Micromagnetic simulations of the magnetization precession induced by a spin polarized current in a point contact geometry

This paper is devoted to numerical simulations of the magnetization dynamics driven by a spin-polarized current in extended ferromagnetic multilayers when a point-contact setup is used. We present (i) detailed analysis of methodological problems arising by such simulations and (ii) physical results obtained on a system similar to that studied in Rippard et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., v. 92, 027201 (2004). We demonstrate that the usage of a standard Slonczewski formalism for the phenomenological treatment of a spin-induced torque leads to a qualitative disagreement between simulation results and experimental observations and discuss possible reasons for this discrepancy.Comment: Invited paper on MMM2005 (San Jose); accepted for publication in J. Applied Physic

Variational bounds on the energy dissipation rate in body-forced shear flow

A new variational problem for upper bounds on the rate of energy dissipation in body-forced shear flows is formulated by including a balance parameter in the derivation from the Navier-Stokes equations. The resulting min-max problem is investigated computationally, producing new estimates that quantitatively improve previously obtained rigorous bounds. The results are compared with data from direct numerical simulations.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Variational bound on energy dissipation in turbulent shear flow

We present numerical solutions to the extended Doering-Constantin variational principle for upper bounds on the energy dissipation rate in plane Couette flow, bridging the entire range from low to asymptotically high Reynolds numbers. Our variational bound exhibits structure, namely a pronounced minimum at intermediate Reynolds numbers, and recovers the Busse bound in the asymptotic regime. The most notable feature is a bifurcation of the minimizing wavenumbers, giving rise to simple scaling of the optimized variational parameters, and of the upper bound, with the Reynolds number.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 5 postscript figures are available as one .tar.gz file from [email protected]

Rb-85 tunable-interaction Bose-Einstein condensate machine

We describe our experimental setup for creating stable Bose-Einstein condensates of Rb-85 with tunable interparticle interactions. We use sympathetic cooling with Rb-87 in two stages, initially in a tight Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic trap and subsequently in a weak, large-volume crossed optical dipole trap, using the 155 G Feshbach resonance to manipulate the elastic and inelastic scattering properties of the Rb-85 atoms. Typical Rb-85 condensates contain 4 x 10^4 atoms with a scattering length of a=+200a_0. Our minimalist apparatus is well-suited to experiments on dual-species and spinor Rb condensates, and has several simplifications over the Rb-85 BEC machine at JILA (Papp, 2007; Papp and Wieman, 2006), which we discuss at the end of this article.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Variational bound on energy dissipation in plane Couette flow

We present numerical solutions to the extended Doering-Constantin variational principle for upper bounds on the energy dissipation rate in turbulent plane Couette flow. Using the compound matrix technique in order to reformulate this principle's spectral constraint, we derive a system of equations that is amenable to numerical treatment in the entire range from low to asymptotically high Reynolds numbers. Our variational bound exhibits a minimum at intermediate Reynolds numbers, and reproduces the Busse bound in the asymptotic regime. As a consequence of a bifurcation of the minimizing wavenumbers, there exist two length scales that determine the optimal upper bound: the effective width of the variational profile's boundary segments, and the extension of their flat interior part.Comment: 22 pages, RevTeX, 11 postscript figures are available as one uuencoded .tar.gz file from [email protected]

Correlation in the velocity of a Brownian particle induced by frictional anisotropy and magnetic field

We study the motion of charged Brownian particles in an external magnetic field. It is found that a correlation appears between the components of particle velocity in the case of anisotropic friction, approaching asymptotically zero in the stationary limit. If magnetic field is smaller compared to the critical value, determined by frictional anisotropy, the relaxation of the correlation is non-oscillating in time. However, in a larger magnetic field this relaxation becomes oscillating. The phenomenon is related to the statistical dependence of the components of transformed random force caused by the simultaneous influence of magnetic field and anisotropic dissipation.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Magnetization precession due to a spin polarized current in a thin nanoelement: numerical simulation study

In this paper a detailed numerical study (in frames of the Slonczewski formalism) of magnetization oscillations driven by a spin-polarized current through a thin elliptical nanoelement is presented. We show that a sophisticated micromagnetic model, where a polycrystalline structure of a nanoelement is taken into account, can explain qualitatively all most important features of the magnetization oscillation spectra recently observed experimentally (S.I. Kiselev et al., Nature, vol. 425, p. 380 (2003), namely: existence of several equidistant spectral bands, sharp onset and abrupt disappearance of magnetization oscillations with increasing current, absence of the out-of-plane regime predicted by a macrospin model and the relation between frequencies of so called small-angle and quasichaotic oscillations. However, a quantitative agreement with experimental results (especially concerning the frequency of quasichaotic oscillations) could not be achieved in the region of reasonable parameter values, indicating that further model refinement is necessary for a complete understanding of the spin-driven magnetization precession even in this relatively simple experimental situation.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. B; In this revised version figure positions on the page have been changed to ensure correct placements of the figure caption

Enhancement of stability in randomly switching potential with metastable state

The overdamped motion of a Brownian particle in randomly switching piece-wise metastable linear potential shows noise enhanced stability (NES): the noise stabilizes the metastable system and the system remains in this state for a longer time than in the absence of white noise. The mean first passage time (MFPT) has a maximum at a finite value of white noise intensity. The analytical expression of MFPT in terms of the white noise intensity, the parameters of the potential barrier, and of the dichotomous noise is derived. The conditions for the NES phenomenon and the parameter region where the effect can be observed are obtained. The mean first passage time behaviours as a function of the mean flipping rate of the potential for unstable and metastable initial configurations are also analyzed. We observe the resonant activation phenomenon for initial metastable configuration of the potential profile.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. In press in "European Physical Journal B