Energetic Collisions Research Articles

Impact sculpting of the early martian atmosphere.

Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed substantial masses of gas from rocky planet atmospheres. Noble gases are powerful tracers of this early atmospheric history, xenon in particular, which on Mars and Earth shows significant depletions and isotopic fractionations relative to the lighter noble gasses. To evaluate the effect of impacts on the loss and fractionation of xenon, we measure its ionization and recombination efficiency by laser shock and apply these constraints to model impact-driven atmospheric escape on Mars. We demonstrate that impact bombardment within the first 200 to 300 million years of solar system history generates the observed Xe depletion and isotope fractionation of the modern martian atmosphere. This process may also explain the Xe depletion recorded in Earth's deep mantle and provides a latest date for the timing of giant planet instability.

Cavitating Bubbles in Condensing Gas as a Means of Forming Clumps, Chondrites, and Planetesimals

Vaporized metal, silicates, and ices on the verge of recondensing into solid or liquid particles appear in many contexts: behind shocks, in impact ejecta, and within the atmospheres and outflows of stars, disks, planets, and minor bodies. We speculate that a condensing gas might fragment, forming overdensities within relative voids, from a radiation–condensation instability. Seeded with small thermal fluctuations, a condensible gas will exhibit spatial variations in the density of particle condensates. Regions of higher particle density may radiate more, cooling faster. Faster cooling leads to still more condensation, lowering the local pressure. Regions undergoing runaway condensation may collapse under the pressure of their less condensed surroundings. Particle condensates will compactify with collapsing regions, potentially into macroscopic bodies (planetesimals). As a first step toward realizing this hypothetical instability, we calculate the evolution of a small volume of condensing silicate vapor—a spherical test “bubble” embedded in a background medium whose pressure and radiation field are assumed fixed for simplicity. Such a bubble condenses and collapses upon radiating its latent heat to the background, assuming that its energy loss is not stopped by background irradiation. Collapse speeds can range up to sonic, similar to cavitation in terrestrial settings. Adding a noncondensible gas like hydrogen to the bubble stalls the collapse. We discuss whether cavitation can provide a way for millimeter-sized chondrules and refractory solids to assemble into meteorite parent bodies, focusing on CB/CH chondrites whose constituent particles likely condensed from silicate/metal vapor released from the most energetic asteroid collisions.

Shock melt in the Cold Bokkeveld CM2 carbonaceous chondrite and the response of C‐complex asteroids to hypervelocity impacts

AbstractMany of the CM carbonaceous chondrites are regolith breccias and so should have abundant evidence for collisional processing. The constituent clasts of these fragmental rocks frequently display compactional petrofabrics; yet, olivine microstructures show that most CMs are unshocked. To better understand the reasons for this contradiction, we have sought other evidence for hypervelocity impact processing of CM chondrites using the Cold Bokkeveld meteorite. We find that this regolith breccia contains rare particles of vesicular shock melt that are close in chemical composition to bulk CM chondrite. Transmission electron microscopy of a melt bead shows that it is composed of silicate glass with inclusions of pentlandite, pyrrhotite, and wüstite. Characterization of shards of another bead by atom probe tomography reveals nanoscale clusters of sulfur that represent sulfide inclusions arrested at an early stage of growth. These glass particles are mineralogically comparable to micrometeoroid impact melt described from the Cb‐type asteroid Ryugu and melt that has been experimentally produced by pulsed laser irradiation of CM targets. The glass could have formed by in situ shock‐melting, but petrographic evidence is more consistent with an origin as ballistic ejecta from a distal impact. The scarcity of melt in this meteorite, and CM chondrites more broadly, is consistent with the explosive fragmentation of hydrous asteroids following energetic collisions. Cold Bokkeveld's parent body is likely to be a second‐generation asteroid that was constructed from the debris of one or more earlier bodies, and only a small proportion of the reaccreted material had been highly shocked and melted.

Ionization by radiative energy transport vs. impact ionization in energetic atomic collisions

Abstract We explore a mechanism for ionization in high-velocity (but not yet relativistic) collisions of light atomic particles, one of which being initially in an excited internal state. This mechanism is driven by the generalized Breit interaction and proceeds via radiative energy transport between the colliding particles which has an extremely long range. A comparison of this mechanism with those which are ‘standard’ for high-velocity collisions shows that it can play a noticeable role in collisions with excited target atoms.

