10,250 research outputs found
Helicity and alpha-effect by current-driven instabilities of helical magnetic fields
Helical magnetic background fields with adjustable pitch angle are imposed on
a conducting fluid in a differentially rotating cylindrical container. The
small-scale kinetic and current helicities are calculated for various field
geometries, and shown to have the opposite sign as the helicity of the
large-scale field. These helicities and also the corresponding -effect
scale with the current helicity of the background field. The -tensor is
highly anisotropic as the components and have
opposite signs. The amplitudes of the azimuthal -effect computed with
the cylindrical 3D MHD code are so small that the operation of an
dynamo on the basis of the current-driven, kink-type
instabilities of toroidal fields is highly questionable. In any case the low
value of the -effect would lead to very long growth times of a dynamo
in the radiation zone of the Sun and early-type stars of the order of
mega-years.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, submitted to MNRA
Design aspects of a solar array drive for spot, with a high platform stability objective
A solar array drive mechanism (MEGS) for the SPOT platform, which is a prototype of a multimission platform, is described. High-resolution cameras and other optical instruments are carried by the platform, requiring excellent platform stability in order to obtain high-quality pictures. Therefore, a severe requirement for the MEGS is the low level of disturbing torques it may generate considering the 0.6 times 10 to the minus 3 power deg/sec stability required. The mechanical design aspects aiming at reducing the mean friction torque, and therefore its fluctuations, are described as well as the method of compensation of the motor imperfections. It was concluded, however, that this is not sufficient to reach the stability requirement
Determination of the interactions in confined macroscopic Wigner islands: theory and experiments
Macroscopic Wigner islands present an interesting complementary approach to
explore the properties of two-dimensional confined particles systems. In this
work, we characterize theoretically and experimentally the interaction between
their basic components, viz., conducting spheres lying on the bottom electrode
of a plane condenser. We show that the interaction energy can be approximately
described by a decaying exponential as well as by a modified Bessel function of
the second kind. In particular, this implies that the interactions in this
system, whose characteristics are easily controllable, are the same as those
between vortices in type-II superconductors.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Self-similar solutions with fat tails for Smoluchowski's coagulation equation with locally bounded kernels
The existence of self-similar solutions with fat tails for Smoluchowski's
coagulation equation has so far only been established for the solvable and the
diagonal kernel. In this paper we prove the existence of such self-similar
solutions for continuous kernels that are homogeneous of degree and satisfy . More precisely,
for any we establish the existence of a continuous weak
self-similar profile with decay as
Fluctuations of the Casimir-like force between two membrane inclusions
Although Casimir forces are inseparable from their fluctuations, little is
known about these fluctuations in soft matter systems. We use the membrane
stress tensor to study the fluctuations of the membrane-mediated Casimir-like
force. This method enables us to recover the Casimir force between two
inclusions and to calculate its variance. We show that the Casimir force is
dominated by its fluctuations. Furthermore, when the distance d between the
inclusions is decreased from infinity, the variance of the Casimir force
decreases as -1/d^2. This distance dependence shares a common physical origin
with the Casimir force itself.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Universal analytic properties of noise. Introducing the J-Matrix formalism
We propose a new method in the spectral analysis of noisy time-series data
for damped oscillators. From the Jacobi three terms recursive relation for the
denominators of the Pad\'e Approximations built on the well-known Z-transform
of an infinite time-series, we build an Hilbert space operator, a J-Operator,
where each bound state (inside the unit circle in the complex plane) is simply
associated to one damped oscillator while the continuous spectrum of the
J-Operator, which lies on the unit circle itself, is shown to represent the
noise. Signal and noise are thus clearly separated in the complex plane. For a
finite time series of length 2N, the J-operator is replaced by a finite order
