Uniqueness of bounded solutions for the homogeneous Landau equation with a Coulomb potential

We prove the uniqueness of bounded solutions for the spatially homogeneous Fokker-Planck-Landau equation with a Coulomb potential. Since the local (in time) existence of such solutions has been proved by Arsen'ev-Peskov (1977), we deduce a local well-posedness result. The stability with respect to the initial condition is also checked

Pinsker estimators for local helioseismology

A major goal of helioseismology is the three-dimensional reconstruction of the three velocity components of convective flows in the solar interior from sets of wave travel-time measurements. For small amplitude flows, the forward problem is described in good approximation by a large system of convolution equations. The input observations are highly noisy random vectors with a known dense covariance matrix. This leads to a large statistical linear inverse problem. Whereas for deterministic linear inverse problems several computationally efficient minimax optimal regularization methods exist, only one minimax-optimal linear estimator exists for statistical linear inverse problems: the Pinsker estimator. However, it is often computationally inefficient because it requires a singular value decomposition of the forward operator or it is not applicable because of an unknown noise covariance matrix, so it is rarely used for real-world problems. These limitations do not apply in helioseismology. We present a simplified proof of the optimality properties of the Pinsker estimator and show that it yields significantly better reconstructions than traditional inversion methods used in helioseismology, i.e.\ Regularized Least Squares (Tikhonov regularization) and SOLA (approximate inverse) methods. Moreover, we discuss the incorporation of the mass conservation constraint in the Pinsker scheme using staggered grids. With this improvement we can reconstruct not only horizontal, but also vertical velocity components that are much smaller in amplitude

Quantitative lower bounds for the full Boltzmann equation, Part I: Periodic boundary conditions

We prove the appearance of an explicit lower bound on the solution to the full Boltzmann equation in the torus for a broad family of collision kernels including in particular long-range interaction models, under the assumption of some uniform bounds on some hydrodynamic quantities. This lower bound is independent of time and space. When the collision kernel satisfies Grad's cutoff assumption, the lower bound is a global Maxwellian and its asymptotic behavior in velocity is optimal, whereas for non-cutoff collision kernels the lower bound we obtain decreases exponentially but faster than the Maxwellian. Our results cover solutions constructed in a spatially homogeneous setting, as well as small-time or close-to-equilibrium solutions to the full Boltzmann equation in the torus. The constants are explicit and depend on the a priori bounds on the solution.Comment: 37 page

Fingering convection in a spherical shell

We use 120 three dimensional direct numerical simulations to study fingering convection in non-rotating spherical shells. We investigate the scaling behaviour of the flow lengthscale, mean velocity and transport of chemical composition over the fingering convection instability domain defined by $1 \leq R_\rho \leq Le$, $R_\rho$ being the ratio of density perturbations of thermal and compositional origins. We show that the horizontal size of the fingers is accurately described by a scaling law of the form $\mathcal{L}_h/d \sim |Ra_T|^{-1/4} (1-\gamma)^{-1/4}/\gamma^{-1/4}$, where $d$ is the shell depth, $Ra_T$ the thermal Rayleigh number and $\gamma$ the flux ratio. Scaling laws for mean velocity and chemical transport are derived in two asymptotic regimes close to the two edges of the instability domain, namely $R_\rho \lesssim Le$ and $R_\rho \gtrsim 1$. For the former, we show that the transport follows power laws of a small parameter $\epsilon^\star$ measuring the distance to onset. For the latter, we find that the Sherwood number $Sh$, which quantities the chemical transport, gradually approaches a scaling $Sh\sim Ra_\xi^{1/3}$ when $Ra_\xi \gg 1$; and that the P\'eclet number accordingly follows $Pe \sim Ra_\xi^{2/3} |Ra_T|^{-1/4}$, $Ra_\xi$ being the chemical Rayleigh number. When the Reynolds number exceeds a few tens, a secondary instability may occur taking the form of large-scale toroidal jets. Jets distort the fingers resulting in Reynolds stress correlations, which in turn feed the jet growth until saturation. This nonlinear phenomenon can yield relaxation oscillation cycles.Comment: 43 pages, 22 figures, 3 tables, submitted to JF

