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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 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Interpretation of electromagnetic modes in the sub-TAE frequency range in JET plasmas with elevated monotonic q-profiles

Recent JET deuterium experiments with an advanced tokamak scenario using an internal transport barrier (ITB) have been performed to clearly observe destabilized toroidicity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) by fast ions; interestingly, these also exhibit unstable electromagnetic (EM) perturbations in the sub-TAE frequency range. We identify such EM perturbations to be beta-induced ion temperature gradient (BTG) eigenmodes and not beta-induced Alfvén eigenmodes nor beta-induced Alfvén acoustic eigenmodes, which are often unstable in such high-beta plasmas with high-power neutral beam injection (NBI). The BTG modes are the most unstable modes due to the high thermal ion temperature gradient related to the ITB, high thermal ion temperature compared to thermal electron temperature (high T i /T⁠ e ), and a high ion beta regime. BTG mode experimental characteristics match the analytical theory, i.e., location in the vicinity of a rational magnetic surface with a low magnetic shear, mode frequency scaling with the ion diamagnetic frequency (⁠ω$^*_i$⁠), and a coupling among Alfvén and drift waves. We also perform linear gyrokinetic simulations with validated plasma profiles and equilibrium, and find a mode kinetically driven by thermal ions with similar characteristics as the experimental BTG modes.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Interpreting ion-energy distributions using charge exchange emitted from deeply kinetic field-reversed-configuration plasmas

Energy resolving the atomic hydrogen outflux created within plasmas by charge exchange (CX) of hot plasma ions with cooler hydrogen neutrals is used to infer the ion energy distribution within the plasma, IED p . In high- β plasma with field nulls and ion gyro-radii comparable to the plasma size, the measured ion energy distribution (IED m ) of the CX outflux will depend on the viewing angle and position of the detector. Here, we describe the physics for this, results from a synthetic diagnostic code that contrasts the IED m to the IED p within relatively small and hot field-reversed-configuration plasmas, and how these data can show the presence of magnetic nulls and different orbit classes in the plasma.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Using deep machine learning to interpret proton radiography data from a pulsed power experiment

Deep machine learning is used to analyze a proton radiograph from a tin pulsed power experiment and determine density values for each pixel in the image. Two promising convolutional neural network architectures that have proven to be effective for image analysis in other applications are applied to analyze a proton radiograph and find density values. The process of creating a suitable training dataset is described, involving the Lagrangian hydrodynamic model used for simulations of the experiment, the proton radiography forward model to make synthetic images for training, and the manner in which data augmentation is used to expand the resulting image dataset. It is shown that machine learning not only produces a reasonable density field but is also able to predict features in the density field that are suggested by the proton radiograph but not captured by simulations.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Revisiting the Anisotropic Complex Refractive Indices of Sodium Nitrate for Interpretation of the Reflectance Spectrum of Pressed Pellets

Reflectance spectroscopy is notoriously confounding in that the measured spectral response is highly dependent upon the morphology of the sample. Fortunately, all such perturbations are neatly encoded by the complex refractive index of the sample. Herein, we seek to quantitatively model the measured infrared reflectance spectrum of a specularly flat pressed pellet sample of the birefringent compound, sodium nitrate. Single crystals of sodium nitrate were synthesized via a slow evaporation process and spectroscopically analyzed using polarization-dependent infrared single-angle reflectance spectroscopy. The anisotropic complex refractive index was measured from 7500 to 300 cm-1 (1.33 to 33.33 µm). The deduced anisotropic optical constants were found to be consistent with those previously reported. Once measured and validated, the optical constants were applied to model the pressed pellet reflectance spectrum. It was evident that an average of the anisotropic refractive indices was insufficient to account for the measured pellet reflectance. In order to account for contributions of all possible microcrystalline orientations within the pellet, the Python package PYELLI was used to calculate a basis set of orientation-dependent reflection spectra spanning the distinct ? and ? Euler rotations of the uniaxial crystal. When the population of orientations was allowed to vary freely in a spectral fit analysis, the fit-deduced orientations were tightly clustered along f = 45º, hinting at residual anisotropy in the pressed pellet sample. Conversely, an equally valid spectral fit (with marginally worse fit metric) was obtained when the population was constrained to an isotropic distribution of orientations. Subsequent non-zero cross-polarization reflectance measurements likewise suggested anisotropy in the pellet. However, both grazing incidence wide-angle x-ray scattering and scanning electron microscopy measurements revealed that the microcrystal orientations at the surface of the pressed pellet sample were isotropically distributed (and that the average crystallite size was larger than ?/10). Application of the measured complex refractive indices for modeling the reflectance spectrum of the pressed pellet, and rectification of these seemingly contradictory observations will be discussed.

