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Using proton-antiproton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.8 fb-1 collected in Tevatron Run 2, CDF performed a high precision measurement of the W mass. This result, 80433.5±6.4±6.9 MeV, is the most precise so far, and shows a discrepancy of 76 with Standard Model expectations.
The KN system at rest makes a sensitive testing ground for low energy QCD. At the DA{Phi}NE electron-positron collider of Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati we study kaonic atoms, taking advantage of the low-energy kaons from {Phi}-mesons decaying nearly at rest. The DEAR (DA{Phi}NE Exotic Atom Research) experiment at LNF delivered the most precise data on kaonic hydrogen up to now. DEAR and its follow-up experiment SIDDHARTA (Silicon Drift Detector for Hadronic Atom Research by Timing Application) are using X-ray spectroscopy of kaonic atoms to measure the strong interaction induced shift and width of the ground state. SIDDHARTA is the first experiment on kaonic helium-3 and deuterium ever, and kaonic hydrogen was remeasured with improved precision.
A novel technique for absolute wavelength determination in high-precision crystal x-ray spectroscopy recently introduced has been upgraded reaching unprecedented accuracies. The method combines visible laser beams with the Bond method, where Bragg angles ({theta} and -{theta}) are determined without any x-ray reference lines. Using flat crystals this technique makes absolute x-ray wavelength measurements feasible even at low x-ray fluxes. The upgraded spectrometer has been used in combination with first experiments on the 1s2p {sup 1}P{sub 1}{yields} 1s{sup 2} {sup 1}S{sub 0} w-line in He-like argon. By resolving a minute curvature of the x-ray lines the accuracy reaches there the best ever reported value of 1.5 ppm. The result is sensitive to predicted second-order QED contributions at the level of two-electron screening and two-photon radiative diagrams and will allow for the first time to benchmark predicted binding energies for He-like ions at this level of precision.
Multiply charged ions to be used prospectively are produced from solid pure material in an electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS). Recently a pure iron source is also required for the production of caged iron ions in the fullerene in order to control cells in vivo in bio-nano science and technology. We adopt directly heating iron rod by induction heating (IH) because it has non-contact with insulated materials which are impurity gas sources. We choose molybdenum wire for the IH coils because it doesn't need water cooling. To improve power efficiency and temperature control, we propose to the new circuit without previously using the serial and parallel dummy coils (SPD) for matching and safety. We made the circuit consisted of inductively coupled coils which are thin-flat and helix shape, and which insulates the IH power source from the evaporator. This coupling coils circuit, i.e. insulated induction heating coil transformer (IHCT), can be move mechanically. The secondary current can be adjusted precisely and continuously. Heating efficiency by using the IHCT is much higher than those of previous experiments by using the SPD, because leakage flux is decreased and matching is improved simultaneously. We are able to adjust the temperature in heating the vapor source around melting point. And then the vapor pressure can be controlled precisely by using the IHCT. We can control {+-}10K around 1500 Degree-Sign C by this method, and also recognize to controlling iron vapor flux experimentally in the extreme low pressures. Now we come into next stage of developing induction heating vapor source for materials with furthermore high temperature melting points above 2000K with the IHCT, and then apply it in our ECRIS.
Two calorimeters, with stainless steel and Cu as the thermal path material for high precision and high power versions, respectively, have been designed and commissioned for the surface impedance characterization (SIC) system at Jefferson Lab to provide low temperature control and measurement for CW power up to 22 W on a 5 cm dia. disk sample which is thermally isolated from the RF portion of the system. A power compensation method has been developed to measure the RF induced power on the sample. Simulation and experimental results show that with these two calorimeters, the whole thermal range of interest for superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) materials has been covered. The power measurement error in the interested power range is within 1.2% and 2.7% for the high precision and high power versions, respectively. Temperature distributions on the sample surface for both versions have been simulated and the accuracy of sample temperature measurements have been analysed. Both versions have the ability to accept bulk superconductors and thin film superconducting samples with a variety of substrate materials such as Al, Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}, Cu, MgO, Nb and Si.
We describe an improved experimental method for the generation of cold, directed particle bunches, and the highly accurate determination of their velocities in a pulsed supersonic beam, allowing for high-resolution experiments of atoms, molecules, and clusters. It is characterized by a pulsed high pressure jet source with high brilliance and optimum repeatability, a flight distance of few metres that can be varied with a tolerance of setting of 50 {mu}m, and a precision in the mean flight time of particles of better than 10{sup -4}. The technique achieves unmatched accuracies in particle velocities and kinetic energies and also permits the reliable determination of enthalpy changes with very high precision.
