Performance study of aluminum shielded room for ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging based on SQUID:Simulations and experiments

The aluminum shielded room has been an important part of ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging(ULF MRI)based on the superconducting quantum interference device(SQUID). The shielded room is effective to attenuate the external radio-frequency field and keep the extremely sensitive detector, SQUID, working properly. A high-performance shielded room can increase the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and improve image quality. In this study, a circular coil with a diameter of 50 cm and a square coil with a side length of 2.0 m was used to simulate the magnetic fields from the nearby electric apparatuses and the distant environmental noise sources. The shielding effectivenesses(SE) of the shielded room with different thicknesses of aluminum sheets were calculated and simulated. A room using 6-mm-thick aluminum plates with a dimension of 1.5 m×1.5 m×2.0 m was then constructed. The SE was experimentally measured by using three-axis SQUID magnetometers, with tranisent magnetic field induced in the aluminum plates by the strong pre-polarization pulses. The results of the measured SE agreed with that from the simulation. In addition, the introduction of a 0.5-mm gap caused the obvious reduction of SE indicating the importance of door design. The nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) signals of water at 5.9 kHz were measured in free space and in a shielded room, and the SNR was improved from 3 to 15. The simulation and experimental results will help us design an aluminum shielded room which satisfies the requirements for future ULF human brain imaging. Finally, the cancellation technique of the transient eddy current was tried, the simulation of the cancellation technique will lead us to finding an appropriate way to suppress the eddy current fields.     

Angle-dependent spin waves in antidot bilayers

Ferromagnetic resonance is introduced to examine the microwave frequency response of Ni Fe/Ir Mn bilayers, patterned as antidot arrays. In the experiment, field direction dependence on mode is obtained by rotating the applied magnetic field. We find that at a given resonance frequency, the dependence of the resonance field on the angle has a tendency of sinusoid/cosine variation in the experiment. From micromagnetic simulation it can be seen that spin waves are localized between dots from a given mode profile. This is caused by a demagnetization distribution with a larger value in the center of the two nearest dots than that of the next-nearest dots.     

Micromagnetic simulation for high field sensors with perpendicular magnetizations

In this paper, we present a micromagnetic design for high field sensors. The hard layer of the sensors is L10-FePt which is magnetized perpendicularly to film plane and the sense layer is NiFe which is magnetized in the film plane. The magnetization configurations of the hard and sense layers at different external magnetic fields have been simulated. In micromagnetic simulation, the sense field up to one tesla can be reached by using this sensor. We find that whether the sensor has a symmetric or an asymmetric field-sensing window is determined by the coercive field of the hard layer and the demagnetizing field of the sense layer.     

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering properties of highly ordered self-assemblies of gold nanorods with different aspect ratios

Gold nanorods with aspect ratios of from 1 (particles) to 31.6 were synthesized by the seed-mediated method and packed in a highly ordered structure on a large scale on silicon substrates through capillary force induced self-assembly behaviour during solvent evaporation.The gold nanorod surface exhibits a strong enhancing effect on Raman scattering spectroscopy.The enhancement of Raman scattering for two model molecules (2-naphthalenethiol and rhodamine 6G) is about 5-6 orders of magnitude.By changing the aspect ratio of the Au nanorods,we found that the enhancement factors decreased with the increase of aspect ratios.The observed Raman scattering enhancement is strong and should be ascribed to the surface plasmon coupling between closely packed nanorods,which may result in huge local electromagnetic field enhancements in those confined junctions.     

The study of the shape anisotropy in patterned permalloy films

In this paper a systematic ferromagnetic resonance study shows that an in-plane magnetic anisotropy in the patterned micron octagon permalloy （Ni80Fe20） elements is mainly determined by the element geometry. The easy-axis is along the edge of the elements, and the hard-axis is along the diagonal. The shape anisotropy of the octagon elements is determined by square and equilateral octagon, and the theoretical calculation was studied on the shape anisotropy. The shape anisotropy of rectangular was calculated by using the same theory.     

Chemical synthesis and characterization of manganese oxide coated Ni particles

Nanosized Ni particles with an average diameter of about 8 nm were prepared by reducing of NiCl 2 with sodium borohydride (NaBH 4 ) in aqueous solution. By moderate annealing in protective atmosphere, the composite grew up to be 15-20 nm particles. Both of the as-prepared and annealed Ni particles were coated by a layer of manganese oxide via decomposition reaction in aqueous KMnO4 solution. Hysteresis loops of as-prepared samples show a large increase in the magnetization with decreasing temperature and an unsaturated component at high magnetic field. In contrast, the ferromagnetic characteristics of annealed one are much stronger with large magnetization and coercivity. The thermomagnetic curves verified the coexistence of ferromagnetic Ni and antiferromangetic Mn oxide phases. But there exists no exchange bias behavior in the samples, even though the interface structure between the ferromagnetic Ni core and the antiferromagnetic manganese oxides has been distinctly formed. The absence of exchange bias probably originates from the weak ferromagnetic characteristic of Ni cores.     

