Study of tooling concepts for manufacturing operations in space Final report

Mechanical linkage device for manufacturing operations with orbital workshop

Search for the second forbidden beta decay of 8B to the ground state of 8Be

A significant decay branch of 8B to the ground state of 8Be would extend the solar neutrino spectrum to higher energies than anticipated in the standard solar models. These high-energy neutrinos would affect current neutrino oscillation results and also would be a background to measurements of the hep process. We have measured the delayed alpha particles from the decay of 8B, with the goal of observing the two 46-keV alpha particles arising from the ground-state decay. The 8B was produced using an in-flight radioactive beam technique. It was implanted in a silicon PIN-diode detector that was capable of identifying the alpha-particles from the 8Be ground state. From this measurement we find an upper limit (at 90% confidence level) of 7.3 x 10^{-5} for the branching ratio to the ground state. In addition to describing this measurement, we present a theoretical calculation for this branching ratio.Comment: One reference corrected. Minor edits in tex

Interaction of a Modulated Electron Beam with a Plasma

The results of a theoretical and experimental investigation of the high-frequency interaction of an electron beam with a plasma are reported. An electron beam, modulated at a microwave frequency, passes through a uniform region of a mercury arc discharge after which it is demodulated. Exponentially growing wave amplification along the electron beam was experimentally observed for the first time at a microwave frequency equal to the plasma frequency. Approximate theories of the effects of 1) plasma-electron collision frequencies, 2) plasma-electron thermal velocities and 3) finite beam diameter, are given. In a second experiment the interaction between a modulated electron beam and a slow electrostatic wave on a plasma column has been studied. A strong interaction occurs when the velocity of the electron beam is approximately equal to the velocity of the wave and the interaction is essentially the same as that which occurs in traveling-wave amplifiers, except that here the plasma colum replaces the usual helical slow-wave circuit. The theory predicting rates of growth is presented and compared with the experimental results

The horofunction boundary of the Hilbert geometry

We investigate the horofunction boundary of the Hilbert geometry defined on an arbitrary finite-dimensional bounded convex domain D. We determine its set of Busemann points, which are those points that are the limits of `almost-geodesics'. In addition, we show that any sequence of points converging to a point in the horofunction boundary also converges in the usual sense to a point in the Euclidean boundary of D. We prove that all horofunctions are Busemann points if and only if the set of extreme sets of the polar of D is closed in the Painleve-Kuratowski topology.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; minor changes, examples adde

Stochastic properties of systems controlled by autocatalytic reactions II

We analyzed the stochastic behavior of systems controlled by autocatalytic reaction A+X -> X+X, X+X -> A+X, X -> B provided that the distribution of reacting particles in the system volume is uniform, i.e. the point model of reaction kinetics introduced in arXiv:cond-mat/0404402 can be applied. Assuming the number of substrate particles A to be kept constant by a suitable reservoir, we derived the forward Kolmogorov equation for the probability of finding n=0,1,... autocatalytic particles X in the system at a given time moment. We have shown that the stochastic model results in an equation for the mean value of autocatalytic particles X which differs strongly from the kinetic rate equation. It has been found that not only the law of the mass action is violated but also the bifurcation point is disappeared in the well-known diagram of X particle- vs. A particle-concentration. Therefore, speculations about the role of autocatalytic reactions in processes of the "natural selection" can be hardly supported.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Coherent Backscattering of Light with Nonlinear Atomic Scatterers

We study coherent backscattering of a monochromatic laser by a dilute gas of cold two-level atoms in the weakly nonlinear regime. The nonlinear response of the atoms results in a modification of both the average field propagation (nonlinear refractive index) and the scattering events. Using a perturbative approach, the nonlinear effects arise from inelastic two-photon scattering processes. We present a detailed diagrammatic derivation of the elastic and inelastic components of the backscattering signal both for scalar and vectorial photons. Especially, we show that the coherent backscattering phenomenon originates in some cases from the interference between three different scattering amplitudes. This is in marked contrast with the linear regime where it is due to the interference between two different scattering amplitudes. In particular we show that, if elastically scattered photons are filtered out from the photo-detection signal, the nonlinear backscattering enhancement factor exceeds the linear barrier two, consistently with a three-amplitude interference effect.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Parametric down-conversion from a wave-equations approach: geometry and absolute brightness

Using the approach of coupled wave equations, we consider spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in the narrow-band regime and its relationship to classical nonlinear processes such as sum-frequency generation. We find simple expressions in terms of mode overlap integrals for the absolute pair production rate into single spatial modes, and simple relationships between the efficiencies of the classical and quantum processes. The results, obtained with Green function techniques, are not specific to any geometry or nonlinear crystal. The theory is applied to both degenerate and non-degenerate SPDC. We also find a time-domain expression for the correlation function between filtered signal and idler fields.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Current collection by high voltage anodes in near ionospheric conditions

The authors experimentally identified three distinct regimes with large differences in current collection in the presence of neutrals and weak magnetic fields. In magnetic field/anode voltage space the three regions are separated by very sharp transition boundaries. The authors performed a series of laboratory experiments to study the dependence of the region boundaries on several parameters, such as the ambient neutral density, plasma density, magnetic field strength, applied anode voltage, voltage pulsewidth, chamber material, chamber size and anode radius. The three observed regimes are: classical magnetic field limited collection; stable medium current toroidal discharge; and large scale, high current space glow discharge. There is as much as several orders of magnitude of difference in the amount of collected current upon any boundary crossing, particularly if one enters the space glow regime. They measured some of the properties of the plasma generated by the breakdown that is present in regimes II and III in the vicinity of the anode including the sheath modified electrostatic potential, I-V characteristics at high voltage as well as the local plasma density

Time-bin entangled photon holes

The general concept of entangled photon holes is based on a correlated absence of photon pairs in an otherwise constant optical background. Here we consider the specialized case when this background is confined to two well-defined time bins, which allows the formation of time-bin entangled photon holes. We show that when the typical coherent state background is replaced by a true single-photon (Fock state) background, the basic time-bin entangled photon-hole state becomes equivalent to one of the time-bin entangled photon-pair states. We experimentally demonstrate these ideas using a parametric down-conversion photon-pair source, linear optics, and post-selection to violate a Bell inequality with time-bin entangled photon holes.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure