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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 613 records · Page 34

In-field alpha spectrometry system for uranium enrichment verification of uranium hexafluoride

A portable In-Field Alpha Spectrometry (IFAS) system was developed to support on-site uranium enrichment determination for samples taken at facilities working with gaseous UF 6 . It consists of a modified commercial alpha spectrometer, a vacuum pump, a laptop computer, and associated connectors and cables. The IFAS uses specially designed Single-Use Destructive Assay (SUDA) samplers to capture gaseous UF 6 and convert and store it as UO 2 F 2 in a thin-film zeolite. To examine the quantitative performance of the IFAS system a large number of replicate SUDA samples was acquired for natural uranium (NU, 0.72 wt%, 23 samples), low enriched uranium 1 (LEU1, 2.33 wt% 235 U, 10 samples), and low enriched uranium 2 (LEU2, 4.62 wt% 235 U, 10 samples). The standard deviation (SD) values for uranium enrichment determination with the IFAS for NU, LEU1, and LEU2, in 20-hour assays, were 0.037 wt% 235 U, 0.063 wt% 235 U, and 0.072 wt% 235 U, respectively. In addition, a separate analysis suggests that comparable SD values can be achieved in less time, approximately 8-10 hours. For context, these SD values are well below the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Target Values for the determination of uranium enrichment in non-destructive assay measurements.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

TaskWorks v1.0

TaskWorks is a portable, high-level, task engine designed for HPC workloads. Applications can create tasks and define dependencies between them with the task engine. Once the task is defined and submitted to TaskWorks, the TaskWorks engine will execute it according to the specified dependencies, without additional input from the application. TaskWorks has an integrated event manager monitors files, sockets, timers, and MPI operations, and these events can be used as task dependencies. TaskWorks is compatible with MPI and is designed to work efficiently with HPC applications that perform.

Koziol, Quincey↗

36 Hz integral linewidth laser based on a photonic integrated 4.0 m coil resonator

Laser stabilization sits at the heart of many precision scientific experiments and applications, including quantum information science, metrology, and atomic timekeeping. Many of these systems narrow the laser linewidth and stabilize the carrier by use of Pound–Drever–Hall (PDH) locking to a table-scale, ultrahigh quality factor (Q), vacuum spaced Fabry–Perot reference cavity. Integrating these cavities to bring characteristics of PDH stabilization to the chip scale is critical to reducing their size, cost, and weight, and enabling a wide range of portable and system-on-chip applications. We report a significant advance in integrated laser linewidth narrowing, stabilization, and noise reduction by use of a photonic integrated 4.0 m long coil resonator to stabilize a semiconductor laser. We achieve a 36 Hz 1 / π <#comment/> -integral linewidth, Allan deviation of 1.8 × <#comment/> 10 − <#comment/> 13 at 10 ms measurement time, and a 2.3 kHz/s drift—to the best of our knowledge, the lowest integral linewidth and highest stability demonstrated for an integrated waveguide reference cavity. This performance represents over an order of magnitude improvement in integral linewidth and frequency noise over previous integrated waveguide PDH stabilized reference cavities and bulk-optic and integrated injection locked approaches, and over two orders of magnitude improvement in frequency and phase noise than integrated injection locked approaches. Two different wavelength coil designs are demonstrated, stabilizing lasers at 1550 nm and 1319 nm. The resonator is bus-coupled to a 4.0 m long coil, with a 49 MHz free spectral range, mode volume of 1.0 × <#comment/> 10 10 µ <#comment/> m 3 , and 142 million intrinsic Q , fabricated in a CMOS compatible, ultralow loss silicon nitride waveguide platform. Our measurements and simulations show that the thermorefractive noise floor for this particular cavity is reached for frequencies down to 20 Hz in an ambient environment with simple passive vibration isolation and without vacuum or thermal isolation. The thermorefractive noise limited performance is estimated to yield an 8 Hz 1 / π <#comment/> -integral linewidth and Allan deviation of 5 × <#comment/> 10 − <#comment/> 14 at 10 ms, opening a stability regime that heretofore has been available only in fundamentally non-integrated systems. These results demonstrate the potential to bring the characteristics of laboratory-scale stabilized lasers to the integrated, wafer-scale compatible chip scale, and are of interest for a number of applications in quantum technologies and atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and with further developments below 10 Hz linewidth, can be highly relevant to ultralow noise microwave generation.

