Combining satellite observations and reanalysis energy transports to estimate global net surface energy fluxes 1985-2012

Two methods are developed to estimate net surface energy fluxes based upon satellite-based reconstructions of radiative fluxes at the top of atmosphere and the atmospheric energy tendencies and transports from the ERA-Interim reanalysis. Method 1 applies the mass adjusted energy divergence from ERA-Interim while method 2 estimates energy divergence based upon the net energy difference at the top of atmosphere and the surface from ERA-Interim. To optimise the surface flux and its variability over ocean, the divergences over land are constrained to match the monthly area mean surface net energy flux variability derived from a simple relationship between the surface net energy flux and the surface temperature change. The energy divergences over the oceans are then adjusted to remove an unphysical residual global mean atmospheric energy divergence. The estimated net surface energy fluxes are compared with other data sets from reanalysis and atmospheric model simulations. The spatial correlation coefficients of multi-annual means between the estimations made here and other data sets are all around 0.9. There are good agreements in area mean anomaly variability over the global ocean, but discrepancies in the trend over the eastern Pacific are apparent.

THERMAL CHARACTERIZATION OF COMBUSTION CHAMBER COMPONENTS IN A GASOLINE TURBOCHARGED DIRECT INJECTION (GTDI) ENGINE

This report is a PhD dissertation proposal to study the in-cylinder temperature and heat flux distributions within a gasoline turbocharged direct injection (GTDI) engine. Recent regulations requiring automotive manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles has led to great technological achievements in internal combustion engines. These achievements have increased the power density of gasoline engines dramatically in the last two decades. Engine technologies such as variable valve timing (VVT), direct injection (DI), and turbocharging have significantly improved engine power-to-weight and power-to-displacement ratios. A popular trend for increasing vehicle fuel economy in recent years has been to downsize the engine and add VVT, DI, and turbocharging technologies so that a lighter more efficient engine can replace a larger, heavier one. With the added power density, thermal management of the engine becomes a more important issue. Engine components are being pushed to their temperature limits. Therefore it has become increasingly important to have a greater understanding of the parameters that affect in-cylinder temperatures and heat transfer. The proposed research will analyze the effects of engine speed, load, relative air-fuel ratio (AFR), and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on both in-cylinder and global temperature and heat transfer distributions. Additionally, the effect of knocking combustion and fuel spray impingement will be investigated. The proposed research will be conducted on a 3.5 L six cylinder GTDI engine. The research engine will be instrumented with a large number of sensors to measure in-cylinder temperatures and pressures, as well as, the temperature, pressure, and flow rates of energy streams into and out of the engine. One of the goals of this research is to create a model that will predict the energy distribution to the crankshaft, exhaust, and cooling system based on normalized values for engine speed, load, AFR, and EGR. The results could be used to aid in the engine design phase for turbocharger and cooling system sizing. Additionally, the data collected can be used for validation of engine simulation models, since in-cylinder temperature and heat flux data is not readily available in the literature..

Atmospheric energy for subsurface life on Mars?

The location and density of biologically useful energy sources on Mars will limit the biomass, spatial distribution, and organism size of any biota. Subsurface Martian organisms could be supplied with a large energy flux from the oxidation of photochemically produced atmospheric H2 and CO diffusing into the regolith. However, surface abundance measurements of these gases demonstrate that no more than a few percent of this available flux is actually being consumed, suggesting that biological activity driven by atmospheric H2 and CO is limited in the top few hundred meters of the subsurface. This is significant because the available but unused energy is extremely large: for organisms at 30-m depth, it is 2,000 times previous estimates of hydrothermal and chemical weathering energy and far exceeds the energy derivable from other atmospheric gases. This also implies that the apparent scarcity of life on Mars is not attributable to lack of energy. Instead, the availability of liquid water may be a more important factor limiting biological activity because the photochemical energy flux can only penetrate to 100- to 1,000-m depth, where most H2O is probably frozen. Because both atmospheric and Viking lander soil data provide little evidence for biological activity, the detection of short-lived trace gases will probably be a better indicator of any extant Martian life.