An early giant planet instability recorded in asteroidal meteorites

Giant planet migration appears widespread among planetary systems in our Galaxy. However, the timescales of this process, which reflect the underlying dynamical mechanisms, are not well constrained, even within the Solar System. As planetary migration scatters smaller bodies onto intersecting orbits, it would have resulted in an epoch of enhanced bombardment in the Solar System’s asteroid belt. Here, to accurately and precisely quantify the timescales of migration, we interrogate thermochronologic data from asteroidal meteorites, which record the thermal imprint of energetic collisions. We present a database of 40K–40Ar system ages from chondrite meteorites and evaluate it with an asteroid-scale thermal code coupled to a Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion. Simulations require bombardment to reproduce the observed age distribution and identify a bombardment event beginning 11.3−6.6+9.5Myr\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$11.{3}_{-6.6}^{+9.5}\\, {\\mathrm{Myr}}$$\\end{document} after the Sun formed (50% credible interval). Our results associate a giant planet instability in our Solar System with the dissipation of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.

An N-body/hydrodynamical simulation study of the merging cluster El Gordo: A compelling case for self-interacting dark matter?

We used a large set N-body/hydrodynamical simulations to study the physical properties of the merging cluster El Gordo. We find that the observed X-ray structures, along with other data, can be matched fairly well by simulations with collision velocities 2000 km s−1 ≲ V ≲ 2500 km s−1 and impact parameters 600 kpc ≲ P ≲ 800 kpc. The mass of the primary is constrained to be between ∼1015 M⊙ and ∼1.6 × 1015 M⊙, in accordance with recent lensing-based mass measurements. Moreover, a returning, post-apocenter, scenario is not supported by our head-on simulations. We also considered merger models that incorporate dark matter self-interactions. The simulation results show that the observed spatial offsets between the different mass components are well reproduced in self-interacting dark matter models with an elastic cross-section in the range σDM/mX ∼ 4 − 5 cm2 gr−1. In addition, the mean relative line-of-sight radial velocity between the two brightest cluster galaxies is found to be on the order of several hundred km s−1. We argue that these findings provide an unambiguous signature of a dark matter behavior that exhibits collisional properties in a very energetic high-redshift cluster collision. The range of allowed values we find for σDM/mX is, however, inconsistent with present upper limits. To resolve this tension, we suggest the possibility that the self-interacting dark matter model used here be considered as only a low-order approximation, and that the underlying physical processes that describe the interaction of dark matter in major cluster mergers are more complex than can be adequately represented by the commonly assumed approach based on the scattering of dark matter particles.

Spectroscopic and thermodynamic characterization of the interaction of a new synthesized antitumor drug candidate 2H4MBBH with human serum albumin

In the present work we studied the interactions of a newly synthesized drug candidate, 2-(2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzylidene)-1-(1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)hydrazine (2H4MBBH), with human serum albumin (HSA) by fluorescence spectroscopy. 2H4MBBH-HSA binding parameters were assessed by fluorescence quenching strategy. As made clear by the concentration data, 2H4MBBH unequivocally quenched the instrinsic HSA fluorescence. The calculated Stern-Volmer quenching constant Ksv, the Ka of 2H4MBBH-HSA complexes, as well as the thermodynamic parameters ∆H°, ∆S° and ∆G°, showed that the H-bonding forces play major part in the interaction of 2H4MBBH with HSA. These calculations point to a quenching component based on 2H4MBBH-HSA static complex formation rather than energetic collisions.

Projectile Fragmentation Characteristics of the Events Produced from 84Kr+Emulsion Interaction at 1 a Gev

ABSTRACT: Projectile fragmentation is a rather well-isolated phenomenon within the complex context of highly energetic heavy-ion collisions with a multibaryon system. The projectile fragmentation study reveals the characteristics of the particles release out from the projectile spectator region. The goal of present investigation is to study the emission possibility of single event, double events and triple events for the single charge, double charge and multiple charge projectile fragments. The observation show that the emission possibility of single, double and triple events is depending on the types of the projectile fragments.

Dual Tunability for Uncatalyzed N-Alkylation of Primary Amines Enabled by Plasma-Microdroplet Fusion.

