Relationships between intrinsic mechanical hardness and atomic-scale properties are reviewed, Hardness scales closely and linearly with shear modulus for a given class of material (covalent, ionic or metallic). A two-parameter fit and a Peierls-stress model produce a more universal scaling relationship, but no model can explain differences in hardness between the transition metal carbides and nitrides. Calculations of ''ideal strength'' (defined by the limit of elastic stability of a perfect crystal) are proposed. The ideal shear strengths of fcc aluminum and copper are calculated using ab initio techniques and allowing for structural relaxation of all five strain components other than the imposed strain. The strengths of Al and Cu are similar (8-9% of the shear modulus), but the geometry of the relaxations in Al and Cu is very different. The relaxations are consistent with experimentally measured third-order elastic constants. The general thermodynamic conditions of elastic stability that set the upper limits of mechanical strength are derived. The conditions of stability are shown for cubic (hydrostatic), tetragonal (tensile) and monoclinic (shear) distortions of a cubic crystal. The implications of this stability analysis to first-principles calculations of ideal strength are discussed, and a method to detect instabilities orthogonal to the direction of …

The author performs image reconstruction for a novel Positron Emission Tomography camera that is optimized for breast cancer imaging. This work addresses for the first time, the problem of fully-3D, tomographic reconstruction using a septa-less, stationary, (i.e. no rotation or linear motion), and rectangular camera whose Field of View (FOV) encompasses the entire volume enclosed by detector modules capable of measuring Depth of Interaction (DOI) information. The camera is rectangular in shape in order to accommodate breasts of varying sizes while allowing for soft compression of the breast during the scan. This non-standard geometry of the camera exacerbates two problems: (a) radial elongation due to crystal penetration and (b) reconstructing images from irregularly sampled data. Packing considerations also give rise to regions in projection space that are not sampled which lead to missing information. The author presents new Fourier Methods based image reconstruction algorithms that incorporate DOI information and accommodate the irregular sampling of the camera in a consistent manner by defining lines of responses (LORs) between the measured interaction points instead of rebinning the events into predefined crystal face LORs which is the only other method to handle DOI information proposed thus far. The new procedures maximize the use …

An implicit version of the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) code SPHINX has been written and is working. In conjunction with the SPHINX code the new implicit code models fluids and solids under a wide range of conditions. SPH codes are Lagrangian, meshless and use particles to model the fluids and solids. The implicit code makes use of the Krylov iterative techniques for solving large linear-systems and a Newton-Raphson method for non-linear corrections. It uses numerical derivatives to construct the Jacobian matrix. It uses sparse techniques to save on memory storage and to reduce the amount of computation. It is believed that this is the first implicit SPH code to use Newton-Krylov techniques, and is also the first implicit SPH code to model solids. A description of SPH and the techniques used in the implicit code are presented. Then, the results of a number of tests cases are discussed, which include a shock tube problem, a Rayleigh-Taylor problem, a breaking dam problem, and a single jet of gas problem. The results are shown to be in very good agreement with analytic solutions, experimental results, and the explicit SPHINX code. In the case of the single jet of gas case it has …

An accelerator-based experiment was performed using the CEBAF accelerator of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to investigate a predicted sensitivity of the beam polarization to the vertical betatron orbit in the recirculation arcs. This is the first measurement of any such effect at CEBAF, and provides information about the polarized beam delivery performance of the accelerator. A brief description of the accelerator is given, followed by the experimental methods used and the relevant issues involved in measuring a small ({approximately} 10{sup {minus}2}) change in the beam polarization. Results of measurements of the polarization sensitivity parameters and the machine energy by polarization transport techniques are presented. The parameters were obtained by measurement of the strength of the effect as a function of orbit amplitude and spin orientation, to confirm the predicted coupling between the spin orientation and the quadrupole fields in the beam transport system. This experiment included characterizing the injector spin manipulation system and 5 MeV Mott polarimeter, modeling of the polarization transport of the accelerator, installation of magnets to create a modulated orbit perturbation in a single recirculation arc, and detailed studies of the Hall C Moeller polarimeter.

Many scientific and industrial applications call for quantum-efficient high-energy-resolution microcalorimeters for the measurement of x rays. The applications driving the development of these detectors involve the measurement of faint sources of x rays in which few photons reach the detector. Interesting astrophysical applications for these microcalorimeters include the measurement of composition and temperatures of stellar atmospheres and diffuse interstellar plasmas. Other applications of microcalorimeter technology include x-ray fluorescence (XRF) measurements of industrial or scientific samples. We are attempting to develop microcalorimeters with energy resolutions of several eV because many sources (such as celestial plasmas) contain combinations of elements producing emission lines spaced only a few eV apart. Our microcalorimeters consist of a metal-film absorber (250 {micro}m x 250{micro}m x 3 {micro}m of copper) coupled to a superconducting transition-edge-sensor (TES) thermometer. This microcalorimeter demonstrated an energy resolution of 42 eV (FWHM) at 6 keV, excellent linearity, and showed no evidence of position dependent response. The response of our microcalorimeters depends both on the temperature of the microcalorimeter and on the electrical current conducted through the TES thermometer. We present a microcalorimeter model that extends previous microcalorimeter theory to include additional current dependent effects. The model makes predictions about the effects of …