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Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations of sintered Al-Cu-Fe icosahedral quasicrystal (IQC) have been carried out to understand the origin of some ductility previously noticed within tracks produced by standard tribological scratch tests. Transformation of the icosahedral phase to a modulated structure is shown and a transformation of the IQC to a bcc phase has been found beneath the tracks. Twins and dislocations have also been observed.

The effects of the discharge voltage on the formation and nature of electric field transients in a symmetric, collisionless, very high frequency, capacitively coupled plasma are studied using a self-consistent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation code. At a driving frequency of 60 MHz and 5 mTorr of argon gas pressure, the discharge voltage is varied from 10V to 150 V for a fixed discharge gap. It is observed that an increase in the discharge voltage causes filamentation in the electric field transients and to create multiple higher harmonics in the bulk plasma. Correspondingly, higher harmonics, up to 7th harmonic, in the discharge current are also observed. The power in the higher harmonics increases with a rise in the discharge voltage. The plasma density continues to increase with the discharge voltage but in a non-linear manner, whereas, the bulk electron temperature decreases. Meanwhile, the electron energy distribution function (EEDF) evolves from a Maxwellian at lower discharge voltages to a bi-Maxwellian at higher discharge voltages.

We analyze the physical properties and dynamical origin of a curved jet of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that was observed repeatedly in several nucleus rotations starting on May 30 and persisting until early August, 2015. We simulated the motion of dust grains ejected from the nucleus surface under the influence of the gravity and viscous drag effect of the expanding gas flow from the rotating nucleus. The formation of the curved jet is a combination of the size of the dust particles (~0.1-1 mm) and the location of the source region near the nucleus equator. This enhances the spiral feature of the collimated dust stream after the dust is accelerated to a terminal speed on the order of m/s., Comment: 5pages, 5 figures

We report on nano-infrared (IR) imaging studies of confined plasmon modes inside patterned graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) fabricated with high-quality chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) graphene on Al2O3 substrates. The confined geometry of these ribbons leads to distinct mode patterns and strong field enhancement, both of which evolve systematically with the ribbon width. In addition, spectroscopic nano-imaging in mid-infrared 850-1450 cm-1 allowed us to evaluate the effect of the substrate phonons on the plasmon damping. Furthermore, we observed edge plasmons: peculiar one-dimensional modes propagating strictly along the edges of our patterned graphene nanostructures., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

We investigate near-field infrared spectroscopy and superfluid polariton imaging experiments on conventional and unconventional superconductors. Our modeling shows that near-field spectroscopy can measure the magnitude of the superconducting energy gap in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like superconductors with nanoscale spatial resolution. We demonstrate how the same technique can measure the c-axis plasma frequency, and thus the c-axis superfluid density, of layered unconventional superconductors with a similar spatial resolution. Our modeling also shows that near-field techniques can image superfluid surface mode interference patterns near physical and electronic boundaries. We describe how these images can be used to extract the collective mode dispersion of anisotropic superconductors with sub-diffractional spatial resolution., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

A new phasing algorithm has been used to determine the phases of diffuse elastic X-ray scattering from a non-periodic array of gold balls of 50 nm diameter. Two-dimensional real-space images, showing the charge-density distribution of the balls, have been reconstructed at 50 nm resolution from transmission diffraction patterns recorded at 550 eV energy. The reconstructed image fits well with scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the same sample. The algorithm, which uses only the density modification portion of the SIR2002 program, is compared with the results obtained via the Gerchberg-Saxton-Fienup HIO algorithm. In this way the relationship between density modification in crystallography and the HiO algorithm used in signal and image processing is elucidated., Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures

Neutrino Bremsstrahlung of flavor-degenerate pairs in the field of a nucleus is of potential importance for neutrino astrophysics and is representative of a class of processes connecting leptonic electroweak sectors to real or virtual photons. We focus on first generation flavor production by both electron and muon neutrinos and present Standard Model cross sections and distributions for lead and iron nuclei. The results (of order 10-41 cm2 for electron neutrino - lead collisions at 100 MeV) have been fitted to empirical formulae that can be used to estimate backgrounds to neutrino detection experiments and flux normalizations. A compact form of the matrix element obtained by analytic reduction is used to explain the distributions. The V-A limits of the cross sections are shown to agree with published work from the pre-neutral current era. Event signatures and the possible roles of these processes in stellar and laboratory neutrino physics are discussed. Cross sections are compared with those for neutrino-electron scattering for neutrino spectra corresponding to typical supernovae temperatures., Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to Astrophysical Journal, Presented at APS April 2001 Meeting