Four-nucleon transfer with the 32S(16O, 12C)36Ar reaction

Angular distributions have been measured for the ³²S(¹⁶O,¹²C)³⁶Ar reaction at 45.5 MeV leading to excited states between E_x, = 0 and 8 MeV. Experimental cross sections are compared with exact finite-range DWBA calculations in combination with extensive shell-model calculations, which include sd- and fp-shell configurations. Transitions to low-energy positive-parity states and bound negative-parity states are well reproduced. The calculations, however, fail to describe some high-energy positive-parity states. Calculations with a complete cluster expansion for the four transferred nucleons give about 50% larger cross sections, but can not explain the observed discrepancies. Possible interference of reaction processes other than direct α-transfer and special structure effects are discussed.     

Resonant-absorption measurements of attosecond lifetimes

The lifetimes of the ²³Na levels at E_x = 7.89 and 4.43 MeV have been measured in resonant-absorption experiments as τ_m = 220 ± 17 and 350 ± 70 as, respectively. In both cases the γ-ray source was a ³⁰Si(p, γ)³¹P resonance. The implications of these results for the application of the resonant-absorption technique are discussed.     

Vectorial Approach to Fast Correlation Attacks

A new, vectorial approach to fast correlation attacks on binary memoryless combiners is proposed. Instead of individual input sequences or their linear combinations, the new attack is targeting subsets of input sequences as a whole thus exploiting the full correlation between the chosen subset and the output sequence. In particular, the set of all the input sequences can be chosen as the target. The attack is based on a novel iterative probabilistic algorithm which is also applicable to general memoryless combiners over finite fields or finite rings. To illustrate the effectiveness of the introduced approach, experimental results obtained for random balanced combining functions are presentedMost of this work was done while he was with Rome CryptoDesign Center, Gemplus, Italy     

On the Motion of a Dynamic System with Minimal Dissipation

The motion of a holonomic scleronomic non-conservative mechanicalsystem with minimal dissipation is considered. As applicationsof the theory several problems are studied in detail.     

Fusion around the barrier for 7Li+12C

Fusion cross-sections for the ⁷Li + ¹²C reaction have been measured at energies above the Coulomb barrier by the direct detection of evaporation residues. The heavy evaporation residues with energies below 3 MeV could not be separated out from the α-particles in the spectrum and hence their contribution was estimated using statistical model calculations. The present work indicates that suppression of fusion cross-sections due to the breakup of ⁷Li may not be significant for ⁷Li + ¹²C reaction at energies around the barrier.     

Correlation Analysis of the Alternating Step Generator

The alternating step generator is a well-known keystream generator consisting of two stop/go clocked LFSRs, LFSR₁ and LFSR₂, whose clocks are controlled by another LFSR, LFSR₃, which is clocked regularly. A probabilistic analysis of this generator is conducted which shows that the posterior probabilites of individual bits of the first derivatives of the regularly clocked LFSR₁ and LFSR₂ sequences, when conditioned on a given segment of the first derivative of the keystream sequence, can be computed efficiently in a number of probabilistic models of interest. The expected values of these probabilities, for a random keystream sequence, are derived by an approximate theoretical analysis and are also verified by systematic computer experiments. It is pointed out that these posterior probabilities can be enhanced in a resynchronization scenario and thus used for a low-complexity fast correlation attack on the two LFSRs. More generally, it is argued that even without resynchronization these probabilities may be significantly different from one half for fast correlation attacks based on iterative decoding algorithms to be successful, although with incresead complexity. A related method for computing the posterior probabilities of individual bits of the LFSR₃ sequence, when conditioned on both the keystream sequence and the LFSR₁ and LFSR₂ sequences, is also developed. As these posterior probabilities are much more different from one half, they can be used for a low-complexity fast correlation attack on LFSR₃, provided that the initial states of LFSR₁ and LFSR₂ are previously reconstructed.