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At least 145 records · Page 8

Truss beam having convex-curved rods, shear web panels, and self-aligning adapters

A truss beam comprised of a plurality of joined convex-curved rods with self-aligning adapters (SAA) adhesively attached at each end of the truss beam is disclosed. Shear web panels are attached to adjacent pairs of rods, providing buckling resistance for the truss beam. The rods are disposed adjacent to each other, centered around a common longitudinal axis, and oriented so that adjacent rod ends converge to at least one virtual convergence point on the common longitudinal axis, with the rods' curvature designed to increase prevent buckling for the truss beam. Each SAA has longitudinal bores that provide self-aligning of the rods in the SAA, the self-aligning feature enabling creation of strong adhesive bonds between each SAA and the rods. In certain embodiments of the present invention, pultruded unidirectional carbon fiber rods are coupled with carbon fiber shear web panels and metal SAA(s), resulting in a lightweight, low-cost but strong truss beam that is highly resistant to buckling.

Fernandez, Ian M.↗

Applications of Atomic Layer Deposition in the Modification of Carbon Nanotubes

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a cost-effective nanoadditive-manufacturing technique that allows for conformal coating of substrates with atomic control in a benign temperature and pressure environment. Using paired precursor gases, thin films can be deposited on flat or textured surfaces ranging from glass, polymers, aerogels, and metals. Through atomic layer control, where single layers of atoms are deposited, fabrication of metal transparent films, nano-laminates, and coatings of nano-channels and pores is achievable. Reaction mechanisms in ALD are normally self-limiting, allowing for atomically accurate control of nanometer (nm) thicknesses. Therefore, high uniformity and precise thickness control make ALD an attractive process for the creation of novel nano-scale devices. Decreases in resistivity and density of electrical wire are needed to improve the function of electronics, electric motors and cables. Such improvements may be accomplished by adding ballistically conducting, metallic carbon nanotubes (CNT) to Cu. ALD was used to coat multiple substrates including CNT with Cu in an effort to make CNT-Cu composites which is more conductive and less dense than Cu. In addition, ALD can be used to as a method to deposit the catalyst layer seed layer for CNT growth using Ni. The ALD of copper metallic films can follow multiple reaction pathways depending on the ALD precursors used. For this work the reaction pathway was deposition of copper oxide and then post process annealing in a hydrogen environment. Copper(II) diacetylacetonate (Cu(acac)2) and ozone are used as precursors for copper oxide. As-deposited copper oxide films prepared at 180°C resulted in a growth per cycle of 1.0 A/cycle with low film resistivity.

Dwivedi, Vivek H.↗

Moiré and beyond in transition metal dichalcogenide twisted bilayers

Abstract Fabricating van der Waals bilayer heterostructures (BL-HS) by stacking the same or different two-dimensional layers, offers a unique physical system with rich electronic and optical properties. Twist-angle between component layers has emerged as a remarkable parameter that can control the period of lateral confinement, and nature of the exciton (Coulomb bound electron–hole pair) in reciprocal space thus creating exotic physical states including moiré excitons (MXs). In this review article, we focus on opto-electronic properties of excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductor twisted BL-HS. We look at existing evidence of MXs in localized and strongly correlated states, and at nanoscale mapping of moiré superlattice and lattice-reconstruction. This review will be helpful in guiding the community as well as motivating work in areas such as near-field optical measurements and controlling the creation of novel physical states.

Materials Science↗

BEAM Technology Flight Demonstration

As technologies advance, their growing complexity makes them harder to maintain. Detection methods for isolating and identifying impending problems are needed to balance this complexity. Through comparison of signal pairs from onboard sensors, the Beacon-based Exception Analysis For Multimissions (BEAM) algorithm can identify and help classify deviations in system operation from a data-trained statistical model. The goal of this task is to mature BEAM and validate its performance on a flying test bed. A series of F-18 flight demonstrations with BEAM monitoring engine parameters in real time was used to demonstrate in-the-field readiness. Captured F-18 and simulated F-18 engine data were used in model creation and training. The algorithm was then ported to the embedded system with a data buffering, file writing, and data-time-stamp monitoring shell to reduce the impact of embedded system faults on BEAM'S ability to correctly identify engine faults. Embedded system testing identified hardware related restrictions and contributed to iterative improvements in the code's runtime performance. The system was flown with forced engine flameouts and other pilot induced faults to simulate operation out of the norm. Successful detection of these faults, confirmed through post-flight data analysis, helped BEAM achieve TRL6.

