Emission mechanism for the silicon He-α lines in a photoionization experiment

In this paper, we present a reanalysis of the silicon He- $\mathrm{\alpha}$ X-ray spectrum emission in Fujioka et al.’s 2009 photoionization experiment. The computations were performed with our radiative-collisional code, RCF. The central ingredients of our computations are accurate atomic data, inclusion of satellite lines from doubly excited states and accounting for the reabsorption of the emitted photons on their way to the spectrometer. With all these elements included, the simulated spectrum turns out to be in good agreement with the experimental spectrum.

Oscillations of EPR Signals Accompanying Belousov–Zhabotinsky Reaction

Periodical transformation of ferroin to ferriin is accompanied by changes in magnetic properties of liquids during Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction malonic acid, sodium bromide, sodium bromate, ferroin, and sulfuric acid. Instead of the earlier studied oscillation of microwave conductivity accompanying an oscillating reaction, we propose a flash technique to interrupt the BZ reaction by rapid freezing. Rapid cooling of a solution during chemical oscillations results in a frozen system with a fixed concentration of paramagnetic centers Fe3+. EPR spectrum recorded at different stages of the interrupted reaction corresponds to the exact concentration of the ferroin and ferriin components. Following unfreezing unblocks the BZ reaction, and oscillations are still observed. A simulated spectrum allows one to distinguish two groups of Fe3+ ions of different symmetries. The obtained results are important to explain the earlier observed effect of inhomogeneous magnetic field on BZ reaction front velocity.

Ultrathin polarization-insensitive tri-band THz perfect metamaterial absorber

In this paper, an ultrathin and polarization-insensitive THz perfect metamaterial absorber (PMA) was proposed using the traditional sandwiched structure with circular patch resonators on the top layer. The simulated spectrum shows that the proposed PMA has three distinctive absorption peaks at f1 = 0.8 THz, f2 = 2.28 THz and f3 = 3.62 THz, with absorbance of 96.7%, 97.9% and 99.8%, respectively. The electric field distributions of the PMA reveal that the absorption mainly originates from the standing wave resonances between the top and bottom layers. The proposed PMA is polarization insensitive due to its axisymmetric unit cell structure. By adjusting the structure parameters, the resonance frequency, intensity and Q-factor of absorption peak can be tuned effectively. Our design may find potential applications in THz imaging, sensing and signal detection.

An Improved Spectral Background Subtraction Method Based on Wavelet Energy

Most spectral background subtraction methods rely on the difference in frequency response of background compared with characteristic peaks. It is difficult to extract accurately the background components from the spectrum when characteristic peaks and background have overlaps in frequency domain. An improved background estimation algorithm based on iterative wavelet transform (IWT) is presented. The wavelet entropy principle is used to select the best wavelet basis. A criterion based on wavelet energy theory to determine the optimal iteration times is proposed. The case of energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy is discussed for illustration. A simulated spectrum with a prior known background and an experimental spectrum are tested. The processing results of the simulated spectrum is compared with non-IWT and it demonstrates the superiority of the IWT. It has great significance to improve the accuracy for spectral analysis.

Bicyclo[3.2.0]hepta-1,3,6-triene — UV photoelectron spectroscopic and computational studies

Pyrolysis of N,N-dimethylbicyclo[3.2.0]hepta-3,6-dien-1-amine oxide (5) at 120 °C in the source chamber of the UV photoelectron (PE) spectrometer yielded bicyclo[3.2.0]hepta-1,3,6-triene (6). The triene dimerizes to yield a mixture of two dimers in equal amounts. A PE spectrum of an authentic mixture of dimers was also recorded for the purpose of spectral subtraction. Pyrolysis of 5 also generates dimethylhydroxylamine (7), a spectrum of which was also recorded from an authentic sample. Spectral subtraction allowed the first two ionization potentials of triene 6 at 7.2 and 9.8 eV to be identified. The resultant PE spectrum was compared very favorably with a simulated spectrum obtained from DFT calculations. A QTAIM analysis and calculation of delocalization indexes showed that while homoconjugation between C4 and C6 is negligible there is a weak through-space interaction between the bridgehead carbon atom C1 and C6 of the four-membered ring.Key words: bicyclo[3.2.0]hepta-1,3,6-triene, UV photoelectron spectroscopy, DFT calculations, QTAIM, delocalization indexes.

Retrieval and validation of ozone columns derived from measurements of SCIAMACHY on Envisat

This paper describes a new ozone column retrieval algorithm and its application to SCIAMACHY measurements. The TOSOMI algorithm is based on the Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) technique and implements several improvements over older algorithms. These improvements include aspects like (i) the explicit treatment of rotational Raman scattering, (ii) an improved air-mass factor formulation which is based on a simulation of the reflectivity spectrum and a subsequent DOAS fit of this simulated spectrum, (iii) the use of an improved ozone climatology and a column dependent air-mass factor, (iv) the use of daily varying ECMWF temperature profile analyses. The results of three validation exercises are reported. The TOSOMI columns are compared with an extensive set of ground-based observations (Brewer, Dobson) for the years 2003 and 2004. Secondly, a direct comparison for January–June 2003 with two new GOME retrievals, GDP Version 4 and TOGOMI, is presented. Third, data assimilation is used to study the dependence of the TOSOMI columns with retrieval parameters such as the viewing angle, cloud fraction and geographical location. These comparisons show a good consistency on the percent level between the GOME and SCIAMACHY algorithms. The present TOSOMI implementation (v0.32) shows an offset of about −1.5% with respect to ground-based observations and the GOME retrievals.