Fifteen meter long uninterrupted filaments from sub-terawatt ultraviolet pulse in air.

A technique is presented to create uninterrupted long ultraviolet filaments in air using appropriately structured transmission mesh. The mesh with different cell sizes was inserted into 10-cm parallel beam of 0.2-J, 248-nm, and 870-fs pulse propagating along ~100-m corridor. Transverse positions of multiple filaments formed by the optimum size cells were reproducible within at least 15 m along the propagation path. 3D+time simulations confirmed uninterrupted plasma channels with fixed positions in the transverse space similar to the experiment. Unoptimized cell size resulted in filaments shifting towards the cell center and destruction of uninterrupted filaments.

Chemical characterization of element 112.

The heaviest elements to have been chemically characterized are seaborgium (element 106), bohrium (element 107) and hassium (element 108). All three behave according to their respective positions in groups 6, 7 and 8 of the periodic table, which arranges elements according to their outermost electrons and hence their chemical properties. However, the chemical characterization results are not trivial: relativistic effects on the electronic structure of the heaviest elements can strongly influence chemical properties. The next heavy element targeted for chemical characterization is element 112; its closed-shell electronic structure with a filled outer s orbital suggests that it may be particularly susceptible to strong deviations from the chemical property trends expected within group 12. Indeed, first experiments concluded that element 112 does not behave like its lighter homologue mercury. However, the production and identification methods used cast doubt on the validity of this result. Here we report a more reliable chemical characterization of element 112, involving the production of two atoms of (283)112 through the alpha decay of the short-lived (287)114 (which itself forms in the nuclear fusion reaction of 48Ca with 242Pu) and the adsorption of the two atoms on a gold surface. By directly comparing the adsorption characteristics of (283)112 to that of mercury and the noble gas radon, we find that element 112 is very volatile and, unlike radon, reveals a metallic interaction with the gold surface. These adsorption characteristics establish element 112 as a typical element of group 12, and its successful production unambiguously establishes the approach to the island of stability of superheavy elements through 48Ca-induced nuclear fusion reactions with actinides.

Geometrically nonlinear modelling of pre-stressed viscoelastic fibre-reinforced composites with application to arteries.

Mechanical behaviour of pre-stressed fibre-reinforced composites is modelled in a geometrically exact setting. A general approach which includes two different reference configurations is employed: one configuration corresponds to the load-free state of the structure and another one to the stress-free state of each material particle. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated in terms of a viscoelastic material model; both the matrix and the fibre are modelled using a multiplicative split of the deformation gradient tensor; a transformation rule for initial conditions is elaborated and specified. Apart from its simplicity, an important advantage of the approach is that well-established numerical algorithms can be used for pre-stressed inelastic structures. The interrelation between the advocated approach and the widely used "opening angle" approach is clarified. A full-scale FEM simulation confirms the main predictions of the "opening angle" approach. A locking effect is discovered: in some cases the opening angle of the composite is essentially smaller than the opening angles of its individual layers. Thus, the standard cutting test typically used to analyse pre-stresses does not carry enough information and more refined experimental techniques are needed.

Quasiperiodic plane tilings based on stepped surfaces.

Static and dynamic characteristics of layerwise growth in two-dimensional quasiperiodic Ito-Ohtsuki tilings are studied. These tilings are the projections of three-dimensional stepped surfaces. It is proved that these tilings have hexagonal self-similar growth with bounded radius of neighborhood. A formula is given for the averaged coordination number. Deviations of coordination numbers from its average are quasiperiodic. Ito-Ohtsuki tiling can be decomposed into one-dimensional sector layers. These sector layers are one-dimensional quasiperiodic tilings with properties like Ito-Ohtsuki tilings.

Complex quasiperiodic self-similar tilings: their parameterization, boundaries, complexity, growth and symmetry.

A class of quasiperiodic tilings of the complex plane is discussed. These tilings are based on beta-expansions corresponding to cubic irrationalities. There are three classes of tilings: Q(3), Q(4) and Q(5). These classes consist of three, four and five pairwise similar prototiles, respectively. A simple algorithm for construction of these tilings is considered. This algorithm uses greedy expansions of natural numbers on some sequence. Weak and strong parameterizations for tilings are obtained. Layerwise growth, the complexity function and the structure of fractal boundaries of tilings are studied. The parameterization of vertices and boundaries of tilings, and also similarity transformations of tilings, are considered.