On Permutable Congruences on Antigroups of Finite Rank

We find necessary and sufficient conditions for any two congruences on an antigroup of finite rank to be permutable.     

A Study of Drop Size Distribution in Multistage Bubble Extractor

Results obtained in determining experimentally the mean volume-surface drop diameter of the dispersed phase in a multistage bubble extractor are presented.     

Kinetics of a photoinduced NH tautomerism of free-base porphyrins in crystalline matrices at low temperatures: Computer simulations and experiment

Photoinduced NH tautomerism, along with the reaction pathways of phototautomerization in tetrabenzoporphin and porphin free bases in n-octane polycrystalline matrices at 77 K, is studied by simulation of kinetic processes and their experimental observation. The simulation of the processes is performed by the numerical solution of the system of kinetic equations describing the populations of electronic levels and transitions between them. Kinetic dependences are obtained by measuring the perturbation of stationary fluorescence of one component of the 0-0 doublet origin upon pulsed selective photoexcitation of the other component. For two tautomeric forms related by the reversibility of the photochemical reaction, under the assumption of synchronism of the NH rearrangement, (i) analytical solutions governing the reaction rate are found, (ii) a method of measuring the rate constants of the proton rearrangement is suggested and the constants themselves are estimated, and (iii) direct evidence of the participation of T ₁ levels in the photochemical reaction is obtained. With the aid of numerical simulations, the specific features of kinetic manifestation of an asynchronous mechanism of the photoinduced NH rearrangement are studied.     

Search for the emission of π<Superscript>0</Superscript> mesons from the neutron-induced fission of <Superscript>235</Superscript>U nuclei

A nuclear-reactor experiment on the search for the emission of neutral pions from the neutron-induced fission of ²³⁵U nuclei has been carried out. To this end, an experimental setup for searching for the emission of π⁰ mesons with high sensitivity to this process has been designed and produced. This setup consisted of two Cherenkov total-absorption spectrometers for the detection and measurements of the energy of two gamma-ray photons from π ⁰-meson decay. The spectrometers were placed at the exits of two coaxial horizontal experimental channels. To protect the detectors from low-energy β and γ rays and neutron fluxes, 3.5-m-long water filters were situated in the channels. To reject the cosmic background, large-area scintillation counters operating in the anticoincidence mode were placed over each spectrometer. The energy and time resolution of the spectrometers, as well as the efficiency of detecting charged particles by scintillation counters, were tested on the secondary electron beam of the Tomsk electron synchrotron Sirius. Runs of measurements of the effect on the operating reactor (duration of 805 h) were alternated with runs of measurements of background on the stopped reactor (duration of 403 h). Statistical processing of the experimental results yields an upper limit of ≤5.3×10 ^?12 with a 90% confidence level for the probability of the emission of neutral pions from the neutron-induced fission of ²³⁵U nuclei. This result and results of other works carried out with sources of spontaneously fissioning ²⁵²Cf nuclei show that the probabilities of the emission of π⁰ mesons from spontaneous fission and fission induced by fission-spectrum neutrons are equal to each other.     

First-principles calculations of the hyperfine fields on ligands in fluorides

In solid-state physics, a crystal lattice is frequently approximated by an array of interacting ions. In this case, the wave functions of individual ions are assumed to be a fairly good zeroth approximation in calculating the matrix elements of the interaction Hamiltonian of electrons and nuclei of the lattice from first principles. Use of the second-quantization method is proposed for such calculations in the basis of these functions. As an example, the electron transition amplitude from a ligand to the central ion is estimated. The results agree well with the experimental data.     

A double acousto-optic monochromator for the uv region with improved optical characteristics based on a KDP single crystal

A double monochromator is developed and manufactured on the basis of an acousto-optic filter made of a potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) single crystal. The device has an operating range of 260–540 nm and improved optical characteristics: high aperture ratio (an angular aperture of 2° and a linear aperture of 6.5x15 mm), high polarization contrast (～10⁸), and low level of transmission sidelobes (～10³). The spectral resolution of the monochromator at the edges of the operating range is 0.5 and 3 nm, respectively. The control frequency band is 60–150 MHz. Experimentally, it is shown that, for sound beams with equivalent geometric parameters, the diffraction efficiency provided by the KDP-based acousto-optic filter is an order of magnitude higher than that obtained with a noncollinear acousto-optic filter fabricated on the basis of crystalline quartz.     

Thickness decrease of a grafted polyelectrolyte membrane exposed to shear flow

The effect of the shear flow on the thickness change of a polyelectrolyte membrane grafted onto a glass substrate was directly investigated with a flow cell combined with a confocal laser scanning microscope. The membrane thickness decreased proportionally to an increase in the shear stress of the flow when the shear rate exceeded a critical value of 1 s^?1. The higher the ionic strength was of the fluid, the greater the thinning effect was. The correlation between the critical shear rate and the relaxation of the polymer in the gel membrane was examined. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 41: 2808–2815, 2003