John von Neumann and Klaus Fuchs: an Unlikely Collaboration

I discuss the origin of the idea of making a fusion (hydrogen) bomb and the physics involved in it, and then turn to the design proposed for one by the unlikely collaborators John von Neumann and Klaus Fuchs in a patent application they filed at Los Alamos in May 1946, which Fuchs passed on to the Russians in March 1948, and which with substantial modifications was tested on the island of Eberiru on the Eniwetok atoll in the South Pacific on May 8, 1951. This test showed that the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei could be ignited, but that the ignition would not propagate because the heat produced was rapidly radiated away. Meanwhile, Stanislaw Ulam and C.J. Everett had shown that Edward Teller’s Classical Super could not work, and at the end of December 1950, Ulam had conceived the idea of super compression, using the energy of a fission bomb to compress the fusion fuel to such a high density that it would be opaque to the radiation produced. Once Teller understood this, he invented a greatly improved, new method of compression using radiation, which then became the heart of the Ulam–Teller bomb design, which was tested, also in the South Pacific, on November 1, 1952. The Russians have freely acknowledged that Fuchs gave them the fission bomb, but they have insisted that no one gave them the fusion bomb, which grew out of design involving a fission bomb surrounded by alternating layers of fusion and fission fuels, and which they tested on November 22, 1955. Part of the irony of this story is that neither the American nor the Russian hydrogen-bomb programs made any use of the brilliant design that von Neumann and Fuchs had conceived as early as 1946, which could have changed the entire course of development of both programs.     

Manipulating the "straightness" and "curvature" of patterns of interaural cross correlation affects listeners' sensitivity to changes in interaural delay

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that stimuli characterized by "straight" trajectories of their patterns of cross correlation foster greater sensitivity to changes in interaural temporal disparities (ITDs) than do stimuli characterized by more "curved" trajectories of their patterns of cross correlation. To do so, sensitivity to changes in ITD was measured, as a function of duration, using a set of "reference" stimuli that yielded differing relative amounts of straightness within their patterns of cross correlation while keeping the dominant trajectory at or near midline. The relative amounts of straightness were manipulated by employing specific combinations of bandwidth, ITD, and interaural phase disparity (IPD) of Gaussian noises centered at 500 Hz. The results were consistent with expectations in that the patterning of the threshold ITDs revealed increasingly poorer sensitivity as greater and greater curvature was imposed on the dominant, "midline," trajectory. The variations in threshold ITD across the stimulus conditions can be accounted for quite well quantitatively by assuming either that the listeners based their judgments on changes in the position of the most central peak of the cross-correlation function or that they based their judgments on changes in the centroid of a second-level cross-correlation function. In a second experiment, binaural detection was measured using a subset of the reference stimuli as maskers. As expected, sensitivity was poorest with the maskers characterized by the greatest curvature, which were also those having the lowest interaural correlation.     

Testing Lorentz invariance and CPT conservation with NuMI neutrinos in the MINOS near detector

A search for a sidereal modulation in the MINOS near detector neutrino data was performed. If present, this signature could be a consequence of Lorentz and CPT violation as predicted by the effective field theory called the standard-model extension. No evidence for a sidereal signal in the data set was found, implying that there is no significant change in neutrino propagation that depends on the direction of the neutrino beam in a sun-centered inertial frame. Upper limits on the magnitudes of the Lorentz and CPT violating terms in the standard-model extension lie between 10(-4) and 10(-2) of the maximum expected, assuming a suppression of these signatures by a factor of 10(-17).     

Indication of reactor ν(e) disappearance in the Double Chooz experiment

The Double Chooz experiment presents an indication of reactor electron antineutrino disappearance consistent with neutrino oscillations. An observed-to-predicted ratio of events of 0.944±0.016(stat)±0.040(syst) was obtained in 101 days of running at the Chooz nuclear power plant in France, with two 4.25 GW(th) reactors. The results were obtained from a single 10 m(3) fiducial volume detector located 1050 m from the two reactor cores. The reactor antineutrino flux prediction used the Bugey4 flux measurement after correction for differences in core composition. The deficit can be interpreted as an indication of a nonzero value of the still unmeasured neutrino mixing parameter sin(2)2θ(13). Analyzing both the rate of the prompt positrons and their energy spectrum, we find sin(2)2θ(13)=0.086±0.041(stat)±0.030(syst), or, at 90% C.L., 0.017相似文献   

John Bell and the Identical Twins

I present a biographical profile of John S. Bell based upon extensive interviews I had with him. I present Bell‘s views on the quantum theory along with a simple explanation of his identity. Jeremy Bernstein is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology and a former staff writer for The New Yorker.     

Magnetization reversal of a single cobalt cluster using a RF field pulse

Technological improvements require the understanding of dynamical magnetization reversal processes at the nanosecond time scales. In this paper, we present the first magnetization reversal measurements performed on a single cobalt cluster (counting only a thousand of spins), using the micro-superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) technique by applying a constant magnetic field combined with a radio-frequency (RF) field pulse. First of all, we present the different technical steps necessary to detect the magnetic reversals at low temperature (T=35 mK) of a well-defined nanoparticle prepared by low energy clusters beam deposition (LECBD). We previously showed that the three-dimensional (3D)-switching Stoner-Wohlfarth astroid represents the magnetic anisotropy of the nanoparticle. Then, an improved device coupled with a gold stripe line, allow us to reverse such macrospin, using a RF pulse. A qualitative understanding of the magnetization reversal by non-linear resonance has been obtained with the Landau-Lifschitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation.     

Measurements of F2 and xF(nu)(3) - xF(nu;)(3) from CCFR nu(mu)-Fe and nu;(mu)-Fe Data in a Physics Model-Independent Way

We report on the extraction of the structure functions F2 and DeltaxF(3) = xF(nu)(3)-xF(nu;)(3) from CCFR nu(mu)-Fe and nu;(mu)-Fe differential cross sections. The extraction is performed in a physics model-independent (PMI) way. This first measurement of DeltaxF(3), which is useful in testing models of heavy charm production, is higher than current theoretical predictions. The ratio of the F2 (PMI) values measured in nu(mu) and mu scattering is in agreement (within 5%) with the predictions of next-to-leading-order parton distribution functions using massive charm production schemes, thus resolving the long-standing discrepancy between the two sets of data.     

Observation of muon neutrino disappearance with the MINOS detectors in the NuMI neutrino beam

This Letter reports results from the MINOS experiment based on its initial exposure to neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. The rates and energy spectra of charged current nu(mu) interactions are compared in two detectors located along the beam axis at distances of 1 and 735 km. With 1.27 x 10(20) 120 GeV protons incident on the NuMI target, 215 events with energies below 30 GeV are observed at the Far Detector, compared to an expectation of 336+/-14 events. The data are consistent with nu(mu) disappearance via oscillations with |Delta(m)2/32|=2.74 +0.44/-0.26 x10(-3)eV(2) and sin(2)(2theta(23))>0.87 (68% C.L.).