41,183 research outputs found

    An elasto-visco-plastic model for immortal foams or emulsions

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    A variety of complex fluids consist in soft, round objects (foams, emulsions, assemblies of copolymer micelles or of multilamellar vesicles -- also known as onions). Their dense packing induces a slight deviation from their prefered circular or spherical shape. As a frustrated assembly of interacting bodies, such a material evolves from one conformation to another through a succession of discrete, topological events driven by finite external forces. As a result, the material exhibits a finite yield threshold. The individual objects usually evolve spontaneously (colloidal diffusion, object coalescence, molecular diffusion), and the material properties under low or vanishing stress may alter with time, a phenomenon known as aging. We neglect such effects to address the simpler behaviour of (uncommon) immortal fluids: we construct a minimal, fully tensorial, rheological model, equivalent to the (scalar) Bingham model. Importantly, the model consistently describes the ability of such soft materials to deform substantially in the elastic regime (be it compressible or not) before they undergo (incompressible) plastic creep -- or viscous flow under even higher stresses.Comment: 69 pages, 29 figure

    Moment instabilities in multidimensional systems with noise

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    We present a systematic study of moment evolution in multidimensional stochastic difference systems, focusing on characterizing systems whose low-order moments diverge in the neighborhood of a stable fixed point. We consider systems with a simple, dominant eigenvalue and stationary, white noise. When the noise is small, we obtain general expressions for the approximate asymptotic distribution and moment Lyapunov exponents. In the case of larger noise, the second moment is calculated using a different approach, which gives an exact result for some types of noise. We analyze the dependence of the moments on the system's dimension, relevant system properties, the form of the noise, and the magnitude of the noise. We determine a critical value for noise strength, as a function of the unperturbed system's convergence rate, above which the second moment diverges and large fluctuations are likely. Analytical results are validated by numerical simulations. We show that our results cannot be extended to the continuous time limit except in certain special cases.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figure

    Certain aspects of regularity in scalar field cosmological dynamics

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    We consider dynamics of the FRW Universe with a scalar field. Using Maupertuis principle we find a curvature of geodesics flow and show that zones of positive curvature exist for all considered types of scalar field potential. Usually, phase space of systems with the positive curvature contains islands of regular motion. We find these islands numerically for shallow scalar field potentials. It is shown also that beyond the physical domain the islands of regularity exist for quadratic potentials as well.Comment: 15 pages with 4 figures; typos corrected, final version to appear in Regular and Chaotic Dynamic

    Closed time path approach to the Casimir energy in real media

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    The closed time path formalism is applied, in the framework of open quantum systems, to study the time evolution of the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of a scalar field in the presence of real materials. We analyze quantum fluctuations in a fully non-equilibrium scenario, when the scalar field is interacting with the polarization degrees of freedom of matter, described as quantum Brownian particles. A generalized analysis was done for two types of couplings between the field and the material. On the one hand, we considered a bilinear coupling, and on the other hand, a (more realistic) current-type coupling as in the case of the electromagnetic field interacting with matter. We considered the high temperature limit for the field, keeping arbitrary temperatures for each part of the volume elements of the material. We obtained a closed form for the Hadamard propagator, which let us study the dynamical evolution of the expectations values of the energy-momentum tensor components from the initial time. We showed that two contributions always take place in the transient evolution: one of these is associated to the material and the other one is only associated to the field. Transient features were studied and the long-time limit was derived in several cases. We proved that in the steady situation of a field in n + 1 dimensions, the material always contribute unless is non-dissipative. Conversely, the proper field contribution vanishes unless the material is non-dissipative or, moreover, at least for the 1 + 1 case, if there are regions without material. We conclude that any steady quantization scheme in 1 + 1 dimensions must consider both contributions and we argue why these results are physically expected from a dynamical point of view, and also could be valid for higher dimensions based on the expected continuity between the non-dissipative and real material cases.Comment: 28 pages, no figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
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