The groups led by Stormer and Pinczuk have focused this project on goals that seek the elucidation of novel many-particle effects that emerge in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) as the result from fundamental quantum interactions. This experimental research is conducted under extreme conditions of temperature and magnetic field. From the materials point of view, the ultra-high mobility systems in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum structures continue to be at the forefront of this research. The newcomer materials are based on graphene, a single atomic layer of graphite. The graphene research is attracting enormous attention from many communities involved in condensed matter research. The investigated many-particle phenomena include the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect, composite fermions, and Dirac fermions, and a diverse group of electron solid and liquid crystal phases. The Stormer group performed magneto-transport experiments and far-infrared spectroscopy, while the Pinczuk group explores manifestations of such phases in optical spectra.

Environmental systems exhibit a range of complexities which exist at a range of length and mass scales. Within the realm of radionuclide fate and transport, much work has been focused on understanding pore scale processes where complexity can be reduced to a simplified system. In describing larger scale behavior, the results from these simplified systems must be combined to create a theory of the whole. This process can be quite complex, and lead to models which lack transparency. The underlying assumption of this approach is that complex systems will exhibit complex behavior, requiring a complex system of equations to describe behavior. This assumption has never been tested. The goal of the experiments presented is to ask the question: Do increasingly complex systems show increasingly complex behavior? Three experimental tanks at the intermediate scale (Tank 1: 2.4m x 1.2m x 7.6cm, Tank 2: 2.4m x 0.61m x 7.6cm, Tank 3: 2.4m x 0.61m x 0.61m (LxHxW)) have been completed. These tanks were packed with various physical orientations of different particle sizes of a uranium contaminated sediment from a former uranium mill near Naturita, Colorado. Steady state water flow was induced across the tanks using constant head boundaries. Pore water was removed …

We have investigated the response of a DoubleScatter Neutron Spectrometer (DSNS) for sources at long distances (gr than 200 meters). We find that an alternative method for analyzing double scatter data avoids some uncertainties introduced by amplitude measurements in plastic scintillators.Time of flight is used to discriminate between gamma and neutron events, and the kinematic distributions of scattering angles are assumed to apply. Non-relativistic neutrons are most likely to scatter at 45°, while gammas with energies greater than 2 MeV are most likely to be forward scattered. The distribution of scattering angles of fission neutrons arriving from a distant point source generates a 45° cone, which can be back-projected to give the source direction. At the same time, the distribution of Compton-scattered gammas has a maximum in the forward direction, and can be made narrower by selecting events that deposit minimal energy in the first scattering event. We have further determined that the shape of spontaneous fission neutron spectra at ranges gr than 110 m is still significantly different from thecosmic ray background.

We developed a photodiode-based monochromatic X-ray beam-position monitor (X-BPM) with high spatial resolution for the project beamlines of the NSLS-II. A ring array of 32 Si PIN-junction photodiodes were designed for use as a position sensor, and a low-noise HERMES4 ASIC chip was integrated into the electronic readout system. A series of precision measurements to characterize electrically the Si-photodiode sensor and the ASIC chip demonstrated that the inherent noise is sufficiently below tolerance levels. Following up modeling of detector's performance, including geometrical optimization using a Gaussian beam, we fabricated and assembled a first prototype. In this paper, we describe the development of this new state-of-the-art X-ray BPM along the beamline, in particular, downstream from the monochromator.

