INSTABILITY OF VIBRATION OF A MOVING-TRAIN-AND-RAIL COUPLING SYSTEM

This paper presents the derivation of the governing equations for the stability of vibration of an integrated system comprising a moving train and the railway track. The train consists of a convoy of articulated two-axle wagons. The equations are applicable to any arbitrary number of axles at arbitrary spacing. Each axle is modelled as a mass-spring-damper vibration unit. The railway track is an infinitely long Euler beam subjected to an axial compressive force and rests on a visco-elastic foundation. The governing equations for the integrated system are coupled differential equations, which can be transformed to algebraic equations by Fourier and Laplace transforms. Subsequent inverse Fourier transform and contour integration yield the instability equation. Critical parameter is identified. It follows by parametric studies on the instability of vibration due to different train configurations. Illustrative examples for trains having up to 20 wagons or 40 axles are given.     

Pulses in a complex Ginzburg-Landau system: Persistence under coupling with slow diffusion

The Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equation is essential for understanding the dynamics of patterns in a wide variety of physical contexts. It governs the evolutions of small amplitude instabilities near criticality. If the instabilities are, however, driven by two coupled instability mechanisms, of which one corresponds with a neutrally stable mode, their evolution is described by a GL equation coupled to a diffusion equation.In this paper, we study the influence of an additional diffusion equation on the existence of pulse solutions in the complex GL equation. In light of recently developed insights into the effect of slow diffusion on the stability of pulses, we consider the case of slow diffusion, i.e., in which the additional diffusion equation acts on a long spatial scale.In previous work [A. Doelman, G. Hek, N. Valkhoff, Stabilization by slow diffusion in a real Ginzburg-Landau system, J. Nonlinear Sci. 14 (2004) 237-278; A. Doelman, G. Hek, N.J.M. Valkhoff, Algebraically decaying pulses in a Ginzburg-Landau system with a neutrally stable mode, Nonlinearity 20 (2007) 357-389], we restricted ourselves to a model with both real coefficients and, more importantly, a real amplitude A rather than the complex-valued A that is needed to completely describe the pattern formation near criticality. In this simpler setting, we proved that pulse solutions of the GL equation can both persist and be stabilized under coupling with a slow diffusion equation. In the current work, we no longer make these restrictions, so that the problem is higher-dimensional and intrinsically harder. By a combination of a geometrical approach and explicit perturbation analysis, we consider the persistence of the solitary pulse solution of the GL equation under coupling with the additional diffusion equation. In the two limiting situations of the nearly real GL equation and the near nonlinear Schrödinger equation, we show that the pulse solutions can indeed persist under this coupling.     

On the initial-boundary value problems for soliton equations

We present a novel approach to solving initial-boundary value problems on the segment and the half line for soliton equations. Our method is illustrated by solving a prototypal and widely applied dispersive soliton equation—the celebrated nonlinear Schroedinger equation. It is well known that the basic difficulty associated with boundaries is that some coefficients of the evolution equation of the (x) scattering matrix S(k, t) depend on unknown boundary data. In this paper, we overcome this difficulty by expressing the unknown boundary data in terms of elements of the scattering matrix itself to obtain a nonlinear integrodifferential evolution equation for S(k, t). We also sketch an alternative approach in the semiline case on the basis of a nonlinear equation for S(k, t), which does not contain unknown boundary data; in this way, the “linearizable” boundary value problems correspond to the cases in which S(k, t) can be found by solving a linear Riemann-Hilbert problem.     

Determination of the third- and fifth-order optical nonlinearities: the general case

We compute the evolution of the intensity (I) and the phase (φ) of a beam propagating in a nonlinear (NL) isotropic medium exhibiting third- and fifth-order NL optical characteristics. All formulas are analytic, but the general case requires a numerical inversion by means of Newton’s method. The solutions may differ if some coefficients vanish, so they are given in all cases up to the fifth-order nonlinearities. The analytical relations allow us to fit the experimental data using the recently introduced D4σ-Z-scan method. Carbon disulfide is tested at 532 and 1,064 nm in the picosecond regime deducing NL coefficients related to third- and fifth-order optical susceptibilities.     

Elimination of fast variables

First nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the evolution of a physical system are considered. When they involved a small (or large) parameter the evolution occurs on two time scales. A general scheme is developed for extracting equations for the slow evolution, including higher order corrections. The scheme unifies the multifarious methods that exist in the literature. It leads to a subdivision in three categories, determined by the structure of the equations.Although linear equations are merely a specialization, they can readily be generalized to the case of linear partial differential equations, such as the so amply studied Fokker-Planck equation. These are treated with special attention to the definition of the required projection operator.Throughout, numerous examples and applications are given.     

