Nucleon transfer reactions to rotational states induced by206, 208Pb projectiles

In a systematic study of nucleon transfer reactions accompanied by Coulomb excitation we have bombarded¹⁵²Sm,¹⁶⁰Gd and²³²Th with^{206, 208}pb beams at incident energies close to the Coulomb barrier. Particle-gamma coincidence techniques were used to identify excited states of reaction products populated through inelastic scattering and in nucleon transfer reactions. One-neutron stripping and pick-up reactions on¹⁵²Sm were observed leading to known states of the rotation alignedi _13/2-bands in¹⁵³Sm and¹⁵¹Sm. In the¹⁶⁰Gd+^{206, 208}Pb systems no significant population of low lying states of product nuclei was found in the nucleon-transfer channels. Large cross sections were observed for one- and two-neutron pick-up from²³²Th at an incident energy of 6.4 MeV/u. Around the grazing angle they are of the same order of magnitude as the cross section measured for inelastic scattering. The results are analyzed in the framework of semiclassical models.     

Vehicle routing problems with time windows and multiple service workers: a systematic comparison between ACO and GRASP

This paper systematically compares an ant colony optimization (ACO) and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) metaheuristic. Both are used to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple service workers. In order to keep the results comparable, the same route construction heuristic and local search procedures are used. It is shown that ACO clearly outperforms GRASP in the problem under study. Additionally, new globally best results for the used benchmark problems are presented.     

MacWilliams duality and a Gleason-type theorem on self-dual bent functions

We prove that the MacWilliams duality holds for bent functions. It enables us to derive the concept of formally self-dual Boolean functions with respect to their near weight enumerators. By using this concept, we prove the Gleason-type theorem on self-dual bent functions. As an application, we provide the total number of (self-dual) bent functions in two and four variables obtaining from formally self-dual Boolean functions.     

Electrical conductivity of the system Y2O3CeO2

The electrical conductivity of the system Y₂O₃CeO₂ was measured in the temperature range 500–1100°C and P_o2 range 10^–7?10^?1 atm. Possible defect models were suggested on the basis of conductivity data, which were investigated as a function of temperature and of P_o2. The observed activation energies were 0.40 eV and 1.79 eV in the low- and high-temperature regions, respectively. The observed conductivity dependences on P_o2 were in the temperature range 500–750°C and at temperatures from 750–1100°C. It is suggested that the system Y₂O₃CeO₂ shows a mixed ionic plus hole conduction due to an O^″_i defect and an electronic hole conduction due to a V^'''_Y defect in the low- and high-temperature regions, respectively.     

Different Faces of the Shearlet Group

Recently, shearlet groups have received much attention in connection with shearlet transforms applied for orientation sensitive image analysis and restoration. The square integrable representations of the shearlet groups provide not only the basis for the shearlet transforms but also for a very natural definition of scales of smoothness spaces, called shearlet coorbit spaces. The aim of this paper is twofold: first we discover isomorphisms between shearlet groups and other well-known groups, namely extended Heisenberg groups and subgroups of the symplectic group. Interestingly, the connected shearlet group with positive dilations has an isomorphic copy in the symplectic group, while this is not true for the full shearlet group with all nonzero dilations. Indeed we prove the general result that there exist, up to adjoint action of the symplectic group, only one embedding of the extended Heisenberg algebra into the Lie algebra of the symplectic group. Having understood the various group isomorphisms it is natural to ask for the relations between coorbit spaces of isomorphic groups with equivalent representations. These connections are examined in the second part of the paper. We describe how isomorphic groups with equivalent representations lead to isomorphic coorbit spaces. In particular we apply this result to square integrable representations of the connected shearlet groups and metaplectic representations of subgroups of the symplectic group. This implies the definition of metaplectic coorbit spaces. Besides the usual full and connected shearlet groups we also deal with Toeplitz shearlet groups.     

