Left unprotected, both transmissive and reflective final optics in a laser-driven inertial fusion power plant would quickly fail from melting, pulsed thermal stress, or degradation of optical properties as a result of ion implantation. One potential option for mitigating this threat is to magnetically deflect the ions such that they are directed to a robust energy dump. In this paper we detail integrated studies that have been carried out to assess the viability of this approach for protecting final optics.

The discovery that ultra-intense laser pulses (I > 10{sup 18} W/cm{sup 2}) can produce short pulse, high energy proton beams has renewed interest in the fundamental mechanisms that govern particle acceleration from laser-solid interactions. Experiments have shown that protons present as hydrocarbon contaminants on laser targets can be accelerated up to energies > 50 MeV. Different theoretical models that explain the observed results have been proposed. One model describes a front-surface acceleration mechanism based on the ponderomotive potential of the laser pulse. At high intensities (I > 10{sup 18} W/cm{sup 2}), the quiver energy of an electron oscillating in the electric field of the laser pulse exceeds the electron rest mass, requiring the consideration of relativistic effects. The relativistically correct ponderomotive potential is given by U{sub p} = ([1 + I{lambda}{sup 2}/1.3 x 10{sup 18}]{sup 1/2} - 1) m{sub o}c{sup 2}, where I{lambda}{sup 2} is the irradiance in W{micro}m{sup 2}/cm{sup 2} and m{sub o}c{sup 2} is the electron rest mass.At laser irradiance of I{lambda}{sup 2} {approx} 10{sup 20} W{micro}m{sup 2}/cm{sup 2}, the ponderomotive potential can be of order several MeV. A few recent experiments--discussed in Chapter 3 of this thesis--consider this ponderomotive potential sufficiently strong to accelerate protons from the …

Far infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy was used to study the low lying vibronic states of Mn$sup 3+$ in Al$sub 2$O$sub 3$ and the plasma absorption of electron-hole droplets in Ge. The transmission of Mn-doped samples of Al$sub 2$O$sub 3$ was measured in the frequency range from 3 to 30 cm$sup -1$ in applied magnetic fields up to 50 kG. Absorption lines were observed due to both ground and excited state transitions. Polarization measurements established that these absorption lines were due to electric dipole transitions. Temperature dependence measurements were used to derive a level diagram for the low lying states of Mn$sup 3+$. A phenomenological model based on an electronic Hamiltonian was developed which successfully describes the data. The empirically determined trigonal field and spin-orbit quenching parameters of this model are 0.7 and 0.1 respectively. This quenching is attributed to the dynamic Jahn-- Teller interaction. The plasma absorption of small ($alpha$) electron-hole drops in Ge was measured in the frequency range from 30 to 300 cm$sup -1$. The observed absorption is in good agreement with measurements by Vavilov and other workers. A theoretical model which includes both intraband and interband contributions to the dielectric constant in the Rayleigh limit of Mie …

Germanium Blocked Impurity Band (BIB) detectors require a high purity blocking layer (< 10{sup 13} cm{sup -3}) approximately 1 mm thick grown on a heavily doped active layer ({approx} 10{sup 16} cm{sup -3}) approximately 20 mm thick. Epilayers were grown using liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) of germanium out of lead solution. The effects of the crystallographic orientation of the germanium substrate on LPE growth modes were explored. Growth was studied on substrates oriented by Laue x-ray diffraction between 0.02{sup o} and 10{sup o} from the {l_brace}111{r_brace} toward the {l_brace}100{r_brace}. Terrace growth was observed, with increasing terrace height for larger misorientation angles. It was found that the purity of the blocking layer was limited by the presence of phosphorus in the lead solvent. Unintentionally doped Ge layers contained {approx}10{sup 15} cm{sup -3} phosphorus as determined by Hall effect measurements and Photothermal Ionization Spectroscopy (PTIS). Lead purification by vacuum distillation and dilution reduced the phosphorus concentration in the layers to {approx} 10{sup 14} cm{sup -3} but further reduction was not observed with successive distillation runs. The graphite distillation and growth components as an additional phosphorus source cannot be ruled out. Antimony ({approx}10{sup 16} cm{sup -3}) was used as a dopant for the …

Thesis analyzing a lead-glass photon spectrometer and its use in studying the absorption of photons and antinucleons.

