Sensitive indirect spectrophotometric determination of isoniazid

A simple, rapid, sensitive and accurate indirect spectrophotometric method for the microdetermination of isoniazid (INH) in pure form and pharmaceutical formulations is developed. The procedure is based on the reaction of copper(II) with isoniazid in the presence of neocuproine (NC). In the presence of neocuproine, copper(II) is reduced easily by isoniazid to a Cu(I)-neocuproine complex, which shows an absorption maximum at 454 nm. By measuring the absorbance of the complex at this wavelength, isoniazid can be determined in the range 0.3-3.5 microgml-1. This method was applied to the determination of isoniazid in pharmaceutical formulation and enabled the determination of the isoniazid in microgram quantities (0.3-3.5 microgml-1). The results obtained for the assay of pharmaceutical preparations compared well with those obtained by the official method and demonstrated good accuracy and precision.     

Ising model andN=2 supersymmetric theories

We establish a direct link between massive Ising model and arbitrary massiveN=2 supersymmetric QFT's in two dimensions. This explains why the equations which appear in the computation of spin-correlations in the non-critical Ising model are the same as those describing the geometry of vacua inN=2 theories. The tau-function appearing in the Ising model (i.e., the spin correlation function) is reinterpreted in theN=2 context as a new index. In special cases this new index is related to the Ray-Singer analytic torsion, and can be viewed as a generalization of that to the loop space of Kähler manifolds.     

Remote sensing with intense filaments enhanced by adaptive optics

A method involving a closed loop adaptive optic system is investigated as a tool to significantly enhance the collected optical emissions, for remote sensing applications involving ultrafast laser filamentation. The technique combines beam expansion and geometrical focusing, assisted by an adaptive optics system to correct the wavefront aberrations. Targets, such as a gaseous mixture of air and hydrocarbons, solid lead and airborne clouds of contaminated aqueous aerosols, were remotely probed with filaments generated at distances up to 118 m after the focusing beam expander. The integrated backscattered signals collected by the detection system (15–28 m from the filaments) were increased up to a factor of 7, for atmospheric N₂ and solid lead, when the wavefronts were corrected by the adaptive optic system. Moreover, an extrapolation based on a simplified version of the LIDAR equation showed that the adaptive optic system improved the detection distance for N₂ molecular fluorescence, from 45 m for uncorrected wavefronts to 125 m for corrected.     

Qualitative assessment of ultra-fast non-Grotthuss proton dynamics in S<Subscript>1</Subscript> excited state of liquid H<Subscript>2</Subscript>O from ab initio time-dependent density functional theory

We study qualitatively ultra-fast proton transfer (PT) in the first singlet (S₁) state of liquid water (absorption onset) through excited-state dynamics by means of time-dependent density functional theory and ab initio Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics. We find that after the initial excitation, a PT occurs in S₁ in form of a rapid jump to a neighboring water molecule, on which the proton either may rest for a relatively long period of time (as a consequence of possible defect in the hydrogen bond network) followed by back and forth hops to its neighboring water molecule or from which it further moves to the next water molecule accompanied by back and forth movements. In this way, the proton may become delocalized over a long water wire branch, followed again by back and forth jumps or short localization on a water molecule for some femtoseconds. As a result, the mechanism of PT in S₁ is in most cases highly non-Grotthuss-like, delayed and discrete. Furthermore, upon PT an excess charge is ejected to the solvent trap, the so-called solvated electron. The spatial extent of the ejected solvated electron is mainly localized within one solvent shell with overlappings on the nearest neighbor water molecules and delocalizing (diffuse) tails extending beyond the first solvent sphere. During the entire ultra-short excited-state dynamics the remaining OH radical from the initially excited water molecule exhibits an extremely low mobility and is non-reactive.     

An efficient control of ultrashort laser filament location in air for the purpose of remote sensing

The unavoidable hot spots in a practical terawatt level laser pulse will self-focus in air at a short distance. The short distance cannot be changed significantly by only controlling the chirp or divergence. We overcome such early self-focusing by using a telescope, which enlarges the diameter of the beam, thus that of the hot spots. The telescope’s effective focal length is much shorter than the self-focusing distance of both the enlarged beam and the hot spots. Then, the resulting filaments merge into the geometrical focus whose position is controllable by the telescope. This technique also minimizes the generation of white light. PACS 52.38.Hb; 42.65.Jx; 52.35.Mw     

Eigenvalue inequalities for fermions in gauge theories

We show that QCD with a sufficient number of fermions of zero bare mass has physical massless particles. That result also follows from triangle anomalies, so only our method is novel. Our method involves proving special cases of recently conjectured paramagnetic inequalities for fermions. The proofs are simple applications of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer theorem on spectral flow.Supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY80-19754Supported in part by DOE Grant No. DE-AC02-76ER02220     

The operator algebra of orbifold models

We analyze the chiral properties of (orbifold) conformal field theories which are obtained from a given conformal field theory by modding out by a finite symmetry group. For a class of orbifolds, we derive the fusion rules by studying the modular transformation properties of the one-loop characters. The results are illustrated with explicit calculations of toroidal andc=1 models.