A number of technical requirements and performance criteria can drive stellarator costs, e.g., tight tolerances, accurate coil positioning, low aspect ratio (compactness), choice of assembly strategy, metrology, and complexity of the stellarator coil geometry. With the completion of a seven-year design and construction effort of the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) it is useful to interject the NCSX experience along with the collective experiences of the NCSX stellarator community to improving the stellarator configuration. Can improvements in maintenance be achieved by altering the stellarator magnet configuration with changes in the coil shape or with the combination of trim coils? Can a mechanical configuration be identified that incorporates a partial set of shaped fixed stellarator coils along with some removable coil set to enhance the overall machine maintenance? Are there other approaches that will simplify the concepts, improve access for maintenance, reduce overall cost and improve the reliability of a stellarator based power plant? Using ARIES-CS and NCSX as reference cases, alternative approaches have been studied and developed to show how these modifications would favorably impact the stellarator power plant and experimental projects. The current status of the alternate stellarator configurations being developed will be described and a comparison made to …

We present a new supernode-based incomplete LU factorization method to construct a preconditioner for solving sparse linear systems with iterative methods. The new algorithm is primarily based on the ILUTP approach by Saad, and we incorporate a number of techniques to improve the robustness and performance of the traditional ILUTP method. These include the new dropping strategies that accommodate the use of supernodal structures in the factored matrix. We present numerical experiments to demonstrate that our new method is competitive with the other ILU approaches and is well suited for today's high performance architectures.

High temperature creep in structures at the interface between the nuclear plant and the hydrogen plant and the migration of tritium from the core through structures in the interface are two key challenges for the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) coupled to the High Temperature Electrolysis (HTE) process. The severity of these challenges, however, can be reduced by lowering the temperature at which the interface operates. Preferably this should be accomplished in a way that does not reduce combined plant efficiency and other performance measures. A means for doing so is described in this report. A heat pump is used to raise the temperature of near-waste heat from the PCU to the temperature at which nine-tenths of the HTE process heat is needed. In addition to mitigating tritium transport and creep of structures, structural material commodity costs are reduced and plant efficiency is increased by a couple of percent.

PARAMETERIZING SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ICE CLOUDS David L. Mitchell and Daniel H. DeSlover ABSTRACT An outstanding problem that contributes considerable uncertainty to Global Climate Model (GCM) predictions of future climate is the characterization of ice particle sizes in cirrus clouds. Recent parameterizations of ice cloud effective diameter differ by a factor of three, which, for overcast conditions, often translate to changes in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) of 55 W m-2 or more. Much of this uncertainty in cirrus particle sizes is related to the problem of ice particle shattering during in situ sampling of the ice particle size distribution (PSD). Ice particles often shatter into many smaller ice fragments upon collision with the rim of the probe inlet tube. These small ice artifacts are counted as real ice crystals, resulting in anomalously high concentrations of small ice crystals (D < 100 µm) and underestimates of the mean and effective size of the PSD. Half of the cirrus cloud optical depth calculated from these in situ measurements can be due to this shattering phenomenon. Another challenge is the determination of ice and liquid water amounts in mixed phase clouds. Mixed phase clouds in the Arctic contain mostly liquid water, and the …

As critical dimensions for leading-edge semiconductor devices shrink, line-edge roughness (LER) requirements are pushing well into the single digit nanometer regime. At these scales many new sources of LER must be considered. In the case of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, modeling has shown the lithographic mask to be a source of significant concern. Here we present a correlation-based methodology for experimentally measuring the magnitude of mask contributors to printed LER. The method is applied to recent printing results from a 0.3 numerical aperture EUV microfield exposure tool. The measurements demonstrate that such effects are indeed present and of significant magnitude. The method is also used to explore the effects of illumination coherence and defocus and has been used to verify model-based predictions of mask-induced LER.

We present particle-in-cell simulations, using the VORPAL framework, of 10 GeV laser plasma wakefield accelerator stages. Scaling of the physical parameters with the plasma density allows us to perform these simulations at reasonable cost and to design high performance stages. In particular we show that, by choosing to operate in the quasi-linear regime, we can use higher order laser modes to tailor the focusing forces. This makes it possible to increase the matched electron beam radius and hence the total charge in the bunch while preserving the low bunch emittance required for applications.

