Vol 61, No 6 (2016)

This paper is devoted to the contribution of Yuri Ostrovsky to holographic interferometry, one of the fundamental scientific and practical applications of holography. The title of this paper is the same as the title of his doctoral thesis that he defended in 1974, and, as it seems to me, reflects most of the specific features of the majority of his scientific publications, viz., an inseparable link of the methods developed by him with the results obtained with the help of these methods in a wide range of investigations of physical processes and phenomena.

The contacts between conductors formed under relatively low pressures can be treated as quasi-planar. Melting of the material of such contacts upon the passage of electric current is used in some technological processes, but the behavior of liquid in these conditions has not been analyzed. In this study, such an estimate was obtained for specific conditions appearing under electric-pulse compacting (briquetting) of metal shavings. Analysis of derived relations shows that this estimate is valid for any quasi-2D contacts upon passage of a pulsed current of duration from microseconds to milliseconds. It is shown that the spacing between contact surfaces decreases, the liquid metal is extruded in the lateral directions, and the area of the contact and its conductivity increase. Sausage-type magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability and overheating instability do not evolve in these conditions because the instability wavelength is larger than the rated thickness of the molten layer; screw MHD instability can appear in slower processes.

Possible equilibrium configurations of the free surface of a jet of an ideally conducting liquid placed in a nonuniform magnetic field are considered. The magnetic field is generated by two thin wires that are parallel to the jet and bear oppositely directed currents. Equilibrium is due to a balance between capillary and magnetic forces. For the plane symmetric case, when the jet deforms only in the plane of its cross section, two one-parameter families of exact solutions to the problem are derived using the method of conformal mapping. According to these solutions, a jet with an initially circular cross section deforms up to splitting into two separate jets. A criterion for jet splitting is derived by analyzing approximate two-parameter solutions.

We report on the results of simulation of the gas flow in a gun with a plasma emitter and in the system for extracting the electron beam to the atmosphere, constructed on the basis of standard gasdynamic windows (GDWs). The design of the gun and GDWs is described. Calculations are performed for a pressure of about 10^–3 Torr in the electron beam generation range. It is shown that the pressure drop to the atmospheric pressure in the system of electron beam extraction to the atmosphere can be ensured by two GDW stages evacuated by pumps with optimal performance.

The experiments on explosion of cylindrical conductors aimed at comparison of plasma formation during skin explosion of homogeneous and double-layer conductors with an external layer with a lower conductivity are carried out on a high-current MIG generator (current amplitude up to 2.5 MA and current rise time 100 ns). The generator is loaded with cylindrical copper conductors with a diameter of 3 mm on the cathode part of which a titanium layer of thickness 20, 50, and 80 μm is deposited in vacuum. This type of loading makes it possible to compare the behaviors of the homogeneous and double-layer conductors in identical conditions. It is shown that using the double-layer structure of the conductor with an external layer of thickness 20–80 μm with a lower conductivity, which is obtained by vacuum arc deposition, higher values of magnetic induction (as compared to homogeneous conductor) can be attained on its surface prior to plasma formation and spread.

An experimental system is developed to determine the main parameters of the impact and penetration of a solid deformable body into a soft soil medium. This system is based on the technique of an inverse experiment with a measuring rod and the technique of a direct experiment with photo recording and the application of a shadow picture of the interaction of a striker with a soil target. To verify these techniques, the collision of a solid body with soil is studied by a numerical calculation and the time intervals in which the change of the resistance force is proportional to the penetration velocity squared are determined. The penetration resistance coefficients determined in direct and inverse experiments are shown to agree with each other in the collision velocity range 80–400 m/s, which supports the validity of the techniques and the reliability of measuring the total load.

Dielectric properties of ceramic titanates of nickel, cobalt, and manganese and their isomorphically substituted solid solutions are studied. Iron and magnesium are used as dopants. Original methods for solid-state synthesis of titanates allow variations in the dispersity of products. The structure and phase composition of products are analyzed. Microwave measurements of permittivity are performed in a frequency interval of 12–38 GHz. Real and imaginary parts of the permittivities of titanates are determined.

Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction are used to show that a pseudosingle crystal forms upon cooling of an alloy Ni₄₉Mn₅₁ single crystal below the temperature of the β→θ (bcc → fct) transformation. At room temperature, this pseudosingle crystal has the structure of tetragonal L1₀ martensite with parameters a = 0.3732 nm and c = 0.3537 nm and a tetragonality c/a = 0.94775. The temperatures of the forward and reverse B2 → L1₀ transformations are determined. The crystallographic features of martensite packet formation are analyzed. As shown by EBSD, neighboring martensite packets always have three kinds of tetragonal martensite plates, which are in a twin position and have different tetragonality axis directions. Repeated heating and quenching of the pseudosingle crystal result in recrystallization with the formation of coarse grains. The packet structure of the tetragonal martensite is retained in this case, and the sizes of the packets formed within a grain decrease by a factor of 2–3 as compared to the initial pseudosingle crystal.

