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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Landau–Zener Transition Enhanced Quantum Sensing in Spin Defects of Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Negatively charged boron vacancies (V $^{–}_{B}$ ) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) comprise a promising quantum sensing platform, optically addressable at room temperature and transferable onto samples. However, broad hyperfine-split spin transitions of the ensemble pose challenges for quantum sensing with conventional resonant excitation due to limited spectral coverage. While V $^{–}_{B}$ in isotopically enriched hBN using 10 B and 15 N isotopes (h 10 B 15 N) exhibits sharper spectral features, significant inhomogeneous broadening persists. We show that, implemented via frequency modulation on an FPGA, a frequency-ramped microwave pulse achieves around 4-fold greater |0⟩→|−1⟩ spin-state population transfer and thus contrast than resonant microwave excitation and thus 16-fold shorter measurement time for spin relaxation-based quantum sensing. Quantum dynamics simulations reveal that an effective two-state Landau–Zener model captures the complex relationship between population inversion and pulse length with relaxations incorporated. Our approach is robust and valuable for quantum relaxometry with spin defects in hBN, especially in noisy environments.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Early- and late-time dynamics of laser-produced plasmas by combining emission and absorption spectroscopy

Optical emission spectroscopy and laser absorption spectroscopy are two highly complementary techniques for diagnosing plasmas, specifically in the determination of important parameters such as temperature and density. In this work, we characterized a laser-produced plasma by combining emission and tunable absorption spectroscopy. Plasmas are produced by focusing pulses from a frequency quadrupled Nd:YAG laser onto a glass target containing a minor concentration of aluminum in an ambient atmosphere of ~100 Torr N 2 . Here, emission spectroscopy is used to investigate the line behavior of Al and Ca, electron density, and excitation temperature at times = 5 μs, while absorption spectroscopy is used to investigate the line behavior of Al and Ca, species density, and kinetic temperature at times = 5-100 μs. A comparison is made between the excitation temperature measured from emission using the Boltzmann plot method and the kinetic temperature measured from absorption; the implications of this comparison on local thermodynamic equilibrium and line-of-sight averaging are discussed. By combining the two methods of optical emission and laser absorption spectroscopy, a comprehensive characterization of the plasma over the entire lifetime of its evolution is possible, leading to a greater understanding of the plasma behavior including particle condensation.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Laser absorption measurements of electron density in nanosecond-scale atmospheric pressure pulsed plasmas

We report on time-resolved measurements of electron number density by continuous-wave laser absorption in a low-energy nanosecond-scale laser-produced spark in atmospheric pressure air. Laser absorption is a result of free-free and bound-free electron excitation, with the absorption coefficient modeled and evaluated using estimates of the time-variation in electron temperature and probe laser absorption path length. Plasma electron number densities are determined to be as high as n e = 7 x 10 19 cm -3 , and decay to 1/e of their peak values over a period of about 50 ns following plasma formation using a 20 mJ, 10 ns pulse width frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. The measured plasma densities at later times are shown to be in reasonable agreement with Stark broadening measurements of the 3s[ 5 S o ]-3p[ 5 P] electronic transition in atomic oxygen at 777 nm. This study provides support for the use of such continuous wave laser absorption for time resolved electron density measurements in low energy spark discharges in air, provided that an estimate of the electron temperature and laser path length can be made by accompanying diagnostics.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit): Readout and control for qubits and detectors

We introduce a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC)-based qubit controller (called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK for short), which supports the direct synthesis of control pulses with carrier frequencies of up to 6 GHz. The QICK can control multiple qubits or other quantum devices. The QICK consists of a digital board hosting an RFSoC field-programmable gate array, custom firmware, and software and an optional companion custom-designed analog front-end board. We characterize the analog performance of the system as well as its digital latency, important for quantum error correction and feedback protocols. We benchmark the controller by performing standard characterizations of a transmon qubit. We achieve an average gate fidelity of ℱ avg =99.93%. All of the schematics, firmware, and software are open-source.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

A method for infrared sensing based on oscillating zero power microelectromechanical photoswitches

This paper presents an interesting new method for measuring infrared (IR) radiation using a micromechanical photoswitch (MP). By leveraging the event-driven narrowband IR detection capability of an MP, electrostatic pull-in, and a novel integrated thermomechanical feedback mechanism, we show for the first time a zero-standby power IR sensor that can not only detect above-threshold IR power levels (>600 nW), but also generates an oscillating electromechanical pulse waveform whose frequency is a function of the incident IR power level. The device design, the theoretical model for the proposed idea, and the experimental demonstration of the mechanism are shown. The unique capability of zero-standby power IR detection and frequency-tunable AC waveform generation from a constant input signal (IR radiation) without the need for additional electronics promises to enable new functionalities for such remote wake-up sensors beyond simply detection, with potential uses in microrobotics and low-power computing.

