Limits on the high-energy gamma and neutrino fluxes from the SGR 1806-20 giant flare of 27 December 2004 with the AMANDA-II detector

On 27 December 2004, a giant gamma flare from the Soft Gamma-Ray Repeater 1806-20 saturated many satellite gamma-ray detectors, being the brightest transient event ever observed in the Galaxy. AMANDA-II was used to search for down-going muons indicative of high-energy gammas and/or neutrinos from this object. The data revealed no significant signal, so upper limits (at 90% C.L.) on the normalization constant were set: 0.05(0.5) TeV-1 m;{-2} s;{-1} for gamma=-1.47 (-2) in the gamma flux and 0.4(6.1) TeV-1 m;{-2} s;{-1} for gamma=-1.47 (-2) in the high-energy neutrino flux.     

Electrophoresis of sheared polyelectrolytes

ABSTRACT

A shear flow breaks the spherical symmetry of a flexible polymer, which has some interesting consequences for the electrophoresis of polyelectrolytes. In addition to introducing a chain-length dependence of the electrophoretic velocity, there is also the possibility of migration of the molecule perpendicular to the direction of coaxial gradients in pressure and electric potential. This has been shown to produce a rapid and highly localised concentration of DNA within a microfluidic capillary, with a number of potential applications to on-chip preparation and analysis of genomic DNA. In this paper, dedicated to Prof. Daan Frenkel, I will describe a calculation of the electrophoretic motion of a long polyelectrolyte under a coaxial flow and electric field.     

Proton beam writing of Nd:GGG crystals as new waveguide laser sources

Focused proton beam writing has been utilized to fabricate optical channel waveguides in Nd:GGG crystals. The 1?MeV proton beam irradiation creates a local modified region with positive refractive index changes at the end of the proton trajectory, in which the channel waveguide could confine the light field in a symmetric way. Room-temperature laser emission has been achieved at 1063.7?nm, with absorbed pump power of 61?mW (at 808?nm). The obtained slope efficiency of the Nd:GGG waveguide laser system is as high as 66%, which is, to our best knowledge, the highest value for integrated lasers from ion beam processed channel waveguide systems.     

A General Deterministic Treatment of Derivatives in Particle Methods

A unified approach to approximating spatial derivatives in particle methods using integral operators is presented. The approach is an extension of particle strength exchange, originally developed for treating the Laplacian in advection–diffusion problems. Kernels of high order of accuracy are constructed that can be used to approximate derivatives of any degree. A new treatment for computing derivatives near the edge of particle coverage is introduced, using “one-sided” integrals that only look for information where it is available. The use of these integral approximations in wave propagation applications is considered and their error is analyzed in this context using Fourier methods. Finally, simple tests are performed to demonstrate the characteristics of the treatment, including an assessment of the effects of particle dispersion, and their results are discussed.     

Multi-level optical data storage in a photobleaching polymer using two-photon excitation under continuous wave illumination

A multi-level recording method is implemented in a photobleaching polymer using two-photon excitation under continuous wave illumination. It is experimentally shown that information encoded with ten levels of darkness can be successfully stored. This multi-level bit optical data storage method is of importance in increasing the storage density of a recording material and the speed of data access.     

Mode beating in spot-size converter lasers

An anomalous modulation in the wavelength spectrum has been observed in lasers with spot-size converters. This intensity modulation is shown to be caused by beating between the fundamental lasing mode and radiation modes in the taper. This results in a periodic modulation in the net gain spectrum, which causes wavelength jumps between adjacent net gain maxima, and a drive current dependent spectral width that is expected to affect system performance. The amplitude of this spectral modulation is reduced significantly by either using an angled rear-facet which reflects the beating radiation modes away from the laser axis, or by using a nonlinear, adiabatic taper.     

Depth-dependent acoustic features of diving sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Gulf of Mexico

Three-dimensional dive trajectories of three sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico have been obtained by measuring the relative arrival times and bearings of the animals' acoustic multipath reflections, using two elements of a towed hydrophone array deployed at an unknown depth and orientation. Within the first 6-12 min of the start of a dive, the intervals between successive "clicks" of all three whales corresponded closely with the two-way travel time of an acoustic pulse traveling vertically between the animals' position and the ocean bottom. The click spectra contained multiple peaks, including a faint band of energy originally centered near 10 kHz. As the animals descended over 500 m in depth, the center frequency of this band shifted to nearly 15 kHz, but subsequently remained near this value during the rest of the dive. This frequency shift is consistent with that expected from energy scattering from an ensemble of incompressible small-scale air-filled resonators, with diameters on the order of 4 mm. One possible candidate for such an ensemble is proposed to reside in the collapsed frontal sac of the animal. A comparison of the received levels for the bottom and direct multipath arrivals indicates that the whales' acoustic directivity must range between 10-30 dB in the 5-20-kHz region.     

Acoustic diffraction by a half-plane in a viscous fluid medium

We consider the diffraction of a time-harmonic acoustic plane wave by a rigid half-plane in a viscous fluid medium. The linearized equations of viscous fluid flow and the no-slip condition on the half-plane are used to derive a pair of disjoint Wiener-Hopf equations for the fluid stresses and velocities. The Wiener-Hopf equations are solved in conjunction with a requirement that the stresses are integrable near the edge of the half-plane. Specific wave components of the scattered velocity field are given analytically. A Padé approximation to the Wiener-Hopf kernel function is used to derive numerical results that show the effect of viscosity on the velocity field in the immediate vicinity of the edge of the half-plane.     

Fluorimetric metal ion sensing usingN-methyl-9-anthrylhydroxamic acid

We have synthesizedN-methyl-9-anthrylhydroxamic acid, which is a fluorescent analogue ofN-methylbenzohydroxamic acid. Complexation with various di- and trivalent metal ions occurs (logK from 4 to 5) in water with resulting fluorescence quenching. Because the Fe(III) and Al(III) complexes substituted rather slowly, the addition of EDTA provides a temporal method for obtaining some selectivity in the chemosensor.