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In the quasistatic limit, a time-varying magnetic field inside a conductor is governed by the diffusion equation. Despite the occurrence of this scenario in many popular physics demonstrations, the concept of magnetic diffusion appears not to have garnered much attention itself as a subject for teaching. We employ the model of a thin conducting tube in a time-varying axial field to introduce magnetic diffusion and connect it to the related phenomenon of inductive shielding. We describe a very simple apparatus utilizing a wide-band Hall-effect sensor to measure these effects with a variety of samples. Quantitative results for diffusion time constants and shielding cutoff frequencies are consistent with a single, sample-specific parameter given by the product of the tube radius, thickness, and electrical conductivity. The Laplace transform arises naturally in regard to the time and frequency domain solutions presented here, and the utility of the technique is highlighted in several places.

A lack of sufficient training data, both in terms of variety and quantity, is often the bottleneck in the development of machine learning (ML) applications in any domain. For agricultural applications, ML-based models designed to perform tasks such as autonomous plant classification will typically be coupled to just one or perhaps a few plant species. As a consequence, each crop-specific task is very likely to require its own specialized training data, and the question of how to serve this need for data now often overshadows the more routine exercise of actually training such models. To tackle this problem, we have developed an embedded robotic system to automatically generate and label large datasets of plant images for ML applications in agriculture. The system can image plants from virtually any angle, thereby ensuring a wide variety of data; and with an imaging rate of up to one image per second, it can produce lableled datasets on the scale of thousands to tens of thousands of images per day. As such, this system offers an important alternative to time- and cost-intensive methods of manual generation and labeling. Furthermore, the use of a uniform background made of blue keying fabric enables additional image processing techniques such as background replacement and plant segmentation. It also helps in the training process, essentially forcing the model to focus on the plant features and eliminating random correlations. To demonstrate the capabilities of our system, we generated a dataset of over 34,000 labeled images, with which we trained an ML-model to distinguish grasses from non-grasses in test data from a variety of sources. We now plan to generate much larger datasets of Canadian crop plants and weeds that will be made publicly available in the hope of further enabling ML applications in the agriculture sector., 35 pages, 8 figures, Preprint submitted to PLoS One

We describe a very simple experiment that utilizes standard laboratory equipment to measure the electromagnetic response of a metallic sphere exposed to a uniform ac magnetic field. Measurements were made for a variety of non-magnetic and magnetic metals, and in all cases the results fit very well with theory over the four orders of frequency (25?Hz to 102?kHz) explored here. Precise values of magnetic permeability and electrical conductivity can be extracted from fits to the data given the sphere radius only. The same apparatus is also used to explore the effects of geometry on eddy current generation as well as to demonstrate non-destructive testing through measurements on coins of different composition. "The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, especially the Undergraduate Student Research Award for MLH." https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.5034350

We report on the operation of co-located ${}^{129}$Xe and ${}^{131}$Xe nuclear spin masers with an external feedback scheme, and discuss the use of ${}^{131}$Xe as a comagnetometer in measurements of the ${}^{129}$Xe spin precession frequency. By applying a correction based on the observed change in the ${}^{131}$Xe frequency, the frequency instability due to magnetic field and cell temperature drifts are eliminated by two orders of magnitude. The frequency precision of 6.2 $\mu$Hz is obtained for a 10$^4$ s averaging time, suggesting the possibility of future improvement to $\approx$ 1 nHz by improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the observation., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

Future experiments seeking to measure the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) require stable and homogeneous magnetic fields. Normally these experiments use a coil internal to a passively magnetically shielded volume to generate the magnetic field. The stability of the magnetic field generated by the coil within the magnetically shielded volume may be influenced by a number of factors. The factor studied here is the dependence of the internally generated field on the magnetic permeability $\mu$ of the shield material. We provide measurements of the temperature-dependence of the permeability of the material used in a set of prototype magnetic shields, using experimental parameters nearer to those of nEDM experiments than previously reported in the literature. Our measurements imply a range of $\frac{1}{\mu}\frac{d\mu}{dT}$ from 0-2.7\%/K. Assuming typical nEDM experiment coil and shield parameters gives $\frac{\mu}{B_0}\frac{dB_0}{d\mu}=0.01$, resulting in a temperature dependence of the magnetic field in a typical nEDM experiment of $\frac{dB_0}{dT}=0-270$~pT/K for $B_0=1~\mu$T. The results are useful for estimating the necessary level of temperature control in nEDM experiments., Comment: 5 figures

Current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) axon diameter measurements rely on the pulsed gradient spin-echo sequence, which is unable to provide diffusion times short enough to measure small axon diameters. This study combines the AxCaliber axon diameter fitting method with data generated from Monte Carlo simulations of oscillating gradient spin-echo sequences (OGSE) to infer micron-sized axon diameters, in order to determine the feasibility of using MRI to infer smaller axon diameters in brain tissue. Monte Carlo computer simulation data were synthesized from tissue geometries of cylinders of different diameters using a range of gradient frequencies in the cosine OGSE sequence . Data were fitted to the AxCaliber method modified to allow the new pulse sequence. Intra- and extra-axonal water were studied separately and together. The simulations revealed the extra-axonal model to be problematic. Rather than change the model, we found that restricting the range of gradient frequencies such that the measured apparent diffusion coefficient was constant over that range resulted in more accurate fitted diameters. Thus a careful selection of frequency ranges is needed for the AxCaliber method to correctly model extra-axonal water, or adaptations to the method are needed. This restriction helped reduce the necessary gradient strengths for measurements that could be performed with parameters feasible for a Bruker BG6 gradient set. For these experiments, the simulations inferred diameters as small as 0.5 μm on square-packed and randomly packed cylinders. The accuracy of the inferred diameters was found to be dependent on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), with smaller diameters more affected by noise, although all diameter distributions were distinguishable from one another for all SNRs tested. The results of this study indicate the feasibility of using MRI with OGSE on preclinical scanners to infer small axon diameters.