Rajaram, Vageeswar (ORCID:0000000199546844)↗
DOE OSTI2026

Quantum kinetic modeling of KEEN waves in a warm-dense regime

We report the first fully kinetic, quantum study of kinetic electrostatic electron nonlinear (KEEN) waves, showing that quantum diffraction systematically erodes the classical trapping mechanism, narrows harmonic locking to the fundamental, and hastens post-drive decay. Electrons are evolved with a second-order Strang-split 1D1V Wigner–Poisson solver that couples conservative semi-Lagrangian WENO advection to an analytic Fourier space update for the non-local Wigner term, while ions remain classical. We focus on collisionless dynamics in a weakly coupled regime, providing a controlled baseline before collisional extensions. Short, frequency-tuned ponderomotive pulses drive KEEN formation in a uniform Maxwellian plasma; as the dimensionless quantum parameter H rises from the classical limit to values relevant to warm-dense matter, doped semiconductors, and 2D electron systems, the drive threshold increases, higher harmonics are damped, trapped electron vortices diffuse, and the subplasma electrostatic energy relaxes to a lower stationary level, as confirmed by continuous wavelet analysis. These microscopic changes carry macroscopic weight. Ignition-scale capsules now compress matter to regimes where the electron de Broglie wavelength rivals the Debye length, making classical kinetic descriptions insufficient. By extending KEEN physics into this quantum domain, our results offer a potential diagnostic of non-equilibrium electron dynamics for next-generation inertial-confinement designs and high-energy-density platforms, indicating that predictive fusion modeling may benefit from the integration of kinetic fidelity with quantum effects.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Bell state analyzer for spectrally distinct photons

We demonstrate a Bell state analyzer that operates directly on frequency mismatch. Based on electro-optic modulators and Fourier-transform pulse shapers, our quantum frequency processor design implements interleaved Hadamard gates in discrete frequency modes. Experimental tests on entangled-photon inputs reveal fidelities of ∼ <#comment/> 98 % <#comment/> for discriminating between the | Ψ <#comment/> + ⟩ <#comment/> and | Ψ <#comment/> − <#comment/> ⟩ <#comment/> frequency-bin Bell states. Our approach resolves the tension between wavelength-multiplexed state transport and high-fidelity Bell state measurements, which typically require spectral indistinguishability.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Real-time jitter correction in a photonic analog-to-digital converter

A real-time jitter meter is used to measure and digitally sample the pulse-to-pulse timing error in a laser pulse train. The jitter meter is self-referenced using a single-pulse delay line interferometer and measures timing jitter using optical heterodyne detection between two frequency channels of the pulse train. Jitter sensitivity down to 3×10 -10 fs 2 /Hz at 500 MHz has been demonstrated with a pulse-to-pulse noise floor of 1.6 fs. Furthermore, as a proof of principle, the digital correction of the output of a high-frequency photonic analog-to-digital converter (PADC) is demonstrated with an emulated jitter signal. Up to 23 dB of jitter correction, down to the noise floor of the PADC, is accomplished with radio-frequency modulation up to 40 GHz.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Convolution-based frequency domain multiplexing of SiPM readouts using the $\mathrm{DRS4}$ digitizer

Here we present 4:1 multiplexing of organic scintillators, each coupled to a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), to reduce the need for a large number of digitizer input channels to readout highly pixelated radiation detection systems. Frequency domain multiplexing (FDM) encodes a detector pulse by assigning it a unique frequency via convolution before combining the encoded signal into a single channel. The combined signal is then read through a digitizer input channel. We have designed an FDM system to multiplex four SiPMs using DRS4 digitizer evaluation board from Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). We demonstrate 4:1 multiplexing of the SiPM fast output signals and pulse recovery from the digitized multiplexed signal using deconvolution. The noise in the recovered pulse introduces a bias and uncertainty in the estimate of energy and timing that changes with pulse height. The relative uncertainty in the estimated energy from the recovered pulse decreases with pulse height with a maximum uncertainty of 3.1% for the low energy pulses (corresponding to 100 keV); the uncertainty in the estimated time pick-off also decreases with pulse height with a maximum uncertainty of 110 ps for the low energy pulses.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Angle-robust two-qubit gates in a linear ion crystal

