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At least 55 records · Page 3

Bimodality of the solar cycle

An alternative characterization of the solar cycle is offered that is consistent with the sunspot data for cycles 1-20 (1775-1976) but suggests a different physical interpretation. For sunspot cycles 1-20, all cycles occurred in strings (two to six cycles in length) during which the period remained longer or shorter than the sample mean period. These strings have coincided with long-term trends of growth or decay in the amplitude of the cycle. In six out of six cases, the period of the cycle has switched from long to short (or the reverse) in coincidence with the turning points in the long-term trend. This suggests that the solar dynamo has two modes with different mean periods. In the short-period mode, the amplitude of the cycle grows; in the long-period mode, the amplitude decays. The transition between modes has occurred at irregular intervals. A persistence of the long-period mode would eventually produce a grand minimum such as the Maunder minimum; a persistence of the short-period mode would produce a grand maximum. Unless the present interval between transitions turns out to be shorter than any previously observed interval, the present cycle (cycle 21) is part of a long-period, decaying trend and will be of longer-than-average duration (more than 133 months).

Rabin, D.↗

Termination of String Rewriting Rules that have One Pair of Overlaps

This paper presents a partial solution to the long standing open problem of termination of one-rule string rewriting. Overlaps between the two sides of the rule play a central role in existing termination criteria. We characterize termination of all one-rule string rewriting systems that have one such overlap at either end. This both completes a result of Kurth and generalizes a result of Shikishima-Tsuji et al.

Geser, Alfons↗

All-order splits and multi-soft limits for particle and string amplitudes

The most important aspects of scattering amplitudes have long been thought to be associated with their poles. But recently a very different sort of “split” factorizations for a wide range of particle and string tree amplitudes have been discovered away from poles. In this paper, we give a simple, conceptual origin for these splits arising from natural properties of the binary geometry of the curve integral formulation for scattering amplitudes for Tr(Φ 3 ) theory. The most natural way of “joining” smaller surfaces to build larger ones directly produces a choice of kinematics for which higher amplitudes factor into lower ones. This gives a generalization of splits to all orders in the topological expansion. These splits allow us to access and compute loop-integrated multi-soft limits for particle and string amplitudes, at all loop orders. This includes split factorizations and multisoft limits for pion and gluon amplitudes, that are related to Tr(Φ 3 ) theory by a simple kinematical shift.

Bosonic Strings↗

The Strings of Eta Carina: The HST/STIS Spectra and [Ca II]

Long linear, filamentary ejecta, are found to move at very high velocity external to the Homunculus, the circumstellar hourglass-shaped ejecta surrounding Eta Carinae. The origin of the strings is a puzzle. As an example, the Weigelt Blobs have N at 10X solar and C, O at 0.01X solar abundance, along with He/H significantly enhanced. This abundance pattern is evidence for extreme CNO-processing. Similarly, the Strontium Filament has Ti/Ni at 100X solar, presumably due to the lack of oxygen to form Ti-oxide precipitates onto dust grains. We have obtained 2-D spectra with the HST/STIS of the Strontium Filament and a portion of a string. These deep spectral exposures, at moderate dispersion, span much of the near red spectral region from 5000 to 9000A. We have identified twelve emission lines in these spectra with proper velocities and spatial structure of this string and obtained line ratios for [Ca II] (7293/7325A) and [Fe Ill (7157/8619A) which are useful for determining physical conditions in this nebulosity. In an attempt to use the [Ca II] ratio to determine the physical parameters, and ultimately the abundances in the strings, we have constructed a statistical equilibrium model for Ca II , including radiative and collisional rates. These results incorporate our newly calculated atomic data for levels n = 3,4,5 and 6 configurations of Ca II. The aim is to compute the [Ca II] line ratios and use them as a diagnostic of the physical parameters. Using the [Fe II] ratio we find that for Te=10,000 K, the electron density is Ne approx.10(exp 6)/cu cm. We plan to use the [Ca II] ratio to confirm this result. Then, we will extend the use of this multilevel model Ca II atom to study the physical conditions of the Strontium filament where eight lines of Ca II, both allowed and forbidden, had been identified. With the physical conditions determined, we will be able to derive reliable estimates for the gas phase abundances in the strings.