Perfectly matched layers for coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with mixed derivatives

This paper constructs perfectly matched layers (PML) for a system of 2D coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with mixed derivatives which arises in the modeling of gap solitons in nonlinear periodic structures with a non-separable linear part. The PML construction is performed in Laplace–Fourier space via a modal analysis and can be viewed as a complex change of variables. The mixed derivatives cause the presence of waves with opposite phase and group velocities, which has previously been shown to cause instability of layer equations in certain types of hyperbolic problems. Nevertheless, here the PML is stable if the absorption function σ$\sigma$ lies below a specified threshold. The PML construction and analysis are carried out for the linear part of the system. Numerical tests are then performed in both the linear and nonlinear regimes checking convergence of the error with respect to the layer width and showing that the PML performs well even in many nonlinear simulations.     

Nonlinear evolution of the axisymmetric nuclear surface

We consider a uniformly charged incompressible nuclear liquid bounded by a closed surface. It is shown that the evolution of an axisymmetric surface Г(r, t) ≡ σ ? ∑(z, t) = 0, r = (σ, φ, z) can be approximately reduced to the motion of a curve in the (σ, z) plane. A nonlinear integro-diffrerential equation for the contour Σ (z, t) is derived. The contour Σ (z, t) and the local curvature are found to be a direct correspondence, which makes it possible to use methods of differential geometry to analyze the evolution of an axisymmetric nuclear surface.     

Dissipative contributions of internal multiplicative noise: I. mechanical oscillator

Langevin equations for closed systems with multiplicative fluctuations must also include appropriate dissipative terms that ensure eventual equilibration of the system. We consider an oscillator coupled to a heat bath and show that a particular nonlinear coupling to a harmonic heat bath leads to a fluctuating frequency and to nonlinear dissipative terms. We also analyze the effects of the multiplicative fluctuations and of the corresponding nonlinear dissipation on the temporal evolution of the average oscillator energy. We find that the rate of equilibration of this system can be significantly different from that of an oscillator with only additive fluctuations and linear dissipation.     

Instabilities in coupled photorefractive ring cavities and self-pumped phase conjugators

We investigate the temporal instabilities of mode intensities in two coupled unidirectional photorefractive ring resonators. The first resonator is driven by an external laser beam via photorefractive two-wave mixing. The internal oscillating beam is then employed to drive the second ring resonator. The second ring resonator provides a nonlinear loss mechanism for the coupled system. Complete spatial-temporal equations for describing the coupled system are derived and mean-field approximation is employed to simplify the transient analysis. The results of linear stability analysis indicate that the coupled system exhibits instability in the off-state and steady-state operation. The instability is explained in terms of competition between nonlinear gain and loss. The results are presented and discussed.Part II on Numerical Results will be published in a forthcoming issue of Applied Physics B     

Influence of atmospheric turbulence on the propagation of superimposed partially coherent Hermite-Gaussian beams

The influence of atmospheric turbulence on the propagation of superimposed partially coherent Hermite-Gaussian (H-G) beams is studied in detail. The closed-form propagation equation of superimposed partially coherent H-G beams through atmospheric turbulence is derived. It is shown that the turbulence accelerates the evolution of three stages which superimposed partially coherent H-G beams undergo. The turbulence results in a beam spreading and a decrease of the maximum intensity. However, the larger the beam number M, the beam order m, the separate distance x_d, and the smaller the beam correlation length σ₀ are, the less the power focusability of superimposed partially coherent H-G beams is affected by the turbulence. Specially, superimposed partially coherent H-G beams are less sensitive to turbulence than superimposed fully ones, and than partially coherent H-G beams if the beam power focusability and the maximum intensity are taken as beam criterions. However, the maximum intensity of superimposed partially coherent H-G beams is less sensitive or more sensitive to turbulence than that of superimposed Gaussian Schell-model (GSM) beams depending on σ₀.     

Solitons and cnoidal waves of the Klein–Gordon–Zakharov equation in plasmas

This paper studies the Klein?CGordon?CZakharov equation with power-law nonlinearity. This is a coupled nonlinear evolution equation. The solutions for this equation are obtained by the travelling wave hypothesis method, (G??/G) method and the mapping method.     

Compatibility and generalised conditional symmetries

It is shown that the determining equations for generalised conditional symmetries (GCSs) of order n, of an evolution equation of arbitrary order, can be found as a consequence of compatibility with an nth-order invariant surface condition. The compatibility technique is demonstrated on a second-order nonlinear diffusion–convection equation with absorption and used to find new GCSs of a linear diffusion equation with nonlinear source.     

