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At least 325 records · Page 18

A Multistage Stochastic Transmission Expansion Algorithm for Wide-Area Planning under Uncertainty

The overall objective for this project was to develop and demonstrate a set of methods for solving the transmission investment problem for a large network considering many possible scenarios of future conditions and multiple decision points when investments can be made. Project sub-objectives achieved this goal through a succession of extending the methods to apply to problems with increasing complexity or additional features, including the number of decision points, whether generation and transmission are co-optimized, and whether AC or DC power flow is used. A transmission model was developed for the Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC) region, the high-voltage transmission system that serves the western third of the continental U.S. Using a dataset provided by WECC and by researchers from John Hopkins University, we have validated and demonstrated the model and used it to compare the new method for solving multi-stage stochastic transmission planning to several state-of-the-art techniques. The project has resulted in several key outcomes and achievements: The covariance-based method for choosing a small set of hours to represent short-term variability has superior performance in terms of accuracy to existing methods, including K-means clustering and Importance Sampling; The combined partitioning method for long-term uncertainty with the nested clustering approach for choosing representative hours for each long-term group has superior accuracy for equivalent computational effort compared with existing methods; Using the partitioning/clustering method combined with Sample Average Approximation provides both statistical bounds on the quality of the solution and at the same time, a complete investment plan for all contingencies in the full uncertainty set; no existing methods can provide both at the same time; The method is demonstrated to work well for choosing both transmission and generation investments; A variant on the method allows for both scenario selection and simultaneous correction for the error from the DC power flow approximation to provide a tractable method for AC power flow-based transmission planning under uncertainty; The method applied to the WECC case study demonstrates the additional value to the system operator and the consumer of identifying flexible investment options in the near-term decisions. In particular, the case study exhibits significant option value in postponing some transmission additions that appear useful but in some long-term system states create new congestion problems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Specific absorbed fractions for a revised series of the UF/NCI pediatric reference phantoms: internal photon sources

Assessment of radiation absorbed dose to internal organs of the body from the intake of radionuclides, or in the medical setting through the injection of radiopharmaceuticals, is generally performed based upon reference biokinetic models or patient imaging data, respectively. Biokinetic models estimate the time course of activity localized to source organs. The time-integration of these organ activity profiles are then scaled by the radionuclide S-value, which defines the absorbed dose to a target tissue per nuclear transformation in various source tissues. S-values are computed using established nuclear decay information (particle energies and yields), and a parameter termed the specific absorbed fraction (SAF). The SAF is the ratio of the absorbed fraction—fraction of particle energy emitted in the source tissue that is deposited in the target tissue—and the target organ mass. While values of the SAF may be computed using patient-specific or individual-specific anatomic models, they have been more widely available through the use of computational reference phantoms. In this study, we report on an extensive series of photon SAFs computed in a revised series of the University of Florida and the National Cancer Institute pediatric reference phantoms which have been modified to conform to the specifications embodied in the ICRP reference adult phantoms of Publication 110 (e.g. organs modeled, organ ID numbers, blood contribution to elemental compositions). Following phantom anatomical revisions, photon radiation transport simulations were performed using MCNPX v2.7 in each of the ten phantoms of the series—male and female newborn, 1 year old, 5 year old, 10 year old, and 15 year old—for 60 different tissues serving as source and/or target regions. A total of 25 photon energies were considered from 10 keV to 10 MeV along a logarithm energy grid. Detailed analyses were conducted of the relative statistical errors in the Monte Carlo target tissue energy deposition tallies at low photon energies and over all energies for source–target combinations at large intra-organ separation distances. Based on these analyses, various data smoothing algorithms were employed, including multi-point weighted data smoothing, and log–log interpolation at low energies (1 keV and 5 keV) using limiting SAF values based upon target organ mass to bound the interpolation interval. The final dataset is provided in a series of ten electronic supplemental files in MS Excel format. Finally, the results of this study were further used as the basis for assessing the radiative component of internal electron source SAFs as described in our companion paper (Schwarz et al 2021) for this same pediatric phantom series.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