Theoretical simulations and ultrafast pump-probe laser spectroscopy experiments were used to study photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes and antennae found in green sulfur bacteria such as Prosthecochloris aestuarii, Chloroflexus aurantiacus, and Chlorobium tepidum. The work focused on understanding structure-function relationships in energy transfer processes in these complexes through experiments and trying to model that data as we tested our theoretical assumptions with calculations. Theoretical exciton calculations on tubular pigment aggregates yield electronic absorption spectra that are superimpositions of linear J-aggregate spectra. The electronic spectroscopy of BChl c/d/e antennae in light harvesting chlorosomes from Chloroflexus aurantiacus differs considerably from J-aggregate spectra. Strong symmetry breaking is needed if we hope to simulate the absorption spectra of the BChl c antenna. The theory for simulating absorption difference spectra in strongly coupled photosynthetic antenna is described, first for a relatively simple heterodimer, then for the general N-pigment system. The theory is applied to the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) BChl a protein trimers from Prosthecochloris aestuarii and then compared with experimental low-temperature absorption difference spectra of FMO trimers from Chlorobium tepidum. Circular dichroism spectra of the FMO trimer are unusually sensitive to diagonal energy disorder. Substantial differences occur between CD spectra in exciton simulations performed with and without realistic …

In this work, they try to understand the protein folding problem using pair-wise hydrophobic interaction as the dominant interaction for the protein folding process. They found a strong correlation between amino acid sequences and the corresponding native structure of the protein. Some applications of this correlation were discussed in this dissertation include the domain partition and a new structural threading method as well as the performance of this method in the CASP5 competition. In the first part, they give a brief introduction to the protein folding problem. Some essential knowledge and progress from other research groups was discussed. This part includes discussions of interactions among amino acids residues, lattice HP model, and the design ability principle. In the second part, they try to establish the correlation between amino acid sequence and the corresponding native structure of the protein. This correlation was observed in the eigenvector study of protein contact matrix. They believe the correlation is universal, thus it can be used in automatic partition of protein structures into folding domains. In the third part, they discuss a threading method based on the correlation between amino acid sequences and ominant eigenvector of the structure contact-matrix. A mathematically straightforward iteration scheme provides …

A collocation method using cubic splines is developed and applied to simulate steady and time-dependent, including turbulent, thermally convecting flows for two-dimensional compressible fluids. The state variables and the fluxes of the conserved quantities are approximated by cubic splines in both space direction. This method is shown to be numerically conservative and to have a local truncation error proportional to the fourth power of the grid spacing. A ''dual-staggered'' Cartesian grid, where energy and momentum are updated on one grid and mass density on the other, is used to discretize the flux form of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Each grid-line is staggered so that the fluxes, in each direction, are calculated at the grid midpoints. This numerical method is validated by simulating thermally convecting flows, from steady to turbulent, reproducing known results. Once validated, the method is used to investigate many aspects of thermal convection with high numerical accuracy. Simulations demonstrate that multiple steady solutions can coexist at the same Rayleigh number for compressible convection. As a system is driven further from equilibrium, a drop in the time-averaged dimensionless heat flux (and the dimensionless internal entropy production rate) occurs at the transition from laminar-periodic to chaotic flow. This observation is …

Accurate ionization energies (IE`s) for molecular species are used for prediction of chemical reactivity and are of fundamental importance to chemists. The IE of a gaseous molecule can be determined routinely in a photoionization or a photoelectron experiment. IE determinations made in conventional photoionization and photoelectron studies have uncertainties in the range of 3--100 meV (25--250 cm{sup {minus}1}). In the past decade, the most exciting development in the field of photoionization and photoelectron spectroscopy has been the availability of high resolution, tunable ultraviolet (UV) and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser sources. The laser pulsed field ionization photoelectron (PFI-PE) scheme is currently the state-of-the-art photoelectron spectroscopic technique and is capable of providing photoelectron energy resolution close to the optical resolution. The author has focused attention on the photoionization processes of some sulfur-containing species. The studies of the photoionization and photodissociation on sulfur-containing compounds [such as CS{sub 2}, CH{sub 3}SH, CH{sub 3}SSCH{sub 3}, CH{sub 3}CH{sub 2}SCH{sub 2}CH{sub 3}, HSCH{sub 2}CH{sub 2}SH and C{sub 4}H{sub 4}S (thiophene) and sulfur-containing radicals, such as HS, CS, CH{sub 3}S, CH{sub 3}CH{sub 2}S and CH{sub 3}SS], have been the major subjects in the group because sulfur is an important species contributing to air pollution in the atmosphere. The …

This dissertation comprises two main research projects. The first project, presented in Chapter 1, involves the synthesis and thermochemistry of germacyclobutanes (germetanes). Four new germetanes (spirodigermetane, diallylgermetane, dichlorogermetane, and germacyclobutane) have been synthesized using a modified di-Grignard synthesis. Diallylgermetane is shown to be a useful starting material for obtaining other germetanes, particularly the parent germetane, germacyclobutane. The gas-phase thermochemistries of spirodigermetane, diallylgermetane and germacyclobutane have been explored via pulsed stirred-flow reactor (SFR) studies, showing remarkable differences in decomposition, depending on the substitution at the germanium atom. The second project investigates the thermochemical, photochemical, and catalytic additions of several digermanes to acetylenes. The first examples of thermo- and photochemical additions of Ge-Ge bonds to C{triple_bond}C are demonstrated. Mechanistic investigations are described and comparisons are made to analogous disilane addition reactions, previously studied in their group.

Baryon stopping and particle production in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon are studied as a function of the collision centrality using new proton, antiproton, charged kaon and charged pion production data measured with the NA49 experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). Stopping, which is measured by the shift in rapidity of net protons or baryons from the initial beam rapidity, increases in more central collisions. This is expected from a geometrical picture of the collisions. The stopping data are quantitatively compared to models incorporating various mechanisms for stopping. In general, microscopic transport calculations which incorporate current theoretical models of baryon stopping or use phenomenological extrapolations from simpler systems overestimate the dependence of stopping on centrality. Approximately, the yield of produced pions scales with the number of nucleons participating in the collision. A small increase in yield beyond this scaling, accompanied by a small suppression in the yield of the fastest pions, reflects the variation in stopping with centrality. Consistent with the observations from central collisions of light and heavy nuclei at the SPS, the transverse momentum distributions of all particles are observed to become harder with increasing centrality. This effect is most pronounced for the heaviest particles. This …

The field of spintronics offers perspectives for seamless integration of coupled and inter-tunable electrical and magnetic properties in a single device. For integration of the spin degree of freedom with current electronic technology, new semiconductors are needed that show electrically-tunable magnetic properties at room temperature and above. Dilute magnetic semiconductors derived from III-V compounds, like GaMnAs and InMnAs, show coupled and tunable magnetic, transport, and optical properties, due to the fact that their ferromagnetism is hole-mediated. These unconventional materials are ideal systems for manipulating the magnetic order by changing the carrier polarization, population density, and energy band distribution of the complementary subsystem of holes. This is the main theme we cover in this thesis. In particular, we develop a unique setup by use of ultraviolet pump, near-infrared probe femtosecond laser pulses, that allows for magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) spectroscopy experiments. We photo-excite transient carriers in our samples, and measure the induced transient magnetization dynamics. One set of experiments performed allowed us to observe for the first time enhancement of the ferromagnetic order in GaMnAs, on an ultrafast time scale of hundreds of picoseconds. The corresponding transient increase of Curie temperature (Tc, the temperature above which a ferromagnetic material loses its …