Hydrogen in plasma-nanofabrication : selective control of nanostructure heating and passivation

The possibility of independent control of the surface fluxes of energy and hydrogen-containing radicals, thus enabling selective control of the nanostructure heating and passivation, is demonstrated. In situ energy flux measurements reveal that even a small addition of H2 to low-pressure Ar plasmas leads to a dramatic increase in the energy deposition through H recombination on the surface. The heat release is quenched by a sequential addition of a hydrocarbon precursor while the surface passivation remains effective. Such selective control offers an effective mechanism for deterministic control of the growth shape, crystallinity, and density of nanostructures in plasma-aided nanofabrication. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Surface waves in strongly irradiated dusty plasmas

High-frequency surface waves at the interface between two dusty plasmas subject to radiation are considered. Ultraviolet radiation with energy flux larger than the photoelectric work function of the dust surface causes photoemission of electrons. The dust charge and the overall charge balance of the plasma are thus modified. The dispersion properties of the surface waves are investigated for three parameter regimes distinguished by the charging mechanisms in the two plasmas. It is shown that photoemission can significantly affect the plasma and the surface waves.

Top polarisation studies in H(-)t and Wt production

The polarisation of top quarks produced in high energy processes can be a very sensitive probe of physics beyond the Standard Model. The kinematical distributions of the decay products of the top quark can provide clean information on the polarisation of the produced top and thus can probe new physics effects in the top quark sector. We study some of the recently proposed polarisation observables involving the decay products of the top quark in the context of H(-)t and Wt production. We show that the effect of the top polarisation on the decay lepton azimuthal angle distribution, studied recently for these processes at leading order in QCD, is robust with respect to the inclusion of next-to-leading order and parton shower corrections. We also consider the leptonic polar angle, as well as recently proposed energy-related distributions of the top decay products. We construct asymmetry parameters from these observables, which can be used to distinguish the new physics signal from the Wt background and discriminate between different values of tan beta and m(H)- in a general type II two-Higgs doublet model. Finally, we show that similar observables may be useful in separating a Standard Model Wt signal from the much larger QCD induced top pair production background.

Light transmission through and its complete stoppage in an ultra slow wave optical medium

Light wave transmission - its compression, amplification, and the optical energy storage in an ultra slow wave medium (USWM) is studied analytically. Our phenomenological treatment is based entirely on the continuity equation for the optical energy flux, and the well-known distribution-product property of Dirac delta-function. The results so obtained provide a clear understanding of some recent experiments on light transmission and its complete stoppage in an USWM.

Shock slip-relations for thermal and chemical nonequilibrium flows

This paper appears to be the first where the multi-temperature shock slip-relations for the thermal and chemical nonequilibrium flows are derived. The derivation is based on analysis of the influences of thermal nonequilibrium and viscous effects on the mass, momentum and energy flux balance relations at the shock wave. When the relaxation times for all internal energy modes tend to sere, the multi-temperature shock slip-relations are converted into single-temperature ones for thermal equilibrium hows. The present results can be applied to flows over vehicles of different geometries with or without angles of attack. In addition, the present single-temperature shock slip-relations are compared with those in the literature, and Some defects and limitations in the latter are clarified.

Fluctuations in a tokamak plasma

An experimental investigation of low frequency floating potential fluctuations (f ≤ 200 kHz) in a research tokamak plasma using two spatially separated electrostatic probes has been performed. The spectra, correlation length, and the phase velocity of the fluctuations in both the radial and azimuthal direction have been determined. The propagation velocity in the toroidal direction was also measured and was found to be in the direction of electron current flow. The waves traveled azimuthally in the ion diamagnetic drift direction, even after the usual E x B rotation was taken into account. The electron density fluctuations associated with these oscillations were large, δn/n ≃ 0.35 - 0.50.

The spectra were found to have regularly spaced peaks which seemed to be related to specific azimuthal modes (m =1,2,3,...,etc. ) A parametric study was made to determine what effect plasma parameters had on these peaks. During periods of high electron density in the first 2 msec of the plasma lifetime, strong sawtooth type oscillations were observed. These oscillations typically had frequencies of approximately 10 kHz and were also present when large amounts of neutral gas were added during the discharge by a process called "gas puffing."

