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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 955 records · Page 53
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DOE OSTI2024

FLARE: field line analysis and reconstruction for 3D boundary plasma modeling

The FLARE code is a magnetic mesh generator that is integrated within a suite of tools for the analysis of the magnetic geometry in toroidal fusion devices. A magnetic mesh is constructed from field line segments and permits fast reconstruction of field lines in 3D boundary plasma codes such as EMC3-EIRENE. Both intrinsically non-axisymmetric configurations (stellarators) and those with symmetry breaking perturbations of an axisymmetric equilibrium (tokamaks) are supported. The code itself is written in Modern Fortran with MPI support for parallel computing, and it incorporates object-oriented programming for the definition of the magnetic field and the material surface geometry. Extended derived types for a number of different magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium and plasma response models are implemented. The core element of FLARE is a field line tracer with adaptive step-size control, and this is integrated into tools for the construction of Poincaré maps and invariant manifolds of X-points. A collection of high-level procedures that generate output files for visualization is build on top of that. The analysis modules are build with Python frontends that facilitate customization of tasks and/or scripting of parameter scans.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

A hybrid 3D/2D field response calculation for liquid argon detectors with PCB based anode plane

Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) technology is commonly utilized in neutrino detector designs. It enables detailed reconstruction of neutrino events with high spatial precision and low energy threshold. Its field response (FR) model describes the time-dependent electric currents induced in the anode-plane electrodes when ionization electrons drift nearby. An accurate and precise FR is a crucial input to LArTPC detector simulations and charge reconstruction. Established LArTPC designs have been based on parallel wire planes. It allows accurate and computationally economic two-dimensional (2D) FR models utilizing the translational symmetry along the direction of the wires. Recently, novel LArTPC designs utilize electrodes formed on printed circuit board (PCB) in the shape of strips with through holes. The translational symmetry is no longer a good approximation near the electrodes and a new FR calculation that employs regions with three dimensions (3D) has been developed. Extending the 2D models to 3D would be computationally expensive. Fortuitously, the nature of strips with through holes allows for a computationally economic approach based on the finite-difference method (FDM). In this paper, we present a new software package pochoir that calculates LArTPC field response for these new strip-based anode designs. This package combines 3D calculations in the volume near the electrodes with 2D far-field solutions to achieve fast and precise field response computation. We apply the resulting FR to simulate and reconstruct samples of cosmic-ray muons and 39 Ar decays from a Vertical Drift (VD) detector prototype operated at CERN. We find the difference between real and simulated data within 5%. Current state-of-the-art LArTPC software requires a 2D FR which we provide by averaging over one dimension and estimate that variations lost in this average are smaller than 7%.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Cosmic ray transport in mixed magnetic fields and their role on the observed anisotropies

ABSTRACT There is a growing set of observational data demonstrating that cosmic rays exhibit small-scale anisotropies (5°–30°) with amplitude deviations lying between 0.01–0.1 per cent that of the average cosmic ray flux. A broad range of models have been proposed to explain these anisotropies ranging from finite-scale magnetic field structures to dark matter annihilation. The standard diffusion transport methods used in cosmic ray propagation do not capture the transport physics in a medium with finite-scale or coherent magnetic field structures. Here, we present a Monte Carlo transport method, applying it to a series of finite-scale magnetic field structures to determine the requirements of such fields in explaining the observed cosmic ray, small-scale anisotropies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Nonadiabatic Strong-Field Photoionization Revisited

We measure strong field ionization of cesium atoms, observing a robust feature near 2⁢𝑈p in the photoelectron spectrum, which we call the intermediate energy structure (IES). Using a Coulomb-corrected strong-field approximation, we show it arises from electrons born with large inward velocities that rapidly undergo forward scattering off the Coulomb potential. The IES is similar to the previously identified low energy structure in that they are both due to forward scattering. However, it is different in that IES requires both nonadiabatic ionization conditions (as defined by the Keldysh parameter) and a more weakly bound initial state. Furthermore, our joint experimental and theoretical study supports the need for an additional parameter in characterization of strong field ionization, which depends both on nonadiabaticity of the process and the principal quantum number of the target. Together with Reiss and Keldysh parameters, this dimensionless parameter expands the description of strong field ionization across a broad range of atomic targets and incorporates ionization from excited states.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Exact solutions for the electromagnetic fields of a flying focus

