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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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35 records · Page 2

LEED: A Lightwave Energy-Efficient Datacenter

The Lightwave Energy-Efficient Datacenter (LEED) program is a disruptive “green-field” approach that provides a quantum leap in the energy efficiency of datacenters. LEED’s fundamental value proposition is that a novel and re-architected optical network—RotorNet— can deliver “more bandwidth per buck” as well as unique system-level attributes that significantly improve overall datacenter energy efficiency and performance. LEED has developed three system-level testbeds. The first testbed uses calibrated hardware and software power measurements to determine server energy efficiency as a function of network bandwidth and workload. These measurements have shown that increasing network communications bandwidth dramatically increases server energy efficiency providing a realistic path to the overall ENLITENED program goal of doubling the number of transactions per joule. The second testbed demonstrates key hardware: a prototype low-loss, high-port count optical “selector switch”. This switch was fabricated, racked, and tested. Measured switch characteristics include loss, bandwidth, crosstalk, switch time, system-level switch time (including the transceivers), and bit error rate. The third testbed demonstrates a fully working and manufactured pinwheel design which dramatically lowers the cost of design, while delivering high switch radix and low reconfiguration times. The LEED project has tied these three novel photonic switch prototypes together with production servers and software through the development of a novel FPGA-based NIC platform called Corundum. Corundum ensures that the packet-switched protocols supported by commodity operating systems and devices can interface with the Rotor switch design. The LEED group has used this combined hardware and software prototype to characterize applications running at a commercially relevant scale. The project has used a combination of enhanced optical modulation amplitude (OMA) modulators, broadband multiplexers and demultiplexers, avalanche photodiodes, and a novel burst-mode receivers to enable the insertion of LEED-developed optical switches without the need for expensive optical amplification. Our modeling has shown that measured LEED-developed device characteristics can achieve link characteristics of 2 pJ/bit including both transceivers and the Rotor switch. In summary, the LEED program has demonstrated a credible and practical path, through novel hardware and software, to realize the program objectives of ENLITENED. The net result will ensure that the United States maintains its strength in the crucial sector of Information Technology, which is vital to both our economic security and our national security.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Integrated SOAs enable energy-efficient intra-data center coherent links

Coherent optical links are becoming increasingly attractive for intra-data center applications as data rates scale. Realizing the era of high-volume short-reach coherent links will require substantial improvements in transceiver cost and power efficiency, necessitating a reassessment of conventional architectures best-suited for longer-reach links and a review of assumptions for shorter-reach implementations. In this work, we analyze the impact of integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) on link performance and power consumption, and describe the optimal design spaces for low-cost and energy-efficient coherent links. Placing SOAs after the modulator provide the most energy-efficient link budget improvement, up to 6 pJ/bit for large link budgets, despite any penalties from nonlinear impairments. Increased robustness to SOA nonlinearities makes QPSK-based coherent links especially attractive, and larger supported link budgets enable the inclusion of optical switches, which could revolutionize data center networks and improve overall energy efficiency.

Maharry, Aaron (ORCID:0000000273732697)↗

Micropulse Lidar (MPL) Handbook

The micropulse lidar (MPL) is a ground-based optical remote sensing system designed primarily to determine the altitude of clouds overhead. The physical principle is the same as for radar. Pulses of energy are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal. From the time delay between each outgoing transmitted pulse and the backscattered signal, the distance to the scatterer is infered. Besides real-time detection of clouds, post-processing of the lidar return can also characterize the extent and properties of aerosol or other particle-laden regions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Remote quantum state transfer for qubits with different frequencies

A quantum communication system includes a first quantum transceiver, a second quantum transceiver, and a quantum communication mediator (QCM) system. The transceivers have different resonant frequencies or physical systems. The QCM system receives an initial quantum signal from the first quantum transceiver. The QCM system transfers a quantum state of the initial quantum signal to a first mechanical signal and then from the first mechanical signal to a first pair of optical signals by way of a first three-wave mixing process. The QCM transfers the quantum state to a second pair of optical signals from the first pair by way of a four-wave mixing process. The QCM transfers the quantum state from the second pair of optical signals to a second mechanical signal by way of a second three-wave mixing process. The QCM transfers the quantum state from the second mechanical signal to a final quantum signal by mechanical transduction.

