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FOCUS (Fast Monte CarlO approach to Coherence of Undulator Sources) is a new GPU-based simulation code to compute the transverse coherence of undulator radiation from ultra-relativistic electrons. The core structure of the code, which is written in the language C++ accelerated with CUDA, combines an analytical description of the emitted electric fields and massively parallel computations on GPUs. The combination is rigorously justified by a statistical description of synchrotron radiation based on a Fourier optics approach. FOCUS is validated by direct comparison with multi-electron Synchrotron Radiation Workshop (SRW) simulations, evidencing a reduction in computation times by up to five orders of magnitude on a consumer laptop. FOCUS is then applied to systematically study the transverse coherence in typical third- and fourth-generation facilities, highlighting peculiar features of undulator sources close to the diffraction limit. FOCUS is aimed at fast evaluation of the transverse coherence of undulator radiation as a function of the electron beam parameters, to support and help prepare more advanced and detailed numerical simulations with traditional codes like SRW.

Knowledge of the refractive index of water in the deeply supercooled metastable liquid state is important, for example, for an accurate description of optical reflection and refraction processes occurring in clouds. However, a measurement of both the temperature and wavelength dependence of the refractive index under such extreme conditions is challenging. Here, we employ Raman spectroscopy in combination with microscopic water jets in vacuum to obtain the refractive index of supercooled water to a lowest temperature of 230.3 K. While our approach is based on the analysis of Mie resonances in Raman spectra measured by using a single excitation wavelength at 532 nm, it allows us to obtain the refractive index in a wide visible wavelength range from 534 to 675 nm. Because of a direct link between the refractive index and density of water, our results provide a promising approach to help improve our understanding of water's anomalous behavior.

Mineral dust aerosol plays an important role in climate and biogeochemical processes by providing nutrients to marine and terrestrial ecosystems and by influencing the radiation balance of the atmosphere. In turn, mineral dust responds to natural and anthropogenic alterations of land cover and land use resulting from several environmental changes that occurred on different timescales. Contamination by aerosols is a very tangible threat to the cryosphere in the European Alps due to its proximity to highly urbanized areas, cultivated landscapes, and the largest hot desert in the world. We recently developed and assembled a continuous flow analysis system for studying the solid content of ice cores with a high time resolution, focusing on optical characterization methods based on light scattering. The line is designed to provide an integrated measurement of dust particles with Single-Particle Extinction and Scattering (SPES), digital holography, and an optical particle sizer (Abakus). Many of the particles found in ice are efficient scatterers and absorbers close to the size range of the visible light wavelength. We report some preliminary results from ice cores drilled during the ADA270 project, aiming at an in-depth characterization of the samples that provide essential information on the fast climate evolution, which is causing a severe degeneration of glaciers, among other consequences.

We describe an optical approach based on Digital Holography for single-particle characterization of mineral dust and micrometric particles, focusing on the analysis of airborne particles in meltwater from Antarctic ice cores. We record the holograms formed by the superposition of the transilluminating reference beam and the waves scattered by single particles. Taking a cue from recent approaches in the field and holography methods, we process the holograms to recover both optical and morphological properties of single dust grains. As a considerable advantage over traditional light-scattering-based methods, holograms give the extinction cross section of each particle and, by numerically reconstructing the wavefront propagation, an unambiguous image of each particle whereby we derive its cross-sectional shape and size. Measurements have been carried out on samples collected from the recent EAIIST (East Antarctic International Ice Sheet Traverse) project, some of which show evidence of volcanic events. The vast majority of the detected particles show significant deviations from the isometric shape, as confirmed by both image reconstruction and extinction cross section analysis. By our analysis, we observe that experimental data have an extinction cross section up to 3 times lower than that of spherical particles with the same volume. Therefore, these deviations have an appreciable impact on the aerosol contribution to radiative forcing: retrieving particle shape may improve the modeling of the radiative properties of mineral dust and reduce the associated uncertainties.

