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Plasma and Beam Physics Commons

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2007

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Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Plasma and Beam Physics

Investigation Of Radio Frequency Discharges And Langmuir Probe Diagnostic Methods In A Fast Flowing Electronegative Background Gas, Nathaniel P. Lockwood Dec 2007

Investigation Of Radio Frequency Discharges And Langmuir Probe Diagnostic Methods In A Fast Flowing Electronegative Background Gas, Nathaniel P. Lockwood

Theses and Dissertations

Discharges in a flowing background gas are used to produce charged and excited species for numerous applications including etching semiconductors and pumping gas discharge lasers (Pinhero and others, 1998). The effect of a flowing background gas on the charged and excited neutral species generation by an RF discharge in a flow tube and the diagnostics of the resulting plasma with a Langmuir probe have been investigated for pressures between 0.001 to 1 Torr and flow velocities up to 1000 m/s. This investigation was performed using a fluid method coupled to a chemical kinetic model and a hybrid Particle-In-Cell/Monte Carlo Collision …


Practical Sensor For Measurement Of Nitrogen, Dusan Popovic, Vladimir Milosavljevic, Steven Daniels Nov 2007

Practical Sensor For Measurement Of Nitrogen, Dusan Popovic, Vladimir Milosavljevic, Steven Daniels

Articles

This paper presents a method for precise measurement of atomic and molecular nitrogen in an oxygen-nitrogen dc plasma. This is achieved by monitoring the intensities of the atomic nitrogen spectral line at 821.6 nm and the molecular nitrogen bandhead at 337.1 nm, relative to the atomic oxygen spectral line at 844.7 nm. Oxygen is one of the most frequently used gases for surface chemical treatment, including deposition and etching, therefore the ability to measure and control the process and chemical composition of the process is essential. To validate this oxygen actimometry method for N2-xO2 (where x varies from 0 to …


Time Resolution Of Collapse Events During The Progation Of Ultraviolet Filaaments, Teresa J. Fondren Oct 2007

Time Resolution Of Collapse Events During The Progation Of Ultraviolet Filaaments, Teresa J. Fondren

Theses and Dissertations

Long distance propagation, or filamentation, of short, intense laser pulses is suggested to be possible through the balance of two effects: self-focusing, when a nonlinear index of refraction of air is induced by high intensities, and de-focusing, due to the plasma created by the pulse. Applications for filamentation include areas such as remote sensing and directed energy. A split-step spectral propagation simulation is used to model the behavior of a high intensity ultraviolet laser pulse propagating through air. Convergence of femtosecond duration collapses that form on the leading edge of the pulse in the time domain is achieved with an …


Self-Organization In Cathode Boundary Layer Discharges, Nobuhiko Takano Oct 2007

Self-Organization In Cathode Boundary Layer Discharges, Nobuhiko Takano

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cathode boundary layer (CBL) discharge, which has been developed as a UV light source, operates in a direct current between a planar cathode and a ring-shape anode that are separated by a dielectric with an opening of the same diameter as the anode. The nonthermal CBL discharges operate in a medium pressure range down to 30 Torr, emitting excimer radiation when operated with noble gases. The radiant excimer emittance at 172 nm in xenon reaches 1.7 W/cm2, and a maximum excimer efficiency of 6 % has been obtained. The high excimer radiant emittance, in addition to low cost …


Bactericidal Effects Of Cold Plasma Technology On Geobacillus Stearothermophilus And Bacillus Cereus Microorganisms, Angela D. Morris, Gayle B. Mccombs, Susan L. Tolle, Mounir Laroussi, Wayne L. Hynes Oct 2007

Bactericidal Effects Of Cold Plasma Technology On Geobacillus Stearothermophilus And Bacillus Cereus Microorganisms, Angela D. Morris, Gayle B. Mccombs, Susan L. Tolle, Mounir Laroussi, Wayne L. Hynes

Dental Hygiene Faculty Publications

Cold plasma is a state of matter that contains a large number of particles that are electrically charged. Plasmas generate chemically reactive species and ultraviolet radiation making them useful in decontamination applications (Kong & Laroussi, 2003). Research regarding the inactivation of gram-positive bacteria by cold plasma has been studied by Laroussi et al (2003); however, there is limited research regarding the germicidal effectiveness of cold plasma on Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Bacillus cereus microorganisms. The purpose of this study was to determine if cold plasma technology inactivates Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Bacillus cereus vegetative cells and spores. This study consisted of 981 …


Raman Fiber Lasers And Amplifiers Based On Multimode Fibers And Their Applications To Beam Cleanup, Nathan B. Terry Sep 2007

Raman Fiber Lasers And Amplifiers Based On Multimode Fibers And Their Applications To Beam Cleanup, Nathan B. Terry

