Towards using molecular ions as qubits: Femtosecond control of molecular fragmentation with multiple knobs

Non-resonant molecular fragmentation of n-propyl benzene with femtosecond laser pulses is dependent on the phase and polarization characteristics of the laser. We find that the effect of the chirp and polarization of the femtosecond pulse when applied simultaneously is mutually independent of each other, which makes chirp and polarization as useful ‘logic’ implementing knobs.     

A software channel compression technique for faster reconstruction with many channels

In magnetic resonance imaging, highly parallel imaging using coil arrays with a large number of elements is an area of growing interest. With increasing channel numbers for parallel acquisition, the increased reconstruction time and extensive computer memory requirements have become significant concerns. In this work, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to develop a channel compression technique. This technique efficiently reduces the size of parallel imaging data acquired from a multichannel coil array, thereby significantly reducing the reconstruction time and computer memory requirement without undermining the benefits of multichannel coil arrays. Clinical data collected with a 32-channel cardiac coil are used in all of the experiments. The performance of the proposed method on parallel, partially acquired data, as well as fully acquired data, was evaluated. Experimental results show that the proposed method dramatically reduces the processing time without considerable degradation in the quality of reconstructed images. It is also demonstrated that this PCA technique can be used to perform intensity correction in parallel imaging applications.     

Fluoropolymer piezoelectrets with tubular channels: resonance behavior controlled by channel geometry

Ferro- or piezoelectrets are dielectric materials with two elastically very different macroscopic phases and electrically charged interfaces between them. One of the newer piezoelectret variants is a system of two fluoroethylenepropylene (FEP) films that are first laminated around a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) template. Then, by removing the PTFE template, a two-layer FEP structure with open tubular channels is obtained. After electrical charging, the channels form easily deformable macroscopic electric dipoles whose changes under mechanical or electrical stress lead to significant direct or inverse piezoelectricity, respectively. Here, different PTFE templates are employed to generate channel geometries that vary in height or width. It is shown that the control of the channel geometry allows a direct adjustment of the resonance frequencies in the tubular-channel piezoelectrets. By combining several different channel widths in a single ferroelectret, it is possible to obtain multiple resonance peaks that may lead to a rather flat frequency-response region of the transducer material. A phenomenological relation between the resonance frequency and the geometrical parameters of a tubular channel is also presented. This relation may help to design piezoelectrets with a specific frequency response.     

OFDM symbol detection integrated with channel multipath gains estimation for doubly-selective fading channels

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a technique for wideband transmission that is commonly used in modern wireless communication systems because of its good performance over frequency selective channels. However OFDM systems are sensitive to channel time variations resulting in Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI), that without suitable detection methods can degrade performance significantly. Channel State Information (CSI) is essential to various OFDM detection schemes, and its acquisition is a critical factor over time varying channels. This work considers a Kalman filter channel multipath gains estimation technique for time varying environments, integrated with a novel detection scheme for OFDM based on a Sphere Decoding (SD) algorithm derived to exploit the banded structure of the channel matrix. This combined scheme employs decision–feedback from the SD requiring only a low pilot symbol density, and hence improves bandwidth efficiency. Three techniques for integrating the Kalman filter operating in decision–feedback mode, with SD data detection that produces these decisions, are considered in this paper. When compared with other competing schemes, this integrated symbol detection and channel multipath gains estimation approach for OFDM provides performance advantages over time varying channels. Furthermore, it is shown that for moderate Doppler shifts the degradation that carrier phase noise induces in this scheme is small.     

Selective steering of molecular multiple dissociative channels with strong few-cycle laser pulses

We report that multiple dissociative channels of carbon monoxide (CO) molecules are selectively controlled using intense phase-stabilized few-cycle laser fields (4.2 fs, 740 nm, 6×10(14) W/cm(2)). The controllable emission direction of C(2+) from charge asymmetrical dissociation and ionization of CO dications is out of phase in a linear polarized laser field. The strong coupling between the channels is explained as the competition of recollision excitation and recollision ionization in a recollision process, leading to the opposite asymmetrical property. The experimental result provides insight into high degree controlling molecular multiple dissociative processes in the time scale of electronic motion.     

