In this paper, a nanosecond bipolar pulse voltage with 20 ns rise time is employed to generate a low gas temperature homogeneous dielectric barrier discharge plasma both in nitrogen and air at atmospheric pressure. Images of the discharge, waveforms of pulse voltage and discharge current, and the optical emission spectra emitted from the discharge are recorded successfully under severe electromagnetic interference. The effects of pulse peak voltage, pulse repetition rate and the gap distance between electrodes on gas temperature and the emission intensities of NO (A 2 → X 2 ), OH (A 2 → X 2 ) and N 2 (C 3 u → B 3 g ) are discussed. It is found that the emission intensities of NO (A 2 → X 2 ), OH (A 2 → X 2 ) and N 2 (C 3 u → B 3 g ) rise with increasing both pulse peak voltage and pulse repetition rate but decrease with gap distance between the electrodes when it is above 2.5 mm. The effect of concentrations of O 2 on the emission intensities of NO (A 2 → X 2 ), OH (A 2 → X 2 ) and N 2 (C 3 u → B 3 g ) is also investigated, and it is found that the emission intensities of both NO (A 2 → X 2 ) and OH (A 2 → X 2 ) reach maximum values when the O 2 concentration is 0.3%.

A nonequilibrium Ar∕O2 plasma discharge at atmospheric pressure was carried out in a coaxial cylindrical reactor with a stepped electrode configuration powered by a 13.56MHz rf power supplier. The argon glow discharge with high electron density produces oxygen reactive species in large quantities. Argon plasma jets penetrate deep into ambient air and create a path for oxygen radicals to sterilize microbes. A sterilization experiment with bacterial endospores indicates that an argon-oxygen plasma jet very effectively kills endospores of Bacillus atrophaeus (ATCC 9372), thereby demonstrating its capability to clean surfaces and its usefulness for reinstating contaminated equipment as free from toxic biological warfare agents. The decimal reduction time (D values) of the Ar∕O2 plasma jet at an exposure distance of 0.5–1.5cm ranges from 5 to 57s. An actinometric comparison of the sterilization data shows that atomic oxygen radicals play a significant role in plasma sterilization. When observed under a scanning electron microscope, the average size of the spores appears to be greatly reduced due to chemical reactions with the oxygen radicals.

In this paper, the electrical discharge characteristics of plasmas generated in coaxial cylindrical electrodes capacitively powered by a radio-frequency power supply at atmospheric pressure are investigated with respect to helium and argon gases. The electrical discharge parameters, voltage ͑V͒, current ͑I͒, and power ͑P͒, are measured for both helium and argon plasmas, and the electron temperatures and electron densities for them are evaluated by means of the equivalent circuit model and the power balance equation. By comparison of the discharge characteristics of the helium and argon plasmas, it is found that the discrepant macroscopic characteristics of helium and argon plasma, viz., current and voltage characteristics and current and power characteristics, are owed to their own intrinsic microscopic parameters of the helium and argon atoms, such as the first excited energy, the ionization energy, the total cross section, and the atom mass. Furthermore, the influences of the additive gas, oxygen gas, on the electrical discharge characteristics are also investigated in the helium and argon plasmas, which are closely related to the electron temperature of plasmas.

The vulnerabilities in cryptographic currencies facilitate the adversarial attacks. Therefore, the attackers have incentives to increase their rewards by strategic behaviors. Block withholding attacks (BWH) are such behaviors that attackers withhold blocks in the target pools to subvert the blockchain ecosystem. Furthermore, BWH attacks may dwarf the countermeasures by combining with selfish mining attacks or other strategic behaviors, for example, fork after withholding (FAW) attacks and power adaptive withholding (PAW) attacks. That is, the attackers may be intelligent enough such that they can dynamically gear their behaviors to optimal attacking strategies. In this paper, we propose mixed-BWH attacks with respect to intelligent attackers, who leverage reinforcement learning to pin down optimal strategic behaviors to maximize their rewards. More specifically, the intelligent attackers strategically toggle among BWH, FAW, and PAW attacks. Their main target is to fine-tune the optimal behaviors, which incur maximal rewards. The attackers pinpoint the optimal attacking actions with reinforcement learning, which is formalized into a Markov decision process. The simulation results show that the rewards of the mixed strategy are

A large-power inductively coupled plasma source was designed to perform the continuous helium ions (He +) irradiations of polycrystalline tungsten (W) under International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) relevant conditions. He + irradiations were performed at He + fluxes of 2.310 21-1.610 22 /m 2 s and He + energies of 12-220 eV. Surface damages and microstructures of irradiated W were observed by scanning electron microscopy. This study showed the growth of nano-fuzzes with their lengths of 1.3-2.0 m at He + energies of >70 eV or He + fluxes of >1.310 22 /m 2 s. Nanometer-sized defects or columnar microstructures were formed in W surface layer due to low-energy He + irradiations at an elevated temperature (>1300 K). The diffusion and coalescence of He atoms in W surface layers led to the growth and structures of nano-fuzzes. This study indicated that a reduction of He + energy below 12-30 eV may greatly decrease the surface damage of tungsten diverter in the fusion reactor.