High‐order CFD methods: current status and perspective

After several years of planning, the 1st International Workshop on High‐Order CFD Methods was successfully held in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 7–8, 2012, just before the 50th Aerospace Sciences Meeting. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the German Aerospace Center provided much needed support, financial and moral. Over 70 participants from all over the world across the research spectrum of academia, government labs, and private industry attended the workshop. Many exciting results were presented. In this review article, the main motivation and major findings from the workshop are described. Pacing items requiring further effort are presented. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled-resonator optical waveguides: Q-factor and disorder influence

Coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROW) can significantly reduce light propagation pulse velocity due to pronounced dispersion properties. A number of interesting applications have been proposed to benefit from such slow-light propagation. Unfortunately, the inevitable presence of disorder, imperfections, and a finite Q value may heavily affect the otherwise attractive properties of CROWs. We show how finite a Q factor limits the maximum attainable group delay time; the group index is limited by Q, but equally important the feasible device length is itself also limited by damping resulting from a finite Q. Adding the additional effects of disorder to this picture, limitations become even more severe due to destructive interference phenomena, eventually in the form of Anderson localization. Simple analytical considerations demonstrate that the maximum attainable delay time in CROWs is limited by the intrinsic photon lifetime of a single resonator.     

Room temperature fabrication of silicon nanocrystals by pulsed laser deposition

Reaction of 10 nm gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with a thiol-functionalized bipyridine copper(II) complex, Cu[(N-(6-mercaptohexyl)-2,2′-bipyridinyl-5-carboxamide)]Cl₂ (3), and (1-mercaptohex-6-yl)tri(ethylene glycol) (5) in different ratios resulted in mixed monolayer modified NPs with varying surface coverage of capping agent. The copper complex modified NPs were used for surface plasmon resonance (SPR) promoted homogeneous catalysis applied to the hydrolysis of the nerve agent methyl parathion (MeP) at pH 8.0. Low power green laser (532 nm) irradiation of solutions of modified AuNPs with MeP resulted in significant increase in the rate of phosphate ester hydrolysis which could not be attributed to a thermal process. Ratios of initial rates (laser/dark) at high substrate concentrations of MeP as a function of copper catalyst coverage were determined. A possible mechanism for catalytic enhancement involving dissociation of catalytically inactive hydroxy-bridged Cu(II) dimer is discussed.     

TBC and PML conditions for 2D and 3D BPM: a comparison

Any implementation of the beam propagation method, when used to analyse open problems, requires a procedure allowing radiation to leave the computational window. In this paper we present the results of a case study on the effectiveness of the classical Hadley's Transparent Boundary Conditions (TBC) and the Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) to handle strong radiation at the boundaries. A polished fibre coupler will be studied both in 2D and in 3D configurations using, in the former case, a scalar method and, in the latter, a full vectorial approach. Numerical results show that simple TBC can be used in 2D simulations also when high radiation occurs but they easily fail in 3D structures. Therefore, in these cases, the more complicated PML conditions should be preferred.     

FDTD modelling of spatial soliton propagation

The finite difference time domain method is used as a tool to model non-linear optical devices. Following this approach, Maxwell's equations are directly integrated in the time domain, avoiding any mathematical approximation. As an example, spatial soliton propagation and interaction will be modelled by the FDTD technique. Some new results will be discussed, to highlight the envisaged breakthroughs allowed by the method. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Resonant photoacoustic simultaneous detection of methane and ethylene by means. of a 1.63-μm diode laser

A compact multi-component trace-gas detector based on the resonant photoacoustic technique and a NIR external cavity diode laser has been developed. It has been characterized using a mixture of ethylene and methane diluted in ambient air. A spectroscopic investigation of combination bands and overtones between 5900 and 6250 cm^-1, obtained with an IR pulsed laser photoacoustic spectrometer, allowed us to find a wavelength region where the 2ν₃ overtone of CH₄ and the ν₅+ν₉ combination band of C₂H₄ show uncongested rotational lines. Using a single-mode scan of the diode laser in this region, around 6150 cm^-1, the sensitivity for the simultaneous detection of ethylene and methane is 8 ppm/mW and 40 ppm/mW respectively. Factors affecting the sensitivity and selectivity of the detection system and possible improvements suitable to reach the sub-ppm detection limit are discussed. Received: 1 August 2001 / Revised version: 28 November 2001 / Published online: 7 February 2002 An erratum to this article is available at .     

Modelling of Photonic Wire Bragg Gratings

Some important properties of photonic wire Bragg grating structures have been investigated. The design, obtained as a generalisation of the full-width gap grating, has been modelled using 3D finite-difference time-domain simulations. Different types of stop-band have been observed. The impact of the grating geometry on the lowest order (longest wavelength) stop-band has been investigated – and has identified deeply indented configurations where reduction of the stop-bandwidth and of the reflectivity occurred. Our computational results have been substantially validated by an experimental demonstration of the fundamental stop-band of photonic wire Bragg gratings fabricated on silicon-on-insulator material. The accuracy of two distinct 2D computational models based on the effective index method has also been studied – because of their inherently much greater rapidity and consequent utility for approximate initial designs. A 2D plan-view model has been found to reproduce a large part of the essential features of the spectral response of full 3D models.     

Grasp with memory-based mechanisms for minimizing total tardiness in single machine scheduling with setup times

This paper addresses the problem of scheduling jobs in a single machine with sequence dependent setup times in order to minimize the total tardiness with respect to job due dates. We propose variants of the GRASP metaheuristic that incorporate memory-based mechanisms for solving this problem. There are two mechanisms proposed in the literature that utilize a long-term memory composed of an elite set of high quality and sufficiently distant solutions. The first mechanism consists of extracting attributes from the elite solutions in order to influence the construction of an initial solution. The second one makes use of path relinking to connect a GRASP local minimum with a solution of the elite set, and also to connect solutions from the elite set. Reactive GRASP, which probabilistically determines the degree of randomness in the GRASP construction throughout the iterations, is also investigated. Computational tests for instances involving up to 150 jobs are reported, and the proposed method is compared with heuristic and exact methods from the literature.     

Nanomechanical analysis of Clostridium tyrobutyricum spores

In this work we report on the measurement of the Young modulus of the external surface of Clostridium tyrobutyricum spores in air with an atomic force microscope. The Young modulus can be reliably measured despite the strong tip-spore adhesion forces and the need to immobilize the spores due to their slipping on most substrates. Moreover, we investigate the disturbing factors and consider some practical aspects that influence the measurements of elastic properties of biological objects with the atomic force microscopy indentation techniques.     

Rigorous analysis of 3D optical and optoelectronic devices by the Compact-2D-FDTD method

Continous advances in material technology, in the field of integrated optics and optoelectronics, allow the realization of devices with geometries more and more compact and complex. Because of this trend, there is a parallel need for accurate fully numerical CAD tools. Among new ones, the FDTD method, already widely and successfully used for the characterization of microwave and millimeter-wave devices, is emerging in optics community because of its accuracy and versatility. However, in spite of the tremendous increase in computing power, the applicability of the method is still limited by the typical dimensions of optical structures. To overcome these limitations a specialized version of the FDTD algorithm for the rigorous analysis of 3D optical and optoelectronic devices is proposed and validated. This new technique is then used to characterize the optical behaviour of a MQW waveguide electroabsorption modulator.