Magnetic field regression using artificial neural networks for cold atom experiments

Accurately measuring magnetic fields is essential for magnetic-field sensitive experiments in areas like atomic,molecular,and optical physics,condensed matter experiments,and other areas.However,since many experiments are often conducted in an isolated environment that is inaccessible to experimentalists,it can be challenging to accurately determine the magnetic field at the target location.Here,we propose an efficient method for detecting magnetic fields with the assistance of an artificial neural network(NN).Instead of measuring the magnetic field directly at the desired location,we detect fields at several surrounding positions,and a trained NN can accurately predict the magnetic field at the target location.After training,we achieve a below 0.3%relative prediction error of magnetic field magnitude at the center of the vacuum chamber,and successfully apply this method to our erbium quantum gas apparatus for accurate calibration of magnetic field and long-term monitoring of environmental stray magnetic field.The demonstrated approach significantly simplifies the process of determining magnetic fields in isolated environments and can be applied to various research fields across a wide range of magnetic field magnitudes.

Method for array gain and phase uncertainties calibration based on ISM and ESPRIT

A new method for array calibration of array gain and phase uncertainties, which severely degrade the performance of spatial spectrum estimation, is presented. The method is based on the idea of the instrumental sensors method （ISM）, two well-calibrated sensors are added into the original array. By applying the principle of estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques （ESPRIT）, the direction-of-arrivals （DOAs） and uncertainties can be estimated simultaneously through eigen-decomposition. Compared with the conventional ones, this new method has less computational complexity while has higher estimation precision, what＇s more, it can overcome the problem of ambiguity. Both theoretical analysis and computer simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Estimating the mirror seeing for a large optical telescope with a numerical method

It is widely accepted that mirror seeing is caused by turbulent fluctuations in the index of air refraction in the vicinity of a telescope mirror. Computational Fluid Dynamics（CFD） is a useful tool to evaluate the effects of mirror seeing. In this paper, we present a numerical method to estimate the mirror seeing for a large optical telescope（～ 4 m） in cases of natural convection with the ANSYS ICEPAK software. We get the FWHM of the image for different inclination angles（i） of the mirror and different temperature differences（△T） between the mirror and ambient air. Our results show that the mirror seeing depends very weakly on i, which agrees with observational data from the Canada-FranceHawaii Telescope. The numerical model can be used to estimate mirror seeing in the case of natural convection although with some limitations. We can determine △T for thermal control of the primary mirror according to the simulation, empirical data and site seeing.

Crossed Intralaminar Screws for Fusion of the Cervicothoracic Junction and the Thoracic Spine: The Experience in an Iberic Service with Case Series and Review of the Current Literature with Technique Description

The treatment of pathologies in the thoracic spine is a challenge. The periodic failure of pedicle screw insertion and anatomical variations make the search for an alternative to pedicle screws in thoracic spine surgery necessary. The interlaminar crossed screws is a well-known and secure method for fusion in cervical spine, and in thoracic spine there used to be insufficient clinical data to support this technique, until now. We demonstrate in an initial series of 10 cases treated with interlaminar fusion in association of other fusion techniques in the thoracic spine with good results. Objective: Intralaminar screws have been shown to be a biomechanical salvage technique in the thoracic spine, especially in long cervicothoracic, thoracic and thoracolumbar fixation. The goals of this article are to demonstrate our initial experience and the range of indications for thoracic crossed intralaminar screws. Methods: In this article we describe our initial series performed at S&#227o Teot&#243nio Hospital in Viseu, Portugal, and our results, and also provide a comprehensive review of the recent literature in the use of intralaminar crossed fixation.

Preface: Frontiers in Astrophysics(Ⅱ)——A special issue dedicated to the 20th anniversary of RAA(2001–2020)

On the arrival of the 20 th anniversary of the journal,Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics(RAA),we see rapid progress in the frontiers of astronomy and astrophysics.To celebrate the birth and growth of RAA,a special issue consisting of 11 invited reviews from more than 30 authors,mainly from China,has been organized.This is the second volume of the special issues entitled Frontiers in Astrophysics published in RAA.The publication aims at evaluating the current status and key progress in some frontier areas of astronomy and astrophysics with a spirit of guiding future studies.