Melendez, M. B.↗

String-Breaking Dynamics in Quantum Adiabatic and Diabatic Processes

Confinement prohibits isolation of color charges, e.g., quarks, in nature via a process called string breaking : the separation of two charges results in an increase in the energy of a color flux, visualized as a string, connecting those charges. Eventually, creating additional charges is energetically favored, hence breaking the string. Such a phenomenon can be probed in simpler models, including quantum spin chains, enabling enhanced understanding of string-breaking dynamics. A challenging task is to understand how string breaking occurs as time elapses, in an out-of-equilibrium setting. This work establishes the phenomenology of dynamical string breaking induced by a gradual increase of string tension over time. It, thus, goes beyond instantaneous quench processes and enables tracking the real-time evolution of strings in a more controlled setting. We focus on domain-wall confinement in a family of quantum Ising chains. Our results indicate that, for sufficiently short strings and slow evolution, string breaking can be described by the transition dynamics of a two-state quantum system akin to a Landau-Zener process. For longer strings, a more intricate spatiotemporal pattern emerges: the string breaks by forming a superposition of bubbles (domains of flipped spins of varying sizes), which involve highly excited states. We finally demonstrate that string breaking driven only by quantum fluctuations can be realized in the presence of sufficiently long-ranged interactions. This work holds immediate relevance for studying string breaking in quantum-simulation experiments.

Ising model↗

Terminal context in context-sensitive grammars.

Investigation of the conditions whereunder context-sensitive grammars generate context-free languages. The obtained results indicate that, if every noncontext-free rewriting rule of a context-sensitive grammar has as left context a string of terminal symbols and the left context is at least as long as the right context, then the language generated is context-free. Likewise, if every noncontext-free rewriting rule of a context-sensitive grammar has strings of terminal symbols as left and right contexts, then the language generated is also context-free.

Book, R. V.↗

Growth from a hypercooled melt near absolute stability

The stability of a solid-liquid interface in a hypercooled melt is studied, taking into account attachment kinetics, surface energy, and surface energy in the heat balance. There is a basic-state solution with the planar interface moving at constant speed. Linear-stability theory gives a long-wave absolute-stability limit. Near this point a string model is introduced in which a thermal-boundary-layer approximation is used and an evolution equation for the interface is obtained. In a limiting case this interface equation reduces to a Kuromoto-Sivashinsky equation. Comparison with experimental and numerical results are discussed, and a conceptual picture of unconstrained growth for all undercoolings is addressed.

Umantsev, A.↗

Ultra-long-life spacecraft for long duration space exploration missions

The predominant failure mode in an ultra longlife system is the wear-out of components. In order to survive long duration missions, current fault tolerant design techniques would require excessive number of redundant components. This paper describes a more efficient fault tolerant avionics system architecture that requires much less redundant components. This architecture employs generic function blocks that can be programmed to replace a wide variety of components in-flight. Hence, each individual generic block is essentially equivalent to almost an entire redundant string of components in the conventional approach. In that way, the ultra long-life system can achieve much higher level of reliability while carrying much less components. On the other hand, due to the programmability of the generic redundant blocks, the physical location of a specific component might not be pre-determined. Therefore, wireless interconnection is employed to provide the necessary flexibility in connectivity. A testbed of this architecture is being developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

return missions↗

How Can We Efficiently Build A Spacecraft That Has Longevity? Experiences From the GSFC Perspective to Inform Lunar Exploration and Science Orbiter’s Architecture

Recent successes in NASA planetary science missions has shown that long-lived missions can yield significant science return. These missions, despite their longevity, were not planned to operate beyond their deign life. For example, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has a design life of 2-3 years, and yet we are entering its 14th year on orbit. Spacecraft longevity in practice has been related to: 1) mission class; 2) did we test it long enough and resolve all the anomalies to be beyond the early failure curve; 3) consumables budgets, and 4) how components are de-signed and tested. Mission class has been perceived as one of the primary ways to drive longevity. But higher mission class is a significant cost and mission driver. Parts selection only from the limited military standard parts and extensive parts qualification adds to development time and cost. Largely redundant (often erroneously interpreted as fully redundant) adds to launch mass and increases testing complexity (which may reduce the amount of testing in the nominal con-figuration). Lower Risk Posture (reflected in a higher mission class) drives significant additional processes and quality assurance analyses. Higher mission class also drives significantly greater sparing and life testing costs. This discussion focuses on whether this is indeed the best way to achieve longevity efficiently or whether there are more efficient ways to achieve longevity. Empirical evidence shows that lower mission classes that implement effective risk reduction and selective redundancy generally results in long life at a lower Spacecraft bus cost. By evaluating redundancy careful-ly, spacecraft cost can be lowered which can enable a more capable payload. Risk of the mission is highly dependent on the complexity of the mission and is only loosely dependent on Class of Mission. High complexity missions can have many single point failures and require the development of new technology, while lower class mission can have lower risk by baselining or incorporating: (selective) redundancy, fault-tolerant design, design for minimum risk, ability to reset, and/or design for graceful degradation. The team met with Goddard Space Flight Center Space Systems Mission Operations leaders to discuss which avionics have proven in flight to be the most reliable and which have had lifetime issues. The paper proposes a list of components to focus on for redundancy for a long-lived lunar mission. Reliability numbers are presented for both single string and dual string missions. The history of life-time performance versus planned mission life according to mission class is presented. A mission with well thought out selective redundancy and effective on the ground test program, can be expected to last well beyond its mission lifetime and provided enhanced return for the community. This approach minimizes project expenditures that do not retire significant risk and allows the project to focus risk mitigation efforts on those risks that will have a significant likelihood of threatening mission success. This is aided by keeping the amount of technology maturation and mission complexity low, while focusing effort on ensuring all component stress-ing parameters well within the bounds of their capabilities.