Wang, David↗

3D Play Fairway Analysis for Examining of Superhot Reservoir Production Scenarios

The DEEPEN (DE-risking Exploration for geothermal Plays in magmatic ENvironments) project was a multi-laboratory, international effort to reduce uncertainty and improve resource characterization in superhot geothermal systems. Building on this foundation, this work advances open-source tools designed to lower the exploration risk and cost of superhot geothermal projects while promoting transparency, reproducibility, and efficiency in exploration workflows. These tools are being tested at two key sites: (1) the Nesjavellir Geothermal Area in Iceland, where the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) will drill its third well, and (2) Newberry Volcano in Oregon, USA, where Mazama Energy will pilot the first superhot enhanced geothermal system (EGS). A major outcome is the creation of a modular, open-source Python framework for play fairway analysis (PFA) in 2D and 3D, called geoPFA. The PFA workflow has been expanded to produce pseudo conceptual models, and will soon be refined to assess reservoir components through integration with the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical (THMC) simulator TReactMech, to enable iterative coupling between PFA and THMC models, improving characterization of superhot systems. All three of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project's production scenarios were analyzed via this framework: (1) a superhot deep injection well paired with conventional production wells at Nesjavellir, (2) a superhot deep production well at Nesjavellir, and (3) superhot enhanced geothermal system at Newberry Volcano. This analysis provides useful insights around conceptual modeling of these production scenarios, helping to inform decisions around which scenario is best suited for which types of environments.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

3D Play Fairway Analysis for Examining of Superhot Drilling Production Scenarios: Preprint

The DEEPEN (DE-risking Exploration for geothermal Plays in magmatic ENvironments) project was a multi-laboratory, international effort to reduce uncertainty and improve resource characterization in superhot geothermal systems. Building on this foundation, this work advances open-source tools designed to lower the exploration risk and cost of superhot geothermal projects while promoting transparency, reproducibility, and efficiency in exploration workflows. These tools are being tested at two key sites: (1) the Nesjavellir Geothermal Area in Iceland, where the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) will drill its third well, and (2) Newberry Volcano in Oregon, USA, where Mazama Energy will pilot the first superhot enhanced geothermal system (EGS). A major outcome is the creation of a modular, open-source Python framework for play fairway analysis (PFA) in 2D and 3D, called geoPFA. The PFA workflow has been expanded to produce pseudo conceptual models, and will soon be refined to assess reservoir components through integration with the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical (THMC) simulator TReactMech, to enable iterative coupling between PFA and THMC models, improving characterization of superhot systems. All three of the Icelandic Deep Drilling Project's production scenarios were analyzed via this framework: (1) a superhot deep injection well paired with conventional production wells at Nesjavellir, (2) a superhot deep production well at Nesjavellir, and (3) superhot enhanced geothermal system at Newberry Volcano. This analysis provides useful insights around conceptual modeling of these production scenarios, helping to inform decisions around which scenario is best suited for which types of environments.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Update On the Status of the FLUKA Monte Carlo Transport Code*

The FLUKA Monte Carlo transport code is a well-known simulation tool in High Energy Physics. FLUKA is a dynamic tool in the sense that it is being continually updated and improved by the authors. We review the progress achieved since the last CHEP Conference on the physics models, some technical improvements to the code and some recent applications. From the point of view of the physics, improvements have been made with the extension of PEANUT to higher energies for p, n, pi, pbar/nbar and for nbars down to the lowest energies, the addition of the online capability to evolve radioactive products and get subsequent dose rates, upgrading of the treatment of EM interactions with the elimination of the need to separately prepare preprocessed files. A new coherent photon scattering model, an updated treatment of the photo-electric effect, an improved pair production model, new photon cross sections from the LLNL Cullen database have been implemented. In the field of nucleus-- nucleus interactions the electromagnetic dissociation of heavy ions has been added along with the extension of the interaction models for some nuclide pairs to energies below 100 MeV/A using the BME approach, as well as the development of an improved QMD model for intermediate energies. Both DPMJET 2.53 and 3 remain available along with rQMD 2.4 for heavy ion interactions above 100 MeV/A. Technical improvements include the ability to use parentheses in setting up the combinatorial geometry, the introduction of pre-processor directives in the input stream. a new random number generator with full 64 bit randomness, new routines for mathematical special functions (adapted from SLATEC). Finally, work is progressing on the deployment of a user-friendly GUI input interface as well as a CAD-like geometry creation and visualization tool. On the application front, FLUKA has been used to extensively evaluate the potential space radiation effects on astronauts for future deep space missions, the activation dose for beam target areas, dose calculations for radiation therapy as well as being adapted for use in the simulation of events in the ALICE detector at the LHC.

