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At least 883 records · Page 49

Electromagnetic Scattering by Discrete Random Media. IV: Coherent Backscattering

The problem of backscattering of light by a discrete random medium illuminated by an obliquely incident plane electromagnetic wave is considered.The analysis is performed in a linear-polarization basis and includes a complete derivation of the cross reflection matrix for a layer with densely and sparsely distributed particles, the design of an approximate method for computing the ladder and cross reflection matrices in the case of a semi-infinite medium with a sparse distribution of particles, the derivation of the relations between the elements of the ladder and cross reflection matrices in the exact backscattering direction for dense and sparse media, and the development of practical algorithms for solving the underlying integral equations by the method of Picard iterations and the discrete ordinate method. Simulation results for particles with large size parameters are also presented.

Adrian Doicu↗

Optical vortices with large orbital momentum : generation and interference

We demonstrate a method for generation of beams of light with large angular momenta. The method utilizes whispering gallery mode resonators that transform a plane electromagnetic wave into high order Bessel beams. Interference pattern among the beams as well as shadow pictures induced by the beams are observed and studied.

Maleki, Lute↗

A Dual Linear/Circular Polarized Wideband Flat Panel Phased Array Antenna for K/Ka-band 6U CubeSat Communications Applications

Circular polarized (CP) electromagnetic waves are preferred for space-to-space and space-to-ground satellite communications (SATCOM). CubeSats with 6U sizes (1U represents a 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm), that will rotate together with the Moon as it orbits Earth require high gain CP antenna systems to maintain reliable communication links. Here, we have designed an 8x8 dual linear and dual circularly polarized phased array antenna (PAA) aperture that offers 22-28 GHz bandwidth, with maximum gain of 23 dBic, and beam scanning capability of ±50o with acceptable axial ratio over all scan angles. A stacked patch topology is selected to achieve wide impedance bandwidth. Each driven patch has two via feed point locations that are connected to grounded coplanar waveguide (CPW) feed structures. By utilizing phase shifters from the Anokiwave RFICs (AWMF-0165) employed for the beamforming network (BFN), we have generated both dual linear polarization and dual circular polarization in each patch. Each driven and parasitic patch is innovatively shaped to achieve excellent isolation between two feed points which, in turn, leads to low cross polarization, high efficiency and good axial ratio over the entire bandwidth. Each chip has eight outputs which feed one 2x2 sub-array consisting of four dual linear or dual circularly polarized driven patches, simultaneously. Each 2x2 sub-array of the 8x8 array are sequentially rotated which improves axial ratio performance when the antenna operates in the dual circularly polarized mode. By utilizing a mirror effect, cross-polarized fields are also improved when operated in a dual linear polarized mode. The 8x8 array aperture is simulated taking into account the effect of the multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) stack-up of the BFN and co-simulated with the power splitter outputs and chip outputs and results are compared with only passive array performance. The performance of the antenna is still excellent when non-ideal chip performances are included in the simulation analysis. The fabricated array will be tested for radiation patterns in the Antenna and Microwave Laboratory (AML) of the San Diego State University and the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) spherical near field chambers. The design of the 8x8 antenna array with BFN layout is shown in Fig. 1.