Theses and Dissertations

Raman fiber lasers (RFLs) and Raman fiber amplifiers (RFAs) in multimode fibers were explored. The RFL based on a graded-index fiber was shown to be very efficient relative to RFLs based on singlemode fibers. Several configurations of the RFL were examined; the beam quality of the Stokes beam depended on the reflectivity of the output coupler and the Stokes power. When used as a beam combiner, the RFL was a highly efficient brightness converter. RFL configurations which used dichroic mirrors were shown to be potentially useful for RFLs based on very large fibers. The forward- and backward-seeded geometries of an …


Hot Electron And X-Ray Production From Intense Laser Irradiation Of Wavelength-Scale Polystyrene Spheres, H. A. Sumeruk, S. Kneip, D. R. Symes, I. V. Churina, A. V. Belolipetski, G. Dyer, J. Landry, G. Bansal, A. C. Bernstein, Thomas D. Donnelly, A. Karmakar, A. Pukhov, T. Ditmire Jun 2007

Hot Electron And X-Ray Production From Intense Laser Irradiation Of Wavelength-Scale Polystyrene Spheres, H. A. Sumeruk, S. Kneip, D. R. Symes, I. V. Churina, A. V. Belolipetski, G. Dyer, J. Landry, G. Bansal, A. C. Bernstein, Thomas D. Donnelly, A. Karmakar, A. Pukhov, T. Ditmire

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Hot electron and x-ray production from solid targets coated with polystyrene-spheres which are irradiated with high-contrast, 100 fs, 400 nm light pulses at intensity up to 2×1017 W/cm2 have been studied. The peak hard x-ray signal from uncoated fused silica targets is an order of magnitude smaller than the signal from targets coated with submicron sized spheres. The temperature of the x-rays in the case of sphere-coated targets is twice as hot as that of uncoated glass. A sphere-size scan of the x-ray yield and observation of a peak in both the x-ray production and temperature at a …


An Infrared Camera Simulation For Estimating Spatial Temperature Profiles And Signal-To-Noise Ratios Of An Airborne Laser-Illuminated Target, David F. Orth Jun 2007

An Infrared Camera Simulation For Estimating Spatial Temperature Profiles And Signal-To-Noise Ratios Of An Airborne Laser-Illuminated Target, David F. Orth

Theses and Dissertations

Airborne Laser testing and evaluation can be aided by developing a spectrally-based infrared camera simulation to explore how the target surface's specular and diffuse reflectivities affect the observed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and how the target's temperature in the laser spot can estimated. This simulation provides for the observed irradiance, scaled by atmospheric absorption, to consist of the target's self-emission, reflected background emission, and the path emission from the observer to the target. The observed irradiance is scaled and distributed onto a focal plane array by way of a simulated optical system, whose effects are described by modulation transfer functions. The …


Stimulated Brillouin Scattering Beam Cleanup And Beam Phasing Through Two Passive Channels, Omar Gamboa Mar 2007

Stimulated Brillouin Scattering Beam Cleanup And Beam Phasing Through Two Passive Channels, Omar Gamboa

Theses and Dissertations

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) beam cleanup and SBS piston correction properties are explored. This research measures the beam cleaning and phase-conjugating properties of stimulated Brillouin scattering in an optical fiber. The first stage of this research began by coupling an aberrated beam into a long multimode 62.5 micron core fiber to demonstrate its beam cleanup properties. The Stokes beam obtained was shown to be the fundamental fiber mode, LP01. The second stage spatially divided the pump beam into two equal halves. Each half was then sent through two different channels. The path length of one channel remained fixed while the …


Portable Diode Pumped Femtosecond Laser, David A. Jones Mar 2007

Portable Diode Pumped Femtosecond Laser, David A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the work to make ultrashort pulsed lasers smaller and more economical. While sharing many of the basic properties of normal beam optics there are some specific properties in both creating and exploiting those pulses that must be understood. The discussion will focus on mode locking as the primary way of producing ultrashort pulses. Particular attention will be paid to intracavity group velocity dispersion and how to correct it inside the cavity. The discussion then turns to the basis of our work including initial cavity design and component selection with focus on the specific crystals used in the …


Thermally Activated, Variable Blazed Grating For Coherent Beam Steering, Matthew T. Johnson Mar 2007

Thermally Activated, Variable Blazed Grating For Coherent Beam Steering, Matthew T. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to perform non-mechanical optical beam steering is of critical importance in laser communication and remote sensing; it is as vital as a phased-array antenna is for RADAR. Directed energy transmission and direction-selective reception increase performance and produce tactical advantage in DoD applications. However, specific geometric features of non-mechanical beam steering devices must be designed in proportion to the wavelength of the monochromatic light to be steered. Also, the ability to handle higher energies by reducing the energy per unit requires large areas of uniform properties on the micrometer scale. These challenges have been addressed in the past using …


