Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “data consistent”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,621 records · Page 90

Technologies for providing secure emergency power control of high voltage direct current transmission system

Technologies for providing secure emergency power control of a high voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) system include a controller. The controller includes circuitry configured to receive status data indicative of a present physical status of a power system. The circuitry is also configured to obtain an emergency power control command triggered by a remote source. The emergency power control command is to be executed by an HVDC transmission system of the power system. Further, the circuitry is configured to determine, as a function of the status data, whether the emergency power control command is consistent with the present physical status of the power system and block, in response to a determination that the emergency power control command is not consistent with the present physical status of the power system, execution of the emergency power control command by the HVDC transmission system.

Pan, Jiuping↗

Building an Efficient Cluster Cosmology Software Package for Modeling Cluster Counts and Lensing

We introduce a software suite developed for galaxy cluster cosmological analysis with the Dark Energy Survey Data. Cosmological analyses based on galaxy cluster number counts and weak-lensing measurements need efficient software infrastructure to explore an increasingly large parameter space, and account for various cosmological and astrophysical effects. Our software package is designed to model the cluster observables in a wide-field optical survey, including galaxy cluster counts, their averaged weak-lensing masses, or the cluster's averaged weak-lensing radial signals. To ensure maximum efficiency, this software package is developed in C++ in the CosmoSIS software framework, making use of the CUBA integration library. We also implement a testing and validation scheme to ensure the quality of the package. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this development by applying the software to the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 galaxy cluster cosmological data sets, and acquired cosmological constraints that are consistent with the fiducial Dark Energy Survey analysis.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

FY2025 Status Report: Model 9975 O Ring Fixture Long-Term Leak Performance

Leak testing experiments to monitor the aging performance of Viton® GLT and GLT-S O-rings used in the model 9975 shipping package have been ongoing since 2004 at Savannah River National Laboratory. Seventy tests using mock-up 9975 primary containment vessels (PCVs) with GLT O-rings were assembled and heated to temperatures ranging from 200 to 450 °F. Due to material substitution, fourteen tests with GLT-S O-rings were initiated in 2008 and heated to temperatures ranging from 200 to 400 °F. The conditioning temperatures are elevated compared to the calculated maximum O-ring temperature in a 9975 package in storage, 158 °F, to accelerate aging and enable observations of O-ring failures in a reasonable time frame. The mock-up PCV fixtures are leak tested periodically, and all GLT O-ring fixtures aged at 350 °F or above have failed to maintain a leak-tight seal. Eight GLT O-ring fixtures aged at 300 °F have failed after 2.8 to 5.7 years at temperature while the remaining fixtures at 300 °F were retired from testing following more than five years of aging without failure. Two of these retired fixtures were returned to testing and heated to 350 °F to evaluate the impact of additional heating at higher temperature for aged O-rings. Fixture #20 failed after 3 months while fixture #18 failed after 9 months at 350 °F. These O-rings demonstrated that aged and in-service O-rings can continue to be used, even at higher temperatures, after being in storage, and their leak performance are consistent with other samples at 350 °F. There has been one GLT O-ring fixture which failed after 13.4 years of aging at 200 °F. However, 20 other GLT O-rings aging at 200 °F have remained leak-tight for over 16.9 years and remain in test. There are two GLT O-ring fixtures at 270 °F; one fixture has failed after 12.9 years while the other fixture remains in test after 12.5 years. All GLT-S O-ring fixtures aged at 300 °F or above have failed their leak test. No failures have yet been observed in GLT-S O-ring fixtures aging at 250 °F for 14.9 years, while one GLT-S O-ring fixture failed after 12.4 years at 200 °F. The leak testing data to date suggest the GLT and GLT-S O-rings aging in the K-Area Complex (KAC) storage at temperatures of 158 °F might maintain a leak-tight seal for up to 59 years. Data from the O-ring fixtures are generally consistent with results from compression stress-relaxation testing and provide confidence in the predictive models based on those results. However, uncertainty exists in extrapolating these elevated temperature results to the lower temperatures of interest for normal storage in KAC. The collective data from these test efforts suggest the minimum O-ring service life at KAC normal storage conditions should be at least 34 years for GLT and GLT-S O-rings. Measurement of compression set in O-rings removed from failed fixtures, compared to that from KAC surveillance O-rings, indicate significant margin remains for O-rings still in service in 9975 packages in KAC. Aging and periodic leak testing will continue for the remaining 24 mock-up PCV fixtures.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Native Architecture of Wheat Straw Cell Walls: A Unified Model from X-ray Scattering and Solid-State NMR

