Research Activities on Space Electronics in CAST

This paper gives a brief review of the research activities on space electronics done in Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST), especially in Xi'an Institute of Space Radio Technology (XISRT). XISRT undertakes the development and manufacturing of space borne electronic equipment and their relevant ground TT&C in CAST. This paper deals with satellite communication and remote sensing.

Forming of Space Charge Wave with Broad Frequency Spectrum in Helical Relativistic Two-Stream Electron Beams

We elaborate a quadratic nonlinear theory of plural interactions of growing space charge wave （SCW） harmonics during the development of the two-stream instability in helical relativistic electron beams. It is found that in helical two-stream electron beams the growth rate of the two-stream instability increases with the beam entrance angle. An SCW with the broad frequency spectrum, in which higher harmonics have higher amplitudes, forms when the frequency of the first SCW harmonic is much less than the critical frequency of the two-stream instability. For helical electron beams the spectrum expands with the increase of the beam entrance angle. Moreover, we obtain that utilizing helical electron beams in multiharmonic two-stream superheterodyne free-electron lasers leads to the improvement of their amplification characteristics, the frequency spectrum broadening in multiharmonic signal generation mode, and the reduction of the overall system dimensions.

Theoretical description of electron-phonon Fock space for gapless and gapped nanowires

We study the effect of electron-phonon （e-ph） interaction on the elastic and inelastic electronic transport of a nanowire connected to two simple rigid leads within the tight-binding and harmonic approximations. The model is constructed using Green＇s function and multi-channel techniques, taking into account the local and nonlocal e-ph interactions. Then, we examine the model for the gapless （simple chain） and gapped （PA-like nanowire） systems. The results show that the tunneling conductance is improved by the e-ph interaction in both local and nonlocal regimes, while for the resonance conductance, the coherent part mainly decreases and the incoherent part increases. At the corresponding energies which depend on the phonon frequency, two dips in the elastic and two peaks in the inelastic conductance spectra appear. The reason is the absorption of the phonon by the electron in transition into inelastic channels.

On the loss mechanisms of radiation belt electron dropouts during the 12 September 2014 geomagnetic storm

Radiation belt electron dropouts indicate electron flux decay to the background level during geomagnetic storms,which is commonly attributed to the effects of wave-induced pitch angle scattering and magnetopause shadowing.To investigate the loss mechanisms of radiation belt electron dropouts triggered by a solar wind dynamic pressure pulse event on 12 September 2014,we comprehensively analyzed the particle and wave measurements from Van Allen Probes.The dropout event was divided into three periods:before the storm,the initial phase of the storm,and the main phase of the storm.The electron pitch angle distributions(PADs)and electron flux dropouts during the initial and main phases of this storm were investigated,and the evolution of the radial profile of electron phase space density(PSD)and the(μ,K)dependence of electron PSD dropouts(whereμ,K,and L^*are the three adiabatic invariants)were analyzed.The energy-independent decay of electrons at L>4.5 was accompanied by butterfly PADs,suggesting that the magnetopause shadowing process may be the major loss mechanism during the initial phase of the storm at L>4.5.The features of electron dropouts and 90°-peaked PADs were observed only for>1 MeV electrons at L<4,indicating that the wave-induced scattering effect may dominate the electron loss processes at the lower L-shell during the main phase of the storm.Evaluations of the(μ,K)dependence of electron PSD drops and calculations of the minimum electron resonant energies of H+-band electromagnetic ion cyclotron(EMIC)waves support the scenario that the observed PSD drop peaks around L^*=3.9 may be caused mainly by the scattering of EMIC waves,whereas the drop peaks around L^*=4.6 may result from a combination of EMIC wave scattering and outward radial diffusion.

Single event effect hardness for the front-end ASICs in the DAMPE satellite BGO calorimeter

The Dark Matter Particle Explorer （DAMPE） is a Chinese scientific satellite designed for cosmic ray studies with a primary scientific goal of indirect detection of dark matter particles. As a crucial sub-detector, the BGO calorimeter measures the energy spectrum of cosmic rays in the energy range from 5 GeV to 10 TeV. In order to implement high-density front-end electronics （FEE） with the ability to measure 1848 signals from 616 photomultiplier tubes on the strictly constrained satellite platform, two kinds of 32-channel front-end ASICs, VA160 and VATA160, are customized. However, a space mission period of more than 3 years makes single event effects （SEEs） become threats to reliability. In order to evaluate SEE sensitivities of these chips and verify the effectiveness of mitigation methods, a series of laser-induced and heavy ion-induced SEE tests were performed. Benefiting from the single event latch-up （SEL） protection circuit for power supply, the triple module redundancy （TMR） technology for the configuration registers and the optimized sequential design for the data acquisition process, 52 VA160 chips and 32 VATA160 chips have been applied in the flight model of the BGO calorimeter with radiation hardness assurance.

Electron densitymap evaluation functions for determining the quality of protein crystal structures

Background Finding methods to judge the quality of X-ray crystallographic information is an active research topic.The quality of electron density maps reconstructed by Fourier transform is always limited by the finite resolution,the amplitude/phase error and the completeness of diffraction data.At present,the R value and effective resolution are common ways of evaluating the quality of electron density maps.Unfortunately,the current evaluation methods are only dependent on diffraction amplitude,without any phase information.Methods Advanced evaluation functions in real space are designed to estimate the electron density map quality.The electron density map definition evaluation function relies on the atomicity of the electron density distribution.We use the power spectrum electron density entropy in protein crystallography for the first time.These two functions include both structure factor amplitudes and phases via the Fourier transform of electron density map.Results We carry out tests on synthetic data sets of known structures,varying the resolution and error,and draw the quality curves of electron density maps with theoretical,noisy and experimental diffraction data by two evaluation functions at different resolutions.The curves reveal the optimum structure and resolution of proteins clearly.Conclusions The work presented here offers new methods to evaluate the qualities of the electron density maps of proteins with slight differences,and brand new indicators to select the optimum diffraction resolution of protein structures.