Effect of radiative cooling on collapsing charged grains

The effect of the radiative cooling of electrons on the gravitational collapse of cold dust grains with fluctuating electric charge is investigated. We find that the radiative cooling as well as the charge fluctuations, both, enhance the growth rate of the Jeans instability. However, the Jeans length, which is zero for cold grains and nonradiative plasma, becomes finite in the presence of radiative cooling of electrons and is further enhanced due to charge fluctuations of grains resulting in an increased threshold of the spatial scale for the Jeans instability.     

Collapse and revival of glycolytic oscillation

Glycolysis is the major source of metabolic energy in almost all living cells. A key feature of the glycolytic oscillations is their critical control by substrate injection rate. We show that in the limit of weak noise of the fluctuating substrate injection rate a new instability arises in the dynamics leading to collapse and revival of glycolytic oscillation reminiscent of "bursting" of action potential in nerve cells. The dynamical system in this limit also exhibits an interesting mirror image symmetry between growth and decay of fluctuations of the reaction product.     

Jeans instability of an inhomogeneous streaming dusty plasma

The dynamics of a self-gravitating unmagnetized, inhomogeneous, streaming dusty plasma is studied in the present work. The presence of the shear flow causes the coupling between gravitational and electrostatic forces. In the absence of self-gravity, the fluctuations in the plasma may grow at the expense of the density inhomogeneity and for certain wavelengths, such an unstable mode may dominate the usual streaming instability. However, in the presence of self-gravity, the plasma inhomogeneity causes an overlap between Jeans and streaming modes and collapse of the grain will continue at all wavelengths.     

Fluctuation approach to the problem of thermodynamics’ applicability to nanoparticles

The root-mean square fluctuations of the temperature and energetic surface tension of metallic and molecular nanoparticles have been estimated. It is revealed that the relative value of mentioned fluctuations is not higher than several percents even for the particles of 0.5 nm in size. We thus conclude that it is possible to apply the thermodynamic approach to nanoparticles with fluctuating properties, and the fluctuations do not lead to nanoparticle instability and decay.     

Intramolecular vibrations and noise effects on pattern formation in a molecular helix

Modulational instability in a biexciton molecular chain is addressed. We show that the model can be reduced to a set of three coupled equations: two nonlinear Schr?dinger equations and a Boussinesq equation. The linear stability analysis of continuous wave solutions of the coupled systems is performed and the growth rate of instability is found numerically. Simulations of the full discrete systems reveal some behaviors of modulational instability, since wave patterns are observed for the excitons and the phonon spectrum. We also take the effect of thermal fluctuations into account and we numerically study both the stability and the instability of the plane waves under 300 K. The plane wave is found to be stable under modulation, but displays a gradual increase of the wave amplitudes. Under modulation, the same behaviors are observed and wave patterns are found to resist thermal fluctuations, which is in agreement with earlier research on localized structure stability under thermal noise.     

Three dimensional convective instability in nematic liquid crystal under an ac field

Using a light scattering technique, fluctuations in nematic MBBA under an a.c. field are investigated near a three dimensional convective instability point. It is found that the instability is accompanied by a critical slowing down of the thermally excited twist fluctuation and the appearance of the macroscopic undamped oscillation. A distribution of the molecular orientation is also proposed.     

Coherent radiation from neutral molecules moving above a grating

We predict and study the effect of parametric self-induced excitation of a molecule moving above the dielectric or conducting medium with periodic grating. In this case the radiation reaction force modulates the molecular transition frequency which results in a parametric instability of dipole oscillations even from the level of quantum or thermal fluctuations. The present mechanism of instability of electrically neutral molecules is different from that of the well-known Smith-Purcell and transition radiation in which a moving charge and its oscillating image create an oscillating dipole. We show that parametrically excited molecular bunches can produce an easily detectable coherent radiation flux of up to a microwatt.     

Instabilities of isotropic solutions of active polar filaments

We study the dynamics of an isotropic solution of polar filaments coupled by molecular motors which generate relative motion of the filaments in two and three dimensions. We investigate the stability of the homogeneous state for constant motor concentration taking into account excluded volume and an estimate of entanglement. At low filament density the system develops a density instability, while at high density entanglement drives the instability of orientational fluctuations.     