Liu, Kaikai (ORCID:0000000213609646)↗

Speeding Up Hartree–Fock in JuliaChem with Density Fitting

In this work, the density fitting (DF) approximation is added to the restricted Hartree–Fock (RHF) implementation in the JuliaChem computational chemistry code. Utilizing a DF algorithm that uses symmetry and integral screening, a significant reduction in time to compute the Fock matrix is achieved. The symmetry and screening DF-RHF techniques were adapted to be performed on graphics processing units (GPUs), which are well suited to perform the matrix multiplications that comprise the bulk of the Fock build time in DF-RHF. The JuliaChem DF-RHF GPU algorithm employs a novel approach that automatically switches between two DF-RHF algorithms depending on the number of basis functions in the calculation. The JuliaChem GPU DF-RHF implementation demonstrates up to 2× speedup for Fock build times compared to the existing best-in-class GPU DF-RHF implementation by operating directly on screened intermediate matrices. Due to the high portability of the Julia language code, the JuliaChem CPU and GPU DF-RHF implementations could be benchmarked on a variety of CPU and GPU architectures from multiple hardware vendors.

Hayes, John J. [Ames Laboratory, and Iowa State Un↗

Batched Sparse Linear Algebra (Final Report for Subcontract B648960)

This report finalizes design specifications for developing batched kernels for small tensor operations for unassembled matrix-free iterative solvers, batched solvers for partially assembled operators, and batched solvers with support for various sparse formats. The outcome of the project milestones is a set of interfaces to Batched Sparse LA solvers running on hardware accelerators for use in ECP Libraries and Applications. It is part of the development of sparse batched kernels, solvers/preconditioners as well as creating interoperability in xSDK libraries with sparse and dense batched functions to benefit ECP applications. The participants included representatives from ECP libraries (not limited to the xSDK project), applications, and vendors (AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA). Batched sparse linear algebra solvers form the new frontier for algorithmic development and performance engineering. Many applications (ECP and non-ECP alike) require simultaneous solutions of small linear systems of equations that are structurally sparse. To move towards high hardware utilization, it is important to provide these applications with appropriate interfaces to efficient batched sparse solvers running on modern hardware accelerators. We present interface designs in use by HPC software libraries supporting batched sparse linear algebra and the development of sparse batched kernel codes for solvers and preconditioners. We also address the potential interoperability opportunities to keep the software portable between the major hardware accelerators from AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. The presented interface specifications includes batched band, sparse iterative, and sparse direct solvers. This report summarizes progress in Kokkos Kernels and the xSDK libraries MAGMA, Ginkgo, hypre, SUNDIALS, and SuperLU_dist.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

CCAMP: OpenMP and OpenACC Interoperable Framework

Heterogeneous systems have become a staple of the HPC environment. Several directive-based solutions, such as OpenMP and OpenACC, have been developed to alleviate the challenges of programming heterogeneous systems, and these standards strive to provide a single portable programming solution across heterogeneous environments. However, in many ways this goal has yet to be realized due to device-specific implementations and different levels of language support across compilers. In this framework we aim to analyze and address the different levels of optimization and compatibility between OpenACC and OpenMP programs and device compilers. We introduce the CCAMP framework, built on the OpenARC compiler, which implements language translation between OpenACC and OpenMP, with the goal of exploiting the maturity of different device-specific compilers to maximize performance for a given architecture. We show that CCAMP allows us to generate code for a specific device-compiler combination given a device-agnostic OpenMP or OpenACC program, allowing compilation and execution of programs with specific directives on otherwise incompatible devices. CCAMP also provides a starting point for a more advanced interoperable framework that can effectively provide directive translation and device, compiler, and application specific optimizations.

Lambert, Jacob↗

Opportunities and Limitations of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in Astrobiology

For decades, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been utilized as a powerful tool in various scientific disciplines, most prominently in chemistry, to determine molecular structures or monitor reactions. While well established in various fields, NMR applications in astrobiology are still unclear. This work aims to explore the potential of NMR in astrobiology, highlighting strengths but also weaknesses. We illustrate capabilities of NMR with two applications: (1) recently developed methods for position-specific carbon isotope analysis of complex organics; and (2) well-established tools for performing quantitative compositional analysis of complex organic mixtures. By utilizing samples relevant to astrobiology, specifically the amino acid valine and analogue mixtures of organics, we showcase that molecules retain a source dependent and distinct intramolecular carbon isotope fingerprint. We demonstrate that compositional sample analysis provides an independent and complementary line of evidence pointing towards the origin of a molecule or mixture. Together, these NMR tools have the potential to support life detection efforts, and aid in distinguishing between biotic and abiotic samples. Finally, we discuss sensitivity, detection limits, the portability of NMR, and propose how integration with mass-spectrometry techniques will be imperative to enable more targeted and comprehensive analyses relevant to astrobiology, including in-situ analysis but also sample return missions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Implementation of McMurchie–Davidson Algorithm for Gaussian AO Integrals Suited for SIMD Processors

