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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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At least 397 records · Page 22
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

The best and brightest metal-poor stars

The chemical abundances of large samples of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars can be used to investigate metal-free stellar populations, supernovae, and nucleosynthesis as well as the formation and galactic chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its progenitor halos. However, current progress on the study of EMP stars is being limited by their faint apparent magnitudes. The acquisition of high signal-to-noise spectra for faint EMP stars requires a major telescope time commitment, making the construction of large samples of EMP star abundances prohibitively expensive. We have developed a new, efficient selection that uses only public, all-sky APASS optical, 2MASS near-infrared, and WISE mid-infrared photometry to identify bright metal-poor star candidates through their lack of molecular absorption near 4.6 microns. We have used our selection to identify 11,916 metal-poor star candidates with V < 14, increasing the number of publicly available candidates by more than a factor of five in this magnitude range. Their bright apparent magnitudes have greatly eased high-resolution follow-up observations that have identified seven previously unknown stars with [Fe/H] ≲ –3.0. Our follow-up campaign has revealed that 3.8{sub −1.1}{sup +1.3}% of our candidates have [Fe/H] ≲ –3.0 and 32.5{sub −2.9}{sup +3.0}% have –3.0 ≲ [Fe/H] ≲ –2.0. The bulge is the most likely location of any existing Galactic Population III stars, and an infrared-only variant of our selection is well suited to the identification of metal-poor stars in the bulge. Indeed, two of our confirmed metal-poor stars with [Fe/H] ≲ –2.7 are within about 2 kpc of the Galactic center. They are among the most metal-poor stars known in the bulge.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF METAL-POOR STARS FROM LAMOST: EARLY RESULTS

We report on early results from a pilot program searching for metal-poor stars with LAMOST and follow-up high-resolution observation acquired with the MIKE spectrograph attached to the Magellan II telescope. We performed detailed abundance analysis for eight objects with iron abundances [Fe/H] < -2.0, including five extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H] < -3.0) stars with two having [Fe/H] < -3.5. Among these objects, three are newly discovered EMP stars, one of which is confirmed for the first time with high-resolution spectral observations. Three program stars are regarded as carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, including two stars with no enhancement in their neutron-capture elements, which thus possibly belong to the class of CEMP-no stars; one of these objects also exhibits significant enhancement in nitrogen, and is thus a potential carbon and nitrogen-enhanced metal-poor star. The [X/Fe] ratios of the sample stars generally agree with those reported in the literature for other metal-poor stars in the same [Fe/H] range. We also compared the abundance patterns of individual program stars with the average abundance pattern of metal-poor stars and find only one chemically peculiar object with abundances of at least two elements (other than C and N) showing deviations larger than 0.5 dex. The distribution of [Sr/Ba] versus [Ba/H] agrees that an additional nucleosynthesis mechanism is needed aside from a single r-process. Two program stars with extremely low abundances of Sr and Ba support the prospect that both main and weak r-processes may have operated during the early phase of Galactic chemical evolution. The distribution of [C/N] shows that there are two groups of carbon-normal giants with different degrees of mixing. However, it is difficult to explain the observed behavior of the [C/N] of the nitrogen-enhanced unevolved stars based on current data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Metal-poor stars observed with the Magellan Telescope. III. New extremely and ultra metal-poor stars from SDSS/SEGUE and insights on the formation of ultra metal-poor stars

We report the discovery of one extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H] < −3) and one ultra metal-poor (UMP; [Fe/H] < −4) star selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration survey. These stars were identified as EMP candidates based on their medium-resolution (R ∼2000) spectra, and were followed up with high-resolution (R ∼ 35,000) spectroscopy with the Magellan/Clay Telescope. Their derived chemical abundances exhibit good agreement with those of stars with similar metallicities. We also provide new insights on the formation of the UMP stars, based on comparisons with a new set of theoretical models of supernovae (SNe) nucleosynthesis. The models were matched with 20 UMP stars found in the literature, together with one of the program stars (SDSS J1204+1201), with [Fe/H]=−4.34. From fitting their abundances, we find that the SNe progenitors, for stars where carbon and nitrogen are measured, had masses ranging from 20.5 M{sub ⊙} to 28 M{sub ⊙} and explosion energies from 0.3 to 0.9×10{sup 51} erg. These results are highly sensitive to the carbon and nitrogen abundance determinations, which is one of the main drivers for a future high-resolution follow-up of UMP candidates. In addition, we are able to reproduce the different CNO abundance patterns found in UMP stars with a single progenitor type by varying its mass and explosion energy.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