Control Of Strong-Laser-Field Coupling To Electrons In Solid Targets With Wavelength-Scale Spheres, H. A. Sumeruk, S. Kneip, D. R. Symes, I. V. Churina, A. V. Belolipetski, Thomas D. Donnelly, T. Ditmire Jan 2007

Control Of Strong-Laser-Field Coupling To Electrons In Solid Targets With Wavelength-Scale Spheres, H. A. Sumeruk, S. Kneip, D. R. Symes, I. V. Churina, A. V. Belolipetski, Thomas D. Donnelly, T. Ditmire

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Irradiation of a planar solid by an intense laser pulse leads to fast electron acceleration and hard x-ray production. We have investigated whether this high field production of fast electrons can be controlled by introducing dielectric spheres of well-defined size on the target surface. We find that the presence of spheres with a diameter slightly larger than half the laser wavelength leads to Mie enhancements of the laser field which, accompanied by multipass stochastic heating of the electrons, leads to significantly enhanced hard x-ray yield and temperature.


Plasma Treatment Of Bulk Nb Surface In The Ar/Cl2 Discharge, M. Rašković, L. Vuskovic, S. Popovic, A.-M. Valente-Feliciano, L. Phillips Jan 2007

Plasma Treatment Of Bulk Nb Surface In The Ar/Cl2 Discharge, M. Rašković, L. Vuskovic, S. Popovic, A.-M. Valente-Feliciano, L. Phillips

Physics Faculty Publications

The preparation of the cavity walls has been one of the major challenges in the superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) accelerator technology. Therefore, constant research and development effort is devoted to develop surface preparation processes that will improve roughness and lower the level of impurities, like hydrogen or oxygen, embedded in bulk Nb, having in the same time reasonable etching rates. Plasma based surface modification provides an excellent opportunity to achieve these goals. We present Ar/Cl2 discharge treatment of bulk Nb where we achieved etching rates comparable to the rates obtained with the electropolishing method without introducing impurities in Nb. The …


Reactive Oxygen Emission From Microwave Discharge Plasmas, S. Popovic, M. Rašković, S. P. Kuo, L. Vuskovic Jan 2007

Reactive Oxygen Emission From Microwave Discharge Plasmas, S. Popovic, M. Rašković, S. P. Kuo, L. Vuskovic

Physics Faculty Publications

Metastable oxygen atoms and molecules have received increased interest because of their function in surface modification, bio-decontamination and many other industrial applications, in addition to the role in the upper atmospheric layer chemistry. We review work on production and detection of metastable oxygen and we describe our experiments, including the development of techniques for measurement of metastable molecular oxygen. We show that either metastable oxygen molecules or metastable oxygen atoms can be produced in large quantities in electrical discharges, carefully tailored to promote the required kinetics. Although the two species may coexist, colder discharge regimes favor production of molecules, while …


Fluorescence Imaging Study Of Free And Impinging Supersonic Jets: Jet Structure And Turbulent Transition, Jennifer Ann Inman Jan 2007

Fluorescence Imaging Study Of Free And Impinging Supersonic Jets: Jet Structure And Turbulent Transition, Jennifer Ann Inman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

A series of experiments into the behavior of underexpanded jet flows has been conducted at NASA Langley Research Center. This work was conducted in support of the Return to Flight effort following the loss of the Columbia. The tests involved simulating flow through a hypothetical breach in the leading edge of the Space Shuttle Orbiter along its reentry trajectory, with the goal of generating a data set with which other researchers can test and validate computational modeling tools. Two nozzles supplied with high-pressure gas were used to generate axisymmetric underexpanded jets exhausting into a low-pressure chamber. These nozzles had exit …


Use Of A Continuous Wave Raman Fiber Laser In Graded-Index Multimode Fiber For Srs Beam Combination, Nathan B. Terry, Kevin T. Engel, Thomas G. Alley, Timothy H. Russell Jan 2007

Use Of A Continuous Wave Raman Fiber Laser In Graded-Index Multimode Fiber For Srs Beam Combination, Nathan B. Terry, Kevin T. Engel, Thomas G. Alley, Timothy H. Russell

Faculty Publications

We report using a Raman fiber laser (RFL) based on a multimode graded-index fiber as a novel method for beam combination of two continuous wave pump beams. Due to stimulated Raman scattering, the RFL generates a Stokes beam which can be up to 300% brighter than the pump beams. Up to 5.8 W of Stokes power is generated with an optical conversion efficiency of 56%.