The results are compared with experimental observations made on other plasma devices with electric and magnetic probes and with microwave and CO₂ laser scattering techniques. (The scattering measurements are complimentary to the probe measurements since, in the former case, the wavelength is fixed by the scattering angle, but the oscillations could not be spatially localized.) The oscillations in the Caltech torus were probably related to a drift-tearing type instability which is thought to play a major role in the anomalous particle and energy flux observed in tokamaks. Comparisons are made between current theory and the experimental results. However, the theory for the observed oscillations is still in a rudimentary stage of development, and it is hoped that the present investigation will stimulate future analytical work.

Semiconductor laser with a biconical waveguide

The propagation losses in the fundamental mode of a bicone made of highly reflecting metal or a dielectric of large refraction were approximately estimated using Leontovich's boundary condition. A 400-fold concentration of the energy flux density lias been obtained in a cross section which is much smaller than λ. Here, the losses are 2.5% at λ = 550 nm in an Ag bicone and 12% in a semiconductor bicone with a band gap of ≈1 eV for hv larger than the band gap. The excitation efficiency of a bicone has been estimated. While not too large, it can be increased significantly using the method proposed in the present paper. The application of the optical bicone for the multiplication of a semiconductor-laser frequency is discussed. The results obtained are also of use in scanning near-field optical microscopy and in experiments on focusing laser pulses of ultrahigh power. © 2000 Plenum/Kluwer Publishing Corporation.

Investigation of mode coupling in a microdisk resonator for realizing directional emission

Mode coupling between the whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) is numerically investigated for a two-dimensional microdisk resonator with an output waveguide. The equilateral-polygonal shaped mode patterns can be constructed by mode coupling in the microdisk, and the coupled modes can still keep high quality factors (Q factors). For a microdisk with a diameter of 4.5 mu m and a refractive index of 3.2 connected to a 0.6-mu m-wide output waveguide, the coupled mode at the wavelength of 1490 nm has a Q factor in the order of 10(4), which is ten times larger than those of the uncoupled WGMs, and the output efficiency defined as the ratio of the energy flux confined in the output waveguide to the total radiation energy flux is about 0.65. The mode coupling can be used to realize high efficiency directional-emission microdisk lasers. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America

Improved BCS-type pairing for the relativistic mean-field theory

A density-dependent delta interaction (DDDI) is proposed in the formalism of BCS-type pairing correlations for exotic nuclei whose Fermi surfaces are close to the threshold of the unbound state. It provides the possibility to pick up those states whose wave functions are concentrated in the nuclear region by making the pairing matrix elements state dependent. On this basis, the energy level distributions, occupations, and ground-state properties are self-consistently studied in the RMF theory with deformation. Calculations are performed for the Sr isotopic chain. A good description of the total energy per nucleon, deformations, two-neutron separation energies and isotope shift from the proton drip line to the neutron drip line is found. Especially, by comparing the single-particle structure from the DDDI pairing interaction with that from the constant pairing interaction for a very neutron-rich nucleus it is demonstrated that the DDDI pairing method improves the treatment of the pairing in the continuum.

Systematic study of properties of Hs nuclei

The ground-state properties of Hs nuclei are studied in the framework of the relativistic meanfield theory. We find that the more relatively stable isotopes are located on the proton abundant side of the isotopic chain. The last stable nucleus near the proton drip line is probably the (255)Hs nucleus. The alpha-decay half-lives of Hs nuclei are predicted, and together with the evaluation of the spontaneous-fission half-lives it is shown that the nuclei, which are possibly stable against spontaneous fission are (263-274)Hs. This is in coincidence with the larger binding energies per nucleon. If (271-274)Hs can be synthesized and identified, only those nuclei from the upper Z = 118 isotopic chain, which are lighter than the nucleus (294)118, and those nuclei in the corresponding alpha-decay chain lead to Hs nuclei. The most stable unknown Hs nucleus is (268)Hs. The density-dependent delta interaction pairing is used to improve the BCS pairing correction, which results in more reasonable single-particle energy level distributions and nucleon occupation probabilities. It is shown that the properties of nuclei in the superheavy region can be described with this interaction.

Transition region, coronal heating and the fast solar wind

Li, Xing, 'Transition region, coronal heating and the fast solar wind', Astronomy and Astrophysics (2003) 406 pp.345-356 RAE2008

Plasma acceleration above Martian magnetic anomalies

Grande, Manuel, et al., 'Plasma acceleration above Martian magnetic anomalies', Science (2006) 311(5763) pp.980-983 RAE2008