Plant secondary cell walls constitute the dominant reservoir of renewable biomass, comprising tightly packed cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin at the nanoscale. Recent advances in solid-state NMR spectroscopy and the availability of small-angle X-ray scattering for biomass characterization have led to an accumulation of experimental data on cell wall organization, yet no explicit structure model has simultaneously satisfied both Xray and NMR observations. Using wheat straw as a model system, we propose a structural framework consistent with current knowledge of cellulose biosynthesis, X-ray scattering data, and one- and two-dimensional 13 C solid-state NMR spectra. In this model, 18-chain elementary fibrils align in parallel and populate the cross-section at random. Arabinose-substituted xylan shows no conformational dependence for cellulose-binding in wheat, and only a minor fraction of 2-fold xylan appears in close proximity to cellulose, unlike in Arabidopsis, where xylan is more tightly attached to the cellulose surface. While NMR data cannot unambiguously resolve the internal arrangement of the 18 glucan chains, X-ray scattering profiles uniquely constrain the fibril size and exclude the possibility of tight bundling in the intact walls. The specific interaction between the matrix polymers and the cellulose elementary fibrils must be reconsidered in light of the small interfibril spaces, which bring the matrix components into spatial proximity with cellulose even in the absence of attractive interactions. These findings provide fundamental molecular-level insight into cellulose fibril architecture and matrix−polymer interactions, resolving longstanding discrepancies between spectroscopic and scattering data and advancing our understanding of biopolymer assembly into structurally and functionally versatile lignocellulosic biomaterials.

Carbohydrates↗

AFUE Analysis Software Tool

The Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE) analysis of residential and light commercial furnaces follows ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 103-2017 (i.e., Method of Testing for Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency of Residential Central Furnaces and Boilers) . The analysis is a complex, comprehensive method based on furnace configuration and specific components equipped, requiring detailed furnace testing and measurement data. For this reason, an AFUE Analysis Tool using Microsoft Excel enabled with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) was developed with a user-friendly interface and comprehensive coverage. The tool consists of three worksheets: unit and configuration selection, geometry and measurement data input, and AFUE plus key results. This tool can be used to estimate the AFUE of both condensing and noncondensing furnaces with single-stage, two-stage, and step-modulating functions. The tool was validated with experimental data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s natural gas furnace projects that are commercially available. The results indicate the tool is reasonably accurate in the evaluation of a new R&D modified furnace unit.

Gao, Zhiming [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)↗

Consistent performance of large language models in rare disease diagnosis across ten languages and 4917 cases

