The technique of in-situ wide angle diffraction has been used to study materials such as Si and Cu. We have extended our studies of shocked single crystal materials to include Fe (001) that is shock compressed by direct laser irradiation using the OMEGA and Janus lasers. A series of experiments was conducted in Fe at pressures above the Hugoniot Elastic Limit. Transient x-ray was used to record the response of multiple lattice planes simultaneously. This technique of wide-angle diffraction provides information on the lattice response both parallel and oblique to the shock propagation direction. In these experiments, compressions of up to 14% in the (002) planes were observed. Details on the experiments and analysis of the dynamic lattice compression will be presented.

The use of fs lasers to directly write photonic structures inside a glass has great potential as a fabrication method for three-dimensional all-optical integrated components. The ability to use this technique with different glass compositions--specifically tailored for a specific photonics application--is critical to its successful exploitation. Consequently, it is important to understand how glass composition effects waveguide fabrication with fs laser pulses and how different glasses are structurally modified after exposure to fs laser pulses. We have used confocal laser spectroscopy to monitor the changes in glass structure that are associated with waveguide fabrication. Using a low power continuous wave (cw) Ar laser as excitation source we have measured both Raman and fluorescence spectra of the modified regions. Raman spectroscopy provides us with information on the network structure, whereas fluorescence measurements reveal the presence of optically active point defects in the glass. In this paper we review our work on fs-laser fabrication and characterization of photonic structures in glass and discuss the effect of glass composition on processing parameters and structural modification.

This paper presents the status of General Atomics Urban Maglev Program. The development provides an innovative approach for low speed transportation suitable for very challenging urban environments. Permanent magnets arranged in a 'Halbach' array configuration produce a relatively stiff magnetic suspension operating with an air gap of 25 mm. The project has progressed from design and prototype hardware testing, to the construction of a 120-meter full-scale test track, located in San Diego, California. Dynamic testing of the levitation, propulsion and guidance systems is being performed.

The X-ray Spectrometer (XRS) instrument is a revolutionary non-dispersive spectrometer that will form the basis for the Astro-E2 observatory to be launched in 2005. We have recently installed a flight spare XRS microcalorimeter spectrometer at the EBIT-I and SuperEBIT facility at LLNL replacing the XRS from the earlier Astro-E mission and providing twice the resolving power. The XRS microcalorimeter is an x-ray detector that senses the heat deposited by the incident photon. It achieves a high energy resolution by operating at 0.06K and by carefully engineering the heat capacity and thermal conductance. The XRS/EBIT instrument has 32 pixels in a square geometry and achieves an energy resolution of 6 eV at 6 keV, with a bandpass from 0.1 to 12 keV (or more at higher operating temperature). The instrument allows detailed studies of the x-ray line emission of laboratory plasmas. The XRS/EBIT also provides an extensive calibration 'library' for the Astro-E2 observatory.

Data coming from complex simulation models reach easily dimensions much greater than available computational resources. Visualization of such data still represents the most intuitive and effective tool for scientific inspection of simulated phenomena. To ease this process several techniques have been adopted mainly concerning the use of hierarchical multi-resolution representations. In this paper we present the implementation of a hierarchical indexing schema for multiresolution data tailored to overwork the computational power of distributed environments.

Experiments and direct numerical simulations have been performed to examine the effects of initial conditions on the dynamics of a Rayleigh-Taylor mixing layer. Experiments were performed on a water channel facility to quantify the interfacial and velocity perturbations initially present at the two-fluid interface in a small Atwood number mixing layer. The measurements have been parameterized for implementation in numerical simulations of the experiment, and two- and three-dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the experiment have been performed. It is shown that simulations implemented with initial velocity perturbations are required to match experimentally-measured statistics. Data acquired from both the experiment and numerical simulations are used to elucidate the role of initial conditions on the evolution of integral-scale, turbulence, and mixing statistics. Early-time turbulence and mixing statistics will be shown to be strongly dependent upon the early-time transition of the initial perturbation from a weakly- to a strongly-nonlinear flow.

I performed contact ultrasonic time-of-flight measurements on three binary U-6 wt-% Nb alloy (U-6Nb) cubes. Using the time-of-flight measurement results, thickness, and density, the Acoustic Velocity, Poisson's Ratio, Shear Modulus, and Modulus of Elasticity are calculated. A detailed data is summarized in the spreadsheets 1-6. The calculated data compares the material properties of each cube before and after a heat treatment (HT). The time-of-flight measurements were performed using the pulse/echo signal overlap technique discussed in the Review of Ultrasonic Pulse/Echo Signal Overlap Technique section of this report. The measurements were made using both the longitudinal and shear ultrasonic modes and acquired in the X, Y, and Z axes of each cube, as represented in Figure 1. Thickness and density measurements on the three cubes were performed by the Manufacturing and Materials Engineering Division, Dimensional Inspection Group. The HT was performed on all three cubes in the Manufacturing and Materials Engineering Division, Heat Treat Shop. The process consisted of 200 C for 2 hours in a vacuum furnace, followed by an argon purge to 25 C.

