Hydrodynamics of an expanding fireball

A set of relativistic hydrodynamic equations is solved numerically on the basis of the flux-corrected SHASTA method for one-, two-, and three-dimensional geometries. The accuracy of the proposed method is demonstrated via a comparison with exact analytic solutions for the one-dimensional Riemann problem and a boost-invariant longitudinal expansion in the Bjorken model. The example of an expanding three-dimensional fireball for which initial conditions approximately correspond to PbPb collisions at an energy of about 160 GeV per nucleon is considered. This example indicates that the presumed dynamics of the expansion may affect substantially the results of an analysis of in-medium properties of hadrons that relies on data from experiments with leptons.     

On multiple integrals represented as a linear form in 1, ζ(3), ζ(5),..., ζ(2<Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis> − 1)

A theorem on the presentability of a multiple integral as a linear form in 1, ζ(3), ζ(5),..., ζ(2k − 1) over ℚ is proved. This theorem refines the results recently obtained by D. Vasiliev, V. Zudilin, and S. Zlobin. __________ Translated from Fundamentalnaya i Prikladnaya Matematika, Vol. 11, No. 6, pp. 143–178, 2005.     

Cayley hypersurfaces

We exhibit a family of homogeneous hypersurfaces in affine space, one in each dimension, that generalize the Cayley surface.     

Ionic relaxation in nematic liquid crystal cells

We investigate the dependence of the relaxation time of the current flowing in a nematic cell submitted to an external dc voltage on the physical properties of the substrate. We show that previously presented analyses of the same problem are not very useful for practical applications. We compare our theoretical predictions with experimental data, and show that the agreement is rather good. The influence of the adsorption-desorption phenomenon on the relaxation time is also discussed.     

Effect of crack tip sharpness on the strength of vulcanized rubbers

The effect of crack tip sharpness on crack propagation in vulcanized rubbers has been studied. For very sharp cracks, tearing is found to occur on a small scale at very low energies not far above the threshold required for the onset of mechanical crack growth. The “small-scale” tearing energies show relatively little variation for rubbers that differ widely in tear strength as normally measured. Thus the latter property appears to be strongly influenced by variations in the ability of rubbers to promote tip blunting. The small-scale tear behavior is of relevance to other fracture phenomena, including cutting by sharp objects and tensile failure. Natural variations in tip sharpness occur during cyclic or time-dependent mechanical crack growth and influence the form of the crack growth characteristics.