Understanding the behaviors of the material removal mechanism of ultra-precision polishing process has been a critical issue of generating well-formed surface. In order to make clear the abrasive self-rotation effects on material removal at the atomic level, a three-dimensional molecular dynamics (MD) model is conducted to study the mechanics of ultra-precision polishing on single-crystal copper with a diamond abrasive and the effects of abrasive self-rotation velocity and direction. Morse potential energy function and EAM potential energy function are applied to model the copper/diamond and copper/copper interactions, respectively. The simulation results show that the deformation mechanism of single-crystal copper is due to the formation and movement of dislocations in the specimen. In addition, with the increasing of abrasive self-rotation velocity, the deformation mechanism falls from cutting to plowing regimes. The abrasive self-rotation velocity and direction have effects on the morphology and quality of the specimen surface, distribution and evolution of defects under the surface of the specimen. Also, the interatomic force between abrasive and specimen is studied to account for the effects of different polishing conditions.
In this work, we present a portable laser differential refractometer with real-time detection and high precision based on the Snell's law and a 2f-2f optical design. The 2f-2f configuration solves a traditional position drifting problem of the laser beam and enhances the signal stability, where a small pinhole is illuminated by the laser light and imaged to the detector by lens placed in the middle between the detector and the pinhole. However, it also leads to a larger dimension of the instrument, limiting its applications and its sensitivity that is proportional to the optical path. Therefore, for a portable device on the basis of the 2f-2f design, a combination of a mirror and a lens was developed to minimize the optical path without affecting the 2f-2f design. Our simple and compact design reaches a resolution of 10{sup −6} refractive index units (RIU). Moreover, the dimension of such a modified differential refractometer is significantly reduced to be portable. Owing to its real-time detection speed and high precision, this newly developed refractometer is particularly attractive when it is used as an independent and ultra-sensitive detector in many research and industrial applications wherein there is a time-dependent concentration change, e.g., the concentration determination, quality control, and study of kinetic processes in solution, including adsorption, sedimentation, and dissolution, to name few but not limited.
Here, we show indirect precise angular control using a four-wave mixing (FWM) process. This was performed with a superposition of light with orbital angular momentum in an M-Type configuration of a hot {sup 85}Rb atomic ensemble. A gear-shaped interference pattern is observed at FWM light with a donut-shaped input signal. The gear could be rotated and is controlled through the change of the polarization of the pump laser. Our experimental results that are based on nonlinear coherent interactions have applications in image processing and precise angular control.
We have fabricated atomically precise nitrogen-doped chevron-type graphene nanoribbons by using the on-surface synthesis technique combined with the nitrogen substitution of the precursors. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy indicate that the well-defined nanoribbons tend to align with the neighbors side-by-side with a band gap of 1.02 eV, which is in good agreement with the density functional theory calculation result. The influence of the high precursor coverage on the quality of the nanoribbons is also studied. We find that graphene nanoribbons with sufficient aspect ratios can only be fabricated at sub-monolayer precursor coverage. This work provides a way to construct atomically precise nitrogen-doped graphene nanoribbons.
Electronic structure methods based on low-order “n-body” expansions are an increasingly popular means to defeat the highly nonlinear scaling of ab initio quantum chemistry calculations, taking advantage of the inherently distributable nature of the numerous subsystem calculations. Here, we examine how the finite precision of these subsystem calculations manifests in applications to large systems, in this case, a sequence of water clusters ranging in size up to (H{sub 2}O){sub 47}. Using two different computer implementations of the n-body expansion, one fully integrated into a quantum chemistry program and the other written as a separate driver routine for the same program, we examine the reproducibility of total binding energies as a function of cluster size. The combinatorial nature of the n-body expansion amplifies subtle differences between the two implementations, especially for n ⩾ 4, leading to total energies that differ by as much as several kcal/mol between two implementations of what is ostensibly the same method. This behavior can be understood based on a propagation-of-errors analysis applied to a closed-form expression for the n-body expansion, which is derived here for the first time. Discrepancies between the two implementations arise primarily from the Coulomb self-energy correction that is required when electrostatic embedding charges are implemented by means of an external driver program. For reliable results in large systems, our analysis suggests that script- or driver-based implementations should read binary output files from an electronic structure program, in full double precision, or better yet be fully integrated in a way that avoids the need to compute the aforementioned self-energy. Moreover, four-body and higher-order expansions may be too sensitive to numerical thresholds to be of practical use in large systems.
A classical method used to characterize the strain in modern semiconductor devices is nanobeam diffraction (NBD) in the transmission electron microscope. One challenge for this method lies in the fact that the smaller the beam becomes, the more difficult it becomes to analyze the resulting diffraction spot pattern. We show that a carefully designed fitting algorithm enables us to reduce the sampling area for the diffraction patterns on the camera chip dramatically (∼1/16) compared to traditional settings without significant loss of precision. The resulting lower magnification of the spot pattern permits the presence of an annular dark field detector, which in turn makes the recording of images for drift correction during NBD acquisition possible. Thus, the reduced sampling size allows acquisition of drift corrected NBD 2D strain maps of up to 3000 pixels while maintaining a precision of better than 0.07%. As an example, we show NBD strain maps of a modern field effect transistor (FET) device. A special filtering feature used in the analysis makes it is possible to measure strain in silicon devices even in the presence of other crystalline materials covering the probed area, which is important for the characterization of the next generation of devices (Fin-FETs).