The US Department of Energy has undertaken an initiative to improve the quality of software used to design and operate their nuclear facilities across the United States. One aspect of this initiative is to revise or create new directives and guides associated with quality practices for the safety software in its nuclear facilities. Safety software includes the safety structures, systems, and components software and firmware, support software and design and analysis software used to ensure the safety of the facility. DOE nuclear facilities are unique when compared to commercial nuclear or other industrial activities in terms of the types and quantities of hazards that must be controlled to protect workers, public and the environment. Because of these differences, DOE must develop an approach to software quality assurance that ensures appropriate risk mitigation by developing a framework of requirements that accomplishes the following goals: {sm_bullet} Ensures the software processes developed to address nuclear safety in design, operation, construction and maintenance of its facilities are safe {sm_bullet} Considers the larger system that uses the software and its impacts {sm_bullet} Ensures that the software failures do not create unsafe conditions Software designers for nuclear systems and processes must reduce risks in software applications …

K{alpha} X-ray emission spectra from highly charged Fe ions have been theoretically predicted using a detailed and systematic spectral model. Account has been taken of the fundamental atomic radiative-emission processes associated with inner-shell electron collisional excitation and ionization, as well as dielectronic recombination. Particular emphasis has been directed at extreme non-equilibrium or transient-ionization conditions, which can occur in astrophysical and tokamak plasmas. Good agreement has been found in comparisons with spectral observations on the EBIT-II electron beam ion trap at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We have identified spectral features that can serve as diagnostics of the electron density, the line-formation mechanism, and the charge-state distribution.

This paper introduces two efficient algorithms that compute the Contour Tree of a 3D scalar field F and its augmented version with the Betti numbers of each isosurface. The Contour Tree is a fundamental data structure in scientific visualization that is used to preprocess the domain mesh to allow optimal computation of isosurfaces with minimal overhead storage. The Contour Tree can also be used to build user interfaces reporting the complete topological characterization of a scalar field, as shown in Figure 1. Data exploration time is reduced since the user understands the evolution of level set components with changing isovalue. The Augmented Contour Tree provides even more accurate information segmenting the range space of the scalar field in portion of invariant topology. The exploration time for a single isosurface is also improved since its genus is known in advance. Our first new algorithm augments any given Contour Tree with the Betti numbers of all possible corresponding isocontours in linear time with the size of the tree. Moreover we show how to extend the scheme introduced in [3] with the Betti number computation without increasing its complexity. Thus, we improve on the time complexity from our previous approach [10] from O(m …

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We study the singlet part of the free energy of a static quark anti-quark (Q{bar Q}) pair at finite temperature. The model is three flavor QCD with degenerate quark masses using N{sub {tau}} = 4 and 6 lattices with Asqtad staggered fermion action. We look at thermodynamics of the system around phase transition and study its scaling with lattice spacing and quark masses.

The diffusivity in alloys at low temperatures is modeled for composition-modulated structures using Khachaturyan's microscopic theory of diffusion. The theory is now applied to assess a two-phase multilayer system.

The goal of this Strategic Initiative in Applied Computational Biology has been to apply LLNL's expertise in computational simulation to forge a new laboratory core competency in biological simulation. By every measure, this SI has been very successful in this goal. Based on a strong publication record and large number of conference presentations and invited talks, we have built a recognized niche for LLNL in the burgeoning field of computational biology. Further, many of the projects that were previously part of this LDRD are now externally funded based on the research results and expertise developed under this SI. We have created successful collaborations with a number of outside research groups including several joint projects with the new UC Davis/LLNL Comprehensive Cancer Center. In addition to these scientific collaborations, the staff developed on this SI is involved in computational biology program development and advisory roles with other DOE laboratories and DOE Headquarters. Moreover, a number of capabilities and expertise created by this SI are finding use in LLNL programmatic applications. Finally, and most importantly, this SI project has brought to LLNL the human talent on who will be the ensuring the further success of computational biology at this laboratory.

Neutron-induced fission cross sections on targets of {sup 236,236m,237,238}Np, {sup 237,237m}Pu, and {sup 240,241,242,242m,243,244,244m}Am have been estimated for incident neutron energies of up to 6 MeV, using the ''surrogate'' technique and the ({sup 3}He,df) and ({sup 3}He,tf) reactions on stable targets to measure fission probabilities. In isotopes where low-lying isomeric states are known to exist, the (n,f) cross section on the corresponding isomeric targets has been estimated, using the surrogate technique. For targets of {sup 237}Np, {sup 241}Am, {sup 242m}Am, {sup 243}Am, measurements of the (n,f) cross section exist, and comparison with the surrogate-method results suggests that the (n,f) cross sections estimated by the surrogate technique are reliable to within 10% for incident neutron energies E{sub n}{approx}>2 MeV. Tabulated values of the estimated (n,f) cross sections are given in an appendix.

