162 research outputs found
Time-variability in the Interstellar Boundary Conditions of the Heliosphere: Effect of the Solar Journey on the Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux at Earth
During the solar journey through galactic space, variations in the physical
properties of the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM) modify the heliosphere
and modulate the flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) at the surface of the
Earth, with consequences for the terrestrial record of cosmogenic
radionuclides. One phenomenon that needs studying is the effect on cosmogenic
isotope production of changing anomalous cosmic ray fluxes at Earth due to
variable interstellar ionizations. The possible range of interstellar ram
pressures and ionization levels in the low density solar environment generate
dramatically different possible heliosphere configurations, with a wide range
of particle fluxes of interstellar neutrals, their secondary products, and GCRs
arriving at Earth. Simple models of the distribution and densities of ISM in
the downwind direction give cloud transition timescales that can be directly
compared with cosmogenic radionuclide geologic records. Both the interstellar
data and cosmogenic radionuclide data are consistent with cloud transitions
during the Holocene, with large and assumption-dependent uncertainties. The
geomagnetic timeline derived from cosmic ray fluxes at Earth may require
adjustment to account for the disappearance of anomalous cosmic rays when the
Sun is immersed in ionized gas.Comment: Submitted to Space Sciences Review
Is the Sun Embedded in a Typical Interstellar Cloud?
The physical properties and kinematics of the partially ionized interstellar
material near the Sun are typical of warm diffuse clouds in the solar vicinity.
The interstellar magnetic field at the heliosphere and the kinematics of nearby
clouds are naturally explained in terms of the S1 superbubble shell. The
interstellar radiation field at the Sun appears to be harder than the field
ionizing ambient diffuse gas, which may be a consequence of the low opacity of
the tiny cloud surrounding the heliosphere. The spatial context of the Local
Bubble is consistent with our location in the Orion spur.Comment: "From the Outer Heliosphere to the Local Bubble", held at
International Space Sciences Institute, October 200
Pdf's of Derivatives and Increments for Decaying Burgers Turbulence
A Lagrangian method is used to show that the power-law with a -7/2 exponent
in the negative tail of the pdf of the velocity gradient and of velocity
increments, predicted by E, Khanin, Mazel and Sinai (1997 Phys. Rev. Lett. 78,
1904) for forced Burgers turbulence, is also present in the unforced case. The
theory is extended to the second-order space derivative whose pdf has power-law
tails with exponent -2 at both large positive and negative values and to the
time derivatives. Pdf's of space and time derivatives have the same
(asymptotic) functional forms. This is interpreted in terms of a "random Taylor
hypothesis".Comment: LATEX 8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Metafluid dynamics and Hamilton-Jacobi formalism
Metafluid dynamics was investigated within Hamilton-Jacobi formalism and the
existence of the hidden gauge symmetry was analyzed. The obtained results are
in agreement with those of Faddeev-Jackiw approach.Comment: 7 page
Stochastic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in space dimensions
Interplay of kinematic and magnetic forcing in a model of a conducting fluid
with randomly driven magnetohydrodynamic equations has been studied in space
dimensions by means of the renormalization group. A perturbative
expansion scheme, parameters of which are the deviation of the spatial
dimension from two and the deviation of the exponent of the powerlike
correlation function of random forcing from its critical value, has been used
in one-loop approximation. Additional divergences have been taken into account
which arise at two dimensions and have been inconsistently treated in earlier
investigations of the model. It is shown that in spite of the additional
divergences the kinetic fixed point associated with the Kolmogorov scaling
regime remains stable for all space dimensions for rapidly enough
falling off correlations of the magnetic forcing. A scaling regime driven by
thermal fluctuations of the velocity field has been identified and analyzed.
The absence of a scaling regime near two dimensions driven by the fluctuations
of the magnetic field has been confirmed. A new renormalization scheme has been
put forward and numerically investigated to interpolate between the
expansion and the double expansion.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Dispersion and collapse in stochastic velocity fields on a cylinder
The dynamics of fluid particles on cylindrical manifolds is investigated. The
velocity field is obtained by generalizing the isotropic Kraichnan ensemble,
and is therefore Gaussian and decorrelated in time. The degree of
compressibility is such that when the radius of the cylinder tends to infinity
the fluid particles separate in an explosive way. Nevertheless, when the radius
is finite the transition probability of the two-particle separation converges
to an invariant measure. This behavior is due to the large-scale
compressibility generated by the compactification of one dimension of the
space
Statistical properties of the Burgers equation with Brownian initial velocity
We study the one-dimensional Burgers equation in the inviscid limit for
Brownian initial velocity (i.e. the initial velocity is a two-sided Brownian
motion that starts from the origin x=0). We obtain the one-point distribution
of the velocity field in closed analytical form. In the limit where we are far
from the origin, we also obtain the two-point and higher-order distributions.
