Spectrograph based on a single diffractive element for real-time measurement of circular dichroism

In this study, a novel and simple diffractive spectrographic method for real-time measurements of circular dichroism (CD) is considered from a theoretical and experimental approach. A demonstrator prototype of the CD spectrograph has been developed and its performance has been compared with a commercial phase-modulation CD spectrometer. The main element of the device is a polarization holographic grating, recorded in a thin photosensitive organic film, by two interfering opposite circularly polarized beams. A peculiarity of this grating is that the amplitude of the +1 (-1) order of diffraction is proportional to the right (left) circular polarization component of the incoming beam. Here we demonstrate that the CD spectrum of a specimen can be easily evaluated from the intensities of the diffracted beams. A white light beam passing through the specimen is diffracted from the grating and the intensities of the +/-1 orders of diffraction are measured. Due to the spectral selectivity of the grating, the CD at each wavelength can be evaluated at the same time using two linear array detectors.     

Structural properties of the formation of yttrium germanides thin films on the Si(111) surface

We have performed first principles total energy calculations to investigate the deposit of yttrium digermanide on the Si(111) surface. We have used the periodic density functional theory as implemented in the Quantum-ESPRESSO package. For the adsorption of a monolayer of yttrium digermanide on the Si(111)-(1 × 1) surface, we have found that the most stable geometry corresponds to a configuration with Y atoms occupying the T4 site above a second layer Si atom, and with a Ge bilayer on top of the structure. The atomic structure of the Ge bilayer is similar to that of Si (Ge) in the bulk but rotated 180° with respect to the crystal. For the three dimensional growth of a few layers of yttrium digermanide on Si(111) we have considered a hexagonal structure with (√3 × √3) periodicity, similar to the one found in the growth of few layers of YSi₂ on Si(111): graphite-like Ge planes (with vacancies) intercalated with yttrium planes. As in the case of a single layer of YGe₂, there is a formation of a Ge bilayer on top of the structure. In this case, the Ge_down atoms of the bilayer, which are on top the vacancies, move down towards the vacancy, while Ge atoms in the graphitic layer, which are below the Ge_up atoms of the bilayer, are displaced towards the vacancy.     

Optical and structural properties of ZnO + Zn<Subscript>2</Subscript>TiO<Subscript>4</Subscript> thin films prepared by the sol–gel method

ZnO + Zn₂TiO₄ thin films were obtained by the sol–gel method using precursor solutions with different Ti/Zn ratios in the 0.18–2.13 range. The films were deposited on glass substrates and annealed in an open atmosphere at 550 °C. The oxide was characterized by X-ray diffraction and photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy. The films were constituted of polycrystalline ZnO for the lowest Ti/Zn ratio (0.18), polycrystalline Zn₂TiO₄ for the 0.70 and 1.0 ratios, and mixes of both oxides for the intermediate ratios (0.32 and 0.50). For the highest ratios studied (1.44 and 2.13), the films were amorphous. The energy band gap (E_g) values were determined from optical absorption spectra, measured by means of the PA technique spectra. E_g varied in the 3.15 eV (ZnO) to 3.70 eV (Zn₂TiO₄) range.     

