The effects of certain pulse-shaping networks on the signal-to-noise ratio of a nuclear pulse amplifier were considered. The shaping networks discussed are: equal RC-integrating and RC-differentiating time constant, single- delay-line clipper and RC integrator, and doubledelay-line clipper and RC integrator. The effects of these networks on the signal, when high count rates and overload pulses are present, were also considered. Equations and curves were developed for the energy resolution (signal-tonoise ratio) and resolving time (related to the ability to operate at high counting rates) of the networks. Experimental results are shown for the energy resolution of the types of pulse- shaping networks considered. (auth)

Optical microbunches with a spacing of 800 nm have been produced for laser acceleration research. The microbunches are produced using a inverse Free-Electron-Laser (IFEL) followed by a dispersive chicane. The microbunched electron beam is characterized by coherent optical transition radiation (COTR) with good agreement to the analytic theory for bunch formation. In a second experiment the bunches are accelerated in a second stage to achieve for the first time direct net acceleration of electrons traveling in a vacuum with visible light. This dissertation presents the theory of microbunch formation and characterization of the microbunches. It also presents the design of the experimental hardware from magnetostatic and particle tracking simulations, to fabrication and measurement of the undulator and chicane magnets. Finally, the dissertation discusses three experiments aimed at demonstrating the IFEL interaction, microbunch production, and the net acceleration of the microbunched beam. At the close of the dissertation, a separate but related research effort on the tight focusing of electrons for coupling into optical scale, Photonic Bandgap, structures is presented. This includes the design and fabrication of a strong focusing permanent magnet quadrupole triplet and an outline of an initial experiment using the triplet to observe wakefields generated by an electron …

In order to better understand the fundamental components that govern catalytic activity, two-dimensional model platinum nanocatalyst arrays have been designed and fabricated. These catalysts arrays are meant to model the interplay of the metal and support important to industrial heterogeneous catalytic reactions. Photolithography and sub-lithographic techniques such as electron beam lithography, size reduction lithography and nanoimprint lithography have been employed to create these platinum nanoarrays. Both in-situ and ex-situ surface science techniques and catalytic reaction measurements were used to correlate the structural parameters of the system to catalytic activity.

The series of projects described in this dissertation was stimulated by the discovery of high temperature superconductivity. Our goal was to develop useful applications which would be competitive with the current state of technology. The high-{Tc} microbolometer was developed into the most sensitive direct detector of millimeter waves, when operated at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The thermal boundary resistance of thin YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}0{sub 7-{delta}} films was subsequently measured and provided direct evidence for the bolometric response of high-{Tc} films to fast (ns) laser pulses. The low-{Tc} microbolometer was developed and used to make the first direct measurements of the frequency dependent optical efficiency of planar lithographed antennas. The hot-electron microbolometer was invented less than a year prior to the writing of this dissertation. Our analysis, presented here, indicates that it should be possible to attain up to two orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than that of the best available direct detectors when operated at the same temperature. The temperature readout scheme for this device could also be used to measure the intrinsic interaction between electrons and phonons in a metal with a sensitivity that is five orders of magnitude better than in previous measurements. Preliminary measurements of quasiparticle trapping effects …

Better devices are needed for the detection of aerosolized biological warfare agents. Advances in the ongoing development of one such device, the BioAerosol Mass Spectrometry (BAMS) system, are described here in detail. The system samples individual, micrometer-sized particles directly from the air and analyzes them in real-time without sample preparation or use of reagents. At the core of the BAMS system is a dual-polarity, single-particle mass spectrometer with a laser based desorption and ionization (DI) system. The mass spectra produced by early proof-of-concept instruments were highly variable and contained limited information to differentiate certain types of similar biological particles. The investigation of this variability and subsequent changes to the DI laser system are described. The modifications have reduced the observed variability and thereby increased the usable information content in the spectra. These improvements would have little value without software to analyze and identify the mass spectra. Important improvements have been made to the algorithms that initially processed and analyzed the data. Single particles can be identified with an impressive level of accuracy, but to obtain significant reductions in the overall false alarm rate of the BAMS instrument, alarm decisions must be made dynamically on the basis of multiple analyzed particles. …

