Effective grain surface area in the formation of molecular hydrogen in interstellar clouds

In the interstellar clouds, molecular hydrogens are formed from atomic hydrogen on grain surfaces. An atomic hydrogen hops around till it finds another one with which it combines. This necessarily implies that the average recombination time, or equivalently, the effective grain surface area depends on the relative numbers of atomic hydrogen influx rate and the number of sites on the grain. Our aim is to discover this dependency. We perform a numerical simulation to study the recombination of hydrogen on grain surfaces in a variety of cloud conditions. We use a square lattice (with a periodic boundary condition) of various sizes on two types of grains, namely, amorphous carbon and olivine. We find that the steady state results of our simulation match very well with those obtained from a simpler analytical consideration provided the `effective' grain surface area is written as $\sim S^{\alpha}$, where, $S$ is the actual physical grain area and $\alpha$ is a function of the flux of atomic hydrogen which is determined from our simulation. We carry out the simulation for various astrophysically relevant accretion rates. For high accretion rates, small grains tend to become partly saturated with $H$ and $H_2$ and the subsequent accretion will be partly inhibited. For very low accretion rates, the number of sites to be swept before a molecular hydrogen can form is too large compared to the actual number of sites on the grain, implying that $\alpha$ is greater than unity.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures in eps forma

Dynamic transitions and hysteresis

When an interacting many-body system, such as a magnet, is driven in time by an external perturbation, such as a magnetic field,the system cannot respond instantaneously due to relaxational delay. The response of such a system under a time-dependent field leads to many novel physical phenomena with intriguing physics and important technological applications. For oscillating fields, one obtains hysteresis that would not occur under quasistatic conditions in the presence of thermal fluctuations. Under some extreme conditions of the driving field, one can also obtain a non-zero average value of the variable undergoing such dynamic hysteresis. This non-zero value indicates a breaking of symmetry of the hysteresis loop, around the origin. Such a transition to the spontaneously broken symmetric phase occurs dynamically when the driving frequency of the field increases beyond its threshold value which depends on the field amplitude and the temperature. Similar dynamic transitions also occur for pulsed and stochastically varying fields. We present an overview of the ongoing researches in this not-so-old field of dynamic hysteresis and transitions.Comment: 30 Pages Revtex, 10 Postscript figures. To appear in Reviews of Modern Physics, April, 199

QPOs from Radial and Vertical Oscillation of Shocks in Advective Accretion Flows

We present results of several numerical simulations of two dimensional advective flows which include cooling processes. We show that the computed light curve is similar to the $\chi$ state in GRS 1915+105. The power density spectrum (PDS) also shows presence of QPOs near the break frequency.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures To be published in the Proceedings of 10th Marcel Grossman Meeting, Ed. R. Ruffini et al. (World Scientific: Singapore

Dynamic Response of Ising System to a Pulsed Field

The dynamical response to a pulsed magnetic field has been studied here both using Monte Carlo simulation and by solving numerically the meanfield dynamical equation of motion for the Ising model. The ratio R_p of the response magnetisation half-width to the width of the external field pulse has been observed to diverge and pulse susceptibility \chi_p (ratio of the response magnetisation peak height and the pulse height) gives a peak near the order-disorder transition temperature T_c (for the unperturbed system). The Monte Carlo results for Ising system on square lattice show that R_p diverges at T_c, with the exponent $\nu z \cong 2.0$, while \chi_p shows a peak at $T_c^e$, which is a function of the field pulse width $\delta t$. A finite size (in time) scaling analysis shows that $T_c^e = T_c + C (\delta t)^{-1/x}$, with $x = \nu z \cong 2.0$. The meanfield results show that both the divergence of R and the peak in \chi_p occur at the meanfield transition temperature, while the peak height in $\chi_p \sim (\delta t)^y$, $y \cong 1$ for small values of $\delta t$. These results also compare well with an approximate analytical solution of the meanfield equation of motion.Comment: Revtex, Eight encapsulated postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Spin-Reversal Transition in Ising Model under Pulsed Field

In this communication we report the existence of a dynamic ``spin-reversal'' transition in an Ising system perturbed by a pulsed external magnetic field. The transition is achieved by tuning the strength ($h_p$) and/or the duration ($\Delta t$) of the pulse which is applied in a direction opposite to the existing order. We have studied this transition in the kinetic Ising Model in two dimension using Monte Carlo technique, and solved numerically the mean field equation of motion. The transition is essentially dynamic in nature and it takes the system from one ordered equilibrium phase to another by means of the growth of opposite spin domains (in the kinetic Ising case) induced during the period when the pulsed field is applied.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, 6 eps figures, to appear in Physica A Subject-Class: Statistical Physic

Dynamic Magnetization-Reversal Transition in the Ising Model

We report the results of mean field and the Monte Carlo study of the dynamic magnetization-reversal transition in the Ising model, brought about by the application of an external field pulse applied in opposition to the existing order before the application of the pulse. The transition occurs at a temperature T below the static critical temperature T_c without any external field. The transition occurs when the system, perturbed by the external field pulse competing with the existing order, jumps from one minimum of free energy to the other after the withdrawal of the pulse. The parameters controlling the transition are the strength h_p and the duration Delta t of the pulse. In the mean field case, approximate analytical expression is obtained for the phase boundary which agrees well with that obtained numerically in the small Delta t and large T limit. The order parameter of the transition has been identified and is observed to vary continuously near the transition. The order parameter exponent beta was estimated both for the mean field (beta =1) and the Monte Carlo beta = 0.90 \pm 0.02 in two dimension) cases. The transition shows a "critical slowing-down" type behaviour near the phase boundary with diverging relaxation time. The divergence was found to be logarithmic in the mean field case and exponential in the Monte Carlo case. The finite size scaling technique was employed to estimate the correlation length exponent nu (= 1.5 \pm 0.3 in two dimension) in the Monte Carlo case.Comment: 13 pages, latex, 8 figure

Noninteracting Fermions in infinite dimensions

Usually, we study the statistical behaviours of noninteracting Fermions in finite (mainly two and three) dimensions. For a fixed number of fermions, the average energy per fermion is calculated in two and in three dimensions and it becomes equal to 50 and 60 per cent of the fermi energy respectively. However, in the higher dimensions this percentage increases as the dimensionality increases and in infinite dimensions it becomes 100 per cent. This is an intersting result, at least pedagogically. Which implies all fermions are moving with Fermi momentum. This result is not yet discussed in standard text books of quantum statistics. In this paper, this fact is discussed and explained. I hope, this article will be helpful for graduate students to study the behaviours of free fermions in generalised dimensionality.Comment: To appear in European Journal of Physics (2010