Three-dimensional wake potential in a streaming dusty plasma

The oscillatory wake potential for a slowly moving or static test dust particulate in a finite temperature, collisionless and unmagnetized dusty plasma with a continuous flow of ions and dust particles has been studied. The collective resonant interaction of the moving test particle with the low-frequency and low-phase-velocity dust-acoustic mode is the origin of the periodic attractive force between the like polarity particulates along and perpendicular to the streaming ions and dust grains resulting into dust-Coulomb crystal formation. This wake potential can explain the three-dimensional dust-Coulomb crystal formation in the laboratory conditions.     

Novel synthesis of NixZn1?xFe2O4 (0?≤?x?≤?1) nanoparticles and their dielectric properties

Nanocrystalline Ni _x Zn_1−x Fe₂O₄ (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) ferrite powders with average particle size 15–20 nm have been successfully prepared at a very low temperature (180 °C) by a novel auto combustion process using citric acid and ethylenediamine as a coordinating agent and bridging ligand, respectively. Phase purity of the solid solutions has been confirmed by X-ray diffraction. Morphological characterizations of the prepared samples were performed by high resolution transmission electron and field emission scanning electron microscopy. Extensive Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopic characterization has been carried out to identify the plausible mechanism of the synthesis process. Composition-dependent electrical properties (resistivity and dielectric constant) of the synthesized solid solution have been investigated. Interestingly, a non-linear variation of dielectric permittivity with respect to composition has been observed. The room temperature electrical resistivity as well as the dielectric permittivity of Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe₂O₄ was found to decrease with the decrease of particle size.     

On the inadmissibility of preliminary-test estimators when the loss involves a complexity cost

Summary Estimation-preceded-by-testing is studied in the context of estimating the mean vector of a multivariate normal distribution under squared error loss together with a complexity cost. It is shown that although the preliminary test estimator is admissible for the univariate problem (cf Meeden and Arnold (1979),J. Amer. Statist. Assoc.,74, 872–874), for dimensionp≧3, the estimator is inadmissible. A new preliminary test estimator is obtained, which depends on the cost for each component and dominates the usual preliminary test estimator. Research partially supported by the NSF Grant Number DMS-82-18091 and partially by the DSR Research Development Award, University of Florida.     

The FFTRR-based fast direct algorithms for complex inhomogeneous biharmonic problems with applications to incompressible flows

We develop analysis-based fast and accurate direct algorithms for several biharmonic problems in a unit disk derived directly from the Green’s functions of these problems and compare the numerical results with the “decomposition” algorithms (see Ghosh and Daripa, IMA J. Numer. Anal. 36(2), 824–850 [17]) in which the biharmonic problems are first decomposed into lower order problems, most often either into two Poisson problems or into two Poisson problems and a homogeneous biharmonic problem. One of the steps in the “decomposition algorithm” as discussed in Ghosh and Daripa (IMA J. Numer. Anal. 36(2), 824–850 [17]) for solving certain biharmonic problems uses the “direct algorithm” without which the problem can not be solved. Using classical Green’s function approach for these biharmonic problems, solutions of these problems are represented in terms of singular integrals in the complex z?plane (the physical plane) involving explicitly the boundary conditions. Analysis of these singular integrals using FFT and recursive relations (RR) in Fourier space leads to the development of these fast algorithms which are called FFTRR based algorithms. These algorithms do not need to do anything special to overcome coordinate singularity at the origin as often the case when solving these problems using finite difference methods in polar coordinates. These algorithms have some other desirable properties such as the ease of implementation and parallel in nature by construction. Moreover, these algorithms have O(logN) complexity per grid point where N ² is the total number of grid points and have very low constant behind this order estimate of the complexity. Performance of these algorithms is shown on several test problems. These algorithms are applied to solving viscous flow problems at low and moderate Reynolds numbers and numerical results are presented.     

