Transport properties of a modified Lorentz gas

We present a detailed study of the first simple mechanical system that shows fully realistic transport behavior while still being exactly solvable at the level of equilibrium statistical mechanics. The system under consideration is a Lorentz gas with fixed freely-rotating circular scatterers interacting with point particles via perfectly rough collisions. Upon imposing a temperature and/or a chemical potential gradient, a stationary state is attained for which local thermal equilibrium holds for low values of the imposed gradients. Transport in this system is normal, in the sense that the transport coefficients which characterize the flow of heat and matter are finite in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, the two flows are non-trivially coupled, satisfying Onsager's reciprocity relations to within numerical accuracy as well as the Green-Kubo relations . We further show numerically that an applied electric field causes the same currents as the corresponding chemical potential gradient in first order of the applied field. Puzzling discrepancies in higher order effects (Joule heating) are also observed. Finally, the role of entropy production in this purely Hamiltonian system is shortly discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, submitted to J. Stat. Phy

First passages for a search by a swarm of independent random searchers

In this paper we study some aspects of search for an immobile target by a swarm of N non-communicating, randomly moving searchers (numbered by the index k, k = 1, 2,..., N), which all start their random motion simultaneously at the same point in space. For each realization of the search process, we record the unordered set of time moments \{\tau_k\}, where \tau_k is the time of the first passage of the k-th searcher to the location of the target. Clearly, \tau_k's are independent, identically distributed random variables with the same distribution function \Psi(\tau). We evaluate then the distribution P(\omega) of the random variable \omega \sim \tau_1/bar{\tau}, where bar{\tau} = N^{-1} \sum_{k=1}^N \tau_k is the ensemble-averaged realization-dependent first passage time. We show that P(\omega) exhibits quite a non-trivial and sometimes a counterintuitive behaviour. We demonstrate that in some well-studied cases e.g., Brownian motion in finite d-dimensional domains) the \textit{mean} first passage time is not a robust measure of the search efficiency, despite the fact that \Psi(\tau) has moments of arbitrary order. This implies, in particular, that even in this simplest case (not saying about complex systems and/or anomalous diffusion) first passage data extracted from a single particle tracking should be regarded with an appropriate caution because of the significant sample-to-sample fluctuations.Comment: 35 pages, 18 figures, to appear in JSTA

Negative response to an excessive bias by a mixed population of voters

We study an outcome of a vote in a population of voters exposed to an externally applied bias in favour of one of two potential candidates. The population consists of ordinary individuals, that are in majority and tend to align their opinion with the external bias, and some number of contrarians --- individuals who are always hostile to the bias but are not in a conflict with ordinary voters. The voters interact among themselves, all with all, trying to find an opinion reached by the community as a whole. We demonstrate that for a sufficiently weak external bias, the opinion of ordinary individuals is always decisive and the outcome of the vote is in favour of the preferential candidate. On the contrary, for an excessively strong bias, the contrarians dominate in the population's opinion, producing overall a negative response to the imposed bias. We also show that for sufficiently strong interactions within the community, either of two subgroups can abruptly change an opinion of the other group.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Quantum and classical echoes in scattering systems described by simple Smale horseshoes

We explore the quantum scattering of systems classically described by binary and other low order Smale horseshoes, in a stage of development where the stable island associated with the inner periodic orbit is large, but chaos around this island is well developed. For short incoming pulses we find periodic echoes modulating an exponential decay over many periods. The period is directly related to the development stage of the horseshoe. We exemplify our studies with a one-dimensional system periodically kicked in time and we mention possible experiments.Comment: 7 pages with 6 reduced quality figures! Please contact the authors ([email protected]) for an original good quality pre-prin

Nonequlibrium particle and energy currents in quantum chains connected to mesoscopic Fermi reservoirs

We propose a model of nonequilibrium quantum transport of particles and energy in a system connected to mesoscopic Fermi reservoirs (meso-reservoir). The meso-reservoirs are in turn thermalized to prescribed temperatures and chemical potentials by a simple dissipative mechanism described by the Lindblad equation. As an example, we study transport in monoatomic and diatomic chains of non-interacting spinless fermions. We show numerically the breakdown of the Onsager reciprocity relation due to the dissipative terms of the model.Comment: 5pages, 4 figure

Pascal ante el misterio de la gracia

Fiel a los principios de Pascal respecto a lo que debería ser la teología, Los Escritos sobre la grada quieren ser sólo una exposición de la doctrina tal y como se contiene en la Sagrada Escritura y en los Padres. Escritos en un contexto polémico -en el núcleo mismo de la controversia entre molinistas y jansenistas- contienen algunas exageraciones de corte jansenista. En el conjunto de la obra prevalecen, sin embargo, los grandes temas agustinianos que serán la clave para interpretar toda la obra de Pascal, más concretamente, su idea de hombre, contenida sobre todo en Les Pensées

Spectroscopic Interpretation: The High Vibrations of CDBrClF

We extract the dynamics implicit in an algebraic fitted model Hamiltonian for the deuterium chromophore's vibrational motion in the molecule CDBrClF. The original model has 4 degrees of freedom, three positions and one representing interbond couplings. A conserved polyad allows in a semiclassical approach the reduction to 3 degrees of freedom. For most quantum states we can identify the underlying motion that when quantized gives the said state. Most of the classifications, identifications and assignments are done by visual inspection of the already available wave function semiclassically transformed from the number representation to a representation on the reduced dimension toroidal configuration space corresponding to the classical action and angle variables. The concentration of the wave function density to lower dimensional subsets centered on idealized simple lower dimensional organizing structures and the behavior of the phase along such organizing centers already reveals the atomic motion. Extremely little computational work is needed.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in J. Chem. Phy