Despite the apparent simplicity of controlled fusion, there are many phenomena which have prevented its achievement. One phenomenon is laser-plasma instabilities. An investigation of one such instability, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), is reported here. SBS is a parametric process whereby an electromagnetic wave (the parent wave) decays into another electromagnetic wave and an ion acoustic wave (the daughter waves). SBS impedes controlled fusion since it can scatter much or all of the incident laser light, resulting in poor drive symmetry and inefficient laser-plasma coupling. It is widely believed that SBS becomes convectively unstable--that is, it grows as it traverses the plasma. Though it has yet to be definitively tested, convective theory is often invoked to explain experimental observations, even when one or more of the theory`s assumptions are violated. In contrast, the experiments reported here not only obeyed the assumptions of the theory, but were also conducted in plasmas with peak densities well below quarter-critical density. This prevented other competing or coexisting phenomena from occurring, thereby providing clearly interpretable results. These are the first SBS experiments that were designed to be both a clear test of linear convective theory and pertinent to controlled fusion research. A crucial part of this …

Laser-plasma interactions have been of interest for many years not only from a basic physics standpoint, but also for their relevance to numerous applications. Advances in laser technology in recent years have resulted in compact laser systems capable of generating (psec), 10{sup 16} W/cm{sup 2} laser pulses. These lasers have provided a new regime in which to study laser-plasma interactions, a regime characterized by L{sub plasma} {ge} 2L{sub Rayleigh} > c{tau}. The goal of this dissertation is to experimentally characterize the interaction of a short pulse, high intensity laser with an underdense plasma (n{sub o} {le} 0.05n{sub cr}). Specifically, the parametric instability known as stimulated Raman scatter (SRS) is investigated to determine its behavior when driven by a short, intense laser pulse. Both the forward Raman scatter instability and backscattered Raman instability are studied. The coupled partial differential equations which describe the growth of SRS are reviewed and solved for typical experimental laser and plasma parameters. This solution shows the growth of the waves (electron plasma and scattered light) generated via stimulated Raman scatter. The dispersion relation is also derived and solved for experimentally accessible parameters. The solution of the dispersion relation is used to predict where (in k-space) and …

The first two papers of this dissertation present our work with the intramolecular cyclizations of a pair of p-quinodimethanes. The p-quinodimethanes were generated by flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP) and were linked by a bridging chain. The third paper of this dissertation presents our work in the synthetic manipulation of the products formed from the intramolecular reactions of the p-quinodimethanes.

One of the most significant advances in computer systems over the past decade is parallel processing. To be scalable to a large number of processing nodes and to be able to support multiple levels and forms of parallelism and its flexible use, new parallel machines have to be multicomputer architectures that have general networking support and extremely low internode communication latencies. The performance of a program when ported to a parallel machine is limited mainly by the internode communication latencies of the machine. Therefore, the best parallel applications are those that seldom require communications which must be routed through the nodes. Thus the ratio of computation time to that of communication time is what determines, to a large extent, the performance metrics of an algorithm. The cost of synchronization and load imbalance appear secondary to that of the time required for internode communication and I/O, for communication intensive applications. This thesis is organized in chapters. The first chapter deals with the communication strategies in various message-passing computers. A taxonomy of inter-node communication strategies is presented in the second chapter and a comparison of the strategies in some existing machines is done. The implementation of communication in nCUBE Vertex O.S is …

Various geometrical aspects of quantum spaces are presented showing the possibility of building physics on quantum spaces. In the first chapter the authors give the motivations for studying noncommutative geometry and also review the definition of a Hopf algebra and some general features of the differential geometry on quantum groups and quantum planes. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 the noncommutative version of differential calculus, integration and complex structure are established for the quantum sphere S{sub 1}{sup 2} and the quantum complex projective space CP{sub q}(N), on which there are quantum group symmetries that are represented nonlinearly, and are respected by all the aforementioned structures. The braiding of S{sub q}{sup 2} and CP{sub q}(N) is also described. In Chapter 4 the quantum projective geometry over the quantum projective space CP{sub q}(N) is developed. Collinearity conditions, coplanarity conditions, intersections and anharmonic ratios is described. In Chapter 5 an algebraic formulation of Reimannian geometry on quantum spaces is presented where Riemannian metric, distance, Laplacian, connection, and curvature have their quantum counterparts. This attempt is also extended to complex manifolds. Examples include the quantum sphere, the complex quantum projective space and the two-sheeted space. The quantum group of general coordinate transformations on some …