On Various Kinds of Dielectric Barrier Discharges

Dielectric barrier discharges in Xe and Ne/Xe, He/Xe mixtures are investigated with regard to the ranges of existence of various discharge types over a wide range of parameters (total gas pressure p, electrode distance d, frequency f and mixture ratio X). The discharges were explained in more detail because of the bistable behaviour and the transfered charges, partly of the peak current and the maximum of the visible radiation pulse. The time behaviour of the discharge was observed, too. In this paper a distinction of various discharge types could be achieved by the similarity parameters f/p and pd. The charge carriers remaining in the volume and long-living plasma species could be identified as essential mechanisms for the development of various types of discharges. The influence of space charges on the bistable behaviour could be shown indirectly.     

D-D neutron yield in the 125 J dense plasma focus Nanofocus

We present here a very small transportable dense plasma focus with 125 J of energy able to be used mainly as an intense fast neutron source. The aim of this work was to design, construct and experimentally study a very compact nuclear fusion apparatus, at the lower energy limit, useful for multiple applications, such as soil humidity measurements, inspection of several materials metallic inclusions, medical neutron-therapies, etc. Besides, the possibility of using the same device as X-rays emitter has been explored. In a narrow range of deuterium filling pressure around 1 mbar, peaked Rogowski dips are observed. Correspondingly, strong neutron and hard X-ray pulses are measured. The neutron pulses last, in average, 50 ns, being about 10⁶ the amount of neutrons per pulse. The performance of this device has shown to be higher than any other plasma focus apparatus, compar ed on the empirical scaling law of neutron yield vs. pinch current.Received: 29 April 2003, Published online: 5 August 2003PACS: 52.58.Lq Z-pinches, plasma focus and other pinch devices - 52.70.Ds Electric and magnetic measurements - 52.70.Nc Particle measurements     

Amplification in Ni-like Nb at 204.2 Å pumped by a table-top laser

We identified for the first time the 3d ⁹4d ¹ S – 3d ⁹4p ¹ P line in Ni-like Nb at 204.2 Å that was predicted to show gain. When pumped with a train of pulses containing less than 1 J per pulse, significant emission was recorded at 204.2 Å following the second and the third pulses. We measured the small signal gain coefficient per Joule of incident laser energy to be 1.49±0.42 cm^–1 J^–1 for this laser transition, which is higher by several orders of magnitude than that reported for other collisional laser systems in this wavelength range.     

Alkali and alkaline earth metal compounds: core—valence basis sets and importance of subvalence correlation

Core-valence basis sets for the alkali and alkaline earth metals Li, Be, Na, Mg, K, and Ca are proposed. The basis sets are validated by calculating spectroscopic constants of a variety of diatomic molecules involving these elements. Neglect of (3s, 3p) correlation in K and Ca compounds will lead to erratic results at best, and chemically nonsensical ones if chalcogens or halogens are present. The addition of low-exponent p functions to the K and Ca basis sets is essential for the smooth convergence of molecular properties. Inclusion of inner-shell correlation is important for accurate spectroscopic constants and binding energies of all the compounds. In basis set extrapolation/convergence calculations, the explicit inclusion of alkali and alkaline earth metal subvalence correlation at all steps is essential for K and Ca, strongly recommended for Na, and optional for Li and Mg, while in Be compounds an additive treatment in a separate ‘core correlation’ step is probably sufficient. Consideration of (ls) inner-shell correlation energy in first-row elements requires the inclusion of (2s, 2p) ‘deep core’ correlation energy in K and Ca for consistency. The latter requires special CCVnZ ‘deep core correlation’ basis sets. For compounds involving Ca bound to electronegative elements, additional d functions in the basis set are strongly recommended. For optimal basis set convergence in such cases, we suggest the sequence CV(D + 3d)Z, CV(T + 2d)Z, CV(Q + d)Z, and CV5Z on calcium.     