Deuteron photodisintegration is a benchmark process for the investigation of the role of quarks and gluons in nuclei. Existing theoretical models of this process describe the available cross sections with the same degree of success. Therefore, spin-dependent observables are crucial for a better understanding of the underlying dynamical mechanisms. However, data on the induced polarization (P{sub y}), along with the polarization transfers (C{sub x'} and C{sub z'} ), have been shown to be insensitive to differences between theoretical models. On the other hand, the beam-spin asymmetry {Sigma} is predicted to have a large sensitivity and is expected to help in identifying the energy at which the transition from the hadronic to the quark-gluon picture of the deuteron takes place. Here, the work done to determine the experimental values of the beam-spin asymmetry in deuteron photodisintegration for photon energies between 1.1 – 2.3 GeV is presented. The data were taken with the CLAS at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility during the g13 experiment. Photons with linear polarization of ~80% were produced using the coherent bremsstrahlung facility in Hall B. The work done by the author to calibrate a specific detector system, select deuteron photodisintegration events, study the degree of photon …

The use of the ReaxFF force field to correlate with NMR mobilities of amine catalytic substituents on a mesoporous silica nanosphere surface is considered. The interfacing of the ReaxFF force field within the Surface Integrated Molecular Orbital/Molecular Mechanics (SIMOMM) method, in order to replicate earlier SIMOMM published data and to compare with the ReaxFF data, is discussed. The development of a new correlation consistent Composite Approach (ccCA) is presented, which incorporates the completely renormalized coupled cluster method with singles, doubles and non-iterative triples corrections towards the determination of heats of formations and reaction pathways which contain biradical species.

We present the search for the lepton flavour violating decay {tau} {yields} lK{sup 0}{sub s} with the BaBar experiment data. This process and many other lepton flavour violating {tau} decays, like {tau} {yields} {mu}{gamma} and {tau} {yields} lll, are one of the most promising channel to search for evidence of new physics. According to the Standard Model and the neutrino mixing parameters, branching fractions are estimated well below 10{sup -14}, but many models of new physics allow for branching fractions values close to the present experimental sensitivity. This analysis is based on a data sample of 469fb{sup -1} collected by BABAR detector at the PEP-II storage ring from 1999 to 2007, equivalent to 431 millions of {tau} pairs. the BABAR experiment, initially designed for studying CP violation in B mesons, has demonstrated to be one of the most suitable environments for studying {tau} decays. The tracking system, the calorimeter and the particle identification of BABAR, together with the knowledge of the {tau} initial energy, allow an extremely powerful rejection of background events that, for this analysis, is better than 10{sup -9}. Being {tau} {yields} lK{sup 0}{sub s} a decay mode without neutrinos, the signal {tau} decay can be fully reconstructed. …

In the past decades, there has been increasing interest in pulsed high power RF sources for building high-gradient high-energy particle accelerators. Passive RF pulse compression systems have been used in many applications to match the available RF sources to the loads requiring higher RF power but a shorter pulse. Theoretically, an active RF pulse compression system has the advantage of higher efficiency and compactness over the passive system. However, the key component for such a system an element capable of switching hundreds of megawatts of RF power in a short time compared to the compressed pulse width is still an open problem. In this dissertation, we present a switch module composed of an active window based on the bulk effects in semiconductor, a circular waveguide three-port network and a movable short plane, with the capability to adjust the S-parameters before and after switching. The RF properties of the switch module were analyzed. We give the scaling laws of the multiple-element switch systems, which allow the expansion of the system to a higher power level. We present a novel overmoded design for the circular waveguide three-port network and the associated circular-to-rectangular mode-converter. We also detail the design and synthesis process of …

