Roles of magnetospheric convection on nonlinear drift resonance between electrons and ULF waves

<p>In the Earth's inner magnetosphere, charged particles can be accelerated and transported by ultralow frequency (ULF) waves via drift resonance. We investigate the effects of magnetospheric convection on the nonlinear drift resonance process, which provides an inhomogeneity factor S to externally drive the pendulum equation that describes the particle motion in the ULF wave  field. The S factor, defined as the ratio of the driving amplitude to the square of the pendulum trapping frequency, is found to vary with magnetic local time and as a consequence, oscillates quasi-periodically at the particle drift frequency. To better understand the particle behavior governed by the driven pendulum equation, we carry out simulations to obtain the evolution of electron distribution functions in energy and L-shell phase space. We find that resonant electrons can remain trapped by the low-m ULF waves under strong convection electric  field, whereas for high-m ULF waves, the electrons trajectories can be significantly modified. More interestingly, the electron drift frequency is close to the nonlinear trapping frequency for intermediate-m ULF waves, which corresponds to chaotic motion of resonant electrons. These  findings shed new light on the nature of particle coherent and diffusive transport in the inner magnetosphere.</p>

Real Time Electronic Feedback for Improved Acoustic Trapping of Micron-Scale Particles

Acoustic differential extraction has been previously reported as a viable alternative to the repetitive manual pipetting and centrifugation steps for isolating sperm cells from female epithelial cells in sexual assault sample evidence. However, the efficiency of sperm cell isolation can be compromised in samples containing an extremely large number of epithelial cells. When highly concentrated samples are lysed, changes to the physicochemical nature of the medium surrounding the cells impacts the acoustic frequency needed for optimal trapping. Previous work has demonstrated successful, automated adjustment of acoustic frequency to account for changes in temperature and buffer properties in various samples. Here we show that, during acoustic trapping, real-time monitoring of voltage measurements across the piezoelectric transducer correlates with sample-dependent changes in the medium. This is achieved with a wideband peak detector circuit, which identifies the resonant frequency with minimal disruption to the applied voltage. We further demonstrate that immediate, corresponding adjustments to acoustic trapping frequency provides retention of sperm cells from high epithelial cell-containing mock sexual assault samples.

Frequency tracking in acoustic trapping for improved performance stability and system surveillance

This work demonstrates an acoustic trapping system where the optimal trapping frequency is automatically determined and can be used to analyse changes in the acoustic trap.