A study of NOX production in air heated by laser discharges: Effect of energy, wavelength, multiple discharges and pressure

An experimental study on the production of NO_X in air heated under the action of a concentrated laser beam is presented. In this experiment laser induced plasma was produced in air in a closed Teflon chamber of inner volume 1600 cm³ by focusing a laser beam with either the wavelength of 1064 or 532 nm from a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. The NO_X production was measured by chemiluminescence method and the possible effect of wavelengths, multiple discharges, and pressure on the yield of NO_X was studied. The results show that within the studied plasma energy range of 26–253 mJ for 532 nm beam and 16–610 mJ for 1064 nm beam, the NO_X production scales linearly with the dissipated plasma energy. For a given energy, 532 nm beam produces more NO_X in air at atmospheric pressure than the 1064 nm beam. In an attempt to see the possible influence of multiple discharges on the production of NO_X, discharges were created using 2–8 pulses with a repetition rate of 10 pulses per second in stationary air at atmospheric pressure. The results indicate that a certain amount of the NO_X created by a given pulse is destroyed by the subsequent pulses. In order to study the pressure dependence of the NO_X production, the pressure was varied from 16 to 100 kPa in the chamber and it was found that the NO_X production efficiency scales linearly with pressure.     

Investigation of a single barrier discharge in submillimeter air gaps. Nonuniform field

Pulse characteristics of single barrier discharges as well as parameters of charges accumulated on the surface of a dielectric under the atmospheric pressure in the “needle-(0.1–2.0)-mm air gap-polymer barrier-plane” system are investigated. It is found experimentally that for the positive polarity of the needle, the voltage for the discharge initiation is higher than in the case of the negative polarity by ～25–35%. The reversal of the needle polarity from negative to positive increases the amplitude of the discharge current and the accumulated surface charge by ～1.5–3 times. For the positive polarity of the needle, the discharge is governed by a streamer mechanism, while for the negative polarity, the discharge is initiated by the formation of a single Trichel pulse. The single pulse regime is observed for the discharge current up to a certain electrode gap d _CR. For the positive needle and for air gap width d _air > d _CR ≈ 1.5 mm, a multipulse burst corona is formed, while for the negative needle and d _air > d _CR ≈ 0.9 mm, a damped sequence of Trichel pulses evolves in the system.     

Berechnung der isotropen Kopplungskonstanten für die Wechselwirkung zwischen den Kernspins inHD

The coupling constant is calculated by using several basis sets of Gaussian functions differing in size and parameters. For the first time the result of 42.40 cps is in very satisfactory agreement with experiment (42.7?+0.5 cps). The calculations justify our conclusions that 1^st one has to determine classes of excited states which are complete respective to the chosen basis set, 2^d the restriction to the class of singly excited states is adequate and 3^d correlation effects must be included but a perturbational approach is sufficient. These restrictions are essential for handling large basis sets which makes our method transferable to larger molecules.     

Design of self-refocused pulses under short relaxation times

The effect of using self-refocused RF pulses of comparable duration to relaxation times is studied in detail using numerical simulation. Transverse magnetization decay caused by short T2 and longitudinal component distortion due to short T1 are consistent with other studies. In order to design new pulses to combat short T1 and T2 the relaxation terms are directly inserted into the Bloch equations. These equations are inverted by searching the RF solution space using simulated annealing global optimization technique. A new T2-decay efficient excitation pulse is created (SDETR: single delayed excursion T2 resistive) which is also energy efficient. Inversion pulses which improve the inverted magnetization profile and achieve better suppression of the remaining transverse magnetization are also created even when both T1 and T2 are short. This is achieved, however, on the expense of a more complex B1 shape of larger energy content.     

