Nitrogen dissociation and its excitation/vibrational temperature with hydrogen admixture in 50 Hz DC discharge

Trace rare gas optical emission spectroscopy (TRG-OES) is carried out to determine the excitation temperature, vibrational temperature, dissociation fraction and nitrogen (N) atom density in 50?Hz active screen cage nitrogen plasma, as a function of discharge parameters (current density and fill pressure) and hydrogen concentrations. The excitation temperature is determined from Ar–I emission lines and is found to increase with hydrogen mixing. In a similar fashion, the vibrational temperature of second positive system is determined and found to have increasing trend with hydrogen addition. The dissociation fraction increases with hydrogen concentration up to 40% H₂ in the nitrogen plasma, so as the nitrogen atom density.     

Ionizing particles may create shockwaves

To find a model that describes the gas diffusion on irradiated polymers (Makrofol KG polycarbonate) the diffusion constants have been measured with argon as diffusion gas. The polymers were irradiated with uranium, gold and lead ions of about 10 MeV/u and ion fluences between 1×10¹⁰ and 4×10¹¹ ions/cm². The ion irradiated probes show two quite different dependencies of the diffusion constant on the ion energy loss. These effects are strongly related to the fluence of the irradiation. In case of low ion fluences, the diffusion constant is up to 8 times higher than that of pristine material. In the probes with high ion fluences we observe a decrease of diffusion constant to half the value of the pristine material. To understand the dependence of the diffusion constant on ion fluences we apply a model of compacting. This model describes the compacting ability of shockwaves arising from latent tracks. A track formation model is suggested. When an ion penetrates the foil it creates shockwaves around its path. These shockwaves put compacting forces on earlier created latent tracks in the same foil.     

Radiation-enhanced diffusion and fission gas release from recrystallised grains in high burn-up hbox{UO}_{2} nuclear fuel

The effective diffusion coefficient that gives a steady-state xenon concentration of 0.2-0.3wt% in the recrystallised grains of high burn-up UO 2 fuel is calculated to lie in the range 10 m 24 to 10 m 22 m 2 s m 1 . These values are one to three orders of magnitude lower than the value currently accepted for the radiation-enhanced diffusion coefficient. The time required to reach the steady-state concentration depends on the local fission rate, the grain size distribution and the precise magnitude of the radiation-enhanced diffusion coefficient, and can take from 2 to 10 years. Additional calculations reveal that substantially less than 10% of the fission gas inventory is released from the original UO 2 grains in the outer region of the fuel prior to recrystallisation. In contrast, with a diffusion coefficient of 10 m 22 m 2 s m 1 more than 80% of the fission gas is released from the recrystallised grains of the high burn-up structure in one year.     

Diffusion equations and the time evolution of foreign exchange rates

We investigate which type of diffusion equation is most appropriate to describe the time evolution of foreign exchange rates. We modify the geometric diffusion model assuming a non-exponential time evolution and the stochastic term is the sum of a Wiener noise and a jump process. We find the resulting diffusion equation to obey the Kramers–Moyal equation. Analytical solutions are obtained using the characteristic function formalism and compared with empirical data. The analysis focus on the first four central moments considering the returns of foreign exchange rate. It is shown that the proposed model offers a good improvement over the classical geometric diffusion model.     

Rates of diffusion controlled reactions for one-dimensionally-moving species in 3D space

ABSTRACT

The asymmetry in diffusion dimensionality between self-interstitial atom (SIA) clusters and vacancies is a fundamental feature of irradiation damage in crystals, leading to a defect buildup imbalance that manifests itself as measurable dimensional and mechanical property changes. It is well known that, while vacancies and mobile vacancy clusters diffuse in a three-dimensional (3D) fashion, SIA clusters perform one-dimensional motion along mostly rectilinear trajectories. Despite this, a complete set of kinetic coefficients, including coagulation reaction rates and sink strengths, does not exist for 1D-moving objects. In this paper, we derive analytical expressions for these coefficients from continuum diffusion theory particularised to 1D motion. Moreover, we carry out kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of numerical replicas of the geometry of diffusing particles and sinks to validate the proposed solutions. Our simulations, which are conducted entirely independently from the analytical derivations, reveal excellent agreement with the proposed expressions, adding confidence to their validity. We compare the 1D and 3D cases and discuss their relevance for kinetic codes for damage accumulation calculations.     

