Highly active and tunable catalysts for O2 evolution from water based on mononuclear ruthenium(II) monoaquo complexes

The catalytic activity of [Ru(tpy)(bpy)OH(2)](2+) (tpy = 2,2':6',2'-terpyridine and bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) increased by a 4'-substituted ethoxy group on the tpy ligand by more than one order of magnitude to give 1.1 × 10(-1) s(-1) of catalyst turnover frequency, which is comparable with the hitherto-reported champion data.     

Laser acceleration in novel media

With newly available compact laser technology [1] we are capable of producing 100?PW-class laser pulses with a single-cycle duration on the femtosecond timescale. With this fs intense laser we can produce a coherent X-ray pulse that is also compressed, well into the hard X-ray regime (～10?keV) and with a power up to as much as 10 Exawatts. We suggest utilizing these coherent X-rays to drive the acceleration of particles. Such X-rays are focusable far beyond the diffraction limit of the original laser wavelength and when injected into a crystal it forms a metallic-density electron plasma ideally suited for laser wakefield acceleration. If the X-ray field is limited by the Schwinger field at the focal size of ～100?nm, the achievable energy is 1?PeV over 50?m. (If the X-rays are focused further, much higher energies beyond this are possible). These processes are not limited to only electron acceleration, and if ions are pre-accelerated to beyond GeV they are capable of being further accelerated using a LWFA scheme [2] to similar energies as electrons over the same distance-scales. Such high energy proton (and ion) beams can induce copious neutrons, which can also give rise to intense compact muon beams and neutrino beams that may be portable. High-energy gamma rays can also be efficiently emitted with a bril- liance many orders of magnitude above the brightest X-ray sources by this accelerating process, from both the betatron radiation as well as the dominant radiative-damping dynamics. With the exceptional conditions enabled by this technology we envision a whole scope of new physical phenomena, including: the possibility of laser self-focus in the vacuum, neutron manipulation by the beat of such lasers, zeptosecond spectroscopy of nuclei, etc. Further, we now introduce along with the idea of vacuum as a nonlinear medium, the Schwinger Fiber Accelerator. This is a self-organized vacuum fiber acceleration concept, in which the repeated process of self-focusing and defocusing for the X-ray pulse in vacuum forms a modulated fiber that guides the intense X-rays.     

Preparations of polystyrene/aluminum hydroxide and polystyrene/alumina composite particles in an ionic liquid

Polystyrene (PS)/aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)(3)) composite particles were successfully prepared by the sol-gel process of aluminum isopropoxide (Al(OPr(i))(3)) in a hydrophilic ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([Bmim][BF(4)]) using ammonium hydroxide (NH(4)OH) as a catalyst in the presence of PS seed. Transmission electron microscopy observation of ultrathin cross-sections of the composite particles revealed that the composite particles had a core-shell morphology consisting of a PS core and a Al(OH)(3) shell having high crystallinity. The amount of secondary nucleated Al(OH)(3) could be reduced by dropwise addition of NH(4)OH. Moreover, PS/η-Al(2)O(3) composite particles were successfully prepared by heat treatment of PS/Al(OH)(3) at 300 °C in N(2) atmosphere, which is below the decomposition temperature of PS.     

High-contrast, high-intensity laser pulse generation using a nonlinear preamplifier in a Ti:sapphire laser system

We report a high-contrast, high-intensity Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system that incorporates a nonlinear preamplifier based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). By cooling the Ti:sapphire crystal in the final amplifier down to 77 K, the chirped-pulses are amplified to 2.9 J at a 10 Hz repetition rate without a thermal lensing effect. Pulse compression down to 19 fs duration obtained after amplification indicates a peak power of 80 TW. With the OPCPA, the temporal contrast is significantly improved to better than 7x10(-9) in a few picoseconds interval prior to the main laser pulse.     

Isotopic fingerprint of electron-phonon coupling in high-Tc cuprates

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with low-energy tunable photons along the nodal direction of oxygen isotope substituted Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+delta) reveals a distinct oxygen isotope shift near the electron-boson coupling "kink" in the electronic dispersion. The magnitude (a few meV) and direction of the kink shift are as expected due to the measured isotopic shift of phonon frequency, and are also in agreement with theoretical expectations. This demonstrates the participation of the phonons as dominant players, as well as pinpointing the most relevant of the phonon branches.     

Laser acceleration and its future

Laser acceleration is based on the concept to marshal collective fields that may be induced by laser. In order to exceed the material breakdown field by a large factor, we employ the broken-down matter of plasma. While the generated wakefields resemble with the fields in conventional accelerators in their structure (at least qualitatively), it is their extreme accelerating fields that distinguish the laser wakefield from others, amounting to tiny emittance and compact accelerator. The current research largely falls on how to master the control of acceleration process in spatial and temporal scales several orders of magnitude smaller than the conventional method. The efforts over the last several years have come to a fruition of generating good beam properties with GeV energies on a table top, leading to many applications, such as ultrafast radiolysis, intraoperative radiation therapy, injection to X-ray free electron laser, and a candidate for future high energy accelerators.