Sawtooth evolution during JET ion-cyclotron-resonance-heated pulses

The recent Joint European Torus deuterium-tritium campaign has yielded ion-cyclotron-resonance-heated (ICRH) pulses during which both the sawtooth characteristics and the ICRH minority ion population both evolve substantially. At multiple times during each pulse, the evolution of the kinetic-fluid MHD energy is calculated from measurement of the energetic ions and compared with the evolving sawtooth duration. There is strong correlation between sawtooth duration and minority ion stabilization of the ideal internal kink.     

Negative refraction and rough surfaces: A new regime for lensing

The action of a rough, but differentiable, interface upon the passage of rays between air and a left-handed medium is considered. It is shown that negative refraction brings rays to a focus at distances closer to the boundary than can be attained by conventional refraction. This effect enables a new mechanism for reflection to occur, even in media that are impedance matched, caused principally by rays undergoing two interactions with the interface via paths that pass exclusively through air or the left-handed medium.     

The ArNe-N2O van der Waals trimer: a high resolution spectroscopic study of its rotational spectrum,structure and dynamics

A new ternary van der Waals complex of the type rare gas-rare gas'-linear molecule, ArNe-N₂O, was investigated using a pulsed molecular beam cavity Fourier transform microwave spectrometer. The rotational spectra of six isotopomers of the trimer were studied in detail. These include Ar²⁰Ne-¹⁴N¹⁴NO, Ar²²Ne-¹⁴N¹⁴NO, Ar²⁰Ne-15N¹⁴NO, Ar²²Ne-¹⁵N¹⁴N0, Ar²⁰Ne-¹⁴N¹⁵NO and Ar²²Ne-¹⁴N¹⁵NO. Nuclear quadrupole hyperfine structures of the rotational transitions that are due to the one or two ¹⁴N nuclei were resolved and analysed. The resulting spectroscopic constants were used to provide structural and dynamical information about the trimer. Based on the quartic centrifugal distortion constants, a harmonic force field analysis was performed to estimate the frequencies of the van der Waals vibrational modes. A perturbation of the electronic charge distribution at the site of the central ¹⁴N nucleus of N²0 upon complex formation was detected and discussed. Differences of structural parameters of the trimer as compared to those of the respective dimer units are indicative of the presence of significant three-body non-additive contributions to the interaction energy.     

Robust chaos synchronization based on adaptive fuzzy delayed feedback ${\bf{\mathcal{H}}}_{\bf{\infty}}$ control

In this paper, we propose a new adaptive H_￥\mathcal H_\infty synchronization strategy, called an adaptive fuzzy delayed feedback H_￥\mathcal H_\infty synchronization (AFDFHS) strategy, for chaotic systems with uncertain parameters and external disturbances. Based on Lyapunov–Krasovskii theory, Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy model and adaptive delayed feedback H_￥\mathcal H_\infty control scheme, the AFDFHS controller is presented such that the synchronization error system is asymptotically stable with a guaranteed H_￥\mathcal{H}_{\infty } performance. It is shown that the design of the AFDFHS controller with adaptive law can be achieved by solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be easily facilitated by using some standard numerical packages. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed AFDFHS approach.     

Imaging and multiple scattering through media containing optically active particles

This paper examines the behaviour of polarized light scattered by a medium containing small chiral spheroidal particles. We show that for single scattering the observed phenomena of optical activity may be interpreted in terms of an averaged Mueller matrix and describe how the degree of polarization is affected by such a medium. The polarization properties of multiply scattered light by chiral particles are considered through the use of Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the effects of chirality under multiple scattering can be interpreted as an order-preserving influence in a disordered system and that this influence can, in principle, be exploited for the purposes of imaging.     

Enhanced twinkling in left-handed media

A slab of left-handed material (LHM) with refractive index -1 forms a perfect lens that retains subwavelength information about a source or object. Such lenses are highly susceptible to perturbations affecting their performance. It is shown that illuminating a roughened interface between air and an LHM produces a regime for enhanced focusing of light close to the boundary. This generates caustics that are brighter, fluctuate more, and cause Gaussian speckle at distances closer to the interface than in right-handed matter. These effects present fresh challenges for perfecting the perfect lens.     

Between right- and left-handed media

We report analytical calculations for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through an inhomogeneous layer whose refractive index varies in one-dimension situated between bulk right- and left-handed media. Significant field localization is generated in the layer that is caused by the coherent superposition of evanescent waves. The strength of the field localization and the transmission properties of the layer are investigated as a function of the layer width, losses and defects in the refractive index; the former two being modelled by continuous changes, and the latter by discontinuous changes, in the index profile.