Specific absorbed fractions for a revised series of the UF/NCI pediatric reference phantoms: internal electron sources

Assessment of radiation absorbed dose to internal organs of the body from the intake of radionuclides, or in the medical setting through the injection of radiopharmaceuticals, is generally performed based upon reference biokinetic models or patient imaging data, respectively. Biokinetic models estimate the time course of activity localized to source organs. The time-integration of these organ activity profiles are then scaled by the radionuclide S-value, which defines the absorbed dose to a target tissue per nuclear transformation in various source tissues. S-values are computed using established nuclear decay information (particle energies and yields), and a parameter termed the specific absorbed fraction (SAF). The SAF is the ratio of the absorbed fraction—fraction of particle energy emitted in the source tissue that is deposited in the target tissue—and the target organ mass. While values of the SAF may be computed using patient-specific or individual-specific anatomic models, they have been more widely available through the use of computational reference phantoms. In this study, we report on an extensive series of photon SAFs computed in a revised series of the University of Florida and the National Cancer Institute pediatric reference phantoms which have been modified to conform to the specifications embodied in the ICRP reference adult phantoms of Publication 110 (e.g. organs modeled, organ ID numbers, blood contribution to elemental compositions). Following phantom anatomical revisions, photon radiation transport simulations were performed using MCNPX v2.7 in each of the ten phantoms of the series—male and female newborn, 1 year old, 5 year old, 10 year old, and 15 year old—for 60 different tissues serving as source and/or target regions. A total of 25 photon energies were considered from 10 keV to 10 MeV along a logarithm energy grid. Detailed analyses were conducted of the relative statistical errors in the Monte Carlo target tissue energy deposition tallies at low photon energies and over all energies for source–target combinations at large intra-organ separation distances. Based on these analyses, various data smoothing algorithms were employed, including multi-point weighted data smoothing, and log–log interpolation at low energies (1 keV and 5 keV) using limiting SAF values based upon target organ mass to bound the interpolation interval. The final dataset is provided in a series of ten electronic supplemental files in MS Excel format. Finally, the results of this study were further used as the basis for assessing the radiative component of internal electron source SAFs as described in our companion paper (Schwarz et al 2021) for this same pediatric phantom series.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Optimal interpolation of global dissolved oxygen: 1965–2015

Oxygen inventory of the global ocean has declined in recent decades potentially due to the warming-induced reduction in solubility as well as the circulation and biogeochemical changes associated with ocean warming and increasing stratification. Earth System Models predict continued oxygen decline for this century with profound impacts on marine ecosystem and fisheries. Observational constraint on the rate of oxygen loss is crucial for assessing the ability of models to accurately simulate these changes. There are only a few observational assessments of the global oceanic oxygen inventory reporting a range of oxygen loss. This study develops a gridded data set of dissolved oxygen for the global oceans using optimal interpolation method. The resulting gridded product includes full-depth map of dissolved oxygen as 5-year moving average from 1965 to 2015 with uncertainty estimates. The uncertainty can come from unresolved small-scale and high-frequency variability and mapping errors. The multi-decadal trend of global dissolved oxygen is in the range of -281 to -373 Tmol/decade. This estimate is more conservative than previous works. In this study, the grid points far from the observations are essentially set equal to zero anomaly from the climatology. Calculating global inventory with this approach produces a relatively conservative estimate; thus, the results from this study likely provide a useful lower bound estimate of the global oxygen loss.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Cholesky-based experimental design for Gaussian process and kernel-based emulation and calibration.