A non-local inequality and global existence

In this article we prove a collection of new non-linear and non-local integral inequalities. As an example for $u\ge 0$ and $p\in (0,\infty)$ we obtain \int_{\threed} dx ~ u^{p+1}(x) \le (\frac{p+1}{p})^2 \int_{\threed} dx ~ \{(-\triangle)^{-1} u(x) \} \nsm \nabla u^{\frac{p}{2}}(x)\nsm^2. We use these inequalities to deduce global existence of solutions to a non-local heat equation with a quadratic non-linearity for large radial monotonic positive initial conditions. Specifically, we improve \cite{ksLM} to include all $\alpha\in (0, 74/75)$.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in Advances in Mathematic

Prefix-Projection Global Constraint for Sequential Pattern Mining

Sequential pattern mining under constraints is a challenging data mining task. Many efficient ad hoc methods have been developed for mining sequential patterns, but they are all suffering from a lack of genericity. Recent works have investigated Constraint Programming (CP) methods, but they are not still effective because of their encoding. In this paper, we propose a global constraint based on the projected databases principle which remedies to this drawback. Experiments show that our approach clearly outperforms CP approaches and competes well with ad hoc methods on large datasets

Bi-defects of Nematic Surfactant Bilayers

We consider the effects of the coupling between the orientational order of the two monolayers in flat nematic bilayers. We show that the presence of a topological defect on one bilayer generates a nontrivial orientational texture on both monolayers. Therefore, one cannot consider isolated defects on one monolayer, but rather associated pairs of defects on either monolayer, which we call bi-defects. Bi-defects generally produce walls, such that the textures of the two monolayers are identical outside the walls, and different in their interior. We suggest some experimental conditions in which these structures could be observed.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 3 figure

Modeling planar degenerate wetting and anchoring in nematic liquid crystals

We propose a simple surface potential favoring the planar degenerate anchoring of nematic liquid crystals, i.e., the tendency of the molecules to align parallel to one another along any direction parallel to the surface. We show that, at lowest order in the tensorial Landau-de Gennes order-parameter, fourth-order terms must be included. We analyze the anchoring and wetting properties of this surface potential. In the nematic phase, we find the desired degenerate planar anchoring, with positive scalar order-parameter and some surface biaxiality. In the isotropic phase, we find, in agreement with experiments, that the wetting layer may exhibit a uniaxial ordering with negative scalar order-parameter. For large enough anchoring strength, this negative ordering transits towards the planar degenerate state

The Generation of Magnetic Fields Through Driven Turbulence

We have tested the ability of driven turbulence to generate magnetic field structure from a weak uniform field using three dimensional numerical simulations of incompressible turbulence. We used a pseudo-spectral code with a numerical resolution of up to $144^3$ collocation points. We find that the magnetic fields are amplified through field line stretching at a rate proportional to the difference between the velocity and the magnetic field strength times a constant. Equipartition between the kinetic and magnetic energy densities occurs at a scale somewhat smaller than the kinetic energy peak. Above the equipartition scale the velocity structure is, as expected, nearly isotropic. The magnetic field structure at these scales is uncertain, but the field correlation function is very weak. At the equipartition scale the magnetic fields show only a moderate degree of anisotropy, so that the typical radius of curvature of field lines is comparable to the typical perpendicular scale for field reversal. In other words, there are few field reversals within eddies at the equipartition scale, and no fine-grained series of reversals at smaller scales. At scales below the equipartition scale, both velocity and magnetic structures are anisotropic; the eddies are stretched along the local magnetic field lines, and the magnetic energy dominates the kinetic energy on the same scale by a factor which increases at higher wavenumbers. We do not show a scale-free inertial range, but the power spectra are a function of resolution and/or the imposed viscosity and resistivity. Our results are consistent with the emergence of a scale-free inertial range at higher Reynolds numbers.Comment: 14 pages (8 NEW figures), ApJ, in press (July 20, 2000?