Soh, Daniel Beom Soo↗

Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with a coexisting clock using transceivers for synchronization over deployed fiber

Interference between independently generated photons is a key step towards distributing entanglement over long distances, but it requires synchronization between the distantly-located photon sources. Synchronizing the clocks of such photon sources using coexisting two-way classical optical communications over the same fiber that transports the quantum photonic signals is a promising approach for achieving photon-photon interference over long distances, enabling entanglement distribution for quantum networking using the deployed fiber infrastructure. Here, we demonstrate photon-photon interference by observing the Hong-Ou-Mandel dip between two distantly-located sources: a weak coherent-state source obtained by attenuating the output of a laser and a heralded single-photon source. We achieve a maximum dip visibility of 0.58 +/- 0.04 when the two sources are connected via 4.3 km of deployed fiber. Dip visibilities > 0.5 are nonclassical and a first step towards achieving teleportation over the deployed fiber infrastructure. In our experiment, the classical optical communication is achieved with - 21 dBm of optical signal launch power, which is used to synchronize the clocks in the two independent, distantly-located photon sources. The impact of spontaneous Raman scattering from the classical optical signals is mitigated by appropriate choice of the quantum- and classical-channel wavelengths. All equipment used in our experiment (the photon sources and the synchronization setup) is commercially available. Finally, our experiment represents a scalable approach to enabling practical quantum networking with commercial equipment and coexistence with classical communications in optical fiber.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

minimpl (b1)

The micropulse lidar (MPL) is a ground-based, optical, remote-sensing system designed primarily to determine the altitude of clouds; however, it is also used for detection of atmospheric aerosols. The physical principle is the same as for radar. Pulses of energy are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal, thereby detecting clouds and aerosols in real time. From the time delay between each outgoing pulse and the backscattered signal, the distance to the scatterer is inferred. Post-processing of the lidar return characterizes the extent and properties of aerosols or other particles in a region.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

INTREPID program: technology and architecture for next-generation, energy-efficient, hyper-scale data centers [Invited]

The INTREPID program is developing power-efficient coherent optics for package-level integration with future switch integrated circuits as a path to realizing higher-radix switches for flatter networks. The link architecture is underpinned by coherent quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) polarization-multiplex transceivers at 200 Gb/s per λ <#comment/> , further enhanced with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to enable energy-efficient 800 or 1600 Gb/s inter-switch fiber connections. The technology is compatible with conventional three-level data center designs as well as a two-level data center design introduced here, which includes an added layer of passive, arrayed waveguide grating routers (AWGRs) or WDM circuit switches to further improve the cost, energy efficiency, and latency of the network.

Saleh, Adel A. M. (ORCID:0000000182451136)↗

Multi-chip photonics transceiver

A photonics transceiver is described herein, wherein the photonics transceiver exhibits improved areal bandwidth density and improved energy per bit consumption relative to conventional photonics transceivers. The photonics transceiver achieves an areal bandwidth density of at least 5 Tbps/mm2 with an energy consumption of less than 500 fJ/bit (sum of energy consumed for both a transmitted bit and a received bit). The photonics transceiver is a multi-chip module, where chips in the multi-chip module are tightly integrated with one another. The multi-chip module includes light source, photodetector, photonics, and control/logic chips. The photonics chip includes transparent conducting oxide integrated optical modulators and multiplexers and demultiplexers based on MEMS-tunable optical ring resonators.

Wood, Michael↗

Ultra-power-efficient heterogeneous III–V/Si MOSCAP (de-)interleavers for DWDM optical links

We discuss the design and demonstration of various III–V/Si asymmetric Mach–Zehnder interferometer (AMZI) and ring-assisted AMZI (de-)interleavers operating at O-band wavelengths with 65 GHz channel spacing. The wafer-bonded III–V/Si metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) structure facilitates ultra-low-power phase tuning on a heterogeneous platform that allows for complete monolithic transceiver photonic integration. The second- and third-order MOSCAP AMZI (de-)interleavers exhibit cross-talk (XT) levels down to − 22 dB and − 32 dB with tuning powers of 83.0 nW and 53.0 nW, respectively. The one-, two-, and three-ring-assisted MOSCAP AMZI (de-)interleavers have XT levels down to − 27 dB, − 22 dB, and − 20 dB for tuning powers of 10.0 nW, 7220.0 nW, and 33.6 nW, respectively. The leakage current density is measured to be in the range of 1.6 – 27 μA / cm 2 . To the best of our knowledge, we have demonstrated for the first time, athermal III–V/Si MOSCAP (de-)interleavers with the lowest XT and reconfiguration power consumption on a silicon platform.