We report an implementation of the McMurchie− Davidson evaluation scheme for 1- and 2-particle Gaussian AO integrals designed for processors with Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instruction sets. Like in our recent MD implementation for graphical processing units (GPUs) [Asadchev, A.; Valeev, E. F.. J. Chem. Phys. 2024, 160, 244109.], variable-sized batches of shellsets of integrals are evaluated at a time. By optimizing for the floating point instruction throughput rather than minimizing the number of operations, this approach achieves up to 50% of the theoretical hardware peak FP64 performance for many common SIMD-equipped platforms (AVX2, AVX512, NEON), which translates to speedups of up to 30 over the state-of-the-art one-shellset-at-a-time implementation of Obara−Saika-type schemes in Libint for a variety of primitive and contracted integrals. As with our previous work, we rely on the standard C++ programming language such as the std::simd standard library feature to be included in the 2026 ISO C++ standard without any explicit code generation to keep the code base small and portable. The implementation is part of the open source LibintX library freely available at https://github.com/ValeevGroup/libintx.

Basis sets↗

Need for portable accelerators in cultural heritage

Ion Beam Accelerators (IBA) centres have provided researchers with powerful techniques to analyse objects of cultural significance in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner. However, in some cases it is not feasible to remove an object from the field or museum and transport it to the laboratory. In this contributed talk, we present as a manner of a short review, examples of the benefits provided from these techniques in the study of material culture and discuss the initial steps to consider when investigating the feasibility of a compact accelerator that can be taken to sites of cultural significance for PIXE analysis. In particular, we consider the application of a compact, robust 2 MeV proton accelerator that can be taken into the field to perform PIXE measurements on rock art. We detail the main challenges and considerations for such a device.

Charles, T. K.↗

Symbolic construction of the chemical Jacobian of quasi-steady state (QSS) chemistries for Exascale computing platforms

The Quasi-Steady State Approximation (QSSA) can be an effective tool for reducing the size and stiffness of chemical mechanisms for implementation in computational reacting flow solvers. However, for many applications, the resulting model still requires implicit methods for efficient time integration. Here, in this paper, we outline an approach to formulating the QSSA reduction that is coupled with a strategy to generate C++ source code to evaluate the net species production rates, and the chemical Jacobian. The code-generation component employs a symbolic approach enabling a simple and effective strategy to analytically compute the chemical Jacobian. For computational tractability, the symbolic approach needs to be paired with common subexpression elimination which can negatively affect memory usage. Several solutions are outlined and successfully tested on a 3D multipulse ignition problem, thus allowing portable application across chemical model sizes and GPU capabilities. The implementation of the proposed method is available at https://github.com/AMReX-Combustion/PelePhysics under an open-source license.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

A new portable random number generator wrapper library

Random number generator is an important component of many scientific projects. Many projects are written using programming models (like OpenMP and SYCL) to target different architectures. However, some programming models do not provide a random number generator. In this work, we introduce our random number generator wrapper. It is a header-only library that supports three distributions of random numbers: uniform, normal, and poisson. On the GPU backend, it wraps the cuRAND and rocRAND library, and supports various random number engines. It also wraps random123, a counterbased random number generator, on both CPU and GPU. With this library, we can generate random numbers with a few lines of code and target both GPU and multi-thread CPU with the same code. We also investigate the performance and scalability of this wrapper on different architectures with different engines and the number of cores.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Oxygen-deficient ammonium vanadate for flexible aqueous zinc batteries with high energy density and rate capability at -30 °C

