Lockheed Martin Corporation

High-coherence cavity resonators are excellent resources for encoding quantum information in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces, moving beyond traditional qubit-based platforms. A natural strategy is to use the Fock basis to encode information in qudits. One can perform quantum operations on the cavity mode qudit by coupling the system to a non-linear ancillary transmon qubit. However, the performance of the cavity-transmon device is limited by the noisy transmons. It is, therefore, important to develop practical benchmarking tools for these qudit systems in an algorithm-agnostic manner. We gauge the performance of these qudit platforms using sampling tests such as the heavy output generation test as well as the linear cross-entropy benchmark, by way of simulations of such a system subject to realistic dominant noise channels. We use selective number-dependent arbitrary phase and unconditional displacement gates as our universal gateset. Our results show that contemporary transmons comfortably enable controlling a few tens of Fock levels of a cavity mode. This framework allows benchmarking even higher dimensional qudits as those become accessible with improved transmons.

The environmental impacts caused by the manufacturing of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and the supply risks of the valuable metals in electric vehicle (EV) batteries can be mitigated by recycling used LIBs. This study employed a Cradle-to-Gate life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost-benefit analysis, to evaluate the environmental and economic advantages of recycling and remanufacturing Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) cells using hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical processes, compared to manufacturing with virgin materials. In the regional context, hydrometallurgy-based LIB remanufacturing has the potential to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 10.7%, accompanied by 11.3% cost savings, compared to virgin material manufacturing. However, despite its potential for GHG emission reduction, pyrometallurgy-based remanufacturing is economically unviable across all scenarios considered. The economics of LIB recycling are significantly influenced by spent LIB costs, requiring careful management of market trends and purchase expenses for feasibility. Challenges have arisen from the increasing volume of spent LIBs and production cost fluctuations. Various LIB chemical compositions yield nuanced outcomes, with NMC111 and NMC811 showing promise for economic and environmental aspects, respectively, while NMC532 and NMC111 demonstrate relative suitability for a cell remanufacturing. Preliminary analysis of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries, an emerging chemistry with growing adoption, highlights unique challenges underscoring the need for further research. This study marks the first economic and environmental evaluation of LIB recycling in the oil-rich Middle East, emphasizing the need for an assessment tailored to the UAE to inform regional policy development. This framework could be adapted for use in other Middle Eastern countries, aiding the formulation of effective regional policies and regulations.

Additive friction stir deposition (AFSD) is a novel additive manufacturing technique that enables the fabrication of components in the solid state. Given the benefits of AFSD, understanding the behavior of various feedstock materials after undergoing the AFSD process is crucial for optimizing their performance in structural applications. This study aims to evaluate the effects of AFSD on an Al–Mg alloy, Al5086, comparing it to its initial H32 condition to assess the changes in mechanical properties, microstructure, corrosion resistance, microhardness, and electrical conductivity. Tensile testing showed a 23% reduction in yield strength for as-deposited samples, while ultimate tensile strength remained comparable to the feedstock. Ductility improved significantly, with elongation to failure increasing by 77%, attributed to grain refinement and dynamic recovery. Microhardness decreased by 16% in lower layers due to thermal exposure, but electrical conductivity remained stable, indicating minimal solute atom redistribution. The Nitric Acid Mass Loss Test (NAMLT) revealed a 245% increase in corrosion rate for the AFSD material, linked to the higher density of grain boundaries acting as pathways for corrosion. These findings highlight AFSD’s potential for improving ductility and formability. However, they underscore the need for optimization to reduce corrosion susceptibility and address mechanical strength trade-offs. Future work should focus on fine-tuning process parameters or implementing post-treatment methods to enhance corrosion and mechanical performance.

The Analyzers for Cusp Ions (ACIs) on the TRACERS mission measure ion velocity distribution functions in the magnetospheric cusp from two closely spaced spacecraft in low Earth orbit. The precipitating and upflowing ion measurements contribute to the overarching goal of the TRACERS mission and are key to all three science objectives of the mission. ACI is a toroidal top-hat electrostatic analyzer on a spinning platform that provides full angular coverage with instantaneous 22.5° × ∼6° angular resolution for a single energy step. ACI has an ion energy range from ∼8 eV/e to 20,000 eV/e covered in 47 logarithmic-spaced energy steps with fractional energy resolution of ∼10%. It provides reasonably high cadence (312 ms) measurements of the ion energy-pitch angle distribution with good sensitivity and energy resolution, enabling detection of cusp boundaries and characterization of cusp ion steps.