Wilhelm, Michael J.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Measurement and interpretation of Mueller matrices of barley leaves

We report the results of measuring Mueller matrices for three groups of leaf samples of common barley (Hordeum vulgare): Chlorina mutant, Chlorina etiolated mutant and Cesaer varieties. The repeatability of the measurement results of Mueller matrices of such a complex and highly depolarising object as a plant leaf is demonstrated. It is shown that the barley leaves of these three groups can be reliably identified both at forward scattering and backward scattering modes; the best results are obtained in the case of forward scattering. In both cases, the most informative matrix elements are identified. It is also shown that at backward scattering mode linear dichroism comes out, the magnitude of which increases with decreasing observation angle. (paper)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Collection-limited theory interprets the extraordinary response of single semiconductor organic solar cells

Significance We demonstrate that, instead of the charge generation mechanism, charge collection can readily explain the bottleneck toward higher efficiency single organic semiconductor based OPVs (SS-OPVs). This change in archetype has the potential to transform the design rules for materials used in OPV devices and would inspire searches for a completely different set of polymers for OPV cells. Furthermore, we believe that our findings will broaden the understanding of the physics of charge transport and the impact of charged defect states in organic electronic devices. Hence, this work should have deep and immediate impact on the chemists, materials scientists, and device physicists in the field and would be of broad interest to the organic electronics community.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Growth model interpretation of planet size distribution

Significance The discovery of numerous exoplanet systems containing diverse populations of planets orbiting very close to their host stars challenges the planet formation theories based on the solar system. Here, we focus on the planets with radii of 2–4 R ⊕ , whose compositions are debated. They are thought to be either gas dwarfs consisting of rocky cores embedded in H 2 -rich gas envelopes or water worlds containing significant amounts of H 2 O-dominated fluid/ice in addition to rock and gas. We argue that these planets are water worlds.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Reply to Bracher: Scoring probabilistic forecasts to maximize public health interpretability

Evaluating probabilistic forecasts in the context of a real-time public health surveillance system is a complicated business. We agree with Bracher’s (1) observations that the scores established by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and used to evaluate our forecasts of seasonal influenza in the United States are not “proper” by definition (2). We thank him for raising this important issue.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Interpretations of ground-state symmetry breaking and strong correlation in wavefunction and density functional theories

Significance The ground state of a quantum mechanical system is the lowest-energy eigenstate of the Hamiltonian. In isolation, it persists unchanged forever, with symmetries dictated by those of the Hamiltonian. But near-eigenstates of broken symmetry can persist for long times, even on the scale of human measurement. The appearance of broken symmetries of the electron density or spin density in a density functional calculation can reveal strong correlations among the electrons that are present in a symmetry-unbroken wavefunction. Symmetry breaking can arise when a wave-like fluctuation drops to zero frequency. The presented examples are the stretched hydrogen molecule, antiferromagnetism in solids, and the static charge-density wave in a low-density jellium, which is shown quantitatively to be a zero-frequency plasma wave.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Harnessing interpretable and unsupervised machine learning to address big data from modern X-ray diffraction