Background Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used medicine for diverse applications including differential diagnostic support. The training data used to create LLMs such as the Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) predominantly consist of English-language texts, but LLMs could be used across the globe to support diagnostics if language barriers could be overcome. Initial pilot studies on the utility of LLMs for differential diagnosis in languages other than English have shown promise, but a large-scale assessment on the relative performance of these models in a variety of European and non-European languages on a comprehensive corpus of challenging rare-disease cases is lacking. Methods We created 4917 clinical vignettes using structured data captured with Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) terms with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Phenopacket Schema. These clinical vignettes span a total of 360 distinct genetic diseases with 2525 associated phenotypic features. We used translations of the Human Phenotype Ontology together with language-specific templates to generate prompts in English, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish. We applied GPT-4o, version gpt-4o-2024-08-06, and the medically fine-tuned Meditron3-70B to the task of delivering a ranked differential diagnosis using a zero-shot prompt. An ontology-based approach with the Mondo disease ontology was used to map synonyms and to map disease subtypes to clinical diagnoses in order to automate evaluation of LLM responses. Findings For English, GPT-4o placed the correct diagnosis at the first rank 19.9% and within the top-3 ranks 27.0% of the time. In comparison, for the nine non-English languages tested here the correct diagnosis was placed at rank 1 between 16.9% and 20.6%, within top-3 between 25.4% and 28.6% of cases. The Meditron3 model placed the correct diagnosis within the first 3 ranks for 20.9% of cases in English and between 19.9% and 24.0% for the other nine languages. Interpretation The differential diagnostic performance of LLMs across a comprehensive corpus of rare-disease cases was largely consistent across the ten languages tested. This suggests that the utility of LLMs in clinical settings may extend to non-English clinical settings.

Artificial intelligence↗

Measurements of the temperature and $E$-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background from the full 500-square-degree SPTpol dataset

Using the full four-year SPTpol 500 deg 2 dataset in both the 95 and 150 GHz frequency bands, we present measurements of the temperature and E-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as well as the E-mode polarization autopower spectrum (EE) and temperature-E-mode cross-power spectrum (TE) in the angular multipole range 50 < ℓ < 8000. We find the SPTpol dataset to be self-consistent, passing several internal consistency tests based on maps, frequency bands, bandpowers, and cosmological parameters. The full SPTpol dataset is well-fit by the ΛCDM model, for which we find H 0 = 70.48 ± 2.16 km s -1 Mpc -1 and Ω m = 0.271 ± 0.026, when using only the SPTpol data and a Planck-based prior on the optical depth to reionization. The ΛCDM parameter constraints are consistent across the 95 GHz-only, 150 GHz-only, TE-only, and EE-only data splits. Between the ℓ < 1000 and ℓ > 1000 data splits, the ΛCDM parameter constraints are borderline consistent at the ∼2σ level. This consistency improves when including a parameter A L , the degree of lensing of the CMB inferred from the smearing of acoustic peaks. When marginalized over A L , the ΛCDM parameter constraints from SPTpol are consistent with those from Planck. In conclusion, the power spectra presented here are the most sensitive measurements of the lensed CMB damping tail to date for roughly ℓ > 1700 in TE and ℓ > 2000 in EE.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

TIC 168789840: A Sextuply Eclipsing Sextuple Star System

We report the discovery of a sextuply eclipsing sextuple star system from TESS data, TIC 168789840, also known as TYC 7037-89-1, the first known sextuple system consisting of three eclipsing binaries. The target was observed in Sectors 4 and 5 during Cycle 1, with lightcurves extracted from TESS Full Frame Image data. It was also previously observed by the WASP survey and ASAS-SN. The system consists of three gravitationally bound eclipsing binaries in a hierarchical structure of an inner quadruple system with an outer binary subsystem. Follow-up observations from several different observatories were conducted as a means of determining additional parameters. The system was resolved by speckle interferometry with a 0.″42 separation between the inner quadruple and outer binary, inferring an estimated outer period of ∼2 kyr. It was determined that the fainter of the two resolved components is an 8.217 day eclipsing binary, which orbits the inner quadruple that contains two eclipsing binaries with periods of 1.570 days and 1.306 days. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis of the stellar parameters has shown that the three binaries of TIC 168789840 are “triplets,” as each binary is quite similar to the others in terms of mass, radius, and T {sub eff}. As a consequence of its rare composition, structure, and orientation, this object can provide important new insight into the formation, dynamics, and evolution of multiple star systems. Future observations could reveal if the intermediate and outer orbital planes are all aligned with the planes of the three inner eclipsing binaries.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in lead-lead collisions at $\sqrt{S_{NN}}$ = 5.36 TeV

