Discovery of interstellar mercapto radicals (SH) with the GREAT instrument on SOFIA

We report the first detection of interstellar mercapto radicals, obtained along the sight-line to the submillimeter continuum source W49N. We have used the GREAT instrument on SOFIA to observe the 1383 GHz Doublet Pi 3/2 J = 5/2 - 3/2 lambda doublet in the upper sideband of the L1 receiver. The resultant spectrum reveals SH absorption in material local to W49N, as well as in foreground gas, unassociated with W49N, that is located along the sight-line. For the foreground material at velocities in the range 37 - 44 km/s with respect to the local standard of rest, we infer a total SH column density ~ 2.6 E+12 cm-2, corresponding to an abundance of ~ 7 E-9 relative to H2, and yielding an SH/H2S abundance ratio ~ 0.13. The observed SH/H2S abundance ratio is much smaller than that predicted by standard models for the production of SH and H2S in turbulent dissipation regions and shocks, and suggests that the endothermic neutral-neutral reaction SH + H2 -> H2S + H must be enhanced along with the ion-neutral reactions believed to produce CH+ and SH+ in diffuse molecular clouds.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics (SOFIA/GREAT special issue

Towards the noise reduction of piezoelectrical-driven synthetic jet actuators

This paper details an experimental investigation aimed at reducing the noise output of piezoelectrical-driven synthetic jet actuators without compromising peak jet velocity. Specifically, the study considers double-chamber ('back-to-back') actuators for anti-phase noise suppression and corrugated-lobed orifices as a method to enhance turbulent mixing of the jets to suppress jet noise. The study involved the design, manufacture and bench test of interchangeable actuator hardware. Hot-wire anemometry and microphone recordings were employed to acquire velocity and noise measurements respectively for each chamber configuration and orifice plate across a range of excitation frequencies and for a fixed input voltage. The data analysis indicated a 32% noise reduction (20 dBA) from operating a singlechamber, circular orifice SJA to a double-chamber, corrugated-lobed orifice SJA at the Helmholtz resonant frequency. Results also showed there was a small reduction in peak jet velocity of 7% (~3 m/s) between these two cases based on orifices of the same discharge area. Finally, the electrical-to-fluidic power conversion efficiency of the double-chamber actuator was found to be 15% across all orifice designs at the resonant frequency; approximately double the efficiency of a single-chamber actuator. This work has thus demonstrated feasible gains in noise reduction and power efficiency through synthetic jet actuator design

Sulphur-bearing molecules in diffuse molecular clouds: new results from SOFIA/GREAT and the IRAM 30 m telescope

We have observed five sulphur-bearing molecules in foreground diffuse molecular clouds lying along the sight-lines to five bright continuum sources. We have used the GREAT instrument on SOFIA to observe the 1383 GHz $^2\Pi_{3/2} J=5/2-3/2$ transitions of SH towards the star-forming regions W31C, G29.96-0.02, G34.3+0.1, W49N and W51, detecting foreground absorption towards all five sources; and the EMIR receivers on the IRAM 30m telescope at Pico Veleta to detect the H$_2$S 1(10)-1(01), CS J=2-1 and SO 3(2)-2(1) transitions. In nine foreground absorption components detected towards these sources, the inferred column densities of the four detected molecules showed relatively constant ratios, with N(SH)/N(H$_2$S) in the range 1.1 - 3.0, N(CS)/N(H$_2$S) in the range 0.32 - 0.61, and N(SO)/N(H$_2$S) in the range 0.08 - 0.30. The observed SH/H$_2$ ratios - in the range (0.5-2.6) $\times 10^{-8}$ - indicate that SH (and other sulphur-bearing molecules) account for << 1% of the gas-phase sulphur nuclei. The observed abundances of sulphur-bearing molecules, however, greatly exceed those predicted by standard models of cold diffuse molecular clouds, providing further evidence for the enhancement of endothermic reaction rates by elevated temperatures or ion-neutral drift. We have considered the observed abundance ratios in the context of shock and turbulent dissipation region (TDR) models. Using the TDR model, we find that the turbulent energy available at large scale in the diffuse ISM is sufficient to explain the observed column densities of SH and CS. Standard shock and TDR models, however, fail to reproduce the column densities of H$_2$S and SO by a factor of about 10; more elaborate shock models - in which account is taken of the velocity drift, relative to H$_2$, of SH molecules produced by the dissociative recombination of H$_3$S$^+$ - reduce this discrepancy to a factor ~ 3.Comment: 30 pages, accepted for publication in A&