A rapidly increasing number of microbial genomes are sequenced by organizations worldwide and are eventually included into various public genome data resources. The quality of the annotations depends largely on the original dataset providers, with erroneous or incomplete annotations often carried over into the public resources and difficult to correct. We have developed an Expert Review (ER) version of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) system, with the goal of supporting systematic and efficient revision of microbial genome annotations. IMG ER provides tools for the review and curation of annotations of both new and publicly available microbial genomes within IMG's rich integrated genome framework. New genome datasets are included into IMG ER prior to their public release either with their native annotations or with annotations generated by IMG ER's annotation pipeline. IMG ER tools allow addressing annotation problems detected with IMG's comparative analysis tools, such as genes missed by gene prediction pipelines or genes without an associated function. Over the past year, IMG ER was used for improving the annotations of about 150 microbial genomes.

Federal Regulation 10 CFR 851, which became effective February 2007, brought to light potential weaknesses regarding the Pressure Safety Program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The definition of a pressure system in 10 CFR 851 does not contain a limit based upon pressure or any other criteria. Therefore, the need for a method to determine an appropriate risk-based hazard level for pressure safety was identified. The Laboratory has historically used a stored energy of 1000 lbf-ft to define a pressure hazard; however, an analytical basis for this value had not been documented. This document establishes the technical basis by evaluating the use of stored energy as an appropriate criterion to establish a pressure hazard, exploring a suitable risk threshold for pressure hazards, and reviewing the methods used to determine stored energy. The literature review and technical analysis concludes the use of stored energy as a method for determining a potential risk, the 1000 lbf-ft threshold, and the methods used by PNNL to calculate stored energy are all appropriate. Recommendations for further program improvements are also discussed

The diverse and complex geology of the Nevada Test Site region makes for a challenging environment for identifying and characterizing hydrogeologic units penetrated by wells drilled for the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Underground Test Area (UGTA) Environmental Restoration Sub-Project. Fortunately, UGTA geoscientists have access to large and robust sets of subsurface geologic data, as well as a large historical knowledge base of subsurface geological analyses acquired mainly during the underground nuclear weapons testing program. Of particular importance to the accurate identification and characterization of hydrogeologic units in UGTA boreholes are the data and interpretation principles associated with geophysical well logs. Although most UGTA participants and stakeholders are probably familiar with drill hole data such as drill core and cuttings, they may be less familiar with the use of geophysical logs; this document is meant to serve as a primer on the use of geophysical logs in the UGTA project. Standard geophysical logging tools used in the UGTA project to identify and characterize hydrogeologic units are described, and basic interpretation principles and techniques are explained. Numerous examples of geophysical log data from a variety of hydrogeologic units encountered in UGTA wells are presented to highlight the use …

We reported that we were successful in our 45nm technology node device demonstration in February 2008 and 22nm node technology node device patterning in February 2009 using ASML's Alpha Demo Tool (ADT). In order to insert extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at the 15nm technology node and beyond, we have thoroughly characterized one EUV mask, a so-called NOVACD mask. In this paper, we report on three topics, The first topic is an analysis of line edge roughness (LER) using a mask Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and the Actinic Inspection Tool (AIT) to compare resist images printed with the ASML ADT. The results of the analysis show a good correlation between the mask AFM and the mask SEM measurements, However, the resist printing results for the isolated space patterns are slightly different. The cause ofthis discrepancy may be resist blur, image log slope and SEM image quality and so on. The second topic is an analysis of mask topography using an AFM and relative reflectivity of mirror and absorber surface using the AIT, The AFM data show 6 and 7 angstrom rms roughness for mirror and absorber, respectively. The reflectivity measurements show that the mirror reflects EUV …

