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Abstract We study a flavor model with A 4 symmetry which originates from S 4 modular group. In S 4 symmetry, Z 2 subgroup can be anomalous, and then S 4 can be violated to A 4. Starting with a S 4 symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only A 4 symmetry when Z 2 in S 4 is anomalous. We obtain modular forms of two singlets and a triplet representations of A 4 by decomposing S 4 modular forms into A 4 representations. We propose a new A 4 flavor model of leptons by using those A 4 modular forms. We succeed in constructing a viable neutrino mass matrix through the Weinberg operator for both normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) of neutrino masses. Our predictions of the CP violating Dirac phase δ CP and the mixing sin2 θ 23 depend on the sum of neutrino masses for NH.

A bstract We study the phenomenological implications of the modular symmetry Γ(3) ≃ A 4 of lepton flavors facing recent experimental data of neutrino oscillations. The mass matrices of neutrinos and charged leptons are essentially given by fixing the expectation value of modulus τ , which is the only source of modular invariance breaking. We introduce no flavons in contrast with the conventional flavor models with A 4 symmetry. We classify our neutrino models along with the type I seesaw model, the Weinberg operator model and the Dirac neutrino model. In the normal hierarchy of neutrino masses, the seesaw model is available by taking account of recent experimental data of neutrino oscillations and the cosmological bound of sum of neutrino masses. The predicted sin 2 θ 23 is restricted to be larger than 0 . 54 and δ CP = ±(50°-180°). Since the correlation of sin 2 θ 23 and δ CP is sharp, the prediction is testable in the future. It is remarkable that the effective mass m ee of the neutrinoless double beta decay is around 22 meV while the sum of neutrino masses is predicted to be 145 meV. On the other hand, for the inverted hierarchy of neutrino masses, only the Dirac neutrino model is consistent with the experimental data.

A bstract We study a flavor model with A 4 symmetry which originates from S 4 modular group. In S 4 symmetry, Z 2 subgroup can be anomalous, and then S 4 can be violated to A 4 . Starting with a S 4 symmetric Lagrangian at the tree level, the Lagrangian at the quantum level has only A 4 symmetry when Z 2 in S 4 is anomalous. We obtain modular forms of two singlets and a triplet representations of A 4 by decomposing S 4 modular forms into A 4 representations. We propose a new A 4 flavor model of leptons by using those A 4 modular forms. We succeed in constructing a viable neutrino mass matrix through the Weinberg operator for both normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) of neutrino masses. Our predictions of the CP violating Dirac phase δ CP and the mixing sin 2 θ 23 depend on the sum of neutrino masses for NH.

A bstract We study the minimal seesaw model, where two right-handed Majorana neutrinos are introduced, focusing on the CP violating phase. In addition, we take the trimaximal mixing pattern for the neutrino flavor where the charged lepton mass matrix is diagonal. Owing to this symmetric framework, the 3 × 2 Dirac neutrino mass matrix is given in terms of a few parameters. It is found that the observation of the CP violating phase determines the flavor structure of the Dirac neutrino mass matrix in the minimal seesaw model. New minimal Dirac neutrino mass matrices are presented in the case of TM 1 , which is given by the additional 2-3 family mixing to the tri-bimaximal mixing basis in the normal hierarchy of neutrino masses. Our model includes the Littlest seesaw model by King et al. as one of the specific cases. Furthermore, it is remarked that our 3 × 2 Dirac neutrino mass matrix is reproduced by introducing gauge singlet flavons with the specific alignments of the VEV’s. These alignments are derived from the residual symmetry of S 4 group.

Higher performance is constantly required in rare earth permanent magnets, which are an indispensable component of the motors of electric vehicles. When producing sintered magnets, advanced structural control is necessary in the powder metallurgy process in order to achieve high performance. Especially in recent years, it has become important to develop processes for Sm-Fe-N magnets and metastable phase magnets as next-generation magnets to replace the Nd-Fe-B magnets. Because the crystal grain refinement of sintered magnets is most effective for improving coercivity, production methods for raw powders have evolved from the traditional pulverization to chemical synthesis approaches, and as a result, a submicron-sized Sm-Fe-N powder with huge coercivity has been developed. State-of-the-art physical synthesis methods have also been applied successfully to the synthesis of nanopowders. Since control of the grain boundary is very effective in Nd-Fe-B magnets, this approach has also been evolved to Sm-Fe-N magnets by nano coating. On the other hand, since technologies for crystalline orientation control and high-density sintering are indispensable for improvement of remanence, new low-thermal load consolidation techniques such as spark plasma sintering are being developed for Sm-Fe-N magnets and metastable phase magnets in order to overcome the inherent low thermal stability of these materials.