5G↗

NASA's Moon to Mars Autonomous Habitat Status

NASA is developing a strategy for sending humans to the Mars vicinity, known broadly as the Moon to Mars (M2M) Campaign. A critical part of this campaign is the development of in-space and surface habitation systems capable of substantially extending human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Mars missions feature an in-space transit habitat capable of supporting crews of four on ~850-1200-day missions, including transit to and from Mars and time in Mars orbit. Surface and transit habitats are complex elements which must keep crewmembers healthy and productive in deep-space environments with limited resources, long rescue times in contingency situations, and communication delays; all within constrained mass, volume, and power budgets. These habitats provide crew both living and workspace as well as most of the resources needed to support crew life. For deep space habitats, automation needs to be employed due to latency and for significant amounts of time when the habitats are uncrewed. Automation of systems is possible in space applications, but there are limitations. Outside of the Earth’s (or any) magnetosphere, radiation environments are harsh to both the physical hardware and the software components. Radiation (charged particles and ionizing electromagnetic waves) degrades and damages the hardware and causes single event upsets (SEUs) in software. If the hardware is damaged, data can be lost, or control actions not made. For software, SEUs cause algorithms to result in different solutions, or incorrect commands to be sent out. This means that algorithms and hardware used for deep space systems are different than what is used on Earth. Radiation-tolerant hardware is generations behind the current state-of-the-art hardware. Recent NASA missions, such as James Webb Space Telescope, continue to rely on older technologies such as the RAD750 processor, and the most advanced processors are still single core and less than 1.5 GHz. There have been attempts to use higher performance processors, but these often take multiple mitigation steps to handle the radiation environments, which limits the processing power and/or throughput. Current techniques for radiation mitigation have been redundancies, voting, physical separation of hardware, encasing materials, under-clocking hardware, and more. Some radiation mitigation techniques do provide benefits such as having a redundant system to improve the probability that a system will be available when needed. Autonomous software systems will have fewer interactions with humans on deep space missions and therefore need to be able to handle more off-nominal conditions. Microgravity also complicates the autonomous aspects of the mission because autonomous systems are usually built from known deterministic states, but microgravity causes physical objects to shift and move changing the location an autonomous system placed the object. Not only does the software need to be reliable and deterministic, losing resources due to a software error is not only costly but detrimental to reputation. The combination of having lower performance hardware and having to be able to verify and deterministically run software and an ever-changing environment makes deep space autonomous systems more complicated. Multiple gaps have been identified including verification of autonomous software algorithms (including artificial intelligence and machine learning), higher performance processors (graphics and general purpose), high speed networks (onboard and transmissions), memory, power distribution, data security, and variations from these. These gaps need to be closed for more advanced systems to be deployed and reduce the size, weight, and power impacts on the habitats.

Scott B. Tashakkor↗

Hybrid Kinetic Model of the Interaction Between the Dense Plasma Clouds and Magnetospheric Plasma on Large Time and Spatial Scales, and Comparison With MMS Observations

We present a new simulation results of the cloud dynamics in the ambient magnetospheric plasma on the large time and spatial scales. It was assumed that these impulsive structures observed by the MMS spacecraft originally were created because of the reconnection at the magnetopause. Our new 3-D hybrid kinetic modeling on the large time and spatial scales captures several of these processes: an excitation of the electromagnetic waves (whistler and shear-Alfvén waves) and plasma instabilities (mirror and flute); a formation of shock waves, and collapsing diamagnetic cavity; particle acceleration. A strong overshoot in plasma density profile was observed in the modeling and MMS observation at the interface between the cloud and magnetospheric plasma. The cloud expansion into ambient magnetospheric plasma causes the flute waves connected with excitation of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability observed at the overshoot in plasma density profile across the external magnetic field. The modeling demonstrates a formation of the whistler waves at the initial stage which propagate in the external magnetic field direction. At the later stage, a formation of shear-Alfvén waves was observed

A. S. Lipatov↗

Toward Accurate Thermal Modeling of Phase Change Material Based Photonic Devices

Reconfigurable or programmable photonic devices are rapidly growing and have become an integral part of many optical systems. The ability to selectively modulate electromagnetic waves through electrical stimuli is crucial in the advancement of a variety of applications from data communication and computing devices to environmental science and space explorations. Chalcogenide-based phase change materials (PCMs) are one of the most promising material candidates for reconfigurable photonics due to their large optical contrast between their different solid-state structural phases. Although significant efforts have been devoted to accurate simulation of PCM-based devices, in this paper, we highlight three important aspects which have often evaded prior models yet having significant impacts on the thermal and phase transition behavior of these devices: the enthalpy of fusion, the heat capacity change upon glass transition, as well as the thermal conductivity of liquid-phase PCMs. We further investigated the important topic of switching energy scaling in PCM devices, which also helps explain why the three above-mentioned effects have long been overlooked in electronic PCM memories but only become important in photonics. Our findings offer insight to facilitate accurate modeling of PCM-based photonic devices and can inform the development of more efficient reconfigurable optics.