Lessons Learned↗

Relating Aerial Infrared Thermography Defects to Photovoltaic Performance: Preprint

In this research, we examine the relationship between aerial IR defect analysis and photovoltaic (PV) performance data for twelve utility- and commercial-scale solar sites in the United States. To do this, we fuse the site diagram geoJSON's, aerial infrared thermography (aIRT) defect analyses, and associated inverter time series, allowing for a direct comparison between site defects and time series data. Defect analyses were provided by Zeitview, under its Solar Insights platform. Following the data fusion process, we look at the relationship between system performance and aIRT defects. We investigate the relationship between degradation and hotspot defects, as well as the relationship between AC power data and offline strings and misaligned modules. In general, system degradation was not affected by long-term or balance-of-system (BoS) defects as they occurred infrequently in the data set. However, for one system, a near statistically significant relationship (p-value=0.057) was found when comparing the degradation of inverter blocks with several multi-hotspot defects to all other inverter blocks without this particular defect. There was strong alignment when comparing short-term recoverable module defects such as stuck trackers and offline strings to time series data. In general, we found that when an inverter block has more than 80% of modules flagged for one of these defects, its AC power time data is flat-lined and the inverter block is not producing.

aerial inspection↗

Self-Gravitating Fundamental Strings and Black Holes

The configuration of typically highly excited M much greater than M(sub s) which is approximately equal to alpha(prime) to the 1/2 power string states is considered as the string coupling g is adiabatically increased. The size distribution of very massive single string states is studied and the mass shift, due to a long-range gravitational, dilatonic, and axionic attraction, is estimated.

Damour, T.↗

Effective dissipation rate in a Liouvillian-graph picture of high-temperature quantum hydrodynamics

At high temperature, generic strongly interacting spin systems are expected to display hydrodynamics: local transport of conserved quantities, governed by classical partial differential equations like the diffusion equation. I argue that the emergence of this dissipative long-wavelength dynamics from the system's unitary microscopic dynamics is controlled by the structure of the Liouvillian graph of the system's Hamiltonian, that is, the graph induced on Pauli strings by commutation with that Hamiltonian. The Liouvillian graph decomposes naturally into subgraphs of Pauli strings of constant diameter, and the coherent dynamics of these subgraphs determines the rate at which operator weight spreads to long operators. In conclusion, this argument provides a quantitative theory of the emergence of a dissipative effective dynamics from unitary microscopic dynamics; it also leads to an effective model with Hilbert space dimension linear in system size and exponential in the UV cutoff for diffusion.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Testing theories of Gravitation with the Interstellar Probe Radio Experiment

