Thermal analysis of some polynuclear coordination compounds

The thermal behaviour of five polynuclear coordination compounds containing tartaric anion as ligand, namely (NH₄)₃[LnFe(C₄O₆H₄)₃(OH)₃] (Ln=La and Eu), (NH₄)₂[PrFe(C₄O₆H₄)₃(OH)₂] and (NH₄)[LnFe(C₄O₆H₄)₃(OH)]·3H₂O (Ln=Nd and Gd) was investigated. The reaction progress was studied by TG/DTA and FTIR measurements. Oxalates and oxocarbonates were identified as intermediates. In the case of Ln=La, Nd, Pr, Eu and Gd, pure LnFeO₃ was obtained as final decomposition product. The thermal decomposition of Eu-Fe compound, leads to a mixture of mixed (ortho-ferrite (EuFeO₃) and garnet (Eu₃Fe₅O₁₂)) and simple oxides (Eu₂O₃ and α-Fe₂O₃).     

Visible continuum generation using a femtosecond erbium-doped fiber laser and a silica nonlinear fiber

Supercontinuum extending to visible wavelengths is generated in a hybrid silica nonlinear fiber pumped at 1560 nm by a femtosecond, erbium-doped fiber laser. The hybrid nonlinear fiber consists of a short length of highly nonlinear, germano-silicate fiber (HNLF) spliced to a length of photonic crystal fiber (PCF). A 2 cm length of HNLF provides an initial stage of continuum generation due to higher-order soliton compression and dispersive wave generation before launching into the PCF. The visible radiation is generated in the fundamental mode of the PCF.     

M?ssbauer, TEM/SAED and XRD investigation on waste dumps of the Valea lui Stan gold mines

The complementary investigation techniques, M?ssbauer spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy with selected area electron diffraction (TEM/SAED), X-ray diffraction (XRD) have been used to investigate the fate of the Valea lui Stan, Romania, gold-ore nanoscale-minerals during the long time of residence in the waste dumps. The preliminary investigations showed such waste dumps to contain significant amount of metals which cannot be identified by conventional methods. An intense research activity started up in order to evaluate the possibilities to recycle Valea lui Stan waste dumps and to recover metals by chemical or phytoextraction procedures. The waste dumps naturally show different mineral constituents with clay minerals as major phases, observed by XRD-technique. Although the waste dumps materials have whitish-yellowish colours, M?SSBAUER technique evidences the presence of the finely dispersed iron bearing minerals. The authors are focusing to inspect and analyze Fe-compounds in the samples collected from Valea lui Stan’s waste dumps in order to identify the magnetic phases by M?ssbauer technique.     

Thermodynamic properties and ordering in liquid NaK alloys

The thermodynamic activities of sodium and potassium were determined by vapour-phase absorption spectrophotometry of atomic resonance lines. Both components exhibit significant positive deviations from ideality. Excess Gibbs energies computed from the activity data were combined with available heat-of-mixing data to yield values for excess entropies. The entropy of mixing which was found to be ideal in the sodium-rich liquid alloys provides no support for the earlier speculations about the existence of Na₂K molecules therein. The partial molar excess entropy of sodium in dilute solution in potassium was found to be surprisingly large and negative for a system of this type. A plausible model, involving sodium-sodium pairing, is proposed to account for the loss of configurational entropy.     

Bi‐arc graphs and the complexity of list homomorphisms

Given graphs G, H, and lists L(v) ? V(H), v ε V(G), a list homomorphism of G to H with respect to the lists L is a mapping f : V(G) → V(H) such that uv ε E(G) implies f(u)f(v) ε E(H), and f(v) ε L(v) for all v ε V(G). The list homomorphism problem for a fixed graph H asks whether or not an input graph G, together with lists L(v) ? V(H), v ε V(G), admits a list homomorphism with respect to L. In two earlier papers, we classified the complexity of the list homomorphism problem in two important special cases: When H is a reflexive graph (every vertex has a loop), the problem is polynomial time solvable if H is an interval graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. When H is an irreflexive graph (no vertex has a loop), the problem is polynomial time solvable if H is bipartite and H is a circular arc graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. In this paper, we extend these classifications to arbitrary graphs H (each vertex may or may not have a loop). We introduce a new class of graphs, called bi‐arc graphs, which contains both reflexive interval graphs (and no other reflexive graphs), and bipartite graphs with circular arc complements (and no other irreflexive graphs). We show that the problem is polynomial time solvable when H is a bi‐arc graph, and is NP‐complete otherwise. In the case when H is a tree (with loops allowed), we give a simpler algorithm based on a structural characterization. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 61–80, 2003     

Demonstration of bend-induced nonlinearities in large-mode-area fibers

We present what we believe to be the first direct measurements of enhanced nonlinearities in large-mode-area fibers due to bend induced reductions in effective area. Both Raman scattering and self-phase modulation are observed to increase in tightly coiled fibers. The measured increase in nonlinearity compares well with predictions from simulations of the modal effective area.     

Grating phase matching beyond a continuum edge

We show that fiber Bragg gratings can extend an optical continuum to spectral regions where continuum generation is very weak. Highly nonlinear fibers with Bragg grating resonances at 700, 750, and 800 nm were pumped with 70 fs pulses at 1580 nm and exhibited enhancement peaks up to 25 dB above the extremely weak continuum at these wavelengths, normally more than 40 dB below the average power in the continuum. We show that the grating peaks may be computed by treating the continuum pulse as an undepleted pump and including the grating dispersion as a phase-matching term.     

Improved stabilization of a 1.3 microm femtosecond optical frequency comb by use of a spectrally tailored continuum from a nonlinear fiber grating

We report significant enhancement (+24 dB) of the optical beat note between a 657 nm cw laser and the second-harmonic generation of the tailored continuum at 1314 nm generated with a femtosecond Cr:forsterite laser and a nonlinear fiber Bragg grating. The same continuum is used to stabilize the carrier-envelope offset frequency of the Cr:forsterite femtosecond laser and permits improved optical stabilization of the frequency comb from 1.0 to 2.2 microm. Using a common optical reference at 657 nm, a relative fractional frequency instability of 2.0 x 10(-15) is achieved between the repetition rates of Cr:forsterite and Ti:sapphire laser systems in 10 s averaging time. The fractional frequency offset between the optically stabilized frequency combs of the Cr:forsterite and Ti:sapphire lasers is +/-(0.024 +/- 6.1) x 10(-17).     

The underaddressed optical multiple-input, multiple-output channel: capacity and outage

We study an optical space-division multiplexed system where the number of modes that are addressed by the transmitter and receiver is allowed to be smaller than the total number of optical modes supported by the fiber. This situation will be of relevance if, for instance, fibers supporting more modes than can be processed with current multiple-input, multiple-output technology are deployed with the purpose of future-proof installation. We calculate the ergodic capacity and the outage probability of the link and study their dependence on the number of addressed modes at the transmitter and receiver.