Angle- and time-resolved mass spectrometric study on pulsed laser ablation of an La-Ca-Mn-O target

Pulsed laser ablation (PLA) of an La₂O₃-CaO-MnO₂ target at 532 nm has been investigated by angle- and time-resolved quadrupole mass spectrometry. The results show that different kinds of metal oxides as well as metal ions and atoms are produced during the ablation at high laser fluence. The measured TOF spectra are fitted by multicomponent Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with a stream velocity, which gives the translational energy of 6.34 and 0.43 eV for Mn⁺ ions and Mn atoms, respectively. It implies that ablated ions are mainly formed via a nonthermal process, while the neutral atoms mainly via a thermal one. The angular distributions of Mn + ions and Mn atoms can be described by a cos ⁿ θ and a bicosine function a cosθ+ (1-a)cos ⁿ θ, respectively. Possible mechanisms of laser ablation of La-Ca-Mn-0 are discussed. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 29683001).     

High quality YBCO superconductive thin films fabricated by laser molecular beam epitaxy

High quality YBa₂.Cu₃O_{6 +x}(YBCO) superconductive thin films have been fabricated on the SrTiO₃(100) substrate using laser molecular beam epitaxy (laser-MBE). The active oxygen source was used, which made the necessary ambient oxygen pressure be 2–3 orders lower than that in pulsed laser deposition (PLD). T_c0 is 85–87 K, and J_c, 1.0 × 10⁶ A/cm². Atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements show that no obvious particulates can be observed and the root mean square roughness is 7.8 nm. High stability DC superconducting quantum interference devices (DC-SQUID) was fabricated using this YBCO thin film.     

Mathematical and numerical aspects of one-dimensional laminar flame simulation

The aim of this paper is to solve several mathematical and numerical questions related to the simulation of stationary and nonstationary premixed flat flames. Most of the results are obtained in the general context of complex chemical and diffusion mechanisms. The main mathematical results concern: (i) thea priori positivity of the mass fractions, and (ii) the sensitivity of the flame speed to the computational domain. The numerical method proposed for solving the stationary problem is a new combination of the pseudo-nonstationary approach, the Newton iterations, and the adaptive gridding. The computation of H₂-O₂-N₂ flames with various initial concentrations (including the chemical extinction zone) shows the efficiency of this method.     

Detection of air pollutants with a tunable CO2 laser

Following a method described by Kreuzeret al., we have et up an improved spectroscopic system to detect trace pollutants in ambient air. A CO₂ laser is tuned to various transitions coincident with absorption lines or bands of pollutant gases. The laser beam is amplitude modulated at the resonant frequency of an acoustical cavity which serves as sample chamber. The pressure waves detected by sensitive microphones placed inside the cavity yield a signal proportional to the energy taken up by the absorbing gases. So far sensitivity limits of a few ppb have been achieved for some typical pollutants, together with high rejection ratios against interference among these gases and against water and CO₂.     

A 3-D coupled Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and Coarse-Grained model to simulate drying mechanisms of small cell aggregates

Recently, meshfree-based computational modelling approaches have become popular in modelling biological phenomena due to their superior ability to simulate large deformations, multiphase phenomena and complex physics compared to the conventional grid-based methods. In this article, small plant cell aggregates were simulated using a three dimensional (3-D) Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Coarse-Grained (CG) coupled computational approach to predict the morphological behaviour during drying. The model predictions of these cell aggregate models have been compared qualitatively and quantitatively through comparisons with experimental findings. The results show that the shrinkage and wrinkling behaviour of cell cluster models are in fairly good agreement with real cellular structures. The agreement between the cell aggregate model predictions and the experimental findings are closer in the high and medium moisture content values (X/X₀ ≥ 0.3), than highly dried stages (X/X₀ < 0.3). Further, optimisation and sensitivity studies have been conducted on model parameters such as particle resolution, smoothing length, mass transfer characteristics and wall forces. Overall, the 3-D nature of this model allows it to predict real 3-D morphological changes more realistically compared to the previous meshfree based 2-D cellular drying models. The proposed 3-D modelling approach has a higher potential to be used to model larger plant tissues with complicated physical and mechanical interactions as well as their multiscale interactions.     

