Enhancement of high harmonics generated by field steering of electrons in a two-color orthogonally polarized laser field

We demonstrate enhancement by 1 order of magnitude of the high-order harmonics generated in argon by combining a fundamental field at 1300 nm (10(14) W cm(-2)) and its orthogonally polarized second harmonic at 650 nm (2 × 10(13) W cm(-2)) and by controlling the relative phase between them. This extends earlier work by ensuring that the main effect is the combined field steering the electron trajectory with negligible contribution from multiphoton effects compared to the previous schemes with 800/400 nm fields. We access a broad energy range of harmonics (from 20 eV to 80 eV) at a low laser intensity (far below the ionization saturation limit) and observe deep modulation of the harmonic yield with a period of π in the relative phase. Strong field theoretical analysis reveals that this is principally due to the steering of the recolliding electron wave packet by the two-color field. Our modeling also shows that the atto chirp can be controlled, leading to production of shorter pulses.     

Quantum Darwinism Requires an Extra-Theoretical Assumption of Encoding Redundancy

Observers restricted to the observation of pointer states of apparatus cannot conclusively demonstrate that the pointer of an apparatus A\mathcal{A} registers the state of a system of interest S without perturbing S. Observers cannot, therefore, conclusively demonstrate that the states of a system S are redundantly encoded by pointer states of multiple independent apparatus without destroying the redundancy of encoding. The redundancy of encoding required by quantum Darwinism must, therefore, be assumed from outside the quantum-mechanical formalism and without the possibility of experimental demonstration.     

Robustness of spatial average equalization: a statistical reverberation model approach

Traditionally, multiple listener room equalization is performed to improve sound quality at all listeners, during audio playback, in a multiple listener environment (e.g., movie theaters, automobiles, etc.). A typical way of doing multiple listener equalization is through spatial averaging, where the room responses are averaged spatially between positions and an inverse equalization filter is found from the spatially averaged result. However, the equalization performance, will be affected if there is a mismatch between the position of the microphones (which are used for measuring the room responses for designing the equalization filter) and the actual center of listener head position (during playback). In this paper, we will present results on the effects of microphone-listener mismatch on spatial average equalization performance. The results indicate that, for the analyzed rectangular configuration, the region of effective equalization depends on (i) the distance of a listener from the source, (ii) the amount of mismatch between the responses, and (iii) the frequency of the audio signal. We also present some convergence analysis to interpret the results.     

Memory in time-dependent density functional theory

Exact time-dependent density functionals remember both the entire history of the density and the initial wave function. We show that the two effects are intimately related, and all history dependence can be written as initial-state dependence, including that of the exchange-correlation kernel. For states that can be evolved from a ground state, all initial-state dependence is a dependence on a pseudo-prehistory, providing a route to excited-state densities from time-dependent density functional theory.     

Development of non-lethal sampling of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios in salmonids: effects of lipid and inorganic components of fins

The preferred tissue for analyses of fish stable isotope ratios for most researchers is muscle, the sampling of which typically requires the specimen to be sacrificed. The use of non-destructive methods in fish isotopic research has been increasing recently, but as yet is not a standard procedure. Previous studies have reported varying levels of success regarding the utility of non-lethally obtained stable isotope materials, e.g. fins, but none have accounted for the potential compounding effects of inorganic components of fin rays or lipids. Comparisons of carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotope ratios of muscle with adipose and caudal fin of two salmonids, Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) and brown trout (Salmo trutta L.), revealed that caudal fin can be used as a non-destructive surrogate for muscle in stable isotope analysis, but that adipose fin, where available, is a better proxy. The use of a published model to inexpensively counteract the confounding effect of lipids, which are depleted in ¹³C, greatly improved the relationship between fish muscle and fins. However, efforts to account for the inorganic components of fin rays were counterproductive and required twice the biomass of fins clipped from each fish. As this experiment was conducted on wild fish, controlled laboratory studies are required to confirm these field observations.     

Phase Transfer Promoted Ruthenium Oxide Oxidations of Carbohydrates II

ABSTRACT

The use of a phase transfer catalyst, benzyltriethylammonium chloride (BTEAC), is described in conjunction with the ruthenium dioxide/periodate : water/chloroform system for the oxidation of carbohydrate alcohols to the corresponding ketone, aldehyde, or carboxylic acid. The method was found to be applicable to carbohydrates appropriately protected as acetals, ethers, or containing a benzoyloxy group not positioned to readily undergo β-elimination. While the method was very suitable for the oxidation of carbohydrate secondary alcohols to ketones, it was found to be less suitable for the oxidation of a carbohydrate primary alcohol to the corresponding aldehyde or carboxylic acid. Evidence presented suggests that under the mildly basic conditions of the reaction, ruthenium tetraoxide is converted to ruthenate and perruthenate ions in the aqueous solution and then the perruthenate ion is carried by the phase transfer catalyst into the organic layer where oxidation of the substrate occurs. A number of examples illustrating the scope of the method are presented.     