J-Matrix J_N, having N eigenvalues which are time reversal covariant. Different
classes of input noise, such as blank (white and uniform), Gaussian and pink,
are discussed in detail, the J-Matrix formalism allowing us to efficiently
calculate hundreds of poles of the Z-transform. Evidence of a universal
behaviour in the final statistical distribution of the associated poles and
zeros of the Z-transform is shown. In particular the poles and zeros tend, when
the length of the time series goes to infinity, to a uniform angular
distribution on the unit circle. Therefore at finite order, the roots of unity
in the complex plane appear to be noise attractors. We show that the
Z-transform presents the exceptional feature of allowing lossless undersampling
and how to make use of this property. A few basic examples are given to suggest
the power of the proposed method.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Long-range Ni/Mn structural order in epitaxial double perovskite La2NiMnO6 thin films
We report and compare the structural, magnetic, and optical properties of
ordered La2NiMnO6 thin films and its disordered LaNi0.5Mn0.5O3 counterpart. An
x-ray diffraction study reveals that the B-site Ni/Mn ordering induces
additional XRD reflections as the crystal symmetry is transformed from a
pseudocubic perovskite unit cell in the disordered phase to a monoclinic form
with larger lattice parameters for the ordered phase. Polarized Raman
spectroscopy studies reveal that the ordered samples are characterized by
additional phonon excitations that are absent in the disordered phase. The
appearance of these additional phonon excitations is interpreted as the
clearest signature of Brillouin zone folding as a result of the long-range
Ni/Mn ordering in La2NiMnO6. Both ordered and disordered materials display a
single ferromagnetic-to-paramagnetic transition. The ordered films display also
a saturation magnetization close to 4.8 mB/f.u. and a transition temperature
(FM-TC) around 270 K, while the disordered ones have only a 3.7 mB/f.u.
saturation magnetization and a FM-TC around 138 K. The differences in their
magnetic behaviours are understood based on the distinct local electronic
configurations of their Ni/Mn cations.Comment: 15 pages, 5 fig
Phase formation, phonon behavior, and magnetic properties of novel ferromagnetic La3BAlMnO9 (B = Co or Ni) triple perovskites
In the quest for novel magnetoelectric materials, we have grown, stabilized
and explored the properties of La3BAlMnO9 (B = Co or Mn) thin films. In this
paper, we report the influence of the growth parameters that promote B/Al/Mn
ordering in the pseudo-cubic unit cell and their likely influence on the
magnetic and multiferroic properties. The temperature dependence of the
magnetization shows that La3CoAlMnO9 is ferromagnetic up to 190 K while
La3NiAlMnO9 shows a TC of 130 K. The behavior of these films are compared and
contrasted with related La2BMnO6 double perovskites. It is observed that the
insertion of AlO6 octahedra between CoO6 and MnO6 suppresses significantly the
strength of the superexchange interaction, spin-phonon and spin-polar coupling.Comment: 13 pages, 3 fig
Field theoretic calculation of scalar turbulence
The cascade rate of passive scalar and Bachelor's constant in scalar
turbulence are calculated using the flux formula. This calculation is done to
first order in perturbation series. Batchelor's constant in three dimension is
found to be approximately 1.25. In higher dimension, the constant increases as
.Comment: RevTex4, publ. in Int. J. Mod. Phy. B, v.15, p.3419, 200
The scaling attractor and ultimate dynamics for Smoluchowski's coagulation equations
We describe a basic framework for studying dynamic scaling that has roots in
dynamical systems and probability theory. Within this framework, we study
Smoluchowski's coagulation equation for the three simplest rate kernels
, and . In another work, we classified all self-similar
solutions and all universality classes (domains of attraction) for scaling
limits under weak convergence (Comm. Pure Appl. Math 57 (2004)1197-1232). Here
we add to this a complete description of the set of all limit points of
solutions modulo scaling (the scaling attractor) and the dynamics on this limit
set (the ultimate dynamics). The main tool is Bertoin's L\'{e}vy-Khintchine
representation formula for eternal solutions of Smoluchowski's equation (Adv.
Appl. Prob. 12 (2002) 547--64). This representation linearizes the dynamics on
the scaling attractor, revealing these dynamics to be conjugate to a continuous
dilation, and chaotic in a classical sense. Furthermore, our study of scaling
limits explains how Smoluchowski dynamics ``compactifies'' in a natural way
that accounts for clusters of zero and infinite size (dust and gel)
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