The pseudorapidity (η) distributions of charged hadrons are measured using data collected at the highest ever nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{S_{NN}}$ = 5.36 TeV for collisions of lead-lead ions. The data were recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2022 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.30 ± 0.03 μb -1 . Using the CMS silicon pixel detector, the yields of primary charged hadrons produced in the range |η| < 2.6 are reported. The evolution of the midrapidity particle density as a function of collision centrality is also reported. In the 5% most central collisions, the charged-hadron η density in the range |η| < 0.5 is found to be 2032 ± 91(syst), with negligible statistical uncertainty. This result is consistent with an extrapolation from nucleus-nucleus collision data at lower center-of-mass energies. Comparisons are made to various Monte Carlo event generators and to previous measurements of lead-lead and xenon-xenon collisions at similar collision energies. These new data detail the dependence of particle production on the collision energy, initial collision geometry, and the size of the colliding nuclei.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Uncovering heterogeneous intercommunity disease transmission from neutral allele frequency time series

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for accurate epidemic forecasting to predict pathogen spread, evolution, and evaluate intervention strategies. Forecast reliability hinges on detailed knowledge of disease transmission across population segments, which may be inferred from contact surveys or mobility data. However, these indirect approaches make it difficult to estimate rare transmissions between socially or geographically distant communities. We show that the steep ramp-up of genome sequencing surveillance during the pandemic can be leveraged to directly identify transmission patterns between geographically defined communities. Our approach uses a hidden Markov model to infer the fraction of infections a community imports from others based on how rapidly allele frequencies in the focal community converge to those in the donor communities. Applying this method to SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data from England and the United States, we uncover networks of intercommunity transmission that reflect geographical relationships while exposing significant long-range interactions. The scaling of importation rate with distance is consistent across both countries, yet weaker than expected based on mobility data, highlighting limitations of indirect inference. We show that transmission patterns can change between waves of variants of concern and analyze how the inferred heterogeneity in intercommunity transmission impacts evolutionary forecasts. While applied here to geographically defined communities, our approach could be applied to those defined by other traits (e.g., age, socioeconomic status), provided time-series data can be stratified accordingly. Overall, our study highlights population genomic time series data as a crucial record of epidemiological interactions, which can be deciphered using tree-free inference methods.

Okada, Takashi [Department of Physics; University ↗

Semi-supervised graph neural networks for pileup noise removal

Abstract The high instantaneous luminosity of the CERN Large Hadron Collider leads to multiple proton–proton interactions in the same or nearby bunch crossings (pileup). Advanced pileup mitigation algorithms are designed to remove this noise from pileup particles and improve the performance of crucial physics observables. This study implements a semi-supervised graph neural network for particle-level pileup noise removal, by identifying individual particles produced from pileup. The graph neural network is firstly trained on charged particles with known labels, which can be obtained from detector measurements on data or simulation, and then inferred on neutral particles for which such labels are missing. This semi-supervised approach does not depend on the neutral particle pileup label information from simulation, and thus allows us to perform training directly on experimental data. The performance of this approach is found to be consistently better than widely-used domain algorithms and comparable to the fully-supervised training using simulation truth information. The study serves as the first attempt at applying semi-supervised learning techniques to pileup mitigation, and opens up a new direction of fully data-driven machine learning pileup mitigation studies.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

The Worldwide C3S CORDEX Grand Ensemble: A Major Contribution to Assess Regional Climate Change in the IPCC AR6 Atlas