Research on design of adaptive connecting mechanisms for the cable-net and panels of FAST

The reflector system of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope （FAST） is designed to incorporate 4450 rigid panels supported by a flexible cable-net structure. The shapechanging operation that occurs in the process of observation will lead to a relative displacement between adjacent nodes in the cable-net. In addition, three nodes on a rigid panel are fixed with respect to each other. Thus, adaptive connecting mechanisms between panels and the cable-net are certainly needed. The present work focuses on the following aspects. Firstly, the degrees of freedom of adaptive connecting mechanisms were designed so that we can not only adapt the panel to the deformation of the cable- net, but also restrict the panel to its right place. Secondly, finite element and theoretical analyses were applied to calculate the scope of motion in adaptive connecting mechanisms during the cable-net＇s shape-changing operation, thus providing input parameters for the design size of the adaptive connecting mechanisms. In addition, the gap size between the panels is also investigated to solve the trade-off between avoiding panel collisions and increasing the observation efficiency of FAST.

Preliminary numerical simulation of mirror seeing for the Chinese Future Giant Telescope

Mirror seeing will be one of the key factors influencing image quality of an extremely large ground-based optical telescope （ELT）. Computational fluid dynamics （CFD） can be used to estimate the mirror seeing and the effects of ventilation. In this paper, we present a simplified approach to simulation of mirror seeing for the Chinese Future Giant Telescope （CFGT, 30 m in diameter） with the CFD software ANSYS Icepak. We get the FWHM of the image and the distribution of refractive index structure function （CN2） above the mirror. We demonstrate that thermal control and ventilation are effective ways to improve the image quality. Our simulation results agree with those of other authors for the ELT. To reduce the mirror seeing to a level of 0.5＂, the suggested temperature excess of the primary mirror above the ambient air for thermal control of the CFGT is 0 - 2 K according to the present results of weakly forced convection. The limitations of the method are also discussed.

Acceleration feedback control (AFC) enhanced by disturbance observation and compensation (DOC) for high precision tracking in telescope systems

Abstract In this paper, a cascade acceleration feedback control （AFC） enhanced by a disturbance observa- tion and compensation （DOC） method is proposed to improve the tracking precision of telescope systems. Telescope systems usually suffer some uncertain disturbances, such as wind load, nonlinear friction and other unknown disturbances. To ensure tracking precision, an acceleration feedback loop which can in- crease the stiffness of such a system is introduced. Moreover, to further improve the tracking precision, we introduce the DOC method which can accurately estimate the disturbance and compensate it. Furthermore, the analysis of tracking accuracy used by this method is proposed. Finally, a few comparative experimental results show that the proposed control method has excellent performance for reducing the tracking error of a telescope system.

Development of a combined interferometer using millimeter wave solid state source and a far infrared laser on ENN's Xuan Long-50(EXL-50)

A millimeter wave solid state source—far infrared laser combined interferometer system(MFCI)consisting of a three-channel 890 GHz hydrogen cyanide(HCN)laser interferometer and a threechannel 340 GHz solid state source interferometer(SSI)is developed for real-time line-integrated electron density feedback and electron density profile of the EXL-50 spherical tokamak device.The interferometer system is a Mach–Zehnder type,with all probe-channels measured vertically,covering the plasma magnetic axis to the outermost closed magnetic plane.The HCN laser interferometer uses an HCN laser with a frequency of 890 GHz as a light source and modulates a100 k Hz beat signal by a rotating grating,giving a temporal resolution of 10μs.The SSI uses two independent 340 GHz solid-state diode sources as the light source,the frequency of the two sources is adjustable,and the temporal resolution of SSI can reach 1μs by setting the frequency difference of the two lasers at 1 MHz.The main optical path of the two interferometers is compactly installed on a set of double-layer optical platform directly below EXL-50.Dual optical path design using corner cube reflectors avoids the large support structures.Collinear the probebeams of two wavelengths,then the phase error caused by vibration can be compensated.At present,the phase noise of the HCN Interferometer is 0.08 rad,corresponding to a line-integrated electron density of 0.88×10^(17)m^(-2),one channel of measuring result was obtained by the MFCI system,and the highest density measured is about 0.7×10^(19)m^(-2).

A Study on the Technique of Observing Interplanetary Scintillation with Simultaneous Dual-Frequency Measurements

Ground-based observation of Interplanetary Scintillation （IPS） is an important approach of monitoring solar wind speed. We describe both the principle and method of observing the solar wind speed by using the normalized cross-spectrum of simultaneous dualfrequency IPS measurement. The effects of the solar wind properties and the angular size of the scintillation source on the measurement of solar wind speed are investigated by numerical analysis. We carry out a comparison of this method with the traditional single station-single frequency method. We outline a new IPS observation system using this method now under construction at the National Astronomical Observatories, CAS （NAOC）.