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been tasked by Bechtel National Inc. (BNI) on the River Protection Project-Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (RPP-WTP) project to perform research and development activities to resolve technical issues identified for the Pretreatment Facility (PTF). The Pretreatment Engineering Platform (PEP) was designed, constructed, and operated as part of a plan to respond to issue M12, "Undemonstrated Leaching Processes," of the External Flowsheet Review Team (EFRT) issue response plan.( ) The PEP is a 1/4.5-scale test platform designed to simulate the WTP pretreatment caustic leaching, oxidative leaching, ultrafiltration solids concentration, and slurry washing processes. The PEP replicates the WTP leaching processes using prototypic equipment and control strategies. A simplified flow diagram of the PEP system is shown in Figure 1.1. Two operating scenarios are currently being evaluated for the ultrafiltration process (UFP) and leaching operations. The first scenario has caustic leaching performed in the UFP-2 ultrafiltration feed vessels (i.e., vessel UFP-VSL-T02A in the PEP and vessels UFP-VSL-00002A and B in the WTP PTF). The second scenario has caustic leaching conducted in the UFP-1 ultrafiltration feed preparation vessels (i.e., vessels UFP-VSL-T01A and B in the PEP and vessels UFP-VSL-00001A and B in the WTP PTF). …

The light curves produced by all-sky monitors, such as the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer All-Sky Monitor and the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), generally have non-uniform error bars. In searching for periodic modulation in this type of data using power spectra it can be important to use appropriate weighting of data points to achieve the best sensitivity. It was recently demonstrated that for Swift BAT data a simple weighting scheme can actually sometimes reduce the sensitivity of the power spectrum depending on source brightness. Instead, a modified weighting scheme, based on the Cochran semi-weighted mean, gives improved results independent of source brightness. We investigate the benefits of weighting power spectra in period searches using simulated GLAST LAT observations of {gamma}-ray binaries.

At the Savannah River Site (SRS), a Department of Energy (DOE) installation in west-central South Carolina there is a unique geologic stratum that exists at depth that has the potential to cause surface settlement resulting from a seismic event. In the past the particular stratum in question has been remediated via pressure grouting, however the benefits of remediation have always been debatable. Recently the SRS has attempted to frame the issue in terms of risk via an event tree or logic tree analysis. This paper describes that analysis, including the input data required.

The objective of this project is to develop dense ceramic membranes that, without using an external power supply or circuitry, can produce hydrogen via coal/coal gas-assisted water dissociation. This project grew from an effort to develop a dense ceramic membrane for separating hydrogen from gas mixtures such as those generated during coal gasification, methane partial oxidation, and water-gas shift reactions. That effort led to the development of various cermet (i.e., ceramic/metal composite) membranes that enable hydrogen production by two methods. In one method, a hydrogen transport membrane (HTM) selectively removes hydrogen from a gas mixture by transporting it through either a mixed protonic/electronic conductor or a hydrogen transport metal. In the other method, an oxygen transport membrane (OTM) generates hydrogen mixed with steam by removing oxygen that is generated through water splitting. This project focuses on the development of OTMs that efficiently produce hydrogen via the dissociation of water. Supercritical boilers offer very high-pressure steam that can be decomposed to provide pure hydrogen by means of OTMs. Oxygen resulting from the dissociation of steam can be used for coal gasification, enriched combustion, or synthesis gas production. Hydrogen and sequestration-ready CO{sub 2} can be produced from coal and steam by using …

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is currently evaluating an alternative Chemical Process Cell (CPC) flowsheet to increase throughput. It includes removal of the steam-stripping step, which would significantly reduce the CPC processing time and lessen the sampling needs. However, its downside would be to send 100% of the mercury that come in with the sludge straight to the melter. For example, the new mercury content in the Sludge Batch 5 (SB5) melter feed is projected to be 25 times higher than that in the SB4 with nominal steam stripping of mercury. This task was initiated to study the impact of the worst-case scenario of zero-mercury-removal in the CPC on the DWPF melter off-gas system. It is stressed that this study is intended to be scoping in nature, so the results presented in this report are preliminary. In order to study the impact of elevated mercury levels in the feed, it is necessary to be able to predict how mercury would speciate in the melter exhaust under varying melter operating conditions. A homogeneous gas-phase oxidation model of mercury by chloride was developed to do just that. The model contains two critical parameters pertaining to the partitioning of chloride among HCl, …