An SR1/BFGS SQP algorithm for nonconvex nonlinear programs with block-diagonal Hessian matrix

We present a quasi-Newton sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm for nonlinear programs in which the Hessian of the Lagrangian function is block-diagonal. Problems with this characteristic frequently arise in the context of optimal control; for example, when a direct multiple shooting parametrization is used. In this article, we describe an implementation of a filter line-search SQP method that computes search directions using an active-set quadratic programming (QP) solver. To take advantage of the block-diagonal structure of the Hessian matrix, each block is approximated separately by quasi-Newton updates. For nonconvex instances, that arise, for example, in optimum experimental design control problems, these blocks are often found to be indefinite. In that case, the block-BFGS quasi-Newton update can lead to poor convergence. The novel aspect in this work is the use of SR1 updates in place of BFGS approximations whenever possible. The resulting indefinite QPs necessitate an inertia control mechanism within the sparse Schur-complement factorization that is carried out by the active-set QP solver. This permits an adaptive selection of the Hessian approximation that guarantees sufficient progress towards a stationary point of the problem. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces the number of SQP iterations and CPU time required for the solution of a set of optimal control problems.     

Exsolution of Nickel Nanoparticles from Mixed-Valence Metal Oxides: A Quantitative Evaluation by Magnetic Measurements

A fast and accurate experimental method is demonstrated to assess the fraction of exsolved metallic nanoparticles using magnetic measurements. As a benchmark, nanometric metallic nickel exsolved from (La_1−xSr_x)(Cr_1−yNi_y)O_3−δ is used for its high relevance as a solid oxide fuel cell component. The method is based on the difference in the magnetic response of the exsolved metallic nickel (ferromagnetic) and Sr-doped lanthanum chromite ceramic matrix (paramagnetic). The exsolved nickel results in coherent nanoparticles pinned on the surface of the Sr-doped lanthanum chromite ceramic matrix, as evidenced by electron microscopy analyses. The results obtained indicate the procedure as a fast and sensitive method to study the exsolution of ferromagnetic nanoparticles.     

Löwner expansions

A fundamental problem is to estimate the logarithmic coefficients of a power series with constant coefficient zero which represents a function which has distinct values at distinct points of the unit disk. A source of estimates is an expansion theorem for the Löwner equations which is obtained from a study of contractive substitutions in Hilbert spaces of analytic functions. The methods are an outgrowth of the theory of square summable power series [1]. Assume that σ_n is a given function of nonnegative integers n, with nonnegative values, such that σ₀ = 0 and such that σ_{n ? 1} ? σ_n when n is positive. Infinite values are allowed. The underlying Hilbert space is the set $\text{G}$_σ(0) of equivalence classes of power series f(z) = ∑ a_nzⁿ with constant coefficient zero such that f(z)²_{$\text{G}$σ⁽⁰⁾} = ∑(n/σ_n)|a_n|² is finite. Equivalence of power series f(z) and g(z) means that the coefficient of zⁿ in f(z) is equal to the coefficient of zⁿ in g(z) when σ_n is finite.     

Dislocation glide through non-randomly distributed point obstacles

Abstract

Classical meso-scale models for dislocation–obstacle interactions have, by and large, assumed a random distribution of obstacles on the glide plane. While a good approximation in many situations, this does not represent materials where obstacles are clustered on the glide plane. In this work, we have investigated the statistical problem of a dislocation sampling a set of clustered point obstacles in the glide plane using a modified areal-glide model. The results of these simulations show two clear regimes. For weak obstacles, the spatial distribution does not matter and the critically resolved shear stress is found to be independent of the degree of clustering. In contrast, above a critical obstacle strength determined by the degree of clustering, the critical resolved shear strength becomes constant. It is shown that this behaviour can be explained semi-analytically by considering the probability of interaction between the dislocation line and obstacles at a given level of stress. The consequences for alloys exhibiting solute clustering are discussed.