Numerical experiments with MALDI Imaging data

This article does not present new mathematical results, it solely aims at discussing some numerical experiments with MALDI Imaging data. However, these experiments are based on and could not be done without the mathematical results obtained in the UNLocX project. They tackle two obstacles which presently prevent clinical routine applications of MALDI Imaging technology. In the last decade, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI-IMS) has developed into a powerful bioanalytical imaging modality. MALDI imaging data consists of a set of mass spectra, which are measured at different locations of a flat tissue sample. Hence, this technology is capable of revealing the full metabolic structure of the sample under investigation. Sampling resolution as well as spectral resolution is constantly increasing, presently a conventional 2D MALDI Imaging data requires up to 100 GB per dataset. A major challenge towards routine applications of MALDI Imaging in pharmaceutical or medical workflows is the high computational cost for evaluating and visualizing the information content of MALDI imaging data. This becomes even more critical in the near future when considering cohorts or 3D applications. Due to its size and complexity MALDI Imaging constitutes a challenging test case for high performance signal processing. In this article we will apply concepts and algorithms, which were developed within the UNLocX project, to MALDI Imaging data. In particular we will discuss a suitable phase space model for such data and report on implementations of the resulting transform coders using GPU technology. Within the MALDI Imaging workflow this leads to an efficient baseline removal and peak picking. The final goal of data processing in MALDI Imaging is the discrimination of regions having different metabolic structures. We introduce and discuss so-called soft-segmentation maps which are obtained by non-negative matrix factorization incorporating sparsity constraints.     

Radiation balance of the lower stratosphere

A study of the radiation balance of the atmosphere involves the determination of the absorption and emission of radiant energy due to the different constituents of the atmosphere. In the stratosphere below 50 km., these are mainly ozone, CO₂ and water vapour. The major part of the absorbed energy is from solar radiation, the actual absorption at different levels being determined by the absorption coefficients of these gases and their vertical distributions. In this paper, a detailed survey is made of all the available data and of the recent methods developed for using such data, and after proper selection, curves are prepared giving the solar energy absorbed by different quantities of O₃, CO₂ and H₂O. These are used to calculate the absorption of solar energy per unit volume and per unit mass in different 2 km. layers for certain vertical distributions of the constituents. It is seen that the mass density of absorption due to ozone above 50 km. becomes much larger than that due to CO₂ and H₂O while in the region below 30 km., they become comparable. Water vapour becomes more and more effective as we approach the earth.     

Artificial Intelligence in numerical modeling of nano sized ceramic particulates reinforced metal matrix composites

Artificial neural network models have the capacity to eliminate the need for expensive experimental investigation in various areas of manufacturing processes, including the casting methods. An understanding of the inter-relationships between input variables is essential for interpreting the sensitivity data and optimizing the design parameters. Aluminum is the best metal for producing metal matrix composites which are known as one of the most useful and high-tech composites in our world. Combining aluminum and nano Al₂O₃ particles will yield a material with high mechanical and tribological properties. In this investigation, the accuracy of various artificial neural network training algorithms in FEM modeling of Al₂O₃ nano particles reinforced A356 matrix composites has been studied.     

Analytic Invariant Charge in QCD with Suppression of Nonperturbative Contributions at Large <Emphasis Type="Italic">Q</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>

Based on the analytic invariant charge obtained from the results of the standard perturbation theory up to the four-loop approximation, we construct a “synthetic” model of the invariant charge in quantum chromodynamics. In the suggested model, the perturbative discontinuity on the timelike semiaxis in the complex Q² plane is preserved, and nonperturbative contributions not only cancel nonphysical perturbation theory singularities in the infrared region but also rapidly decrease in the ultraviolet region. On one hand, the effective coupling function in this model is enhanced at zero (the dual superconductivity property of the quantum chromodynamics vacuum); on the other hand, a dynamical gluon mass appears. In our approach, fixing the parameter corresponding to the string tension parameter and normalizing (for example, at the point M_τ) entirely fix the synthetic invariant-charge model. The dynamical gluon mass m_g is then fixed and is stable as the number of loops of the original perturbative approximation increases. __________ Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 145, No. 2, pp. 221–239, November, 2005.