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The friction and wear performance, wear morphology and friction-induced subsurface microstructural characteristics of 18Cr-8Ni austenitic stainless steels with coarse-grained (CG), heterogeneous ultrafine-grained (HUFG), and nano/ultrafine-grained (NG/UFG) microstructures after dry sliding wear under room temperature were studied. The results reveal that HUFG steel with a good match between hardness and plasticity exhibits the best wear performance, followed by CG steel, while NG/UFG steel with the highest hardness exhibits the poorest wear performance. From the element distribution map, the contents of O and Si in the delamination and wear debris are relatively high. O is relatively evenly distributed on the whole wear surface of HUFG steel, and there is a continuous oxide layer on its wear surface. After the wear test, the hardness increment near the wear surface of the CG sample is the largest, and the depth affected by sliding is the largest, followed by the HUFG sample, and those of the NG/UFG steel are the smallest. The repeated frictional shear stress causes the formation of cracks between the mechanical mixed layer and the plastic deformation layer, and the continuous expansion of cracks can help oxygen elements diffuse deeply, causing the deformation layer materials to fall off.

We establish a set of resource conversion relationships between quantum coherence and multipartite entanglement in many-body systems, where the operational measures of resource cost and distillation are focused. Under the multipartite incoherent operation, the initial coherence of single-party system bounds the maximal amounts of corresponding operational entanglement in an arbitrary bipartite partition as well as the genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) in many-body systems. Furthermore, the converted multipartite entanglement can be transferred to its subsystems and restored to coherence of a single party by means of local incoherent operations and classical communication, which constitutes a protocol of resource interconversion within the full incoherent operation scenario. As an example, we present a scheme for cyclic interconversion between coherence and GME in three-qubit systems without loss. Moreover, we analyze the property of bipartite and multipartite genuine multi-level entanglement by the initial coherence and investigate multipartite resource dynamics in the conversion.

We propose an arresting scheme for emulating the famous Faraday effect in ultracold atomic gases. Inspired by the similarities between the light field and bosonic atoms, we represent the light propagation in medium by the atomic transport in accompany of the laser-atom interaction. An artificial magneto-optic Faraday effect (MOFE) is readily signaled by the spin imbalance of atoms, with the setup of laser fields offering a high controllability for quantum manipulation. The present scheme is really feasible and can be realized with existing experimental techniques of ultracold atoms. It generalizes the crucial concept of the MOFE to ultracold atomic physics, and opens a new way of quantum emulating and exploring the MOFE and associated intriguing physics.

We propose an experimentally feasible scheme to disclose the noncommutative effects induced by a light-induced non-Abelian gauge structure with trapped ions. Under an appropriate configuration, a true non-Abelian gauge potential naturally arises in connection with the geometric phase associated with two degenerated dark states in a four-state atomic system interacting with three pulsed laser fields. We show that the population in the atomic state at the end of a composed path formed by two closed loops C1 and C2 in the parameter space can be significantly different from the composed counter-ordered path. This population difference is directly induced by the noncommutative feature of non-Abelian geometric phases and can be detected unambiguously with current technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We here present an experimentally feasible proposal for manipulating Cooper pairs in degenerate Fermi gases trapped by an optical lattice. Upon introducing an in situ periodically driven field, the system may be described by an effective time-independent Hamiltonian, in which the Cooper pairs, generated by the bound molecule state in Feshbach resonance, host a nonzero center-of-mass momentum. The system thus processes a crossover from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid phase to a Fulde–Ferrell (FF) one. Furthermore, the magnitude and direction of the Cooper pairs in the synthetic FF superfluids are both directly controllable via the periodically driven field. Our proposal offers a reliable and feasible scenario for manipulating the Cooper pairs in cold atoms, serving as a tunable as well as powerful platform for quantum-emulating and exploring the FF superfluid phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns pre-breakdown phenomena, including streamer characteristics from a fundamental perspective and partial discharge (PD) measurements from an industrial perspective, in a hydrocarbon insulating liquid. The aim was to investigate the possible changes of the liquid’s streamer and PD characteristics and their correlations when the uniformity of the AC electric field varies. In the experiments, a plane-to-plane electrode system incorporating a needle protrusion was used in addition to a needle-to-plane electrode system. When the applied electric field became more uniform, fewer radial branches occurred and streamer propagation towards the ground electrode was enhanced. The transition from streamer propagation dominated breakdown in divergent fields to streamer initiation dominated breakdown in uniform fields was evidenced. Relationships between streamer and PD characteristics were established, which were found to be electric field dependent. PD of the same apparent charge would indicate longer streamers if the electric field is more uniform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called 'secondary reverse streamer (SRS)' in this study depicts a newly observed streamer-in-liquid phenomenon which subsequently occurs well after the extinction of the primary streamer (PS) propagation within a single shot of negative impulse voltage and has reverse polarity to the PS. Tests were carried out in a synthetic ester liquid at a 50 mm needle-plane gap under negative impulse voltages up to 140 kV. Based on the current and light waveforms as well as the photographic images, two types of SRS were found: one has a bright trunk with a high velocity of 9.79 km s[?]1 belonging to the 3rd mode streamer; and the other has a weak tree-like channel with a low velocity of 1.28 km s[?]1 resembling the 2nd mode streamer. It should be emphasized that SRS under negative impulse voltages has positive polarity being opposite to the negative PS, which is believed to be due to the reverse electric field induced by the residual space charges left by the PS. This has been confirmed by further verification tests under tail-chopped impulse voltages, for SRSs are significantly enhanced in both axial and lateral directions after the early removal of the external applied field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was indicated (Yu 2007 Phys. Rev. A 75 066301) that a previously proposed quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol based on Smolin states (Augusiak 2006 Phys. Rev. A 73 012318) is insecure against an internal cheater. Here we build a different QSS protocol with Smolin states alone, and prove it to be secure against known cheating strategies. Thus we open a promising venue for building secure QSS using merely Smolin states, which is a typical kind of bound entangled states. We also propose a feasible scheme to implement the protocol experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]