We show how they factorize and recover the statistical invariance through
translations for the distributions of velocity increments and Lagrangian
increments. We also derive the velocity structure functions and we recover the
bifractality of the inverse Lagrangian map. Then, for the case where the
initial density is uniform, we obtain the distribution of the density field and
its -point correlations. In the same limit, we derive the point
distributions of the Lagrangian displacement field and the properties of
shocks. We note that both the stable-clustering ansatz and the Press-Schechter
mass function, that are widely used in the cosmological context, happen to be
exact for this one-dimensional version of the adhesion model.Comment: 42 pages, published in J. Stat. Phy
Length-scale estimates for the LANS-alpha equations in terms of the Reynolds number
Foias, Holm & Titi \cite{FHT2} have settled the problem of existence and
uniqueness for the 3D \lans equations on periodic box . There still
remains the problem, first introduced by Doering and Foias \cite{DF} for the
Navier-Stokes equations, of obtaining estimates in terms of the Reynolds number
\Rey, whose character depends on the fluid response, as opposed to the
Grashof number, whose character depends on the forcing. \Rey is defined as
\Rey = U\ell/\nu where is a bounded spatio-temporally averaged
Navier-Stokes velocity field and the characteristic scale of the
forcing. It is found that the inverse Kolmogorov length is estimated by
\ell\lambda_{k}^{-1} \leq c (\ell/\alpha)^{1/4}\Rey^{5/8}. Moreover, the
estimate of Foias, Holm & Titi for the fractal dimension of the global
attractor, in terms of \Rey, comes out to be d_{F}(\mathcal{A}) \leq c
\frac{V_{\alpha}V_{\ell}^{1/2}}{(L^{2}\lambda_{1})^{9/8}} \Rey^{9/4} where
and . It is
also shown that there exists a series of time-averaged inverse squared length
scales whose members, \left, %, are related to the
th-moments of the energy spectrum when . are estimated as
\ell^{2}\left \leq
c_{n,\alpha}V_{\alpha}^{\frac{n-1}{n}} \Rey^{{11/4} -
\frac{7}{4n}}(\ln\Rey)^{\frac{1}{n}} + c_{1}\Rey(\ln\Rey) . The upper bound
on the first member of the hierarchy \left coincides
with the inverse squared Taylor micro-scale to within log-corrections.Comment: 16 pages, no figures, final version accepted for Physica
Anomalous scaling of a passive scalar in the presence of strong anisotropy
Field theoretic renormalization group and the operator product expansion are
applied to a model of a passive scalar field, advected by the Gaussian strongly
anisotropic velocity field. Inertial-range anomalous scaling behavior is
established, and explicit asymptotic expressions for the n-th order structure
functions of scalar field are obtained; they are represented by superpositions
of power laws with nonuniversal (dependent on the anisotropy parameters)
anomalous exponents. In the limit of vanishing anisotropy, the exponents are
associated with tensor composite operators built of the scalar gradients, and
exhibit a kind of hierarchy related to the degree of anisotropy: the less is
the rank, the less is the dimension and, consequently, the more important is
the contribution to the inertial-range behavior. The leading terms of the even
(odd) structure functions are given by the scalar (vector) operators. For the
finite anisotropy, the exponents cannot be associated with individual operators
(which are essentially ``mixed'' in renormalization), but the aforementioned
hierarchy survives for all the cases studied. The second-order structure
function is studied in more detail using the renormalization group and
zero-mode techniques.Comment: REVTEX file with EPS figure
Three-dimensional lattice-Boltzmann simulations of critical spinodal decomposition in binary immiscible fluids
We use a modified Shan-Chen, noiseless lattice-BGK model for binary
immiscible, incompressible, athermal fluids in three dimensions to simulate the
coarsening of domains following a deep quench below the spinodal point from a
symmetric and homogeneous mixture into a two-phase configuration. We find the
average domain size growing with time as , where increases
in the range , consistent with a crossover between
diffusive and hydrodynamic viscous, , behaviour. We find
good collapse onto a single scaling function, yet the domain growth exponents
differ from others' works' for similar values of the unique characteristic
length and time that can be constructed out of the fluid's parameters. This
rebuts claims of universality for the dynamical scaling hypothesis. At early
times, we also find a crossover from to in the scaled structure
function, which disappears when the dynamical scaling reasonably improves at
later times. This excludes noise as the cause for a behaviour, as
proposed by others. We also observe exponential temporal growth of the
structure function during the initial stages of the dynamics and for
wavenumbers less than a threshold value.Comment: 45 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review
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