Properties of a-C:H films deposited from a methane electron cyclotron wave resonant plasma

An electron cyclotron wave resonant methane plasma discharge was used for the high rate deposition of hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H). Deposition rates of up to ∼400 Å/min were obtained over substrates up to 2.5 in. in diameter with a film thickness uniformity of ∼±10%. The deposited films were characterised in terms of their mass density, sp3 and hydrogen contents, C-H bonding, intrinsic stress, scratch resistance and friction properties. The deposited films possessed an average sp3 content, mass density and refractive index of ∼58%, 1.76 g/cm3 and 2.035 respectively.Mechanical characterisation indicated that the films possessed very low steady-state coefficients of friction (ca. 0.06) and a moderate shear strength of ∼141 MPa. Nano-indentation measurements also indicated a hardness and elastic modulus of ∼16.1 and 160 GPa respectively. The critical loads required to induce coating failure were also observed to increase with ion energy as a consequence of the increase in degree of ion mixing at the interface. Furthermore, coating failure under scratch test conditions was observed to take place via fracture within the silicon substrate itself, rather than either in the coating or at the film/substrate interface. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Reflection of shock-wave in pur foam from rigid wall

Keller proposed that a building, a mechanical installation or a body wrapped bya layer of foam plastics may be an efficient means for protection from damage ofblast wave. However, the practical effect was beyond expectation. For example, agunner wearing the foam plastics-padded waistcoat was injured more seriously by theblast wave from a muzzle. Monti took the foam plastics as homogeneous two-phasemedium and analyzed it with the theory of dusty flow. The obtained results showthat the peak pressure behind the reflected shock wave from rigid wall with foamcoat exceeds obviously that without foam coat under the same condition. Gel'fand,Patz and Weaver made experimental observations by means of shock tubes and veri-

Topics in gravitational-wave science : macroscopic quantum mechanics and black hole physics

The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, the two most important physics discoveries of the 20th century, not only revolutionized our understanding of the nature of space-time and the way matter exists and interacts, but also became the building blocks of what we currently know as modern physics. My thesis studies both subjects in great depths --- this intersection takes place in gravitational-wave physics.

Gravitational waves are "ripples of space-time", long predicted by general relativity. Although indirect evidence of gravitational waves has been discovered from observations of binary pulsars, direct detection of these waves is still actively being pursued. An international array of laser interferometer gravitational-wave detectors has been constructed in the past decade, and a first generation of these detectors has taken several years of data without a discovery. At this moment, these detectors are being upgraded into second-generation configurations, which will have ten times better sensitivity. Kilogram-scale test masses of these detectors, highly isolated from the environment, are probed continuously by photons. The sensitivity of such a quantum measurement can often be limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and during such a measurement, the test masses can be viewed as evolving through a sequence of nearly pure quantum states.

The first part of this thesis (Chapter 2) concerns how to minimize the adverse effect of thermal fluctuations on the sensitivity of advanced gravitational detectors, thereby making them closer to being quantum-limited. My colleagues and I present a detailed analysis of coating thermal noise in advanced gravitational-wave detectors, which is the dominant noise source of Advanced LIGO in the middle of the detection frequency band. We identified the two elastic loss angles, clarified the different components of the coating Brownian noise, and obtained their cross spectral densities.

The second part of this thesis (Chapters 3-7) concerns formulating experimental concepts and analyzing experimental results that demonstrate the quantum mechanical behavior of macroscopic objects - as well as developing theoretical tools for analyzing quantum measurement processes. In Chapter 3, we study the open quantum dynamics of optomechanical experiments in which a single photon strongly influences the quantum state of a mechanical object. We also explain how to engineer the mechanical oscillator's quantum state by modifying the single photon's wave function.

In Chapters 4-5, we build theoretical tools for analyzing the so-called "non-Markovian" quantum measurement processes. Chapter 4 establishes a mathematical formalism that describes the evolution of a quantum system (the plant), which is coupled to a non-Markovian bath (i.e., one with a memory) while at the same time being under continuous quantum measurement (by the probe field). This aims at providing a general framework for analyzing a large class of non-Markovian measurement processes. Chapter 5 develops a way of characterizing the non-Markovianity of a bath (i.e.,whether and to what extent the bath remembers information about the plant) by perturbing the plant and watching for changes in the its subsequent evolution. Chapter 6 re-analyzes a recent measurement of a mechanical oscillator's zero-point fluctuations, revealing nontrivial correlation between the measurement device's sensing noise and the quantum rack-action noise.

