7,091 research outputs found
On the dependence of the avalanche angle on the granular layer thickness
A layer of sand of thickness h flows down a rough surface if the inclination
is larger than some threshold value theta which decreases with h. A tentative
microscopic model for the dependence of theta with h is proposed for rigid
frictional grains, based on the following hypothesis: (i) a horizontal layer of
sand has some coordination z larger than a critical value z_c where mechanical
stability is lost (ii) as the tilt angle is increased, the configurations
visited present a growing proportion $_s of sliding contacts. Instability with
respect to flow occurs when z-z_s=z_c. This criterion leads to a prediction for
theta(h) in good agreement with empirical observations.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
Analytical Multi-kinks in smooth potentials
In this work we present an approach which can be systematically used to
construct nonlinear systems possessing analytical multi-kink profile
configurations. In contrast with previous approaches to the problem, we are
able to do it by using field potentials which are considerably smoother than
the ones of Doubly Quadratic family of potentials. This is done without losing
the capacity of writing exact analytical solutions. The resulting field
configurations can be applied to the study of problems from condensed matter to
brane world scenarios
On the rigidity of a hard sphere glass near random close packing
We study theoretically and numerically the microscopic cause of the
mechanical stability of hard sphere glasses near their maximum packing. We show
that, after coarse-graining over time, the hard sphere interaction can be
described by an effective potential which is exactly logarithmic at the random
close packing . This allows to define normal modes, and to apply recent
results valid for elastic networks: mechanical stability is a non-local
property of the packing geometry, and is characterized by some length scale
which diverges at [1, 2]. We compute the scaling of the bulk and
shear moduli near , and speculate on the possible implications of these
results for the glass transition.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Figure 4 had a wrong unit in abscissa, which was
correcte
Cosmology in the Universe with distance dependent Lorentz-violating bakground
We consider a cosmological setup with the inflaton field in the presence of a
redshift dependent Lorentz-violating time-like background to address the
inflationary regime and other phases of the Universe. We also show that the
regime of dark energy at large distances (low redshifts) is essentially
dominated by the presence of the Lorentz-violating background.Comment: 8 pages, no figure, Latex, to appear in AHE
Relaxing to a three dimensional brane junction
We suggest a mechanism which leads to 3+1 space-time dimensions. The Universe
assumed to have nine spatial dimensions is regarded as a special nonlinear
oscillatory system -- a kind of Einstein solid. There are p-brane solutions
which manifest as phase oscillations separating different phase states. The
presence of interactions allows for bifurcations of higher dimensional spaces
to lower dimensional ones in the form of brane junctions. We argue this is a
natural way to select lower dimensions.Comment: RevTex, 5 pages; version to appear in Europhys. Let
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