Gaussian processes and other kernel-based methods are used extensively to construct approximations of multivariate data sets. The accuracy of these approximations is dependent on the data used. This paper presents a computationally efficient algorithm to greedily select training samples that minimize the weighted L p error of kernel-based approximations for a given number of data. The method successively generates nested samples, with the goal of minimizing the error in high probability regions of densities specified by users. The algorithm presented is extremely simple and can be implemented using existing pivoted Cholesky factorization methods. Training samples are generated in batches which allows training data to be evaluated (labeled) in parallel. For smooth kernels, the algorithm performs comparably with the greedy integrated variance design but has significantly lower complexity. Numerical experiments demonstrate the efficacy of the approach for bounded, unbounded, multi-modal and non-tensor product densities. We also show how to use the proposed algorithm to efficiently generate surrogates for inferring unknown model parameters from data using Bayesian inference.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Examination of the inversion of isobaric analogue states in mirror nuclei

A recent study by Hoff and collaborators [Nature (London) 580, 52 (2020)] presented evidence that the ground-state spin of [Math Processing Error] is different from that of its mirror, [Math Processing Error], likely due to an inversion of the ground- and first-excited states. Here, we assess the likelihood of such an inversion arising from normal isospin-symmetry breaking and, more broadly, whether such phenomena challenge our understanding of charge-symmetry-breaking forces in atomic nuclei. By placing the result within the context of previous experimental and theoretical work we demonstrate that this inversion lies entirely within the bounds of normal isospin-symmetry-breaking behavior. We further note that, in the context of isospin, neither level inversions nor the nuclear ground state hold any special significance.

59 ≤ A ≤ 89↗

Conservative Numerical Schemes with Optimal Dispersive Wave Relations: Part II. Numerical Evaluations

A new energy and enstrophy conserving scheme (EEC) for the shallow water equations is proposed and evaluated using a suite of test cases over the global spherical or bounded domain. The evaluation is organized around a set of pre-defined properties: accuracy of individual operators, accuracy of the whole scheme, conservation of key quantities, control of the divergence variable, representation of the energy and enstrophy spectra, and simulation of nonlinear dynamics. The results confirm that the scheme is between the first and second order accurate, and conserves the total energy and potential enstrophy up to the time truncation errors. Here, the scheme is capable of producing more physically realistic energy and enstrophy spectra, indicating that it can help prevent the unphysical energy cascade towards the finest resolvable scales. With an optimal representation of the dispersive wave relations, the scheme is able to keep the flow close to being non-divergent, and maintain the geostrophically balanced structures with large-scale geophysical flows over long-term simulations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A Particle-in-Cell Method for Plasmas with a Generalized Momentum Formulation, Part II: Enforcing the Lorenz Gauge Condition

In a previous paper Christlieb et al. (A particle-in-cell method for plasmas with a generalized momentum formulation, part I: Model formulation, 2024), we developed a new particle-in-cell (PIC) method for the relativistic Vlasov–Maxwell system in which the electromagnetic fields and the equations of motion for the particles were cast in terms of scalar and vector potentials through a Hamiltonian formulation. This new method evolved the potentials under the Lorenz gauge using integral equation methods. New methods to construct spatial derivatives of the potentials that converge at the same rates as the fields were also presented. The new particle method was compared against standard explicit discretizations, including the well-known FDTD-PIC method, for a range of applications involving sheaths and particle beams. Here, this paper extends this new class of methods by focusing on the enforcement the Lorenz gauge condition in both exact and approximate forms using co-located meshes. A time-consistency property of the proposed field solver for the vector potential form of Maxwell’s equations is established, which is shown to preserve the equivalence between the semi-discrete Lorenz gauge condition and the analogous semi-discrete continuity equation. Using this property, we present three methods to enforce a semi-discrete gauge condition. The first method introduces an update for the continuity equation that is consistent with the discretization of the Lorenz gauge condition. Both the finite difference and spectral implementations satisfy this discrete gauge condition to machine precision. The second approach we propose enforces a semi-discrete continuity equation using the boundary integral solution to the field equations. The potential benefit of this approach is that it eliminates spatial derivatives that appear on the particle data, namely the current density, which is often calculated by linear combinations of low-order spline basis functions. This method is ideally suited to boundary integral equation methods that invert multi-dimensional operators without dimensional splitting techniques and will be the subject of future work. The third approach introduces a gauge correcting method that makes direct use of the gauge condition to modify the scalar potential and uses local maps for both the charge and current densities. This results in a gauge error, as the maps do not enforce the continuity equation. The vector potential coming from the current density is taken to be exact, and using the Lorenz gauge, we compute a correction to the scalar potential that makes the two potentials satisfy the gauge condition. This method also enforces the gauge condition to machine precision. We demonstrate two of the proposed methods in the context of periodic domains. Problems defined on bounded domains, including those with complex geometric features remain an ongoing effort. However, this work shows that it is possible to design computationally efficient methods that can effectively enforce the Lorenz gauge condition in a non-staggered PIC formulation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Ion-chain sympathetic cooling and gate dynamics

