12,308 research outputs found
Fold-Saddle Bifurcation in Non-Smooth Vector Fields on the Plane
This paper presents results concerning bifurcations of 2D piecewise-smooth
dynamical systems governed by vector fields. Generic three parameter families
of a class of Non-Smooth Vector Fields are studied and its bifurcation diagrams
are exhibited. Our main result describes the unfolding of the so called
Fold-Saddle singularity
Growth patterns and scaling laws governing AIDS epidemic in Brazilian cities
Brazil holds approximately 1/3 of population living infected with AIDS
(acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) in Central and South Americas, and it was
also the first developing country to implement a large-scale control and
intervention program against AIDS epidemic. In this scenario, we investigate
the temporal evolution and current status of the AIDS epidemic in Brazil.
Specifically, we analyze records of annual absolute frequency of cases for more
than 5000 cities for the first 33 years of the infection in Brazil. We found
that (i) the annual absolute frequencies exhibit a logistic-type growth with an
exponential regime in the first few years of the AIDS spreading; (ii) the
actual reproduction number decaying as a power law; (iii) the distribution of
the annual absolute frequencies among cities decays with a power law behavior;
(iv) the annual absolute frequencies and the number of inhabitants have an
allometric relationship; (v) the temporal evolution of the annual absolute
frequencies have different profile depending on the average annual absolute
frequencies in the cities. These findings yield a general quantitative
description of the AIDS infection dynamics in Brazil since the beginning. They
also provide clues about the effectiveness of treatment and control programs
against the infection, that has had a different impact depending on the number
of inhabitants of cities. In this framework, our results give insights into the
overall dynamics of AIDS epidemic, which may contribute to select empirically
accurate models.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Performance of dynamical decoupling in bosonic environments and under pulse-timing fluctuations
We study the suppression of qubit dephasing through Uhrig dynamical
decoupling (UDD) in nontrivial environments modeled within the spin-boson
formalism. In particular, we address the case of (i) a qubit coupled to a
bosonic bath with power-law spectral density, and (ii) a qubit coupled to a
single harmonic oscillator that dissipates energy into a bosonic bath, which
embodies an example of a structured bath for the qubit. We then model the
influence of random time jitter in the UDD protocol by sorting
pulse-application times from Gaussian distributions centered at appropriate
values dictated by the optimal protocol. In case (i) we find that, when few
pulses are applied and a sharp cutoff is considered, longer coherence times and
robust UDD performances (against random timing errors) are achieved for a
super-Ohmic bath. On the other hand, when an exponential cutoff is considered a
super-Ohmic bath is undesirable. In case (ii) the best scenario is obtained for
an overdamped harmonic motion. Our study provides relevant information for the
implementation of optimized schemes for the protection of quantum states from
decoherence.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Limits of space-times in five dimensions and their relation to the Segre Types
A limiting diagram for the Segre classification in 5-dimensional space-times
is obtained, extending a recent work on limits of the energy-momentum tensor in
general relativity. Some of Geroch's results on limits of space-times in
general relativity are also extended to the context of five-dimensional
Kaluza-Klein space-times.Comment: Late
Linear Theory of Electron-Plasma Waves at Arbitrary Collisionality
The dynamics of electron-plasma waves are described at arbitrary
collisionality by considering the full Coulomb collision operator. The
description is based on a Hermite-Laguerre decomposition of the velocity
dependence of the electron distribution function. The damping rate, frequency,
and eigenmode spectrum of electron-plasma waves are found as functions of the
collision frequency and wavelength. A comparison is made between the
collisionless Landau damping limit, the Lenard-Bernstein and Dougherty
collision operators, and the electron-ion collision operator, finding large
deviations in the damping rates and eigenmode spectra. A purely damped entropy
mode, characteristic of a plasma where pitch-angle scattering effects are
dominant with respect to collisionless effects, is shown to emerge numerically,
and its dispersion relation is analytically derived. It is shown that such a
mode is absent when simplified collision operators are used, and that
like-particle collisions strongly influence the damping rate of the entropy
mode.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication on Journal of Plasma
Physic
Numerical modeling and optimization of an air handling unit
Concerns about the efficiency of Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning systems, including Air Handling Units (AHUs), started in the last century due to the energy crisis. Thenceforth, important improvements on the AHUs performance have emerged. Among the various improvements, the control of the AHUs and the redesign of the fans are the most important ones. Although, with increasingly demanding energy efficiency requirements, other constructive solutions must be investigated. Therefore, the objective of this work is to investigate, using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool, the fluid flow inside an AHU and to analyze different constructive solutions in order to improve the AHU performance. The numerical model provided a reasonable agreement with the experimental results in terms of air flow rate, despite the assumed simplifications. Regarding the constructive solution concept, the CFD results for the two different flow control units (FCUs) showed improvements in terms of fan static pressure rise. Under real conditions, improvements of 15.1% when compared with the case without the FCU were obtained. Nevertheless, it was concluded that the axial component of the air velocity, at the fan exit, can have a determinant impact on the FCU viability. Finally, an improved FCU geometry, with a new body shape, which resulted in an additional improvement of 6.1% in the fan static pressure rise.The second author would like to express his gratitude for the support given by FCT through the Grant SFRH/BD/130588/2017
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