Table of contents

High-temperature superconducting thin films offer unique properties which can be utilized for a variety of high-frequency device applications in many areas related to the strongly progressing market of information technology. One important property is an exceptionally low level of microwave absorption at temperatures attainable with low power cryocoolers. This unique property has initiated the development of various novel type of microwave devices and commercialized subsystems with special emphasis on application in advanced microwave communication systems. The second important achievement related to efforts in oxide thin and multilayer technology was the reproducible fabrication of low-noise Josephson junctions in high-temperature superconducting thin films. As a consequence of this achievement, several novel nonlinear high-frequency devices, most of them exploiting the unique features of the ac Josephson effect, have been developed and found to exhibit challenging properties to be utilized in basic metrology and Terahertz technology. On the longer timescale, the achievements in integrated high-temperature superconductor circuit technology may offer a strong potential for the development of digital devices with possible clock frequencies in the range of 100 GHz.

Stellar nucleosynthesis of heavy elements such as carbon allowed the formation of organic molecules in space, which appear to be widespread in our Galaxy. The physical and chemical conditions—including density, temperature, ultraviolet (UV) radiation and energetic particles—determine reaction pathways and the complexity of organic molecules in different space environments. Dense interstellar clouds are the birth sites of stars of all masses and their planetary systems. During the protostellar collapse, interstellar organic molecules in gaseous and solid phases are integrated into protostellar disks from which planets and smaller solar system bodies form. After the formation of the planets 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, including the Earth, was subjected to frequent impacts for several hundred million years. Life on Earth may have emerged during or shortly after this heavy bombardment phase, perhaps as early as 3.90–3.85 billion years ago, but the exact timing remains uncertain. A prebiotic reducing atmosphere, if present, predicts that building blocks of biopolymers—such as amino acids, sugars, purines and pyrimidines—would be formed in abundance. Recent modelling of the Earth's early atmosphere suggests, in contrast, more neutral conditions (e.g. H₂O, N₂, CO₂), thus, precluding the formation of significant concentrations of prebiotic organic compounds. Moreover, even if the Earth's atmosphere were reducing, the presence of UV photons would readily destroy organic compounds unless they were quickly sequestered away in rocks or in the prebiotic ocean. Other possible sources of organic compounds would be high temperature vent chemistry, although the stability of such compounds (bases, amino acids) in these environments remains problematic. Finally, organic compounds may have been delivered to the Earth by asteroids, comets and smaller fragments, such as meteorites and interplanetary dust particles.

It is likely that a combination of these sources contributed to the building blocks of life on the early Earth. It may even have taken several starts before life surpassed the less than ideal conditions at the surface. What is certain is that once life emerged, it learned to adapt quickly taking advantage of every available refuge and energy source (e.g. photosynthesis and chemosynthesis), an attribute that eventually led to complex metabolic life and even our own existence.

Current experimental research investigating the origin of life is focused on the spontaneous formation of stable polymers out of monomers. However, understanding the spontaneous formation of structure is not enough to understand the formation of life. The introduction and evolution of information and complexity is essential to our definition of life. The formation of complexity and the means to distribute and store information are currently being investigated in a number of theoretical frameworks, such as evolving algorithms, chaos theory and modern evolution theory.

In this paper we review the physical and chemical processes that form and process organic matter in space. In particular we discuss the chemical pathways of organic matter in the interstellar medium, its evolution in protoplanetary disks and its integration into solar system material. Furthermore, we investigate the role of impacts and the delivery of organic matter to the prebiotic Earth. Processes that may have assembled prebiotic molecules to produce the first genetic material and ideas about the formation of complexity in chemical networks are also discussed.

The last quarter of the twentieth century saw the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) grow from a laboratory demonstration to a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry. There is a clinical body scanner in almost every hospital of the developed nations. The field of magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), after mostly being abandoned by researchers in the first decade of MRI, has become an established branch of the science. This paper reviews the development of MRM over the last decade with an emphasis on the current state of the art. The fundamental principles of imaging and signal detection are examined to determine the physical principles which limit the available resolution. The limits are discussed with reference to liquid, solid and gas phase microscopy. In each area, the novel approaches employed by researchers to push back the limits of resolution are discussed. Although the limits to resolution are well known, the developments and applications of MRM have not reached their limit.

In this paper, the author reviews the plasma-based x-ray lasers which we have already demonstrated saturated amplification whose wavelengths are between 50 and 6 nm.

Section 1 describes the motivation of this review paper which includes basic ideas, developments and their applications of x-ray lasers. In section 2, the author describes the early x-ray laser researches on the recombination and the electron collisional excitation schemes including the hydrogen-like and lithium-like ion recombination schemes and the electron collisional excitation scheme. Section 3 describes the first demonstration of significant lasing at Livermore for the electron collisional excitation scheme of neon-like selenium ions at a wavelength of 20.6 and 20.9 nm and Princeton for the recombination scheme of hydrogen-like carbon ions at a wavelength of 18.2 nm. In section 4, the author describes the electron collisional excitation type soft x-ray lasers which are at present the most successful x-ray lasers. The subjects with which the author deals are saturated amplification neon-like soft x-ray lasers, improvement of neon-like soft x-ray laser performance using multi-layer mirrors, atomic physics issues of the neon-like soft x-ray lasers, gain guiding of the x-ray laser beam propagation, discharge-pumped compact repetitive neon-like ion soft x-ray lasers, the collisional excitation nickel-like ion soft x-ray lasers, high gain and saturated amplification nickel-like soft x-ray lasers at wavelengths as short as 7 nm, the short wavelength nickel-like x-ray lasers whose wavelengths are close to the longest wavelength edge the water window of 4.4 nm, transient collisional excitation scheme which is currently the most popular soft x-ray lasers pumped by short-pulse compact lasers with a laser energy of a few J to a few tens of J. In section 5, the author describes various plasma-based x-ray laser schemes other than the recombination and the collisional schemes, such as the optical field ionization schemes and inner-shell ionization schemes. Section 6 includes soft x-ray laser applications such as soft x-ray holography, soft x-ray interferometers, soft x-ray microscopy and other applications. In section 7, the author summarizes this review paper and he proposes a future direction for x-ray laser researches.