The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a globally complete collection of digital outlines of glaciers, excluding the ice sheets, developed to meet the needs of the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for estimates of past and future mass balance. The RGI was created with limited resources in a short period. Priority was given to completeness of coverage, but a limited, uniform set of attributes is attached to each of the ~198 000 glaciers in its latest version, 3.2. Satellite imagery from 1999–2010 provided most of the outlines. Their total extent is estimated as 726 800 ± 34 000 km2. The uncertainty, about ±5%, is derived from careful single-glacier and basin-scale uncertainty estimates and comparisons with inventories that were not sources for the RGI. The main contributors to uncertainty are probably misinterpretation of seasonal snow cover and debris cover. These errors appear not to be normally distributed, and quantifying them reliably is an unsolved problem. Combined with digital elevation models, the RGI glacier outlines yield hypsometries that can be combined with atmospheric data or model outputs for analysis of the impacts of climatic change on glaciers. The RGI has already proved its value in the generation of significantly improved aggregate estimates of glacier mass changes and total volume, and thus actual and potential contributions to sea-level rise.

The variation in the substrate temperature during ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), which employs the use of energetic ions to bombard a growing film, has been shown to influence the quality of crystalline texture in MgO films. Determining the acceptable deviation from the optimum ion to molecule ratio for different substrate temperatures establishes the optimum MgO deposition conditions. For each fixed deposition temperature, a set of samples was produced by varying the ion assist beam current from sample to sample while keeping the deposition rate constant. In this way, the ion to molecule ratio was modified and the range of achieving well textured films was determined. The investigation of the MgO texture dependence on the substrate temperature reveals that the best in-plane alignment is obtained at ˜ 25°C. At this temperature, MgO films with in-plane orientation distribution as low as 3.7° full width at half maximum (FWHM) have been attained. MgO films deposited at temperatures higher than 100°C have broad in-plane alignment. Although, the deposition at the lowest temperature (-150°C) did not improve the in-plane texture, the acceptable deviation from the optimum ion to molecule ratio for achieving biaxially textured films was the largest. As a trend, the acceptable ion to molecule deviation decreases with increasing substrate temperature. This is especially important for continuous IBAD MgO depositions where less restrictive conditions are desired.

This article reports on the development of second-generation Y1Ba2Cu3O7–(YBCO)-coated conductors deposited on biaxially textured MgO templates fabricated using ion-beam-assisted deposition (IBAD).The materials system architecture and processing techniques used to achieve high critical supercurrents on flexible superalloy substrates is described.The texturing of YBCO films on metal substrates approaches that of films deposited on single-crystal oxide substrates.Critical currents and critical current densities of YBCO films on metal substrates are also equivalent to YBCO films deposited on single-crystal oxides.

We have studied the growth of magnesium oxide using ion-beam assisted deposition (IBAD) to achieve (100) oriented, bi-axially textured films with low mosaic spread, for film thicknesses of 10 nm on silicon substrates. We have refined the process by using reflected high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) to monitor the growth of IBAD MgO films and found that the diffracted intensity can be used to determine (and ultimately control) final in-plane texture of the film. Here we present results on our work to develop the use of real-time RHEED monitoring to deposit well-oriented IBAD MgO films. The results have been corroborated with extensive grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GID). Results of these analyses have allowed us to deposit films on metallic substrates with in-plane mosaic spread less than 7°.

We used a previously reported kinematical electron scattering model1 to develop a RHEED based method for performing quantitative analysis of mosaic polycrystalline thin film in-plane and out-of-plain grain orientation distributions. RHEED based biaxial texture measurements are compared to X-Ray and transmission electron microscopy measurements to establish the validity of the RHEED analysis method. In situ RHEED analysis reveals that the out-of-plane orientation distribution starts out very broad, and then decreases during IBAD MgO growth. Other results included evidence that the in-plane orientation distribution narrows, the grain size increases, and the film roughens as film thickness increases during IBAD MgO growth. Homoepitaxy of MgO improves the biaxial texture of the IBAD layer, making X-ray measurements of IBAD films with an additional homoepitaxial layer not quantitatively representative of the IBAD layer. Systematic offsets between RHEED analysis and X-ray measurements of biaxial texture, coupled with evidence that biaxial texture improves with increasing film thickness, indicate that RHEED is a superior technique for probing surface biaxial texture.

Two conducting oxides, La0.5Sr0.5CoO3(LSCO) and SrRuO3, were deposited by pulsed laser ablation onto silicon substrates coated with biaxially textured MgO on an amorphous silicon nitride isolation layer. Comparison is made between templates using just 10 nm of ion-beam assisted deposited (IBAD) MgO and substrates with an additional 100 nm of homoepitaxial MgO. Both of these conducting oxide layers exhibited in-plane and out-of-plane texture, on the order of that obtained by the underlying MgO. The SrRuO3 was c-axis oriented on both substrates, but exhibited a slightly sharper out-of- plane texture when the homoepitaxial MgO layer was included. On the other hand, the LSCO showed only (100) orientation when deposited directly on the IBAD-MgO templates, whereas a significant (110) peak was observed for films on the homoepitaxial MgO. A simple calculation of the distribution of grain boundary angles, assuming a normal distribution of grains, is also presented.

We have simulated the development of the pair cascade in a range of magnetic field strengths. We determined the efficiencies of lepton and secondary photon production, as well as the distribution functions of the pair plasma and of the escaping photons. We find the magnetic field has the most important effect on the cascade; primary beam energies and seed photon emissivities are of less importance.

Ion-assisted, ion-beam sputter deposition is used to obtain (00l) biaxially oriented films of cubic yttria-stabilized-zirconia (YSZ) on polycrystalline metal substrates. Yttrium-barium-copper-oxide (YBCO) is then heteroepitaxially-pulse-laser deposited onto the YSZ. Phi scans of the films show the full-width-half maxima of the YSZ (202) and the YBCO (103) reflections to be 14° and 10° respectively. Our best dc transport critical current density measurement for the YBCO is 800,000 A/cm2 at 75K and 0T. At 75K, the total dc transport current in a 1 cm wide YBCO film is 23 A.