1,414 research outputs found
Verschraenkung versus Stosszahlansatz: Disappearance of the Thermodynamic Arrow in a High-Correlation Environment
The crucial role of ambient correlations in determining thermodynamic
behavior is established. A class of entangled states of two macroscopic systems
is constructed such that each component is in a state of thermal equilibrium at
a given temperature, and when the two are allowed to interact heat can flow
from the colder to the hotter system. A dilute gas model exhibiting this
behavior is presented. This reversal of the thermodynamic arrow is a
consequence of the entanglement between the two systems, a condition that is
opposite to molecular chaos and shown to be unlikely in a low-entropy
environment. By contrast, the second law is established by proving Clausius'
inequality in a low-entropy environment. These general results strongly support
the expectation, first expressed by Boltzmann and subsequently elaborated by
others, that the second law is an emergent phenomenon that requires a
low-entropy cosmological environment, one that can effectively function as an
ideal information sink.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX
Distortion and regulation characterization of a Mapham inverter
Output voltage Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of a 20kHz, 6kVA Mapham resonant inverter is characterized as a function of its switching-to-resonant frequency ratio, f sub s/f sub r, using the EASY5 engineering analysis system. EASY5 circuit simulation results are compared with hardware test results to verify the accuracy of the simulations. The effects of load on the THD versus f sub s/f sub r ratio is investigated for resistive, leading, and lagging power factor load impedances. The effect of the series output capacitor on the Mapham inverter output voltage distortion and inherent load regulation is characterized under loads of various power factors and magnitudes. An optimum series capacitor value which improves the inherent load regulation to better than 3 percent is identified. The optimum series capacitor value is different than the value predicted from a modeled frequency domain analysis. An explanation is proposed which takes into account the conduction overlap in the inductor pairs during steady-state inverter operation, which decreases the effective inductance of a Mapham inverter. A fault protection and current limit method is discussed which allows the Mapham inverter to operate into a short circuit, even when the inverter resonant circuit becomes overdamped
Diverse corrugation pattern in radially shrinking carbon nanotubes
Stable cross-sections of multi-walled carbon nanotubes subjected to
electron-beam irradiation are investigated in the realm of the continuum
mechanics approximation. The self-healing nature of sp graphitic sheets
implies that selective irradiation of the outermost walls causes their radial
shrinkage with the remaining inner walls undamaged. The shrinking walls exert
high pressure on the interior part of nanotubes, yielding a wide variety of
radial corrugation patterns ({\it i.e.,} circumferentially wrinkling
structures) in the cross section. All corrugation patterns can be classified
into two deformation phases for which the corrugation amplitudes of the
innermost wall differ significantly.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Class of dilute granular Couette flows with uniform heat flux
In a recent paper [F. Vega Reyes et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 028001 (2010)]
we presented a preliminary description of a special class of steady Couette
flows in dilute granular gases. In all flows of this class the viscous heating
is exactly balanced by inelastic cooling. This yields a uniform heat flux and a
linear relationship between the local temperature and flow velocity. The class
(referred to as the LTu class) includes the Fourier flow of ordinary gases and
the simple shear flow of granular gases as special cases. In the present paper
we provide further support for this class of Couette flows by following four
different routes, two of them being theoretical (Grad's moment method of the
Boltzmann equation and exact solution of a kinetic model) and the other two
being computational (molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations of the
Boltzmann equation). Comparison between theory and simulations shows a very
good agreement for the non-Newtonian rheological properties, even for quite
strong inelasticity, and a good agreement for the heat flux coefficients in the
case of Grad's method, the agreement being only qualitative in the case of the
kinetic model.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; v2: change of title plus some other minor
change
Fluid/solid transition in a hard-core system
We prove that a system of particles in the plane, interacting only with a
certain hard-core constraint, undergoes a fluid/solid phase transition
A real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction
Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at
low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally
indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of
propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest
models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in
fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed
in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the
laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are
much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate
system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly
defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the
following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way
for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective
phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium?
By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a
Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real
Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are
unable to find out anything about their `absolute ' state of motion. Therefore,
we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can
emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system.
This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics, in
particular regarding the quest towards a theory of quantum gravity.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. Minor changes reflect published versio
EQUATION OF STATE OF CLASSICAL SYSTEMS OF CHARGED PARTICLES
Recent developments in the classical theory of fully ionized gases and strong electrolyte solutions are reviewed, and are used to discuss the equation of state at high temperature and low densities. The pressure is calculated using the ring-integral approximation, and quantitative estimates of higher correction terms are given. The effect of short-range repulsive forces is shown by comparing the results with two kinds of potential functions: hard spheres of diameter a, and "soft" spheres for which the short-range potential cancels the Coulomb potential at the origin, and decreases exponentially with distance. It is found that the use of either type of potential extends the range of validity of the ring integral approximation to considerably higher densities and lower temperatures. Since there is little difference in the results for the hard spheres and the soft spheres in this range, the latter is investigated more extensively since it is more easily handled by analytical methods. The expressions derived for the free energy of a system of charged particles can also be used in ionization equilibrium calculations, and the effect of electrostatic interactions on the equilibrium concentrations of various kinds of ions is indicated
Criticality in strongly correlated fluids
In this brief review I will discuss criticality in strongly correlated
fluids. Unlike simple fluids, molecules of which interact through short ranged
isotropic potential, particles of strongly correlated fluids usually interact
through long ranged forces of Coulomb or dipolar form. While for simple fluids
mechanism of phase separation into liquid and gas was elucidated by van der
Waals more than a century ago, the universality class of strongly correlated
fluids, or in some cases even existence of liquid-gas phase separation remains
uncertain.Comment: Proceedings of Scaling Concepts and Complex Systems, Merida, Mexic
The Hartree limit of Born's ensemble for the ground state of a bosonic atom or ion
The non-relativistic bosonic ground state is studied for quantum N-body
systems with Coulomb interactions, modeling atoms or ions made of N "bosonic
point electrons" bound to an atomic point nucleus of Z "electron" charges,
treated in Born--Oppenheimer approximation. It is shown that the (negative)
ground state energy E(Z,N) yields the monotonically growing function (E(l N,N)
over N cubed). By adapting an argument of Hogreve, it is shown that its limit
as N to infinity for l > l* is governed by Hartree theory, with the rescaled
bosonic ground state wave function factoring into an infinite product of
identical one-body wave functions determined by the Hartree equation. The proof
resembles the construction of the thermodynamic mean-field limit of the
classical ensembles with thermodynamically unstable interactions, except that
here the ensemble is Born's, with the absolute square of the ground state wave
function as ensemble probability density function, with the Fisher information
functional in the variational principle for Born's ensemble playing the role of
the negative of the Gibbs entropy functional in the free-energy variational
principle for the classical petit-canonical configurational ensemble.Comment: Corrected version. Accepted for publication in Journal of
Mathematical Physic
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