THE SYNTHETIC-OVERSAMPLING METHOD: USING PHOTOMETRIC COLORS TO DISCOVER EXTREMELY METAL-POOR STARS

Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars ([Fe/H] ≤ −3.0 dex) provide a unique window into understanding the first generation of stars and early chemical enrichment of the universe. EMP stars are exceptionally rare, however, and the relatively small number of confirmed discoveries limits our ability to exploit these near-field probes of the first ∼500 Myr after the Big Bang. Here, a new method to photometrically estimate [Fe/H] from only broadband photometric colors is presented. I show that the method, which utilizes machine-learning algorithms and a training set of ∼170,000 stars with spectroscopically measured [Fe/H], produces a typical scatter of ∼0.29 dex. This performance is similar to what is achievable via low-resolution spectroscopy, and outperforms other photometric techniques, while also being more general. I further show that a slight alteration to the model, wherein synthetic EMP stars are added to the training set, yields the robust identification of EMP candidates. In particular, this synthetic-oversampling method recovers ∼20% of the EMP stars in the training set, at a precision of ∼0.05. Furthermore, ∼65% of the false positives from the model are very metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] ≤ −2.0 dex). The synthetic-oversampling method is biased toward the discovery of warm (∼F-type) stars, a consequence of the targeting bias from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding survey. This EMP selection method represents a significant improvement over alternative broadband optical selection techniques. The models are applied to >12 million stars, with an expected yield of ∼600 new EMP stars, which promises to open new avenues for exploring the early universe.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Cable SGEMP Code Validation Study

This report compared data taken on the Modular Bremsstrahlung Simulator using copper jacketed (cujac) cables with calculations using the RHSD-RA Cable SGEMP analysis tool. The tool relies on CEPXS/ONBFP to perform radiation transport in a series of 1D slices through the cable, and then uses a Green function technique to evaluate the expected current drive on the center conductor. The data were obtained in 2003 as part of a Cabana verification and validation experiment using 1-D geometries, but were not evaluated until now. The agreement between data and model is not adequate unless gaps between the dielectric and outer conductor (ground) are assumed, and these gaps are large compared with what is believed to be in the actual cable.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
DOE OSTI2017

Precision Stellar Characterization of FGKM Stars using an Empirical Spectral Library

Classification of stars, by comparing their optical spectra to a few dozen spectral standards, has been a workhorse of observational astronomy for more than a century. Here, we extend this technique by compiling a library of optical spectra of 404 touchstone stars observed with Keck/HIRES by the California Planet Search. The spectra have high resolution ( R ≈ 60,000), high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N ≈ 150/pixel), and are registered onto a common wavelength scale. The library stars have properties derived from interferometry, asteroseismology, LTE spectral synthesis, and spectrophotometry. To address a lack of well-characterized late-K dwarfs in the literature, we measure stellar radii and temperatures for 23 nearby K dwarfs, using modeling of the spectral energy distribution and Gaia parallaxes. This library represents a uniform data set spanning the spectral types ∼M5–F1 ( T {sub eff} ≈ 3000–7000 K, R {sub ⋆} ≈ 0.1–16 R {sub ⊙}). We also present “Empirical SpecMatch” (SpecMatch-Emp), a tool for parameterizing unknown spectra by comparing them against our spectral library. For FGKM stars, SpecMatch-Emp achieves accuracies of 100 K in effective temperature ( T {sub eff}), 15% in stellar radius ( R {sub ⋆}), and 0.09 dex in metallicity ([Fe/H]). Because the code relies on empirical spectra it performs particularly well for stars ∼K4 and later, which are challenging to model with existing spectral synthesizers, reaching accuracies of 70 K in T {sub eff}, 10% in R {sub ⋆}, and 0.12 dex in [Fe/H]. We also validate the performance of SpecMatch-Emp, finding it to be robust at lower spectral resolution and S/N, enabling the characterization of faint late-type stars. Both the library and stellar characterization code are publicly available.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Exploring the SDSS Data Set with Linked Scatter Plots. I. EMP, CEMP, and CV Stars