We study the dynamic properties of asymmetric vortex Bloch walls and classical 1D Néel walls controlled by a spin-polarized current in magnetic films with in-plane anisotropy. It is shown that fairly high velocities of domain walls (up to 100 m/s) can be obtained for the current density in the range j = 10⁶–10⁸ A/cm². The nonlinear dependence of the wall velocity on the film thickness and the linear dependence of the velocity on the current density and inverse damping parameter are found.

A microwave electrically tunable photonic crystal based on a periodically width-modulated slot transmission line with a ferroelectric film is investigated for the first time. The dispersion and transmission characteristics of electromagnetic waves propagating in such a structure are calculated. The electric control over photonic crystal characteristics is simulated.

The speed and efficiency of the Tesla transformer at the first half-wave of the output voltage are studied as a function of the Q factors of the circuits and their coupling factor. Calculated results and experimental data are considered. It is shown that for given Q factors, there is an optimal value of the coupling factor providing the highest efficiency, which can be calculated and for which designers should work.

The effect of the working gas pressure (P ≈ 1.33–0.09 Pa) and the substrate temperature (T_s ≈ 77–550 K) on the texture and the microstructure of nickel films deposited by magnetron sputtering onto SiO₂/Si substrates is studied. Ni(200) films with a transition type of microstructure are shown to form at growth parameters P ≈ 0.13–0.09 Pa and T_s ≈ 300–550 K, which ensure a high migration ability of nickel adatoms on a substrate. This transition type is characterized by a change of the film structure from quasi-homogeneous to quasi-columnar when a film reaches a critical thickness. Ni(111) films with a columnar microstructure and high porosity form at a low migration ability, which takes place at P ≈ 1.33–0.3 Pa or upon cooling a substrate to T_s ≈ 77 K.

The patch-clamp technique has been used to demonstrate that low-intensity IR irradiation affects the effective charge of the activation gating system of slow sodium channels in the nociceptive neuron membrane. IR photons are absorbed by ATP molecules bound to Na⁺,K⁺-ATPase at their hydrolysis site. Na⁺,K⁺-ATPase is a transducer of signal that is further delivered to slow sodium channels and cell genome. It is demonstrated that the irradiation does not modulate the response of a sensory neuron in the presence of PP2, an inhibitor of Src-kinase. The results show that Src-kinase is a series unit involved in the intracellular cascade processes triggered by low-intensity radiation of CO₂ laser.

Effect of shot noise and energy spread of particles on the statistical properties of cooperative emission of an ensemble of nonisochronous electrons–oscillators is analyzed. The dependences of the rootmean-square deviation of the peak radiation power and the autophasing time on the number of particles are determined in the absence of the energy spread. Even a minor energy spread of 4% leads to a decrease in the maximum possible power of cooperative emission.

In experiments on complex plasmas, afixed strata region in which the levitation of dust structures is observed is investigated using the method of probing by calibrated dust particles of different sizes in an applied magnetic field under elevated pressures. The measured azimuthal velocity of the probing particles corresponds to the action of the ion drag force for 4 μm-size particles and to the entrainment by the rotating gas owing to the electron vortex flow inside the strata for 1 μm-size particles. Extrapolation to pressures and magnetic fields in which the rotation inversion of dust structures is observed in experiments shows that the ion drag is the dominating force causing rotation with a negative projection of the angular velocity onto the magnetic induction.

Coupling impedance Z₀ of a continuous relativistic electron beam with the fundamental harmonic of the TM₀₁ wave slowed down to the speed of light in a slow-wave structure (SWS) based on a hollow corrugated waveguide is estimated analytically and using the program based on the scattering matrix method. It is shown that Z₀ in relativistic Cherenkov microwave oscillators without a guiding magnetic field realized in earlier experiments with the given type of interaction amounts to about 6–7 Ω, which is several times higher than the coupled impedances averaged over the SWS cross section for–1 and +1 spatial harmonics of the operating wave and can be increased in future to values exceeding 10 Ω due to a decrease in the average SWS diameter in admissible limits. In numerical simulation using the KARAT code, the possibility of reduction of the time of stabilization of oscillations of the Cherenkov microwave oscillator without a guiding magnetic field by 1.5 times is demonstrated.