The Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) is a proposed space-based experiment designed to study the dark energy and alternative explanations of the acceleration of the Universes expansion by performing a series of complementary systematics-controlled astrophysical measurements. We here describe a self-consistent reference mission design that can accomplish this goal with the two leading measurement approaches being the Type Ia supernova Hubble diagram and a wide-area weak gravitational lensing survey. This design has been optimized to first order and is now under study for further modification and optimization. A 2-m three-mirror anastigmat wide-field telescope feeds a focal plane consisting of a 0.7 square-degree imager tiled with equal areas of optical CCDs and near infrared sensors, and a high efficiency low-resolution integral field spectrograph. The instrumentation suite provides simultaneous discovery and light-curve measurements of supernovae and then can target individual objects for detailed spectral characterization. The SNAP mission will discover thousands of Type Ia supernovae out to z = 3 and will obtain high-signal-to-noise calibrated light-curves and spectra for a subset of > 2000 supernovae at redshifts between z = 0.1 and 1.7 in a northern field and in a southern field. A wide-field survey covering one thousand square degrees in both northern and …

A vacuum arc ion source was modified allowing us to collections from arc plasma streaming through an anode mesh. The mesh had ageometric transmittance of 60 percent, which was taken into account as acorrection factor. The ion current from twenty-two cathode materials wasmeasured at an arc current of 100 A. The ion current normalized by thearc current was found to depend on the cathode material, with valuesinthe range from 5 percent to 11 percent. The normalized ion current isgenerally greater for light elements than for heavy elements. The ionerosion rates were determined fromvalues of ion currentand ion chargestates, which were previously measured in the same experimental system.The ion erosion rates range from 12-94 mu g/C.

This article discusses a framework to evaluate the costs and benefits of IT security solutions using a company's risk profile. This method uses an unconventional concept of benefit based on risk avoided rather than increased productivity.

This study developed a probabilistic methodology for assessment of the reliability and security of electrical energy distribution networks. This included consideration of the future grid system, which will rely heavily on the existing digitally based communication infrastructure for monitoring and protection. Event tree and fault tree methods were utilized. The approach extensively modeled the types of faults that a grid could potentially experience, the response of the grid, and the specific design of the protection schemes. We demonstrated the methods by applying it to a small sub-section of a hypothetical grid based on an existing electrical grid system of a metropolitan area. The results showed that for a typical design that relies on communication network for protection, the communication network reliability could contribute significantly to the frequency of loss of electrical power. The reliability of the communication network could become a more important contributor to the electrical grid reliability as the utilization of the communication network significantly increases in the near future to support ''smart'' transmission and/or distributed generation.

Horizontal path correction of optical beam propagation presents a severe challenge to adaptive optics systems due to the short transverse coherence length and the high degree of scintillation incurred by propagation along these paths. The system presented operates with nearly monochromatic light. It does not require a global reconstruction of the phase, thereby eliminating issues with branch points and making its performance relatively unaffected by scintillation. The systems pixel count, 1024, and relatively high correction speed, in excess of 800 Hz, enable its use for correction of horizontal path beam propagation. We present results from laboratory and field tests of the system in which we have achieved Strehl ratios greater than 0.5.

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A Type Ia supernova explosion likely begins as a nuclear runaway near the center of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf. The outward propagating flame is unstable to the Landau-Darrieus, Rayleigh-Taylor, and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, which serve to accelerate it to a large fraction of the speed of sound. We investigate the Rayleigh-Taylor unstable flame at the transition from the flamelet regime to the distributed-burning regime, around densities of 10e7 gm/cc, through detailed, fully resolved simulations. A low Mach number, adaptive mesh hydrodynamics code is used to achieve the necessary resolution and long time scales. As the density is varied, we see a fundamental change in the character of the burning--at the low end of the density range the Rayleigh-Taylor instability dominates the burning, whereas at the high end the burning suppresses the instability. In all cases, significant acceleration of the flame is observed, limited only by the size of the domain we are able to study. We discuss the implications of these results on the potential for a deflagration to detonation transition.

