This report describes progress made on research projects associated with my Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator grant.

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These proceedings contain papers prepared for the 28th Seismic Research Review: Ground-Based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Technologies, held 19-21 September, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. These papers represent the combined research related to ground-based nuclear explosion monitoring funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), and other invited sponsors. The scientific objectives of the research are to improve the United States capability to detect, locate, and identify nuclear explosions. The purpose of the meeting is to provide the sponsoring agencies, as well as potential users, an opportunity to review research accomplished during the preceding year and to discuss areas of investigation for the coming year. For the researchers, it provides a forum for the exchange of scientific information toward achieving program goals, and an opportunity to discuss results and future plans. Paper topics include: seismic regionalization and calibration; detection and location of sources; wave propagation from source to receiver; the nature of seismic sources, including mining practices; hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide methods; on-site inspection; and data processing.

Figure 1 shows the resistivity models considered in this study; log10 of the resistivity is shown. The graph on the upper left hand side shows a hypothetical resisitivity well log measured along a well in the upper layered model; 10% Gaussian noise has been added to the well log data. The lower model is identical to the upper one except for one square area located within the second deepest layer. Figure 2 shows the electrode configurations considered. The ''reference'' case (upper frame) considers point electrodes located along the surface and along a vertical borehole. The ''CPT electrode'' case (middle frame) assumes that the CPT tip serves as an electrode that is electrically connected to the push rod; the surface electrodes are used in conjuction with the moving CPT electrode. The ''isolated CPT electrode'' case assumes that the electrode at the CPT tip is electrically isolated from the pushrod. Note that the separate CPT push rods in the middle and lower frames are shown separated to clarify the figure; in reality, there is only one pushrod that is changing length as the probe advances. Figure 3 shows three pole-pole measurement schemes were considered; in all cases, the ''get lost'' electrodes were …

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This report provides information about environmental programs during 2004 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Seasonal activities that span calendar years are also included. Production of an annual site environmental report (ASER) is a requirement established by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for all management and operating (M&O) contractors throughout the DOE complex. SLAC is a federally-funded, research and development center with Stanford University as the M&O contractor. The most noteworthy information in this report is summarized in this section. This summary demonstrates the effective application of SLAC environmental management in meeting the site's integrated safety management system (ISMS) goals. For normal daily activities, all SLAC managers and supervisors are responsible for ensuring that proper procedures are followed so that worker safety and health are protected; the environment is protected; and compliance is ensured. Throughout 2004, SLAC focused on these activities through the SLAC management systems (described in Chapter 3). These systems were also the way SLAC approached implementing ''greening of the government'' initiatives such as Executive Order 13148. The management systems at SLAC are effective, supporting compliance with all relevant statutory and regulatory requirements. There were no reportable releases to the environment from SLAC operations during …

For electricity and hydrogen production, an advanced reactor technology receiving considerable international interest is a modular, passively-safe version of the high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor, known in the U.S. as the Modular Helium Reactor (MHR), which operates at a power level of 600 MW(t). For electricity production, the MHR operates with an outlet helium temperature of 850 C to drive a direct, Brayton-cycle power-conversion system with a thermal-to-electrical conversion efficiency of 48 percent. This concept is referred to as the Gas Turbine MHR (GT-MHR). For hydrogen production, both electricity and process heat from the MHR are used to produce hydrogen. This concept is referred to as the H2-MHR. This report provides pre-conceptual design descriptions of full-scale, nth-of-a-kind H2 MHR plants based on thermochemical water splitting using the Sulfur-Iodine process and High-Temperature Electrolysis.

Current and next generation experiments in nuclear and elementary particle physics require detectors with high spatial resolution, fast response, and accurate energy information. Such detectors are required for spectroscopy, and imaging of optical and high-energy photons, charged particles, and neutrons, and are of interest not only in nuclear and high-energy physics, but also in other areas such as medical imaging, diffraction, astronomy, nuclear treaty verification, non-destructive evaluation, and geological exploration.