Ferrari, A.↗

Boundary-Aware Adversarial Learning Domain Adaption and Active Learning for Cross-Sensor Building Extraction

The use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for building extraction from remote sensing images has been widely studied and many public datasets have been made available for accelerating development of these CNN models. Yet adapting pretrained models at scale in real-world scenarios remains a challenging task. The main barrier is that certain new labels are still needed to compensate for domain shifting between the labeled data and new images that potentially cover new geographic locations or that are from a different sensor. In this article, we propose to add informatively labeled samples from a new image pool under the paradigm of active learning. To select the most useful samples based on model uncertainty, we first tackle the problem of uncalibrated uncertainty estimation due to distribution shifting by adapting feature extractors with boundary-based adversarial learning. Calibrated uncertainty is used as the query criterion in the active learning process, where the most uncertain samples are selected for annotation and included for model retraining. The proposed workflow was tested with three data pairs in which each workflow represents a scenario often encountered in real-world applications, including adapting pretrained models to new images collected with different sensors or to new geographic areas where appearances and types of buildings are very different. Compared to several baselines, including random sampling, temperature scaling (a well-known uncertainty calibration technique), different query strategies, and active domain adaptation methods, the proposed workflow shows that strategically querying a smaller set of samples for labeling achieves comparable or better building extraction performance. The proposed method reduces the number of labeled samples required to achieve sufficient model accuracy, thus significantly reducing hundreds of person-hours for labeled data creation. In addition, we include a few considerations when deploying this workflow in a GPU cluster that can be easily adapted to achieve operational building extraction model retraining.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

From neural-based object recognition toward microelectronic eyes

Engineering neural network systems are best known for their abilities to adapt to the changing characteristics of the surrounding environment by adjusting system parameter values during the learning process. Rapid advances in analog current-mode design techniques have made possible the implementation of major neural network functions in custom VLSI chips. An electrically programmable analog synapse cell with large dynamic range can be realized in a compact silicon area. New designs of the synapse cells, neurons, and analog processor are presented. A synapse cell based on Gilbert multiplier structure can perform the linear multiplication for back-propagation networks. A double differential-pair synapse cell can perform the Gaussian function for radial-basis network. The synapse cells can be biased in the strong inversion region for high-speed operation or biased in the subthreshold region for low-power operation. The voltage gain of the sigmoid-function neurons is externally adjustable which greatly facilitates the search of optimal solutions in certain networks. Various building blocks can be intelligently connected to form useful industrial applications. Efficient data communication is a key system-level design issue for large-scale networks. We also present analog neural processors based on perceptron architecture and Hopfield network for communication applications. Biologically inspired neural networks have played an important role towards the creation of powerful intelligent machines. Accuracy, limitations, and prospects of analog current-mode design of the biologically inspired vision processing chips and cellular neural network chips are key design issues.

Sheu, Bing J.↗

Cave-based chronology of valley incision in the glaciated Northern Carpathians

While glaciers leave a mark on mountain landscapes, the importance of glacial erosion in mountains at a global scale remains insufficiently constrained despite over a century of research aimed at quantifying the rates and magnitudes of such erosion. Measuring rates of landscape change across the Quaternary in repeatedly glaciated mountain landscapes requires the ability to accurately partition the relative role of glacial versus fluvial processes in forming relief; however, the modification of landforms by surface erosion hinders quantification of process rates over the last few million years. This study presents 32 paired 26 Al and 10 Be cosmogenic nuclide burial ages from allochthonous, quartz-bearing sediment deposited within a paleophreatic karst system in the northern Carpathians. These data quantify Pliocene-to-present timing of valley incision and karst system reactivation, as well as erosion rates over time. Post-burial, muon production-correction yields 24 fully resolved ages, six minimum ages, and two unresolvable ages. Burial ages are interpreted to document the tempo of valley incision via phreatic passage formation and reveal that ∼80% of current valley relief (∼700 m) had developed by approximately 1.6 Ma. Paleoerosion rates derived from this dataset suggest little change in the processes generating sediment washed into the karst networks since the Pliocene. These results suggest that river incision dominated relief creation in Carpathian valleys that bear the imprint of glaciation. Our findings suggest the importance of investigating other mid-latitude mountainous regions worldwide to determine if they have similar erosion and topographic histories.