When imaging underwater scenes from above the water surface, the reflection from the air–water interface creates an obscuring background that varies with illumination and viewing angles. It is well known that the reflected light is horizontally polarized, and using a vertically transmitting polarizing filter is a common technique to improve the contrast of underwater scenes. However, to our knowledge, no quantitative measurements of polarization-enabled contrast enhancement have been reported in the literature. In this work, panchromatic and RGB division-of-focal-plane polarization cameras were used to record images of black and white tiles submerged in water for determining contrast as a function of viewing angle, both without a polarizer and with a vertical polarizer. Experiments were conducted in two outdoor locations and in a black tub indoors with controlled color and brightness of the reflected background. The maximum contrast through a vertical polarizer occurred near the Brewster angle, but the amount of contrast enhancement (the ratio of contrast through a polarizer to contrast without a polarizer) was found to increase until much larger angles. Also, the observed changes in contrast resulting from changing properties of the reflected background were consistent with the Fresnel reflection coefficients.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has documented a strategic gap how exploratory analyses are accomplished to support capability development which was decomposed into areas of needed focused research. We began with an exploration of current methods for integrating different models to meet the concerns of Congress with regard to quality, accuracy, and dependability, noting that they have become too computationally prohibitive for exploring large trade spaces. In addition, current model abstraction methods have difficulty accounting for the increasing dimensionality associated with increasingly complex simulations. These observations led to the formulation of the Reduced Order Non-INtrusive (RONIN) modeling methodology, which generates predictive reduced order surrogate models, which capture more information regarding behaviors as compared to traditional methods. The RONIN modeling methodology works to create surrogate models which emulate stochastic full-order models (FOMs) by leveraging order reduction approaches, stochastic modeling methods, and regression techniques. To demonstrate the RONIN modeling methodology, a notional United States Air Force use case was defined, and a DOD standard simulation framework was used to create relevant simulation scenario which output a set of response distributions. Ultimately, the RONIN modeling method was used to create a predictive surrogate model which was able to reconstruct output distributions which are statically consistent with the original FOM on average over 99% of the time while reducing the time needed to generate a distribution of outputs from minutes down to less than a second.

This paper presents a novel accelerator architecture for real-time image filtering applications that require high throughput and low latency. The proposed architecture consists of two systolic arrays: a Row Convolution (RConv) Array and a Column Convolution (CConv) Array. The RConv Array processes one row of the input image and computes one row of an intermediate image per clock cycle which is then input to CConv Array. The CConv Array computes one row of the output image per clock cycle. A novel aspect of the architecture is that the line delays within the convolution architecture are used efficiently due to the parallelism. This leads to a significant reduction in the memory requirement and latency of the architecture. While the row convolution in the RConv Array is implemented using a direct-form FIR filter, the column convolution in the CConv Array is implemented using the transpose-form FIR filter. Thus, the processing elements in the CConv array are implicitly pipelined and do not require additional pipelining delays. The parallelized row-by-row processing significantly reduces the memory overhead per output pixel. The proposed architecture is then generalized where multiple rows of the image can be processed in a clock cycle, leading to further proportional reduction in latency and memory requirements. The proposed architecture is fully feed-forward and can be pipelined further as needed. We show that using a Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T FPGA clocked at 100 MHz, the architecture achieves $16.0\times$ , $86.3\times$ , and $943\times$ improvements in the LUT-time $^2$ , FF-time $^2$ , and DSP-time $^2$ products over a baseline serial architecture for the non-separable case with Image size $128\times 128$ and filter size $11\times 11$ . The proposed architecture can operate at a throughput of 12.8 Gpixels/s whereas the baseline can only operate at 100 Mpixels/s.

As aerospace and defense platforms face the continuing demand to capture and process expanding volumes of the electromagnetic spectrum, platforms are confronted with the challenge of internally transporting this large information throughput between sensing and processing locations with high efficiency and low latency. Owing to unfavorable frequencydependent characteristics, as well as cumbersome size and weight, coaxial cabling is increasingly becoming an infeasible solution, mandating the use of optical links. However, while analog photonic signal transport via radio-over-fiber has long been an alternative to electrical transport, the progress in analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) now affords the system architect the option of implementing a digital optical link, following an ADC located immediately at the antenna site. This work undertakes an analysis of the trade-space associated with this architectural choice, correlating available and projected device performance with fundamental link theory. Resultant from this analysis, a simplified decision framework is proposed, which may be used to suggest the preferable approach given the application requirements.