Chapter 7 describes a model in which gravity is classical and matter motions are quantized, elaborating how the quantum motions of matter are affected by the fact that gravity is classical. It offers an experimentally plausible way to test this model (hence the nature of gravity) by measuring the center-of-mass motion of a macroscopic object.

The most promising gravitational waves for direct detection are those emitted from highly energetic astrophysical processes, sometimes involving black holes - a type of object predicted by general relativity whose properties depend highly on the strong-field regime of the theory. Although black holes have been inferred to exist at centers of galaxies and in certain so-called X-ray binary objects, detecting gravitational waves emitted by systems containing black holes will offer a much more direct way of observing black holes, providing unprecedented details of space-time geometry in the black-holes' strong-field region.

The third part of this thesis (Chapters 8-11) studies black-hole physics in connection with gravitational-wave detection.

Chapter 8 applies black hole perturbation theory to model the dynamics of a light compact object orbiting around a massive central Schwarzschild black hole. In this chapter, we present a Hamiltonian formalism in which the low-mass object and the metric perturbations of the background spacetime are jointly evolved. Chapter 9 uses WKB techniques to analyze oscillation modes (quasi-normal modes or QNMs) of spinning black holes. We obtain analytical approximations to the spectrum of the weakly-damped QNMs, with relative error O(1/L^2), and connect these frequencies to geometrical features of spherical photon orbits in Kerr spacetime. Chapter 11 focuses mainly on near-extremal Kerr black holes, we discuss a bifurcation in their QNM spectra for certain ranges of (l,m) (the angular quantum numbers) as a/M → 1. With tools prepared in Chapter 9 and 10, in Chapter 11 we obtain an analytical approximate for the scalar Green function in Kerr spacetime.

Modeling Innovative Power Take-Off Based on Double-Acting Hydraulic Cylinders Array for Wave Energy Conversion

One of the key systems of a Wave Energy Converter for extraction of wave energy is the Power Take-Off (PTO) device. This device transforms the mechanical energy of a moving body into electrical energy. This paper describes the model of an innovative PTO based on independently activated double-acting hydraulic cylinders array. The model has been developed using a simulation tool, based on a port-based approach to model hydraulics systems. The components and subsystems used in the model have been parameterized as real components and their values experimentally obtained from an existing prototype. In fact, the model takes into account most of the hydraulic losses of each component. The simulations show the flexibility to apply different restraining torques to the input movement depending on the geometrical configuration and the hydraulic cylinders on duty, easily modified by a control law. The combination of these two actions allows suitable flexibility to adapt the device to different sea states whilst optimizing the energy extraction. The model has been validated using a real test bench showing good correlations between simulation and experimental tests.

Influences of CO2 laser annealing on mechanical and laser-induced damage properties of ZrO2 thin films

Zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) thin films were deposited on BK7 glass substrates by the electron beam evaporation method. A continuous wave CO2 laser was used to anneal the ZrO2 thin films to investigate whether beneficial changes could be produced. After annealing at different laser scanning speeds by CO2 laser, weak absorption of the coatings was measured by the surface thermal lensing (STL) technique, and then laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) was also determined. It was found that the weak absorption decreased first, while the laser scanning speed is below some value, then increased. The LIDT of the ZrO2 coatings decreased greatly when the laser scanning speeds were below some value. A Nomarski microscope was employed to map the damage morphology, and it was found that the damage behavior was defect-initiated both for annealed and as-deposited samples. The influences of post-deposition CO2 laser annealing on the structural and mechanical properties of the films have also been investigated by X-ray diffraction and ZYGO interferometer. It was found that the microstructure of the ZrO2 films did not change. The residual stress in ZrO2 films showed a tendency from tensile to compressive after CO, laser annealing, and the variation quantity of the residual stress increased with decreasing laser scanning speed. The residual stress may be mitigated to some extent at proper treatment parameters. (c) 2007 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Design and simulation of SMES system using YBCO tapes for direct drive wave energy converters

The ocean represents a huge energy reservoir since waves can be exploited to generate clean and renewable electricity; however, a hybrid energy storage system is needed to smooth the fluctuation. In this paper a hybrid energy storage system using a superconducting magnetic energy system (SMES) and Li-ion battery is proposed. The SMES is designed using Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide (YBCO) tapes, which store 60 kJ electrical energy. The magnet component of the SMES is designed using global optimization algorithm. Mechanical stress, coupled with electromagnetic field, is calculated using COMSOL and Matlab. A cooling system is presented and a suitable refrigerator is chosen to maintain a cold working temperature taking into account four heat sources. Then a microgrid system of direct drive linear wave energy converters is designed. The interface circuit connecting the generator and storage system is given. The result reveals that the fluctuated power from direct drive linear wave energy converters is smoothed by the hybrid energy storage system. The maximum power of the wave energy converter is 10 kW. © 2012 IEEE.