Thirty Meter Telescope Detailed Science Case:2015 Warren Skidmore on behalf of the TMT International Science Development Teams &TMT Science Advisory Committee

The TMT Detailed Science Case describes the transformational science that the Thirty Meter Telescope will enable. Planned to begin science operations in 2024, TMT will open up opportunities for revolutionary discoveries in essen- tially every field of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, seeing much fainter objects much more clearly than existing telescopes. Per this capability, TMT＇s sci- ence agenda fills all of space and time, from nearby comets and asteroids, to exo- planets, to the most distant galaxies, and all the way back to the very first sources of light in the universe. More than 150 astronomers from within the TMT partner- ship and beyond offered input in compiling the new 2015 Detailed Science Case. The contributing astronomers represent the entire TMT partnership, including the California Institute of Technology （Caltech）, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics （HA）, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences （NAOC）, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan （NAOJ）, the University of California, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy （ACURA） and US associate partner, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy （AURA）.

Distortion mapping correction in the AIMS primary mirror testing by a computer-generated hologram

The National Solar Observatory is currently developing the Accurate Infrared Magnetic Field Measurements of the Sun(AIMS). The primary mirror of the AIMS solar telescope is an off-axis parabolic with a diameter of 1 m and with a large off-axis amount of 1 m. Due to the surface figure of the primary mirror under the used state is directly related to image quality of the whole system, a computer-generated hologram(CGH) is carried out to test the primary mirror, and the test results are used to polish the mirror to a higher surface accuracy. However, the fact that the distortion exists in the testing results leads to the failure of a further guide to deterministic optical processing. In this paper, a distortion correction method is proposed, which uses an orthogonal set of vector polynomials to mapping the coordinates of the mirror and the pixels of fringes, and then an interpolation method is adopted to obtain the corrected results. The testing accuracy by using CGH is also verified by an auto-collimate test experiment. According to the distorted corrected results, the root-mean-square of the surface figure is about 1/50λ(λ=632.8 nm) after polishing.

Stochastic parallel gradient descent based adaptive optics used for a high contrast imaging coronagraph

An adaptive optics （AO） system based on a stochastic parallel gradient descent （SPGD） algorithm is proposed to reduce the speckle noises in the optical system of a stellar coronagraph in order to further improve the contrast. The principle of the SPGD algorithm is described briefly and a metric suitable for point source imaging optimization is given. The feasibility and good performance of the SPGD algorithm is demonstrated by an experimental system featured with a 140-actuator deformable mirror and a Hartrnann-Shark wavefront sensor. Then the SPGD based AO is applied to a liquid crystal array （LCA） based coronagraph to improve the contrast. The LCA can modulate the incoming light to generate a pupil apodization mask of any pattern. A circular stepped pattern is used in our preliminary experiment and the image contrast shows improvement from 10^-3 to 10^-4.5 at an angular distance of 2A/D after being corrected by SPGD based AO.

High-contrast coronagraph for ground-based imaging of Jupiter-like planets

We propose a high-contrast coronagraph for direct imaging of young Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby bright stars. The coronagraph employs a step- transmission filter in which the intensity is apodized with a finite number of steps with identical transmission in each step. It should be installed on a large ground-based telescope equipped with a state-of-the-art adaptive optics system. In this case, contrast ratios around 10-6 should be accessible within 0.1 arcsec of the central star. In recent progress, a coronagraph with a circular apodizing filter has been developed, which can be used for a ground-based telescope with a central obstruction and spider structure. It is shown that ground-based direct imaging of Jupiter-like planets is promising with current technology.

A solar radio dynamic spectrograph with flexible temporal-spectral resolution

Observation and research on solar radio emission have unique scientific values in solar and space physics and related space weather forecasting applications, since the observed spectral structures may carry important information about energetic electrons and underlying physical mechanisms. In this study, we present the design of a novel dynamic spectrograph that has been installed at the Chashan Solar Radio Observatory operated by the Laboratory for Radio Technologies, Institute of Space Sciences at Shandong University. The spectrograph is characterized by real-time storage of digitized radio intensity data in the time domain and its capability to perform off-line spectral analysis of the radio spectra. The analog signals received via antennas and amplified with a low-noise amplifier are converted into digital data at a speed reaching up to 32 k data points per millisecond. The digital data are then saved into a high- speed electronic disk for further off-line spectral analysis. Using different word lengths （1-32k） and time cadences （5 ms-10 s） for off-line fast Fourier transform analysis, we can obtain the dynamic spectrum of a radio burst with different （user-defined） temporal （5 ms-10 s） and spectral （3 kHz-320kHz） resolutions. This enables great flexibility and convenience in data analysis of solar radio bursts, especially when some specific fine spectral structures are under study.