A fast-switching, high-repetition-rate magnet and power supply have been developed for and operated at TRIUMF, to deliver a proton beam to the new ultracold neutron (UCN) facility. The facility possesses unique operational requirements: a time-averaged beam current of 40~$\mu$A with the ability to switch the beam on or off for several minutes. These requirements are in conflict with the typical operation mode of the TRIUMF cyclotron which delivers nearly continuous beam to multiple users. To enable the creation of the UCN facility, a beam-sharing arrangement with another facility was made. The beam sharing is accomplished by the fast-switching (kicker) magnet which is ramped in 50~$\mu$s to a current of 193~A, held there for approximately 1~ms, then ramped down in the same short period of time. This achieves a 12~mrad deflection which is sufficient to switch the proton beam between the two facilities. The kicker magnet relies on a high-current, low-inductance coil connected to a fast-switching power supply that is based on insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). The design and performance of the kicker magnet system and initial beam delivery results are reported., Comment: 16 pages, 21 figures

We installed a source for ultracold neutrons at a new, dedicated spallation target at TRIUMF. The source was originally developed in Japan and uses a superfluid-helium converter cooled to 0.9$\,$K. During an extensive test campaign in November 2017, we extracted up to 325000 ultracold neutrons after a one-minute irradiation of the target, over three times more than previously achieved with this source. The corresponding ultracold-neutron density in the whole production and guide volume is 5.3$\,$cm$^{-3}$. The storage lifetime of ultracold neutrons in the source was initially 37$\,$s and dropped to 24$\,$s during the eighteen days of operation. During continuous irradiation of the spallation target, we were able to detect a sustained ultracold-neutron rate of up to 1500$\,$s$^{-1}$. Simulations of UCN production, UCN transport, temperature-dependent UCN yield, and temperature-dependent storage lifetime show excellent agreement with the experimental data and confirm that the ultracold-neutron-upscattering rate in superfluid helium is proportional to $T^7$., 8 pages, 10 figures

We demonstrate spin-exchange optical pumping of 129Xe atoms with our newly made laser system. The new laser system was prepared to provide higher laser power required for the stable operation of spin maser oscillations in the 129Xe EDM experiment. We studied the optimum cell temperature and pumping laser power to improve the degree of 129Xe spin polarization. The best performance was achieved at the cell temperature of 100 ◦C with the presently available laser power of 1 W. The results show that a more intense laser is required for further improvement of the spin polarization at higher cell temperatures in our experiment.

International audience; We describe an actively shielded cylindrical RF transmit coil producing a highly uniform internal field (±0.5%) over an extended volume and a strongly suppressed (÷20) external field. Direct field mapping and experimental checks using in-situ NMR and MRI of polarised 3 He at low temperature demonstrate performance consistent with numerical field computations.

We search for 129Xe EDM by using an active nuclear spin maser. In this experiment, the amplitude of the maser oscillation signal is one of the most important parameters that eventually determine the frequency precision. The amplitude is proportional to the ratio of the transverse spin relaxation time T 2 to the effective longitudinal spin relaxation time $T_{1}^{\ast }$ . In particular, for a spin maser of 3He (a co-magnetometer) for which $T_{1}^{\ast }$ typically reaches ∼50 h, a long T 2 is needed. T 2 depends on the homogeneity of the magnetic field which is applied with coils in order to keep the spins under precession. In the present report, we discuss on the design and construction of a new coil which provided a root-mean square (rms) field gradient of less than 5.0 μG/cm. The result of the field measurement has shown that the field gradient in the cell fulfills the target condition $\sqrt {\langle {(\nabla B_{z})^{2}} \rangle }

Co-magnetometry enables the elimination of systematic errors arising from the long-term drift in the magnetic field, and is essential for a precision measurement of spin precession frequency in experiments searching for electric dipole moment (EDM). $^{131}$Xe nuclear spin maser shows great promise as a co-magnetometer in a Xe EDM experiment, because the systematic error originating from the Xe-Rb interaction, which virtually limits the sensitivity in a case of a $^3$He co-magnetometer, will be cancelled out. The performance of a cell which contains both $^{129}$Xe and $^{131}$Xe was investigated. In the best cell among those fabricated this time, the signal-to-noise ratio in a free induction decay experiment turned out to be large enough for the operation as co-existing $^{129}$Xe-$^{131}$Xe masers.

We provide analytic solutions of the net magnetic field generated by spherical and solenoidal coils enclosed in highly-permeable, coaxial magnetic shields. We consider both spherical and cylindrical shields in the case of the spherical coil and only cylindrical shields for the solenoidal coil. Comparisons of field homogeneity are made and we find that the solenoidal coil produces the more homogeneous field for a given number of windings. The models are useful as theoretical and conceptual guides for coil design, as well as for benchmarking finite-element analysis. We also demonstrate how the models can be generalized to explore field inhomogeneities related to winding misplacement., 29 pages, 11 figures