We examine an application of the Gillespie algorithm to simulating spatially inhomogeneous reaction-diffusion systems in mesoscopic volumes such as cells and microchambers. The method involves discretizing the chamber into elements and modeling the diffusion of chemical species by the movement of molecules between neighboring elements. These transitions are expressed in the form of a set of reactions which are added to the chemical system. The derivation of the rates of these diffusion reactions is by comparison with a finite volume discretization of the heat equation on an unevenly spaced grid. The diffusion coefficient of each species is allowed to be inhomogeneous in space, including discontinuities. The resulting system is solved by the Gillespie algorithm using the fast direct method. We show that in an appropriate limit the method reproduces exact solutions of the heat equation for a purely diffusive system and the nonlinear reaction-rate equation describing the cubic autocatalytic reaction.

The production of supersonic jets of material via the interaction of a strong shock wave with a spatially localized density perturbation is a common feature of inertial confinement fusion and astrophysics. The behavior of two-dimensional (2D) supersonic jets has previously been investigated in detail [J. M. Foster et. al, Phys. Plasmas 9, 2251 (2002)]. In three-dimensions (3D), however, there are new aspects to the behavior of supersonic jets in compressible media. In this paper, the commissioning activities on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [J. A. Paisner et al., Laser Focus World 30, 75 (1994)] to enable hydrodynamic experiments will be presented as well as the results from the first series of hydrodynamic experiments. In these experiments, two of the first four beams of NIF are used to drive a 40 Mbar shock wave into millimeter scale aluminum targets backed by 100 mg/cc carbon aerogel foam. The remaining beams are delayed in time and are used to provide a point-projection x-ray backlighter source for diagnosing the three-dimensional structure of the jet evolution resulting from a variety of 2D and 3D features. Comparisons between data and simulations using several codes will be presented.

We investigate computationally two recent mathematical findings involving unusual behavior of solutions of the Young-Laplace capillary equation in cylindrical tubes of particular sections. The first concerns a configuration for which smoothing of the boundary curve at a sharp corner leads from existence to non-existence of a solution over the container section in zero gravity. The second describes a discontinuous behavior of relative rise height in nesting tubes placed vertically in an infinite reservoir. The numerical results support and quantify the mathematical predictions.

Using laser optical pumping, widths and frequency shifts are determined for microwave transitions between ground-state hyperfine components of {sup 85}Rb and {sup 87}Rb atoms contained in vapor cells with alkane anti-relaxation coatings. The results are compared with data on Zeeman relaxation obtained in nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (NMOR) experiments, a comparison important for quantitative understanding of spin-relaxation mechanisms in coated cells. By comparing cells manufactured over a forty-year period we demonstrate the long-term stability of coated cells, an important property for atomic clocks and magnetometers.

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Simulation results are presented that illustrate the formation and decay of a spheromak plasma driven by a coaxial electrostatic plasma gun, and that model the energy confinement of the plasma. The physics of magnetic reconnection during spheromak formation is also illuminated. The simulations are performed with the three-dimensional, time-dependent, resistive magnetohydrodynamic NIMROD code. The dimensional, simulation results are compared to data from the SSPX spheromak experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The simulation results are tracking the experiment with increasing fidelity (e.g., improved agreement with measurements of the magnetic field, fluctuation amplitudes, and electron temperature) as the simulation has been improved in its representations of the geometry of the experiment (plasma gun and flux conserver), the magnetic bias coils, and the detailed time dependence of the current source driving the plasma gun, and uses realistic parameters. The simulations are providing a better understanding of the dominant physics in SSPX, including when the flux surfaces close and the mechanisms limiting the efficiency of electrostatic drive.

We present a proposal for lowering the overhead of interface contract checking for science and engineering applications. Run-time enforcement of assertions is a well-known technique for improving the quality of software; however, the performance penalty is often too high for their retention during deployment, especially for long-running applications that depend upon iterative operations. With an efficient adaptive approach the benefits of run-time checking can continue to accrue with minimal overhead. Examples from scientific software interfaces being developed in the high performance computing research community will be used to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of this approach.