In trapped-ion quantum computers, two-qubit entangling gates are generated by applying spin-dependent force which uses phonons to mediate interaction between the internal states of the ions. To maintain high-fidelity two-qubit gates under fluctuating experimental parameters, robust pulse-design methods are applied to remove the residual spin-motion entanglement in the presence of motional mode-frequency drifts. Here we propose an improved pulse-design method that also guarantees the robustness of the two-qubit rotation angle against uniform mode-frequency drifts by concatenating pulses with opposite sensitivity of the angle to mode-frequency drifts. Here we experimentally verify significantly improved robustness of the rotation angle against uniform mode-frequency drifts, as well as observe an improvement in gate fidelity from 97.84(10)% to 98.11(11)%, compared to a single frequency-modulated pulse.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2024

Efficient laser-driven proton acceleration from a petawatt contrast-enhanced second harmonic mixed-glass laser system

Efficient laser-driven plasma acceleration of ion beams requires precision control of the target–plasma profile, which is crucial to optimize the laser energy transfer. Along the laser propagation direction, this can be achieved by tailoring the temporal structure of the laser pulse. We show for the first time that frequency-doubling of a short pulse (hundreds-femtosecond range) petawatt-class mixed-glass laser system, which results in temporal intensity contrast enhancement, enables surface and volumetric laser–energy coupling, and the acceleration of proton beams from few-nanometer-thick foil targets. Experimentally, maximum ion energies and laser-to-proton energy conversion efficiencies were found to be both maximized at optimum laser and target conditions manifested when the normalized target density nearly equalizes the normalized laser vector potential, which is in agreement with theory and simulations. These signatures are recognized as a unique indication of the interaction between ultra-intense laser pulses with high temporal intensity contrast and ultra-thin nanometer-scale targets. Transverse modulations of accelerated proton beams in the form of bubble- and ring-like structures measured in the thinnest targets provide additional evidence of volumetric laser-driven particle acceleration regimes and transitional features in ultra-thin foil targets specific to laser–plasma interactions characterized by a high temporal intensity contrast. These results open avenues in the generation of high contrast laser pulses from short-pulse-femtosecond petawatt mixed-glass laser systems and demonstrate the feasibility of this technique for applications requiring high laser intensity contrast with high efficiency.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Laser-Induced Spectral Diffusion of T Centers in Silicon Nanophotonic Devices

Color centers in silicon are emerging as spin-photon interfaces operating at telecommunication wavelengths. The nanophotonic device integration of silicon color centers via ion implantation leads to significant optical-linewidth broadening, which makes indistinguishable photon generation challenging. Here, we study the optical spectral diffusion of T centers in a silicon photonic crystal cavity. We investigate the linewidth-broadening timescales and origins by measuring the temporal correlations of the resonance frequency under different conditions. Spectral hole-burning measurements reveal no spectral broadening at short timescales from 102 ns to 725 ns. We probe broadening at longer timescales using a check pulse to herald the T-center frequency and a probe pulse to measure the frequency after a wait time. The optical resonance frequency is stable up to 3 ms in the dark. Laser pulses below the silicon band gap applied during the wait time lead to linewidth broadening. Our observations establish laser-induced processes as the dominant spectral-diffusion mechanism for T centers in devices and inform materials and feedback strategies for indistinguishable photon generation.

Zhang, Xueyue↗
DOE OSTI2022

Port Impedance Measurement and Current Injection Response Analysis for PLCs

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are used to control devices throughout the power system since they have fast control capabilities and can utilize multiple types of communication interfaces. Therefore, studying and mitigating their vulnerabilities to electromagnetic pulse is important for the reliability of PLC operations. Here, in this paper, an effective impedance measurement scheme is proposed and demonstrated for three PLCs to estimate their susceptibility to an electromagnetic pulse. The equivalent non-uniform transmission line model is established to eliminate the impact of the fixture in the de-embedding process. Then different parameters of the impedance measurement setup are explored. Based on the measured impedance, the equivalent circuit is established to calculate the response of the device when subjected to the electromagnetic pulse. The voltage and current responses of different interfaces are compared utilizing the developed pulsed Current Injection (CI) method. Finally, the impedance measurement scheme is verified through testing using three measuring instruments. And the CI simulation experiments reveal the characteristics and susceptibilities of different PLCs interfaces, indicating that some protection measures are required for the reliable operation of the PLC.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Spectral shaping of an ultrafast ytterbium fiber laser via a passive intracavity optical filter: a simple and reliable route to sub-45 fs pulses

We investigate the use of passive intracavity optical filters for controlling the laser output spectrum of a polarization-mode-locked, ultrafast ytterbium fiber laser. The overall lasing bandwidth is increased or extended by strategic choice of the filter cutoff frequency. Overall laser performance, including pulse compression and intensity noise, is investigated for both shortpass and longpass filters with a range of cutoff frequencies. The intracavity filter not only shapes the output spectra, but also provides a route for overall broader bandwidths and shorter pulses in ytterbium fiber lasers. These results demonstrate that spectral shaping with a passive filter is a useful tool to routinely achieve sub-45 fs pulse durations in ytterbium fiber lasers.