Tailoring the structural and magnetic properties of Cu-doped ZnO by c-axis pressure

The structural and magnetic properties of the Cu-doped ZnO(ZnO:Cu) under c-axis pressure were studied using first-principle calculations. It was found that the ZnO:Cu undergoes a structural transition from Wurtzite to Graphite-like structure at a c-axis pressure of 7–8 GPa. This is accompanied by an apparent loss of ferromagnetic stability, indicating a magnetic transformation from a ferromagnetic state to a paramagnetic-like state. Further studies revealed that the magnetic instability is closely related to the variation in crystalline field originated from the structural transition, which is in association with the overlapping of spin–charge density between the Cu2+ and adjacent O2-.     

Magnetization Switching in a Small Disk with Shape Anisotropy

We study the precessional switching of a single domain, uniaxial magnetic disk with shape anisotropy by the micromagnetic simulation. The results show that magnetic switching can be driven by a smaller magnetic field pulse in an elliptic disk with its long semiaxis perpendicular to the easy axis than in a circular disk. The shape anisotropy can change the height of the energy barrier, thus we may obtain an optimal fast magnetization switching by tuning the aspect ratio of the disk under the thermal stability condition. The switching behavior of the elliptic and circular disks is studied in detail It is found that only properly choosing the pulse amplitude and duration can realize the fast precessional switching.     

Magnetically tunable Airy-like beam of magnetostatic surface spin waves

In this Letter,we report an Airy-like beam of magnetostatic surface spin wave(Ai BMSSW)supported on the ferromagnetic film,which is transferred from the optical field.The propagation properties of Ai BMSSW were verified with micromagnetic simulation.From simulation results,the typical parabolic trajectory of the Airy-type beam was observed with an exciting source encoding 3/2 phase pattern.The simulation results coincide well with design parameters.Furthermore,simulated results showed that the trajectories of the Ai BMSSW could be tuned readily with varied external magnetic fields.This work can extend the application scenario of spin waves.     

Study of neutron spectra in a water bath from a Pb target irradiated by 250 MeV protons

Spallation neutrons were produced by the irradiation of Pb with 250 MeV protons. The Pb target was surrounded by water which was used to slow down the emitted neutrons. The moderated neutrons in the water bath were measured by using the resonance detectors of Au, Mn and In with a cadmium (Cd) cover. According to the measured activities of the foils, the neutron flux at different resonance energies were deduced and the epithermal neutron spectra were proposed. Corresponding results calculated with the Monte Carlo code MCNPX were compared with the experimental data to check the validity of the code. The comparison showed that the simulation could give a good prediction for the neutron spectra above 50 eV, while the finite thickness of the foils greatly effected the experimental data in low energy. It was also found that the resonance detectors themselves had great impact on the simulated energy spectra.     

Self-organization of five species in a cyclic competition game

Cyclic competition game models, particularly the “rock–paper–scissors” model, play important roles in exploring the problem of multi-species coexistence in spatially ecological systems. We propose an extended “rock–paper–scissors” game to model cyclic interactions among five species, and find that two of the five can coexistent when biodiversity disappears, which is different from the “rock–paper–scissors” game. As the number of fingers is five, we named the new model the “fingers” game, where the thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger cyclically dominate their subsequent species and are dominated by their former species. We investigate the “fingers” model in two ways: direct simulations and nonlinear partial differential equations. An important finding is that the number of species in a cyclic competition game has an influence on the emergence of biodiversity. To be specific, the “rock–paper–scissors” model is in favor of maintaining biodiversity in comparison with the “fingers” model when the variables (population size, reproduction rate, selection rate, and migration rate) are the same. It is also shown that the mobility and reproduction rate can promote or jeopardize biodiversity.     

Experimental study on downstep in Chinese intonation

Downstep in pitch contour of Chinese Putonghua is examined using subtly designed sentences by controlling tone combinations. The results show both automatic and nonautomatic downstep phenomena exist in Chinese. In non-automatic downstep, low tones compress downwards the pitch range of the following syllables. and the main influence of downstep is on topline. Low tone not only lower the topline behind it, but also raise the high tones before it, the effects are compatible with each other. In automatic downstep, the topline of pitch contour in intonational phrase is presented as a linear downtrend, but it differs among speakers due to the effect of personal stress practice. In comparison with downstep phenomenon in other tone or non-tone languages, the downstep ratio in Chinese is not constant, and the domain of downstep is not limited within the adjacent tones.     