Aqueous zinc batteries (AZBs) have received significant attention owing to environmental friendliness, high energy density and inherent safety. However, lack of high-performance cathodes has become the main bottleneck of AZBs development. Here, oxygen-deficient NH 4 V 4 O 10–x ·nH 2 O (NVOH) microspheres are synthesized and used as cathodes for AZBs. The experimental test and theoretical calculations demonstrate that the oxygen vacancies in the lattice lower the Zn 2+ diffusion energy barrier, which enables fast Zn 2+ diffusion and good electrochemical performance in a wide temperature range. The suppressed side reactions also can help to improve the low temperature performance. NVOH shows a high energy density of 372.4 Wh kg –1 and 296 Wh kg –1 at room temperature and –30 °C, respectively. Moreover, NVOH maintains a 100% capacity retention after 100 cycles at 0.1 A g –1 and ~94% capacity retention after 2600 cycles at 2 A g –1 and –30 °C. Investigation into the mechanism of the process reveals that the capacity contribution of surface capacitive behaviors is dominant and capacity attenuation is mainly caused by the decay of diffusion-controlled capacity. As a result, flexible AZBs can steadily power portable electronics under different bending states, demonstrating its great potential in wide-temperature wearable device.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Implications of Aerosol Physicochemical Properties Including Ice Nucleation at ARM Mega Sites for Improved Understanding of Microphysical Atmospheric Cloud Processes (Final Technical Report)

Continuous, long-term measurements of atmospheric ice-nucleating particles (INPs) that influence clouds and precipitation were conducted to investigate the abundance and variability of ground-level INPs across the world. Three field campaigns were organized by the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, including Examining INP from Southern Great Plains (ExINP-SGP, 2019), Examining INP from Eastern North Atlantic (ExINP-ENA, 2020 – 2021), and Examining INP from North Slope of Alaska (ExINP-NSA, 2021 – 2024). Additional small-scale supporting field experiments were performed in 2019 and 2021 to collect airborne particulate matter at SGP for complementary laboratory characterization of the particles’ physical and chemical properties [Aerosol-Ice Formation Closure Pilot Study (AEROICESTUDY), 2019; ExINP-SGP II, 2021]. In these studies, the PI’s team measured INP concentration with both real-time and laboratory measurements in a wide range of freezing temperatures ($T$ from 0 °C to about –30 °C). This project elucidated spatial variability and seasonality in the abundance of immersion mode active INPs across three ARM sites using a single instrument, a Portable Ice Nucleation Experiment (PINE) chamber version 03 (PINE-03 hereafter). Collocated aerosol and meteorological data were analyzed to assess the correlation between ambient INP abundance, air mass origin region, and meteorological variability. Our findings suggest very high freezing efficiency of INPs at the NSA site across the measured temperatures (ice nucleation active surface site density, $n_s(T)$, $\approx 2 \times 10^{8} - 10^{10}$ m -2 for from –16 to –31 °C), which is a factor of 10 – 1000 times greater efficiency as compared to that found in the previous mid-latitude INP measurements in autumn using the same instrument; surprisingly high INP abundance ($\ge 1 \text{ L}^{-1}$ at –25 °C) for the examined temperatures throughout the year that PINE-03 did not measure at other sites; and high INP concentration in spring, possibly related to arctic haze episodes.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Rechargeable Alkali-Ion Battery Materials: Theory and Computation

Since its development in the 1970s, the rechargeable alkali-ion battery has proven to be a truly transformative technology, providing portable energy storage for devices ranging from small portable electronics to sizable electric vehicles. Here, we present a review of modern theoretical and computational approaches to the study and design of rechargeable alkali-ion battery materials. Additionally, starting from fundamental thermodynamics and kinetics phenomenological equations, we rigorously derive the theoretical relationships for key battery properties, such as voltage, capacity, alkali diffusivity, and other electrochemically relevant computable quantities. We then present an overview of computational techniques for the study of rechargeable alkali-ion battery materials, followed by a critical review of the literature applying these techniques to yield crucial insights into battery operation and performance. Finally, we provide perspectives on outstanding challenges and opportunities in the theory and computation of rechargeable alkali-ion battery materials.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

An Integrated Framework for Memory-Centric Analysis: From Trace Collection to Co-Design

