Astroparticle physics: Working group report

The astroparticle physics working group witnessed intense discussion and activity covering a broad range of topics ranging from supergravity and baryogenesis to compact stars and the large scale structure of the Universe. A summary of some of the subject areas in which collaborations were initiated during WHEPP-5 is presented below.     

Theoretical study of two-element array of equilateral triangular patch microstrip antenna on ferrite substrate

The radiation characteristics of a two-element array of equilateral triangular patch microstrip antenna on a ferrite substrate are studied theoretically by considering the presence of bias magnetic field in the direction of propagation of electromagnetic waves. It is found that the natural modes of propagation in the direction of magnetic field are left- and right-circularly polarized waves and these modes have different propagation constants. In loss-less isotropic warm plasma, this array antenna geometry excites both electromagnetic (EM) and electroacoustic plasma (P) waves in addition to a nonradiating surface wave. In the absence of an external magnetic field, the EM- and P-waves can be decoupled into two independent modes, the electroacoustic mode is longitudinal while the electromagnetic mode is transverse. The far-zone EM-mode and P-mode radiation fields are derived using vector wave function techniques and pattern multiplication approaches. The results are obtained in both plasma medium and free space. Some important antenna parameters such as radiation conductance, directivity and quality factor are plotted for different values of plasma-to-source frequency.     

Dithioester-enabled chemodivergent synthesis of acids,amides and isothiazoles via CC bond cleavage and CO/CN/CS bond formations under metal- and catalyst-free conditions

An operationally simple and user-friendly process to access privileged scaffolds such as acids, amides and isothiazoles has been devised employing β-ketodithioesters for the first time. Remarkably, the new protocol involves combination of CC bond cleavage and CO/CN/NS bond formations in one-pot. Aqueous ammonia led to the formation of skeletally distinct amide and isothiazole, whereas aqueous NaOH enabled the formation of aromatic acid near quantitative yield. This practical approach, which can dramatically streamline the synthesis of simple molecules, is highly chemoselective, cost-effective, amenable to gram scale, insensitive to moisture as well as bears high functional group compatibility.     

Microdomain structure in plasticized PVC

Several electron microscope techniques have been used to characterize the microdomain morphology of plasticized PVC. The plasticizer was found to be heterogeneously distributed in samples processed at low temperatures. The 100—200-Å microdomains, which are essentially unplasticized, do not fuse at temperatures up to 165°C. However, at 180°C they begin to fuse, resulting in a more homogeneous distribution of the plasticizer. With increasing plasticizer level, the additional plasticizer was found to favor regions where it was already present, the unplasticized regions being almost unaffected. Milling time at 165°C was found to have little effect on the plasticizer distribution.     

High-pressure behaviour and elastic properties of heavy rare-earth Gd monopnictides

Pressure-induced structural phase transition of gadolinium monopnictides GdX (X=As and Sb) has been studied theoretically using an inter-ionic potential theory. This method has been found quite satisfactory in case of the pnictides of rare-earth and describes the crystal properties in the framework of rigid-ion model. We have modified the ionic charge so that it may include the Coulomb-screening effect by the delocalization of f electron of the rare-earth ion. The anomalous structural properties of these compounds with many f electrons have been interpreted in terms of the hybridization of f electrons with the conduction band and strong mixing of f states of Gd ion with the p orbital of neighbouring pnictogen ion. Both the compounds are found to undergo from their initial NaCl (B₁) structure to body centered tetragonal (BCT) structure at high pressure and agree well with the experimental results. The BCT structure is viewed as distorted CsCl structure and is highly anisotropic with c/a=0.82–0.85. The nature of bonds between the ions is predicted by simulating the ion–ion (Gd–Gd and Gd–X) distance at high pressure. Elastic properties of these compounds have also been studied with their second-order elastic constants.     

Hop Constrained Network Design Problem with Partial Survivability

This paper studies the hop constrained network design problem with partial survivability, namely, given an undirected network, a set of point-to-point demands (commodities), and transmission link costs, identify two node disjoint paths for each demand (commodity) to minimize the total costs subject to the constraints that each demand is routed and traverses at most a specified number of links (or hops) on both the paths.A mathematical programming formulation of the problem is presented and an efficient solution procedure based on the linear programming relaxation is developed. Extensive computational results across a number of networks are reported. These results indicate that the solution procedure is effective for a wide range of problem sizes.     

Use of acousto-optic grating as a sensor for determining the adulteration in liquids being used in daily life

An optical sensor has been developed for finding the proportional composition of two liquids in a mixture. The variation of the refractive index of a liquid produces light diffraction phenomenon. A liquid mixture is filled in a rectangular glass cell, which is placed orthogonically to the incident collimated beams of light. This cell consists of a piezoelectric crystal vibrator for generating ultrasonic waves. The collimated light while passing through this cell gets diffracted. The diffracted dots are collected by a converging lens and displayed in the back focal plane of the lens. The location of the diffracted dots decide the composition of mixture constituents namely fuel oils, edible oils, wine, water, etc. Thus, the adulteration of various liquids can be determined by having the knowledge of the position of diffraction dots.