We find significant differences between degradation and healing at the surface or in the bulk for each of the different APbBr3 single crystals (A = CH3NH3+, methylammonium (MA); HC(NH2)2+, formamidinium (FA); and cesium, Cs+). Using 1- and 2-photon microscopy and photobleaching we conclude that kinetics dominate the surface and thermodynamics the bulk stability. Fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy, as well as results from several other methods, relate the (damaged) state of the halide perovskite (HaP) after photobleaching to its modified optical and electronic properties. The A cation type strongly influences both the kinetics and the thermodynamics of recovery and degradation: FA heals best the bulk material with faster self-healing; Cs+ protects the surface best, being the least volatile of the A cations and possibly through O-passivation; MA passivates defects via methylamine from photo-dissociation, which binds to Pb2+. DFT simulations provide insight into the passivating role of MA, and also indicate the importance of the Br3- defect as well as predicts its stability. The occurrence and rate of self-healing are suggested to explain the low effective defect density in the HaPs and through this, their excellent performance. These results rationalize the use of mixed A-cation materials for optimizing both solar cell stability and overall performance of HaP-based devices, and provide a basis for designing new HaP variants. published

Blue nevi are a heterogeneous group of lesions that can display a variety of different clinicopathological characteristics. Although attempts are made to classify each lesion into defined subtypes, there can be overlap between the subtypes. The clinical , dermoscopic and histolopathologic features of a case of proliferative nodule arising within blue nevus is discussed. Running title: Blue nevi are an heterogeneous group of melanocytic lesions blue tinctorial properties. Proliferative nodules are rare benign lesions often present at birth as a component of a large congenital melanocytic nevi, congenital or acquired nevi. We first report a case of proliferative nodule arising within blue nevus.

Psoriasis is a immune-mediated, chronic, inflammatory skin dis-ease. In HIV positive (HIV+) patients we usually observe more serious clinical features and recalcitrant course. Furthermore, therapeutic man-agement of HIV+ patient is complex and requires collaboration with the infectious disease specialist. We report the case of a patient affected by severe psoriasis who contracted HIV infection during biological therapy and, subsequently, succesfully treated with ixekizumab.

In this paper we report on recent two-dimensional (2D) electron beam size measurements with a nonconventional synchrotron radiation interferometric technique based on x-ray heterodyne near field speckles (HNFS). The method relies on Fourier analysis of the random speckle patterns generated by a water suspension of nanospheres to assess the full 2D transverse coherence of the incoming x rays. The horizontal and vertical electron beam sizes are then retrieved by means of statistical optics approaches. The manuscript thoroughly describes the HNFS technique, and shows experimental results obtained at the ALBA Synchrotron Light Source. By changing the machine coupling, beam sizes as small as 5 μm are measured, thus improving on past measurements reported in the literature and proving the HNFS diagnostics suitable for low-emittance particle beams.

We describe a robust, portable, deployable instrument for multiparametric optical characterization of single airborne particles. It is based on the Single Particle Extinction and Scattering method with additional sensors at 45° and 90° angles. Four independent optical parameters are associated to each particle. Basically, it provides a rigorous measurement of the extinction cross section and the complex amplitude of the forward scattered field. Moreover, thanks to the multiparametric single particle approach, it is possible to roughly classify the particles within a size range from a few hundreds of nanometers to some micrometers. By assigning a reasonable single scattering albedo for each population, our data are enough to fit the phase function with acceptable uncertainties. We report here the results of tests performed with water droplets, generating well controlled data without any free parameters. Data analysis is described in detail. We also report measurements performed on urban aerosol collected in the city of Milan by recovering the optical properties and feeding radiative transfer models. The findings reported here support the importance of an accurate measurement of the phase function, as already established by the Community. Copyright © 2020 American Association for Aerosol Research.

We describe an innovative data transmission scheme exploiting optical vortices to multiplex and demultiplex independent data channels in a standard asynchronous laser link. We report extensive results of the proof of concept of the method, successfully used to transmit two parallel ASCII strings, demultiplexed and decoded in the far field of the radiation beam. A phase locked two arms interferometer is proved to be effective even accessing a small portion of the beam only. Results prove the robustness and reliability of the method to perform dense-code free space transmissions over long distances even in presence of wavefront distortions. Applications and the extension to a larger number of parallel channels are discussed.