The fusion of non-thermal plasma with charged microdroplets facilitates catalyst-free N-alkylation for a variety of primary amines, without halide salt biproduct generation. Significant reaction enhancement (up to >200×) is observed over microdroplet reactions generated from electrospray. This enhancement for the plasma-microdroplet system is attributed to the combined effects of energetic collisions and the presence of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The ROS (e.g., O2•-) act as a proton sink to increase abundance of free neutral amines in the charged microdroplet environment. The effect of ROS on N-alkylation is confirmed through three unique experiments: (i) utilization of radical scavenging reagent, (ii) characterization of internal energy distribution, and (iii) controls performed without plasma, which lacked reaction acceleration. Establishing plasma discharge in the wake of charged microdroplets as a green synthetic methodology overcomes two major challenges within conventional gas-phase plasma chemistry, including the lack of selectivity and product scale-up. Both limitations are overcome here, where dual tunability is achieved by controlling reagent concentration and residence time in the microdroplet environment, affording single or double N-alkylated products. Products are readily collected yielding milligram quantities in eight hours. These results showcase a novel synthetic strategy that represents a straightforward and sustainable C-N bond-forming process.

Dual Tunability for Uncatalyzed N‐Alkylation of Primary Amines Enabled by Plasma‐Microdroplet Fusion

AbstractThe fusion of non‐thermal plasma with charged microdroplets facilitates catalyst‐free N‐alkylation for a variety of primary amines, without halide salt biproduct generation. Significant reaction enhancement (up to >200×) is observed over microdroplet reactions generated from electrospray. This enhancement for the plasma‐microdroplet system is attributed to the combined effects of energetic collisions and the presence of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The ROS (e.g., O2⋅−) act as a proton sink to increase abundance of free neutral amines in the charged microdroplet environment. The effect of ROS on N‐alkylation is confirmed through three unique experiments: (i) utilization of radical scavenging reagent, (ii) characterization of internal energy distribution, and (iii) controls performed without plasma, which lacked reaction acceleration. Establishing plasma discharge in the wake of charged microdroplets as a green synthetic methodology overcomes two major challenges within conventional gas‐phase plasma chemistry, including the lack of selectivity and product scale‐up. Both limitations are overcome here, where dual tunability is achieved by controlling reagent concentration and residence time in the microdroplet environment, affording single or double N‐alkylated products. Products are readily collected yielding milligram quantities in eight hours. These results showcase a novel synthetic strategy that represents a straightforward and sustainable C−N bond‐forming process.

RSO proper elements: Concept, methods, and application to maneuver detection

Asteroid families consist of swarms of fragments generated after energetic interasteroidal collisions in the distant past that resulted in the breakup of their progenitors. They are recognized by searching for clusters in the three-dimensional space of “proper elements”; parameters characterizing the asteroid orbits that are very close to fundamental invariants of motion, and thus keep a dynamical record of the initial proximity of the orbits generated by a catastrophic fragmentation event. In the circumterrestrial context, proper elements have recently been applied to the dynamical taxonomy of resident space objects (RSO) for the association of debris from breakup into its “parent” satellite. Here, we clarify, adapt, and extend this fundamental concept to space situational awareness for on-orbit maneuver/anomaly detection. RSO proper elements, being linked to the underlying dynamical structure of orbits, can provide a more robust metric within existing maneuver-detection algorithms, through assessment of the induced changes in these quasi invariants of the motion. We highlight the deeper connection of proper elements to classical frozen orbits in Earth-satellite dynamics and to secular elements in artificial satellite theories based on canonical perturbation theory and showcase several techniques for their numerical computation, including a newly proposed Ptolemy method; applicable to both the asteroid and space-debris domains. We apply a Bayesian online changepoint-detection (BOCD) algorithm in both mean- and proper-element space and compare their performances for orbit-maneuver detection.

Medium Response and Jet–Hadron Correlations in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

The study of high-energy heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider has evolved from a qualitative understanding to the precise extraction of the properties of the quantum chromodynamics medium at extremely high temperatures. Jet quenching has offered unique insights into the transport properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) created in these energetic collisions. Apart from medium modification of jets, jet-induced medium excitation constitutes another crucial aspect of jet–QGP interaction and is indispensable in understanding the soft components of jets. We review recent theoretical and phenomenological developments regarding medium response to jet energy loss, including an overview of both weakly and strongly coupled approaches for describing the thermalization and propagation of energy deposition from jets, effects of medium response on jet observables, and exploration of its unique signatures in jet–hadron correlations. Jet-induced medium excitation is shown to be an essential component in probing the in-medium dynamics of jets and a critical step toward precise extraction of the QGP properties.