Terrain reconstruction from Chang'e-3 PCAM images

The existing terrain models that describe the local lunar surface have limited resolution and accuracy, which can hardly meet the needs of rover navigation,positioning and geological analysis. China launched the lunar probe Chang＇e-3 in December, 2013. Chang＇e-3 encompassed a lander and a lunar rover called ＂Yutu＂（Jade Rabbit）. A set of panoramic cameras were installed on the rover mast. After acquiring panoramic images of four sites that were explored, the terrain models of the local lunar surface with resolution of 0.02 m were reconstructed. Compared with other data sources, the models derived from Chang＇e-3 data were clear and accurate enough that they could be used to plan the route of Yutu.

Data processing and initial results from the CE-3 Extreme Ultraviolet Camera

The Extreme Ultraviolet Camera （EUVC） onboard the Chang＇e-3 （CE-3） lander is used to observe the structure and dynamics of Earth＇s plasmasphere from the Moon. By detecting the resonance line emission of helium ions （He＋） at 30.4 nm, the EUVC images the entire plasmasphere with a time resolution of 10 min and a spatial resolution of about 0.1 Earth radius （RE） in a single frame. We first present details about the data processing from EUVC and the data acquisition in the commissioning phase, and then report some initial results, which reflect the basic features of the plas- masphere well. The photon count and emission intensity of EUVC are consistent with previous observations and models, which indicate that the EUVC works normally and can provide high quality data for future studies.

NBFTP: a dedicated data transfer system for remote astronomical observation at Dome A

Dome A,Antarctica,has been thought to be one of the best astronomical sites on the Earth for decades.Since it was first visited by astronomers in 2008,dozens of facilities for astronomical observation and site testing were deployed.Due to its special geographical location,the data and message exchange between Dome A and the domestic control center could only depend on Iridium.Because the link bandwidth of Iridium is extremely limited,the network traffic cost is quite expensive and the network is rather unstable,the commonly used data transfer tools,such as rsync and scp,are not suitable in this case.In this paper,we design and implement a data transfer tool called NBFTP(narrow bandwidth file transfer protocol)for the astronomical observation of Dome A.NBFTP uses a uniform interface to arrange all types of data and matches specific transmission schemes for different data types according to rules.Break-point resuming and extensibility functions are also implemented.Our experimental results show that NBFTP consumes 60%less network traffic than rsync when detecting the data pending to be transferred.When transferring small files of 1 KB,the network traffic consumption of NBFTP is 40%less than rsync.However,as the file size increases,the network traffic consumption of NBFTP tends to approach rsync,but it is still smaller than rsync.

An open-loop control algorithm of the active reflector system of FAST

An open-loop control algorithm is put forward for continuous paraboloid deformation of the active reflector system of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope(FAST).The method is based on a calibration database and interpolation in 2D spatial domain and temperature domain,respectively.It is completely independent of real-time measurement of cable nodes so that it has advantage of working all-weather and no additional electro-magnetic interference(EMI).Furthermore,its control accuracy can be effectively improved via reasonable layout of the calibrated paraboloids and increasing calibration accuracy.Meanwhile deformation safety is considered via calibration as well.Finally its control accuracy is also confirmed via site measurements of paraboloid deformations.

Scientific data products and the data pre-processing subsystem of the Chang'e-3 mission

The Chang＇e-3 （CE-3） mission is China＇s first exploration mission on the surface of the Moon that uses a lander and a rover. Eight instruments that form the scientific payloads have the following objectives： （1） investigate the morphological features and geological structures at the landing site; （2） integrated in-situ analysis of minerals and chemical compositions; （3） integrated exploration of the structure of the lunar interior; （4） exploration of the lunar-terrestrial space environment, lunar sur- face environment and acquire Moon-based ultraviolet astronomical observations. The Ground Research and Application System （GRAS） is in charge of data acquisition and pre-processing, management of the payload in orbit, and managing the data products and their applications. The Data Pre-processing Subsystem （DPS） is a part of GRAS. The task of DPS is the pre-processing of raw data from the eight instruments that are part of CE-3, including channel processing, unpacking, package sorting, calibration and correction, identification of geographical location, calculation of probe azimuth angle, probe zenith angle, solar azimuth angle, and solar zenith angle and so on, and conducting quality checks. These processes produce Level 0, Level 1 and Level 2 data. The computing platform of this subsystem is comprised of a high-performance computing cluster, including a real-time subsystem used for processing Level 0 data and a post-time subsystem for generating Level 1 and Level 2 data. This paper de- scribes the CE-3 data pre-processing method, the data pre-processing subsystem, data classification, data validity and data products that are used for scientific studies.