Methods are presented for synthesizing nanocrystal heterostructures comprised of two semiconductor materials epitaxially attached within individual nanostructures. The chemical transformation of cation exchange, where the cations within the lattice of an ionic nanocrystal are replaced with a different metal ion species, is used to alter the chemical composition at specific regions ofa nanocrystal. Partial cation exchange was performed in cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanorods of well-defined size and shape to examine the spatial organization of materials within the resulting nanocrystal heterostructures. The selectivity for cation exchange to take place at different facets of the nanocrystal plays an important role in determining the resulting morphology of the binary heterostructure. The exchange of copper (I) (Cu+) cations in CdS nanorods occurs preferentially at the ends of the nanorods. Theoretical modeling of epitaxial attachments between different facets of CdS and Cu2S indicate that the selectivity for cation exchange at the ends of the nanorods is a result of the low formation energy of the interfaces produced. During silver (I) (Ag+) cation exchange in CdS nanorods, non-selective nucleation of silver sulfide (Ag2S), followed by partial phase segregation leads to significant changes in the spatial arrangement of CdS and Ag2S regions at the exchange reaction proceeds …

The work described in this dissertation has improved three essential components of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography: exposure tools, photoresist, and metrology. Exposure tools. A field-averaging illumination stage is presented that enables nonuniform, high-coherence sources to be used in applications where highly uniform illumination is required. In an EUV implementation, it is shown that the illuminator achieves a 6.5% peak-to-valley intensity variation across the entire design field of view. In addition, a design for a stand-alone EUV printing tool capable of delivering 15 nm half-pitch sinusoidal fringes with available sources, gratings and nano-positioning stages is presented. It is shown that the proposed design delivers a near zero line-edge-rougness (LER) aerial image, something extremely attractive for the application of resist testing. Photoresist. Two new methods of quantifying the deprotection blur of EUV photoresists are described and experimentally demonstrated. The deprotection blur, LER, and sensitivity parameters of several EUV photoresists are quantified simultaneously as base weight percent, photoacid generator (PAG) weight percent, and post-exposure bake (PEB) temperature are varied. Two surprising results are found: (1) changing base weight percent does not significantly affect the deprotection blur of EUV photoresist, and (2) increasing PAG weight percent can simultaneously reduce LER and E-size in EUV …

This dissertation presents the research on the development of mesoporous silica based nanotechnology for applications in biofuels and plant science. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have been the subject of great interest in the last two decades due to their unique properties of high surface area, tunable pore size and particle morphology. The robust nature of the silica framework is easily functionalized to make the MSNs a promising option for selective separations. Also, the independent channels that form the pores of MSN have been exploited in the use of particles as platforms for molecular delivery. Pore size and organic functionality are varied to identify the ideal adsorbent material for free fatty acids (FFAs). The resulting material is able to sequester FFAs with a high degree of selectivity from a simulated solution and microalgal oil. The recyclability and industrial implications are also explored. A continuation of the previous material, further tuning of MSN pore size was investigated. Particles with a smaller diameter selectively sequester polyunsaturated free fatty acids (PUFAs) over monounsaturated FFAs and saturated FFAs. The experimental results were verified with molecular modeling. Mesoporous silica nanoparticle materials with a pore diameter of 10 nm (MSN-10) were decorated with small gold nanoparticles. The …

A detailed instructional manual was created to guide criticality safety engineers through the process of designing a criticality alarm system (CAS) for Department of Energy (DOE) hazard class 1 and 2 facilities. Regulatory and technical requirements were both addressed. A list of design tasks and technical subtasks are thoroughly analyzed to provide concise direction for how to complete the analysis. An example of the application of the design methodology, the Criticality Alarm System developed for the Radioisotope Production Laboratory (RPL) of Richland, Washington is also included. The analysis for RPL utilizes the Monte Carlo code MCNP5 for establishing detector coverage in the facility. Significant improvements to the existing CAS were made that increase the reliability, transparency, and coverage of the system.