Nonequilibrium fluctuations in the Rayleigh-Bénard problem for binary fluid mixtures

We have employed a simple Galerkin-approximation scheme to calculate nonequilibrium temperature and concentration fluctuations in a binary fluid subjected to a temperature gradient with realistic boundary conditions. When a fluid mixture is driven outside thermal equilibrium, there are two instability mechanisms, namely a Rayleigh (stationary) and a Hopf (oscillatory) instability, causing long-ranged fluctuations. The competition of these two mechanisms causes the structure factor associated with the temperature fluctuations to exhibit two maxima as a function of the wave number q of the fluctuations, in particular, close to the convective instability. In the presence of thermally conducting but impermeable walls the intensity of the temperature fluctuations vanishes as q goes to zero, while the intensity of the concentration fluctuations remains finite in the limit of vanishing q. Finally, we propose a simpler small-Lewis-number approximation scheme, which is useful to represent nonequilibrium concentration fluctuations for mixtures with positive separation ratio, even close to (but below) the convective instability.     

Quantum dissociation of an edge of a Luttinger liquid

In a Luttinger liquid phase of one-dimensional molecular matter the strength of zero-point motion can be characterized by dimensionless De Boer's number quantifying the interplay of quantum fluctuations and two-body interactions. Selecting the latter in the Morse form we show that dissociation of the Luttinger liquid is a process initiated at the system edge. The latter becomes unstable against quantum fluctuations at a value of De Boer's number which is smaller than that of the bulk instability which parallels the classical phenomenon of surface melting.     

Structural elements of collapses in shallow water flows with horizontally nonuniform density

The mechanisms and structural elements of instability whose evolution results in the occurrence of the collapse are studied in the scope of the rotating shallow water model with a horizontally nonuniform density. The diagram stability based on the integral collapse criterion is suggested to explain system behavior in the space of constants of motion. Analysis of the instability shows that two collapse scenarios are possible. One scenario implies anisotropic collapse during which the contact area of a collapsing drop-like fragment with the bottom contracts into a rotating segment. The other implies isotropic contraction of the area into a point.     

Loss of phase of collapsing beams

We experimentally investigate the phase of an optical field after it has undergone wave collapse. We confirm the theoretical prediction that it acquires a large cumulative nonlinear phase shift that is highly sensitive to small fluctuations of the laser input power. This results in an effective postcollapse "loss of phase," whereby the phase of the transmitted beam shows a significant increase in sensitivity to the input fluctuations of the pulse energy. We also investigate interactions between two beams that each undergoes collapse and observe large fluctuations in the output mode profiles, which are due to the postcollapse loss of their relative phase difference. Such effects should occur in all systems that exhibit wave collapse.     

Jamming and fluctuations in granular drag

We investigate the dynamic evolution of jamming in granular media through fluctuations in the granular drag force. The successive collapse and formation of jammed states give a stick-slip nature to the fluctuations which is independent of the contact surface between the grains and the dragged object, thus implying that the stress-induced collapse is nucleated in the bulk of the granular sample. We also find that while the fluctuations are periodic at small depths, they become "stepped" at large depths, a transition which we interpret as a consequence of the long-range nature of the force chains.     

Coupled molecular excited states form unstable spatial modes in an optical λ/2-microresonator

We have investigated the radiation patterns formed by a quasi-planar optical λ/2-microresonator enclosing fluorescent dye molecules that were immobilized in a polymer film between two silver mirrors. Using time-resolved widefield imaging microscopy, we observed laterally confined transversal modes that occurred in the optically pumped microresonator area, exhibiting strong intensity fluctuations. The measured diameter of the isolated spatial modes was found to be 0.5 μm in agreement with theoretical predictions. The instability of the spatial mode emission patterns originates from the triplet-state-induced fluorescence intensity fluctuations of cavity-coupled collective molecular excited states.     