Traffic-related emissions include gas and particles that can alter air quality and affect human and environmental health. Limited studies have demonstrated that particulate debris thrown off from brakes are toxic to higher plants. The acute phytotoxicity of brake pad wear debris (BPWD) investigated using cress seeds grown in soil contaminated with increasing concentrations of debris. Two types of pads were used: a commercially available phenol based pad and an innovative cement-based pad developed within of the LIFE+ COBRA project. The results suggested that even through the BPWD generated by the two pads were similar in and morphology, debris from traditional pads were more phytotoxic than that from cementitious pads, causing significant alterations in terms of root elongation and loss of plasma membrane integrity. Keywords: Brake pads, Phytotoxicity, Debris, Root damage, LIFE+ COBRA

Here we report the quantitative in situ characterization of size distribution evolution of polymeric nanoparticles incubated in murine serum, filtered and unfiltered murine blood. We used an analytical optical approach, named Single Particle Extinction and Scattering (SPES), which relies on the measurements of two independent parameters of single particles. SPES is based on a robust self-reference interference optical scheme which allows a rejection of the spurious signals coming from the background caused by the medium. We employed polystyrene nanoparticles as reference system and polydisperse poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles. Our results demonstrate that SPES can be used for carrying out ex vivo analysis of nanoparticles to evaluate the modifications that NPs undergo in vivo following different routes of entry. Conversely, Dynamic Light Scattering is not able to provide reliable results for these systems due to the presence of the biological components in solution.

Mineral dust aerosol in ice cores is one of the most important proxies for paleoclimate research. Under certain conditions, in the deeper part of ice cores, the pristine paleoclimate signal can be altered by in situ formation of dust aggregates, following the relocation of the impurities. Thus, aggregate detection is a critical indication for post-depositional processes. Clues for the presence of aggregates have been provided by anomalously large dust size distributions, while small aggregates were basically invisible to conventional dust analysis techniques. In this paper, we propose an optical approach to this problem based on the single-particle extinction and scattering (SPES) method, which allows researchers to distinguish between compact and non-compact particles through the analysis of samples populated by isometric particles contained in the core samples. This method can potentially be used during continuous flow analyses of ice cores. It allows for the detection of even the tiniest aggregates, falling within the typical size interval of aeolian mineral aerosol. This approach will potentially provide key evidence for assessing the integrity of paleoclimate records

Synchrotron, undulator and betatron radiations are generated from last generation and novel concept sources. The achievement of unprecedented radiation properties opens new opportunities in various research fields as well as novel potential applications. In particular, bright coherent X-rays and $ \gamma $-rays have been recently obtained thanks to enormous efforts in technological advancements and research activities. We give in this work a uniform argumentation and comparison of the main fundamental emission processes and radiation properties of synchrotron, undulator and betatron radiations. Emphasis is given to spatial coherence and related diagnostics, a fundamental property for any ‘modern light source’ and a basis for recent important advancements.

This study evaluated whether secukinumab treatment for patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis correlates with improvements in symptoms of anxiety and depression. SUPREME was a 24-week, phase IIIb, multicentre, prospective study conducted across 50 centres in Italy with an extension period of up to 72 weeks. Assessments used were: Psoriasis Area Sever-ity Index (PASI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) - Anxiety (HADS-A), and HADS - Depression (HADS-D) scores and Dermatology Quality Life Index (DLQI). Compared with baseline, a significantly greater proportion of patients who reported moderate to severe clinical symptoms of anxiety or depression (HADS-A or HADS-D ≥ 11) were free of moderate to severe symptoms at weeks 16 and 48. The PASI and DLQI scores reduced over time with secukinumab treatment. Psoriasis treatment with secukinumab for 48 weeks resulted in significantly improved skin clearance and a parallel improvement in symptoms of anxiety and depression, assessed by HADS.