Guest-host interaction has long been a subject of interest in many disciplines. Emphasis is often on how a small amount of guest substance could significantly affect the properties of a host material. This thesis describe our work in studying a guest-host effect where dye-doping of liquid crystalline materials greatly enhances the optical Kerr nonlinearity of the material. The dye molecules, upon excitation and via intermolecular interaction, provides an extra torque to reorient the host molecules, leading to the enhanced optical Kerr nonlinearity. We carried out a comprehensive study on the dynamics of the photoexcited dye-doped liquid crystalline medium. Using various experimental techniques, we separately characterized the dynamical responses of the relevant molecular species present in the medium following photo-excitation, and thus were able to follow the transient process in which photo-excitation of the dye molecules exert through guest-host interaction a net torque on the host LC material, leading to the observed enhanced molecular reorientation. We also observed for the first time the enhanced reorientation in a pure liquid crystal system, where the guest population is created through photoexcitation of the host molecules themselves. Experimental results agree quantitatively with the time-dependent theory based on a mean-field model of the guest-host interaction.

We are becoming dependent on energy more today than we were a century ago, and with increasing world population and booming economies, sooner or later our energy sources will be exhausted. Moreover, our economy and welfare strongly depends on foreign oil and in the shadow of political uncertainties, there is an urgent need for a reliable, safe, and cheap energy source. Thermonuclear fusion, if achieved, is that source of energy which not only will satisfy our demand for today but also for centuries to come. Today, there are two major approaches to achieve fusion: magnetic confinement fusion (MFE) and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). This dissertation explores the inertial confinement fusion using the fast ignition concept. Unlike the conventional approach where the same laser is used for compression and ignition, in fast ignition separate laser beams are used. This dissertation addresses three very important topics to fast ignition inertial confinement fusion. These are laser-to-electron coupling efficiency, laser-generated electron beam transport, and the associated isochoric heating. First, an integrated fast ignition experiment is carried out with 0.9 kJ of energy in the compression beam and 70 J in the ignition beam. Measurements of absolute K{sub {alpha}} yield from the imploded core revealed …

Surfactant-coated cobalt nanocrystals can be prepared with areasonable degree of control over particle size and shape using athermolytic route. The small crystallite size, enhanced reactivity andtunable interparticle interactions enable use of this material asstarting material for demonstration of achievement of novel structuresusing extremely simple solution-based approaches. In particular,formation of hollow cobalt sulfide nanocrystals upon chemicalmodification and emergence of long-range orientational order upondrying-mediated assembly of cobalt nanocrystals is reportedhere.Colloidal preparation of Co nanocrystals has been well-studied.Here, we emphasize general principles and crystallographic/morphologicalcharacterization of disk-shaped hcp-Co nanocrystals. Use of surfactantmolecules enables achievement of multiple morphologies in one syntheticsystem.Formation of hollow structures upon in-solution sulfidation of Conanocrystals is presented and discussed. A Kirkendall-type effect,involving dominant outward mass transport during formation of the ionicshell material explains the results naturally. It is expected that thisphenomenon will generalize extensively to formation of hollow structuresof an enormous variety of compositions. Detailed study of particlemorphology as a function of reaction conditions suggest phenomena likelyto be generally relevant to use of this approach. A short report ofcrystallographic co-alignment into vortex-like structures is alsoprovided. Our current best picture of this process involves an interplayof packing and magnetic interactions between facetedparticles.

Over the past ten years, methods have been developed to construct discrete nanostructures using nanocrystals and biomolecules. While these frequently consist of gold nanocrystals and DNA, semiconductor nanocrystals as well as antibodies and enzymes have also been used. One example of discrete nanostructures is dimers of gold nanocrystals linked together with complementary DNA. This type of nanostructure is also known as a nanocrystal molecule. Discrete nanostructures of this kind have a number of potential applications, from highly parallel self-assembly of electronics components and rapid read-out of DNA computations to biological imaging and a variety of bioassays. My research focused in three main areas. The first area, the refinement of electrophoresis as a purification and characterization method, included application of agarose gel electrophoresis to the purification of discrete gold nanocrystal/DNA conjugates and nanocrystal molecules, as well as development of a more detailed understanding of the hydrodynamic behavior of these materials in gels. The second area, the development of methods for quantitative analysis of transmission electron microscope data, used computer programs written to find pair correlations as well as higher order correlations. With these programs, it is possible to reliably locate and measure nanocrystal molecules in TEM images. The final area of …