Cheung, Stanley (ORCID:0000000248860013)↗

Flexible silicon photonic architecture for accelerating distributed deep learning

The increasing size and complexity of deep learning (DL) models have led to the wide adoption of distributed training methods in datacenters (DCs) and high-performance computing (HPC) systems. However, communication among distributed computing units (CUs) has emerged as a major bottleneck in the training process. In this study, we propose Flex-SiPAC, a flexible silicon photonic accelerated compute cluster designed to accelerate multi-tenant distributed DL training workloads. Flex-SiPAC takes a co-design approach that combines a silicon photonic hardware platform with a tailored collective algorithm, optimized to leverage the unique physical properties of the architecture. The hardware platform integrates a novel wavelength-reconfigurable transceiver design and a micro-resonator-based wavelength-reconfigurable switch, enabling the system to achieve flexible bandwidth steering in the wavelength domain. The collective algorithm is designed to support reconfigurable topologies, enabling efficient all-reduce communications that are commonly used in DL training. The feasibility of the Flex-SiPAC architecture is demonstrated through two testbed experiments. First, an optical testbed experiment demonstrates the flexible routing of wavelengths by shuffling an array of input wavelengths using a custom-designed spatial-wavelength selective switch. Second, a four-GPU testbed running two DL workloads shows a 23% improvement in job completion time compared to a similarly sized leaf-spine topology. We further evaluate Flex-SiPAC using large-scale simulations, which show that Flex-SiPAC is able to reduce the communication time by 26% to 29% compared to state-of-the-art compute clusters under representative collective operations.

Wu, Zhenguo (ORCID:0000000322847985)↗

Characterization of a gigabit transceiver for the ATLAS inner tracker pixel detector readout upgrade

We present a gigabit transceiver prototype Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), GBCR, for the ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITk) Pixel detector readout upgrade. GBCR is designed in a 65-nm CMOS technology and consists of four upstream receiver channels, a downstream transmitter channel, and an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) slave. The upstream channels receive the data at 5.12 Gbps passing through 5-meter 34-American Wire Gauge (AWG) Twin-axial (Twinax) cables, equalize and retime them with a recovered clock, and then drive an optical transmitter. The downstream channel receives the data at 2.56 Gbps from an optical receiver and drives the cable as same as the upstream channels. The jitter of the upstream channel output is measured to be 35 ps (peak-peak) when the Clock-Data Recovery (CDR) module is turned on and the jitter of the downstream channel output after the cable is 138 ps (peak-peak). The power consumption of each upstream channel is 72 mW when the CDR module is turned on and the downstream channel consumes 27 mW. GBCR survives the total ionizing dose of 200 kGy.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

High-Efficiency Quantum Dot Lasers as Comb Sources for DWDM Applications

The trend of data center transceivers is to increase bandwidth while simultaneously decreasing their size, power consumption, and cost. While data center links have previously relied on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) or in-plane lasers using coarse wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to encode data, recently, dense WDM (DWDM) has moved to the forefront for next-generation links. Several approaches exist as light sources for DWDM links; DFB arrays, nonlinear microcombs, and semiconductor mode-locked lasers (MLLs). This paper focuses on quantum dot MLLs (QDMLLs), which currently offer the best efficiency, simplicity, and size. The efficiency of optical combs generated by QDMLLs is analyzed in depth in this study.

Dumont, Mario (ORCID:000000023956612X)↗

Postirradiation Examination of WIRE-21 Experiment Irradiated in the High Flux Isotope Reactor

Westinghouse Electric Company is developing wireless sensors to monitor the centerline temperature and internal pressure of commercial light-water reactor fuel rods during irradiation. Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Westinghouse Electric Company developed the Wireless Instrumented RB Experiment 2021 (WIRE-21) to test wireless temperature and pressure sensor technologies in a removable beryllium position in the High Flux Isotope Reactor. The experiment was irradiated for a total of 75 days, at temperatures ranging from approximately 150°C to 400°C, resulting in a peak fast (energy > 0.1 MeV) neutron fluence of about 3 × 10 21 n/cm 2 . The temperature was intentionally cycled multiple times to compare the response of the wireless temperature sensor to collocated thermocouples. Similarly, the pressure sensor was actuated in multiple steps to compare the response of the wireless measurement to excore pressure transducers (Petrie et al., 2023). After irradiation, the experiment was disassembled in the Irradiated Fuels Examination Laboratory (IFEL) hot cell at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with the intent to recover sensor and dosimetry components, document the as-irradiated condition of the hardware, and investigate possible causes of the sensor behavior observed during irradiation. The postirradiation examination successfully recovered and preserved key WIRE-21 components. After the housing was removed using a milling machine, the internal experiment sections were examined. All eight fiber-optic sensors were recovered, cut, and stored. The silicon carbide thermometry, temperature sensor, pressure sensor, lower spacer, and selected pressure and temperature cable sections were also removed and stored. The metal bellows of the pressure sensor was found to be plastically deformed, indicating that it had been properly pressurized during irradiation and generally behaved as expected. X-ray diffraction analysis of a section of one of the irradiated inductor cores within the pressure sensor was performed and confirmed the presence of phase-pure alpha ferrite (i.e., no unexpected phase transformations). Inductance testing was performed on the irradiated pressure sensor cores using an unirradiated test coil, and DC resistance measurements of the transceiver coils were also performed. The measurements with irradiated inductor cores assembled inside unirradiated coils showed slightly reduced inductance compared to measurements made with unirradiated cores, but the difference was not sufficient to explain the more significant reductions in inductance that were observed in-pile. Therefore, it is suspected that degradation of the inductor coils (specifically the wire wrapping) is responsible for the reduced inductance observed in-pile.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