We present the results of a search for extremely metal-poor (EMP), carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP), and cataclysmic variable (CV) stars using a new exploration tool based on linked scatter plots (LSPs). Our approach is especially designed to work with very large spectrum data sets such as the SDSS, LAMOST, RAVE, and Gaia data sets, and it can be applied to stellar, galaxy, and quasar spectra. As a demonstration, we conduct our search using the SDSS DR10 data set. We first created a 3326-dimensional phase space containing nearly 2 billion measures of the strengths of over 1600 spectral features in 569,738 SDSS stars. These measures capture essentially all the stellar atomic and molecular species visible at the resolution of SDSS spectra. We show how LSPs can be used to quickly isolate and examine interesting portions of this phase space. To illustrate, we use LSPs coupled with cuts in selected portions of phase space to extract EMP stars, CEMP stars, and CV stars. We present identifications for 59 previously unrecognized candidate EMP stars and 11 previously unrecognized candidate CEMP stars. We also call attention to 2 candidate He ii emission CV stars found by the LSP approach that have not yet been discussed in the literature.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Plasma channel produced by femtosecond laser pulses as a medium for amplifying electromagnetic radiation of the subterahertz frequency range

The electron energy distribution function in the plasma channel produced by a femtosecond laser pulse with a wavelength of 248 nm in atmospheric-pressure gases was considered. Conditions were determined whereby this channel may be employed for amplifying electromagnetic waves up to the terahertz frequency range over the energy spectrum relaxation time ∼10{sup -7} s. Gains were calculated as functions of time and radiation frequency. The effect of electron – electron collisions on the rate of relaxation processes in the plasma and on its ability to amplify the electromagnetic radiation was investigated. (interaction of laser radiation with matter)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination with the Belle II electromagnetic calorimeter as a novel method to improve particle identification at electron–positron colliders

Here we describe the implementation and performance of CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination for the Belle II electromagnetic calorimeter, representing the first application of CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination for particle identification at an electron–positron collider. The pulse shape characterization algorithms applied by the Belle II calorimeter are described. Control samples of $γ, μ^+, π^±, K^±$ and $ρ/ \bar{ρ}$ are used to demonstrate the significant insight into the secondary particle composition of calorimeter clusters that is provided by CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination. Comparisons with simulation are presented and provide further validation for newly developed CsI(Tl) scintillation response simulation techniques, which when incorporated with GEANT4 simulations allow the particle dependent scintillation response of CsI(Tl) to be modelled. Comparisons between data and simulation also demonstrate that pulse shape discrimination can be a new tool to identify sources of improvement in the simulation of hadronic interactions in materials. The $K^0_L$ efficiency and photon-as-hadron fake-rate of a multivariate classifier that is trained to use pulse shape discrimination is presented and comparisons are made to a shower-shape based approach. CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination is shown to reduce the photon-as-hadron fake-rate by over a factor of 3 at photon energies of 0.2 GeV and over a factor 10 at photon energies of 1 GeV.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Terahertz Solitons in Condensed Media

Theoretical approaches to the formation and propagation of soliton-like broadband electromagnetic and acoustic pulses with terahertz frequencies in condensed media are reviewed. Solitons of different types are analyzed and controlling their parameters by modifying the nonlinear medium is discussed. Nonlinear molecular excitations in biopolymers whose frequencies fall into the terahertz range are considered, and their interactions with external fields of resonant frequencies are discussed.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2011