General Relativity (GR) will soon celebrate its 110th birthday, holding up against all experimental enquiry. Nonetheless, unification theories attempting to quantize gravity, such as string theory, are gaining footing. These hypothesize additional scalar, vector, and tensor long-range fields that couple to matter (Will, 2014), introducing violations to GR. Although such violations have never been detected, it is likely that GR will not be the ultimate theory of gravity. What is certain is that gravity tests are alive and well, pushing the validity of GR to new scales and accuracies, or -potentially- suggesting alternative routes for new physics. Building upon the legacy of Voyager and Pioneer missions, which demonstrated the capability to survive in the outer reaches of the solar system, the Interstellar Probe mission concept (McNutt et al., 2022) aims to characterise our heliosphere through state-of-the-art instrumentation, opening new frontiers also for GR testing. In this work, we investigate the possibility of constraining the Nordtvedt parameter η and the mass of the graviton via the Compton wavelength λc, by simulating the processing of 10 years of radiometric data from the Interstellar Probe. Station calibration and clock synchronisation, as well as limiting spacecraft precession manoeuvres are highlighted as key strategies for obtaining high-quality estimates. In the most favourable scenario, η can be constrained to less than 1.5 · 10 -5 , reducing the uncertainty obtained via Lunar Laser Ranging (Hofmann and Müller, 2018), and a lower bound of 1.4 ‧ 10 14 km is set for λc, improving the estimates obtained from planetary ephemerides (Bernus et al., 2020) and gravitational wave detection (Abbott et al., Jun 2021). Extending ranging measurement acquisition to 20 years improves the results tenfold. This experiment interrogates fundamental physics from a unique dynamical setting, investigating possible violations of the Equivalence Principle (EP) underlying GR.

general relativity↗

Long term effects of low doses of Fe-56 ions on the brain and retina of the mouse - Ultrastructural and behavioral studies

Eight-month-old male C57BL6 mice were exposed without anesthesia to whole-body irradiation in circular holders. The mice were tested for behavioral decrements after 0.5 and 50 rads of Fe particle irradiation at 6 and 12 months postirradiation to obtain long-term results. A standard maze was used, and the animals were timed for completion thereof. A string test also was administered to the mice, testing their ability to grasp and move along a string to safety. The results from animals exposed to 50 rads were significantly different from control results to p = less than 0.001 in both systems of testing. The hippocampus (believed to be the location of environmental interaction in the brain) and the retina were examined for ultrastructural changes. The ultrastructural changes were similar to those found in the Cosmos 782, 936, and Argon experiments. The mouse data indicate that iron particles were able to induce long-term changes in the central nervous system which led to behavioral impairment.

Philpott, Delbert E.↗

Long term effects of low doses of 56Fe ions on the brain and retina of the mouse: ultrastructural and behavioral studies

Eight month old male C57BL6 mice were exposed without anesthesia to whole-body irradiation in circular holders. The mice were tested for behavioral decrements after 0.5 and 50 rads of Fe particle irradiation at 6 and 12 months post irradiation to obtain long term results. A standard maze was used and the animals were timed for completion thereof. A string test also was administered to the mice, testing their ability to grasp and move along a string to safety. The results from animals exposed to 50 rads were significantly different from [correction of fron] control results to p = < .001 in both systems of testing. The hippocampus (believed to be the location of environmental interaction in the brain) and the retina were examined for ultrastructural changes. The ultrastructural changes were similar to those we found in our Cosmos 782, 936 and in our Argon experiments. The mouse data indicate that iron particles were able to induce long term changes in the central nervous system which lead to behavioral impairment.

NASA Program Space Medicine↗

Order fractionalization in a Kitaev-Kondo model

We describe a mechanism for order fractionalization in a two-dimensional Kondo lattice model, in which electrons interact with a gapless spin liquid of Majorana fermions described by the Yao-Lee (YL) model. When the Kondo coupling to the conduction electrons exceeds a critical value, the model develops a superconducting instability into a state with a a spinor order parameter with charge 4 and spin ( = 1 2. The broken symmetry state develops a gapless Majorana Dirac cone in the bulk. By including an appropriate gauge string, we can show that the charge 4, spinorial order develops off-diagonal long range order that allows electrons to coherently tunnel arbitrarily long distances through the spin liquid.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Performance Characteristics of Lithium-Ion Cells for Mars Sample Return Athena Rover

In contrast to the primary batteries (lithium thionyl chloride) on the Sojourner Mars Rover and the upcoming 2001 Mars Rover, the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Athena Rover will utilize rechargeable lithium ion batteries, following the footsteps of MSP 2001 Lander. The MSR Athena Rover will contain a rechargeable lithium ion battery of 16 V and a total energy of 150 Wh. The mass and volume of the projected power system will be a maximum of 3 kg and 2 liters, respectively. Each battery consists of twelve cells (6-7 Ah), combined in three parallel strings of four cells (16 V) each, such that the capability of the Rover shall be maintained even in the event of one string failure. In addition to the usual requirements of high specific energy and energy density and long cycle life (100 cycles), the battery is required to operate at wide range of temperatures, especially at sub-zero temperatures down to -20 C. In this paper, we report various performance characterization tests carried out on lithium ion cells, fabricated by different manufacturers under a NASA/DoD lithium ion battery consortium.

Ratnakumar, B. V.↗