dlppi2 (b1)

The Doppler lidar (DL) is an active remote-sensing instrument that provides range- and time-resolved measurements of the line-of-sight component of air velocity (i.e., radial velocity) and attenuated aerosol backscatter. The DL operates in the near-infrared and is sensitive to backscatter from atmospheric aerosol, which are assumed to be ideal tracers of atmospheric wind fields. The DL works by transmitting short pulses of infrared laser light into the atmosphere. Atmospheric aerosols scatter a small fraction of that light energy back to the transceiver, where it is collected and recorded as a time-resolved signal. From the delay between the outgoing pulse and the backscattered signal, the instrument infers the distance to the scattering volume. Coherent detection is used to measure the Doppler frequency shift of the backscatter signal. This is accomplished by mixing the backscatter signal with a reference laser beam (i.e., local oscillator) of known frequency. The onboard signal processor then determines the Doppler frequency shift from the spectrum of the mixed signal. The Doppler frequency shift and thus the radial air velocity is determined from the peak of the Doppler spectrum. The attenuated backscatter is determined from the energy content of the Doppler spectra. The DL provides accurate measurements of radial velocity in regions of the atmosphere where aerosol concentrations are high enough to ensure good signal-to-noise ratio. Thus, valid data are usually limited to the atmospheric boundary layer where aerosol is ubiquitous. Valid measurements can also be obtained in elevated aerosol layers or in optically thin clouds above the boundary layer. Most of the ARM DLs have full upper-hemispheric scanning capability, enabling 3D mapping of turbulent flows in the atmospheric boundary layer. With the scanner pointed vertically, the DL provides height- and time-resolved measurements of vertical velocity.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Design and Testing of the Address in Real-Time Data Driver Card for the Micromegas Detector of the ATLAS New Small Wheel Upgrade

The Address in Real Time Data Driver Card (ADDC) is designed to transmit the trigger data in the Micro-Mesh Gaseous Structure (Micromegas) detector of the ATLAS New Small Wheel (NSW) upgrade. The Address in Real Time (ART) signals are generated by the front-end ASIC, named VMM chip, to indicate the address of the first above-threshold event. A custom ASIC (ART ASIC) is designed to receive the ART signals from the VMM chip and implement the hit-selection. The processed data from the ART ASIC will be transmitted out of the NSW through the GBTx serializer, the unidirectional Versatile Twin Transmitter (VTTx) and fiber optical links. The ART signal is critical for the ATLAS experiment trigger selection thus the performance and stability of the ADDC is very important. To ensure extensive testing of the ADDC, an FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) based testing platform and a special designed firmware/software are developed. We find that this test platform works with the commercial Xilinx VC707 FPGA development kit, independent of the other electronics of the NSW it can test all the functions of the ADDC and its long-term stability. This paper will introduce the design, testing procedure and results of the ADDC and the FMC testing platform.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Doppler Lidar (DL) Instrument Handbook

The Doppler lidar (DL) is an active remote sensing instrument that provides range- and time-resolved measurements of radial velocity and attenuated backscatter. The principle of operation is similar to radar in that pulses of energy are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal. From the time delay between each outgoing transmitted pulse and the backscattered signal, the distance to the scatterer is inferred. The radial or line-of-sight velocity of the scatterers is determined from the Doppler frequency shift of the backscattered radiation. The DL uses a heterodyne detection technique in which the return signal is mixed with a reference laser beam (i.e., local oscillator) of known frequency. An onboard signal processing computer then determines the Doppler frequency shift from the spectra of the heterodyne signal. The energy content of the Doppler spectra can also be used to determine attenuated backscatter.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