An early identification of non-responders in oncology is of crucial importance to rapidly switch treatment regimens. Here we report a positron emission tomography, (PET)-guided switch from immunotherapy to targeted therapy in a patient affected by metastatic melanoma. We describe the case of a 78-years-old male patient diagnosed with nodular melanoma, submitted to baseline PET/CT with 18fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) that showed cutaneous and skeletal metastases (stage IV). The patients started immunotherapy with pembrolizumab. A PET/CT performed 3 months after the start of immunotherapy demonstrated progressive metabolic disease both at skeletal and cutaneous level, confirmed also by the biopsy. As patients resulted positive for BRAF V600k mutation, treatment regimen was rapidly switched to combined anti-BRAF/MEK targeted therapy. The PET/CT performed 3 months later, showed almost complete metabolic response. Ten months after the beginning of targeted therapy, the patient continues to present a durable metabolic response. PET/CT with 18F-FDG may help in monitoring the response to treatment in metastatic melanoma thus defining personalized therapeutic pathways.

We describe a method for effectively distinguishing the radiation endowed with optical angular momentum, also known as optical vortex, from ordinary light. We show that by detecting the inversion of the transverse intrinsic curvature sign (ITICS) an optical vortex can be locally recognized. The method is effective under conditions of huge importance for the exploitation of optical vortices, such as the far field of the source and access to a small fraction of the wavefront only. The validity of the method has been verified with table-top experiments with visible light, and the results show that a measurement performed over a transverse distance smaller than 4% of the beam diameter distinguishes a vortex from a Gaussian beam with a significance of 93.4%. New perspectives are considered for the characterization of vortices, with potential impact on the detection of extra-terrestrial radiation as well as on broadcast communication techniques.

We show the results of a systematic study of the properties recently evidenced for the asymmetric lateral coherence of broadband radiation emitted by particles in betatron motion. 2-dimensional Montecarlo simulations have been used in order to investigate changes of the coherence properties by varying the spatial distribution of an ensemble of particles, whose parameters match those of the electron beams at the SPARC_LAB test facility. A clear interpretation is given under several conditions, and applications to diagnostics of particle beams appear a natural exploitation of the coherence measurements.

The influence of the internal structure of inhomogeneous particles on their radiative properties is an open issue repeatedly questioned in many fields of science and technology. The importance of a refined description of the particle composition and structure, going beyond mean-field approximations, is generally recognized. Here, we focus on describing internal inhomogeneities from a statistical point of view. We introduce an analytical description based on the two-point density-density correlation function, or the corresponding static structure factor, to calculate the extinction cross sections. The model agrees with numerical predictions and is validated experimentally with colloidal aggregates in the 0.3–6 μm size range, which serve as an inhomogeneous model system that can be characterized enough to work without any free parameters. The model can be tightly compared to measurements with single particle extinction and scattering and spectrophotometry and suggests a simple behavior for 90° scattering from fractal aggregates as a function of extinction, which is also confirmed experimentally and numerically. We also discuss the case of absorbing particles and report the experimental results for water suspensions of black carbon for both the forward and 90° scattering properties. In this case, the total scattering and the extinction cross sections determine the single scattering albedo, which agrees with numerical simulations. The three parameters necessary to feed radiative transfer models, namely, extinction, asymmetry parameter, and single scattering albedo, can all be set by the analytical model, with explicit dependence on a few parameters. Results are applicable to radiative transfer problems in climate, paleoclimate, star and planetary formation, and nanoparticle optical characterization for science and industry, including the intercomparison of different optical methods such as those adopted by ISO standards.

We describe a light scattering technique for characterizing colloidal samples under constant flow. It exploits the properties of speckles in the deep Fresnel region—the so-called near field speckles—providing absolute scattering measurements of the static form factor of the sample, as described extensively by Mazzoni et al. [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 84, 043704 (2013)] for static samples. We exploit a strongly astigmatic beam for illuminating the scattering volume with a light sheet a few microns thick. This largely improves the sensitivity of the method to small signals. Moreover, by flowing the sample in the direction perpendicular to the light sheet, the transit times are reduced to a minimum, allowing for fast measurements. We tested the instrument with suspensions of calibrated colloidal polystyrene spheres with a size comparable to the light wavelength. In particular, we recovered the static form factors of suspensions of spherical particles and the phase lag of the zero-angle scattering amplitude, which both compare well to Mie theory predictions. We then applied the method to colloidal fractal aggregates of sub-wavelength particles and measured their fractal dimension. The instrument is designed to be operational in continuous flow analysis systems.