The memory wall phenomenon—where advances in processor performance significantly outpace those in memory subsystems—poses a fundamental challenge for contemporary computing systems. In memory-bound applications, memory subsystem behavior dominates performance, yet existing analysis approaches present significant limitations: detailed microarchitectural simulators require days to weeks to simulate modest workloads; hardware performance counters provide only aggregate statistics that obscure temporal and spatial access patterns; and scaled simulation approaches face challenges in capturing certain behaviors that emerge at larger scales. These limitations reflect a processor-centric design philosophy increasingly misaligned with memory-bound workloads where detailed understanding of memory access patterns, cache hierarchy interactions, and contention is critical for effective optimization. This paper presents an integrated framework for memory-centric analysis that enables effective hardware-software co-design. We describe practical trace collection techniques, including hardware-assisted processor tracing with minimal overhead and portable software-based instrumentation with statistical sampling. We present multi-perspective analysis methods that examine memory behavior from temporal, sequential, spatial, and relational viewpoints, revealing distinct optimization opportunities invisible in aggregate metrics. We detail an architectural modeling framework that uses sampled traces with temporal interpolation and confidence-based filtering to evaluate cache and memory configurations. Evaluation on representative benchmarks demonstrates that this framework achieves practical accuracy (L2 cache errors of 2.64\%, confidence-filtered L3 errors of 9.92\%, bandwidth errors of 7.33\%) while providing substantial speedup (26.8×) over cycle-accurate simulation, enabling rapid design space exploration. We demonstrate how this integrated framework enables systematic identification of both hardware optimizations (memory controller tuning, bank partitioning, NUMA configuration) and software optimizations (data layout restructuring, prefetching strategies, memory-aware scheduling). Through this comprehensive treatment of the memory-centric analysis pipeline—from trace collection through architectural modeling to co-design application—we provide researchers and practitioners with practical techniques for addressing memory bottlenecks in contemporary computing systems.

Gajaria, Dhruv Mayur↗

Optimization and Portability of a Fusion OpenACC-based FORTRAN HPC Code from NVIDIA to AMD GPUs

NVIDIA has been the main provider of GPU hardware in HPC systems for over a decade. Most applications that benefit from GPUs have thus been developed and optimized for the NVIDIA software stack. Recent exascale HPC systems are, however, introducing GPUs from other vendors, e.g. with the AMD GPU-based OLCF Frontier system just becoming available. AMD GPUs cannot be directly accessed using the NVIDIA software stack, and require a porting effort by the application developers. This paper provides an overview of our experience porting and optimizing the CGYRO code, a widely-used fusion simulation tool based on FORTRAN with OpenACC-based GPU acceleration. While the porting from the NVIDIA compilers was relatively straightforward using the CRAY compilers on the AMD systems, the performance optimization required more fine-tuning. In the optimization effort, we uncovered code sections that had performed well on NVIDIA GPUs, but were unexpectedly slow on AMD GPUs. After AMD-targeted code optimizations, performance on AMD GPUs has increased to meet our expectations. Modest speed improvements were also seen on NVIDIA GPUs, which was an unexpected benefit of this exercise.

Sfiligoi, Igor↗

Elucidating the Origins of High Capacity in Iron-Based Conversion Materials: Benefit of Complementary Advanced Characterization toward Mechanistic Understanding

Lithium-ion batteries are recognized as an important electrochemical energy storage technology due to their superior volumetric and gravimetric energy densities. Graphite is widely used as the negative electrode, and its adoption enabled much of the modern portable electronics technology landscape. However, developing markets, such as electric vehicles and grid-scale storage, have increased demands, including higher energy content and a diverse materials supply chain. Alternatives that provide the opportunity to increase capacity and address supply chain concerns are of interest. Understanding the fundamental mechanisms that govern battery function is crucial to driving further improvements in the field. Advanced characterization techniques, such as those enabled by synchrotron light sources and high-resolution electron microscopes, that can uncover these mechanisms have become a necessity for elucidating structural evolution upon electrochemical conversion at the nano- to mesoscales. Performing these experiments with relevant electrochemistry using in situ and operando experiments imparts the ability to identify critical reaction pathways and capture intermediate (dis)charge products not discernible by traditional experiments.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Early experiences evaluating the HPE/Cray ecosystem for AMD GPUs

Summary The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has a long history of supporting and promoting GPU‐accelerated computing starting with the deployment of the Titan supercomputer in 2021 and continuing with the Summit supercomputer which has a theoretical peak performance of approximately 200 petaflops. Because the majority of Summit's computational power comes from its 27,972 GPUs, users must port their applications to one of the supported programming models in order to make efficient use of the system. To prepare the transition to Frontier, the OLCF's exascale supercomputer, users will need to adapt to an entirely new ecosystem which will include new hardware and software technologies. First, users will need to familiarize themselves with the AMD Radeon GPU architecture. Furthermore, users who have been previously relying on CUDA will need to transition to the Heterogeneous‐Computing Interface for Portability (HIP) or one of the other supported programming models (e.g., OpenMP, OpenACC). In this work, we describe our initial experiences and lessons learned in porting three applications or proxy apps currently running on Summit to the HPE/Cray ecosystem to leverage the compute power from AMD GPUs: minisweep, GenASiS, and Sparkler. Each one is representative of current production workloads utilized at the OLCF, different programming languages, and different programming models.

Melesse Vergara, Verónica G.↗