Shock-accelerated material interfaces are potentially unstable to both the Richtmyer-Meshkov and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. Shear that develops along with these instabilities in turn drives the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. When driven by strong shocks, the evolution and interaction of these instabilities is further complicated by compressibility effects. In this paper, we present a computational study of the formation of jets at strongly driven hydrodynamically unstable interfaces, and the interaction of these jets with one another and with developing spikes and bubbles. This provides a nonlinear spike-spike and spike-bubble interaction mechanism that can have a significant impact on the large-scale characteristics of the mixing layer. These interactions result in sensitivity to the initial perturbation spectrum, including the relative phases of the various modes, that persists long into the nonlinear phase of instability evolution. We describe implications for instability growth rates, the bubble merger process, and the degree of mix in the layer. Finally, we consider results from relevant deceleration RT experiments, performed on OMEGA, to demonstrate some of these effects.

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The Contour Tree of a scalar field is the graph obtained by contracting all the connected components of the level sets of the field into points. This is a powerful abstraction for representing the structure of the field with explicit description of the topological changes of its level sets. It has proven effective as a data-structure for fast extraction of isosurfaces and its application has been advocated as a user interface component guiding interactive data exploration sessions. We propose a new metaphor for visualizing the Contour Tree borrowed from the classical design of a mechanical orrery reproducing a hierarchy of orbits of the planets around the sun or moons around a planet. In the toporrery the hierarchy of stars, planets and moons is replaced with a hierarchy of maxima, minima and saddles that can be interactively filtered, both uniformly and adaptively, by importance with respect to a given metric.

In recent years subdivision methods have been successfully applied to the multi-resolution representation and compression of surface meshes. Unfortunately their use in the volumetric case has remained impractical because of the use of tensor-product generalizations that induce an excessive growth of the mesh size before sufficient number is preformed. This technical sketch presents a new subdivision technique that refines volumetric (and higher-dimensional) meshes at the same rate of surface meshes. The scheme builds adaptive refinements of a mesh without using special decompositions of the cells connecting different levels of resolution. Lower dimensional ''sharp'' features are also handled directly in a natural way. The averaging rules allow to reproduce the same smoothness of the two best known previous tensor product refinement methods.

We are developing a petawatt laser for use as a high energy backlighter source in the 20{approx} 100 keV range. High energy x-ray backlighters will be essential for radiographing High-Energy- Density Experimental Science (HEDES) targets for NIF projects especially to probe implosions and high areal density planar samples. For these experiments we are employing two types of detectors: a columnar grown CsI scintillator coupled to a 2K x 2K CCD camera and a CdTe crystal with a special ASIC readout electronics in a 508 x 512 format array. We have characterized these sensors using radioactive sources. In addition, we utilized them to measure the Sm K{alpha} source size generated by the short pulse laser, JanUSP, at LLNL. This paper will present the results of our characterizations of these detectors.

Objects of various shapes, with some appreciable hydrogen content, were exposed to fast neutrons from a pulsed D-T generator, resulting in a partially-moderated spectrum of backscattered neutrons. The thermal component of the backscatter was used to form images of the objects by means of a coded aperture thermal neutron imaging system. Timing signals from the neutron generator were used to gate the detection system so as to record only events consistent with thermal neutrons traveling the distance between the target and the detector. It was shown that this time-of-flight method provided a significant improvement in image contrast compared to counting all events detected by the position-sensitive {sup 3}He proportional chamber used in the imager. The technique may have application in the detection and shape-determination of land mines, particularly non-metallic types.

The governments of the United Stated of America and the Russian Federation (RF) signed an Agreement September 1, 2000 to dispose of weapons plutonium that has been designated as no longer required for defense purposes. The Agreement declares that each country will disposition 34MT of excess weapons grade plutonium from their stockpiles. The preferred disposition technology is the fabrication of mixed oxide (MOx) fuel for use or burning in pressurized water reactors to destroy the plutonium. Implementation of this Agreement will require the conversion of plutonium metal to oxide and the fabrication of MOx fuel within the Russian Federation. The MOx fuel fabrication and metal to oxide conversion processes will generate solid and liquid radioactive wastes containing trace amounts of plutonium, neptunium, americium, and uranium requiring treatment, storage, and disposal. Unique to the Russian MOx fuel fabrication facility's flow-sheet is a liquid waste stream with high concentrations ({approx}1 g/l) of {sup 241}Am and non radioactive silver. The silver is used to dissolve PuO{sub 2} feed materials to the MOx fabrication facility. Technical solutions are needed to treat and solidify this liquid waste stream. Alternative treatment technologies for this liquid waste stream are being evaluated by a Russian engineering team. The …