The phase and topological properties of radiation from x-ray sources can be characterized in a single shot with the help of simple apertures.

We show a method to measure the topological charge of orbital angular momentum radiation in single-shot by exploiting the intrinsic local curvature of the helicoidal wavefront. The method is based on oriented Hartmann cells in a suitable detection scheme. We show experimental results and propose a Shack–Hartmann configuration with sectored photodiodes to improve resolution and detection time. The method can be applied for telecommunication applications in the far field of the radiation beam and more in general to measure the topological charge from a small portion of the radiation wavefront.

The need of a fs-scale pulsed, high repetition rate, X-ray source for time-resolved fine analysis of matter (spectroscopy and photon scattering) in the linear response regime is addressed by the conceptual design of a facility called MariX (Multi-disciplinary Advanced Research Infrastructure for the generation and application of X-rays) outperforming current X-ray sources for the declared scope. MariX is based on the original design of a two-pass two-way superconducting linear electron accelerator , equipped with an arc compressor, to be operated in CW mode (1 MHz). MariX provides FEL emission in the range 0.2–8 keV with 1 0 8 photons per pulse ideally suited for photoelectric effect and inelastic X-ray scattering experiments. The accelerator complex includes an early stage that supports an advanced inverse Compton source of very high-flux hard X-rays of energies up to 180 keV that is well adapted for large area radiological imaging, realizing a broad science programme and serving a multidisciplinary user community, covering fundamental science of matter and application to life sciences, including health at preclinical and clinical level.

We investigate the incipient stages of the formation of aggregates of weakly attractive particles in microgravity. Using colloidal particles interacting with tunable critical Casimir forces, we drive the system increasingly out of equilibrium starting from near-equilibrium gas-solid coexistence, and follow the early stages of aggregation with near-field scattering. Contrary to measurements on ground that show a rapid exponential growth of aggregates, our microgravity measurements indicate that under pure diffusion-limited conditions, the formation of aggregates is still governed by a nucleation process over the investigated range of moderate attractive strength of a few kBT. By studying in detail the decrease of the critical radius with the increase of the attractive strength, we determine a surface tension of 115 nN/m, or 4.6kBT, with σ the particle diameter, of the order of but larger than that for equilibrium colloidal liquids and crystals. These results highlight the importance of nucleation in the formation of non-equilibrium solid aggregates bound by weakly attractive forces.

The Klotz Abakus laser sensor and the Coulter Counter are both used for measuring the size distribution of insoluble mineral dust particles in ice cores. While the Coulter Counter measures particle volume accurately, the equivalent Abakus instrument measurement deviates substantially from the Coulter Counter depending on the type of sample. We show that the difference between the Abakus and the Coulter Counter measurements is mainly caused by the irregular shape of dust particles in ice core samples. The irregular shape leads means that the calibration routine based on standard spheres must be adjusted. This new calibration routine gives an increased accuracy on Abakus measurements, which may improve future ice core record intercomparisons. We derived an analytical model for extracting the aspect ratio of dust particles from the difference between Abakus and Coulter Counter data. For verification, we measured the aspect ratio of the same samples directly using a Single Particle Extinction and Scattering Instrument. The results demonstrate that the model is accurate enough to discern between samples of aspect ratio 0.3 and 0.4 using only the comparison of Abakus and Coulter Counter data.