In airborne radar, reduced rank detection techniques are used when there are insufficient samples available for fully adaptive processing. This is the case in maritime radar, where the data can be both non‐stationary and non‐homogeneous. There are several approaches that have been proposed to address this problem. These include the single data set algorithms that eliminate the need for training data and reduced rank detectors such as principal components, cross‐spectral metric and the multistage Wiener filter (MWF). This latter approach is superior to other rank reduction techniques in terms of computational efficiency and sample support requirements. In this paper, the authors propose an algorithm that determines the rank of the sea clutter and relates it to the number of stages in the MWF. The algorithm presented is formulated as a model order estimation problem that utilises the minimum description length (MDL). The authors present a computationally efficient implementation of the MDL and demonstrate its effectiveness using simulated data.

This study examines the effect of gallium doping on the phase transformation, transmission, and hardness of commercial multispectral-grade ZnS specimens exposed to Ga2S3 vapor. Using secondary ion mass spectrometry, we show that Ga diffusion extends into the subsurface down to several tens of microns. X-ray diffraction patterns reveal minimal to no precipitation of wurtzite, resulting in limited infrared transmission loss after treatment. We report a monotonic increase in Vickers surface microhardness with increasing Ga concentration, reaching values more than double those of untreated windows. Future work will focus on optimizing this process and evaluating its effectiveness in enhancing the durability of ZnS windows under harsh environmental conditions.

Cometary comae are a mixture of gas and ice-covered dust. Processing on the surface and in the coma change the composition of ice on dust grains relative to that of the nucleus. As the ice on dust grains sublimates, the local coma composition changes. Rosetta observations of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko previously reported one of the highest D/H values for a comet. However, reanalysis of more than 4000 water isotope measurements over the full mission shows that dust markedly increases local D/H. The isotope ratio measured at a distance from the nucleus where the gas is well mixed is close to terrestrial, like that of other Jupiter family comets. This lower D/H has implications for understanding comet formation and the role of comets in delivering water to Earth.

A lens consisting of an anisotropic near‐zero index metamaterial (NZIM) is introduced for improving the far‐field performance of active electronically scanned arrays (AESA). Several simulation studies demonstrate how the NZIM lens (metalens) can be functionalized to transform the embedded element pattern of an array from a typical cosinusoidal shape to a flat‐topped pattern, dramatically reducing the gain at wider angles. This corresponds to reductions in scan loss and suppression of grating lobes in the desired field of view (FOV), especially for arrays with large element spacing (i.e., sparse or thinned arrays). The metalens concept is demonstrated through several simulation studies illustrating the beam shaping capability of NZIM materials. A fabricated metalens demonstrates full suppression of grating lobes and minimal scan loss with a ±10° FOV, which is ideally suited for limited FOV applications such as geosynchronous satellite communications.

We study small traveling salesman problems (TSPs) because current quantum computers can find optional solutions for TSPs with up to 14 cities. Also, we study small TSPs because TSPs have been recommended to be benchmarks to measure quantum optimization on all types of quantum hardware. This means comparisons of quantum data about small TSPs. We extent previous numerical results that were reported in “Small Traveling Salesman Problems” for 6, 8 and 10 cities. The new results in this paper are for 10 – 14 cities in symmetric TSPs. The data for this new range of cities is consistent with the previous data and can be the basis for estimates of results from quantum computers that are upgraded to handle more than 14 cities. The work and analysis suggest two conjectures that we discuss. The paper also contains an annotated survey of recent publications about TSPs.

This paper reports on the fabrication and performance of a fiber bundle with seven hollow cores arranged in a hexagonal pattern. The bundle shows individual core transmission with less than 0.07% core-to-core coupling over a length of 11 cm. Each core exhibits several transmission windows in the visible to near infrared region. These low attenuation regions with large higher order mode suppression are a result of anti-resonant guidance due to the negative curvature membranes encircling the cores. The central core exhibits the widest transmission window with a minimum loss of 4 dB/m between 1250 nm and 1450 nm. The lowest loss for the central core is estimated to be 2.5 dB/m at 600 nm. Such hollow core fiber bundles may be employed in applications including communication, imaging systems, high power laser delivery, or sensing.