The castor bean plant (Ricinus communis) is a member of the family Euphorbiaceae. In spite of its common name, the castor plant is not a true bean (i.e., leguminous plants belonging to the family, Fabaceae). Ricinus communis is native to tropical Africa, but because the plant was recognized for its production of oil with many desirable properties, it has been introduced and cultivated in warm temperate regions throughout the world (Armstrong 1999 and Brown 2005). Castor bean plants have also been valued by gardeners as an ornamental plant and, historically, as a natural rodenticide. Today, escaped plants grow like weeds throughout much of the southwestern United States, and castor seeds are even widely available to the public for order through the Internet. In this study, multiple loci of chloroplast noncoding sequence data and a few nuclear noncoding regions were examined to identify DNA polymorphisms present among representatives from a geographically diverse panel of Ricinus communis cultivated varieties. The primary objectives for this research were (1) to successfully cultivate castor plants and extract sufficient yields of high quality DNA from an assortment of castor cultivated varieties, (2) to use PCR and sequencing to screen available universal oligos against a small panel …

The nuclear radiations of nuclides: U{sup 233}, Pu{sup 239}, Bk{sup 243}, Bk{sup 244}, Bk{sup 245}, Bk{sup 246}, Bk{sup 249}, Cf{sup 249}, and Fm{sup 255} were investigated with high-resolution spectrometers. The {alpha}-particle spectra of all nuclides except Bk{sup 249} were measured with 6 mm diameter surface-barrier detectors. Bk{sup 249} {alpha}-particles were analyzed with a double-focusing magnetic spectrograph. The {gamma}-singles were examined with the recently developed Ge(Li) and Si(Li) detectors coupled with very-low noise 'internal FET' preamplifiers. Weak alpha groups were observed in coincidence with {gamma}-rays, detected with a NaI(Tl) scintillation spectrometer. To improve the over-all coincidence efficiency a new coincidence apparatus was designed and built. This instrument consisted of a cooled 4.5 cm diameter semiconductor detector for {alpha}-particle detection and a 3 cm diameter by 2.7 cm long Ge(Li) detector for {gamma}-ray analysis. The Ge(Li) detector could also be replaced with a NaI(Tl) detector. Cf{sup 249} conversion electrons were measured with a cooled Si(Li) detector coupled with an internal FET preamplifier. On the basis of the present work and previous information, energy-level diagrams of the daughter nuclei have been constructed. The levels have been grouped into rotational bands built on Nilsson single-particle states. Because of identification of several rotational members of …

Knowledge discovery from large and complex collections of today's scientific datasets is a challenging task. With the ability to measure and simulate more processes at increasingly finer spatial and temporal scales, the increasing number of data dimensions and data objects is presenting tremendous challenges for data analysis and effective data exploration methods and tools. Researchers are overwhelmed with data and standard tools are often insufficient to enable effective data analysis and knowledge discovery. The main objective of this thesis is to provide important new capabilities to accelerate scientific knowledge discovery form large, complex, and multivariate scientific data. The research covered in this thesis addresses these scientific challenges using a combination of scientific visualization, information visualization, automated data analysis, and other enabling technologies, such as efficient data management. The effectiveness of the proposed analysis methods is demonstrated via applications in two distinct scientific research fields, namely developmental biology and high-energy physics.Advances in microscopy, image analysis, and embryo registration enable for the first time measurement of gene expression at cellular resolution for entire organisms. Analysis of high-dimensional spatial gene expression datasets is a challenging task. By integrating data clustering and visualization, analysis of complex, time-varying, spatial gene expression patterns and their formation …