PHOTOEXCITATION OF ATOM WITH ULTRASHORT LASER PULSES

The uncoupled basis set is used to describe the interaction between the ultrashort pulses and the Na atom. Several polarization configurations of laser pulses have been investigated, which produce different effects on the two-step photoexcitation process. The study shows that the final states of the transitions driven by ultrashort laser pulses have a strong dependence on the laser polarization configuration. A comparison of the two different basis sets shows that the uncoupled basis set may provide more information than the coupled basis set, such as angular distribution of the atom in the final states of the transitions.     

大气压介质阻挡放电的光谱研究

使用水电极介质阻挡放电装置,分别在大气压空气和氦气中实现了稳定的高气压放电。通过水电极观察两种气体的放电,发现大气压空气中放电为空间随机分布的微放电丝,等离子体是不均匀的,而在氦气中放电没有微放电丝,空间分布比较均匀。比较而言,这种均匀放电产生的等离子体具有更广泛的工业应用前景。对两种气体中放电的电流波形进行了比较,发现空气中放电的电流脉冲在时间上是随机出现的而氦气中放电的电流脉冲在时间上具有周期性,并且空气中放电脉冲宽度约为几十ns而氦气中放电的电流持续时间较长,脉冲宽度大约为1μs。文章还对两种气体中介质阻挡放电发射光谱进行了研究,结果表明大气压氦气中均匀放电的N+₂(B2Σ+_u→X2Σ+_g)谱线391.4nm很强而在大气压空气放电中此光谱线很弱。这些研究结果对高气压条件下均匀放电的实现和大气压辉光放电的工业应用具有重要意义。     

When a Random Walk of Fixed Length can Lead Uniformly Anywhere Inside a Hypersphere

A variation of the Pearson-Rayleigh random walk in which the steps are i.i.d. random vectors of exponential length and uniform orientation is considered. Conditioned on the total path length, the probability density function of the position of the walker after n steps is determined analytically in one and two dimensions. It is shown that in two dimensions n = 3 marks a critical transition point in the behavior of the random walk. By taking less than three steps and walking a total length l, one is more likely to end the walk near the boundary of the disc of radius l, while by taking more than three steps one is more likely to end near the origin. Somehow surprisingly, by taking exactly three steps one can end uniformly anywhere inside the disc of radius l. This means that conditioned on l, the sum of three vectors of exponential length and uniform direction has a uniform probability density. While the presented analytic approach provides a complete solution for all n, it becomes intractable in higher dimensions. In this case, it is shown that a necessary condition to have a uniform density in dimension d is that 2(d + 2)/d is an integer, equal to n + 1.     

Unital Quantum Channels – Convex Structure and Revivals of Birkhoff’s Theorem

The set of doubly-stochastic quantum channels and its subset of mixtures of unitaries are investigated. We provide a detailed analysis of their structure together with computable criteria for the separation of the two sets. When applied to O(d)-covariant channels this leads to a complete characterization and reveals a remarkable feature: instances of channels which are not in the convex hull of unitaries can become elements of this set by either taking two copies of them or supplementing with a completely depolarizing channel. These scenarios imply that a channel whose noise initially resists any environment-assisted attempt of correction can become perfectly correctable.     

Lightning effects at high altitudes: sprites, elves, and terrestrial gamma ray flashes

A fascinating set of newly discovered complex phenomena indicate that thunderstorms and lightning discharges are strongly coupled to the overlying upper atmospheric regions. Lightning discharges at cloud altitudes (<20 km) affect altitudes >40 km either via the release of intense electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) and/or the production of intense quasi-static electric (QE) fields. The intense transient QE fields of up to 1 kV·m⁻¹, which for positive CG discharges is directed downwards, can avalanche accelerate upward-driven runaway MeV electron beams, producing brief (1 ms) flashes of gamma radiation. A spectacular manifestation of these intense fields is the so-called ‘Sprites’, large luminous discharges in the altitude range of 40 km to 90 km, which are produced by the heating of ambient electrons for a few to tens of milliseconds following intense lightning flashes. The so-called ‘Elves’ are optical flashes which last much shorter (<1 ms) than sprites, and are typically limited to 80–95 km altitudes with much larger (up to 600 km) lateral extent, being produced by the heating, ionization, and optical emissions due to the EMPs radiated by both positive and negative lightning discharges. To cite this article: U.S. Inan, C. R. Physique 3 (2002) 1411–1421.     

