TITAN: an ion trap for accurate mass measurements of ms-half-life nuclides

The introduction of Paul traps, in particular linear radio-frequency quadrupoles in the early 2000s, has revolutionized the use of ion traps for probing the properties of radioactive nuclides. It opened the path to trapping all available nuclides, independent of their chemical properties. We present an overview of direct mass measurements of short-lived nuclides using TITAN, a Penning trap mass spectrometer facility particularly suitable for precision measurements of ms-half-life nuclides.     

Long-period-grating-assisted optical add-drop filter based on mismatched twin-core photosensitive-cladding fiber

A noninterferometric optical fiber add-drop channel filter based on a mismatched twin-core photosensitive-cladding fiber and long-period fiber grating is demonstrated. With assistance from the fiber grating, co-directional spectrally selective cross coupling between the two cores can be realized with an efficiency of 90%.     

The Centroaffine Volume of Generalized Geodesic Balls Under Inversion at the Sphere

On an analytic Riemannian manifold (M,g), several authors have studied the Taylor expansion for the volume of geodesic balls under the exponential mapping. In the foregoing paper [1] we studied a more general structure (M,D,g), where D is a torsion-free and Ricci-symmetric connection. We calculated the Taylor expansion up to order (n+4) for the volume of what we called a generalized geodesic ball under the exponential mapping in case that all metric notions are Riemannian, while the exponential mapping is induced from the connection D. For the structure $(M,D,{\cal G})$ the coefficients of the Taylor expansion are much more complicated than in the Riemannian case. It is one of the main objectives of the present paper to study centroaffine hypersurfaces in Euclidean space, their geometric invariants which appear in the very complicated coefficient of order (n+4), and their behaviour under polarization (inversion at the unit sphere). Our results complement applications in the foregoing paper [1], where mainly the coefficients up to order (n+2) and geometric consequences have been studied.     

Reexamination of the I2 spectrum near the B(3Π0u+) state dissociation limit

The disagreement of Danyluk and King's (Chem. Phys.25, 343 (1977)) rotational constants for levels lying near the dissociation limit of B-state I₂ with the mechanical behavior predicted by near-dissociation theory is investigated. The discrepancies are shown to be much too large to be explained by either the neglect of centrifugal distortion effects in the original analysis or by rotational or spin-rotation coupling to a nearby repulsive 1_u state. These differences are therefore attributed to experimental error, a conclusion which is confirmed by more recent experimental results. A reanalysis of the best available data for levels near the dissociation limit of B-state I₂ then yields improved values for the B-state dissociation limit $\text{D}$ = 20 043.16 (±0.02) cm^?1 of the vibrational index at dissociation v_$\text{D}$ = 87.32 (±0.04) and of the long-range potential constant $\text{C}{}_5\text{= 2.88 (±0.03) × 10}{}^5\text{cm}{}^{\mathrm{?1}}\text{A}\text{?}{}^5$. This in turn implies a slightly improved ground-state dissociation energy of $\text{D}$₀ = 12 440.18 (±0.02) cm^?1.     

A Simple proof of the generalized electrostatic Israel theorem

A simple proof of a generalization of the theorem of Israel concerning the uniqueness of the Reissner-Nordström black holes is presented. The present method is also applied to show, in the bosonic sector ofN=4-supergravity, the uniqueness of a static black hole solution found by Gibbons.Work supported by Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung in Österreich, Project No. 4961.     

Functional MRI of working memory and selective attention in vibrotactile frequency discrimination

Background  

Focal lesions of the frontal, parietal and temporal lobe may interfere with tactile working memory and attention. To characterise the neural correlates of intact vibrotactile working memory and attention, functional MRI was conducted in 12 healthy young adults. Participants performed a forced-choice vibrotactile frequency discrimination task, comparing a cue stimulus of fixed frequency to their right thumb with a probe stimulus of identical or higher frequency. To investigate working memory, the time interval between the 2 stimuli was pseudo-randomized (either 2 or 8 s). To investigate selective attention, a distractor stimulus was occasionally presented contralaterally, simultaneous to the probe.     

Contracting on Average Random IFS with Repelling Fixed Point

We consider random iterated function systems which consist of strictly increasing and (not necessarily strictly) convex functions on a compact interval or on a half line. We assume that the system is contracting on average in a sense which is wide enough to permit the existence of a common fixpoint at which some functions of the system are expanding and perhaps none of them are contracting (see Fig. 1). We prove that the Hausdorff dimension of any of the possibly uncountably many invariant measures is smaller than or equal to the accumulated entropy divided by the Liapunov exponent. Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 42A85 Secondary 11R06; 26A46; 26A30; 26A78; 28A80     

A general ultrasound-assisted access to room-temperature ionic liquids

The replacement of common organic solvents by room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) is a topical subject in both academia and industry. In the last decades, the number of applications for RTILs has followed an exponential curve and spilled over the boundaries of chemistry. Still, one of the main drawbacks of these compounds is their difficult access. The present ultrasound-assisted method affords a general and easy access to a large variety of room-temperature ionic liquids.