In this work we focus on the characterization of micro- and nano-powders typically adopted for chemical mechanical polishing, extensively used whenever the global and local planarization of surfaces is required as in nanoelectronic fabs. We present an innovative method for the accurate characterization of water suspensions of nanoparticles. It relies upon the combination of a new approach to extract light-scattering information from single particles and the recently developed diagnostic tool named Single Particle Extinction and Scattering. It can be used in line. Data interpretation becomes independent of any a-priori assumptions about the samples. The results of accurate measurements performed on ceria as well as aluminium oxide slurries are reported. We show the strong advantages of this method compared with traditional ones by explicitly reporting experimental results on calibrated spheres made of different materials. We discuss possible applications for in-line characterization of ultrapure water, chemicals, slurries for abrasive processes, for example, as well as the detection of any undesired particles – which could be the key for future improvements to advanced process control systems.

We present innovative web tools, developed also in the frame of the FP7 ENDORSE (ENergy DOwnstReam SErvices) project, for the performance analysis and the support in planning of solar energy plants (PV, CSP, CPV). These services are based on the combination between the detailed physical model of each part of the plants and the near real-time satellite remote sensing of incident solar irradiance. Starting from the solar Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) data provided by the Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (GMES-MACC) Core Service and based on the elaboration of Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite optical imagery, the Global Tilted Irradiance (GTI) or the Beam Normal Irradiance (BNI) incident on plant's solar PV panels (or solar receivers for CSP or CPV) is calculated. Combining these parameters with the model of the solar power plant, using also air temperature values, we can assess in near-real-time the daily evolution of the alternate current (AC) power produced by the plant. We are therefore able to compare this satellite-based AC power yield with the actually measured one and, consequently, to readily detect any possible malfunctions and to evaluate the performances of the plant (so-called “Controller” service). Besides, the same method can be applied to satellite-based averaged environmental data (solar irradiance and air temperature) in order to provide a Return on Investment analysis in support to the planning of new solar energy plants (so-called “Planner” service). This method has been successfully applied to three test solar plants (in North, Centre and South Italy respectively) and it has been validated by comparing satellite-based and in-situ measured hourly AC power data for several months in 2013 and 2014. The results show a good accuracy: the overall Normalized Bias (NB) is − 0.41%, the overall Normalized Mean Absolute Error (NMAE) is 4.90%, the Normalized Root Mean Square Error (NRMSE) is 7.66% and the overall Correlation Coefficient (CC) is 0.9538. The maximum value of the Normalized Absolute Error (NAE) is about 30% and occurs for time periods with highly variable meteorological conditions.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.015501.

Aerosol optical properties (i.e. scattering and absorption) are of great importance to assess aerosol effects e.g. on visibility and Earth radiation balance. In this paper, we present innovative optical instrumentation developed at the Department of Physics “Aldo Pontremoli” of the University of Milan: a multi-wavelength polar photometer (PP_UniMI) and a Single Particle Extinction and Scattering (SPES). PP_UniMI is a filter-based device providing the aerosol absorption coefficient of aerosol at 4 wavelengths (λ). Such measurements are of interest to have insights into the λ-dependent behavior of aerosol absorption properties, which is still poorly understood especially for what concerns weakly absorbing aerosol components. SPES allows to determine the size and refractive index of single particles. In case of absorbing particles, also information on the imaginary part of the refractive index—very important especially in the field of global models—can be provided with little assumptions. We describe the main features of the two instruments and their advantages and limitations. Examples of application are also presented.

The properties of spatial coherence of radiation emitted by relativistic electrons is far from being trivial. Assessing the coherence of high-brilliance X-ray sources (3rd generation synchrotrons or free electron lasers) is of crucial importance for machine diagnostics, as well as in planning experiments exploiting coherent techniques. The Heterodyne Speckles method, firstly described by Alaimo et al. (2009), is a valuable alternative to standard methods (e.g. Young's interferometer) which 1) provides a direct measure of transverse coherence without any a-priori assumption, 2) provides a full 2D map of coherence, 3) is capable of one shot, time-resolved measures, 4) is scalable over a wide range of wavelengths. It relies upon the statistical analysis of radiation scattered by spherical particles randomly distributed and suspended in a fluid. Here we give an overview of this method, from the theoretical framework to the operating conditions to be adopted in order to obtain coherence measurements in several conditions.