Strain in a silicon-on-insulator nanostructure revealed by 3D x-ray Bragg ptychography

International audienceProgresses in the design of well-defined electronic band structure and dedicated functionalities rely on the high control of complex architectural device nano-scaled structures. This includes the challenging accurate description of strain fields in crystalline structures, which requires non invasive and three-dimensional (3D) imaging methods. Here, we demonstrate in details how x-ray Bragg ptychography can be used to quantify in 3D a displacement field in a lithographically patterned silicon-on-insulator structure. The image of the crystalline properties, which results from the phase retrieval of a coherent intensity data set, is obtained from a well-controlled optimized process, for which all steps are detailed. These results confirm the promising perspectives of 3D Bragg ptychography for the investigation of complex nano-structured crystals in material science

A Very Low Resource Language Speech Corpus for Computational Language Documentation Experiments

Most speech and language technologies are trained with massive amounts of speech and text information. However, most of the world languages do not have such resources or stable orthography. Systems constructed under these almost zero resource conditions are not only promising for speech technology but also for computational language documentation. The goal of computational language documentation is to help field linguists to (semi-)automatically analyze and annotate audio recordings of endangered and unwritten languages. Example tasks are automatic phoneme discovery or lexicon discovery from the speech signal. This paper presents a speech corpus collected during a realistic language documentation process. It is made up of 5k speech utterances in Mboshi (Bantu C25) aligned to French text translations. Speech transcriptions are also made available: they correspond to a non-standard graphemic form close to the language phonology. We present how the data was collected, cleaned and processed and we illustrate its use through a zero-resource task: spoken term discovery. The dataset is made available to the community for reproducible computational language documentation experiments and their evaluation.Comment: accepted to LREC 201

Closed-loop separation control over a sharp edge ramp using Genetic Programming

We experimentally perform open and closed-loop control of a separating turbulent boundary layer downstream from a sharp edge ramp. The turbulent boundary layer just above the separation point has a Reynolds number $Re_{\theta}\approx 3\,500$ based on momentum thickness. The goal of the control is to mitigate separation and early re-attachment. The forcing employs a spanwise array of active vortex generators. The flow state is monitored with skin-friction sensors downstream of the actuators. The feedback control law is obtained using model-free genetic programming control (GPC) (Gautier et al. 2015). The resulting flow is assessed using the momentum coefficient, pressure distribution and skin friction over the ramp and stereo PIV. The PIV yields vector field statistics, e.g. shear layer growth, the backflow area and vortex region. GPC is benchmarked against the best periodic forcing. While open-loop control achieves separation reduction by locking-on the shedding mode, GPC gives rise to similar benefits by accelerating the shear layer growth. Moreover, GPC uses less actuation energy.Comment: 24 pages, 24 figures, submitted to Experiments in Fluid

Vibrational Study of 13C-enriched C60 Crystals

The infrared (IR) spectrum of solid C60 exhibits many weak vibrational modes. Symmetry breaking due to 13C isotopes provides a possible route for optically activating IR-silent vibrational modes. Experimental spectra and a semi-empirical theory on natural abundance and 13C-enriched single crystals of C60 are presented. By comparing the experimental results with the theoretical results, we exclude this isotopic activation mechanism from the explanation for weakly active fundamentals in the spectra.Comment: Accepted for Phys. Rev. B, typeset in REVTEX v3.0 in LaTeX. Postscript file including figures is available at http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~mmartin/papers/c13twocol2.ps File with figures will be e-mailed by reques

Low-velocity shocks: signatures of turbulent dissipation in diffuse irradiated gas