The collaboration between the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) and the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) provides open access to an unprecedented ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations, across the 14 CORDEX continental-scale domains, with global coverage. These simulations have been used as a new line of evidence to assess regional climate projections in the latest contribution of the Working Group I (WGI) to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), particularly in the regional chapters and the Atlas. Here, we present the work done in the framework of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to assemble a consistent worldwide CORDEX grand ensemble, aligned with the deadlines and activities of IPCC AR6. This work addressed the uneven and heterogeneous availability of CORDEX ESGF data by supporting publication in CORDEX domains with few archived simulations and performing quality control. It also addressed the lack of comprehensive documentation by compiling information from all contributing regional models, allowing for an informed use of data. In addition to presenting the worldwide CORDEX dataset, we assess here its consistency for precipitation and temperature by comparing climate change signals in regions with overlapping CORDEX domains, obtaining overall coincident regional climate change signals. The C3S CORDEX dataset has been used for the assessment of regional climate change in the IPCC AR6 (and for the interactive Atlas) and is available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Learning thermodynamic master equations for open quantum systems

The characterization of Hamiltonians and other components of open quantum dynamical systems plays a crucial role in quantum computing and other applications. Scientific machine learning techniques have been applied to this problem in a variety of ways, including by modeling with deep neural networks. However, the majority of mathematical models describing open quantum systems are linear, and the natural nonlinearities in learnable models have not been incorporated using physical principles. We present a data-driven model for open quantum systems that includes learnable, thermodynamically consistent terms. The trained model is interpretable, as it directly estimates the system Hamiltonian and linear components of coupling to the environment. We validate the model on synthetic two and three-level data, as well as experimental two-level data collected from a quantum device at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Mathematics and Computing↗

Availability and Performance Loss Factors for U.S. PV Fleet Systems

In the PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative, we partner with photovoltaic (PV) fleet owners to collect time-series PV production data and publish aggregated, anonymized results. This report is an update of our previous publications, specifically a FY 2021 performance index publication and a FY 2022 fleet degradation analysis. In this analysis, we have increased our data participants and system totals by around 10% to 8.5 GW and 24,000 separate inverter data channels. Four major analysis topics are considered in this report: Performance Index (PI) trends, PV system availability, soiling losses, and PV system degradation. Performance Index and inverter availability are assessed on a larger set of data from our FY 2021 report: 1,128 systems compared with 200 systems from before. The increased number of systems is due to an improved data quality methodology, as well as introducing new systems to the analysis. Overall results are similar to previously published values - overall inverter availability is low in the first six months of system performance before reaching steady-state by the end of the first year. Excluding this six-month startup period, system-level aggregated data shows a median (P50) system availability of 0.99 and a lower 10th percentile (P90) value of 0.95 (Figure ES-1). A dependence on system size is also demonstrated, with worse inverter availability results for larger PV systems. Causes of this effect are under investigation, but may be impacted by inverter size, which also show lower availability for larger inverter sizes. This report also investigates PI, correcting for degradation, soiling, snow, and availability. Following these corrections, the median system PI over its entire lifetime is 0.95. PI values reported here are approximately 3% lower than what we presented in our previous FY 2021 report. Soiling loss is assessed in a comprehensive way for the first time in this report. Results are presented using the COmbined Degradation and Soiling (CODS) method, as implemented in RdTools (v3.0.0a4). Soiling values are presented for 255 systems, which indicated irradiance-weighted soiling loss greater than 1%. The values have been published in an updated NREL soiling map at nrel.gov/pv/soiling.html. Finally, we investigated system degradation using three different data analysis techniques: conventional RdTools (year-on-year (YOY)), CODS, and Performance Loss Rate (PLR) analysis. Overall degradation results are consistent with our previous publications. Rerunning conventional RdTools on our updated fleet shows that some data partners have systematically fallen below the median system degradation rate (change over time) of -0.75 %/year. A comparison with PLR analysis, which looks at change in annual PI over time, shows that median system degradation is consistent with -0.5% to -0.75% per year change. However, at the P90 value, system degradation is substantially faster. These two results are consistent and indicate that resulting degradation statistics depend to a great degree on the population of PV systems making up the analysis cohort and whether soiling impacts the systems. The use of CODS for degradation analysis provides a different method for degradation assessment, which explicitly excludes the impact of recoverable soiling on degradation analysis. Excluding soiling effects yields an annual system degradation around -0.5% per year on average. This indicates that a portion of system performance loss may be attributed to periodic soiling that is not fully recovered. This report provides PV system owners/operators with background and methods to analyze PV system performance, give guidance for expected cohort performance, and performance loss values for use in pro-forma financial models, which guide new-build system design and bankability reports.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Evaluation of E3SM land model snow simulations over the western United States

