16,332 research outputs found
Magnetic compressibility and ion-temperature-gradient-driven microinstabilities in magnetically confined plasmas
The electromagnetic theory of the strongly driven ion-temperature-gradient
(ITG) instability in magnetically confined toroidal plasmas is developed.
Stabilizing and destabilizing effects are identified, and a critical
(the ratio of the electron to magnetic pressure) for stabilization
of the toroidal branch of the mode is calculated for magnetic equilibria
independent of the coordinate along the magnetic field. Its scaling is
where is the characteristic electron
temperature gradient length, and the major radius of the torus. We
conjecture that a fast particle population can cause a similar stabilization
due to its contribution to the equilibrium pressure gradient. For sheared
equilibria, the boundary of marginal stability of the electromagnetic
correction to the electrostatic mode is also given. For a general magnetic
equilibrium, we find a critical length (for electromagnetic stabilization) of
the extent of the unfavourable curvature along the magnetic field. This is a
decreasing function of the local magnetic shear
Design and testing of a contra-rotating tidal current turbine
A contra-rotating marine current turbine has a number of attractive features: nearzero reactive torque on the support structure, near-zero swirl in the wake, and high relative inter-rotor rotational speeds. Modified blade element modelling theory has been used to design and predict the characteristics of such a turbine, and a model turbine and test rig have been constructed. Tests in a towing tank demonstrated the feasibility of the concept. Power coefficients were high for such a small model and in excellent agreement with predictions, confirming the accuracy of the computational modelling procedures. High-frequency blade loading data were obtained in the course of the experiments. These show the anticipated dynamic components for a contra-rotating machine. Flow visualization of the wake verified the lack of swirl behind the turbine. A larger machine is presently under construction for sea trials
Entanglement consumption of instantaneous nonlocal quantum measurements
Relativistic causality has dramatic consequences on the measurability of
nonlocal variables and poses the fundamental question of whether it is
physically meaningful to speak about the value of nonlocal variables at a
particular time. Recent work has shown that by weakening the role of the
measurement in preparing eigenstates of the variable it is in fact possible to
measure all nonlocal observables instantaneously by exploiting entanglement.
However, for these measurement schemes to succeed with certainty an infinite
amount of entanglement must be distributed initially and all this entanglement
is necessarily consumed. In this work we sharpen the characterisation of
instantaneous nonlocal measurements by explicitly devising schemes in which
only a finite amount of the initially distributed entanglement is ever
utilised. This enables us to determine an upper bound to the average
consumption for the most general cases of nonlocal measurements. This includes
the tasks of state verification, where the measurement verifies if the system
is in a given state, and verification measurements of a general set of
eigenstates of an observable. Despite its finiteness the growth of entanglement
consumption is found to display an extremely unfavourable exponential of an
exponential scaling with either the number of qubits needed to contain the
Schmidt rank of the target state or total number of qubits in the system for an
operator measurement. This scaling is seen to be a consequence of the
combination of the generic exponential scaling of unitary decompositions
combined with the highly recursive structure of our scheme required to overcome
the no-signalling constraint of relativistic causality.Comment: 32 pages and 14 figures. Updated to published versio
Object-Oriented Paradigms for Modelling Vascular\ud Tumour Growth: a Case Study
Motivated by a family of related hybrid multiscale models, we have built an object-oriented framework for developing and implementing multiscale models of vascular tumour growth. The models are implemented in our framework as a case study to highlight how object-oriented programming techniques and good object-oriented design may be used effectively to develop hybrid multiscale models of vascular tumour growth. The intention is that this paper will serve as a useful reference for researchers modelling complex biological systems and that these researchers will employ some of the techniques presented herein in their own projects
Development of a contra-rotating tidal current turbine and analysis of performance
A contra-rotating marine current turbine has a number of attractive features: nearzero reactive torque on the support structure, near-zero swirl in the wake, and high relative inter-rotor rotational speeds. Modified blade element modelling theory has been used to design and predict the characteristics of such a turbine, and a model turbine and test rig have been constructed. Tests in a towing tank demonstrated the feasibility of the concept. Power coefficients were high for such a small model and in excellent agreement with predictions, confirming the accuracy of the computational modelling procedures. Highfrequency blade loading data were obtained in the course of the experiments. These show the anticipated dynamic components for a contra-rotating machine. Flow visualization of the wake verified the lack of swirl behind the turbine. A larger machine is presently under construction for sea trials
Using Spatial Density to Characterize Volcanic Fields on Mars
We introduce a new tool to planetary geology for quantifying the spatial arrangement of vent fields and volcanic provinces using non parametric kernel density estimation. Unlike parametricmethods where spatial density, and thus the spatial arrangement of volcanic vents, is simplified to fit a standard statistical distribution, non parametric methods offer more objective and data driven techniques to characterize volcanic vent fields. This method is applied to Syria Planum volcanic vent catalog data as well as catalog data for a vent field south of Pavonis Mons. The spatial densities are compared to terrestrial volcanic fields
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