Self-similar constructions in smooth dynamics: Rigidity,smoothness and dimension

In the first part of this paper, for eachd2, we construct diffeomorphisms of thed-dimensional ball which have zero entropy, one periodic orbit with period 2 ⁿ for eachn0, no other periodic orbits, and a single invariant Cantor set which has a continuum of possible but, in any case, simple geometric structures. These diffeomorphisms areC ^r(d) -smooth, wherer(d) is a strictly increasing function ofd, which goes to infinity withd. The second part contains a more general result about smooth maps obtained by an infinite sequence of surgeries, and further particular cases.     

Proximity effect of electron beam lithography on single-electron transistors

A simple method, based on the proximity effect of electron beam lithography, alleviated by exposing various shapes in the pattern of incident electron exposures with various intensities, was applied to fabricate silicon point-contact devices. The drain current (I _d) of the device oscillates against gate voltage. The electrical characteristics of the single-electron transistor were observed to be consistent with the expected behavior of electron transport through gated quantum dots, up to 150 K. The dependence of the electrical characteristics on the dot size reveals that the I _d oscillation follows from the Coulomb blockade by poly-Si grains in the poly-Si dot. The method of fabrication of this device is completely compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, raising the possibility of manufacturing large-scale integrated nanoelectronic systems.     

Molecular weight effect on void closure and packing at different annealing temperatures during film formation from hard latex particles

Latex particles with high and low molecular weight (HM and LM) poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) were used to prepare two sets of films with various latex contents separately. These films were annealed above the glass transition temperature. A UV-Visible (UVV) technique was used to measure the transmitted photon intensity, I _tr during film formation from latex particles. Transmitted photon intensity from HM and LM films increased as the annealing temperature increased. A void closure equation was derived for I _tr by using the Vogel-Fulcher viscosity equation. It is observed that as the latex film thickness, d, increased void closure constant, B, and viscosity increased in both HM and LM films. For a given thickness, d, the lower viscosity of particles in HM films results in better packing than in LM films.     

Complexity of Two-Dimensional Patterns

In dynamical systems such as cellular automata and iterated maps, it is often useful to look at a language or set of symbol sequences produced by the system. There are well-established classification schemes, such as the Chomsky hierarchy, with which we can measure the complexity of these sets of sequences, and thus the complexity of the systems which produce them. In this paper, we look at the first few levels of a hierarchy of complexity for two-or-more-dimensional patterns. We show that several definitions of regular language or local rule that are equivalent in d=1 lead to distinct classes in d2. We explore the closure properties and computational complexity of these classes, including undecidability and L, NL, and NP-completeness results. We apply these classes to cellular automata, in particular to their sets of fixed and periodic points, finite-time images, and limit sets. We show that it is undecidable whether a CA in d2 has a periodic point of a given period, and that certain local lattice languages are not finite-time images or limit sets of any CA. We also show that the entropy of a d-dimensional CA's finite-time image cannot decrease faster than t ^–d unless it maps every initial condition to a single homogeneous state.     

Absence of Singular Continuous Diffraction for Discrete Multi-Component Particle Models

Particle models with finitely many types of particles are considered, both on ℤ ^d and on discrete point sets of finite local complexity. Such sets include many standard examples of aperiodic order such as model sets or certain substitution systems. The particle gas is defined by an interaction potential and a corresponding Gibbs measure. Under some reasonable conditions on the underlying point set and the potential, we show that the corresponding diffraction measure almost surely exists and consists of a pure point part and an absolutely continuous part with continuous density. In particular, no singular continuous part is present.