The standard non-photochemical hole burning (NPHB) mechanism, which involves phonon-assisted tunneling in the electronically excited state, was originally proposed to explain the light-induced frequency change of chemically stable molecules in glassy solids at liquid helium temperatures by this research group more than two decades ago. The NPHB mechanism was then further elucidated and the concept of intrinsic to glass configurational relaxation processes as pre-mediating step to the hole burning process was introduced. The latter provided the theoretical basis for NPHB to evolve into a powerful tool probing the dynamics and nature of amorphous media, which aside from ''simple'' inorganic glasses may include also ''complex'' biological systems such as living cells and cancerous/normal tissues. Presented in this dissertation are the experimental and theoretical results of hole burning properties of aluminum phthalocyanine tetrasulphonate (APT) in several different matrices: (1) hyperquenched glassy water (HGW); (2) cubic ice (I{sub c}); and (3) water confined into poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate) (poly-HEMA). In addition, results of photochemical hole burning (PHB) studies obtained for phthalocyanine tetrasulphonate (PcT) in HGW and free base phthalocyanine (Pc) in ortho-dichlorobenzene (DCB) glass are reported. The goal of this dissertation was to provide further evidence supporting the NPHB mechanism and to provide more insight that …

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Addition of a novel anionic surfactant, namely lauryl polyoxyethylene sulfate, to an aqueous-acetonitrile electrolyte makes it possible to separate nonionic organic compounds by capillary electrophoresis. Separation is based on differences in the association between analytes and the surfactant. Highly hydrophobic compounds such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons are well separated by this new surfactant. Migration times of analytes can be readily changed over an unusually large range by varying the additive concentration and the proportion of acetonitrile in the electrolyte. Several examples are given, including the separation of four methylbenz[a]anthracene isomers and the separation of normal and deuterated acetophenone. The effect of adding this new surfactant to the acidic electrolyte was also investigated. Incorporation of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide in the electrolyte is shown to dynamically coat the capillary and reverse electroosmotic flow. Chiral recognition mechanism is studied using novel synthetic surfactants as chiral selectors, which are made from amino acids reacting with alkyl chloroformates. A satisfactory separation of both inorganic and organic anions is obtained using electrolyte solutions as high as 5 M sodium chloride using direct photometric detection. The effect of various salts on electrophoretic and electroosmotic mobility is further discussed. Several examples are given under high-salt conditions.

Report discussing details of curium's chemical properties, including gamma radiation, solubility, and absorption. A procedure for separating curium from americium and the preparation of terbium tetrafluoride, which lead to its discovery, is also included.

Presented are the results of a search for direct CP violation in Cabibbo-suppressed decays of D{sup 0} to two charged daughters. The analysis described was performed on {approx}230 fb{sup -1} of the BABAR data sample, recorded at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and using the PEP-II electron storage rings. We measure CP asymmetries for decay to the KK and {pi}{pi} final states, as well as for the branching ratio, and develop a new technique for tagging-efficiency correction using the Cabibbo-favored K{pi} final state. We find some evidence for CP violation in decays to the KK final state and results that suggest CP violation in the {pi}{pi} final state as well.

In this dissertation, they have undertaken the challenge to understand the unusual propagation properties of the photonic crystal (PC). The photonic crystal is a medium where the dielectric function is periodically modulated. These types of structures are characterized by bands and gaps. In other words, they are characterized by frequency regions where propagation is prohibited (gaps) and regions where propagation is allowed (bands). In this study they focus on two-dimensional photonic crystals, i.e., structures with periodic dielectric patterns on a plane and translational symmetry in the perpendicular direction. They start by studying a two-dimensional photonic crystal system for frequencies inside the band gap. The inclusion of a line defect introduces allowed states in the otherwise prohibited frequency spectrum. The dependence of the defect resonance state on different parameters such as size of the structure, profile of incoming source, etc., is investigated in detail. For this study, they used two popular computational methods in photonic crystal research, the Finite Difference Time Domain method (FDTD) and the Transfer Matrix Method (TMM). The results for the one-dimensional defect system are analyzed, and the two methods, FDTD and TMM, are compared. Then, they shift their attention only to periodic two-dimensional crystals, concentrate on their …

