From CAA to CFD

In this contribution, an application of a computational aeroacoustic code as a hybrid Zonal LES tool is presented. The here used hybrid approach is based on a novel implementation of the Non-Linear Perturbation Equations extended with fluctuating viscous terms, denoted as “Overset” since a perturbation analysis is performed on top of a background flow. The extension to LES is demonstrated with isotropic decaying turbulence, where the expected temporal decay and scaling of the reference DNS data is recovered with the LES employing a classical Smagorinsky model. Furthermore, a conceptual approach is presented that describes the investigation of sound sources with application to trailing-edge noise. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Effect of superradiance on transport of diffusing photons in cold atomic gases

We show that in atomic gases cooperative effects like superradiance and subradiance lead to a potential between two atoms that decays like 1/r. In the case of superradiance, this potential is attractive for close enough atoms and can be interpreted as a coherent mesoscopic effect. The contribution of superradiant pairs to multiple scattering properties of a dilute gas, such as photon elastic mean free path and group velocity, is significantly different from that of independent atoms. We discuss the conditions under which these effects may be observed and compare our results to recent experiments on photon transport in cold atomic gases.     

Thermodynamics of photons on fractals

A thermodynamical treatment of a massless scalar field (a photon) confined to a fractal spatial manifold leads to an equation of state relating pressure to internal energy, PV(s) = U/d(s), where d(s) is the spectral dimension and V(s) defines the "spectral volume." For regular manifolds, V(s) coincides with the usual geometric spatial volume, but on a fractal this is not necessarily the case. This is further evidence that on a fractal, momentum space can have a different dimension than position space. Our analysis also provides a natural definition of the vacuum (Casimir) energy of a fractal. We suggest ways that these unusual properties might be probed experimentally.     

Mesoscale model parameters from molecular cluster calculations

We present an efficient, systematic, and universal method to estimate the interaction parameters used in mesoscale simulation methods such as dissipative particle dynamics and self-consistent field methods from molecular cluster calculations. The method is based on a generalized Flory-Huggins model in which molecules, or fragments thereof, are in contact with their van der Waals surface. We sample the density of states of molecular clusters in the space spanned by the coarse-grained degrees of freedom. From here, we calculate the sum over states and free energy of the cluster at a temperature of interest by histogram reweighting. The method allows to calculate the energy and entropy contributions to the cluster free energy explicitly. For two components, we then obtain the excess free energy of mixing and the Flory-Huggins chi-parameter, and their energetic and entropic contributions. We present two applications of the method: a simple liquid mixture of hexane and nitrobenzene, and a series of polymer blends. In the case of hexane/nitrobenzene, we compare to alternative simulation methods; here we find that the energy of mixing alone is too high to explain the critical point. By including the excess entropy of mixing, however, the predicted phase behavior is in reasonable agreement with experiment. The tendency of calculations based on average energy alone to overestimate the chi-parameter is also apparent in the polymer blend calculations.     

Comments on the state densities and the transition rates in the pre-equilibrium exciton model

It is proposed to renormalize the exciton-state densities used in models for precompound decay such that the summed state densities agree with the expressions employed in equilibrium statistical models. In this way a close fit can be guaranteed between preequilibrium model calculations and the results of equilibrium statistical models for the evaporative stage of the reaction. The consequences of this proposal for the internal transition rates of the pre-equilibrium exciton model are analyzed. The matrix element for the residual interaction is obtained not from a phenomenological parametrization, but from the nucleon mean free path in nuclear matter. It is demonstrated that the proposed renormalization, from one-component Fermi-gas formulas to two-fermion expressions for the state densities, leads to strongly improved agreement of the effective exciton-model values for the nucleon mean free path in nuclear matter with realistic estimates. It is proved that the particle-hole state densities for a two-component Fermi gas, summed over the allowed exciton-state numbers, agree with the phenomenological state-density expressions used in statistical Hauser-Feshbach models.