By November of 1997, Fluor Hanford (Fluor) had been the site manager of the Hanford nuclear reservation for a year. The Hanford site had been established as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that gave birth to the atomic bomb. Hanford produced two thirds of U.S. plutonium during the Cold War period. The Hanford site was half the size of Rhode Island and occupied 586 square miles in southeastern Washington State. The production of plutonium for more than 40 years left a huge legacy of chemical and radiological contamination: 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater; 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored in underwater basins; 20 tons of plutonium-laced contaminated materials; and 500 contaminated facilities. The cleanup involved a challenging combination of radioactive material handling within an infrastructure constructed in the 1940s and 1950s. The cleanup that began in 1988 was expected to take 30 years or more. Improving safety at Hanford had already proven to be a significant challenge. As the new site manager at Hanford, Fluor Hanford inherited lower- and mid-level managers and thousands of unionized employees, many of whom were second or third generation Hanford employees. These employees had seen many contractors come and go …

The reweighting method is applied to improve the chiral property of domain-wall fermions. One way to achieve this is to enlarge L{sub s}, the size of fifth dimension, which controls the size of the induced chiral symmetry breaking. While this is a type of reweighting method for shifting the action parameter, it seems non-trivial since this reweighting means change of the five dimensional lattice volume. In this report, we address issues in this direction of reweighting and evaluate its effectiveness.

Advanced theoretical methods and high-performance computers may finally unlock the secrets of nuclear fission, a fundamental nuclear decay that is of great relevance to society. In this work, we studied the phenomenon of spontaneous fission using the symmetry-unrestricted nuclear density functional theory (DFT). Our results show that many observed properties of fissioning nuclei can be explained in terms of pathways in multidimensional collective space corresponding to different geometries of fission products. From the calculated collective potential and collective mass, we estimated spontaneous fission half-lives, and good agreement with experimental data was found. We also predicted a new phenomenon of trimodal spontaneous fission for some transfermium isotopes. Our calculations demonstrate that fission barriers of excited superheavy nuclei vary rapidly with particle number, pointing to the importance of shell effects even at large excitation energies. The results are consistent with recent experiments where superheavy elements were created by bombarding an actinide target with 48-calcium; yet even at high excitation energies, sizable fission barriers remained. Not only does this reveal clues about the conditions for creating new elements, it also provides a wider context for understanding other types of fission. Understanding of the fission process is crucial for many areas of science and …

The authors present recent measurements of the CKM angle {alpha} using data collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e{sup +}e{sup -} collider at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, operating at the {Upsilon}(4S) resonance. They present constraints on {alpha} from B {yields} {pi}{pi}, B {yields} {rho}{rho} and B {yields} {rho}{pi} decays.

Within the scope of the project, a LXe detector and associated gas handling and purification system were set up to study the response of various photodetectors to the VUV Xe light. In particular we tested an Advanced Photonix Large Area Avalanche Photodiode (APD), Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) from two different sources and an Hamamtsu Photonics APD. As part of the XENON Dark Matter project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, we have accumulated independent knowledge of the response of compact metal channel photomultipliers. At this stage, we conclude that the last are far superior in terms of reliability and performance in a LXe detector environment. More studies are needed with APDs and SiPMs in LXe, taking advantage of the improved performance of these sensors with time. We could not test a hybrid PMT (HPD) since the only available unit on loan from one manufacturer lacked the mechanical stability and was packaged in a form not compatible with LXe purity requirements. Meanwhile, within the XENON collaboration, we are developing with Hamamatsu a hybrid PMT which is named QUPID (Quartz Photon Intensifying Detector) which promises to solve the problems of radioactivity and purity encountered with previous HPDs. We attach to this report two …