FEBRUARY 1996 REPORT FOR

W. CHARLES SYMONS, III

January was primarily spent writing and submitting a fellowship proposal available through the Center for Computational Sciences and submitting an entry for the 24 hours in Cyberspace contest. In addition to this, the moment method Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscope (NSOM) simulation code is currently being enhanced in order to allow the aperture of the probe to come into closer proximity with the sample wire(s). At this point, the numerical precision of the Exemplar is causing the code to blow up. However, I am optimistic that a solution is possible and will be reached soon. The results for this code will be posted as soon as it is working properly.

At this time, a presentation for the Pittsburgh Conference is being developed. The presentation is scheduled for March in Chicago, IL. Once the presentation is complete, an HTML version will be placed online and linked to a monthly report page.

In addition to the above mentioned work, the relocation of Dr. Robert Lodder's ASRG labs to the ASTeCC facility was completed in January. In conjunction with this, the Nd:YAG pumped OPO laser utilized for the NSOM instrument and its optical table are now being readied for operation.