Discontinuities in the Electromagnetic Fields of Vortex Beams in the Complex Source/Sink Model

An analytical discontinuity is reported in what was thought to be the discontinuity-free exact nonparaxial vortex beam phasor obtained within the complex source/sink model. This discontinuity appears for all odd values of the orbital angular momentum mode. Such discontinuities in the phasor lead to nonphysical discontinuities in the real electromagnetic field components. We identify the source of the discontinuities, and provide graphical evidence of the discontinuous real electric fields for the first and third orbital angular momentum modes. A simple means of avoiding these discontinuities is presented.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Magnetic Discontinuities in Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence and in the Solar Wind

Recent measurements of solar wind turbulence report the presence of intermittent, exponentially distributed angular discontinuities in the magnetic field. In this Letter, we study whether such discontinuities can be produced by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We detect the discontinuities by measuring the fluctuations of the magnetic field direction, Delta theta, across fixed spatial increments Delta x in direct numerical simulations of MHD turbulence with an imposed uniform guide field B_0. A large region of the probability density function (pdf) for Delta theta is found to follow an exponential decay, proportional to exp(-Delta theta/theta_*), with characteristic angle theta_* ~ (14 deg) (b_rms/B_0)^0.65 for a broad range of guide-field strengths. We find that discontinuities observed in the solar wind can be reproduced by MHD turbulence with reasonable ratios of b_rms/B_0. We also observe an excess of small angular discontinuities when Delta x becomes small, possibly indicating an increasing statistical significance of dissipation-scale structures. The structure of the pdf in this case closely resembles the two-population pdf seen in the solar wind. We thus propose that strong discontinuities are associated with inertial-range MHD turbulence, while weak discontinuities emerge from near-dissipation-range turbulence. In addition, we find that the structure functions of the magnetic field direction exhibit anomalous scaling exponents, which indicates the existence of intermittent structures.Comment: To appear in Physical Review Letter

From discretization to regularization of composite discontinuous functions

Discontinuities between distinct regions, described by different equation sets, cause difficulties for PDE/ODE solvers. We present a new algorithm that eliminates integrator discontinuities through regularizing discontinuities. First, the algorithm determines the optimum switch point between two functions spanning adjacent or overlapping domains. The optimum switch point is determined by searching for a “jump point” that minimizes a discontinuity between adjacent/overlapping functions. Then, discontinuity is resolved using an interpolating polynomial that joins the two discontinuous functions. This approach eliminates the need for conventional integrators to either discretize and then link discontinuities through generating interpolating polynomials based on state variables or to reinitialize state variables when discontinuities are detected in an ODE/DAE system. In contrast to conventional approaches that handle discontinuities at the state variable level only, the new approach tackles discontinuity at both state variable and the constitutive equations level. Thus, this approach eliminates errors associated with interpolating polynomials generated at a state variable level for discontinuities occurring in the constitutive equations. Computer memory space requirements for this approach exponentially increase with the dimension of the discontinuous function hence there will be limitations for functions with relatively high dimensions. Memory availability continues to increase with price decreasing so this is not expected to be a major limitation

Reducing Audible Spectral Discontinuities

In this paper, a common problem in diphone synthesis is discussed, viz., the occurrence of audible discontinuities at diphone boundaries. Informal observations show that spectral mismatch is most likely the cause of this phenomenon.We first set out to find an objective spectral measure for discontinuity. To this end, several spectral distance measures are related to the results of a listening experiment. Then, we studied the feasibility of extending the diphone database with context-sensitive diphones to reduce the occurrence of audible discontinuities. The number of additional diphones is limited by clustering consonant contexts that have a similar effect on the surrounding vowels on the basis of the best performing distance measure. A listening experiment has shown that the addition of these context-sensitive diphones significantly reduces the amount of audible discontinuities

Discontinuities in regularised media

Discontinuous interpolation of the problem fields in non-local and rate-dependent media is considered. The necessity of discontinuities in the analysis of failure processes and some of the requirements for the introduction of discontinuities in regularised media are discussed. The regularisation properties of a novel rate-dependent elastoplastic damage continuum model are presented

Level Set Methods for Stochastic Discontinuity Detection in Nonlinear Problems

Stochastic physical problems governed by nonlinear conservation laws are challenging due to solution discontinuities in stochastic and physical space. In this paper, we present a level set method to track discontinuities in stochastic space by solving a Hamilton-Jacobi equation. By introducing a speed function that vanishes at discontinuities, the iso-zero of the level set problem coincide with the discontinuities of the conservation law. The level set problem is solved on a sequence of successively finer grids in stochastic space. The method is adaptive in the sense that costly evaluations of the conservation law of interest are only performed in the vicinity of the discontinuities during the refinement stage. In regions of stochastic space where the solution is smooth, a surrogate method replaces expensive evaluations of the conservation law. The proposed method is tested in conjunction with different sets of localized orthogonal basis functions on simplex elements, as well as frames based on piecewise polynomials conforming to the level set function. The performance of the proposed method is compared to existing adaptive multi-element generalized polynomial chaos methods