Sympathetic cooling is a technique often employed to mitigate motional heating in trapped-ion quantum computers. However, choosing system parameters such as number of coolants and cooling duty cycle for optimal gate performance requires evaluating trade-offs between motional errors and other slower errors such as qubit dephasing. The optimal parameters depend on cooling power, heating rate, and ion spacing in a particular system. In this study, we aim to analyze best practices for sympathetic cooling of long chains of trapped ions using analytical and computational methods. We use a case study to show that optimal cooling performance is achieved when coolants are placed at the center of the chain and provide a perturbative upper bound on the cooling limit of a mode given a particular set of cooling parameters. In addition, using computational tools, we analyze the trade-off between the number of coolant ions in a chain and the center-of-mass mode heating rate. We also show that cooling as often as possible when running a circuit is optimal when the qubit coherence time is otherwise long. These results provide a roadmap for how to choose sympathetic cooling parameters to maximize circuit performance in trapped-ion quantum computers using long chains of ions.

Cooling & trapping↗

Learning Quantum States and Unitaries of Bounded Gate Complexity

While quantum state tomography is notoriously hard, most states hold little interest to practically minded tomographers. Given that states and unitaries appearing in nature are of bounded gate complexity, it is natural to ask if efficient learning becomes possible. In this work, we prove that to learn a state generated by a quantum circuit with G two-qubit gates to a small trace distance, a sample complexity scaling linearly in G is necessary and sufficient. We also prove that the optimal query complexity to learn a unitary generated by G gates to a small average-case error scales linearly in G . While sample-efficient learning can be achieved, we show that under reasonable cryptographic conjectures, the computational complexity for learning states and unitaries of gate complexity G must scale exponentially in G . We illustrate how these results establish fundamental limitations on the expressivity of quantum machine-learning models and provide new perspectives on no-free-lunch theorems in unitary learning. Together, our results answer how the complexity of learning quantum states and unitaries relate to the complexity of creating these states and unitaries. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Zhao, Haimeng (ORCID:0000000166751489)↗

The Effective Fragment Molecular Orbital Method: Achieving High Scalability and Accuracy for Large Systems