砷的代谢机制、毒性和生物监测

砷化合物是备受关注的一类污染物,特别是饮用水中的砷污染引发了全球性的健康问题.本文综述了近年来人们对砷的代谢机制、毒性和生物监测的研究进展.砷在生物体内的代谢过程十分复杂,在氧化还原酶和甲基转移酶的参与下,产生一系列的代谢产物和中间产物.其中,砷的原始摄入形态、代谢产物及中间产物由于不同的物理化学性质,体现了不同的毒性.人类和不同的动物由于不同的砷代谢机理和甲基化能力,也表现了对砷毒性抵抗能力的差异.在生物体内,一些砷化合物与生物蛋白相互作用,影响它们的存在形式、分布和传输,是砷的生物代谢和毒理研究中不可或缺的内容.生物监测是一种直接有效的污染物健康风险评估方法.在尿液、血液、唾液、头发和指甲中砷化合物直接反映了暴露主体的砷暴露程度,这5种生物介质作为砷暴露的生物标志物各有优缺点.在砷的研究中,代谢机制和毒性的研究可以帮助选择合适的生物监测方法,做出合理准确的健康风险评估.生物监测也可促进对砷的代谢机制和毒性的理解,推断可能的代谢途径,定量毒性剂量效应,两者相互依赖相互促进.     

L1-regularisation for ill-posed problems in variational data assimilation

We consider four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4DVar) and show that it can be interpreted as Tikhonov or L₂-regularisation, a widely used method for solving ill-posed inverse problems. It is known from image restoration and geophysical problems that an alternative regularisation, namely L₁-norm regularisation, recovers sharp edges better than L₂-norm regularisation. We apply this idea to 4DVar for problems where shocks and model error are present and give two examples which show that L₁-norm regularisation performs much better than the standard L₂-norm regularisation in 4DVar. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Ground-based solar absorption studies for the Carbon Cycle science by Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (CC-FTS) mission

Carbon cycle science by Fourier transform spectroscopy (CC-FTS) is an advanced study for a future satellite mission. The goal of the mission is to obtain a better understanding of the carbon cycle in the Earth's atmosphere by monitoring total and partial columns of CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and CO in the near infrared. CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O are important greenhouse gases, and CO is produced by incomplete combustion. The molecular O₂ column is also needed to obtain the effective optical path of the reflected sunlight and is used to normalize the column densities of the other gases. As part of this advanced study, ground-based Fourier transform spectra are used to evaluate the spectral region and resolution needed. Spectra in the 3950–7140 cm^?1 region with a spectral resolution of 0.0042 cm^?1 recorded at Kiruna (67.84°N, 20.41°E, and 419 m above sea level), Sweden, on 1 April 1998, were degraded to the resolutions of 0.01, 0.1, and 0.3 cm^?1. The effect of spectral resolution on the retrievals has been investigated with these four Kiruna spectra. To obtain further information on the spectral resolution, optical components and spectroscopic parameters required by the future mission, high-resolution solar absorption spectra between 2000 and 15000 cm^?1 were recorded using Fourier transform spectrometers at Kitt Peak (31.9°N, 111.6°W, and 2.1 km above sea level), Arizona, on 25 July 2005 and Waterloo (43.5°N, 80.6°W, and 0.3 km above sea level), Ontario, on 22 November 2006 with spectral resolutions of 0.01 and 0.1 cm^?1, respectively. Dry air volume mixing ratios (VMRs) of CO₂ and CH₄ were retrieved from these ground-based observations. The HITRAN 2004 spectroscopic parameters are used with the SFIT2 package for the spectral analysis. The measurement precisions for CO₂ and CH₄ total columns are better than 1.07% and 1.13%, respectively, for our observations. Based on these results, a Fourier transform spectrometer (maximum spectral resolution of 0.1 cm^?1 or 5 cm maximum optical path difference (MOPD)) operating between 2000 and 15000 cm^?1 is suggested as the primary instrument for the mission. Further progress in improving the atmospheric retrievals for CO₂, CH₄, and O₂ requires new laboratory measurements of the spectroscopic line parameters.