Abstract. Seasonal snow has crucial impacts on climate, ecosystems, and humans, but it is vulnerable to global warming. The land component (ELM) of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) mechanistically simulates snow processes from accumulation, canopy interception, compaction, and snow aging to melt. Although high-quality field measurements, remote sensing snow products, and data assimilation products with high spatio-temporal resolution are available, there has been no systematic evaluation of the snow properties and phenology in ELM. This study comprehensively evaluates ELM snow simulations over the western United States at 0.125∘ resolution during 2001–2019 using the Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) in situ networks, MODIS remote sensing products (i.e., MCD43 surface albedo product), the spatially and temporally complete (STC) snow-covered area and grain size (MODSCAG) and MODIS dust and radiative forcing in snow (MODDRFS) products (STC-MODSCAG/STC-MODDRFS), and the snow property inversion from remote sensing (SPIReS) product and two data assimilation products of snow water equivalent and snow depth – i.e., University of Arizona (UA) and SNOw Data Assimilation System (SNODAS). Overall the ELM simulations are consistent with the benchmarking datasets and reproduce the spatio-temporal patterns, interannual variability, and elevation gradients for different snow properties including snow cover fraction (fsno), surface albedo (αsur) over snow cover regions, snow water equivalent (SWE), and snow depth (Dsno). However, there are large biases of fsno with dense forest cover and αsur in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada in winter, compared to the MODIS products. There are large discrepancies of snow albedo, snow grain size, and light-absorbing particle-induced snow albedo reduction between ELM and the MODIS products, attributed to uncertainties in the aerosol forcing data, snow aging processes in ELM, and remote sensing retrievals. Against UA and SNODAS, ELM has a mean bias of −20.7 mm (−35.9 %) and −20.4 mm (−35.5 %), respectively, for spring, and −13.8 mm (−27.8 %) and −10.2 mm (−22.2 %), respectively, for winter. ELM shows a relatively high correlation with SNOTEL SWE, with mean correlation coefficients of 0.69 but negative mean biases of −122.7 mm. Compared to the snow phenology of STC-MODSCAG and SPIReS, ELM shows delayed snow accumulation onset dates by 17.3 and 12.4 d, earlier snow end dates by 35.5 and 26.8 d, and shorter snow durations by 52.9 and 39.5 d, respectively. This study underscores the need for diagnosing model biases and improving ELM representations of snow properties and snow phenology in mountainous areas for more credible simulation and future projection of mountain snowpack.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Electronic structure and photophysics of a supermolecular iron complex having a long MLCT-state lifetime and panchromatic absorption

