257 research outputs found
Rotating superfluids in anharmonic traps: From vortex lattices to giant vortices
We study a superfluid in a rotating anharmonic trap and explicate a rigorous
proof of a transition from a vortex lattice to a giant vortex state as the
rotation is increased beyond a limiting speed determined by the interaction
strength. The transition is characterized by the disappearance of the vortices
from the annulus where the bulk of the superfluid is concentrated due to
centrifugal forces while a macroscopic phase circulation remains. The analysis
is carried out within two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii theory at large coupling
constant and reveals significant differences between 'soft' anharmonic traps
(like a quartic plus quadratic trapping potential) and traps with a fixed
boundary: In the latter case the transition takes place in a parameter regime
where the size of vortices is very small relative to the width of the annulus
whereas in 'soft' traps the vortex lattice persists until the width of the
annulus becomes comparable to the vortex cores. Moreover, the density profile
in the annulus where the bulk is concentrated is, in the 'soft' case,
approximately gaussian with long tails and not of the Thomas-Fermi type like in
a trap with a fixed boundary.Comment: Published version. Typos corrected, references adde
The Effects of Negative Legacies on the Adjustment of Parentally Bereaved Children and Adolescents
This is a report of a qualitative analysis of a sample of bereaved families in which one parent died and in which children scored in the clinical range on the Child Behavior Check List. The purpose of this analysis was to learn more about the lives of these children. They were considered to be at risk of developing emotional and behavioral problems associated with the death. We discovered that many of these “high risk” children had a continuing bond with the deceased that was primarily negative and troubling for them in contrast to a comparison group of children not at risk from the same study. Five types of legacies, not mutually exclusive, were identified: health related, role related, personal qualities, legacy of blame, and an emotional legacy. Coping behavior on the part of the surviving parent seemed to make a difference in whether or not a legacy was experienced as negative
Analysis of Nematic Liquid Crystals with Disclination Lines
We investigate the structure of nematic liquid crystal thin films described
by the Landau--de Gennes tensor-valued order parameter with Dirichlet boundary
conditions of nonzero degree. We prove that as the elasticity constant goes to
zero a limiting uniaxial texture forms with disclination lines corresponding to
a finite number of defects, all of degree 1/2 or all of degree -1/2. We also
state a result on the limiting behavior of minimizers of the Chern-Simons-Higgs
model without magnetic field that follows from a similar proof.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur
Inhomogeneous Vortex Patterns in Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates
We consider a 2D rotating Bose gas described by the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP)
theory and investigate the properties of the ground state of the theory for
rotational speeds close to the critical speed for vortex nucleation. While one
could expect that the vortex distribution should be homogeneous within the
condensate we prove by means of an asymptotic analysis in the strongly
interacting (Thomas-Fermi) regime that it is not. More precisely we rigorously
derive a formula due to Sheehy and Radzihovsky [Phys. Rev. A 70, 063620(R)
(2004)] for the vortex distribution, a consequence of which is that the vortex
distribution is strongly inhomogeneous close to the critical speed and
gradually homogenizes when the rotation speed is increased. From the
mathematical point of view, a novelty of our approach is that we do not use any
compactness argument in the proof, but instead provide explicit estimates on
the difference between the vorticity measure of the GP ground state and the
minimizer of a certain renormalized energy functional.Comment: 41 pages, journal ref: Communications in Mathematical Physics: Volume
321, Issue 3 (2013), Page 817-860, DOI : 10.1007/s00220-013-1697-
Ginzburg-Landau model with small pinning domains
We consider a Ginzburg-Landau type energy with a piecewise constant pinning
term in the potential . The function is different from
1 only on finitely many disjoint domains, called the {\it pinning domains}.