Electrical applications require the development of electric field sensors that can reproduce vector electric field waveforms with a very large spectral width ranging from 50 Hz to at least 70 MHz. This makes it possible to measure both the normal operation modes of electrical components and abnormal behaviors such as the corona emission and partial discharges. In this work, we aim to develop a fully dielectric sensor capable of measuring two components of the electric field using a wide class of optical crystals including anisotropic ones, whereas most of the efforts in this field have been devoted to isotropic crystals. We report the results of the measurements performed at 50 Hz and with a lightning impulse, to validate the sensor.

We report the fabrication and characterization of a simple and compact hyperspectral imaging setup based on a stretchable diffraction grating made with a metal-polymer nanocomposite. The nanocomposite is produced by implanting Ag clusters in a poly(dimethylsiloxane) film by supersonic cluster beam implantation. The deformable grating has curved grooves and is imposed on a concave cylindrical surface, thus obtaining optical power in two orthogonal directions. Both diffractive and optical powers are obtained by reflection, thus realizing a diffractive-catoptric optical device. This makes it easier to minimize aberrations. We prove that, despite the extended spectral range and the simplified optical scheme, it is actually possible to work with a traditional CCD sensor and achieve a good spectral and spatial resolution.

In this paper we extensively describe the heterodyne near field speckle method (HNFS) to characterize both spatial and temporal coherence of synchrotron radiation (SR). The method relies on Fourier analysis of near field speckles generated by scattering from nanoparticles suspended in a liquid. A criterion based on master curves of power spectra is introduced and validated by measurements on the visible light produced by the ALBA bending dipole. While spatial coherence measurements with HNFS have been reported, we present for the first time measurements of the temporal coherence of SR wavefronts with the HNFS method both for narrowband and white light beams. In the former case, using a band-pass filter, a coherence time of 40±10 fs is measured, in good agreement with the expected value of 43 fs for the filter inverse linewidth. Moreover, by exploiting the self-reference scheme of the technique, we show that coherence areas propagate carrying nonvanishing curvature. In the latter case, the measured coherence time of the incident SR without any monochromator is 1.6±0.4 fs, corresponding to a bandwidth of 240 nm at a peak wavelength of 350 nm. Exploiting the Wiener-Kintchine theorem, we also retrieve the SR power spectral density at the sample position from the measured temporal coherence function. Results are in good agreement with the measurements performed using a standard spectrometer, yielding a coherence time of 1.4 fs.

This study aimed to characterize unwanted immune effects of nanoparticles (NP) using THP-1 cells, human whole blood and enriched peripheral blood monocytes. Commercially available silver NP (AgNP

We apply to aerosols the optical method of Single Particle Extinction and Scattering recently proposed for characterizing liquid suspensions and specifically adapted to the aim. It provides simultaneous measurements of the real and imaginary parts of the field scattered in the forward direction by single airborne particles passing through a tightly focused laser beam. The intensity of transmitted light is collected in the forward direction, thus realizing a self-reference interferometric scheme relying on the fundamentals of the optical theorem. A high frequency (20 MS/s), extended dynamics (12 bits) sampling is performed by a cheap segmented photodiode, and a specific pulse shape analysis is exploited to validate the signals against a precise mathematical model. We show that accessing two independent physical quantities allows to exploit physical models to recover the aerosol size distribution from the measurement of the refractive index, either real or even complex. Laboratory measurements have been performed with polydisperse aerosols made of water droplets and NaCl in the submicron range, and the system has been accurately characterized. Examples of measurements of graphite nanoparticles and Pyrethrum smoke are shown. Limitations are discussed.