Carpathians↗

Lewis number and Damkohler number effects in vort ex-flame interactions

A combined experimental-numerical study of the interaction of a two-dimensional vortex pair with a plane premixed laminar flame has been carried out. The selected geometry is two-dimensional in order to allow for the use of quantitative line-of-sight measurement techniques and for comparisons with two-dimensional direct numerical simulations. The experiment is used to identify possible effects of the Lewis number and of radiative heat losses, and direct numerical simulations reproducing the experimental conditions are used to investigate the role of the Lewis number, of heat losses, and of multi-step kinetics. The heat losses considered in this study are essentially radiative losses from the burnt gases and do not include conductive losses to the walls. This report presents the final results of this study of vortex-flame interactions. The main result is the creation of experimental data sets of vortex-flame interactions, which demonstrate the importance of the Lewis and Damkohler numbers to the flame and which allow for comparison with direct numerical simulations. In turn, the comparison between experimental and numerical results shows that the Lewis number effects and complex chemistry play significant roles, which can be reproduced using a two-step reaction mechanism.

Samaniego, Jean-Michael↗

Stress-dominated growth of two-dimensional materials on nonplanar substrates

Curved features are ubiquitous on solid surfaces, but the effect of surface curvatures on growth of two-dimensional (2D) materials has not yet been established. Using a newly developed method based on the Metropolis algorithm and taking graphene as a prototype, we find that a curved feature on substrates can result in a variety of topological defects in 2D materials. As the feature's size increases by just nanometers, the defects can vary from adatoms, dislocation pairs, and grain boundary scars to long-range grain boundaries, in contrast to previously reported defect-free modes of rigid colloidal crystals growing on spheres. We identify an important role of curvature-induced lattice stress in lowering the growth rate over the curved features and driving a plastic instability in the materials. When the feature's size increases to several nanometers, the stress effect is compromised by an enhanced effect of geodesic curvature, yielding long-range grain boundaries as a result of increased local growth rate on the feature with respect to that on flat regions. Here we further provide a ‘phase diagram’ of defects that helps to guide a rational choice of geometrical parameters of features towards the growth of high-quality 2D materials as well as controllable creation of topological defects.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Generic two-phase coexistence in a type-2 Schloegl model for autocatalysis on a square lattice: Analysis via heterogeneous master equations

Schloegl's second model (also known as the quadratic contact process) on a square lattice involves spontaneous annihilation of particles at lattice sites at rate p, and their autocatalytic creation at unoccupied sites with n ≥ 2 occupied neighbors at rate k n . Here, kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation reveals that these models exhibit a nonequilibrium discontinuous phase transition with generic two-phase coexistence: the p value for equistability of coexisting populated and vacuum states, p eq (S), depends on the orientation or slope, S, of a planar interface separating those phases. The vacuum state displaces the populated state for p > eq (S), and the opposite applies for p < p eq (S) for 0 < S < ∞. The special “combinatorial” rate choice k n = n(n–1)/12 facilitates an appealing simplification of the exact master equations for the evolution of spatially heterogeneous states in the model, which aids analytic investigation of these equations via hierarchical truncation approximations. Truncation produces coupled sets of lattice differential equations which can describe orientation-dependent interface propagation and equistability. The pair approximation predicts that p eq (max) = p eq (S = 1) = 0.09645 and p eq (min) = p eq (S → ∞) = 0.08827, values deviating less than 15% from KMC predictions. In the pair approximation, a perfect vertical interface is stationary for all p < p eq (S = ∞) = 0.08907, a value exceeding p eq (S → ∞). One can regard an interface for large S → ∞ as a vertical interface decorated with isolated kinks. For p < p eq (S = ∞), the kink can move in either direction along this otherwise stationary interface depending upon p, but for p = p eq (min) the kink is also stationary.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Methodology to determine printability criteria of highly concentrated pastes through rheological characterization