We discuss wakefields excited by short bunches in accelerators. In particular, we review some of what has been learned in recent years concerning diffraction wakes, roughness impedance, coherent synchrotron radiation wakes, and the resistive wall wake, focusing on analytical solutions where possible. As examples, we apply formulas for these wakes to various parts of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) project. The longitudinal accelerator structure wake of the SLAC linac is an important ingredient in the LCLS bunch compression process. Of the wakes in the undulator region, the dominant one is the resistive wall wake of the beam pipe.

The team of TIAX LLC, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, and Callidus Technologies, LLC conducted a six-year program to develop an ultra-low emission process heater burner and an advanced high efficiency heater design. This project addresses the critical need of process heater operators for reliable, economical emission reduction technologies to comply with stringent emission regulations, and for heater design alternatives that reduce process heater energy requirements without significant cost increase. The key project targets were NOx emissions of 10 ppm (@ 3% O2), and a heater thermal efficiency of 95 percent. The ultra low NOx burner was developed through a series of pilot-scale and field tests combined with computational fluid dynamic modeling to arrive at simultaneous low emissions and suitable flame shape and stability. Pilot scale tests were run at TIAX, at the 2 MMBtu/hr scale, and at Callidus at 8 MMBtu/hr. The full scale burner was installed on a 14 burner atmospheric pipestill furnace at an ExxonMobil refinery. A variety of burner configurations, gas tips and flame stabilizers were tested to determine the lowest emissions with acceptable flame shape and stability. The resulting NOx emissions were 22 ppm on average. Starting in 2001, Callidus commercialized the original ultra low …

Evaluation of the performance of innovative thermal barrier coating systems for applications at high temperatures in advanced industrical gas turbines.

The attenuation of very high energy gamma rays by pair production on the Galactic interstellar radiation field has long been thought of as negligible. However, a new calculation of the interstellar radiation field consistent with multi-wavelength observations by DIRBE and FIRAS indicates that the energy density of the Galactic interstellar radiation field is higher, particularly in the Galactic center, than previously thought. We have made a calculation of the attenuation of very high energy gamma rays in the Galaxy using this new interstellar radiation field which takes into account its nonuniform spatial and angular distributions. We find that the maximum attenuation occurs around 100 TeV at the level of about 25% for sources located at the Galactic center, and is important for both Galactic and extragalactic sources.

The authors report the observation of decays B{sup 0} {yields} D{sub s}{sup (*)+} {pi}{sup -} and B{sup 0} {yields} D{sub s}{sup (*)-} K{sup +} in a sample of 230 x 10{sup 6} {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} events recorded with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e{sup +}e{sup -} storage ring. They measure the branching fractions {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} D{sub s}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}) = (1.3 {+-} 0.3(stat) {+-} 0.2(syst)) x 10{sup -5}, {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} D{sub s}{sup -}K{sup +}) = (2.5 {+-} 0.4(stat) {+-} 0.4(syst)) x 10{sup -5}, {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} D*{sub s}{sup +} {pi}{sup -}) = (2.8 {+-} 0.6(stat) {+-} 0.5 (syst)) x 10{sup -5}, and {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} D*{sub s}{sup -} K{sup +}) = (2.0 {+-} 0.5(stat) {+-} 0.4(syst)) x 10{sup -5}. The significance of the measurements to differ from zero are 5, 9, 6, and 5 standard deviations, respectively.

The authors report a study of D*{sub sJ}(2317){sup +} and D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} meson production in B decays. They observe and measure branching fractions for the decays B{sup +} {yields} D{sub sJ}{sup (*)+} {bar D}{sup (*)0} and B{sup 0} {yields} D{sub sJ}{sup (*)+} {bar D}{sup (*)-} with the subsequent decays D*{sub sJ}(2317){sup +} {yields} D{sub s}{sup +} {pi}{sup 0}, D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} {yields} D*{sub s}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0}, and D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} {yields} D{sub s}{sup +}{gamma}. In addition, they perform an angular analysis of D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} {yields} D{sub s}{sup +}{gamma} decays to test the different D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +} spin hypotheses.