PH and H-bonding energy for pure water

This paper is devoted to the estimation of pH for pure water. We assume that the dissociation of water molecules is mainly caused by binary high energetic collisions. The dissociation energy in liquid water is identified with the energy of H-bonding. The density dependence of the dissociation energy TD is described. It is shown that this dependence allows to successfully reproduce the experimental values of pH up to the boiling temperature.

Dissociation Kinetics in Quadrupole Ion Traps: Effective Temperatures under Dipolar DC Collisional Activation Conditions.

Ions stored in an electrodynamic ion trap can be forced from the center of the ion trap to regions of higher radio frequency (RF) electric fields by exposing them to a dipolar DC (DDC) potential applied across opposing electrodes. Such ions absorb power from the trapping RF field, resulting in increased ripple motion at the frequency of the trapping RF. When a bath gas is present, ions undergo energetic collisions that result in "RF-heating" sufficient to induce fragmentation. DDC is therefore a broad-band (i.e., mass-to-charge-independent) means for collisional activation in ion traps with added bath gas. Under appropriate conditions, the internal energy distribution of an ion population undergoing dissociation can be approximated with an effective temperature, Teff. In such cases, it is possible to determine thermal activation parameters, such as Arrhenius activation energies and A-factors, by measuring dissociation kinetics. In this work, the well-studied thermometer ion, protonated leucine enkephalin, was subjected to DDC activation under rapid energy exchange conditions and in two separate bath gases, N2 and Ar, to measure Teff as a function of the ratio of DDC and RF voltages. As a result, an empirically derived calibration was generated to link experimental conditions to Teff. It was also possible to quantitatively evaluate a model described by Tolmachev et al. that can be used to predict Teff. It was found that the model, which was derived under the assumption of an atomic bath gas, accurately predicts Teff when Ar was used as the bath gas but overestimates Teff when N2 was the bath gas. Adjustment of the Tolmachev et al. model for a diatomic gas resulted in an underestimate of Teff. Thus, use of an atomic gas can provide accurate activation parameters, while an empirical correction factor should be used to generate activation parameters using N2.

Turning Noise Into Data: Characterization of the Van Allen Radiation Belt Using SDO Spikes Data

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a solar mission in an inclined geosynchronous orbit. Since commissioning, images acquired by Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on-board the SDO have frequently displayed “spikes,” pixel regions yielding extreme number of digital counts. These are theorized to occur from energetic electron collisions with the instrument detector system. These spikes are regularly removed from AIA Level 1.0 images to produce clean and reliable data. A study of historical data has found over 100 trillion spikes in the past decade. This project correlates spike detection frequency with radiation environment parameters in order to generate an augmented data product from SDO. We conduct a correlation study between SDO/AIA data and radiation belt activity within the SDO's orbit. By extracting radiation “spike” data from the SDO/AIA images, we produce a comprehensive data product which is correlated not only with geomagnetic parameters such as Kp, Ap, and Sym-H but also with the electron and proton fluxes measured by the GOES-14 satellite. As a result, we find that AIA spikes are highly correlated with the GOES-14 electrons detected by the magnetospheric electron detector and energetic proton, electron and alpha detectors instruments at the equator (where the two satellites meet) with Spearman's Correlation values of ρ = 0.73 and ρ = 0.53, respectively, while a weaker correlation of ρ = 0.47 is shown with magnetospheric proton detector protons for the 2 year period where both missions returned data uninterruptedly. This correlation proves that the SDO spike data can be proven useful for characterizing the Van Allen radiation belt, especially at areas where other satellites cannot.

Dissipative Reactions with Intermediate-Energy Beams: A Novel Approach to Populate Complex-Structure States in Rare Isotopes.

A novel pathway for the formation of multiparticle-multihole excited states in rare isotopes is reported from highly energy- and momentum-dissipative inelastic-scattering events measured in reactions of an intermediate-energy beam of ^{38}Ca on a Be target. The negative-parity, complex-structure final states in ^{38}Ca are observed following the in-beam γ-ray spectroscopy of events in the ^{9}Be(^{38}Ca,^{38}Ca+γ)X reaction in which the scattered projectile loses longitudinal momentum of order Δp_{||}=700 MeV/c. The characteristics of the observed final states are discussed and found to be consistent with the formation of excited states involving the rearrangement of multiple nucleons in a single, highly energetic projectile-target collision. Unlike the far-less-dissipative, surface-grazing reactions usually exploited for the in-beam γ-ray spectroscopy of rare isotopes, these more energetic collisions appear to offer a practical pathway to nuclear-structure studies of more complex multiparticle configurations in rare isotopes-final states conventionally thought to be out of reach with high-luminosity fast-beam-induced reactions.