The research discussed within involves the development of novel applications of real-time imaging of adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP). ATP was detected via bioluminescence and the firefly luciferase-catalyzed reaction of ATP and luciferin. The use of a microscope and an imaging detector allowed for spatially resolved quantitation of ATP release. Employing this method, applications in both biological and chemical systems were developed. First, the mechanism by which the compound 48/80 induces release of ATP from human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) was investigated. Numerous enzyme activators and inhibitors were utilized to probe the second messenger systems involved in release. Compound 48/80 activated a G{sub q}-type protein to initiate ATP release from HUVECs. Ca{sup 2+} imaging along with ATP imaging revealed that activation of phospholipase C and induction of intracellular Ca{sup 2+} signaling were necessary for release of ATP. Furthermore, activation of protein kinase C inhibited the activity of phospholipase C and thus decreased the magnitude of ATP release. This novel release mechanism was compared to the existing theories of extracellular release of ATP. Bioluminescence imaging was also employed to examine the role of ATP in the field of neuroscience. The central nervous system (CNS) was dissected from the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis. …

The peak profile of individual degranulation events from the on-column release of serotonin from single rat peritoneal mast cells (RPMCs) was monitored using capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced native fluorescence detection (CE-LINF). Serotonin, an important biogenic amine, is contained in granules (0.25 fL) within RPMCs and is extruded by a process termed exocytosis. The secretagogue, Polymyxin B sulfate, was used as the CE running buffer after injection of a single RPMC into the separation capillary to stimulate the release of the granules. Because the release process occurs on a ms time scale, monitoring individual exocytotic events is possible with the coupling of high-speed CE and LINF detection.

Undergraduate thesis examining the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the United States and its ethics. The authors' study provides that in states where, by legislation, physicians can aid a patient by prescribing a lethal dose which the patient can choose to ingest, the benefits well surpass any risk feared by opponents of physician-assisted suicide.

Organic chemistry has served as a solid foundation for interdisciplinary research areas, such as molecular biology and medicinal chemistry. An understanding of the biological activities and structural elucidations of natural products can lead to the development of clinically valuable therapeutic options. The advancements of modern synthetic methodologies allow for more elaborate and concise natural product syntheses. The theme of this study centers on the synthesis of natural products with particularly challenging structures and interesting biological activities. The synthetic expertise developed here will be applicable to analog syntheses and to other research problems.

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The focus of this dissertation is the use of chromatographic methods coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry (ES-MS) for the determination of both organic and inorganic compounds in aqueous solutions. The combination of liquid chromatography (LC) methods and ES-MS offers one of the foremost methods for determining compounds in complex aqueous solutions. In this work, LC-ES-MS methods are devised using ion exclusion chromatography, reversed phase chromatography, and ion exchange chromatography, as well as capillary electrophoresis (CE). For an aqueous sample, these LC-ES-MS and CE-ES-MS techniques require no sample preparation or analyte derivatization, which makes it possible to observe a wide variety of analytes as they exist in solution. The majority of this work focuses on the use of LC-ES-MS for the determination of unknown products and intermediates formed during electrochemical incineration (ECI), an experimental waste remediation process. This report contains a general introduction to the project and the general conclusions. Four chapters have been removed for separate processing. Titles are: Chapter 2: Determination of small carboxylic acids by ion exclusion chromatography with electrospray mass spectrometry; Chapter 3: Electrochemical incineration of benzoquinone in aqueous media using a quaternary metal oxide electrode in the absence of a soluble supporting electrolyte; Chapter 4: The …