Tracing the early development of harmful algal blooms with the aid of Lagrangian coherent structures

Several theories have been proposed to explain the development of harmful algal blooms (HABs) produced by the toxic dinoflagellate \emph{Karenia brevis} on the West Florida Shelf. However, because the early stages of HAB development are usually not detected, these theories have been so far very difficult to verify. In this paper we employ simulated \emph{Lagrangian coherent structures} (LCSs) to trace the early location of a HAB in late 2004 before it was transported to an area where it could be detected by satellite imagery, and then we make use of a population dynamics model to infer the factors that may have led to its development. The LCSs, which are computed based on a surface flow description provided by an ocean circulation model, delineate past and future histories of boundaries of passively advected fluid domains. The population dynamics model determines nitrogen in two components, nutrients and phytoplankton, which are assumed to be passively advected by the simulated surface currents. Two nearshore nutrient sources are identified for the HAB whose evolution is found to be strongly tied to the simulated LCSs. While one nutrient source can be associated with a coastal upwelling event, the other is seen to be produced by river runoff, which provides support to a theory of HAB development that considers nutrient loading into coastal waters produced by human activities as a critical element. Our results show that the use of simulated LCSs and a population dynamics model can greatly enhance our understanding of the early stages of the development of HABs.Comment: Submitted to JGR-Ocean

The Dynamic Structure Factor of the 1D Bose Gas near the Tonks-Girardeau Limit

While the 1D Bose gas appears to exhibit superfluid response under certain conditions, it fails the Landau criterion according to the elementary excitation spectrum calculated by Lieb. The apparent riddle is solved by calculating the dynamic structure factor of the Lieb-Liniger 1D Bose gas. A pseudopotential Hamiltonian in the fermionic representation is used to derive a Hartree-Fock operator, which turns out to be well-behaved and local. The Random-Phase approximation for the dynamic structure factor based on this derivation is calculated analytically and is expected to be valid at least up to first order in $1/\gamma$, where $\gamma$ is the dimensionless interaction strength of the model. The dynamic structure factor in this approximation clearly indicates a crossover behavior from the non-superfluid Tonks to the superfluid weakly-interacting regime, which should be observable by Bragg scattering in current experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures misprints in formulas correcte

Soliton Magnetization Dynamics in Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensates

Ring-trapped Bose-Einstein condensates subject to spin-orbit coupling support localized dark soliton excitations that show periodic density dynamics in real space. In addition to the density feature, solitons also carry a localized pseudo-spin magnetization that exhibits a rich and tunable dynamics. Analytic results for Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling and spin-invariant interactions predict a conserved magnitude and precessional motion for the soliton magnetization that allows for the simulation of spin-related geometric phases recently seen in electronic transport measurements.Comment: 3 figures, 5 page

Generating ring currents, solitons, and svortices by stirring a Bose-Einstein condensate in a toroidal trap

We propose a simple stirring experiment to generate quantized ring currents and solitary excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates in a toroidal trap geometry. Simulations of the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation show that pure ring current states can be generated efficiently by adiabatic manipulation of the condensate, which can be realized on experimental time scales. This is illustrated by simulated generation of a ring current with winding number two. While solitons can be generated in quasi-1D tori, we show the even more robust generation of hybrid, solitonic vortices (svortices) in a regime of wider confinement. Svortices are vortices confined to essentially one-dimensional dynamics, which obey a similar phase-offset--velocity relationship as solitons. Marking the transition between solitons and vortices, svortices are a distinct class of symmetry-breaking stationary and uniformly rotating excited solutions of the 2D and 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation in a toroidal trapping potential. Svortices should be observable in dilute-gas experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in J. Phys. B (Letters

Polarizability and dynamic structure factor of the one-dimensional Bose gas near the Tonks-Girardeau limit at finite temperatures

Correlation functions related to the dynamic density response of the one-dimensional Bose gas in the model of Lieb and Liniger are calculated. An exact Bose-Fermi mapping is used to work in a fermionic representation with a pseudopotential Hamiltonian. The Hartree-Fock and generalized random phase approximations are derived and the dynamic polarizability is calculated. The results are valid to first order in 1/\gamma where \gamma is Lieb-Liniger coupling parameter. Approximations for the dynamic and static structure factor at finite temperature are presented. The results preclude superfluidity at any finite temperature in the large-\gamma regime due to the Landau criterion. Due to the exact Bose-Fermi duality, the results apply for spinless fermions with weak p-wave interactions as well as for strongly interacting bosons.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, the journal versio