Electronic structures and mechanical properties of uranium monocarbide from first-principles LDA plus U and GGA plus U calculations

The electronic structure, elastic constants, Poisson's ratio, and phonon dispersion curves of UC have been systematically investigated from the first-principles calculations by the projector-augmented-wave (PAW) method. In order to describe precisely the strong on-site Coulomb repulsion among the localized U 5f electrons, we adopt the local density approximation (LDA) + U and generalized gradient approximation (GGA) + U formalisms for the exchange correlation term. We systematically study how the electronic properties and elastic constants of UC are affected by the different choice of U as well as the exchange-correlation potential. We show that by choosing an appropriate Hubbard U parameter within the GGA + U approach, most of our calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental data. Therefore. the results obtained by the GGA + U with effective Hubbard parameter U chosen around 3 eV for UC are considered to be reasonable. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Intercellular calcium wave propagation in linear and circuit-like bone cell networks

In the present study, the mechanism of intercellular calcium wave propagation in bone cell networks was identified. By using micro-contact printing and self-assembled monolayer technologies, two types of in vitro bone cell networks were constructed: open-ended linear chains and looped hexagonal networks with precisely controlled intercellular distances. Intracellular calcium responses of the cells were recorded and analysed when a single cell in the network was mechanically stimulated by nano-indentation. The looped cell network was shown to be more efficient than the linear pattern in transferring calcium signals from cell to cell. This phenomenon was further examined by pathway-inhibition studies. Intercellular calcium wave propagation was significantly impeded when extracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the medium was hydrolysed. Chemical uncoupling of gap junctions, however, did not significantly decrease the transferred distance of the calcium wave in the cell networks. Thus, it is extracellular ATP diffusion, rather than molecular transport through gap junctions, that dominantly mediates the transmission of mechanically elicited intercellular calcium waves in bone cells. The inhibition studies also demonstrated that the mechanical stimulation-induced calcium responses required extracellular calcium influx, whereas the ATP-elicited calcium wave relied on calcium release from the calcium store of the endoplasmic reticulum.

Accurate quantum mechanical calculation for the N+OH reaction

Accurate three-dimensional time-dependent quantum wave packet calculations for the N+OH reaction on the (3)A' potential energy surface [Guadagnini, Schatz, and Walch, J. Chem. Phys. 102, 774 (1995)] have been carried out. The calculations show for the first time that the initial state-selected reaction probabilities are dominated by resonance structures, and the lifetime of the resonance is generally in the subpicosecond time scale. The calculated reaction cross sections indicate that they are a decreasing function of the translational energy, which is in agreement qualitatively with the quasiclassical trajectory calculations. The rate constants obtained from the quantum mechanical calculations are consistent with the quasiclassical trajectory results and the experimental measurements. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Numerical modeling of water wave interaction with a soft mud bed

A vertical 2-D numerical model is presented for simulating the interaction between water waves and a soft mud bed. Taking into account nonlinear rheology, a semi-empirical rheological model is applied to this water-mud model, reflecting the combined visco-elasto-plastic properties of soft mud under such oscillatory external forces as water waves. In order to increase the resolution of the flow in the neighborhood of both sides of the inter-surface, a logarithmic grid in the vertical direction is employed for numerical treatment. Model verifications are given through comparisons between the calculated and the measured mud mass transport velocities as well as wave height changes.

Numerical wave flume study on wave motion around submerged plates

Nonlinear interaction between surface waves and a submerged horizontal plate is investigated in the absorbed numerical wave flume developed based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method. The governing equations of the numerical model are the continuity equation and the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the k-epsilon turbulence equations. Incident waves are generated by an absorbing wave-maker that eliminates the waves reflected from structures. Results are obtained for a range of parameters, with consideration of the condition under which the reflection coefficient becomes maximal and the transmission coefficient minimal. Wave breaking over the plate, vortex shedding downwave, and pulsating flow below the plate are observed. Time-averaged hydrodynamic force reveals a negative drift force. All these characteristics provide a reference for construction of submerged plate breakwaters.