The information content of crystalline materials becomes astronomical when collective electronic behavior and their fluctuations are taken into account. In the past decade, improvements in source brightness and detector technology at modern X-ray facilities have allowed a dramatically increased fraction of this information to be captured. Now, the primary challenge is to understand and discover scientific principles from big datasets when a comprehensive analysis is beyond human reach. We report the development of an unsupervised machine learning approach, X-ray diffraction (XRD) temperature clustering (X-TEC), that can automatically extract charge density wave order parameters and detect intraunit cell ordering and its fluctuations from a series of high-volume X-ray diffraction measurements taken at multiple temperatures. We benchmark X-TEC with diffraction data on a quasi-skutterudite family of materials, (Ca x Sr 1–x ) 3 Rh 4 Sn 13 , where a quantum critical point is observed as a function of Ca concentration. We apply X-TEC to XRD data on the pyrochlore metal, Cd 2 Re 2 O 7 , to investigate its two much-debated structural phase transitions and uncover the Goldstone mode accompanying them. We demonstrate how unprecedented atomic-scale knowledge can be gained when human researchers connect the X-TEC results to physical principles. Specifically, we extract from the X-TEC–revealed selection rules that the Cd and Re displacements are approximately equal in amplitude but out of phase. This discovery reveals a previously unknown involvement of 5d 2 Re, supporting the idea of an electronic origin to the structural order. Our approach can radically transform XRD experiments by allowing in operando data analysis and enabling researchers to refine experiments by discovering interesting regions of phase space on the fly.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Interpreting dynamic-compression experiments to uncover the time dependence of freezing: Application to gallium

Using pulsed-power magnetic field sources to compress gallium to gigapascal pressures on nanosecond timescales, we report here experiments on shockless dynamic compression of a liquid metal. Time-resolved velocimetry data reveal signatures of rapid freezing from a metastable liquid state, and we demonstrate that the kinetics of this nonequilibrium solidification can be accurately simulated with a computational modeling framework we have developed in previous studies, where classical nucleation theory is coupled with hydrodynamics. Notably, velocity traces in some of our experiments show evidence of a phase transition, while others do not, even though other types of evidence suggest that solidification may be occurring in all of them. We explain how predictions made by our models regarding the presence or absence of these phase-transition signatures motivated additional experiments that later confirmed the theoretical predictions. Our analysis shows that due to the rapid, quasi-isentropic nature of the loading path, our experiments were able to compress liquid gallium to metastable states that are undercooled below the equilibrium melt temperature by more than 300 K and exhibit pressures that approach five times the equilibrium melt pressure. The understanding gained in this study should form the basis for future dynamic-compression experiments aimed at interrogating melt curves at high pressures.

gallium↗
DOE OSTI2024

Aging heat treatment design for Haynes 282 made by wire-feed additive manufacturing using high-throughput experiments and interpretable machine learning

Wire-feed additive manufacturing (WFAM) produces superalloys with complex thermal cycles and unique microstructures, often requiring optimized heat treatments. To address this challenge, we present a hybrid approach that combines high-throughput experiments, precipitation simulation, and machine learning to design effective aging conditions for the WFAM Haynes 282 superalloy. Our results demonstrate that the γ’ radius is the critical microstructural feature for strengthening Haynes 282 during post-heat treatment compared with the matrix composition and γ’ volume fraction. New aging conditions at 770°C for 50 hours and 730°C for 200 hours were discovered based on the machine learning model and were applied to enhance yield strength, bringing it on par with the wrought counterpart. This approach has significant implications for future AM alloy production, enabling more efficient and effective heat treatment design to achieve desired properties.

CALPHAD↗
DOE OSTI2013

Interpreting near-infrared hydrogen line ratios in T Tauri stars

In accreting young stars, one of the prominent spectral features in the near-infrared is the Paschen and Brackett series in emission. We examine hydrogen line ratios for 16 classical T Tauri stars from SpeX spectra and assess the trends with veiling and accretion. The observed line ratios are compared with two theoretical models for line formation: (1) Baker and Menzel's Case B for radiative ionization and recombination and (2) a set of local line excitation calculations designed to replicate the conditions in T Tauri winds and magnetic accretion columns (KF). While the comparison between Case B and observed line ratios implies a wide range in electron density and temperature among the hydrogen line formation regions in T Tauri stars, the predictions of the local line excitation models give consistent results across multiple diagnostics. Under the assumptions of the local line excitation calculations, we find that n {sub H} in the hydrogen line formation region is constrained to 2 × 10{sup 10}-2 × 10{sup 11} cm{sup –3}, where stars with higher accretion rates have densities at the higher end of this range. Because of uncertainties in extinction, temperature is not well delineated, but falls within the range expected for collisional excitation to produce the line photons. We introduce new diagnostics for assessing extinction based on near-infrared hydrogen line ratios from the local line excitation calculations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