The chemical investigation of the transactinide elements (TAN, Z {ge}104) is a topic of great interest in recent nuclear chemistry research. The highly charged nucleus accelerates the innermost electrons to relativistic velocities thus causing contraction of spherical (s, p{sub 1/2}) orbitals and expansion of the others (p{sub 3/2}, d, and f), which directly affects the chemical behavior of these elements. Deviations from trends established in the periodic table may therefore occur due to these so-called relativistic effects [1,2]. In gas phase experiments, mostly volatile inorganic compounds (e.g., halides or oxides) of TAN were investigated. We refer to [3] for a recent review. For reasons such as low production cross-sections or short half-lives, but also technical challenges, more sophisticated chemical studies have not yet been possible. One restriction in present TAN research is the plasma behind the target caused by the intense heavy ion beam. ''Weak'' molecules (e.g., organic ligands) are immediately destroyed, thus limiting the possibilities of synthesizing chemical compounds directly behind the target to ''simple'' and robust inorganic compounds. It is highly desirable to expand the knowledge on the chemical behavior of the TAN to other compound classes, e.g., volatile metal complexes. The use of the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator …

It is well-documented that energy and energy systems have a central role in social and economic development and human welfare at all scales, from household and community to regional and national (41). Among its various welfare effects, energy is closely linked with people s health. Some of the effects of energy on health and welfare are direct. With abundant energy, more food or more frequent meals can be prepared; food can be refrigerated, increasing the types of food items that are consumed and reducing food contamination; water pumps can provide more water and eliminate the need for water storage leading to contamination or increased exposure to disease vectors such as mosquitoes or snails; water can be disinfected by boiling or using other technologies such as radiation. Other effects of energy on public health are mediated through more proximal determinants of health and disease. Abundant energy can lead to increased irrigation, agricultural productivity, and access to food and nutrition; access to energy can also increase small-scale income generation such as processing of agricultural commodities (e.g., producing refined oil from oil seeds, roasting coffee, drying and preserving fruits and meats) and production of crafts; ability to control lighting and heating allows education …

Numerical simulators are playing an increasingly important role in advancing our fundamental understanding of hydrological systems. They are indispensable tools for managing groundwater resources, analyzing proposed and actual remediation activities at contaminated sites, optimizing recovery of oil, gas, and geothermal energy, evaluating subsurface structures and mining activities, designing monitoring systems, assessing the long-term impacts of chemical and nuclear waste disposal, and devising improved irrigation and drainage practices in agricultural areas, among many other applications. The complexity of subsurface hydrology in the vadose zone calls for sophisticated modeling codes capable of handling the strong nonlinearities involved, the interactions of coupled physical, chemical and biological processes, and the multiscale heterogeneities inherent in such systems. The papers in this special section of ''Vadose Zone Journal'' are illustrative of the enormous potential of such numerical simulators as applied to the vadose zone. The papers describe recent developments and applications of one particular set of codes, the TOUGH family of codes, as applied to nonisothermal flow and transport in heterogeneous porous and fractured media (http://www-esd.lbl.gov/TOUGH2). The contributions were selected from presentations given at the TOUGH Symposium 2003, which brought together developers and users of the TOUGH codes at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in …

We have developed a microbeam bending technique for determining elastic-plastic, stress-strain relations for thin metal films on silicon substrates. The method is similar to previous microbeam bending techniques, except that triangular silicon microbeams are used in place of rectangular beams. The triangular beam has the advantage that the entire film on the top surface of the beam is subjected to a uniform state of plane strain as the beam is deflected, unlike the standard rectangular geometry where the bending is concentrated at the support. We present a method of analysis for determining two Ramberg-Osgood parameters for describing the stress-strain relation for the film. These parameters are obtained by fitting the elastic-plastic model to the measured load-displacement data, and utilizing the known elastic properties of both film and substrate. As a part of the analysis we compute the position of the neutral plane for bending, which changes as the film deforms plastically. This knowledge, in turn, allows average stress-strain relations to be determined accurately without forcing the film to closely follow the Ramberg-Osgood law. The method we have developed can be used to determine the elastic-plastic properties of thin metal films on silicon substrates up to strains of about 1%. Utilizing …

Only Nixon could go to China. And maybe only petroleum industry CEOs can spur action on global climate change. Here's Lord Browne, head of BP, in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine: 'Global temperatures have risen by about 0.6 degrees Celsius since the nineteenth century. Other measures of climate bolster the theory that the world is getting warmer. . . . [The] trend is undoubtedly due in large part to substantial increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity.' But should we do something about this trend? Browne is unequivocal. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations at about the same time his article appeared, he declared: 'It would be too great a risk to stand by, do nothing, and to wait so long that when the impact on the climate really does begin to be felt, you have to take action which is so disruptive as to cause serious damage to the world's economy. There is a very strong case for precautionary action.'

