Voltammetric Detection of Free Sulfhydryl Compounds in Food Flours

Cyclic voltammetry has been applied to the rapid measurement of free SH‐compounds in food flours samples. The protocol is based on the electrochemical adaptation of the Ellman's test, where the DTNB reacts with SH‐compounds present in food flour extracts, resulting in the equimolar production of the electroactive compound TNBA which, in turns, reacts with phenylendiamine. The reaction is found to provide an analytical signal from which to quantify indirectly free sulfhydryl compounds in flours extracts.     

Pattern formation and competition in photorefractive oscillators

We introduce a general model of pattern formation in optical systems made of a cavity with an active medium as a photorefractive crystal fed by a pump. The model is based on the interplay of a diffractive equation for the optical field and a diffusive equation for the medium refractivity. The aim of the model is to describe a series of experiments which have shown mode competition (periodic or chaotic alternation) for low Fresnel numbers (F) and mode coexistence, leading to short range space correlations, for high F. For low F, a linear stability analysis provides the set of modes above threshold as a function of the transverse wave number. Due to the interplay of the optical and the diffusive interactions, different behaviors result depending on the thickness of the medium as compared to the optical absorption length and diffusion length. Including the leading nonlinearities compatible with the symmetry constraints, we introduce normal form equations which describe the time-dependent mode competition. In the case of a large number of modes (high F), nonlinear mode-mode interaction is equivalent to a self-induced noise. In this limit, the relevant feature to be compared with the experiment is the power spectrum.     

CO(2) laser with modulated losses: Theoretical models and experiments in the chaotic regime

We compare two different theoretical models for a CO(2) laser, namely, the two- and four-level model, and show that the second one traces with much better accuracy the experimentally observed chaotic dynamics when the cavity losses are sinusoidally modulated. Even though the two-level model provides a qualitative explanation of the chaotic dynamics, only the four-level one assures a quantitative fitting. We also show that, at the onset of chaos, the chaotic dynamics is low dimensional and can be described in terms of a noninvertible one-dimensional map.     

Rate processes in nonlinear optical dynamics with many attractors

Kramers' 1940 paper and its successive elaborations have extensively explored the transition rate between two stable situations, that is, in the language of system dynamics, the transition between the basins of attraction of two stable fixed point attractors. In a nonequilibrium system some of the above conditions may be violated, either because one of the two fixed points is unstable, as in the case of transient phenomena, or because both fixed points are unstable, as in the case of heteroclinic chaos, or because the attractors are more complex than fixed points, as in a chaotic dynamics where two or more strange attractors coexist. Furthermore, there is recent experimental evidence of space-time complexity consisting in the alternate or simultaneous oscillation of many modes, each one with its own (possibly chaotic) dynamics. In all the above cases, coexistence of many alternative paths implies a choice, either due to noise or self-triggered by the same interacting degrees of freedom. A review of the above phenomena in the case of nonequilibrium optical systems is here presented, with the aim of stimulating theoretical investigation on these novel rate processes.     

Experimental characterization of the transition to phase synchronization of chaotic CO2 laser systems

We investigate the transition route to phase synchronization in a chaotic laser with external modulation. Such a transition is characterized by the presence of a regime of periodic phase synchronization, in which phase slips occur with maximal coherence in the phase difference between output signal and external modulation. We provide the first experimental evidence of such a regime and demonstrate that it occurs at the crossover point between two different scaling laws of the intermittent-type behavior of phase slips.     

Controlling and synchronizing space time chaos

Control and synchronization of continuous space-extended systems is realized by means of a finite number of local tiny perturbations. The perturbations are selected by an adaptive technique, and they are able to restore each of the independent unstable patterns present within a space time chaotic regime, as well as to synchronize two space time chaotic states. The effectiveness of the method and the robustness against external noise is demonstrated for the amplitude and phase turbulent regimes of the one-dimensional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. The problem of the minimum number of local perturbations necessary to achieve control is discussed as compared with the number of independent spatial correlation lengths.     

Dynamics of narrow bright solitons in an array of attractive atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate

We study the dynamics of a narrow bright soliton in a one-dimensional lattice of condensed attractive atoms when the soliton width is comparable to the lattice spacing. If a momentum is imprinted to a stationary state, the soliton can have oscillations around a site or it can undergo a random motion along the array. The motion is very sensitive to the atomic background distribution, and a thermal cloud or quantum field fluctuations can induce a random motion of the soliton.     

Propensity criterion for networking in an array of coupled chaotic systems

We examine the mutual synchronization of a one-dimensional chain of chaotic identical objects in the presence of a stimulus applied to the first site. We first describe the characteristics of the local elements, and then the process whereby a global nontrivial behavior emerges. A propensity criterion for networking is introduced, consisting in the coexistence within the attractor of a localized chaotic region, which displays high sensitivity to external stimuli, and an island of stability, which provides a reliable coupling signal to the neighbors in the chain. Based on this criterion, we compare homoclinic chaos, recently explored in lasers and conjectured to be typical of a single neuron, with Lorenz chaos.