Nonadiabatic fragmentation of excited molecular ions: An exploratory study for

The photodissociation of was studied in a one-dimensional approximation, with the aim of understanding the nonadiabatic features of the fragmentation dynamics. In the collinear arrangement of the system, the three lowest excited surfaces (states) interact via two avoided crossings outside the Franck-Condon region, and they are strongly coupled radially by nonadiabatic terms. Electronic transition probabilities for the process , with in one of the three lowest electronic states involved in the fragmentation, were calculated using the semiclassical multichannel S-matrix within the half-collision approach to photodissociation. The reliability of the semiclassical theory, for treating multichannel nonadiabatic processes was analyzed, and inelastic cross-sections for the three processes of electronically selected fragmentations were calculated. The structure found in the calculated absorption lineshapes reveals the marked influence of the nonadiabatic couplings between excited states in the fragmentation dynamics of this molecular ion. Received: 6 March 1998 / Revised: 7 March 1998 and 17 June 1998 / Accepted: 23 June 1998     

Coupled channel T-operator equations with connected kernels: (II). N coupled two-body channels

A time-independent theory of rearrangement collisions involving transitions between two-body states is presented. It is assumed that the system of interest consists of particles that may be partitioned into two-body systems in N ways, including interchanges of particle labels without changing the kind of channel. An infinite family of sets of N coupled T-operator equations is derived by use of the channel coupling array, as in previous work on the three-body problem. Specialization to the channel-permuting arrays guaranteeing connected (N?1)th iterates of the kernel of the coupled equations is made in the N-channel case (N > 3) and the nature of the solutions to the coupled equations is discussed. Various approximation schemes to be used with numerical calculations are suggested. Since the transition operators for all rearrangement channels are coupled together, no problems concerning non-orthogonality of the eigenstates of different channel Hamiltonians are encountered; also the presence of the outgoing wave boundary condition in all channels is made explicit. The close resemblance of the equations in matrix form to those of one-channel scattering is exploited by introducing Møller wave operators and associated channel scattering states, an optical potential formalism that leads to rearrangement channel optical potential operators, and a variational formulation of the coupled equations using a Schwinger-like variational principle. A brief comparison with other many-body formalisms is also given.     

Fluctuation-driven molecular transport through an asymmetric membrane channel

Channel proteins that selectively conduct molecules across cell membranes often exhibit an asymmetric structure. By means of a stochastic model, we argue that channel asymmetry in the presence of nonequilibrium fluctuations, fueled by the cell's metabolism as observed recently, can dramatically influence the transport through such channels by a ratchetlike mechanism. For an aquaglyceroporin that conducts water and glycerol, we show that a previously determined asymmetric glycerol potential leads to enhanced inward transport of glycerol, but for unfavorably high glycerol concentrations also to enhanced outward transport that protects a cell against poisoning.     

Investigation of four wave mixing effect with different number of input channels at various channel spacing

In this paper the design, implementation and performance analysis of four wave mixing (FWM) in optical communication system for different number of input channels is presented using various values of channel spacing. Here, all the input channels have been spaced evenly at various values like 6.25 GHz, 12.5 GHz, 25 GHz, 40 GHz, 50 GHz with the different number of channels at the input i.e. with 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 input channels. The simulation results reveal that the four wave mixing is minimum when the channel spacing is maximum i.e. 50 GHz with minimum number of channels i.e. 2 input channels. It is observed that on increasing the channel spacing, the interference between the input frequencies decreases and hence the four wave mixing also decreases. Also, on increasing the number of input channels/users, the interference between the input frequencies increases and thus, the four wave mixing also increases.     

Competition between exit channels leading to the same residual nucleus in heavy-ion reactions

Competition between pn and d as well as between p2n, dn and t emission in the production of individual residual states has been observed in nuclear reactions induced by ¹⁶O on ¹²C and ¹³C targets. The experimental relative yields for the production of the 417 keV state in ²⁶Al by pn and d emission, measured as a function of bombarding energy in the reaction ¹²C(¹⁶O,pn/d)²⁶Al, are successfully described by Hauser-Feshbach calculations.     