A novel method for studying the buckling of nanotubes considering geometrical imperfections

Buckling of nanotubes has been studied using many methods such as molecular dynamics (MD), molecular mechanics, and continuum-based shell theories. In MD, motion of the individual atoms is tracked under applied temperature and pressure, ensuring a reliable estimate of the material response. The response thus simulated varies for individual nanotubes and is only as accurate as the force field used to model the atomic interactions. On the other hand, there exists a rich literature on the understanding of continuum mechanics-based shell theories. Based on the observations on the behavior of nanotubes, there have been a number of shell theory-based approaches to study the buckling of nanotubes. Although some of these methods yield a reasonable estimate of the buckling stress, investigation and comparison of buckled mode shapes obtained from continuum analysis and MD are sparse. Previous studies show that the direct application of shell theories to study nanotube buckling often leads to erroneous results. The present study reveals that a major source of this error can be attributed to the departure of the shape of the nanotube from a perfect cylindrical shell. Analogous to the shell buckling in the macro-scale, in this work, the nanotube is modeled as a thin-shell with initial imperfection. Then, a nonlinear buckling analysis is carried out using the Riks method. It is observed that this proposed approach yields significantly improved estimate of the buckling stress and mode shapes. It is also shown that the present method can account for the variation of buckling stress as a function of the temperature considered. Hence, this can prove to be a robust method for a continuum analysis of nanosystems taking in the effect of variation of temperature as well.     

Contact instability in adhesion and debonding of thin elastic films

Based on experiments and 3D simulations, we show that a soft elastic film during adhesion and debonding from a rigid flat surface undergoes morphological transitions to pillars, labyrinths, and cavities, all of which have the same lateral pattern length scale, lambda close to lambda/H approximately 3 for thick films, H > 1 microm . The linear stability analysis and experiments show a new thin film regime where lambda/H approximately equal to 3 + 2pi(lambda/3 muH)1/4 (gamma is surface tension, mu is shear modulus) because of a significant surface energy penalty (for example, lambda/H approximately equal to 6 for H = 200 nm; mu = 1 MPa).     

Longitudinal Dust Lattice Shock Wave in a Strongly Coupled Complex Dusty Plasma

The effect of hydrodynamical damping that arises due to the irreversible processes within the system have been studied on 1D nonlinear longitudinal dust lattice wave (LDLW) in homogeneous strongly coupled complex (dusty) plasma. Analytical investigation shows that the nonlinear wave is governed by Korteweg‐de Vries Burgers' equation. This hydrodynamical damping induced dissipative effect is responsible for the Burgers' term that causes the generation of shock wave in dusty plasma crystal. Numerical investigation on the basis of the glow‐discharge plasma parameters reveal that LDLW exhibits both oscillatory and monotonic shock. The shock is compressive in nature and its strength decreases (increases) with the increase of the shielding parameter κ (characteristic length L). The effects of dust‐neutral collision are also discussed. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Structural, electronic and magnetic properties of Cr-doped Cd12S12 clusters: A density functional investigation

We have carried out first-principles density functional investigation of Cd₁₂S₁₂ cluster doped with one (monodoped) and two (bidoped) Cr-atoms, to explore the manifestation of novel magnetism in this family of stable II-VI semiconducting clusters. Different types of possible configurations of the dopant e.g. substitutional, exohedral, endohedral and substitutional-exohedral have been considered. Both for monodoped and bidoped clusters, substitutional doping corresponds to the ground state. In case of bidoped clusters, the coupling is found to be short-ranged, that depends on the Cr-Cr separation and the local environment. The main competing factors stabilizing ferromagnetic (FM) state in this class of doped nanoclusters are: (a) the FM interaction between two Cr atoms via S atom due to strong p-d hybridization and (b) the short range Cr-Cr direct antiferromagnetic (AFM) interaction. When additional hole is introduced in the system by substituting S with P, in substitutional bidoped clusters, FM state is found to be the ground sate.     

An all-optical integrated system for implementing arithmetic operation in 2’s complement method with the active participation of non-linear material based switches

Optics is regarded undoubtedly a potential and successful candidate in information and data processing because of its inherent parallelism. In last few decades several all-optical data processors, algebraic processors, arithmetic processors are proposed. Here in this communication the authors propose a completely new scheme for implementing binary data arithmetic in 2’s Complement method which is the most advantageous among all other established subtraction methods. To implement it we use non-linear material massively.