We demonstrate coherent beam combining and adaptive mitigation of atmospheric turbulence effects over 7 km under strong scintillation conditions using a coherent fiber array laser transmitter operating in a target-in-the-loop setting. The transmitter system is composed of a densely packed array of 21 fiber collimators with integrated capabilities for piston, tip, and tilt control of the outgoing beams wavefront phases. A small cat's-eye retro reflector was used for evaluation of beam combining and turbulence compensation performance at the target plane, and to provide the feedback signal for control of piston and tip/tilt phases of the transmitted beams using the stochastic parallel gradient descent maximization of the power-in-the-bucket metric.

Purging of tumor cells and selection of stem cells are key technologies for enabling stem cell transplantation and stem cell gene therapy. Here we report a strategy for cell selection based on physical properties of the cells. Exposing cells to an external pulsed electric field (PEF) increases the natural potential difference across the cell membrane until a critical threshold is reached and pore formation occurs, resulting in fatal perturbation of cell physiology. Attaining this threshold is a function of the applied field intensity and cell size, with larger cells porated at lower field intensities than smaller cells. Since hematopoietic stem cells are smaller than other hematopoietic cells and tumor cells, we found that exposure of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to PEFs caused stepwise elimination of monocytes without affecting the function of smaller lymphocyte populations. Mobilized peripheral blood exposed to PEFs was enriched for CD34+/CD38- cells and stem cell function was preserved. Furthermore, PEF treatment was able to selectively purge blood preparations of tumor cells and eradicate transplantable tumor.

A simple accurate method for normalizing the absolute magnitude of measured relative rare-gas excitation cross-section data to published measurements of the first Townsend coefficient is presented. Using a code which solved the Boltzmann equation we have determined that the predicted first Townsend coefficient is a very sensitive function of the electron impact excitation cross section. In Ar and Kr we have found that a 10% change in the cross section results in a 30% change in the first Townsend coefficient.

In this paper we report on the formation and quenching kinetics of ArF* (2Σ1/2). The ArF* is produced by irradiating mixtures of Ar and F2. The primary formation channel is via the recombination of Ar+ and Ar+2 with F−. Quenching of ArF* by F2 and Ar have been measured by analyzing the ArF* 2Σ1/2→2Σ1/2 fluorescence as a function of the F2 and Ar partial pressures. We have also measured the displacement of the Ar in ArF* by Kr and Xe to form KrF* and XeF*, respectively.

In this letter we describe modeling of an E-beam-controlled discharge operated in gas mixtures containing mainly argon with approximately 10% krypton and a few tenths of a percent fluorine. The discharge physics is dominated by electron impact ionization and excitation of the rare-gas metastables. The ionization of the metastables impacts the discharge stability directly while their excitation strongly affects the efficiency of pumping KrF*. Predictions of the model are compared with experimental results.