdrometer is also installed to characterize rain drop size distribution for correlation with physical based models.

RF propagation↗
DOE OSTI2018

Kinetics of State Switching in Quasi-One-Dimensional Nanosystems. Statistical Model of the Influence of Defects

The role of native and radiation-induced defects in the state switching kinetics for one-dimensional systems (nanowires, molecular single-chain magnets, biological macromolecules, and many others) has been studied. An analytical approach to the description of the influence of randomly located defects on the dynamics of new-phase domains is developed using an analogy with stochastic processes in queueing theory. This method makes it possible to calculate threshold phenomena and the dependence of switching fields on material parameters.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Cross section analyses in MiniBooNE and SciBooNE experiments

The MiniBooNE experiment (2002-2012) and the SciBooNE experiment (2007-2008) are modern high statistics neutrino experiments, and they developed many new ideas in neutrino cross section analyses. In this note, I discuss selected topics of these analyses.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Future long-baseline neutrino oscillations: View from North America

In late 2012 the US Department of Energy gave approval for the first phase of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) that will conduct a broad scientific program including neutrino oscillations, neutrino scattering physics, search for baryon violation, supernova burst neutrinos and other related astrophysical phenomena. The project is now being reformulated as an international facility hosted by the United States. The facility will consist of an intense neutrino beam produced at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a highly capable set of neutrino detectors on the Fermilab campus, and a large underground liquid argon time projection chamber at Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota 1300 km from Fermilab. With an intense beam and massive far detector, the experimental program at the facility will make detailed studies of neutrino oscillations, including measurements of the neutrino mass hierarchy and Charge-Parity symmetry violation, by measuring neutrino and anti-neutrino mixing separately. At the near site, the high-statistics neutrino scattering data will allow for many cross section measurements and precision tests of the Standard Model. This presentation will describe the configuration developed by the LBNE collaboration, the broad physics program, and the status of the formation of the international facility.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Fast parametric relationships for the large-scale reservoir simulation of mixed CH 4 -CO 2 gas hydrate systems

A recent Department of Energy field test on the Alaska North Slope has increased interest in the ability to simulate systems of mixed CO 2 -CH 4 hydrates. However, the physically realistic simulation of mixed-hydrate simulation is not yet a fully solved problem. Limited quantitative laboratory data leads to the use of various ab initio, statistical mechanical, or other mathematic representations of mixed-hydrate phase behavior. Few of these methods are suitable for inclusion in reservoir simulations, particularly for systems with large number of grid elements, 3D systems, or systems with complex geometric configurations. In this paper, we present a set of fast parametric relationships describing the thermodynamic properties and phase behavior of a mixed methane-carbon dioxide hydrate system. We use well-known, off-the-shelf hydrate physical properties packages to generate a sufficiently large dataset, select the most convenient and efficient mathematical forms, and fit the data to those forms to create a physical properties package suitable for inclusion in the TOUGH+ family of codes. Finally, the mapping of the phase and thermodynamic space reveals the complexity of the mixed-hydrate system and allows understanding of the thermodynamics at a level beyond what much of the existing laboratory data and literature currently offer.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Data-driven high-dimensional statistical inference with generative models

Crucial to many measurements at the LHC is the use of correlated multi-dimensional information to distinguish rare processes from large backgrounds, which is complicated by the poor modeling of many of the crucial backgrounds in Monte Carlo simulations. In this work, we introduce HI-SIGMA, a method to perform unbinned high-dimensional statistical inference with data-driven background distributions. In contradistinction to many applications of Simulation Based Inference in High Energy Physics, HI-SIGMA relies on generative ML models, rather than classifiers, to learn the signal and background distributions in the high-dimensional space. These ML models allow for interpretable inference while also incorporating model errors and other sources of systematic uncertainties. We showcase this methodology on a simplified version of a di-Higgs measurement in the bbγγ final state, where the di-photon resonance allows for background interpolation from sidebands into the signal region. We demonstrate that HI-SIGMA provides improved sensitivity as compared to standard classifier-based methods, and that systematic uncertainties can be straightforwardly incorporated by extending methods which have been used for histogram based analyses.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Well-Posedness of the Iterative Boltzmann Inversion

The iterative Boltzmann inversion is a fixed point iteration to determine an effective pair potential for an ensemble of identical particles in thermal equilibrium from the corresponding radial distribution function. Although the method is reported to work reasonably well in practice, it still lacks a rigorous convergence analysis. In this paper we provide some first steps towards such an analysis, and we show under quite general assumptions that the associated fixed point operator is Lipschitz continuous (in fact, differentiable) in a suitable neighborhood of the true pair potential, assuming that such a potential exists. In other words, the iterative Boltzmann inversion is well-defined in the sense that if the kth iterate of the scheme is sufficiently close to the true pair potential then the k+1st iterate is an admissible pair potential, which again belongs to the domain of the fixed point operator. On our way we establish important properties of the cavity distribution function and provide a proof of a statement formulated by Groeneveld concerning the rate of decay at infinity of the Ursell function associated with a Lennard-Jones type potential.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

