Physics Commons^™

Instrument Performance Enhancement And Modification Through An Extended Instrument Paradigm, Stephen L. Mahan

Doctoral Dissertations

An extended instrument paradigm is proposed, developed and shown in various applications. The CBM (Chin, Blass, Mahan) method is an extension to the linear systems model of observing systems. In the most obvious and practical application of image enhancement of an instrument characterized by a time-invariant instrumental response function, CBM can be used to enhance images or spectra through a simple convolution application of the CBM filter for a resolution improvement of as much as a factor of two. The CBM method can be used in many applications. We discuss several within this work including imaging through turbulent atmospheres, or …

Questing For The Grail: Core Collapse Supernova Simulations With Boltzmann Neutrino Transport, Otis Earl Messer

Doctoral Dissertations

The importance of exact neutrino transport in spherically symmetric core collapse supernova simulations is explored in this dissertation. The primary tool for these studies is the neutrino radiation hydrodynamics code AGILE-BOLTZTRAN (Mezzacappa & Bruenn 1993a,b,c; Mezzacappa & Messer 1998; Liebendörfer 2000). AGILE-BOLTZTRAN couples the solution of the Boltzmann equation for all three flavors of neutrinos and antineutrinos to a one-dimensional, implicit, adaptive grid hydrodynamics code. Emission, absorption, and scattering of neutrinos from nucleons and nuclei, neutrino-electron scattering, and pair production and annihilation are included as neutrino-matter couplings. Details of the code are described, including the equations solved and their finite …

Electronic Excitations In Metals And Semiconductors: Ab Initio Studies Of Realistic Many-Particle Systems, Wei Ku

Doctoral Dissertations

Electronic excitations in metals and semiconductors, measured through inelastic x-ray scattering, electronic energy-loss spectroscopy, and angle-resolved photoemission, provide valuable information about the intrinsic many-body interactions between electrons in the crystal environment. These dynamical interactions are usually analyzed with intuitive simple models. With the problems studied, which correspond to linear response and quasi-particle excitation, it will be shown that ab initio approaches not only can provide more realistic understanding of microscopic processes and mechanisms, but also result in new theoretical interpretations that resolve a number of remarkable "anomalies." Specifically, these problems include the dispersion of the plasmon lifetime in potassium, the …

Searches For Neutral Higgs Bosons In Quark-Antiquark Tau-Antitau Final States Using The Opal Detector At Lep, James Andrew Hocker '91

Doctoral Dissertations

Searches for neutral Higgs bosons have been performed with the OPAL detector at LEP. Approximately 170 /pb of e+e- collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 189 GeV have been used to search for the SM process e+e- to HZ as well as for the processes e+e- to hZ and e+e- to hA which occur in extended Higgs theories. The searches are sensitive to final states containing quarks and tau leptons, for which an artificial neural network for the identification of tau leptons was designed. The results have been combined with OPAL searches for other final states to obtain a …

Laser Spark Ignition Modeling, Ivan George Dors

Doctoral Dissertations

Laser spark phenomena are studied in air and ammonia-oxygen mixtures by the use of a two-dimensional, axially-symmetric, time-accurate computational fluid dynamic model. The initial laser spark temperature distribution is generated to simulate a post-breakdown profile that is consistent with theoretical, experimental, and computational investigations for a nominal 10-ns optical breakdown laser pulse. Thermodynamic properties of various species are extended to 35,000 K to cover the range of the initial temperature distribution. The developed computational model includes a kinetics mechanism that implements plasma equilibrium kinetics in ionized regions.

The computational model time-accurately predicts species concentrations, free electron number density decay, blast …

Fluid Flow In Micro-Channels: A Stochastic Approach, Hilda Marino Black

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study free molecular flow in a micro-channel was modeled using a stochastic approach, namely the Kolmogorov forward equation in three dimensions. Model equations were discretized using Central Difference and Backward Difference methods and solved using the Jacobi method. Parameters were used that reflect the characteristic geometry of experimental work performed at the Louisiana Tech University Institute for Micromanufacturing.

The solution to the model equations provided the probability density function of the distance traveled by a particle in the micro-channel. From this distribution we obtained the distribution of the residence time of a particle in the micro-channel. Knowledge of …