Observation of plasma density dependence of electromagnetic soliton excitation by an intense laser pulse

The experimental evidence of the correlation between the initial electron density of the plasma and electromagnetic soliton excitation at the wake of an intense (10{sup 19} W/cm{sup 2}) and short (1 ps) laser pulse is presented. The spatial distribution of the solitons, together with their late time evolution into post-solitons, is found to be dependent upon the background plasma parameters, in agreement with published analytical and numerical findings. The measured temporal evolution and electrostatic field distribution of the structures are consistent with their late time evolution and the occurrence of multiple merging of neighboring post-solitons.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

Relativistic laser-plasma interactions in the quantum regime

We consider nonlinear interactions between a relativistically strong laser beam and a plasma in the quantum regime. The collective behavior of electrons is modeled by a Klein-Gordon equation, which is nonlinearly coupled with the electromagnetic wave through the Maxwell and Poisson equations. This allows us to study nonlinear interactions between arbitrarily large-amplitude electromagnetic waves and a quantum plasma. We have used our system of nonlinear equations to study theoretically the parametric instabilities involving stimulated Raman scattering and modulational instabilities. A model for quasi-steady-state propagating electromagnetic wave packets is also derived, and which shows possibility of localized solitary structures in a quantum plasma. Numerical simulations demonstrate collapse and acceleration of electrons in the nonlinear stage of the modulational instability, as well as possibility of the wake-field acceleration of electrons to relativistic speeds by short laser pulses at nanometer length scales. Our study is relevant for understanding the localization of intense electromagnetic pulses in a quantum plasma with extremely high electron densities and relatively low temperature.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Interaction between two stopped light pulses

The efficiency of a nonlinear optical process is proportional to the interaction time. We report a scheme of all-optical switching based on two motionless light pulses via the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency. One pulse was stopped as the stationary light pulse (SLP) and the other was stopped as stored light. The time of their interaction via the medium can be prolonged and, hence, the optical nonlinearity is greatly enhanced. Using a large optical density (OD) of 190, we achieved a very long interaction time of 6.9 μs. This can be analogous to the scheme of trapping light pulses by an optical cavity with a Q factor of 8×10{sup 9}. With the approach of using moving light pulses in the best situation, a switch can only be activated at 2 photons per atomic absorption cross section. With the approach of employing a SLP and a stored light pulse, a switch at only 0.56 photons was achieved and the efficiency is significantly improved. Moreover, the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data and show that the efficiency can be further improved by increasing the OD of the medium. Our work advances the technology in quantum information manipulation utilizing photons.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2010

High-power electromagnetic wave in a magnetically insulated transmission line of the ANGARA-5-1 facility

Studies of physical phenomena in magnetically insulated transmission lines (MITLs) of high-power pulsed current generators, analysis of operation of existing megavolt generators, and designing of new high-current generators with a power of up to {approx}10 TW require creating an efficient numerical code for modeling the propagation of a high-power electromagnetic pulse in an MITL. This paper presents basic theoretical concepts of MITL operation in the framework of telegraph equations with allowance for electron leakage and variations in the electrode emissivity and analyzes propagation of an electromagnetic wave in the MITLs of the ANGARA-5-1 eight-module facility toward a dynamic load installed in the central unit with a matrix inductance.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Numerical and simulation study of terahertz radiation generation by laser pulses propagating in the extraordinary mode in magnetized plasma

A one-dimensional numerical model for studying terahertz radiation generation by intense laser pulses propagating, in the extraordinary mode, through magnetized plasma has been presented. The direction of the static external magnetic field is perpendicular to the polarization as well as propagation direction of the laser pulse. A transverse electromagnetic wave with frequency in the terahertz range is generated due to the presence of the magnetic field. Further, two-dimensional simulations using XOOPIC code show that the THz fields generated in plasma are transmitted into vacuum. The fields obtained via simulation study are found to be compatible with those obtained from the numerical model.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