Instability analysis of a cylindrical stellar object in Brans–Dicke gravity

This paper investigates instability ranges of a cylindrically symmetric collapsing cosmic filamentary structure in the Brans–Dicke theory of gravity. For this purpose, we use a perturbating approach to the modified field equations as well as dynamic equations and construct a collapse equation. The collapse equation with an adiabatic index (Γ) is used to explore the instability ranges of both isotropic and anisotropic fluid in Newtonian and post-Newtonian approximations. It turns out that the instability ranges depend on the dynamic variables of collapsing filaments. We conclude that the system always remains unstable for 0 < Γ < 1, while Γ > 1 provides instability only in a special case.     

Nonsingular Collapse of a Perfect Fluid Sphere Within a Dilaton-Gravity Reformulation of the Oppenheimer Model

A generic four-dimensional dilaton gravity is considered as a basis for reformulating the paradigmatic Oppenheimer–Synder model of a gravitationally collapsing star modelled as a perfect fluid or dust sphere. Initially, the vacuum Einstein scalar-tensor equations are modified to Einstein–Langevin equations which incorporate a noise or micro-turbulence source term arising from Planck scale conformal, dilaton fluctuations which induce metric fluctuations. Coupling the energy-momentum tensor for pressureless dust or fluid to the Einstein–Langevin equations, a modification of the Oppenheimer–Snyder dust collapse model is derived. The Einstein–Langevin field equations for the collapse are of the form of a Langevin equation for a non-linear Brownian motion of a particle in a homogeneous noise bath. The smooth worldlines of collapsing matter become increasingly randomised Brownian motions as the star collapses, since the backreaction coupling to the fluctuations is non-linear; the input assumptions of the Hawking–Penrose singularity theorems are then violated. The solution of the Einstein–Langevin collapse equation can be found and is non-singular with the singularity being smeared out on the correlation length scale of the fluctuations, which is of the order of the Planck length. The standard singular Oppenheimer–Synder model is recovered in the limit of zero dilaton fluctuations.     

Optimal Control of Trapped Electron Instability by a Modulated Neutral Beam

Equivalent lumped parameter system representation for dissipative trapped electron instability involving many modes is obtained. Optimal control theory in the presence of noise is used to design a stabilizing feedback network, with a modulated neutral beam as a remote suppressor. The optimality criterion is the minimization of the total energy of control and instability fluctuations. It is shown that the control power does not depend on the level of instability fluctuations in the absence of feedback, but on the noise level in plasma.     

Gravity,energy conservation,and parameter values in collapse models

We interpret the probability rule of the CSL collapse theory to mean to mean that the scalar field which causes collapse is the gravitational curvature scalar with two sources, the expectation value of the mass density (smeared over the GRW scale a) and a white noise fluctuating source. We examine two models of the fluctuating source, monopole fluctuations and dipole fluctuations, and show that these correspond to two well-known CSL models. We relate the two GRW parameters of CSL to fundamental constants, and we explain the energy increase of particles due to collapse as arising from the loss of vacuum gravitational energy.     

Jeans stability of dusty space plasmas

The Jeans stability of dusty plasmas is re-considered. In contrast to a gas, a dusty plasma can support a plethora of wave modes each potentially able to impart to the dust particles the randomising energy necessary to avoid Jeans collapse on some length scale. Consequently, the analysis of the stability to Jeans collapse is many-fold more complex in a dusty plasma than it is for a charge-neutral gas. After recalling some of the fundamental ideas related to the ordinary Jeans instability in neutral gases, we extend the discussion to plasmas containing charged dust grains. Besides the usual Jeans criterion based upon thermal agitation, we consider two other ways of countering the gravitational collapse: (i) via the excitation of dust-acoustic modes and (ii) via a novel Alfvén-Jeans instability, where perturbations of the dust mass-loaded magnetic field counter the effects of self-gravitation. These two mechanisms yield different minimum threshold length scales for the onset of instability/condensation. It is pointed out that for the study of the Jeans instability produced by density enhancements induced in the plasma by the presence of normal wave modes, even more prohibitive plasma size constraints must necessarily be satisfied.     

How does a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate collapse?

We emphasize that the macroscopic collapse of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate in a pancake-shaped trap occurs through local density fluctuations, rather than through a global collapse to the trap center. This hypothesis is supported by a recent experiment in a chromium condensate.