Rotation statistics of fibers in wall shear turbulence

In this paper, the rotation of rigid fibers is investigated for the reference case of turbulent channel flow. The aim of the study is to examine the effect of local shear and turbulence anisotropy on the rotational dynamics of fibers with different elongation and inertia. To this aim, statistics of the fiber angular velocity, Ω, are extracted from direct numerical simulation of turbulence at shear Reynolds number Re _τ = 150 coupled with Lagrangian tracking of prolate ellipsoidal fibers with Stokes number, St, ranging from 3 to 100 and aspect ratio, λ, ranging from 1 to 50. Accordingly, the fiber-to-fluid density ratio ranges from ${S \simeq 7}$ S ? 7 (for St = 1, λ = 50) to ${S \simeq 3, 470}$ S ? 3 , 470 (for St = 100, λ = 1). Statistics are compared one to one with those obtained for spherical particles to highlight effects due to elongation. Results for mean and fluctuating angular velocities show that elongation is important for fibers with small inertia (St ≤  5 in the present flow-fiber combination). For fibers with larger inertia, elongation has an impact on fiber rotation only in the streamwise and wall-normal directions, where mean values of Ω are zero. It is also shown that, in the center of the channel, the Lagrangian autocorrelation coefficients of Ω and corresponding rotational turbulent diffusivities match the exponential behavior predicted by the theory of homogeneous dispersion. In this region of the channel, the probability density function of fiber angular velocities is generally close to Gaussian, indicating that particle rotation away from solid walls can be modeled as a diffusion process of the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck type at stationary state. In the strong shear region (comprised within a distance of 50 viscous units from the wall in the present simulations), fiber anisotropy adds to flow anisotropy to induce strong deviations on fiber rotational dynamics with respect to spherical particles. The database produced in this study is available to all interested users at https://www.fp1005.cism.it.     

Compact spot-size converters with fiber-matched antiresonant reflecting optical waveguides

We propose a concept for InGaAsP-InP 1.55-microm lasers integrated with spot-size converters based on modal interference between the modes of the structure formed by an active waveguide and an underlying fiber-matched antiresonant reflecting optical waveguide. Simulation results show that the spot-size converters exhibit low transformation loss, and narrowed far-field emission patterns (10 degrees x 20 degrees) and reduce the coupling loss to standard single-mode fibers from 8 to 2.6 dB over lengths approximately 200 microm shorter than the adiabatic concept. A tolerant design to fabrication variations is also proposed, which could be realized by standard processing techniques.     

A boundary knot method for harmonic elastic and viscoelastic problems using single-domain approach

The boundary knot method is a promising meshfree, integration-free, boundary-type technique for the solution of partial differential equations. It looks for an approximation of the solution in the linear span of a set of specialized radial basis functions that satisfy the governing equation of the problem. The boundary conditions are taken into account through the collocation technique. The specialized radial basis function for harmonic elastic and viscoelastic problems is derived, and a boundary knot method for the solution of these problems is proposed. The completeness issue regarding the proposed set of radial basis functions is discussed, and a formal proof of incompleteness for the circular ring problem is presented. In order to address the numerical performance of the proposed method, some numerical examples considering simple and complex domains are solved.     

Evaluation of messaging middleware for high-performance cloud computing

Cloud computing is posing several challenges, such as security, fault tolerance, access interface singularity, and network constraints, both in terms of latency and bandwidth. In this scenario, the performance of communications depends both on the network fabric and its efficient support in virtualized environments, which ultimately determines the overall system performance. To solve the current network constraints in cloud services, their providers are deploying high-speed networks, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet. This paper presents an evaluation of high-performance computing message-passing middleware on a cloud computing infrastructure, Amazon EC2 cluster compute instances, equipped with 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The analysis of the experimental results, confronted with a similar testbed, has shown the significant impact that virtualized environments still have on communication performance, which demands more efficient communication middleware support to get over the current cloud network limitations.     

Towards a satisfactory conversion of messages among agent-based information systems

Over the last years, there has been a change of perspective concerning the management of information systems, since they are no longer isolated and need to communicate with others. However, from a semantic point of view, real communication is difficult to achieve due to the heterogeneity of the systems. We present a proposal which, considering information systems are represented by software agents, provides a framework that favors a semantic communication among them, overcoming the heterogeneity of their agent communication languages. The main components of the framework are a suite of ontologies – conceptualizing communication acts – that will be used for generating the communication conversion, and an Event Calculus interpretation of the communications, which will be used for formalizing the notion of a satisfactory conversion. Moreover, we present a motivating example in order to complete the explanation of the whole picture.