Material extrusion is an additive manufacturing technique that enables the creation of reproducible and complex hardware by depositing a viscous, shear-thinning ink onto a substrate in a custom-pattern via extrusion through a syringe. Here, the ability of an ink to be extruded onto a substrate in many layers, and maintain the desired shape is what defines the printability. Printability is often investigated by formulating, printing, and postmortem analysis of final parts in an iterative manner. Investigations of printability through rheological characterization have often been concerned with inks that straddle the line between printable and too thin, leaving out an entire class of inks that are highly-filled pastes, where extrudability is the limiting factor. Highly-filled pastes continue to pose issues for researchers as the effect of filler morphology, size, loading, and packing fraction on the ink rheology and corresponding printability is not understood. While traditional rheological characterizations may be useful for some inks, we show that protocols utilizing steady-shear, or large-amplitude oscillatory shear are difficult and unreliable for highly-filled pastes. Through transient rheology paired with real-time images we show that each traditional protocol produces inhomogeneous deformations that violate the assumptions that underly common rheological definitions. Instead, we demonstrate metrics measured with small-amplitude oscillatory shear that are correlated to the printability of various ink formulations ranging in loading. The rheological measures that accurately predict the printability of the inks are the axial stress measured at small amplitudes, and the critical stress amplitude above which rheological characterizations become impossible. In addition, we estimate the maximum packing fraction for each filler, based on the exponent common to hard sphere models, and show that the printability of each ink can be predicted by the ratio of the packing fraction to the theoretical maximum. We show how small-amplitude oscillatory shear allows users to develop printability criteria for any ink to enhance the workflow in the development of new inks, increase the performance of material extrusion printing, and improve the stability of printed parts, with less wasted time and materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

A Complex History of Silicate Differentiation of Mars from Nd and Hf Isotopes in Crustal Breccia NWA 7034

Resolving the possible mantle and crustal sources for shergottite meteorites is crucial for understanding the formation and early differentiation of Mars. Orbiter and rover characterization of the martian surface reveal that the major element composition of most of its surface does not match the shergottites (McSween et al., 2009)leaving the relationship between them poorly understood. The identification of the meteorite NWA 7034 and its pairs as a Mars surface rock (Cartwright et al., 2014)provides access to a representative sample of Mars' crust (Agee et al., 2013;Humayun et al., 2013). Utilizing the short-lived Sm-146 - Nd-142, and long-lived Sm-142 - Nd-142 and Lu-176 - Hf-176 chronometers, which are sensitive to silicate differentiation, we analyzed three fragments of NWA 7034. The very negative mean isotopic compositions for this breccia, μNd-142(sub JNdi-1)=−45 +/-5(2SD), εNd-143(sub CHUR)=−16.7 +/-0.4(2SD) and εHf176(sub CHUR)=−61 +/-9(2SD) point to an ancient origin for this martian crust. However, modeling of the data shows that the crust sampled by NWA 7034 possesses a Hf/Nd ratio and coupled εNd-143 - μNd-142 model age that are incompatible with this crustal reservoir being an end-member that generated the shergottite source mixing array. In addition, this crust is not juvenile, despite its rare earth element profile, but has had a multistage formation history. Therefore, early crustal extraction alone was not responsible for the creation of the reservoirs that produced the shergottites. Instead mantle reservoirs formed via other early differentiation processes such as in a Mars magma ocean must be responsible for the trace element and isotopic signatures present in shergottites.