A numerical study on extinction behaviour of laminar micro-diffusion flames

We conducted a numerical study on the fluid dynamic, thermal and chemical structures of laminar methane–air micro flames established under quiescent atmospheric conditions. The micro flame is defined as a flame on the order of one millimetre or less established at the exit of a vertically-aligned straight tube. The numerical model consists of convective–diffusive heat and mass transport with a one-step, irreversible, exothermic reaction with selected kinetics constants validated for near-extinction analyses. Calculations conducted under the burner rim temperature 300 K and the adiabatic burner wall showed that there is the minimum burner diameter for the micro flame to exist. The Damköhler number (the ratio of the diffusive transport time to the chemical time) was used to explain why a flame with a height of less than a few hundred microns is not able to exist under the adiabatic burner wall condition. We also conducted scaling analysis to explain the difference in extinction characteristics caused by different burner wall conditions. This study also discussed the difference in governing mechanisms between micro flames and microgravity flames, both of which exhibit similar spherical flame shape.     

Ce3+离子敏化Eu3+∶Cr3+∶Sm3+∶YAG外延层的荧光现象

对Ce3+ ∶Eu3+ ∶Cr3+ ∶Sm3+ ∶YAG处延层中的荧光敏化现象进行了报道和分析 ,在较高浓度的Ce3+ 离子掺杂时 ,外延层在蓝色、绿色波段出现了新的荧光谱线 ,可解释为在Ce3+ 离子敏化作用下 ,Eu3+ 离子产生了由高位激发态能级5Di(i=1,2 ,3)直接到基态能级7Fj(j =0 ,1,2 ,3)的辐射跃迁过程 ,并且这种Ce3+ ∶Eu3+ ∶Cr3+ ∶Sm3+ ∶YAG外延层还是一种新颖的白色单晶荧光材料。     

Ultrafast dynamics in the excited hydrogen atom transfer states of ammonia clusters

Neutral ammonia clusters (NH₃)_m are photo-excited to the electronic state by a deep UV femtosecond laser pump pulse. Within a few hundred femtoseconds a significant fraction of the clusters rearrange to form an H-transfer state (NH₃)_m-2NH₄(3s)NH₂ with the subunit NH₄ in its 3s electronic ground state. This state is then electronically excited by a time-delayed infrared control pulse of variable wavelength. Finally, a third (probe) pulse in the UV ionizes the clusters for detection. The lifetime of the excited (NH₃)_m-2NH₄(3p)NH₂ states is found to vary between 2.7 and 0.13 ps depending on cluster size and excitation energy. It increases drastically upon deuteration. The corresponding cluster size-dependent photoelectron spectra allow us to disentangle the underlying energetics of the excitation and ionization process and reveal additional processes, such as nonresonant ionization or dissociative ionization. The experimental findings suggest that the excited H-transfer ammonia complexes with m > 2 are deactivated by an internal conversion process back to the electronically lowest H-transfer state followed by fast dissociation. Received 22 September 2001 and Received in final form 31 January 2002     

Euclidian distance-weighted smoothing for quantitative MRI: application to intervoxel anisotropy index mapping with DTI

During the computation of intervoxel anisotropy features, the inclusion of both eigenvalues and eigenvectors reduces the effect of noise, but spatial averaging blurs the resulting maps. We propose a new adaptive technique that uses data-dependent weights in the averaging process so that the influence of each neighbor in the local window is proportional to the similarity of characteristics of the neighbor considered to those of the reference central voxel. This likeness criterion is based on the multidimensional Euclidian distance using the entire available multispectral information contained in the diffusion-weighted images. This solution is controlled by a single parameter beta that results from a compromise between edge-preserving and noise-smoothing abilities. This Euclidian distance-weighted technique is a generic solution for filtering noise during parametric reconstruction. It was applied to map anisotropy using an intervoxel lattice index (LI) from experimental images of mouse brain in vivo and achieves noise reduction without distorting small anatomical structures. We also show how to employ in the discrimination scheme the images not used in the estimation of the considered feature.