The effective fragment molecular orbital (EFMO) method has been developed to predict the total energy of a very large molecular system accurately (with respect to the underlying quantum mechanical method) and efficiently by taking advantage of the locality of strong chemical interactions and employing a two-level hierarchical parallelism. The accuracy of the EFMO method is partly attributed to the accurate and robust intermolecular interaction prediction between distant fragments, in particular, the many-body polarization and dispersion effects, which require the generation of static and dynamic polarizability tensors by solving the coupled perturbed Hartree–Fock (CPHF) and time-dependent HF (TDHF) equations, respectively. Solving the CPHF and TDHF equations is the main EFMO computational bottleneck due to the inefficient (serial) and I/O-intensive implementation of the CPHF and TDHF solvers. In this work, the efficiency and scalability of the EFMO method are significantly improved with a new CPU memory-based implementation for solving the CPHF and TDHF equations that are parallelized by either message passing interface (MPI) or hybrid MPI/OpenMP. Here, the accuracy of the EFMO method is demonstrated for both covalently bonded systems and noncovalently bound molecular clusters by systematically examining the effects of basis sets and a key distance-related cutoff parameter, R cut . R cut determines whether a fragment pair (dimer) is treated by the chosen ab initio method or calculated using the effective fragment potential (EFP) method (separated dimers). Decreasing the value of Rcut increases the number of separated (EFP) dimers, thereby decreasing the computational effort. It is demonstrated that excellent accuracy (<1 kcal/mol error per fragment) can be achieved when using a sufficiently large basis set with diffuse functions coupled with a small R cut value. With the new parallel implementation, the total EFMO wall time is substantially reduced, especially with a high number of MPI ranks. Given a sufficient workload, nearly ideal strong scaling is achieved for the CPHF and TDHF parts of the calculation. For the first time, EFMO calculations with the inclusion of long-range polarization and dispersion interactions on a hydrated mesoporous silica nanoparticle with explicit water solvent molecules (more than 15k atoms) are achieved on a massively parallel supercomputer using nearly 1000 physical nodes. In addition, EFMO calculations on the carbinolamine formation step of an amine-catalyzed aldol reaction at the nanoscale with explicit solvent effects are presented.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Embedded Error Bayesian Calibration of Thermal Decomposition of Organic Materials

Organic materials are an attractive choice for structural components due to their light weight and versatility. However, because they decompose at low temperatures relative to tradiational materials they pose a safety risk due to fire and loss of structural integrity. To quantify this risk, analysts use chemical kinetics models to describe the material pyrolysis and oxidation using thermogravimetric analysis. This process requires the calibration of many model parameters to closely match experimental data. Previous efforts in this field have largely been limited to finding a single best-fit set of parameters even though the experimental data may be very noisy. Furthermore the chemical kinetics models are often simplified representations of the true de- composition process. The simplification induces model-form errors that the fitting process cannot capture. In this work we propose a methodology for calibrating decomposition models to thermogravimetric analysis data that accounts for uncertainty in the model-form and experimental data simultaneously. The methodology is applied to the decomposition of a carbon fiber epoxy composite with a three-stage reaction network and Arrhenius kinetics. The results show a good overlap between the model predictions and thermogravimetric analysis data. Uncertainty bounds capture devia- tions of the model from the data. The calibrated parameter distributions are also presented. In conclusion, the distributions may be used in forward propagation of uncertainty in models that leverage this material.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Neural networks for large eddy simulations of wall-bounded turbulence: numerical experiments and challenges

Here, we examine the application of neural network-based methods to improve the accuracy of large eddy simulations of incompressible turbulent flows. The networks are trained to learn a mapping between flow features and the subgrid scales, and applied locally and instantaneously—in the same way as traditional physics-based subgrid closures. Models that use only the local resolved strain rate are poorly correlated with the actual subgrid forces obtained from filtering direct numerical simulation data. We see that highly accurate models in a priori testing are inaccurate in forward calculations, owing to the preponderance of numerical errors in implicitly filtered large eddy simulations. A network that accounts for the discretization errors is trained and found to be unstable in a posteriori testing. We identify a number of challenges that the approach faces, including a distribution shift that affects networks that fail to account for numerical errors.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

S -factor and scattering-parameter extractions from ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}+{}^{4}\mathrm{He}{ \rightarrow }^{7}\mathrm{Be}+\gamma $

