Boissier and botany at Geneva: a historical note

Geneva's contribution to this meeting in Edinburgh is the publication of a booklet dedicated to Boissier (Burdet 1985) on the centenary of his death—an anniversary which coincides with the completion, or approaching completion, of a series of major studies on the floras of SW Asia covering much of the area of Boissier's classic Flora Orientali

A simple model for heterogeneous flows of yield stress fluids

Various experiments evidence spatial heterogeneities in sheared yield stress fluids. To account for heterogeneities in the velocity gradient direction, we use a simple model corresponding to a non-monotonous local constitutive curve and study a simple shear geometry. Different types of boundary conditions are considered. Under controlled macroscopic shear stress $\Sigma$, we find homogeneous flow in the bulk and a hysteretic macroscopic stress - shear rate curve. Under controlled macroscopic shear rate $\dot{\Gamma}$, shear banding is predicted within a range of values of $\dot{\Gamma}$. For small shear rates, stick slip can also be observed. These qualitative behaviours are robust when changing the boundary conditions.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

Slow flows of yield stress fluids: complex spatio-temporal behaviour within a simple elasto-plastic model

A minimal athermal model for the flow of dense disordered materials is proposed, based on two generic ingredients: local plastic events occuring above a microscopic yield stress, and the non-local elastic release of the stress these events induce in the material. A complex spatio-temporal rheological behaviour results, with features in line with recent experimental observations. At low shear rates, macroscopic flow actually originates from collective correlated bursts of plastic events, taking place in dynamically generated fragile zones. The related correlation length diverges algebraically at small shear rates. In confined geometries bursts occur preferentially close to the walls yielding an intermittent form of flow localization.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Microscopic Derivation of Non-Markovian Thermalization of a Brownian Particle

In this paper, the first microscopic approach to the Brownian motion is developed in the case where the mass density of the suspending bath is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Brownian (B) particle. Starting from an extended Boltzmann equation, which describes correctly the interaction with the fluid, we derive systematicaly via the multiple time-scale analysis a reduced equation controlling the thermalization of the B particle, i.e. the relaxation towards the Maxwell distribution in velocity space. In contradistinction to the Fokker-Planck equation, the derived new evolution equation is non-local both in time and in velocity space, owing to correlated recollision events between the fluid and particle B. In the long-time limit, it describes a non-markovian generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. However, in spite of this complex dynamical behaviour, the Stokes-Einstein law relating the friction and diffusion coefficients is shown to remain valid. A microscopic expression for the friction coefficient is derived, which acquires the form of the Stokes law in the limit where the mean-free in the gas is small compared to the radius of particle B.Comment: 28 pages, no figure, submitted to Journal of Statistical Physic

Optimal eavesdropping on QKD without quantum memory

We consider the security of the BB84, six-state and SARG04 quantum key distribution protocols when the eavesdropper doesn't have access to a quantum memory. In this case, Eve's most general strategy is to measure her ancilla with an appropriate POVM designed to take advantage of the post-measurement information that will be released during the sifting phase of the protocol. After an optimization on all the parameters accessible to Eve, our method provides us with new bounds for the security of six-state and SARG04 against a memoryless adversary. In particular, for the six-state protocol we show that the maximum QBER for which a secure key can be extracted is increased from 12.6% (for collective attacks) to 20.4% with the memoryless assumption.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Analysis of six-state and SARG04 QKD protocols adde

Diffusion in pores and its dependence on boundary conditions

We study the influence of the boundary conditions at the solid liquid interface on diffusion in a confined fluid. Using an hydrodynamic approach, we compute numerical estimates for the diffusion of a particle confined between two planes. Partial slip is shown to significantly influence the diffusion coefficient near a wall. Analytical expressions are derived in the low and high confinement limits, and are in good agreement with numerical results. These calculations indicate that diffusion of tagged particles could be used as a sensitive probe of the solid-liquid boundary conditions.Comment: soumis \`a J.Phys. Cond. Matt. special issue on "Diffusion in Liquids, Polymers, Biophysics and Chemical Dynamics

Elastic consequences of a single plastic event : a step towards the microscopic modeling of the flow of yield stress fluids

With the eventual aim of describing flowing elasto-plastic materials, we focus on the elementary brick of such a flow, a plastic event, and compute the long-range perturbation it elastically induces in a medium submitted to a global shear strain. We characterize the effect of a nearby wall on this perturbation, and quantify the importance of finite size effects. Although for the sake of simplicity most of our explicit formulae deal with a 2D situation, our statements hold for 3D situations as well.Comment: submitted to EPJ

Possibility to study eta-mesic nuclei and photoproduction of slow eta-mesons at the GRAAL facility

A new experiment is proposed with the aim to study eta-mesic nuclei and low-energy interactions of eta with nuclei. Two decay modes of eta produced by a photon beam inside a nucleus will be observed, namely a collisional decay \eta N \to \pi N inside the nucleus and the radiative decay \eta \to \gamma \gamma outside. In addition, a collisional decay of stopped S_{11}(1535) resonance inside the nucleus, S_{11}(1535) N \to N N, will be studied. The experiment can be performed using the tagged photon beam at ESRF with the end-point energy 1000 MeV and the GRAAL detector which includes a high-resolution BGO calorimeter and a large acceptance lead-scintillator time-of-flight wall. Some results of simulation and estimates of yields are given.Comment: 20 pages, 19 figure

Jordan-Wigner Approach to Dynamic Correlations in 2D Spin-1/2 Models

We discuss the dynamic properties of the square-lattice spin-1/2 XY model obtained using the two-dimensional Jordan-Wigner fermionization approach. We argue the relevancy of the fermionic picture for interpreting the neutron scattering measurements in the two-dimensional frustrated quantum magnet Cs_2CuCl_4.Comment: Presented at 12-th Czech and Slovak Conference on Magnetism, Ko\v{s}ice, 12-15 July 200