The intensity peak of a “flying” focus travels at a programmable velocity over many Rayleigh ranges while maintaining a near-constant profile. Assessing the extent to which these features can enhance laser-based applications requires an accurate description of the electromagnetic fields. Here we present exact analytical solutions to Maxwell’s equations for the electromagnetic fields of a constant-velocity flying focus, generalized for arbitrary polarization and orbital angular momentum. Furthermore, the approach combines the complex source-point method, which transforms multipole solutions into beam-like solutions, with the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell’s equations. Propagating the fields backward in space reveals the space-time profile that an optical assembly must produce to realize these fields in the laboratory. Comparisons with simpler paraxial solutions provide conditions for their reliable use when modeling a flying focus.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Strategies for simulating the time evolution of Hamiltonian lattice field theories

Simulating the time evolution of quantum field theories given some Hamiltonian H requires developing algorithms for implementing the unitary operator e -iHt . A variety of techniques exist that accomplish this task, with the most common technique used so far being Trotterization, which is a special case of the application of a product formula. However, other techniques exist that promise better asymptotic scaling in certain parameters of the theory being simulated, the most efficient of which are based on the concept of block encoding. In this work we study the performance of such algorithms in simulating lattice field theories. We derive and compare the asymptotic gate complexities of several commonly used simulation techniques in application to Hamiltonian lattice field theories. Using the scalar $\hat{φ}$ 4 theory as a test, we also perform numerical studies and compare the gate costs required by product formulas and signal-processing-based techniques to simulate time evolution. For the latter, we use the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) construction augmented with the quantum Fourier transform circuit to switch between the field and momentum eigenbases, which leads to immediate order-of-magnitude improvement in the cost of preparing the block encoding. Further, this paper also includes a pedagogical review of the techniques used, in particular product formulas, LCU, qubitization, quantum signal processing, as well as the technique for simulating geometrically-local Hamiltonians developed by Haah, Hastings, Kothari, and Low.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Theory and phase-field simulations of electrical control of spin cycloids in a multiferroic

Cycloidal spin orders are common in multiferroics. One of the prototypical examples is BiFeO 3 (BFO) which shows a large polarization and a cycloidal antiferromagnetic (AFM) order at room temperature. Here, we employ Landau theory and phase-field simulations to analyze the coupled switching dynamics of polarization and cycloidal AFM orders in BFO. We identify 14 types of transitional spin structures between two cycloids and nine electric-field-induced spin switching paths. We demonstrate the electric-field-induced rotation of wave vectors of the cycloidal spins and discover two types of cycloidal spin switching dynamics: fast local spin flips and slow rotation of wave vectors. Also, we construct roadmaps to achieve the switching between any two spin cycloids through multistep applications of electric fields. Furthermore, this paper provides a theoretical framework for the phenomenological description of spin cycloids and a fundamental understanding of the switching mechanisms to achieve electrical control of magnetic orders.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2025

Protected fermionic zero modes in periodic gauge fields

It is well known that macroscopically normalizable zero-energy wave functions of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles in a two-dimensional inhomogeneous magnetic field are spin-polarized and exactly calculable with degeneracy equaling the number of flux quanta linking the whole system. Here, extending this argument to massless Dirac fermions subjected to magnetic fields that have zero net flux but are doubly periodic in real space, we show that there exist only two Bloch-normalizable zero-energy eigenstates, one for each spin flavor. This result is immediately relevant to graphene multilayer systems subjected to doubly periodic strain fields, which at low energies enter the Hamiltonian as periodic pseudogauge vector potentials. Furthermore, we explore various related settings including nonlinearly dispersing band structure models and systems with singly periodic magnetic fields.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Constructing chiral effective field theory around unnatural leading-order interactions

A momentum-dependent formulation based on a stationary spin-0 and isospin-1 dibaryon field is proposed to improve convergence of chiral effective field theory in the 1 S 0 channel of NN scattering. Although the two-parameter leading-order interaction appears to be unnatural, it nevertheless has the necessary features of an effective field theory. A rapid order-by-order convergence is found in 1 S 0 . As an application beyond the two-body level, the triton binding energy is studied and compared to standard chiral effective field theory with partly perturbative pions. Here, the consistency of the chiral Lagrangian for the new formulation is examined by working out the pionic radiative corrections, and consequences of nontrivial chiral-connection terms are discussed.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Deformations, relaxation, and broken symmetries in liquids, solids, and glasses: A unified topological field theory

