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.     

Nonequilibrium Layer in the Crust of Neutron Stars and Nonequilibrium β-Processes in Astrophysics

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics - The formation of the chemical composition of neutron star envelopes, at densities 1010–1013 g cm–3, is considered. As hot matter is...     

On fluctuations in μ-space

A master equation is derived microscopically to describe the fluctuating motion of the particle density in . space. This equation accounts for the drift motion of particles and is valid for any inhomogeneous gas. The Boltzmann equation is obtained from the first moment of this equation by neglecting the second cumulant (the pair correlation function). The successive moments form coarse-grained BBGKY-like hierarchy equations, in which small spatial regions with r_ij < the force range are smeared out. These hierarchy equations are convenient for investigating the nonequilibrium long-range pair correlation function, which arises mainly from sequences of isolated binary collisions and gives rise to the much-discussed long-time tail and the logarithmic term in the density expansion of transport coefficients. It is shown to have a spatial long tail, like the Coulombic potential, in a steady laminar flow. The stochastic nature of the nonlinear Boltzmann-Langevin equation is also investigated; the random source term is found to be expressed as a linear superposition of Poisson random variables and to become Gaussian in special cases.     

Quantum fluctuations in planar domain wall space–times: A possible origin of primordial preferred direction

We study the gravitational effects of a planar domain wall on quantum fluctuations of a massless scalar field during inflation. By obtaining an exact solution of the scalar field equation in de-Sitter space, we show that the gravitational effects of the domain wall break the rotational invariance of the primordial power spectrum without affecting the translational invariance. The strength of rotational violation is determined by one dimensionless parameter β, which is a function of two physical parameters, the domain wall surface tension σ and cosmological constant Λ. In the limit of small β, the leading effect of rotational violation of the primordial power spectrum is scale-invariant.     

Phase fluctuations in Bose–Einstein condensates

We demonstrate the existence of phase fluctuations in elongated Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) and study the dependence of these fluctuations on the system parameters. A strong dependence on temperature, atom number, and trapping geometry is observed. Phase fluctuations directly affect the coherence properties of BECs. In particular, we observe instances where the phase-coherence length is significantly smaller than the condensate size. Our method of detecting phase fluctuations is based on their transformation into density modulations after ballistic expansion. An analytic theory describing this transformation is developed. Received: 13 July 2001 / Revised version: 28 September 2001 / Published online: 23 November 2001     

Application of μ SR to radiation damage in metals

Proton-irradiated Al, Cu and Ni foils have been investigated by the SR technique. No trapping of ⁺ has been observed in the temperature range investigated (<300 K). In Ni a temperature-independent increase of the depolarisation rate by a factor of three is found for the irradiated target. This change is attributed to field inhomogeneities produced by defects.     

Valence fluctuations in La2−xSrxCuO4

Ab-initio electronic band structure calculations are presented for the perovskite La₂CuO₄ and for this material doped with Sr for a supercell of composition La₃SrCu₂O₈. This material is close to the high Tc superconductor La_2−xSr_xCuO₄ discovered recently. The Sr doping gives rise to strong valence fluctuations. We discuss the effect of the valence fluctuations on the stability of the lattice, indicating a small value of U and enhancing the electron-phonon coupling λ, mainly by a mechanism of incipient peroxide formation.     

Vacuum fluctuations in charge–current uncertainty relations

We complete and justify the Bohr and Rosenfeld’s extension of their seminal work on the measurability of the free electromagnetic-field components to their pioneering paper on the measurement of charge–current uncertainty relations and the quantum control of vacuum fluctuations. We also show that it is possible to complete the aforementioned article with pseudo-realistic graphics of the thought experiments they designed.     

Cutoff effects in lattice actions at μ ≠ 0

We look at the cutoff dependence of several lattice actions, including two improved actions viz. Naik and p4, and and chirally-invariant ones, namely fixed-point, overlap and domain-wall, with the aim of understanding its behavior at μ ≠ 0. Apart from numerical results, we also derive a series expansion in N _r ⁻¹ for the free-gas pressure. We find that actions with O(a ⁿ )-improved rotational invariance produce O(a ⁿ )-improvement in the pressure. The series for unimproved overlap and domain-wall fermions are identical to the naive series, and hence using Naik or p 4 kernels should produce improvement in these formulations as well. Lastly, we find that actions that are improved at μ = 0 remain so as the chemical potential is turned on. The series coefficients become μ-dependent now, however their functional form at any given order is the same for all actions.     

Landau analog levels for dipoles in non-commutative space and phase space

We investigate the analog of Landau quantization, for a neutral polarized particle in the presence of homogeneous electric and magnetic external fields, in the context of non-commutative quantum mechanics. This particle, possessing electric and magnetic dipole moments, interacts with the fields via the Aharonov–Casher and He–McKellar–Wilkens effects. For this model we obtain the Landau energy spectrum and the radial eigenfunctions of the non-commutative space coordinates and non-commutative phase space coordinates. Also we show that the case of non-commutative phase space can be treated as a special case of the usual non-commutative space coordinates.     

Nonequilibrium kinetics effects in Richtmyer–Meshkov instability and reshock processes

Kinetic effects in the inertial confinement fusion ignition process are far from clear. In this work,we study the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability and reshock processes by using a two-fluid discrete Boltzmann method. The work begins by interpreting the experiment conducted by Collins and Jacobs(2002, J. Fluid Mech. 464, 113–136). It shows that the shock wave causes substances in close proximity to the substance interface to deviate more significantly from their thermodynamic equilibrium state. The ...     

Whiteness formula in CIELAB uniform color space

Many attempts have been made to standardize the calculation of whiteness.Whiteness formulas currently in use satisfactorily characterize the appearance of commercial whiteness.However,they have poor cor- relations with the observers' evaluations,and are often unsuccessful in assessing tinted white samples. A whiteness formula in the CIELAB uniform color space is developed in this paper.Several whiteness formulas are analyzed and compared.The experimental results show that the whiteness formula in the CIELAB uniform color space agrees well with the visual ranking,and it is superior to the CIE whiteness formula and the others in visual correlativity,uniformity and applicability.     

Quantum effects of potential fluctuations in GaAs δ-doping superlattices

The electronic and optical properties of δ-doping n-i-p-i superlattices are strongly influenced by the random distribution of donors and acceptors within the doping layers. A Monte-Carlo method is applied to investigate the resulting potential fluctuations and local changes of energy levels and wavefunctions. We study disorder effects on the density of states, the capacitance and the intraband absorption coefficient as a function of excitation level. In addition, the luminescence spectra are calculated and compared to electroluminescence measurements. Excellent agreement is achieved without using any fitting parameters, if the local wavefunction shrinkage of the tail states is included. While contributions of different subbands cannot be resolved in the luminescence, the simulation of conduction band (CB) intraband absorption confirms that this is possible using resonant Raman scattering.     

Geometrical locus of massive test particle orbits in the space of physical parameters in Kerr space–time

Gravitational radiation of binary systems can be studied by using the adiabatic approximation in General Relativity. In this approach a small astrophysical object follows a trajectory consisting of a chained series of bounded geodesics (orbits) in the outer region of a Kerr Black Hole, representing the space time created by a bigger object. In our paper, we study the entire class of orbits, both of constant radius (spherical orbits), as well as non-null eccentricity orbits, showing a number of properties on the physical parameters and trajectories. The main result is the determination of the geometrical locus of all the orbits in the space of physical parameters in Kerr space–time. This becomes a powerful tool to know if different orbits can be connected by a continuous change of their physical parameters. A discussion on the influence of different values of the angular momentum of the hole is given. Main results have been obtained by analytical methods.