Cooper, Nicholas D.↗
DOE OSTI2023

SonicPy: a suite of programs for ultrasound pulse-echo data acquisition and analysis

Sound speed and elastic constants measurements in solids and liquids are commonly performed using the ultrasound pulse-echo technique. Recent advances have expanded the use of this technique at numerous high pressure synchrotron beamlines and offline laboratories. However, the increased experimental throughput has revealed many limitations in existing software for handling the rapid measurement and the subsequent data-reduction. Here, we report the development of a collection of computer programs for sound speed measurements using the ultrasound pulse-echo technique, compatible with stepped multi-frequency, as well as broadband-pulse, couplant-corrected methods. The programs provide a highly interactive graphical interface, enable efficient measurement, exploration and near real-time analysis of the ultrasound data, and contain features useful for working with samples under high pressure and/or high temperature. The included analysis programs can alleviate the time required for data reduction from hours to less than a minute, allowing users to make timely and informed decisions regarding the appropriate experimental parameters.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Broad Frequency Shift of Parametric Processes in Epsilon-Near-Zero Time-Varying Media

The ultrafast changes of material properties induced by short laser pulses can lead to a frequency shift of reflected and transmitted radiation. Recent reports highlight how such a frequency shift is enhanced in spectral regions where the material features a near-zero real part of the permittivity. Here, we investigate the frequency shift for fields generated by four-wave mixing. In our experiment, we observed a frequency shift of more than 60 nm (compared to the pulse width of ~40 nm) in the phase conjugated radiation generated by a 500 nm aluminium-doped zinc oxide (AZO) film pumped close to the epsilon-near-zero wavelength. Our results indicate applications of time-varying media for nonlinear optics and frequency conversion.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Ionizing photon interactions modulate the optical properties of crystals with femtosecond scale temporal resolution

In this work, we continue our study of a new method for the detection of ionizing radiation with the potential for a dramatic improvement in coincidence time resolution (CTR) for time-of-flight positron emission tomography (ToF-PET) using the modulation of a material's optical properties instead of the scintillation mechanism. Our previous work has shown that for non-scintillation materials such as bismuth silicon oxide (BSO) and cadmium telluride (CdTe), their refractive index can be modulated by annihilation photon interactions. Additionally, the ultrafast nature of this process however remains unexplored. The ionizing radiation-induced charge carriers alter the local band structure in these materials, thus changing the complex refractive index. This mechanism is routinely used at the linac coherent light source (LCLS) facility of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to measure x-ray pulse arrival times with femtosecond scale resolution for photon energies between 0.5 and 10 keV. The method described here follows that example by using a frequency chirped visible continuum pulse to provide a monotonic wavelength-to-time mapping by which one can measure the time-dependent refractive index modulation. In addition, we describe an interference-based measurement setup that allows for significantly improved sensitivity while preserving a timing precision of approximately 10 fs (σ) when measuring the arrival time of below 10 keV x-ray pulses with yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) crystal. The method is presented in the context of ToF-PET application with further discussions on the potential CTR achievable if a similar detection concept is adopted for detecting 511 keV photons. Semi-empirical analysis indicates that the predicted CTR achievable is on the order of 1 ps (FWHM).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Photon phase-space dynamics in a plasma wakefield accelerator

Frequency up-shifting of laser light in a beam-driven plasma wakefield has the potential to provide high-intensity sources of short wavelength radiation. Simulations have demonstrated that a laser pulse can undergo large frequency shifts, limited only by the drive beam energy, when the plasma density is tailored to match the accelerating phase of the wake to the group velocity of the pulse. Here, we study the dynamical evolution of photons in the 1D1P phase-space vicinity of the plasma wake-phase matching condition. Numerical calculations using a photon kinetic model are validated by direct comparison with 1D and quasi-3D particle-in-cell simulations. These calculations form the basis of a linear theory of the photon dynamics which reveals several important results, including scalings for the properties of the witness pulse and a self-similar solution for the photon phase-space dynamics. One prediction of the analytic theory is that the pulse can be compressed indefinitely, though the amount of compression would ultimately be limited by practical constraints. These results suggest that photon acceleration can provide a novel source of sub-femtosecond, short wavelength radiation.

XUV generation↗