46 research outputs found
Heat balance of the Earth
Results of improved calculations of the heat balance components of Earth's surface are reported for yearly average conditions. The technique used to determine the heat-balance components from land- and sea-based actinometric observations as well as from satellite data on the radiation balance of the Earth-atmosphere system is described, with special attention given to short-wavelength solar radiation on the continents, effective radiation from the land surface, the radiation balance of the ocean surface, heat expended by both evaporation from the ocean surface, and turbulent heat transfer between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. World maps of heat-balance components show yearly average values of total radiation, radiation balance, heat expended by evaporation, the turbulent heat flow between Earth's surface and atmosphere, and heat transfer between the ocean surface and underlying waters. The global surface heat balance is estimated along with global values of the various components and the heat-balance components for different latitude zones
Effective Viscosity of Dilute Bacterial Suspensions: A Two-Dimensional Model
Suspensions of self-propelled particles are studied in the framework of
two-dimensional (2D) Stokesean hydrodynamics. A formula is obtained for the
effective viscosity of such suspensions in the limit of small concentrations.
This formula includes the two terms that are found in the 2D version of
Einstein's classical result for passive suspensions. To this, the main result
of the paper is added, an additional term due to self-propulsion which depends
on the physical and geometric properties of the active suspension. This term
explains the experimental observation of a decrease in effective viscosity in
active suspensions.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Biolog
Are the Tails of Percolation Thresholds Gaussians ?
The probability distribution of percolation thresholds in finite lattices
were first believed to follow a normal Gaussian behaviour. With increasing
computer power and more efficient simulational techniques, this belief turned
to a stretched exponential behaviour, instead. Here, based on a further
improvement of Monte Carlo data, we show evidences that this question is not
yet answered at all.Comment: 7 pages including 3 figure
Chiral tunneling in single and bilayer graphene
We review chiral (Klein) tunneling in single-layer and bilayer graphene and
present its semiclassical theory, including the Berry phase and the Maslov
index. Peculiarities of the chiral tunneling are naturally explained in terms
of classical phase space. In a one-dimensional geometry we reduced the original
Dirac equation, describing the dynamics of charge carriers in the single layer
graphene, to an effective Schr\"odinger equation with a complex potential. This
allowed us to study tunneling in details and obtain analytic formulas. Our
predictions are compared with numerical results. We have also demonstrated
that, for the case of asymmetric n-p-n junction in single layer graphene, there
is total transmission for normal incidence only, side resonances are
suppressed.Comment: submitted to Proceedings of Nobel Symposium on graphene, May 201
A fast Monte Carlo algorithm for site or bond percolation
We describe in detail a new and highly efficient algorithm for studying site
or bond percolation on any lattice. The algorithm can measure an observable
quantity in a percolation system for all values of the site or bond occupation
probability from zero to one in an amount of time which scales linearly with
the size of the system. We demonstrate our algorithm by using it to investigate
a number of issues in percolation theory, including the position of the
percolation transition for site percolation on the square lattice, the
stretched exponential behavior of spanning probabilities away from the critical
point, and the size of the giant component for site percolation on random
graphs.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures. Corrections and some additional material in
this version. Accompanying material can be found on the web at
http://www.santafe.edu/~mark/percolation
Flux norm approach to finite dimensional homogenization approximations with non-separated scales and high contrast
We consider divergence-form scalar elliptic equations and vectorial equations
for elasticity with rough (, )
coefficients that, in particular, model media with non-separated scales
and high contrast in material properties. We define the flux norm as the
norm of the potential part of the fluxes of solutions, which is equivalent to
the usual -norm. We show that in the flux norm, the error associated with
approximating, in a properly defined finite-dimensional space, the set of
solutions of the aforementioned PDEs with rough coefficients is equal to the
error associated with approximating the set of solutions of the same type of
PDEs with smooth coefficients in a standard space (e.g., piecewise polynomial).
We refer to this property as the {\it transfer property}.
A simple application of this property is the construction of finite
dimensional approximation spaces with errors independent of the regularity and
contrast of the coefficients and with optimal and explicit convergence rates.
This transfer property also provides an alternative to the global harmonic
change of coordinates for the homogenization of elliptic operators that can be
extended to elasticity equations. The proofs of these homogenization results
are based on a new class of elliptic inequalities which play the same role in
our approach as the div-curl lemma in classical homogenization.Comment: Accepted for publication in Archives for Rational Mechanics and
Analysi