6,881 research outputs found
Strategies for Optimize Off-Lattice Aggregate Simulations
We review some computer algorithms for the simulation of off-lattice clusters
grown from a seed, with emphasis on the diffusion-limited aggregation,
ballistic aggregation and Eden models. Only those methods which can be
immediately extended to distinct off-lattice aggregation processes are
discussed. The computer efficiencies of the distinct algorithms are compared.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures and 3 tables; published at Brazilian Journal of
Physics 38, march, 2008 (http://www.sbfisica.org.br/bjp/files/v38_81.pdf
Understanding long-time vacancy aggregation in iron: a kinetic activation-relaxation technique study
Vacancy diffusion and clustering processes in body-centered-cubic (bcc) Fe
are studied using the kinetic activation-relaxation technique (k-ART), an
off-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo method with on-the-fly catalog building
capabilities. For monovacancies and divacancies, k-ART recovers previously
published results while clustering in a 50-vacancy simulation box agrees with
experimental estimates. Applying k-ART to the study of clustering pathways for
systems containing from one to six vacancies, we find a rich set of diffusion
mechanisms. In particular, we show that the path followed to reach a
hexavacancy cluster influences greatly the associated mean-square displacement.
Aggregation in a 50-vacancy box also shows a notable dispersion in relaxation
time associated with effective barriers varying from 0.84 to 1.1 eV depending
on the exact pathway selected. We isolate the effects of long-range elastic
interactions between defects by comparing to simulations where those effects
are deliberately suppressed. This allows us to demonstrate that in bcc Fe,
suppressing long-range interactions mainly influences kinetics in the first 0.3
ms, slowing down quick energy release cascades seen more frequently in full
simulations, whereas long-term behavior and final state are not significantly
affected.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures. Updated to post-review manuscrip
Laplacian growth with separately controlled noise and anisotropy
Conformal mapping models are used to study competition of noise and
anisotropy in Laplacian growth. For that, a new family of models is introduced
with the noise level and directional anisotropy controlled independently.
Fractalization is observed in both anisotropic growth and the growth with
varying noise. Fractal dimension is determined from cluster size scaling with
its area. For isotropic growth we find d = 1.7, both at high and low noise. For
anisotropic growth with reduced noise the dimension can be as low as d = 1.5
and apparently is not universal. Also, we study fluctuations of particle areas
and observe, in agreement with previous studies, that exceptionally large
particles may appear during the growth, leading to pathologically irregular
clusters. This difficulty is circumvented by using an acceptance window for
particle areas.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figure
Hastings-Levitov aggregation in the small-particle limit
We establish some scaling limits for a model of planar aggregation. The model is described by the composition of a sequence of independent and identically distributed random conformal maps, each corresponding to the addition of one particle. We study the limit of small particle size and rapid aggregation. The process of growing clusters converges, in the sense of Caratheodory, to an inflating disc. A more refined analysis reveals, within the cluster, a tree structure of branching fingers, whose radial component increases deterministically with time. The arguments of any finite sample of fingers, tracked inwards, perform coalescing Brownian motions. The arguments of any finite sample of gaps between the fingers, tracked outwards, also perform coalescing Brownian motions. These properties are closely related to the evolution of harmonic measure on the boundary of the cluster, which is shown to converge to the Brownian web
Electrotunable nanoplasmonic liquid mirror
Recently, there has been a drive to design and develop fully tunable metamaterials for applications ranging from new classes of sensors to superlenses among others. Although advances have been made, tuning and modulating the optical properties in real time remains a challenge. We report on the first realization of a reversible electrotunable liquid mirror based on voltage-controlled self-assembly/disassembly of 16 nm plasmonic nanoparticles at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions. We show that optical properties such as reflectivity and spectral position of the absorption band can be varied in situ within ±0.5 V. This observed effect is in excellent agreement with theoretical calculations corresponding to the change in average interparticle spacing. This electrochemical fully tunable nanoplasmonic platform can be switched from a highly reflective ‘mirror’ to a transmissive ‘window’ and back again. This study opens a route towards realization of such platforms in future micro/nanoscale electrochemical cells, enabling the creation of tunable plasmonic metamaterials
The speed of range shifts in fragmented landscapes
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
A Stochastic Approach to Shortcut Bridging in Programmable Matter
In a self-organizing particle system, an abstraction of programmable matter,
simple computational elements called particles with limited memory and
communication self-organize to solve system-wide problems of movement,
coordination, and configuration. In this paper, we consider a stochastic,
distributed, local, asynchronous algorithm for "shortcut bridging", in which
particles self-assemble bridges over gaps that simultaneously balance
minimizing the length and cost of the bridge. Army ants of the genus Eciton
have been observed exhibiting a similar behavior in their foraging trails,
dynamically adjusting their bridges to satisfy an efficiency trade-off using
local interactions. Using techniques from Markov chain analysis, we rigorously
analyze our algorithm, show it achieves a near-optimal balance between the
competing factors of path length and bridge cost, and prove that it exhibits a
dependence on the angle of the gap being "shortcut" similar to that of the ant
bridges. We also present simulation results that qualitatively compare our
algorithm with the army ant bridging behavior. Our work gives a plausible
explanation of how convergence to globally optimal configurations can be
achieved via local interactions by simple organisms (e.g., ants) with some
limited computational power and access to random bits. The proposed algorithm
also demonstrates the robustness of the stochastic approach to algorithms for
programmable matter, as it is a surprisingly simple extension of our previous
stochastic algorithm for compression.Comment: Published in Proc. of DNA23: DNA Computing and Molecular Programming
- 23rd International Conference, 2017. An updated journal version will appear
in the DNA23 Special Issue of Natural Computin
- …