The effect of enclosed water–ice pockets on porous silica cluster collisions

Collisions between dust particles play an important role in the initial stages of the formation of rocky planets. In space, silica dust exhibits a porous structure due to its formation history. Outside the ice line, water–ice will be present on and in silica dust particles, such that collisions between water-ice-filled porous silica grains are relevant. Molecular dynamics simulations are used to simulate central collisions of such grains (diameter 44 nm), focusing on the analysis of bouncing events. While naked bulk silica particles bounce at high velocities, empty porous silica particles always stick since plastic deformation of the porous structure adds to energy dissipation during the collision. Ice-filled porous silica particles exhibit bouncing collisions already at smaller velocities than naked bulk silica particles of the same size. Collision-induced heating of the ice in the collision zone and also in the pores assists the bouncing process. The coefficient of restitution shows good agreement with available macroscopic models, if both the bouncing velocity and the energy dissipation during the collision are used as fitting parameters. Our results give insights into the agglomeration and bouncing of heterogeneous silica–ice particles, relevant for energetic collision processes outside of the ice line in protoplanetary and planetary systems.

Constraints from isoscaling on the source size in energetic heavy ion collisions

In the framework of the statistical multifragmentation model, the nuclear isoscaling analysis is extended to constrain the ratio between the sizes of the decaying sources formed in a collision between two heavy ions. It is found that the ratio between the probabilities of observing $n$ fragments in each event, for each of the sources, follows a scaling law, similar to the traditional nuclear isoscaling. However, the corresponding slope is sensitive to the source sizes. This property is explained analytically using the grand-canonical ensemble. The extent to which our findings are affected by finite size effects and by the deexcitation of the hot primary fragments is investigated. The scaling turns out to be robust and weakly affected by effects implied by these two aspects. We also find that the Poisson distribution is a fairly good approximation to the above mentioned probabilities, associated with both the primordial fragments, produced at the breakup stage, and the final ones, found at the end of the fragment deexcitation process.

Exploring reaction mechanism for ammonia/methane combustion via reactive molecular dynamics simulations

Ammonia has gained growing attention as a carbon-free fuel. However, extensive studies are still needed to clarify and complete reaction mechanisms for ammonia combustion over a wide range of conditions. In the present study, a series of reactive molecular dynamics simulations that could reproduce the ammonia/methane (NH3/CH4) combustion in air at high temperature and pressure conditions were conducted. Results show that high temperature accelerates the consumption of NH3 and affects the yield of nitrogen oxides (NOx). Meanwhile, high pressure accelerates the NH3 consumption, which could be partly attributed to the frequent energetic collisions, and influences the formation of NOx. To understand the mechanism for NOx formation, the reaction pathways of NH3/CH4 combustion at high pressures were generated by tracing the trajectories of reacting atoms. Results suggest that high pressure complicates reaction pathways of NH3/CH4 combustion as it enhances the molecular/atomic collisions. By comparing with five popular NH3/CH4 combustion mechanisms, new intermediates and elementary reactions revealed by this study are identified. The activation energies for a few featured elementary reactions are calculated as well. The activation energies obtained from the present study agree with previous results from combustion kinetics studies. The present study demonstrates the feasibility to generate reaction network via tracing the atomic events in a reacting system and that the reactive molecular dynamics is a cost-effective tool in revealing in-depth reaction mechanisms under extreme conditions.

Temperature dependence of cluster decay

A universal decay law (UDL) for light cluster decay of excited nuclei is formulated by fitting the UDL half-lives to those evaluated within an excitation energy-dependent double folding model (DFM). The half-lives are evaluated within a preformed cluster model. The excitation energy dependence is introduced both in the energy of the emitted cluster and in the interaction potential through the density distributions of the interacting nuclei. The half-lives are found to decrease when the difference between the excitation energies of the parent and daughter nuclei, ΔE⁎> 0, increases, with the reduction being a few orders of magnitude for higher values of ΔE⁎. This can be of importance for nucleosynthesis calculations of heavy elements formed in extremely hot environments, as well as in highly energetic heavy-ion collisions. The UDL for excited nuclei is used to provide an estimate of the enhancement in the cluster decay rates of thermally excited nuclei such as those produced in r-process nucleosynthesis.