Dipole oscillator strengths for the photoabsorption,photoionization and fragmentation of molecular oxygen

The photoabsorption, photoionization and fragmentation of O₂ have been studied using electron impact coincidence methods to obtain branching ratios and dipole oscillator strengths (cross-sections). The photoabsorption measurements cover the energy range 5–300 eV while the formation of electronic states of O₂⁺ (photoelectron spectroscopy) and the resulting ionic fragmentation (photoionization mass spectrometry) are both measured from close to threshold up to photon energies of 75 eV. The binding energy spectra of O₂ show peaks at 33, 47 and 57 eV in addition to those reported elsewhere in the literature. These peaks are assigned to multiple final ion states arising from photoionization of the inner valence orbitals. Structure in the O₂⁺ electronic state partial oscillator strength curves is in good agreement with recent theoretical work which predicts the existence of several shape resonances. A quantitative picture of the dipole-induced breakdown of O₂ is obtained for the energy range 12–75 eV. The photoionization efficiency is found to be constant above 20 eV.     

Diffusion of gases across lipid membranes with OmpA channel: a molecular dynamics study

Molecular transport across biological membranes occurs in a range of important chemical and biological processes. The biological membrane can usually be modelled as a phospholipid bilayer, but to correctly represent biological transport, the embedded transmembrane proteins must also be included. In previous molecular simulation studies on transport of small gas molecules in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) bilayer membrane, a coarse-grained model was used to provide direct insight into collective phenomena in biological membranes. Coarse graining allowed investigation of longer time and length scales by reducing the degrees of freedom and employing suitable potentials. In this work, membranes that include transmembrane proteins are modelled. This allows one to compare the molecular transport across a lipid membrane with and without the assistance of transmembrane channels. Outer membrane protein A (OmpA) – a porin from Escherichia coli with a small pore size – was chosen in this study because its detailed structure is known, it has high stability and is known to form a nonspecific diffusion channel that permits the penetration of various solutes. In this work the pore characteristics and interaction between lipid and protein were investigated and transport of water and other small gas molecules within the channel were studied. The MD simulation results obtained are compared with previous simulation results and available experimental data. The results obtained from this study will lead to better understanding of protein functionality and advance the development of biochips and drug delivery systems.     

Models of fragmentation with composite power laws

Some models for binary fragmentation are introduced in which a time dependent transition size produces two regions of fragment sizes above and below the transition size. In the first model we assume a fixed rate of fragmentation for the largest fragment and two different rates of fragmentation in the two regions of sizes above and below the transition size. The model is solved exactly in the long time limit to reveal stable time-invariant solutions for the fragment size and mass distributions. These solutions exhibit composite power law behaviours; power laws with two different exponents for fragments in smaller and larger regions. A special case of the model with no fragmentation in the smaller size region is also examined. Another model is also introduced which have three regions of fragment sizes with different rates of fragmentation. The similarities between the stable distributions in our models and composite power law distributions from experimental work on shock fragmentation of long thin glass rods and thick clay plates are discussed.     

Correlation between molecular resonances of well-matched channels in the weak coupling model

The weak coupling models, i.e. the single and two-step DWBA, are shown to reproduce the correlations between the gross structure resonances in the single and mutual excitation channels in ¹²C¹²C, ¹⁴C¹⁴C and ¹⁶O¹⁶O inelastic scattering. The observed enhancement is ascribed to the overlap between the resonances arising in the entrance and exit channels.     

Preferred channels for nucleophilic and electrophilic attack from simple molecular potential maps

Molecular potential maps were constructed to yield information on initial stage of nucleophilic and electrophilic substitution reactions. As proposed recently, the electrostatic part of the potential was calculated from approximately transferable bond fragments. The electrostatic potential was corrected by addition of a 6–12 term to reach better agreement withab initio minimal basis set results. The obtained map gives information on attack of a point-like electrophile. On the other hand, by subtraction, a modified potential is obtained which can be used for nucleophilic reaction channels. Applications, like approach of hydride anion to formaldehyde and orientation rules for aromatic substitution reactions, are discussed.