378 research outputs found

    VI.— On manufactured sea-water for the aquarium

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    Time--Splitting Schemes and Measure Source Terms for a Quasilinear Relaxing System

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    Several singular limits are investigated in the context of a 2×22 \times 2 system arising for instance in the modeling of chromatographic processes. In particular, we focus on the case where the relaxation term and a L2L^2 projection operator are concentrated on a discrete lattice by means of Dirac measures. This formulation allows to study more easily some time-splitting numerical schemes

    An Asymptotic Preserving Scheme for the Euler equations in a strong magnetic field

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    This paper is concerned with the numerical approximation of the isothermal Euler equations for charged particles subject to the Lorentz force. When the magnetic field is large, the so-called drift-fluid approximation is obtained. In this limit, the parallel motion relative to the magnetic field direction splits from perpendicular motion and is given implicitly by the constraint of zero total force along the magnetic field lines. In this paper, we provide a well-posed elliptic equation for the parallel velocity which in turn allows us to construct an Asymptotic-Preserving (AP) scheme for the Euler-Lorentz system. This scheme gives rise to both a consistent approximation of the Euler-Lorentz model when epsilon is finite and a consistent approximation of the drift limit when epsilon tends to 0. Above all, it does not require any constraint on the space and time steps related to the small value of epsilon. Numerical results are presented, which confirm the AP character of the scheme and its Asymptotic Stability

    Interaction between superconducting vortices and Bloch wall in ferrite garnet film

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    Interaction between a Bloch wall in a ferrite-garnet film and a vortex in a superconductor is analyzed in the London approximation. Equilibrium distribution of vortices formed around the Bloch wall is calculated. The results agree quantitatively with magneto-optical experiment where an in-plane magnetized ferrite-garnet film placed on top of NbSe2 superconductor allows observation of individual vortices. In particular, our model can reproduce a counter-intuitive attraction observed between vortices and a Bloch wall having the opposite polarity. It is explained by magnetic charges appearing due to discontinuity of the in-plane magnetization across the wall.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

    A Lagrangian scheme for the solution of nonlinear diffusion equations using moving simplex meshes

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    A Lagrangian numerical scheme for solving nonlinear degenerate Fokker{Planck equations in space dimensions d>2 is presented. It applies to a large class of nonlinear diffusion equations, whose dynamics are driven by internal energies and given external potentials, e.g. the porous medium equation and the fast diffusion equation. The key ingredient in our approach is the gradient ow structure of the dynamics. For discretization of the Lagrangian map, we use a finite subspace of linear maps in space and a variational form of the implicit Euler method in time. Thanks to that time discretisation, the fully discrete solution inherits energy estimates from the original gradient ow, and these lead to weak compactness of the trajectories in the continuous limit. Consistency is analyzed in the planar situation, d = 2. A variety of numerical experiments for the porous medium equation indicates that the scheme is well-adapted to track the growth of the solution's support

    The Flexure-based Microgap Rheometer (FMR)

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    Submitted to J. Rheol.We describe the design and construction of a new microrheometer designed to facilitate the viscometric study of complex fluids with very small sample volumes (1-10 μl)and gaps of micrometer dimensions. The Flexure-based Microgap Rheometer (FMR) is a shear-rate-controlled device capable of measuring the shear stress in a plane Couette configuration with directly-controlled gaps between 1 μm and 200 μm. White light interferometry and a three-point nanopositioning stage using piezo-stepping motors are used to control the parallelism of the upper and lower shearing surfaces which are constructed from glass optical flats. A compound flexure system is used to hold the fluid sample testing unit between a drive spring connected to an ‘inchworm’ motor and an independent sensor spring. Displacements in the sensing flexure are detected using an inductive proximity sensor. Ready optical access to the transparent shearing surfaces enables monitoring of the structural evolution in the gap with a long working-distance video-microscope. This configuration then allows us to determine the microgap-dependent flow behavior of complex fluids over 5 decades of shear rate. We demonstrate the capability of the FMR by characterizing the complex stress and gap dependent flow behavior of a typical microstructured food product (mayonnaise) over the range of gaps from 8 to 100 μm and stresses from 10 to 1500 Pa. We correlate the gap-dependent rheological response to the microstructure of the emulsion and changes induced in the material by prolonged shearing.Dupont MIT Allianc

    Single-molecule experiments in biological physics: methods and applications

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    I review single-molecule experiments (SME) in biological physics. Recent technological developments have provided the tools to design and build scientific instruments of high enough sensitivity and precision to manipulate and visualize individual molecules and measure microscopic forces. Using SME it is possible to: manipulate molecules one at a time and measure distributions describing molecular properties; characterize the kinetics of biomolecular reactions and; detect molecular intermediates. SME provide the additional information about thermodynamics and kinetics of biomolecular processes. This complements information obtained in traditional bulk assays. In SME it is also possible to measure small energies and detect large Brownian deviations in biomolecular reactions, thereby offering new methods and systems to scrutinize the basic foundations of statistical mechanics. This review is written at a very introductory level emphasizing the importance of SME to scientists interested in knowing the common playground of ideas and the interdisciplinary topics accessible by these techniques. The review discusses SME from an experimental perspective, first exposing the most common experimental methodologies and later presenting various molecular systems where such techniques have been applied. I briefly discuss experimental techniques such as atomic-force microscopy (AFM), laser optical tweezers (LOT), magnetic tweezers (MT), biomembrane force probe (BFP) and single-molecule fluorescence (SMF). I then present several applications of SME to the study of nucleic acids (DNA, RNA and DNA condensation), proteins (protein-protein interactions, protein folding and molecular motors). Finally, I discuss applications of SME to the study of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of small systems and the experimental verification of fluctuation theorems. I conclude with a discussion of open questions and future perspectives.Comment: Latex, 60 pages, 12 figures, Topical Review for J. Phys. C (Cond. Matt
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