6 pags., 4 figs., The fast evaporative cooling ofmicrometer-sizedwater droplets in a vacuumoffers the appealing possibility to investigate supercooled water—below the melting point but still a liquid—at temperatures far beyond the state of the art. However, it is challenging to obtain a reliable value of the droplet temperature under such extreme experimental conditions. Here, the observation of morphology-dependent resonances in the Raman scattering from a train of perfectly uniform water droplets allows us to measure the variation in droplet size resulting from evaporative mass losses with an absolute precision of better than 0.2%. This finding proves crucial to an unambiguous determination of the droplet temperature. In particular, we find that a fraction of water droplets with an initial diameter of 6379 12 nm remain liquid down to 230.6 0.6 K. Our results question temperature estimates reported recently for larger supercooled water droplets and provide valuable information on the hydrogen-bond network in liquid water in the hard-to-access deeply supercooled regime., This work was in part supported by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung through Grant No. 05K13RF5.

Stretchable and conformable optical devices open up very exciting perspectives for the fabrication of systems incorporating diffracting and optical power in a single element. Supersonic cluster beam implantation of silver nanoparticles in an elastomeric substrate grooved by molding allows effective fabrication of cheap and simple stretchable optical elements able to withstand thousands of deformations and stretching cycles without any degradation of their optical properties. The nanocomposite-based reflective optical devices were characterized both morphologically and optically showing excellent performances and stability compared to similar devices fabricated with standard techniques. The nanocomposite-based devices can therefore be applied to arbitrary curved nonoptical grade surfaces in order to achieve optical power and to minimize aberrations like astigmatism. The high resilience of the nanocomposite material on which the devices are based allows them to be peeled and reused multiple times.

We developed a broad-spectrum light source specifically designed to reproduce the temporal behavior of the optical pulses emitted by scintillators for X-ray detection. Nanosecond-to-millisecond pulses are generated through a fast circuit driving Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and are endowed with the peculiar time features of the most employed scintillators by means of a dedicated pulse shaping stage. We implement the light source for the optical modeling of the single-shot X-ray coherence measurements with near-field speckles generated by the scattering from colloidal suspensions (heterodyne near field speckle method). Moreover, we derive a rigorous scaling law that quantitatively relates visible and X-ray signal-to-noise ratios.

Stretchable and conformable optical devices open very exciting perspectives for the fabrication of systems incorporating diffracting and optical power in a single element and of tunable plasmonic filters and absorbers. The use of nanocomposites obtained by inserting metallic nanoparticles produced in the gas phase into polymeric matrices allows to effectively fabricate cheap and simple stretchable optical elements able to withstand thousands of deformations and stretching cycles without any degradation of their optical properties. The nanocomposite-based reflective optical devices show excellent performances and stability compared to similar devices fabricated with standard techniques. The nanocomposite-based devices can be therefore applied to arbitrary curved non-optical grade surfaces in order to achieve optical power and to minimize aberrations like astigmatism. Examples discussed here include stretchable reflecting gratings, plasmonic filters tunable by mechanical stretching and light absorbers.

We report in this work the first experimental verification of the asymmetric lateral coherence which is a measurement of the spatio-temporal coherence by using a wide-band Young interference experiment with a fixed off-axis slit. We demonstrate the coherence properties through the measurement of the real part of the coherence factor of thermal light. We extend our recent results obtained for betatron and undulator radiations providing a robust experimental method for the two-dimensional mapping of the two-point correlation function of broadband radiation preserving the phase information. The proposed method can be used as a high-sensitivity alternative to traditional interferometry with quasi-monochromatic radiation.

We report the fabrication of a simple and inexpensive device based on diffractive optics for spectrally resolved imaging. A brass surface manufactured on a metal lathe and a deformable, reflecting diffraction grating guarantee spatially and spectrally resolved images without the need for other optical elements. The grating is a metal-polymer nanocomposite replica of a plastic grating: reflectivity of the transparent dielectric substrate is obtained by the implantation of gold clusters, hence preserving deformability. The brass surface is a portion of a rotation ellipsoid, on which the deformable grating adheres to gain optical power. According to the optical tests performed on the system, the achieved spatial resolution of the system is ∼80 μm, whereas limiting spectral resolution of about 3 nm is observed. Reflectivity of the zero-order reflection and the first order diffraction approaches 45% and 5% respectively. We detail the results for the reconstruction of an on-axis and off-axis pointlike source, and a vertically extended slit-like source with a 110 μm obstruction.