Here, we combine hydrodynamic and field theoretic methods to develop a general theory of phonons as Goldstone bosons in crystals, glasses, and liquids based on nonaffine displacements and the consequent Goldstone phase relaxation. We relate the conservation, or lack thereof, of specific higher-form currents with properties of the underlying deformation field—nonaffinity—which dictates how molecules move under an applied stress or deformation. In particular, the single-valuedness of the deformation field is associated with conservation of higher-form charges that count the number of topological defects. Our formalism predicts, from first principles, the presence of propagating shear waves above a critical wave vector in liquids, thus giving a formal derivation of the phenomenon in terms of fundamental symmetries. The same picture provides also a theoretical explanation of the corresponding “positive sound dispersion” phenomenon for longitudinal sound. Importantly, accordingly to our theory, the main collective relaxation timescale of a liquid or a glass (known as the α relaxation for the latter) is given by the phase relaxation time, which is not necessarily related to the Maxwell time. Finally, we build a nonequilibrium effective action using the in-in formalism defined on the Schwinger-Keldysh contour, that further supports the emerging picture. In summary, our work suggests that the fundamental difference between solids, fluids, and glasses has to be identified with the associated generalized higher-form global symmetries and their topological structure, and that the Burgers vector for the displacement fields serves as a suitable topological order parameter distinguishing the solid (ordered) phase and the amorphous ones (fluids, glasses).

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Energizing charged particles by an orbit instability in a slowly rotating magnetic field

In this work, the stability of charged particle motion in a uniform magnetic field with an added spatially uniform transverse rotating magnetic field (RMF) is studied analytically. It is found that the stability diagram of a single particle's orbit depends critically on the chosen boundary conditions. We show that for many boundary conditions and wide regions in the parameter space, RMFs oscillating far below the cyclotron frequency can cause linear instabilities in the motion which break μ invariance and energize particles. Such energization may appear at odds with the adiabatic invariance of μ; however, adiabatic invariance is an asymptotic result and does not preclude such heating by magnetic fields oscillating at slow frequencies. This mechanism may contribute to heating in the edge plasma of field-reversed configurations (FRCs) in rotamak-FRC experiments. Furthermore, these RMF-driven instabilities may significantly enhance azimuthal current drive during the formation of FRCs in such devices.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Nonlinear ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability: Increased growth due to self-generated magnetic fields

The growth rate of the nonlinear ablative Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability is enhanced by magnetic fields self-generated by the Biermann battery mechanism; a scaling for this effect with perturbation height and wavelength is proposed and validated with extended-magnetohydrodynamic simulations. The magnetic flux generation rate around a single RT spike is found to scale with the spike height. The Hall parameter, which quantifies electron magnetization, is found to be strongly enhanced for short-wavelength spikes due to Nernst compression of the magnetic field at the spike tip. Furthermore, the impact of the magnetic field on spike growth is through both the suppressed thermal conduction into the unstable spike and the Righi-Leduc heat flow deflecting heat from the spike tip to the base. Righi-Leduc is found to be the dominant effect for small Hall parameters, while suppressed thermal conduction dominates for large Hall parameters. These results demonstrate the importance of considering magnetic fields in all perturbed inertial confinement fusion hot spots.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Magnetoelectric effect arising from a field-induced pseudo Jahn-Teller distortion in a rare-earth magnet

Magnetoelectric materials are attractive for several applications, including actuators, switches, and magnetic field sensors. Typical mechanisms for achieving a strong magnetoelectric coupling are rooted in transition metal magnetism. In sharp contrast, here we identify CsEr(MoO 4 ) 2 as a magnetoelectric material without magnetic transition metal ions, thus ensuring that the Er ions play a key role in achieving this interesting property. Our detailed study includes measurements of the structural, magnetic, and magnetoelectric properties of this material. Bulk characterization and neutron powder diffraction show no evidence for structural phase transitions down to 0.3 K and therefore CsEr(MoO 4 ) 2 maintains the room temperature P2/c space group over a wide temperature range without external magnetic field. These same measurements also identify collinear antiferromagnetic ordering of the Er 3+ moments below T N =0.87K. Complementary dielectric constant and pyroelectric current measurements reveal that a ferroelectric phase with a maximum polarization P~0.6 nC/cm 2 emerges when applying a modest external magnetic field, which indicates that this material has a strong magnetoelectric coupling. Finally, we argue that the magnetoelectric coupling in this system arises from a pseudo Jahn-Teller distortion induced by the magnetic field.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Towards Feature-Preserving 2D and 3D Vector Field Compression

The objective of this work is to develop error-bounded lossy compression methods to preserve topological features in 2D and 3D vector fields. Specifically, we explore the preservation of critical points in piecewise linear vector fields. We define the preservation of critical points as, without any false positive, false negative, or false type change in the decompressed data, (1) keeping each critical point in its original cell and (2) retaining the type of each critical point (e.g., saddle and attracting node). The key to our method is to adapt a vertex-wise error bound for each grid point and to compress input data together with the error bound field using a modified lossy compressor. Our compression algorithm can be also embarrassingly parallelized for large data handling and in situ processing. We benchmark our method by comparing it with existing lossy compressors in terms of false positive/negative/type rates, compression ratio, and various vector field visualizations with several scientific applications.

