A completely iterative method for the infinite domain electrostatic problem with nonlinear dielectric media

We present an iterative method for the solution of the exterior all-space electrostatic problem for nonlinear dielectric media. The electric potential is specified on interior boundaries and the electric field decays at infinity. Our approach uses a natural variational formulation based on the total energy of the nonlinear dielectric medium subject to boundary conditions. The problem is decomposed into an exterior calculation and an interior calculation with the boundary-specified electric potentials imposed as constraints between them. Together, these enable an iterative method that is based on the variational formulation. In contrast to direct solution of the electrostatic problems, we avoid the construction, storage and solution of dense and large linear systems. This provides important advantages for multiphysics problems that couple the linear electrostatic Poisson problem to nonlinear physics: the latter necessarily involves iterative approaches, and our approach replaces a large number of direct solves for the electrostatics with an iterative algorithm that can be coupled to the iterations of the nonlinear problem. We present examples applying the method to inhomogeneous, anisotropic nonlinear dielectrics. A key advantage of our variational formulation is that we require only the free-space, isotropic, homogeneous Greens function for all these settings.     

Refractive index imaging from radiative transfer equation-based reconstruction algorithm: Fundamentals

We present the first reconstruction algorithm for refractive index imaging, which is based on the radiative transfer equation (RTE). An objective function is iteratively minimized to find a solution to the problem of inversion of the refractive index field. The function describes the discrepancies of the emerging light measurements on the surface of the sample to be probed with predicted data from the corresponding numerical model. The unknown refractive index field is updated within each reconstruction iteration according to a search direction on the index distribution given by the adjoint model to the RTE. In this paper, emphasis is placed on the theoretical aspects. Preliminary tests are demonstrated on generic phantoms.     

Quantum annealing of the graph coloring problem

Quantum annealing extends simulated annealing by introducing artificial quantum fluctuations. The path-integral Monte Carlo version chosen is population-based and designed to be implemented on a classical computer. Its first application to the graph coloring problem is presented in this paper. It is shown by experiments that quantum annealing can outperform classical thermal simulated annealing for this particular problem. Moreover, quantum annealing proved competitive when compared with the best algorithms on most of the difficult instances from the DIMACS benchmarks. The quantum annealing algorithm has even found that the well-known benchmark graph dsjc1000.9 has a chromatic number of at most 222. This is an improvement on its best upper-bound from a large body of literature.     

Higher Conditional Symmetry and Reduction of Initial Value Problems

We give the exposition of a generalized symmetry approach toreduction of initial value problems for nonlinear evolutionequations in one spatial variable. Using this approach we classifythe initial value problems for third-order evolution equationsthat admit reduction to Cauchy problems for systems of twoordinary differential equations. These reductions are shown tocorrespond to higher conditional symmetries admitted by thecorresponding nonlinear evolution equations.     

Integration of an Equilibrium System in an Enhanced Theory of Bending of Elastic Plates

The complete integral of the system of partial differential equations governing the equilibrium bending of elastic plates with transverse shear deformation and transverse normal strain is constructed by means of complex variable methods. The process helps to elucidate the physical meaning of certain analytic constraints imposed on the asymptotic behavior of the solutions and shows that in the case of an infinite plate, any analytic solution has finite energy if and only if the bending and twisting moments, the transverse shear force, the displacements in vertical planes, and two other characteristic quantities vanish at infinity. An example is discussed to illustrate the theory.     

Jump Condition for Diffusive and Convective Mass Transfer Between a Porous Medium and a Fluid Involving Adsorption and Chemical Reaction

In this paper, mass transfer at the fluid–porous medium boundaries is studied. The problem considers both diffusive and convective transport, along with adsorption and reaction effects in the porous medium. The result is a mass flux jump condition that is expressed in terms of effective transport coefficients. Such coefficients (a total dispersion tensor and effective reaction and adsorption coefficients) may be computed from the solution of the corresponding closure problem here stated and solved as a function of the Péclet number (Pe), the porosity and a local Thiele modulus. For the case of negligible convective transport (i.e., ), the closure problem reduces to the one recently solved by the authors for diffusion and reaction between a fluid and a microporous medium.     

iVI-TD-DFT: An iterative vector interaction method for exterior/interior roots of TD-DFT

The recently proposed iterative vector interaction (iVI) method for large Hermitian eigenvalue problems (Huang et al., J. Comput. Chem. 2017, 38, 2481) is extended to generalized eigenvalue problems, HC = SCE , with the metric S being either positive definite or not. Although, it works with a fixed-dimensional search subspace, iVI can converge quickly and monotonically from above to the exact exterior/interior roots. The algorithms are further specialized to nonrelativistic and relativistic time-dependent density functional theories (TD-DFT) by taking the orbital Hessian as the metric (i.e., the inverse TD-DFT eigenvalue problem) and incorporating explicitly the paired structure into the trial vectors. The efficacy of iVI-TD-DFT is demonstrated by various examples. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Finite Volume Method Based on the Constrained Nonconforming Rotated Q1-Constant Element for the Stokes Problem

We construct a finite volume element method based on the constrained nonconforming rotated Q₁-constant element (CNRQ₁-P₀) for the Stokes problem. Two meshes are needed, which are the primal mesh and the dual mesh. We approximate the velocity by CNRQ₁ elements and the pressure by piecewise constants. The errors for the velocity in the H¹ norm and for the pressure in the L² norm are O(h) and the error for the velocity in the L² norm is O(h²). Numerical experiments are presented to support our theoretical results.     

The Modified Ghost Fluid Method Applied to Fluid-Elastic Structure Interaction

In this work, the modified ghost fluid method is developed to deal with 2D compressible fluid interacting with elastic solid in an Euler-Lagrange coupled system. In applying the modified Ghost Fluid Method to treat the fluid-elastic solid coupling, the Navier equations for elastic solid are cast into a system similar to the Euler equations but in Lagrangian coordinates. Furthermore, to take into account the influence of material deformation and nonlinear wave interaction at the interface, an Euler-Lagrange Riemann problem is constructed and solved approximately along the normal direction of the interface to predict the interfacial status and then define the ghost fluid and ghost solid states. Numerical tests are presented to verify the resultant method.     

The Lower Bounds of Eigenvalues by the Wilson Element in Any Dimension

In this paper, we analyze the Wilson element method of the eigenvalue problem in arbitrary dimensions by combining a new technique recently developed in [10] and the a posteriori error result. We prove that the discrete eigenvalues are smaller than the exact ones.