Previous studies of the reaction ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}+{}^{4}\mathrm{He}\to {}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+\gamma $ have mainly focused on providing the best central value and error bar for the S factor at solar energies. Experimental measurements of this capture reaction at higher energies, the ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}$–${}^{4}\mathrm{He}$ scattering phase shifts, as well as properties of ${}^{7}\mathrm{Be}$ and its excited state, have been used to constrain the theoretical models employed for this purpose. Here we show that much more information than was previously appreciated can be extracted from angle-integrated capture data alone. We use the next-to-leading-order (NLO) amplitude in an effective field theory (EFT) for ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}+{}^{4}\mathrm{He}\to {}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+\gamma $ to perform the extrapolation. At this order the EFT describes the capture process using an s-wave scattering length and effective range, the asymptotic properties of ${}^{7}\mathrm{Be}$ and its excited state, and short-distance contributions to the E1 capture amplitude. We extract the multi-dimensional posterior of all these parameters via a Bayesian analysis that uses capture data below 2 MeV. We find that properties of the ${}^{7}\mathrm{Be}$ ground and excited states are well constrained. The total S factor $S(0)\,={0.577}_{-0.016}^{+0.015}$ keV b, while the branching ratio for excited- to ground-state capture at zero energy, ${Br}(0)={0.406}_{-0.011}^{+0.013}$, both at 68% degree of belief. This S(0) is broadly consistent with other recent evaluations, and agrees with the previously recommended value $S(0)=0.56\pm 0.03\,\,\mathrm{keV}$ b, but has a smaller error bar. We also find significant constraints on ${}^{3}\mathrm{He}$–${}^{4}\mathrm{He}$ scattering parameters, and we obtain constraints on the angular distribution of capture gamma rays, which is important for interpreting experiments. The path forward for this reaction seems to lie with better measurements of the scattering phase shifts and S(E)'s angular dependence away from zero energy, together with better understanding of the asymptotic normalization coefficients of the ${}^{7}$Be bound states' wave functions. Lastly, data on these could further reduce the uncertainty on S(0).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Statistical and systematic uncertainties in extracting the source properties of neutron star-black hole binaries with gravitational waves

Gravitational waves emitted by neutron star black hole mergers encode key properties of neutron stars - such as their size, maximum mass and spins - and black holes. However, the presence of matter and the high mass ratio makes generating long and accurate waveforms from these systems hard to do with numerical relativity, and not much is known about systematic uncertainties due to waveform modeling. In this work, we simulate gravitational waves from neutron star black hole mergers by hybridizing numerical relativity waveforms produced with the SpEC code with a recent numerical relativity surrogate NRHybSur3dq8Tidal. These signals are analyzed using a range of available waveform families, and statistical and systematic errors are reported. We find that at a network signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 30, statistical uncertainties are usually larger than systematic offsets, while at an SNR of 70 the two become comparable. The individual black hole and neutron star masses, as well as the mass ratios, are typically measured very precisely, though not always accurately at high SNR. At a SNR of 30 the neutron star tidal deformability can only be bound from above, while for louder sources it can be measured and constrained away from zero. All neutron stars in our simulations are non-spinning, but in no case we can constrain the neutron star spin to be smaller than ~0.4 (90% credible interval). Waveform families whose late inspiral has been tuned specifically for neutron star black hole signals typically yield the most accurate characterization of the source parameters. Their measurements are in tension with those obtained using waveform families tuned against binary neutron stars, even for mass ratios that could be relevant for both binary neutron stars and neutron star black holes mergers.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Complete quantification of parametric uncertainties in ( d , p ) transfer reactions