An active learning high-throughput microstructure calibration framework for solving inverse structure–process problems in materials informatics

Determining a process–structure–property relationship is the holy grail of materials science, where both computational prediction in the forward direction and materials design in the inverse direction are essential. Problems in materials design are often considered in the context of process–property linkage by bypassing the materials structure, or in the context of structure–property linkage as in microstructure-sensitive design problems. However, there is a lack of research effort in studying materials design problems in the context of process–structure linkage, which has a great implication in reverse engineering. In this paper, given a target microstructure, we propose an active learning high-throughput microstructure calibration framework to derive a set of processing parameters, which can produce an optimal microstructure that is statistically equivalent to the target microstructure. The proposed framework is formulated as a noisy multi-objective optimization problem, where each objective function measures a deterministic or statistical difference of the same microstructure descriptor between a candidate microstructure and a target microstructure. Furthermore, to significantly reduce the physical waiting wall-time, we enable the high-throughput feature of the microstructure calibration framework by adopting an asynchronously parallel Bayesian optimization to exploit high-performance computing resources. Case studies in additive manufacturing and grain growth are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework, where kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulation is used as a forward predictive model, such that for a given target microstructure, the target processing parameters that produced this microstructure are successfully recovered.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Modified multi-dimensional q-deformed Newton oscillators: Algebra, interpolating statistics and thermodynamics

Highlights: • A new quasi-particle algebra is proposed. • The invariance group of the algebra constructed is shown. • The algebra constructed leads to the interpolating statistics. • Anyonic behavior is studied in two dimensions. - Abstract: In this work, we present a new algebraic modelby constructing the modified multi-dimensional q-deformed bosonic and fermionic Newton oscillator algebras. This construction leads effectively to describe interpolating statistics, which can be used to approach the properties of quasi-particle excitations occurring in many-body interacting quantum systems. It is shown that the model algebras are endowed with the SU{sub φ}(d)- and SU{sub θ}(d)-symmetries, where φ and θ are real parameters describing the special phase shifts between two different modes of the models. Particular emphasis is given to the two-dimensional case, which reveals a suitable framework for analyzing anyonic behavior of the models. Furthermore, we discuss the effects of deformation on the general thermodynamical and statistical properties of gas models of these interpolating statistics particles such as the q-deformed statistical distribution function and the equation of state in two and three dimensions. Finally, we concisely point out other possible physical applications of the present deformed (quasi)particle models.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Structural evolution and atomic dynamics in Ni–Nb metallic glasses: A molecular dynamics study

In this work, the composition and temperature dependence of static and dynamic structures in Ni x Nb 1– x ( x = 50–70 at. %) were systematically studied using molecular dynamics with a new-released semi-empirical embedded atom method potential by Mendelev. The calculated pair correlation functions and the structure factor match well with the experimental data, demonstrating the reliability of the potential within relatively wide composition and temperature ranges. The local atomic structures were then characterized by bond angle distributions and Voronoi tessellation methods, demonstrating that the icosahedral $\langle$0,0,12,0$\rangle$ is only a small fraction in the liquid state but increases significantly during cooling and becomes dominant at 300 K. The most abundant clusters are identified as $\langle$0,0,12,0$\rangle$ and distorted icosahedron$\langle$0,2,8,2$\rangle$. The large fraction of these two clusters hints that the relatively good glass forming ability is near the eutectic point. Unlike Cu–Zr alloys, both the self-diffusion coefficient and shear viscosity are insensitive to compositions upon cooling in Ni–Nb alloys. The breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein relation happens at around 1.6 T g ( T g : glass transition temperature). In the amorphous state, the solid and liquid-like atoms can be distinguished based on the Debye-Waller factor $\langle$ u 2 $\rangle$. The insensitivity of the dynamic properties of Ni–Nb alloys to compositions may result from the relatively simple solidification process in the phase diagram, in which only one eutectic point exists in the studied composition range.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

Normal modes, rotational inertia, and thermal fluctuations of trapped ion crystals

The normal modes of a trapped ion crystal are derived using an approach based on the Hermitian properties of the system’s dynamical matrix. This method is equivalent to the standard Bogoliubov method, but for classical systems it is arguably simpler and more general in that canonical coordinates are not necessary. The theory is developed for stable, unstable, and neutrally-stable systems. The method is then applied to ion crystals in a Penning trap. Reduced eigenvalue problems for the case of large applied magnetic field are developed, for which the spectrum breaks into E x B drift modes, axial modes, and cyclotron modes. Thermal fluctuation levels in these modes are analyzed and shown to be consistent with the Bohr-van-Leeuwen theorem, provided that neutrally-stable modes associated with crystal rotations are included in the analysis. An expression for the rotational inertia of the crystal is derived, and a magnetic contribution to this inertia, which dominates in large magnetic fields, is described. An unusual limit is discovered for the special case of spherically-symmetric confinement, in which the rotational inertia does not exist and changes in angular momentum leave the rotation frequency unaffected.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