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In celebration of John von Neumann's 100th birthday, a series of four lectures were presented on the evening of February 10, 2003 during the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering in San Diego. The venue was appropriate because von Neumann spent much of the later part of his life, in the 1950's, as an unofficial ambassador for computational science. He was then the only senior American scientist who had experience with the new computers (digital, electronic, and programmable) and a vision of their future importance. No doubt he would have relished the chance to attend a meeting such as this. The first speaker, William Aspray, described the ''interesting times'' during which computers were invented. His remarks were based on his history [1] of this period in von Neumann's life. We were honored to have John von Neumann's daughter, Marina von Neumann-Whitman, as our second speaker. Other accounts of von Neumann's life can be found in books by two of his colleagues [2] and [3]. Our third speaker, Peter Lax, provided both mathematical and international perspectives on John von Neumann's career. Finally, Pete Stewart spoke about von Neumann's numerical error analysis [4] in the context of later work; this talk …

Target designs are described that are meant to achieve ignition on the National Ignition Facility. Simulations of recent indirect drive cryogenic capsule designs indicate dramatically reduced growth of short wavelength hydrodynamic instabilities, resulting from two changes in the designs. First, better optimization results from systematic mapping of the ignition target performance over the parameter space of ablator and DT-ice thickness combinations, using techniques developed by one of us (Herrmann). After the space is mapped with one-dimensional simulations, exploration of it with two-dimensional simulations quantifies the dependence of instability growth on target dimensions. Low modes and high modes grow differently in different regions of the space, allowing a trade-off of the two regimes of growth. Significant improvement in high-mode stability can be achieved, relative to previous designs, with only insignificant increase in low-mode growth. This procedure produces capsule designs that, in simulations, tolerate several times the surface roughness that could be tolerated by capsules optimized by older more heuristic techniques. Another significant reduction in instability growth, by another factor of several, is achieved with ablators with 'graded dopants.' In this type of capsule the mid-Z dopant, which is needed in the ablator to minimize x-ray preheat at the ablator-ice interface, is …

A predictive framework for supersymmetry at the TeV scale is presented, which incorporates the Ciafaloni-Pomarol mechanism for the dynamical determination of the \mu parameter of the MSSM. It is replaced by (\lambda S), where S is a singlet field, and the axion becomes a heavy pseudoscalar, G, by adding a mass, m_G, by hand. The explicit breaking of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is assumed to be sufficiently weak at the TeV scale that the only observable consequence is the mass m_G. Three models for the explicit PQ breaking are given; but the utility of this framework is that the predictions for all physics at the electroweak scale are independent of the particular model for PQ breaking. Our framework leads to a theory similar to the MSSM, except that \mu is predicted by the Ciafaloni-Pomarol relation, and there are light, weakly-coupled states in the spectrum. The production and cascade decay of superpartners at colliders occurs as in the MSSM, except that there is one extra stage of the cascade chain, with the next-to-LSP decaying to its"superpartner" and \tilde{s}, dramatically altering the collider signatures for supersymmetry. The framework is compatible with terrestrial experiments and astrophysical observations for a wide range of m_G and<s>. …

Recent experimental results have provided unambiguous evidence that neutrinos have a small but finite mass and mix from one type into another. The phenomenon of neutrino mixing is characterized by the coupling between the neutrino flavor (nu e,mu,tau) and mass eigenstates (nu 1,2,3) and the associated mixing angles. Previous neutrino oscillation experiments have determined two of the three mixing angles in the neutrino mixing matrix, U MNSP. Using multiple neutrino detectors placed at different distances from a nuclear power plant, a future reactor neutrino experiment has the potential to discover and measure the coupling of the electron neutrino flavor to the third mass eigenstate, Ue3, the last undetermined element of the neutrino mixing matrix. In this paper we describe recent efforts in the US towards a next-generation experiment to measure theta13 with reactor neutrinos.