Context. Large-scale motions in galaxies (supernovae explosions, galaxy collisions, galactic shear etc.) generate turbulence, which allows a fraction of the available kinetic energy to cascade down to small scales before it is dissipated. Aims. We establish and quantify the diagnostics of turbulent dissipation in mildly irradiated diffuse gas in the specific context of shock structures. Methods. We incorporated the basic physics of photon-dominated regions into a state-of-the-art steady-state shock code. We examined the chemical and emission properties of mildly irradiated (G_0 = 1) magnetised shocks in diffuse media (n_H = 10^2 to 10^4 cm^(-3)) at low- to moderate velocities (from 3 to 40 km s^(-1)). Results. The formation of some molecules relies on endoergic reactions. Their abundances in J-type shocks are enhanced by several orders of magnitude for shock velocities as low as 7 km s^(-1). Otherwise most chemical properties of J-type shocks vary over less than an order of magnitude between velocities from about 7 to about 30 km s^(-1), where H_2 dissociation sets in. C-type shocks display a more gradual molecular enhancement with increasing shock velocity. We quantified the energy flux budget (fluxes of kinetic, radiated and magnetic energies) with emphasis on the main cooling lines of the cold interstellar medium. Their sensitivity to shock velocity is such that it allows observations to constrain statistical distributions of shock velocities. We fitted various probability distribution functions (PDFs) of shock velocities to spectroscopic observations of the galaxy-wide shock in Stephan’s Quintet and of a Galactic line of sight which samples diffuse molecular gas in Chamaeleon. In both cases, low velocities bear the greatest statistical weight and the PDF is consistent with a bimodal distribution. In the very low velocity shocks (below 5 km s^(-1)), dissipation is due to ion-neutral friction and it powers H_2 low-energy transitions and atomic lines. In moderate velocity shocks (20 km s^(-1) and above), the dissipation is due to viscous heating and accounts for most of the molecular emission. In our interpretation a significant fraction of the gas in the line of sight is shocked (from 4% to 66%). For example, C^+ emission may trace shocks in UV irradiated gas where C^+ is the dominant carbon species. Conclusions. Low- and moderate velocity shocks are important in shaping the chemical composition and excitation state of the interstellar gas. This allows one to probe the statistical distribution of shock velocities in interstellar turbulence

Hydrogen chloride in diffuse interstellar clouds along the line of sight to W31C (G10.6-0.4)

We report the detection of hydrogen chloride, HCl, in diffuse molecular clouds on the line of sight toward the star-forming region W31C (G10.6-0.4). The J = 1-0 lines of the two stable HCl isotopologues, H^(35)Cl and H^(37)Cl, are observed using the 1b receiver of the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on board the Herschel Space Observatory. The HCl line is detected in absorption, over a wide range of velocities associated with diffuse clouds along the line of sight to W31C. The analysis of the absorption strength yields a total HCl column density of a few 10^(13) cm^(–2), implying that HCl accounts for ~0.6% of the total gas-phase chlorine, which exceeds the theoretical model predictions by a factor of ~6. This result is comparable to those obtained from the chemically related species H_2Cl^+ and HCl^+, for which large column densities have also been reported on the same line of sight. The source of discrepancy between models and observations is still unknown; however, the detection of these Cl-bearing molecules provides key constraints for the chlorine chemistry in the diffuse gas

Interstellar OH+, H2O+ and H3O+ along the sight-line to G10.6-0.4

We report the detection of absorption lines by the reactive ions OH+, H2O+ and H3O+ along the line of sight to the submillimeter continuum source G10.6$-$0.4 (W31C). We used the Herschel HIFI instrument in dual beam switch mode to observe the ground state rotational transitions of OH+ at 971 GHz, H2O+ at 1115 and 607 GHz, and H3O+ at 984 GHz. The resultant spectra show deep absorption over a broad velocity range that originates in the interstellar matter along the line of sight to G10.6$-$0.4 as well as in the molecular gas directly associated with that source. The OH+ spectrum reaches saturation over most velocities corresponding to the foreground gas, while the opacity of the H2O+ lines remains lower than 1 in the same velocity range, and the H3O+ line shows only weak absorption. For LSR velocities between 7 and 50 kms$^{-1}$ we estimate total column densities of $N$(OH+) $> 2.5 \times 10^{14}$ cm$^{-2}$, $N$(H2O+) $\sim 6 \times 10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$ and $N$(H3O+) $\sim 4.0 \times 10^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$. These detections confirm the role of O$^+$ and OH$^+$ in initiating the oxygen chemistry in diffuse molecular gas and strengthen our understanding of the gas phase production of water. The high ratio of the OH+ by the H2O+ column density implies that these species predominantly trace low-density gas with a small fraction of hydrogen in molecular form