MAGIICAT III. Interpreting self-similarity of the circumgalactic medium with virial mass using Mg II absorption

In Churchill et al., we used halo abundance matching applied to 182 galaxies in the Mg II Absorber-Galaxy Catalog (MAGIICAT) and showed that the mean Mg II λ2796 equivalent width follows a tight inverse-square power law, W{sub r} (2796)∝(D/R {sub vir}){sup –2}, with projected location relative to the galaxy virial radius and that the Mg II absorption covering fraction is effectively invariant with galaxy virial mass, M {sub h}, over the range 10.7 ≤ log M {sub h}/M {sub ☉} ≤ 13.9. In this work, we explore multivariate relationships between W{sub r} (2796), virial mass, impact parameter, virial radius, and the theoretical cooling radius that further elucidate self-similarity in the cool/warm (T = 10{sup 4}-10{sup 4.5} K) circumgalactic medium (CGM) with virial mass. We show that virial mass determines the extent and strength of the Mg II absorbing gas such that the mean W{sub r} (2796) increases with virial mass at fixed distance while decreasing with galactocentric distance for fixed virial mass. The majority of the absorbing gas resides within D ≅ 0.3 R {sub vir}, independent of both virial mass and minimum absorption threshold; inside this region, and perhaps also in the region 0.3 < D/R {sub vir} ≤ 1, the mean W{sub r} (2796) is independent of virial mass. Contrary to absorber-galaxy cross-correlation studies, we show there is no anti-correlation between W{sub r} (2796) and virial mass. We discuss how simulations and theory constrained by observations support self-similarity of the cool/warm CGM via the physics governing star formation, gas-phase metal enrichment, recycling efficiency of galactic scale winds, filament and merger accretion, and overdensity of local environment as a function of virial mass.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Physical interpretation of the angle-dependent magnetic helicity spectrum in the solar wind: The nature of turbulent fluctuations near the proton gyroradius scale

Motivated by recent observations of distinct parallel and perpendicular signatures in magnetic helicity measurements segregated by wave period and angle between the local magnetic field and the solar wind velocity, this paper undertakes a comparison of three intervals of Ulysses data with synthetic time series generated from a physically motivated turbulence model. From these comparisons, it is hypothesized that the observed signatures result from a perpendicular cascade of Alfvénic fluctuations and a local, non-turbulent population of ion-cyclotron or whistler waves generated by temperature anisotropy instabilities. By constraining the model's free parameters through comparison to in situ data, it is found that, on average, ∼95% of the power near dissipative scales is contained in a perpendicular Alfvénic cascade and that the parallel fluctuations are propagating nearly unidirectionally. The effects of aliasing on magnetic helicity measurements are considered and shown to be significant near the Nyquist frequency.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Interpretation of solar irradiance monitor measurements through analysis of 3D MHD simulations

Measurements from the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) on board the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment mission indicate that solar spectral irradiance at visible and IR wavelengths varies in counter phase with the solar activity cycle. The sign of these variations is not reproduced by most of the irradiance reconstruction techniques based on variations of surface magnetism employed so far, and it is not yet clear whether SIM calibration procedures need to be improved or if instead new physical mechanisms must be invoked to explain such variations. We employ three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the solar photosphere to investigate the dependence of solar radiance in SIM visible and IR spectral ranges on variations of the filling factor of surface magnetic fields. We find that the contribution of magnetic features to solar radiance is strongly dependent on the location on the disk of the features, which are negative close to disk center and positive toward the limb. If features are homogeneously distributed over a region around the equator (activity belt), then their contribution to irradiance is positive with respect to the contribution of HD snapshots, but decreases with the increase of their magnetic flux for average magnetic flux larger than 50 G in at least two of the visible and IR spectral bands monitored by SIM. Under the assumption that the 50 G snapshots are representative of quiet-Sun regions, we thus find that the Spectral Irradiance can be in counter-phase with the solar magnetic activity cycle.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