Phase change materials↗

Multiple Scattering Effects of Trees on L-band Microwave Using a Hybrid Method

The multiple scattering of electromagnetic waves in forests is studied using a two-step hybrid method. First, the T-matrix of a single tree is calculated based on its far-field computed with the full-wave simulations of the FEKO software. The T-matrix captures the multiple scattering caused by the tree structure. Second, the the interactions among different trees are considered using the T-matrices of the individual trees and the Foldy-Lax equations. The result of the two-step hybrid method is validated with FEKO by solving scattering from two trees directly. The multiple scattering effects are illustrated by the field solutions.

Yueh, Simon↗

Advancing Metasurfaces Towards New Frontiers: Nonvolatile Reconfigurable Optics

The applications of adaptive optics extend across multiple sectors, encompassing areas such as LiDAR, biological and chemical sensing, and free-space communications. In this study, we report on the design, fabrication, testing, and modeling of electrically reconfigurable metasurfaces using a low-loss high contrast phase change material, Ge2Sb2Se4Te integrated with an IR-transparent silicon microheater. Through this work, we introduce a reliable architecture for switching PCM-based metasurfaces within an integrated circuit configuration which is compatible with standard foundry fabrication processes. We demonstrate the capability of controlling the transmission of electromagnetic waves through the precise stimulation of PCM-based pixels, each spanning a few hundred microns, over numerous cycles. By leveraging PCM-based pixels, we unlock the potential to create metasurfaces encompassing a diverse range of functionalities such as dielectric filters, metalens, or beam steering devices, which is governed by the design of the meta-atoms. Further, we perform an in-depth investigation into the failure mechanism utilizing techniques such as Fourier transform IR spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and thermal modeling. According to our results, due to a sharp temperature rise at the PCM/heater interface, we observe severe delamination of the PCM from the heater. More uniform PCM deposition, better adhesion at the PCM/heater interface, and a more uniform temperature distribution in the device could potentially mitigate the failure and lead to a longer life-time. By addressing these challenges, we aim to unlock the full potential of PCM-based devices and advance the field of adaptive optics.

Phase change material↗

Reconfigurable Metasurface Optics at NASA LaRC Towards Space Image Sensing

Reconfigurable optical metasurfaces are rapidly emerging as a major frontier in photonics research, development, and applications. They promise compact, lightweight, and energy-efficient reconfigurable optical systems with unprecedented performance and functions that can be dynamically defined on-demand. Space applications represent an emerging area in which these characteristics are highly prized. The ability to dynamically tune optical functions through selective modulation of electromagnetic waves is crucial to the advancement of a variety of sensing applications, from imaging spectrometers to light detection and ranging (LiDAR). This presentation introduces a reconfigurable metasurface optic project led by a research team at NASA Langley Research Center (NASA LaRC) since 2019. It covers advances in phase change material-based reconfigurable optics, performance data on reliability enhancement of photonic devices, image sensing system architectures, and mission concepts enabled through these advances.

metasurface↗

Microwave Cavity Simulation Using Ansys HFSS

The design of microwave cavity detectors for axion dark matter research is often accomplished using advanced full-wave electromagnetic simulation software tools. These tools provide a cost-effective approach to evaluate a wide variety of cavity configurations, frequency tuning mechanisms, and conductive or dielectric materials and coatings. One simulation software package used for this application is Ansys High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS), which is based upon the well-established finite element method. HFSS includes numerous features useful for microwave cavity design such as parametric geometry modeling, adaptive meshing algorithm, curvilinear mesh elements, driven modal and eigenmode matrix solvers, and optimization algorithms. This paper describes the use of the HFSS software to simulate microwave cavities for axion haloscope detectors, with an example tutorial for a cylindrical cavity. Excellent agreement between the simulated and analytical results is shown for the resonant frequency, quality factor, and form factor.