Exploiting earth-abundant iron-based metal complexes as high-performance photosensitizers demands long-lived electronically excited metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) states, but these species suffer typically from femtosecond timescale charge-transfer (CT)-state quenching by low-lying nonreactive metal-centered (MC) states. Here, we engineer supermolecular Fe(II) chromophores based on the bis(tridentate-ligand)metal(II)-ethyne-(porphinato)zinc(II) conjugated framework, previously shown to give rise to highly delocalized low-lying 3 MLCT states for other Group VIII metal (Ru, Os) complexes. Electronic spectral, potentiometric, and ultrafast pump–probe transient dynamical data demonstrate that a combination of a strong σ-donating tridentate ligand and a (porphinato)zinc(II) moiety with low-lying π*-energy levels, sufficiently destabilize MC states and stabilize supermolecular MLCT states to realize Fe(II) complexes that express 3 MLCT state photophysics reminiscent of their heavy-metal analogs. The resulting Fe(II) chromophore archetype, FeNHCPZn, features a highly polarized CT state having a profoundly extended 3MLCT lifetime (160 ps), 3 MLCT phosphorescence, and ambient environment stability. Density functional and domain-based local pair natural orbital coupled cluster [DLPNO-CCSD(T)] theory reveal triplet-state wavefunction spatial distributions consistent with electronic spectroscopic and excited-state dynamical data, further underscoring the dramatic Fe metal-to-extended ligand CT character of electronically excited FeNHCPZn. This design further prompts intense panchromatic absorptivity via redistributing high-energy absorptive oscillator strength throughout the visible spectral domain, while maintaining a substantial excited-state oxidation potential for wide-ranging photochemistry––highlighted by the ability of FeNHCPZn to photoinject charges into a SnO 2 /FTO electrode in a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) architecture. Concepts enumerated herein afford opportunities for replacing traditional rare-metal–based emitters for solar-energy conversion and photoluminescence applications.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Renormalization group improved photon impact factors and the high energy virtual photon scattering

We perform the renormalization group improved collinear resummation of the photon-gluon impact factors. We construct the resummed cross section for virtual photon-photon (γ ∗ γ ∗ ) scattering which incorporates the impact factors and BFKL gluon Green’s function up to the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy in energy. The impact factors include important kinematical effects which are responsible for the most singular poles in Mellin space at next-to-leading order. Further conditions on the resummed cross section are obtained by requiring the consistency with the collinear limits. Our analysis is consistent with previous impact factor calculations at NLO, apart from a new term proportional to C F that we find for the longitudinal polarization. Finally, we use the resummed cross section to compare with the LEP data on the γ ∗ γ ∗ cross section and with previous calculations. The resummed result is lower than the leading logarithmic approximation but higher than the pure next-to-leading one, and is consistent with the experimental data.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Using SIMS to decode noisy stratigraphic δ 13 C variations in Ediacaran carbonates

Carbonate carbon isotope (δ 13 C carb ) chemostratigraphy is a valuable tool in Precambrian stratigraphic correlation. The effectiveness of this tool rests on the assumption that δ 13 C carb data record global seawater signals. However, in some cases δ 13 C carb data exhibit rapid and noisy stratigraphic variations that may have been influenced by authigenic or diagenetic carbonate minerals. To assess the contribution of non-primary minerals towards bulk carbonate carbon isotope values, we acquired SIMS (secondary ion mass spectrometry) δ 13 C carb data, electron microscopic data, and CL (cathodoluminescence) microscopic data from two Ediacaran successions—the lower Member II of the Doushantuo Formation in South China and the Mooifontein Member of the Zaris Formation in southern Namibia. The Doushantuo samples came from a stratigraphic interval with noisy meter-scale δ 13 C carb variations of up to 10‰, whereas the Mooifontein Member is characterized by consistent δ13Ccarb values with limited meter-scale variations of less than ~4‰. Our data show that the meter-scale stratigraphic variations in δ 13 C carb are also mirrored in the SIMS data at μm-mm scales in both Doushantuo and Mooifontein samples. In the Doushantuo samples, SIMS δ 13 C carb values of authigenic calcite vary by up to 10‰ over μm-mm scales and can be either higher or lower than those of the co-existing dolomite matrix, which also appears to be affected by authigenic carbonate on the basis of petrographic observation. Bulk-sample δ 13 C carb values measured on powders microdrilled from the same SIMS specimens are within the range of SIMS δ 13 C carb values. Thus, we infer that bulk-sample δ 13 C carb values of Doushantuo samples represent mixtures of different carbonate components. The Doushantuo and Mooifontein SIMS δ 13 C carb data validate the traditional method of using chemostratigraphic consistency to evaluate authigenic/diagenetic alteration, but given that secondary phases may be 13 C-enriched relative to matrix carbonate, caution is warranted when taking maximum values to approximate primary chemostratigraphic trends.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