The hydrohelium cation, HeH{sup +}, serves as an important benchmark for ab initio calculations that take into account non-adiabatic, relativistic, and quantum electrodynamic effects. Such calculations are capable of predicting molecular transitions to an accuracy of ∼300 MHz or less. However, in order to continue to push the boundaries on these calculations, new measurements of these transitions are required. Here we measure seven rovibrational transitions in the fundamental vibrational band to a precision of ∼1 MHz using the technique of Noise Immune Cavity Enhanced Optical Heterodyne Velocity Modulation Spectroscopy. These newly measured transitions are included in a fit to the rotation-vibration term values to derive refined spectroscopic constants in the v = 0 and v = 1 vibrational states, as well as to calculate rotation-vibration energy levels with high precision.
To compensate pressure-measurement errors caused by a synchrotron radiation environment, a precise method using a hot-cathode-ionization-gauge head with correcting electrode, was developed and tested in a simulation experiment with excess electrons in the SPring-8 storage ring. This precise method to improve the measurement accuracy, can correctly reduce the pressure-measurement errors caused by electrons originating from the external environment, and originating from the primary gauge filament influenced by spatial conditions of the installed vacuum-gauge head. As the result of the simulation experiment to confirm the performance reducing the errors caused by the external environment, the pressure-measurement error using this method was approximately less than several percent in the pressure range from 10{sup −5} Pa to 10{sup −8} Pa. After the experiment, to confirm the performance reducing the error caused by spatial conditions, an additional experiment was carried out using a sleeve and showed that the improved function was available.
The precise determination of the beta-neutrino correlation in the decay of radioactive nuclei is an important tool in the effort to probe fundamental interactions for possible deviation from the Standard Model of particles and fields. In order to realize this, a novel scheme for precision measurement of such correlation in the decay of radioactive helium-6 (half-life 0.8 s) using an electrostatic ion beam trap (EIBT) is being constructed at the Weizmann Institute. Efficient ionization of the expected weak flux of helium-6, together with a bunching characteristic suitable for injection into the EIBT, is thereby essential. Both of these requirements are optimally met by an electron beam ion source/trap (EBIT). In this contribution we present the design of a modified DREEBIT (Dresden EBIT) featuring a direct, nearly closed gas intake into the drift tube assembly for maximum trapping and ionization efficiency for low flux rates, without diminishing the bunching phase space of the EBIT. First tests already indicate significant ion production at a minimal gas flow rate observable by a marginal pressure increase that is close to the detection limit of a Leybold extractor gauge located in close proximity to the drift tube assembly. This is a necessary precondition in order to exploit even tiny amounts of rare isotopes.
For many decades, improvements in both theory and experiment of the fine structure of the n = 2 triplet P levels of helium have allowed for an increasingly precise determination of the fine-structure constant. Recently, it has been observed that quantum-mechanical interference between neighboring resonances can cause significant shifts, even if such neighboring resonances are separated by thousands of natural widths. The shifts depend in detail on the experimental method used for the measurement, as well as the specific experimental parameters employed. Here, we review how these shifts apply for the most precise measurements of the helium 2{sup 3}P fine-structure intervals.
We describe an experimental setup for making precision measurements of relative β-decay rates of {sup 22}Na, {sup 36}Cl, {sup 54}Mn, {sup 60}Co, {sup 90}Sr, {sup 133}Ba, {sup 137}Cs, {sup 152}Eu, and {sup 154}Eu. The radioactive samples are mounted in two automated sample changers that sequentially position the samples with high spatial precision in front of sets of detectors. The set of detectors for one sample changer consists of four Geiger-Müller (GM) tubes and the other set of detectors consists of two NaI scintillators. The statistical uncertainty in the count rate is few times 0.01% per day for the GM detectors and about 0.01% per hour on the NaI detectors. The sample changers, detectors, and associated electronics are housed in a sealed chamber held at constant absolute pressure, humidity, and temperature to isolate the experiment from environmental variations. The apparatus is designed to accumulate statistics over many years in a regulated environment to test recent claims of small annual variations in the decay rates. We demonstrate that absent this environmental regulation, uncontrolled natural atmospheric pressure variations at our location would imprint an annual signal of 0.1% on the Geiger-Müller count rate. However, neither natural pressure variations nor plausible indoor room temperature variations cause a discernible influence on our NaI scintillator detector count rate.
Current high precision beta decay experiments of polarized neutrons, employing magnetic guiding fields in combination with position sensitive and energy dispersive detectors, resulted in a detailed study of the mono-energetic point spread function (PSF) for a homogeneous magnetic field. A PSF describes the radial probability distribution of mono-energetic electrons at the detector plane emitted from a point-like source. With regard to accuracy considerations, unwanted singularities occur as a function of the radial detector coordinate which have recently been investigated by subdividing the radial coordinate into small bins or employing analytical approximations. In this note, a series expansion of the PSF is presented which can numerically be evaluated with arbitrary precision.