A wide variety of physical phenomena arising within many scientific disciplines can be described by systems of coupled partial differential equations (PDEs). The numerical approximation of these PDEs often involves the solution of a system of algebraic equations (possibly nonlinear) which are typically large, sparse and nonsymmetric. The increasing computational demands required by the solution of such complex scientific applications has motivated the current direction toward large-scale parallel computers. We, therefore, consider solution techniques of representative systems of equations on large scale MIMD machines. Our primary emphasis in this study is the evaluation of iterative methods for the solution of nonsymmetric systems. In particular, we discuss two Krylov subspace methods, the conjugate gradient squared algorithm (CGS) and the generalized minimum residual method (GMRES), along with the multigrid algorithm (MG) on massively parallel MIMD architectures. The focus of this evaluation considers the performance of various algorithm and implementation variations over a broad selection of problems using a parallel machine.

We examine compression of near-resonant pulses in metal vapor in the nonlinear regime. Our calculations examine nonlinear effects on compression of optimally-chirped pulses of various fluences. In addition, we compare model predictions with experimental results for compression of 4 nsec Nd:YAG pumped dye pulses.

Application of vapor pulse compression for increasing the intensity of a large copper vapor laser pumped dye laser for x-ray generation is limited by collisional absorption and nonlinear pulse breakup. We discuss measurements of these effects. 7 refs., 1 fig., 11 tabs.

The alias method is a Monte Carlo sampling technique that offers significant advantages over more traditional methods. It equals the accuracy of table lookup and the speed of equal probable bins. The original formulation of this method sampled from discrete distributions and was easily extended to histogram distributions. We have extended the method further to applications more germane to Monte Carlo particle transport codes: continuous distributions. This paper presents the alias method as originally derived and our extensions to simple continuous distributions represented by piecewise linear functions. We also present a method to interpolate accurately between distributions tabulated at points other than the point of interest. We present timing studies that demonstrate the method's increased efficiency over table lookup and show further speedup achieved through vectorization. 6 refs., 2 figs., 1 tab.

The Fokker-Planck package FPPAC had been converted to the Connection Machine 2 (CM2). For fine mesh cases the CM2 outperforms the Cray-2 when it comes to time-integrating the difference equations. For long Legendre expansions the CM2 is also faster at computing the Fokker-Planck coefficients. 3 refs.

A ground state depleted (GSD){sup 1,2} laser has been demonstrated in the form of a Q-switched oscillator operating at 912 nm. Using Nd{sup 3+} as the active ion and Y{sub 2}SiO{sub 5} as the host material, the laser transition is from the lowest lying stark level of the Nd{sup 3t}F{sub 3/2} level to a stark level 355 cm{sup {minus}1} above the lowest lying one in the {sup 4}I{sub 9/2} manifold. The necessity of depleting the ground {sup 4}I{sub 9/2} manifold is evident for this level scheme as transparency requires a 10% inversion. To achieve the high excitation levels required for the efficient operation of this laser, bleach wave pumping using an alexandrite laser at 745 nm has been employed. The existence of a large absorption feature at 810 nm also allows for the possibility of AlGaAs laser diode pumping. Using KNbO{sub 3}, noncritical phase matching is possible at 140{degree}C using d{sub 32} and has been demonstrated. The results of Q-switched laser performance and harmonic generation in KNbO{sub 3} will be presented. Orthosilicate can be grown in large boules of excellent optical quality using a Czochralski technique. Because of the relatively small 912 nm emission cross section of 2-3 {times} 10{sup …

Nearly all applications of gamma-ray spectrometry in the quanitative assay of special nuclear materials can be grouped into five general categories. They are as follows: (1) Quanitative passive assay, of which transmission-corrected passive assay methods for measuring isotopic masses/concentrations are an important subset; (2) Enrichment measurements on infinitely thick'' samples for absolute determination of isotopic fractions/concentrations; (3) Measurements of isotopic ratios using relative detection efficiency principles resulting in absolute isotopic distributions without recourse to standards; (4) Absorption-edge densitometry measurements of elemental concentrations; and (5) X-ray fluorescence measurements of elemental concentrations. Careful and correct practice of these techniques can yield measurement accuracies in the range of 0.1% to 1.0% in favorable situations with measurement times generally in the range of 15 minutes to 1 hour. We present examples of these general categories with emphasis on those measurements and techniques exhibiting the best accuracy, as well as those which are not routinely practiced in many other applications of gamma-ray spectrometry. 20 refs., 6 fig.