Dynamical Properties of Vortices in a Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Rotating Lattice

We present simulation results of the vortex dynamics in a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a rotating optical lattice. Changing the potential amplitude and the relative rotation frequency between the condensate and the optical lattice, we find a rich variety of dynamical phases of vortices. In particular, when the optical lattice rotates faster than the condensate, the competition between the pinning force and the interactions by nucleated interstitial vortices leads to the melting of vortex lattice, yielding a vortex liquid phase.     

Characterization and electrochemical properties of CF4 plasma-treated boron-doped diamond surfaces

The effect of CF₄ plasma etching on diamond surfaces, with respect to treatment time, was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and electrochemical measurements. SEM observations and Raman spectra indicated an increase in surface roughening on a scale of 10–20 nm, and an increase in crystal defect density was apparent with treatment time in the range of 10 s to 30 min. In contrast, alteration of the diamond surface terminations from oxygen to fluorine was found to be rather rapid, with saturation of the F/C atomic ratio estimated from XPS analysis after treatment durations of 1 min and more. The redox kinetics of Fe(CN)₆^3−/4− was also found to be significantly modified after 10 s of CF₄ plasma treatment. This behavior shows that C–F terminations predominantly affect the redox kinetics compared to the effect on the surface roughness and crystal defects. The double-layer capacitance (C_dl) of the electrolyte/CF₄ plasma-treated boron-doped diamond interface was found to show a minimum value at 1 min of treatment. These results indicate that a short-duration CF₄ plasma treatment is effective for the fabrication of fluorine-terminated diamond surfaces without undesirable surface damage.     

Highly reliable testing of ULSI memories with on-chip voltage-downconverters

Two testing techniques for ultra-large-scale integrated (ULSI) memories containing on-chip voltage downconverters (VDCs) are described. The first in an on-chip VDC tuning technique that adjusts internal V_CC to compensate for the monitored characteristics of the process parameters during repair analysis testing. The second is an operating-voltage margin test, performed at various internal V_CC levels during the water sort test (WT) and the final shipping test (FT)     

Interaction of two close quantized vortices in superfluid4He

The three-dimensional dynamics of two interacting quantized vortex filaments is studied. The equations of motion and the method of numerical calculation follow Schwarz. Whether two approaching filaments reconnect or not depends on their arrangement before approach. When a ring moves toward a line from a distance, only within a critical initial distance they can reconnect. The critical distance is minimized when their circulations are parallel at the closest place, while it increases as their circulations begin to deviate from being parallel. Hence the reconnection probability can be less than unity.     

1 V 2 GHz CMOS frequency divider

A new frequency divider, called differential injection locking, is proposed. The proposed divider has no transistor stacking to suppress the performance degradation due to supply voltage reduction. It is shown that the proposed frequency divider achieves 2 GHz with 1 V supply voltage and 540 /spl mu/W power consumption.     

Surface Hardening of Carbon Steel Using High Powered YAG Laser

A high powered YAG laser with kaleidoscope for surface modification was applied to the surface hardening of carbon steels containing 0. 18-0.54 wt% C without the absorbents, and the relationships between laser processing and surface hardening were investigated by hardness and microstructure. The structure of the hardened zone underwent complete martensitic transformation in all of the carbon steels tested, and its hardness increased with greater carbon content. Under identical irradiated conditions, the hardened zone expanded with increasing carbon content. A hardened zone extending from the surface to a depth of 1.0 mm was obtained at a laser power of 1.0 kW and a scanning speed of 1 mm/sec. It was found that in the surface hardening of carbon steels, a high powered YAG laser can be used to control the hardened zone by selecting the appropriate irradiation conditions, however, the hardened zone was affected by the assistant gas and the flow rate.     

Collective Shape Oscillation and Domain Formation of Two-Component Bose–Einstein Condensates

In this paper, we describe two kinds of characteristic nonlinear dynamics in two-component Bose–Einstein condensates. For two overlapping components, we analyzed the collective modes and a variety of nonlinear mode couplings, which were then confirmed by numerical simulation of the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equations. Next, we consider the nonlinear dynamics of two condensates after abruptly turning on the intercomponent coupling strength. For strong intercomponent interactions the out-of-phase density wave of the condensates became unstable, leading to mugtiple domain formation.     

Antiarrhythmic effect related to the plasma concentration of pentisomide in vivo and the antiarrhythmic-concentration relationship in vitro

Pentisomide, 2-(2-diisopropylaminoethyl)-4-methyl-2-(pyridyl)- pentanamide, is a novel antiarrhythmic agent structurally related to disopyramide. Using a glass bead arrhythmic model, the authors studied the antiarrhythmic effect of pentisomide in dogs by monitoring the plasma concentrations. When pentisomide was infused at 1 mg/kg/min for 20 min, the ventricular tachycardia was significantly reduced at 5 min after starting the infusion; the arrhythmias were reduced to less than 5% at the end of the 20 min infusion. The plasma-free concentration of pentisomide was about 3 micrograms/ml at 5 min; it increased to about 10 micrograms/ml at the end of 20 min infusion. With 0.3 mg/kg/min infusion, the arrhythmias were reduced to about 60% but were not significant at 20 min of infusion. The plasma-free concentration of pentisomide did not reach 3 micrograms/ml until 20 min of infusion. The 3 micrograms/ml plasma-free concentration for pentisomide seems to be a critical concentration in inducing a significant antiarrhythmic effect. Pentisomide dose-dependently inhibited ischaemia-reperfusion arrhythmia at doses of 30 microM and higher concentrations in vitro. In conclusion, pentisomide inhibits arrhythmias dependent with the plasma concentration or with the concentration of the external solution. The critical plasma-free concentration for inhibition of arrhythmias was 3 micrograms/ml (not equal to 10 microM) and the in vitro effect also had a similar concentration. Therefore, the in vivo and in vitro antiarrhythmic concentrations were well correlated.     

Elimination of fictitious penetrating rays from PO and hybridization with AFIM

Physical optics (PO) is an approximation method for high‐frequency scattering and diffraction problems. But PO fields are inaccurate in the shadow region where the source is screened by the scatter. Two key factors of the error for PO are (i) edge diffraction coefficients and (ii) existence of fictitious penetrating rays. The correction with respect to the former has been extensively investigated by many authors using various ray techniques such as GTD, UTD, and UAT. On the other hand, the latter was identified recently by the authors. This paper proposes novel PO‐based calculation procedures termed PO‐AF and PTD‐AF, where PO and Aperture Field Integration Method (AFIM) are merged with the help of special elementary diffraction coefficients. These can uniformly cover the whole angular region and only the error factor (ii) is removed in PO‐AF while both (i) and (ii) are removed in PTD‐AF. The theoretical backgrounds of PO currents are discussed in terms of field equivalence theorem and visualization of EM waves. Next, new methods are proposed and their validity is numerically demonstrated for 2D scattering problems of a strip, a corner reflector, and a cylinder of circular arc. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 150(2): 1–10, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20037