The Standard Model describes with a very good accuracy all interactions of the, so far, known elementary particles. However the Higgs mechanism, which gives rise to the observed mass of these particles, has not yet been confirmed. The Higgs particle has not yet been observed, and the observation or exclusion is an important test of the Standard Model. The Standard Model does not predict the mass of the Higgs particle, however it does impose some limits on the range in which this mass can lie. In direct searches a Higgs with a mass smaller than 114.4 GeV and within 162 GeV and 166 GeV has been excluded at 95% CL at the LEP and the Tevatron colliders. The analysis presented in this thesis is aimed to search for the ZH → μμb$\bar{b}$ events in 3.1 fb^-1 of data collected with the DØ detector in p$\bar{p}$ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV.

Rapid developments in time-resolved optical spectroscopy have led to renewed interest in the nonequilibrium state of superconductors and other highly correlated electron materials. In these experiments, the nonequilibrium state is prepared by the absorption of short (less than 100 fs) laser pulses, typically in the near-infrared, that perturb the density and energy distribution of quasiparticles. The evolution of the nonequilibrium state is probed by time resolving the changes in the optical response functions of the medium that take place after photoexcitation. Ultimately, the goal of such experiments is to understand not only the nonequilibrium state, but to shed light on the still poorly understood equilibrium properties of these materials. We report nonequilibrium experiments that have revealed aspects of the cup rates that have been inaccessible by other techniques. Namely, the diffusion and recombination coefficients of quasiparticles have been measured in both YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 6.5} and Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}CaCu{sub 2}O{sub 8+x} using time-resolved optical spectroscopy. Dependence of these measurements on doping, temperature and laser intensity is also obtained. To study the recombination of quasiparticles, we measure the change in reflectivity {Delta}R which is directly proportional to the nonequilibrium quasiparticle density created by the laser. From the intensity dependence, we estimate …

YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7-{delta}} (YBCO) coated conductors are promising materials for large-scale superconductivity applications. One version of a YBCO coated conductor is based on ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) of magnesium oxide (MgO) onto polycrystalline metal substrates. SrTiO{sub 3} (STO) is often deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods as a buffer layer between the YBCO and IBAD MgO due to its chemical stability and lattice mismatch of only {approx}1.5% with YBCO. In this work, some aspects of the stability of STO with respect to copper (Cu) and chemical solution deposition of STO on IBAD MgO templates were examined. Solubility limits of Cu in STO were established by processing Cu-doped STO powders by conventional bulk preparation techniques. The maximum solubility of Cu in STO was {approx}1% as determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Rietveld refinements of x-ray diffraction (XRD) data. XRD analysis, performed in collaboration with NIST, on powder compositions on the STO/SrCuO{sub 2} tie line did not identify any ternary phases. SrCu{sub 0.10}Ti{sub 0.90}O{sub y} buffer layers were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and CSD on IBAD MgO flexible metallic textured tapes. TEM analysis of a {approx}100 nm thick SrCu{sub 0.10}Ti{sub 0.90}O{sub y} buffer layer deposited by …

Experimental studies of the relative atomic mu --meson capture probabilities in the constituents of chemical compounds are described. Fermi and Teller had predicted that the atomic-capture probability is proportional to the nuclear charge of the atomic species weighted by its atomic concentration. This is sometimes referred to as the Fermi-Teller Z law.'' Previous experiments indicated no clear systematics to this capture process, and there are conflicts between the results of several measurements made with the same or similar compounds. In these experiments the capturing atom was identified by detection of either mesic x rays or decay electrons from mu /sup -/ mesons bound in the mesic K shell in the atomic species, In these experiments oxides and sulfides of some medium- and high-Z elements as well as two metallic solutions were used, and a nuclear capture product (neutron) rather than the decay electrons was detected. Results show that among the substances examIned, namely CuO, Sb/sub 2/O/sub 3, PbO, CuS, Sb/sub 2/S/sub 3/, PbS AgLi, and CuAu, the Z law'' behavior is not indicated either in insulators or in metals, although in all cases there is a preference for capturing in the atom of higher Z. If the atomic-capture probability is …