Rosalind M. G. Armytage↗

Coilgun Acceleration Model Containing Interactions Between Multiple Coils

Electromagnetic (EM) accelerators have the potential to fill a performance range not currently being met by conventional chemical and electric propulsion systems by providing a specific impulse of 600-1000 seconds and a thrust-to-power ratio greater than 200 mN/kW. A propulsion system based on EM acceleration of small projectiles has the traditional advantages of using a pulsed system, including precise control over a range of thrust and power levels as well as rapid response and repetition rates. Furthermore, EM accelerators have lower power requirements than conventional electric propulsion systems since no plasma creation is necessary. A coilgun is a specific type of EM device where a high-current pulse through a coil of wire interacts with a conductive projectile via an induced magnetic field to accelerate the projectile. There are no physical or electrical connections to the projectile, which leads to less system degradation and a longer life expectancy. Multi-staging a coilgun by adding multiple turns on a single coil or on the projectile increases the inductance, thus permitting acceleration of the projectile to higher velocities. Previously, a simplified problem of modeling an inductively-coupled, single-coil coilgun using a circuit-based analysis coupled to the one-dimensional momentum equation through Lenz's law was solved; however, the analysis was only conducted on uncoupled coils. The problem is significantly more complicated when multiple, independently-powered coils simultaneously operate and interact with each other and the projectile through induced magnetic fields. This paper presents a multi-coil model developed with the magnetostatic finite element solver QuickField. In the model, mutual inductance values between pairs of conductors were found by first computing the magnetic field energy for different cases where individual coils or multiple coils carry current, then integrating over the entire finite element domain for each case, and finally using the definition of inductive energy storage to solve for the self and mutual inductance. The electric circuit model is coupled to the projectile through Lenz's law, with the coils coupled through mutual inductance but able to be independently triggered at different times to optimize the acceleration profile. This initial model to predict the behavior of a projectile's acceleration through a coupled, multi-coil coilgun increases the potential of building a highly efficient coilgun thruster with key advantages over other EM thruster systems, thus making it a promising candidate for satellite main propulsion or attitude control thrusters.

Liu, Connie↗

Airborne Conflict Management within Confined Airspace in a Piloted Simulation of DAG-TM Autonomous Aircraft Operations

A human-in-the-loop experiment was performed at the NASA Langley Research Center to study the feasibility of Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM) autonomous aircraft operations in highly constrained airspace. The airspace was constrained by a pair of special use airspace (SUA) regions on either side of the pilot s planned route. The available airspace was further varied by changing the separation standard for lateral separation between 3 nm and 5 nm. The pilot had to maneuver through the corridor between the SUA s, avoid other traffic and meet flow management constraints. Traffic flow management (TFM) constraints were imposed as a required time of arrival and crossing altitude at an en route fix. This is a follow-up study to work presented at the 4th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar in December 2001. Nearly all of the pilots were able to meet their TFM constraints while maintaining adequate separation from other traffic. In only 3 out of 59 runs were the pilots unable to meet their required time of arrival. Two loss of separation cases are studied and it is found that the pilots need conflict prevention information presented in a clearer manner. No degradation of performance or safety was seen between the wide and narrow corridors. Although this was not a thorough study of the consequences of reducing the en route lateral separation, nothing was found that would refute the feasibility of reducing the separation requirement from 5 nm to 3 nm. The creation of additional, second-generation conflicts is also investigated. Two resolution methods were offered to the pilots: strategic and tactical. The strategic method is a closed-loop alteration to the Flight Management System (FMS) active route that considers other traffic as well as TFM constraints. The tactical resolutions are short-term resolutions that leave avoiding other traffic conflicts and meeting the TFM constraints to the pilot. Those that made use of the strategic tools avoided additional conflicts, whereas, those making tactical maneuvers often caused additional conflicts. Many of these second-generation conflicts could be avoided by improved conflict prevention tools that clearly present to the pilot which maneuver choices will result in a conflict-free path. These results, together with previously reported studies, continue to support the feasibility of autonomous aircraft operations.

Barmore, Bryan↗

Plasma and trap-based techniques for science with antimatter

Positrons (i.e., antielectrons) find use in a wide variety of applications, and antiprotons are required for the formation and study of antihydrogen. Available sources of these antiparticles are relatively weak. To optimize their use, most applications require that the antiparticles be accumulated into carefully prepared plasmas. We present an overview of the techniques that have been developed to efficiently accumulate low energy antiparticles and create, in particular, tailored antiparticle plasmas. Techniques are also described to create tailored antiparticle beams. Many of these techniques are based on methods first developed by the nonneutral plasma community using electron plasmas for increased data rate. They have enabled the creation and trapping of antihydrogen, have been critical to studies of positron and positronium interactions with matter, including advanced techniques to characterize materials and material surfaces, and have led to the creation and study of the positronium molecule. Rather than attempting to be comprehensive, we focus on techniques that have proven most useful, applications where there has been significant, recent progress, and areas that hold promise for future advances. Examples of the latter include the ever more precise comparisons of the properties of antihydrogen and hydrogen, tests of gravity using antihydrogen and positronium atoms, and efforts to create and study phases of the many-electron, many-positron system.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