Dynamics and stability of chiral fluid

Starting from the linear sigma model with constituent quarks we derive hydrodynamic equations which are coupled to the order-parameter field, e.g. the chiral fluid dynamics. For a static system in thermal equilibrium this model leads to a chiral phase transition which, depending on the choice of the quark-meson coupling constant g, could be a crossover or a first order one. We investigate the stability of the chiral fluid in the static and expanding background by considering the evolution of perturbations with respect to the mean-field solution. In the static background the spectrum of plane-wave perturbations consists of two branches, one corresponding to the sound waves and another to the σ-meson excitations. For large g these two branches cross and the excitation spectrum acquires exponentially growing modes. The stability analysis is also done for the Bjorken-like background solution by explicitly solving the time-dependent differential equation for perturbations in the η space. In this case the growth rate of unstable modes is significantly reduced.     

Thermal relaxation of systems with quadratic heat bath coupling: I. Classical systems

We consider the evolution of systems whose coupling to the heat bath is quadratic in the bath coordinates. Performing an explicit elimination of the bath variables we arrive at an equation of evolution for the system variables alone. In the weak coupling limit we show that the equation is of the generalized Langevin form, with fluctuations that are Gaussian and that obey a fluctuation-dissipation relation. If the system-bath coupling is linear in the system coordinates the resulting fluctuations are additive and the dissipation is linear. If the coupling is nonlinear in the system coordinates, the resulting fluctuations are multiplicative and the dissipation is nonlinear.     

Envelope excitations in nonextensive plasmas with warm-ions

In this work we study the modulational instability of plasmas with q-entropy electrons and warm ions, using the hydrodynamic approach. A nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE), governing the dynamics of envelope excitations in the plasma, is obtained by using the conventional multiscales method. Investigation of the modulational instability of the nonextensive plasmas reveals that the criteria for propagation of bright/dark envelope excitations in such plasmas are significantly affected by value of the nonextensivity parameter, q, and the fractional ion-temperature, σ  . In particular, by setting σ≠0$\sigma \ne 0$, a new region of modulational instability appears, indicating that the study of modulation instability in the cold-ion limit (σ=0$\sigma =0$) is completely different from that of warm ions. The study of the growth-rate and rogue-wave amplitudes in terms of different plasma parameters, reveals that their magnitude is of different scales for two ranges of the nonextensivity parameters, q>1$q>1$ and q<1$q<1$.     

Extreme waves statistics for the Ablowitz-Ladik system

We examine statistics of waves for the problem of modulation instability development in the framework of discrete integrable Ablowitz-Ladik (AL) system. Modulation instability depends on one free parameter h that has the meaning of the coupling between the nodes on the lattice. For strong coupling h ? 1, the probability density functions (PDFs) for waves amplitudes coincide with that for the continuous classical nonlinear Schrödinger equation; the PDFs for both systems are very close to Rayleigh ones. When the coupling is weak h ～ 1, there appear highly localized waves with very large amplitudes, that drastically change the PDFs to significantly non-Rayleigh ones, with so-called “fat tails” when the probability of a large wave occurrence is by several orders of magnitude higher than that predicted by the linear theory. Evolution of amplitudes for such rogue waves with time is similar to that of the Peregrine solution for the classical nonlinear Schrödinger equation.     

Kinetic and hydrodynamic models of chemotactic aggregation

We derive general kinetic and hydrodynamic models of chemotactic aggregation that describe certain features of the morphogenesis of biological colonies (like bacteria, amoebae, endothelial cells or social insects). Starting from a stochastic model defined in terms of N coupled Langevin equations, we derive a nonlinear mean-field Fokker-Planck equation governing the evolution of the distribution function of the system in phase space. By taking the successive moments of this kinetic equation and using a local thermodynamic equilibrium condition, we derive a set of hydrodynamic equations involving a damping term. In the limit of small frictions, we obtain a hyperbolic model describing the formation of network patterns (filaments) and in the limit of strong frictions we obtain a parabolic model which is a generalization of the standard Keller-Segel model describing the formation of clusters (clumps). Our approach connects and generalizes several models introduced in the chemotactic literature. We discuss the analogy between bacterial colonies and self-gravitating systems and between the chemotactic collapse and the gravitational collapse (Jeans instability). We also show that the basic equations of chemotaxis are similar to nonlinear mean-field Fokker-Planck equations so that a notion of effective generalized thermodynamics can be developed.