Deuteron-induced transfer reactions are a popular probe in nuclear structure and nuclear astro physics studies. The interpretation of these transfer measurements relies on reaction theory that takes as input effective interactions between the nucleons and the target nucleus. Previous work quantified the uncertainty associated with the optical potentials between the nucleons and the target. In this study, we extend that work by also including the parameters of the mean field associated with the overlap function of the final bound state, thus obtaining the full parametric uncertainty on transfer observables. We use Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations to obtain parameter posterior distributions. We use elastic-scattering cross sections to constrain the optical potential parameters and use the asymptotic normalization coefficient of the final state to constrain the bound state interaction. We then propagate these posteriors to the transfer angular distributions and obtain confidence intervals for this observable. We study (d,p) reactions on 14 C, 16 O, and 48 Ca at energies in the range $E$ $d$ = 7 - 24 MeV. Our results show a strong reduction in uncertainty by using the asymptotic normalization coefficient as a constraint, particularly for those reactions most sensitive to ambiguities in the mean field. For those reactions, the importance of constraining the bound state interaction is equal to that of constraining the optical potentials. Furthermore, the case of 14 C is an outlier because the cross section is less sensitive to the nuclear interior. When minimal constraints are used on the parameters of the nucleon-target interaction, the 1σ uncertainties on the differential cross sections are large (~ 500-100%). However, if elastic-scattering data and the asymptotic normalization coefficient are used in the analysis, with an error of 10% (5%), this uncertainty reduces to ~ 30% (~ 15%).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Capturing CO 2 in Quadrupolar Binding Pockets: Broadband Microwave Spectroscopy of Pyrimidine-(CO 2 ) n , n = 1,2

Pyrimidine has two in-plane CH(δ+)/N̈(δ–)/CH(δ+) binding sites that are complementary to the (δ–/2δ+/δ–) quadrupole moment of CO 2 . For this study, we recorded broadband microwave spectra over the 7.5–17.5 GHz range for pyrimidine-(CO 2 ) n with n = 1 and 2 formed in a supersonic expansion. Based on fits of the rotational transitions, including nuclear hyperfine splitting due to the two 14 N nuclei, we have assigned 313 hyperfine components across 105 rotational transitions for the n = 1 complex and 208 hyperfine components across 105 rotational transitions for the n = 2 complex. The pyrimidine-CO 2 complex is planar, with CO 2 occupying one of the quadrupolar binding sites, forming a structure in which the CO 2 is stabilized in the plane by interactions with the C–H hydrogens adjacent to the nitrogen atom. This structure is closely analogous to that of the pyridine-CO 2 complex studied previously by (Doran, J. L. J. Mol. Struct. 2012, 1019, 191–195). The fit to the n = 2 cluster gives rotational constants consistent with a planar cluster of C 2v symmetry in which the second CO 2 molecule binds in the second quadrupolar binding pocket on the opposite side of the ring. The calculated total binding energy in pyrimidine-CO 2 is –13.7 kJ mol –1 , including corrections for basis set superposition error and zero-point energy, at the CCSD(T)/ 6-311++G(3df,2p) level, while that in pyrimidine-(CO 2 ) 2 is almost exactly double that size, indicating little interaction between the two CO 2 molecules in the two binding sites. The enthalpy, entropy, and free energy of binding are also calculated at 300 K within the harmonic oscillator/rigid-rotor model. This model is shown to lack quantitative accuracy when it is applied to the formation of weakly bound complexes.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Optimal Experimental Design for Inverse Problems in the Presence of Observation Correlations

Optimal experimental design (OED) is the general formalism of sensor placement and decisions on the data collection strategy for engineered or natural experiments. This problem is prevalent in many critical fields such as battery design, numerical weather prediction, geosciences, environmental and urban studies. State-of-the-art computational methods for experimental design do not accommodate correlation structure in observational errors produced by many expensive-to-operate devices such as X-ray machines, radars, and satellites. Discarding evident data correlations leads to biased results, higher expenses, and waste of valuable resources. We present a general formulation of the OED formalism for model-constrained large-scale Bayesian linear inverse problems, where measurement errors are generally correlated. The proposed approach utilizes the Hadamard product of matrices to formulate the weighted-likelihood, and is valid for both finite as well as infinite-dimensional Bayesian inverse problems. Extensive numerical experiments are carried out for empirical verification of the proposed approach using an advection-diffusion model, where the objective is to optimally place a small set of sensors, under a limited budget, to predict the concentration of a contaminant in a closed and bounded domain.

Correlated observations↗