The development of bare metal powder is desirable for obtaining conductive interfaces by low-temperature sintering to be applied in various industries of 3D printing, conductive ink or paste. In our previous study, bulk Al made from Al nanopowder that was prepared with low-oxygen thermal plasma (LO-ITP), which is the original metal powder production technique, showed high electrical conductivity comparable to Al casting material. This study discusses the surface cleaning effect of Al particles expected to be obtained by peeling the surface of Al particles using the LO-ITP method. Bare metal micro-sized powders were prepared using LO-ITP by controlling the power supply rate and preferentially vaporizing the oxidized surface of the Al powder. Electrical conductivity was evaluated to confirm if there was an oxide layer at the Al/Al interface. The Al compact at room temperature produced from LO-ITP-processed Al powder showed an electrical conductivity of 2.9 · 107 S/m, which is comparable to that of cast Al bulk. According to the microstructure observation, especially for the interfaces between bare Al powder, direct contact was achieved at 450 °C sintering. This process temperature is lower than the conventional sintering temperature (550 °C) of commercial Al powder without any surface cleaning. Therefore, surface cleaning using LO-ITP is the key to opening a new gate to the powder metallurgy process.

A bstract We discuss the relation between the CP violation of the quark mixing and that of the lepton mixing by investigating a CP violating observable, the Jarlskog invariant, as well as the CP violating Dirac phase. The down-type quark mass matrix with three zeros is given in terms of the minimal number of parameters, while the up-type quark mass matrix is diagonal. These quark mass matrices leading to the successful CKM mixing angles and CP violation are embedded in both the Pati-Salam and SU(5) models. The leptonic Jarlskog invariant J CP l (as well as CP violating Dirac phase) is examined for two cases: the neutrino mass matrix is diagonal or non-diagonal, where no additional CP violating phase is introduced apart from the Majorana phases. In the case of the diagonal neutrino mass matrix, the favorable sign of the leptonic CP violation is obtained, however, the magnitude of J CP l is at most O (10 −4 ), which is too small compared with the expected value from the observation −0 . 02. In the case of the non-diagonal neutrino mass matrix where the tri-bimaximal mixing pattern is taken, we obtain the successful J CP l up to its sign.

L1 0 -ordered FeNi alloy (tetrataenite), a promising candidate for rare-earth-free and low-cost permanent magnet applications, is attracting increasing attention from academic and industrial communities. Highly ordered single-phase L1 0 -FeNi is difficult to synthesis efficiently because of its low chemical order–disorder transition temperature (200–320 °C). A non-equilibrium synthetic route utilizing a nitrogen topotactic reaction has been considered a valid approach, although the phase transformation mechanism is currently unknown. Herein, we investigated the basis of this reaction, namely the formation mechanism of the tetragonal FeNiN precursor phase during the nitridation of FeNi nanopowders. Detailed microstructure analysis revealed that the FeNiN precursor phase could preferentially nucleate at the nanotwinned region during nitridation and subsequently grow following a massive transformation, with high-index irrational orientation relationships and ledgewise growth motion detected at the migrating phase interface. This is the first report of a massive phase transformation detected in an Fe–Ni–N system and provides new insights into the phase transformation during the nitriding process. This work is expected to promote the synthetic optimization of fully ordered FeNi alloys for various magnetic applications.

TbCu7-type Sm-based compounds can be produced in bulk and potentially surpass Nd2Fe14B as permanent magnets. However, as the processes to prepare anisotropic magnetic particles are limited, the full potential of TbCu7-type Sm-based compounds cannot be exploited. In this study, metastable TbCu7-type phases of anisotropic Sm–Fe–N ultrafine particles were prepared using the low-oxygen induction thermal plasma (LO-ITP) process. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the obtained TbCu7-type Sm–Fe alloy nanoparticles exhibited a c/a value of 0.8419, with an Fe/Sm atomic ratio of ~8.5. After nitrogenation, the obtained Sm–Fe–N nanoparticles were aligned under an external magnetic field, indicating that each alloy particle exhibited anisotropic magnetic properties. A substantially high degree of alignment of 91 ± 2% was achieved, quantitatively estimated via pole figure measurements. Numerical analysis following Sm–Fe nanoparticle formation showed that, compared with Fe condensation, Sm condensation persisted even at low temperatures, because of a significant difference in vapor pressure between Sm and Fe. Though this led to a relatively large compositional distribution of Sm within particles with a Sm concentration of 9–12 at%, the preparation of single-phase TbCu7-type Sm–Fe–N particles could be facilitated by optimizing several parameters during the LO-ITP process.

Aluminum (Al)-stainless steel 316L (SUS316L) composites were successfully fabricated by the spark plasma sintering process (SPS) using pure Al and SUS316L powders as raw materials. The Al-SUS316L composite powder comprising Al with 50 vol.% of SUS316L was prepared by a ball milling process. Subsequently, it was sintered at 630 °C at a pressure of 200 MPa and held for 5 min in a semisolid state. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns show that intermetallic compounds such as Al13Fe4 and AlFe3 were created in the Al-SUS316L composite because the Al and SUS316L particles reacted together during the SPS process. The presence of these intermetallic compounds was also confirmed by using XRD, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and EDS mapping. The mechanical hardness of the Al-SUS316L composites was analyzed by a Vickers hardness tester. Surprisingly, the Al-SU316L composite exhibited a Vickers hardness of about 620 HV. It can be concluded that the Al-SUS316L composites fabricated by the SPS process are lightweight and high-hardness materials that could be applied in the engineering industry such as in automobiles, aerospace, and shipbuilding.