Contrastive analysis on tone between Putonghua and Taiwan Mandarin

The differences of the pitch and duration of Chinese syllables between Putonghua （PTH） and Taiwan Mandarin （TM） were studied. The speech materials to be used are not only isolated syllables, but also sentences. The results reveal that： For the isolated syllables, T1 and T2 in TM are influenced by Minnan dialect, therefore their pitch are lower than those in PTH. T3 is fall-rise in PTH, while it is fall in TM. Moreover, the syllable duration sequence for different tone is T3〉T2〉T1〉T4 in PTH, while it is T1〉T2〉T3〉T4 in TM. For the syllables in sentences, T2 is mid-rise in PTH, while it is mid-level in TM. And the T3 is longer than T4 but shorter than T1 or T2 in PTH, while it is the shortest in TM. Furthermore the effects of prosodic phrase boundary on duration for different tones are almost the same in PTH, but the lengthening part of T1 or T2 is longer than that of T3 or T4 in TM.     

Abelian-Higgs phase of SU(2) QCD and glueball energy

It is shown that SU(2) QCD admits an dual Abelian-Higgs phase, with a Higgs vacuum of a type-Ⅱ superconductor. This is done by using a connection decomposition for the gluon field and the random-direction approximation. Using a bag picture with soft wall, we presented a calculational procedure for the glueball energy based on the recent proof for wall-vortices [Nucl. Phys. B 741(2006)1].     

High efficiency filtering using two-dimensional photonic crystal coupled cavity structures

Transmission spectra of coupled cavity structures (CCSs) in two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals (PCs) are investigated using a coupled mode theory, and an optical filter based on CCS is proposed. The performance of the filter is investigated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, and the results show that within a very short coupling distance of about 3λ, where λ is the wavelength of signal in vacuum, the incident signals with different frequencies are separated into different channels with a contrast ratio of 20 dB. The advantages of this kind of filter are small size and easily tunable operation frequencies.     

Signal generation in an isotropic medium in scanning electron acoustic microscope

Based on the research in Ref. [5][Materials Science and Engineering, 1989; A122： 57 63], an improved model of heat source is set up, the different modes of Lamb wave in an isotropic sample generated by a chopped electron beam at frequency f are obtained with integral transform and normal function expansion method, and the output signal of PZT coupled at the back surface of the sample is found out. The generation mechanism of SEAM （Scanning Electron Acoustic Microscopy） signal is discussed. It shows that the SEAM is a near field imaging technique with high spatial resolution and its best lateral spatial resolution is about 2√2α （α is the radius of the focused electron beam）. Some of experimental results of SEAM images are presented in the paper and it shows that the spatial resolution of SEAM is better than 0.5 μm and smaller than the thermal diffusion length of the sample. Therefore the character of near field imaging in SEAM is also proved experimentally.     

Real-time restoration of rotational blurred image using gradient-loading

The key to the restoration of rotational motion blurred image is how to restore the image under a low cost and to correct the irreversibility of the degradation function matrix.Based on the special qualities of degradation function matrix and precise deduction in space-domain, we present a new approach using gradient-loading for restoration of rotational blurred image.By easily adding a gradient operator, the irreversibility of the original matrix is corrected and can be applied for inverse filtering then.Gradientloading is the optimized approach which combines the advantages of both the approaches using constrained least square filtering and traditional diagonal-loading.Compared with the approach using least square filtering, its peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is improved from 3.18 to 6.46dB, while the computing time is reduced to 1/2-1/3.Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness, noise-resistibility, robustness, and low complexity of this approach, which make it more suitable for real-time environment.     

All-Optical Logic Device Using Bent Nonlinear Tapered Y-Junction Waveguide Structure

We propose an all-optical logic device made of a bent tapered Y-junction waveguide with a Kerr-type nonlinear interface. It could provide an AND gate, OR gate, and exclusive-OR (XOR) gate. We could obtain different transmission results by adjusting the bending angle. The numerical simulation results show that the device functions as AND, OR, and XOR gates.     

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz imaging by a pyroelectric camera

Real-time, continuous-wave terahertz (THz) imaging is demonstrated. A 1.89-THz optically-pumped farinfrared laser is used as the illumination source, and a 124 × 124 element room-temperature pyroelectric camera is adopted as the detector. With this setup, THz images through various wrapping materials are shown. The results show that this imaging system has the potential applications in real-time mail and security inspection.