On the Anisotropic Nature of MRI-Driven Turbulence in Astrophysical Disks

The magnetorotational instability is thought to play an important role in enabling accretion in sufficiently ionized astrophysical disks. The rate at which MRI-driven turbulence transports angular momentum is related to both the strength of the amplitudes of the fluctuations on various scales and the degree of anisotropy of the underlying turbulence. This has motivated several studies of the distribution of turbulent power in spectral space. In this paper, we investigate the anisotropic nature of MRI-driven turbulence using a pseudo-spectral code and introduce novel ways to robustly characterize the underlying turbulence. We show that the general flow properties vary in a quasi-periodic way on timescales comparable to 10 inverse angular frequencies motivating the temporal analysis of its anisotropy. We introduce a 3D tensor invariant analysis to quantify and classify the evolution of the anisotropic turbulent flow. This analysis shows a continuous high level of anisotropy, with brief sporadic transitions towards two- and three-component isotropic turbulent flow. This temporal-dependent anisotropy renders standard shell-average, especially when used simultaneously with long temporal averages, inadequate for characterizing MRI-driven turbulence. We propose an alternative way to extract spectral information from the turbulent magnetized flow, whose anisotropic character depends strongly on time. This consists of stacking 1D Fourier spectra along three orthogonal directions that exhibit maximum anisotropy in Fourier space. The resulting averaged spectra show that the power along each of the three independent directions differs by several orders of magnitude over most scales, except the largest ones. Our results suggest that a first-principles theory to describe fully developed MRI-driven turbulence will likely have to consider the anisotropic nature of the flow at a fundamental level.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Ap

Anisotropic particles near surfaces: Self-propulsion and friction

We theoretically study the phenomenon of self-propulsion through Casimir forces in thermal non-equilibrium. Using fluctuational electrodynamics, we derive a formula for the self-propulsion force for an arbitrary small object in two scenarios, i) for the object being isolated, and ii) for the object being close to a planar surface. In the latter case, the self-propulsion force (i.e., the force parallel to the surface) increases with decreasing distance, i.e., it couples to the near-field. We numerically calculate the lateral force acting on a hot spheroid near a surface and show that it can be as large as the gravitational force, thus being potentially measurable in fly-by experiments. We close by linking our results to well-known relations of linear response theory in fluctuational electrodynamics: Looking at the friction of the anisotropic object for constant velocity, we identify a correction term that is additional to the typically used approach.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures (v2: References updated

Formation and Evolution of Singularities in Anisotropic Geometric Continua

Evolutionary PDEs for geometric order parameters that admit propagating singular solutions are introduced and discussed. These singular solutions arise as a result of the competition between nonlinear and nonlocal processes in various familiar vector spaces. Several examples are given. The motivating example is the directed self assembly of a large number of particles for technological purposes such as nano-science processes, in which the particle interactions are anisotropic. This application leads to the derivation and analysis of gradient flow equations on Lie algebras. The Riemann structure of these gradient flow equations is also discussed.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figures. Physica D, submitte

Euler-Poincar\'e equations for GG-Strands

The $G$-strand equations for a map $\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}$ into a Lie group $G$ are associated to a $G$-invariant Lagrangian. The Lie group manifold is also the configuration space for the Lagrangian. The $G$-strand itself is the map $g(t,s): \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}\to G$, where $t$ and $s$ are the independent variables of the $G$-strand equations. The Euler-Poincar\'e reduction of the variational principle leads to a formulation where the dependent variables of the $G$-strand equations take values in the corresponding Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ and its co-algebra, $\mathfrak{g}^*$ with respect to the pairing provided by the variational derivatives of the Lagrangian. We review examples of different $G$-strand constructions, including matrix Lie groups and diffeomorphism group. In some cases the $G$-strand equations are completely integrable 1+1 Hamiltonian systems that admit soliton solutions.Comment: To appear in Conference Proceedings for Physics and Mathematics of Nonlinear Phenomena, 22 - 29 June 2013, Gallipoli (Italy) http://pmnp2013.dmf.unisalento.it/talks.shtml, 9 pages, no figure

A meshless, integration-free, and boundary-only RBF technique

Based on the radial basis function (RBF), non-singular general solution and dual reciprocity method (DRM), this paper presents an inherently meshless, integration-free, boundary-only RBF collocation techniques for numerical solution of various partial differential equation systems. The basic ideas behind this methodology are very mathematically simple. In this study, the RBFs are employed to approximate the inhomogeneous terms via the DRM, while non-singular general solution leads to a boundary-only RBF formulation for homogenous solution. The present scheme is named as the boundary knot method (BKM) to differentiate it from the other numerical techniques. In particular, due to the use of nonsingular general solutions rather than singular fundamental solutions, the BKM is different from the method of fundamental solution in that the former does no require the artificial boundary and results in the symmetric system equations under certain conditions. The efficiency and utility of this new technique are validated through a number of typical numerical examples. Completeness concern of the BKM due to the only use of non-singular part of complete fundamental solution is also discussed