These pinning domains model small impurities in a homogeneous superconductor
and shrink to single points in the limit ; here, \v is the inverse of
the Ginzburg-Landau parameter. We study the energy minimization in a smooth
simply connected domain with Dirichlet boundary
condition on \d \O, with topological degree {\rm deg}_{\d \O} (g) = d
>0. Our main result is that, for small \v, minimizers have distinct
zeros (vortices) which are inside the pinning domains and they have a degree
equal to 1. The question of finding the locations of the pinning domains with
vortices is reduced to a discrete minimization problem for a finite-dimensional
functional of renormalized energy. We also find the position of the vortices
inside the pinning domains and show that, asymptotically, this position is
determined by {\it local renormalized energy} which does not depend on the
external boundary conditions.Comment: 39 page
Critical Rotational Speeds for Superfluids in Homogeneous Traps
We present an asymptotic analysis of the effects of rapid rotation on the
ground state properties of a superfluid confined in a two-dimensional trap. The
trapping potential is assumed to be radial and homogeneous of degree larger
than two in addition to a quadratic term. Three critical rotational velocities
are identified, marking respectively the first appearance of vortices, the
creation of a `hole' of low density within a vortex lattice, and the emergence
of a giant vortex state free of vortices in the bulk. These phenomena have
previously been established rigorously for a `flat' trap with fixed boundary
but the `soft' traps considered in the present paper exhibit some significant
differences, in particular the giant vortex regime, that necessitate a new
approach. These differences concern both the shape of the bulk profile and the
size of vortices relative to the width of the annulus where the bulk of the
superfluid resides. Close to the giant vortex transition the profile is of
Thomas-Fermi type in `flat' traps, whereas it is gaussian for soft traps, and
the `last' vortices to survive in the bulk before the giant vortex transition
are small relative to the width of the annulus in the former case but of
comparable size in the latter.Comment: To appear in J. Math. Phys, published versio
Passing to the Limit in a Wasserstein Gradient Flow: From Diffusion to Reaction
We study a singular-limit problem arising in the modelling of chemical
reactions. At finite {\epsilon} > 0, the system is described by a Fokker-Planck
convection-diffusion equation with a double-well convection potential. This
potential is scaled by 1/{\epsilon}, and in the limit {\epsilon} -> 0, the
solution concentrates onto the two wells, resulting into a limiting system that
is a pair of ordinary differential equations for the density at the two wells.
This convergence has been proved in Peletier, Savar\'e, and Veneroni, SIAM
Journal on Mathematical Analysis, 42(4):1805-1825, 2010, using the linear
structure of the equation. In this paper we re-prove the result by using solely
the Wasserstein gradient-flow structure of the system. In particular we make no
use of the linearity, nor of the fact that it is a second-order system. The
first key step in this approach is a reformulation of the equation as the
minimization of an action functional that captures the property of being a
curve of maximal slope in an integrated form. The second important step is a
rescaling of space. Using only the Wasserstein gradient-flow structure, we
prove that the sequence of rescaled solutions is pre-compact in an appropriate
topology. We then prove a Gamma-convergence result for the functional in this
topology, and we identify the limiting functional and the differential equation
that it represents. A consequence of these results is that solutions of the
{\epsilon}-problem converge to a solution of the limiting problem.Comment: Added two sections, corrected minor typos, updated reference
Augmented Two-Channel Arrhythmia Detection: An Efficient Diagnostic Method for Implantable Devices
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75624/1/j.1540-8159.1996.tb03164.x.pd
Conservative treatment of a comminuted cervical fracture in a racehorse
The 'classical' or 'Hangman' neck fracture involves the odontoid peg (process) of the second cervical vertebra (C2), and is described as an axial, dens or odontoid peg fracture in both the veterinary and human literature. Possible surgical treatment in both foals and adult horses requires a technique that allows decompression, anatomical alignment and stabilisation of the odontoid fracture. A limited number of surgical cases in foals have been reported in literature, but never in an adult horse. A mature Irish Thoroughbred racehorse was diagnosed with a type 2a odontoid peg fracture. Clinical signs included reluctance to move the head and neck, a left hind limb lameness and a neurological status of grade 2. The horse was treated conservatively and raced successfully five months after the diagnosed injury
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