Ansys HFSS, Cavity simulation, finite element mode↗

Electrodynamics of Thin Sheets of Twisted Material

We construct a minimal theory describing the optical activity of a thin sheet of a twisted material, the simplest example of which is twisted bilayer graphene. We introduce the notion of "twisted electrical conductivity", which parametrizes the parity-odd response of a thin film to a perpendicularly falling electromagnetic waves with wavelength larger than the thickness of the sheet. Here, we show that the low-frequency Faraday rotation angle has different behaviors in different phases. For an insulator, the Faraday angle behaves as ω 2 at low frequencies, with the coefficient being determined by the linear relationship between a component of the electric quadrupole moment and the external electric field. For superconductors, the Faraday rotation angle is constant when the frequency of the incoming EM waves is below the superconducting gap and is determined by the coefficient of the Lifshitz invariant in the Ginzburg-Landau functional describing the superconducting state. In the metallic state, we show that the twisted conductivity is proportional to the "magnetic helicity" (scalar product of the velocity and the magnetic moment) of the quasiparticle, averaged around the Fermi surface. The theory is general and is applicable to strongly correlated phases.

Son, Dam Thanh↗

Effects of energetic heavy ions on electromagnetic ion cyclotron wave generation in the plasmapause region

An expression for electromagnetic ion cyclotron convective growth rates is derived. The derivation of the dispersion relation and convective growth rates in the presence of a multicomponent energetic and cold plasma is presented. The effects that multiple heavy ions in the ring current and cold plasma produce in the growth and propagation characteristics of ion cyclotron waves are explored. Results of growth rate calculations using parameters consistent with conditions in the plasmapause region during the early recovery phase of geomagnetic storms are presented and compared with ground-based and satellite observations of waves in this region. The geophysical implications of the results are discussed.

Kozyra, J. U.↗

Electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves in the plasma depletion layer

Results of a study of the theoretical properties of electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves which occur in the plasma depletion layer are presented. The analysis assumes a homogeneous plasma with the characteristics which were measured by the AMPTE/CCE satellite at 1450-1501 UT on October 5, 1984. Waves were observed in the Pc 1 frequency range below the hydrogen gyrofrequency, and these waves are identified as EMIC waves. The higher-frequency instability is driven by the temperature anisotropy of the H(+) ions, while the lower-frequency instability is driven by the temperature anisotropy of the He(2+) ions. It is argued that the higher-frequency waves will have k roughly parallel to B(0) and will be left-hand polarized, while the lower frequency wave band will have k oblique to B(0) and will be linearly polarized, in agreement with observations.

Denton, Richard E.↗

Self-Consistent Model of Magnetospheric Electric Field, Ring Current, Plasmasphere, and Electromagnetic Ion Cyclotron Waves: Initial Results

Further development of our self-consistent model of interacting ring current (RC) ions and electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves is presented. This model incorporates large scale magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling and treats self-consistently not only EMIC waves and RC ions, but also the magnetospheric electric field, RC, and plasmasphere. Initial simulations indicate that the region beyond geostationary orbit should be included in the simulation of the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. Additionally, a self-consistent description, based on first principles, of the ionospheric conductance is required. These initial simulations further show that in order to model the EMIC wave distribution and wave spectral properties accurately, the plasmasphere should also be simulated self-consistently, since its fine structure requires as much care as that of the RC. Finally, an effect of the finite time needed to reestablish a new potential pattern throughout the ionosphere and to communicate between the ionosphere and the equatorial magnetosphere cannot be ignored.