critical points↗
DOE OSTI2021

Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Field Surveyed Backsheet Degradation

Assessing photovoltaic module backsheet durability is critical to increasing module lifetime. Lab based accelerating testing has recently failed to predict large scale failures of widely adopted polymeric materials. Field surveyed data is critical to assess the performance of component lifetime. Using a documented field survey protocol, 13 field surveys where conducted. Each measurement is encoded with it's spatial location in respect to the other modules. By combining field survey data on degradation predictors with real time satellite weather data, data-driven predictive models of backsheet degradation were trained. LOESS models were constructed to investigate the spatial dependence of measurements. It was found that micro-climatic effects like tree-lines, ground surface changes, and elevation changes effected the magnitude and variance of the measurements. A GAM model was created to predict the value of degradation based on measured predictors. The model includes variables on the climate of the system and the location of each measurement in the PV mounting structure. The model performed well with an adj.R 2 of 0.95 for yellowness index prediction. The model was cross-validated using k-folds.

backsheet↗
DOE OSTI2024

Assessment of Training Performance, Degradation and Robustness of Paraffin-Wax Impregnated Nb 3 Sn Demonstrator Under High Magnetic Field

In the context of high-energy physics, the use of Nb 3 Sn superconducting magnets as a cost-effective and reliable technology depends on improvements in the following areas: long development and manufacturing cycles, conductor degradation after thermal cycling, long training, as well as a demonstration in accelerator magnets with a beam aperture of the full potential of modern Nb 3 Sn conductors. In short, performance, robustness, and cost are the three issues to be addressed. The Magnet Development project (MagDev) of the Swiss Accelerator Research and Technology initiative (CHART) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) aims to contribute to the solutions to each of these issues, re-thinking the manufacturing and design process. Here in our program, every innovation is to be validated by means of a panoply of fast-turnaround tools: from non-powered and powered samples and coils, tested under background field, to low-field subscale magnets and high field short prototypes. This work presents one element in this panoply of R&D vehicles: a stress-managed Nb 3 Sn coil called BigBOX, impregnated with paraffin wax, and tested, through a collaboration with the Magnet Development Program of the United States (US-MDP), in the background field of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)’s common coils dipole DCC17.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2025

Aluminum Boron Nitride Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistors With ZnO Semiconductor Channel

The discovery of ferroelectricity in hafnium zirconium oxide (HfxZr 1−x O2) and related fluorite materials has spurred interest in ferroelectric devices suitable for integration with silicon integrated circuits (ICs), especially those that can be embedded in the back-end-of-line (BEOL) process. More recently, ferroelectricity has been found in wurtzite aluminum nitride-based materials, such as scandium and boron-doped aluminum nitride (Al 1−x ScxN and Al 1−x BxN). Although these materials currently have undesirably large coercive electric fields, and small breakdown electric field-to-coercive electric field ratio, their low processing temperatures and large remanent polarization offer intriguing possibilities for device applications. Furthermore, we report ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) with a 15 nm thick Al0.88B0.12N layer and an 11 nm ZnO semiconductor channel, achieving a memory window >1 V and switching voltages ( V switch ) <±10 V.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Field Enhancement Integration Design Featuring Misalignment Tolerance for Wireless EV Charging Using LCL Topology

This article proposes a magnetic integration design for EV wireless power transfer (WPT) systems, where the compensation and transmitting coils overlap one on top of the other to share the ferrite layer without any decoupling consideration. The magnetic field generated by both the compensation and transmitting coils are exploited to transfer power. To this end, a compensation method is proposed to enable magnetic field enhancement without any reactive power flow between the compensation and the transmitting coils, and to achieve input zero phase angle and constant current output. In addition, an efficient finite element analysis-based coil optimization algorithm is proposed to improve the coil misalignment tolerance on the horizontal plane, in which a reversely connected inner coil is used to stabilize the system output under misalignment conditions. Analytical and simulation results confirm transmission flux density enhancement and reduced leakage field characteristics of the proposed coil design. Finally, a scaled-down WPT prototype is built and tested to verify the performance and effectiveness of the design. The proposed design achieves 91.17% efficiency and misalignment tolerance up to 200 mm in any XY-direction while maintaining the power transfer and its efficiency. The results of this work provide insights into magnetic integration design of high-order compensation topologies featuring higher compactness, less ferrite usage, magnetic field enhancement, and misalignment tolerance for WPT systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