The objective of this grant was to understand how molecular vibrational states (geometry distortions) are involved in photoinduced electron transfer rates of molecules. This subject is an important component of understanding how molecular absorbers of light convert that energy into charge separation. This is important because the absorption usually excites molecular vibrations in a new electronic state prior to electron transfer to other molecules or semiconductor nanoparticles, as in some types of solar cells. The speeds of charge separation and charge recombination are key parameters that require experiments such as those in this work to test the rules governing electron transfer rates. Major progress was made on this goal. Some of the molecular structures selected for developing experimental data were bimolecular charge transfer complexes that contained metals of cobalt or vanadium. The experiments used the absorption of an ultrafast pulse of light to directly separate charges onto the two different molecular parts of the complex. The charge recombination then proceeds naturally, and one goal was to measure the speed of this recombination for different types of molecular vibrations. We used picosecond and femtosecond duration pulses with tunable colors at infrared wavelengths to directly observe vibrational states and their different rates …

A study of the electron beam dynamics in the linac is conducted for the FERMI free electron laser (FEL) founded for construction at the Sincrotrone Trieste.

We present a novel approach to characterize the colliding-beam phase space at the interaction point of the energy-asymmetric PEP-II B-Factory. The method exploits the fact that the transverse-boost distribution of e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -} events reconstructed in the BABAR detector reflects that of the colliding electrons and positrons. The mean boost direction, when combined with the measured orientation of the luminous ellipsoid, determines the e{sup +}-e{sup -} crossing angles. The average angular spread of the transverse boost vector provides an accurate measure of the angular divergence of the incoming high-energy beam, confirming the presence of a sizeable dynamic-{beta} effect. The longitudinal and transverse dependence of the boost angular spread also allow to extract from the continuously-monitored distributions detailed information about the emittances and IP {beta}-functions of both beams during high-luminosity operation.

This contract was awarded in response to a proposal in which a deployable plume and aerosol release prediction and tracking system would be designed, fabricated, and tested. The system would gather real time atmospheric data and input it into a real time atmospheric model that could be used for plume predition and tracking. The system would be able to be quickly deployed by aircraft to points of interest or positioned for deployment by vehicles. The system would provide three dimensional (u, v, and w) wind vector data, inversion height measurements, surface wind information, classical weather station data, and solar radiation. The on-board real time computer model would provide the prediction of the behavior of plumes and released aerosols.

This is the third quarter progress report of Phase II of a three-phase project to develop and evaluate the efficacy of developing multiple environmental market trading credits on a partially reclaimed surface mined site near Valley Point, Preston County, WV. Construction of the passive acid mine drainage (AMD) treatment system was completed but several modifications from the original design had to be made following the land survey and during construction to compensate for unforeseen circumstances. We continued to collect baseline quality data from the Conner Run AMD seeps to confirm the conceptual and final design for the passive AMD treatment system.

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We report of the design, constrcution, commissioning, and beamtests of a prototype calorimeter. This calorimeter is of a novel design so as to equalize its response to electromagnetic and hadronic energy deposits of equal primary energy. Thus its response to jets is independent of the jet's electromagnetic versus hadronic composition. The beamtests show that the prototype satisfies the design requirements. The design, construction and the results of beamtests have been published in several papers in a refereed journal.

Gasoline refineries utilize a process called acid alkylation to increase the octane rating of blended gasoline, and this is the single most expensive process in the refinery. For process efficiency and safety reasons, the sulfuric acid can only be used while it is in the concentration range of 98 to 86 %. The conventional technique to monitor the acid concentration is time consuming and is typically conducted only a few times per day. This results in running higher acid concentrations than they would like to ensure that the process proceeds uninterrupted. Maintaining an excessively high acid concentration costs the refineries millions of dollars each year. Using SBIR funding, Process Instruments Inc. has developed an inline sensor for real time monitoring of acid concentrations in gasoline refinery alkylation units. Real time data was then collected over time from the instrument and its responses were matched up with the laboratory analysis. A model was then developed to correlate the laboratory acid values to the Raman signal that is transmitted back to the instrument from the process stream. The instrument was then used to demonstrate that it could create real-time predictions of the acid concentrations. The results from this test showed that the …