The electrochemical reduction of CO2 on a copper electrode in 1‐n‐butyl‐3‐methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (BMI.BF4) monitored by surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)

The electrochemical conversion of CO₂ into value‐added products using room temperature ionic liquids as solvent/electrolyte has been proposed as an alternative to minimize the environmental effects of CO₂ emissions. A key issue in the design of electrochemical systems for the reduction of CO₂ is the in situ identification of intermediate surface species as well as reaction products. Copper electrodes, besides being used as cathodes in the electrochemical reduction of CO₂, present surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) when properly activated. In this sense, the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ over a copper electrode in the room temperature ionic liquids 1‐n‐butyl‐3‐methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (BMI.BF₄) was investigated by cyclic voltammetry and by in situ SERS. The cyclic voltammetries have shown that the presence of CO₂ on the BMI.BF₄ anticipates the reduction of BMI⁺ to the corresponding carbene. Fourier‐transform‐SERS spectra excited at 1064 nm and SERS spectra excited at 632.8 nm have shown vibrational signals from adsorbed CO. These SERS results indicated that CO adsorbs on the copper surface at two different surface sites. The observation of a 2275 cm⁻¹ vibration in the SERS spectra also confirmed the presence of chemically adsorbed CO₂. Other products of CO₂ reduction in BMI.BF₄, besides CO, were identified, including BMI carbene and the BMI‐CO₂ adduct. The SERS results also suggest that the presence of a thin film of Cu₂O on the copper surface anticipates the reduction of CO₂ to CO, an important component of syngas. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

First results from the CRIS experiment

The ability to study rare isotopes with techniques such as mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy is often prevented by low production rates and large isobaric contamination. This has necessitated the development of novel beam cleaning techniques that can efficiently isolate the isotope of interest. The Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) experiment at ISOLDE, achieves this by resonantly ionizing a bunched atom beam in a region of ultra high vacuum. This method is motivated by the need to measure the hyperfine structure and isotope shift at the extremes of isospin where typical production rates drop to 1 atom/s. The technique also offers the ability to purify an ion beam and even select long-lived isomeric states (> 1 ms) from the ground state, which can be subsequently studied by decay spectroscopy or mass spectrometry experiments. This paper will report on the successful commissioning of the CRIS beam line and the recent laser spectroscopy results and laser assisted nuclear decay spectroscopy on the neutron deficient francium isotopes.     

Auxiliary probe design adaptable to existing probes for remote detection NMR, MRI, and time-of-flight tracing

A versatile, detection-only probe design is presented that can be adapted to any existing NMR or MRI probe with the purpose of making the remote detection concept generally applicable. Remote detection suggests freeing the NMR experiment from the confinement of using the same radio frequency (RF) coil and magnetic field for both information encoding and signal detection. Information is stored during the encoding step onto a fluid sensor medium whose magnetization is later measured in a different location. The choice of an RF probe and magnetic field for encoding can be made based solely on the size and characteristics of the sample and the desired information quality without considering detection sensitivity, as this aspect is dealt with by a separate detector. While early experiments required building probes that included two resonant circuits, one for encoding and one for detection, a modular approach with a detection-only probe as presented here can be used along with any existing NMR probe of choice for encoding. The design of two different detection-only probes is presented, one with a saddle coil for milliliter-sized detection volumes, and the other one with a microsolenoid coil for sub-microliter fluid quantities. As example applications, we present time-of-flight (TOF) tracing of hyperpolarized (129)Xe spins in a gas mixture through coiled tubing using the microsolenoid coil detector and TOF flow imaging through a nested glass container where the gas flow changes its direction twice between inlet and outlet using the saddle coil detector.     

The self-similarity of wall-bounded temporally accelerating turbulent flows

From the study of viscous flow it is known that certain time-dependent laminar problems, such as the impulsively started flat plate and the diffusion of a vortex sheet, possess self-similar solutions. Previous studies of turbulent channel and pipe flows accelerating between two steady states have shown that the flow field evolves in three distinct stages. Furthermore, recent direct numerical simulations have shown that the perturbation velocity, i.e. the surplus velocity from the initial value, in an impulsively accelerating turbulent channel and pipe flow also possesses a self-similar distribution during the initial stage. In here, these results are developed analytically and it is shown that accelerating flows in which the centreline velocity develops as U^∧_c(t) = U₀(t/t₀)^m will possess a self-similar velocity distribution during the initial stage. The displacement thickness of the perturbation velocity is shown to be dependent only on the type of acceleration, and not on the initial Reynolds number, the acceleration rate or the change in Reynolds number. The derived formulas are verified with good agreement against measurements performed in a linearly accelerating turbulent pipe flow and with data from channel flow simulations.     

Real-time increase in depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera using several phase-mask technologies

Imaging systems that combine a phase mask in the pupil and digital postprocessing may have better performance than conventional ones. We have built such a system to enhance the depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera. The phase masks are binary, their structures are optimized thanks to an image quality criterion, and they have been realized with three different technologies that give equivalent results. The deconvolution postprocessing is performed in real time with a graphics processing unit. A significant increase of the depth of field of a factor 3 has been obtained.     

Synthesis of resonant cavities having continuum spectra by genetic algorithm

This paper proposes a novel method for generating continuum spectra with possible applications in WDM access networks. This new method would allow the development of a simple continuum laser structure with better performances in terms of cost and simplicity than those of present supercontinuum sources. In this aim, we will analyze the possibility to broaden the resonant modes of a Fabry–Perot cavity by operating only on the design of one of the cavity's Bragg mirrors. Firstly we considered the conditions which a Bragg grating must satisfy in order to broaden the resonant modes of a resonant cavity. Because an exact solution is not physical possible, the genetic algorithm is the best available tool for the design of such a grating. An active medium is then added inside the cavity and its behavior below threshold is simulated. The spectra thus simulated are continuum over 5–15 nm.     

Holographic dark energy interacting with dark matter in a closed Universe

A cosmological model of an holographic dark energy interacting with dark matter throughout a decaying term of the form Q=3(λ₁ρDE+λ₂ρm)H$Q=3({\lambda }_1{\rho }_{\mathrm{DE}}+{\lambda }_2{\rho }_m)H$ is investigated. General constraint on the parameters of the model are found when accelerated expansion is imposed and we found a phantom scenario, without any reference to a specific equation of state for the dark energy. The behavior of equation of state for dark energy is also discussed.     

Primordial magnetic fields and dynamos from parity violated torsion

It is well known that torsion induced magnetic fields may seed galactic dynamos, but the price one pays for that is the conformal and gauge invariance breaks and a tiny photon mass. More recently I have shown [L.C. Garcia de Andrade, Phys. Lett. B 468 (2011) 28] that magnetic fields decay in a gauge invariant non-minimal coupling theory of torsion is slow down, which would allow for dynamo action to take place. In this Letter, by adding a parity violation term of the type _Rμνρσ?^μνρσ$R_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }{?}^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }$ to the non-coupling term, a magnetic dynamo equation is obtained. From dynamo equation it is shown that torsion terms only appear in the dynamo equation when diffusion in the cosmic plasma is present. Torsion breaks the homogeneity of the magnetic field in the universe. Since Zeldovich anti-dynamo theorem assumes that the spacetime should be totally flat, torsion is responsible for violation of anti-dynamo theorem in 2D spatial dimensions. Contrary to previous results torsion induced primordial magnetic fields cannot seed galactic dynamos since from torsion and diffusion coefficient the decaying time of the magnetic field is 10⁶yrs${10}^{6}yrs$, which is much shorter than the galaxy age.