Gamayunov, K. V.↗

Studies of electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves using AMPTE/CCE and dynamics explorer

The overall objective of this research is to investigate the generation and propagation of electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves in the frequency range from 0.2 to 5 Hz (Pc 1 frequency band). Data used in this research were acquired by the AMPTE/CCE, DE-1, and DE-2 satellites. One of the primary questions addressed in this research is the role which EMIC waves have on the transfer of energy from the equatorial magnetosphere to the ionosphere. The primary result from this research is that some fraction of EMIC waves, generated in the equatorial magnetosphere, are Landau damped in the ionosphere and are therefore a heat source for ionospheric electrons. This result as well as other results are summarized below.

Erlandson, Robert E.↗

(Un)Explained EMIC Waves: Understanding Quiet Time EMIC Wave Drivers

Electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves are known to be generated through cyclotron resonance with the local ion particle population and grow when there is a large enough temperature anisotropy. In general, these temperature anisotropies necessary for wave growth are found to be associated with either solar wind pressure pulses or particle injections during geomagnetic storms or substorms. However, some EMIC events do not show any clear association with these known drivers and appear unexplained. In our analysis of high-amplitude (>1 nT) non-storm time EMIC waves, we find that 24 out of the 223 (~11%) EMIC events with peak amplitude greater than 1 nT were not found to be associated with any clear EMIC wave driver. This raises a compelling question: What magnetospheric or solar wind driver provides the free energy to grow these quiet-time EMIC waves? Here, we examine two EMIC events on 13 April 2017 and 13 February 2014, which were excited during extremely quiet solar wind and geomagnetic conditions. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis of field and particle measurements from multiple data sets, including ground and in situ data for these two events, indicates that extremely weak and otherwise insignificant pressure values and/or very weak substorm injections occurring multiple hours before the event play a significant role in quiet time wave generation.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Implementation and Testing of the First Prompt Search for Electromagnetic Counterparts to Gravitational Wave Transients

A transient astrophysical event observed in both gravitational wave (OW) and electromagnetic (EM) channels would yield rich scientific rewards. A first program initiating EM follow-ups to possible transient OW events has been developed and exercised by the LIGO and Virgo community in association with several partners. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the methods used to promptly identify and localize OW event candidates and to request images of targeted sky locations. Methods. During two observing periods (Dec 172009 to Jan 8 2010 and Sep 2 to Oct 20 2010), a low-latency analysis pipeline was used to identify OW event candidates and to reconstruct maps of possible sky locations. A catalog of nearby galaxies and Milky Way globular clusters was used to select the most promising sky positions to be imaged, and this directional information was delivered to EM observatories with time lags of about thirty minutes. A Monte Carlo simulation has been used to evaluate the low-latency OW pipeline's ability to reconstruct source positions correctly. Results. For signals near the detection threshold, our low-latency algorithms often localized simulated GW burst signals to tens of square degrees, while neutron star/neutron star inspirals and neutron star/black hole inspirals were localized to a few hundred square degrees. Localization precision improves for moderately stronger signals. The correct sky location of signals well above threshold and originating from nearby galaxies may be observed with approx.50% or better probability with a few pointings of wide-field telescopes. Key words. gravitational waves - methods: observational

Camp, Jordan↗

The production of He-3 and heavy ion enrichment in He-3-rich flares by electromagnetic hydrogen cyclotron waves

A new model is presented for the production of He-3 and heavy ion enrichments in He-3-rich flares using a direct single-stage mechanism. In analogy with the production of electromagnetic hydrogen cyclotron waves in earth's aurora by electron beams, it is suggested that such waves should exist in the electron acceleration region of impulsive solar flares. Both analytic and test-particle models of the effect of such waves in a nonuniform magnetic field show that these waves can selectively accelerate He-3 and heavy ions to MeV energies in a single-stage process, in contrast to other models which require a two-stage mechanism.

Temerin, M.↗