Highly confined hybrid spoof surface plasmons in ultrathin metal-dielectric heterostructures

Highly confined "spoof" surface plasmons (SSPs) are theoretically predicted to exist in a perforated metal film coated with a thin dielectric layer. Strong modes confinement results from the additional waveguiding by the layer. Spectral characteristics, field distribution, and lifetime of these SSPs are tunable by the holes' size and shape. SSPs exist both above and below the light line, offering two classes of applications: "perfect" far-field absorption and efficient emission into guided modes. It is experimentally shown that these plasmonlike modes can turn thin, weakly absorbing semiconductor films into perfect absorbers.     

Systemic Risk and Stochastic Games with Delay

We propose a model of inter-bank lending and borrowing which takes into account clearing debt obligations. The evolution of log-monetary reserves of banks is described by coupled diffusions driven by controls with delay in their drifts. Banks are minimizing their finite-horizon objective functions which take into account a quadratic cost for lending or borrowing and a linear incentive to borrow if the reserve is low or lend if the reserve is high relative to the average capitalization of the system. As such, our problem is a finite-player linear–quadratic stochastic differential game with delay. An open-loop Nash equilibrium is obtained using a system of fully coupled forward and advanced-backward stochastic differential equations. We then describe how the delay affects liquidity and systemic risk characterized by a large number of defaults. We also derive a closed-loop Nash equilibrium using a Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman partial differential equation approach.     

Study of Salinity and pH Effects on Gelation Time of a Polymer Gel Using Central Composite Design Method

Experiments were conducted to investigate the main effects of salinity (NaCl) concentrations and pH factors and their interactions on the gelation time response of a polymer gel used in a water shutoff system in oil field reservoirs. Central composite design (CCD) was used to design experiments and a mathematical model building. The main advantage of CCD was to generate the quadratic mathematical model for the gelation time as functions of salinity and pH factors. Tests were limited and optimized by CCD points including low star (axial), low factorial, central, high factorial, and high star points. The evaluation of the data and the developed model were performed through the examination of graphical trend of residuals and a numerical approach. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to estimate the amount of data variations from the model predictions. It was found that the model was significant at the 99% confidence against test data. The results showed that the gelation time was dependent more on pH than salinity. For low pH, the gelation time increased with increasing of the salinity, while for a high pH (>4) the relationship was inversed. The research shows that CCD can effectively be applied for the modeling of gelation time and finding an optimum condition to achieve maximum or minimum gelation time for different salinity and pH factors.     

Swelling and Gelation Time Behavior of Sulfonated Polyacrylamide/Chromium Triacetate Hydrogels

A hydrogel was prepared by crosslinking of aqueous solutions of sulfonated polyacrylamide/chromium triacetate for use in water shut-off operations in oil reservoirs. The effects of pH, salinity, retarder and temperature, as well as co-polymer and crosslinker concentration, on the gelation time were investigated. The results indicated that as temperature increased, gelation occurred more rapidly. The activation energy was measured as about 86 kJ/mol. The effects of initial pH and retarder on the gelation time were also examined. The results showed that addition of retarder and increasing of pH increased and decreased the gelation time, respectively. The increase of co-polymer concentration in solution increased the gel swelling. However, the increase of crosslinker concentration decreased the gel swelling. In the presence of electrolytes, the gel swelling decreased by about 80%. Finally, some usable practical recommendations are offered for the gelling systems in reservoirs.     

Vacuum spherically symmetric solutions in f(T) gravity

Spherically symmetric static vacuum solutions have been built in f(T) models of gravity theory. We apply some conditions on the metric components; then new vacuum spherically symmetric solutions are obtained. Also, by extracting metric coefficients we determine the analytical form of f(T).     

Magnetic nanoparticles supported Cu2+ and Ce3+ complexes: toward the chemical and electrochemical oxidation of alcohol and sulfide derivatives

Research on Chemical Intermediates - Heterogeneous catalysts are more prominent rather than homogenous catalysts since they are simply separated from products. To improve and develop heterogeneous...     

Numerical investigation of the magnetic field effect on the heat transfer and fluid flow of ferrofluid inside helical tube

The effect of a magnetic field on heat and fluid flow of ferrofluid in a helical tube is studied numerically. The helical tube is under constant wall temperature boundary condition. Parametric studies are done to investigate the effects of different factors such as the magnetic field gradient value and Reynolds number on heat transfer rate and pressure drop. Results indicate that the magnetic field increases the Nusselt number by about 40%. At high magnetic gradient value, Nusselt number and friction factor rise slightly, while at low magnetic gradient value, the increment of Nusselt number is considerable. Furthermore, the growth of wall shear stress on tube wall results in lower thermal–hydraulic performance at the high magnetic gradient value. There is an optimum case for thermal–hydraulic performance which results in most top performance of helical tube in the presence of the magnetic field.

     

The Cost Reduction of Distributed Quantum Factorization Circuits

International Journal of Theoretical Physics - The number of qubits involved in a quantum system increases as the quantum computation is being progressed. Restrictions in monolithic quantum...