4,737 research outputs found
The Magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in Three Dimensions
We study the magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instability in three dimensions, with
focus on the nonlinear structure and evolution that results from different
initial field configurations. We study strong fields in the sense that the
critical wavelength l_c at which perturbations along the field are stable is a
large fraction of the size of the computational domain. We consider magnetic
fields which are initially parallel to the interface, but have a variety of
configurations, including uniform everywhere, uniform in the light fluid only,
and fields which change direction at the interface. Strong magnetic fields do
not suppress instability, in fact by inhibiting secondary shear instabilities,
they reduce mixing between the heavy and light fluid, and cause the rate of
growth of bubbles and fingers to increase in comparison to hydrodynamics.
Fields parallel to, but whose direction changes at, the interface produce long,
isolated fingers separated by the critical wavelength l_c, which may be
relevant to the morphology of the optical filaments in the Crab nebula.Comment: 14 pages, 9 pages, accepted by Ap
PT-symmetric quantum Liouvillian dynamics
We discuss a combination of unitary and anti-unitary symmetry of quantum
Liouvillian dynamics, in the context of open quantum systems, which implies a
D2 symmetry of the complex Liovillean spectrum. For sufficiently weak
system-bath coupling it implies a uniform decay rate for all coherences, i.e.
off-diagonal elements of the system's density matrix taken in the eigenbasis of
the Hamiltonian. As an example we discuss symmetrically boundary driven open
XXZ spin 1/2 chains.Comment: Note [18] added with respect to a published version, explaining the
symmetry of the matrix V [eq. (14)
The Morphologies of the Small Magellanic Cloud
We compare the distribution of stars of different spectral types, and hence
mean age, within the central SMC and find that the asymmetric structures are
almost exclusively composed of young main sequence stars. Because of the
relative lack of older stars in these features, and the extremely regular
distribution of red giant and clump stars in the SMC central body, we conclude
that tides alone are not responsible for the irregular appearance of the
central SMC. The dominant physical mechanism in determining the current-day
appearance of the SMC must be star formation triggered by a hydrodynamic
interaction between gaseous components. These results extend the results of
population studies (cf. Gardiner and Hatzidimitriou) inward in radius and also
confirm the suggestion of the spheroidal nature of the central SMC based on
kinematic arguments (Dopita et al; Hardy, Suntzeff & Azzopardi). Finally, we
find no evidence in the underlying older stellar population for a ``bar'' or
``outer arm'', again supporting our classification of the central SMC as a
spheroidal body with highly irregular recent star formation.Comment: 8 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters (higher quality
figures available at http://ngala.as.arizona.edu/dennis/mcsurvey.html
Sliding friction between an elastomer network and a grafted polymer layer: the role of cooperative effects
We study the friction between a flat solid surface where polymer chains have
been end-grafted and a cross-linked elastomer at low sliding velocity. The
contribution of isolated grafted chains' penetration in the sliding elastomer
has been early identified as a weakly velocity dependent pull-out force. Recent
experiments have shown that the interactions between the grafted chains at high
grafting density modify the friction force by grafted chain. We develop here a
simple model that takes into account those interactions and gives a limit
grafting density beyond which the friction no longer increases with the
grafting density, in good agreement with the experimental dataComment: Submitted to Europhys. Letter
Field-Induced Magnetic and Structural Domain Alignment in PrO2
We present a neutron diffraction study of the magnetic structure of single
crystal PrO2 under applied fields of 0-6 T. As the field is increased, changes
are observed in the magnetic Bragg intensities. These changes are found to be
irreversible when the field is reduced, but the original intensities can be
recovered by heating to T > 122 K, then re-cooling in zero field. The
antiferromagnetic ordering temperature TN = 13.5 K and the magnetic periodicity
are unaffected by the applied field. We also report measurements of the
magnetic susceptibility of single crystal PrO2 under applied fields of 0-7 T.
These show strong anisotropy, as well as an anomaly at T = 122 +/- 2 K which
coincides with the temperature TD = 120 +/- 2 K at which a structural
distortion occurs. For fields applied along the [100] direction the
susceptibility increases irreversibly with field in the temperature range TN <
T < TD. However, for fields along [110] the susceptibility is independent of
field in this range. We propose structural domain alignment, which strongly
influences the formation of magnetic domains below TN, as the mechanism behind
these changes.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Minor typographical changes in v
Winding up by a quench: vortices in the wake of rapid Bose-Einstein condensation
A second order phase transition induced by a rapid quench can lock out
topological defects with densities far exceeding their equilibrium expectation
values. We use quantum kinetic theory to show that this mechanism, originally
postulated in the cosmological context, and analysed so far only on the mean
field classical level, should allow spontaneous generation of vortex lines in
trapped Bose-Einstein condensates of simple topology, or of winding number in
toroidal condensates.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; misprint correcte
Adaptive Optical Phase Estimation Using Time-Symmetric Quantum Smoothing
Quantum parameter estimation has many applications, from gravitational wave
detection to quantum key distribution. We present the first experimental
demonstration of the time-symmetric technique of quantum smoothing. We consider
both adaptive and non-adaptive quantum smoothing, and show that both are better
than their well-known time-asymmetric counterparts (quantum filtering). For the
problem of estimating a stochastically varying phase shift on a coherent beam,
our theory predicts that adaptive quantum smoothing (the best scheme) gives an
estimate with a mean-square error up to times smaller than that
from non-adaptive quantum filtering (the standard quantum limit). The
experimentally measured improvement is
Quantum Kinetic Theory of Condensate Growth---Comparison of Experiment and Theory
In a major extension of our previous model (C.W. Gardiner, P. Zoller,
R.J. Ballagh and M.J. Davis, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1793 (1997)) of condensate
growth, we take account of the evolution of the occupations of lower trap
levels, and of the full Bose-Einstein formula for the occupations of higher
trap levels. We find good agreement with experiment, especially at higher
temperatures. We also confirm the picture of the ``kinetic'' region of
evolution, introduced by Kagan et al, for the time up to the initiation of the
condensate. The behavior after initiation essentially follows our original
growth equation, but with a substantially increased rate coefficient W^{+}.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages and 4 eps figure
Scalable quantum field simulations of conditioned systems
We demonstrate a technique for performing stochastic simulations of
conditional master equations. The method is scalable for many quantum-field
problems and therefore allows first-principles simulations of multimode bosonic
fields undergoing continuous measurement, such as those controlled by
measurement-based feedback. As examples, we demonstrate a 53-fold speed
increase for the simulation of the feedback cooling of a single trapped
particle, and the feedback cooling of a quantum field with 32 modes, which
would be impractical using previous brute force methods.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Conditions for the Quantum to Classical Transition: Trajectories vs. Phase Space Distributions
We contrast two sets of conditions that govern the transition in which
classical dynamics emerges from the evolution of a quantum system. The first
was derived by considering the trajectories seen by an observer (dubbed the
``strong'' transition) [Bhattacharya, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85: 4852
(2000)], and the second by considering phase-space densities (the ``weak''
transition) [Greenbaum, et al., Chaos 15, 033302 (2005)]. On the face of it
these conditions appear rather different. We show, however, that in the
semiclassical regime, in which the action of the system is large compared to
, and the measurement noise is small, they both offer an essentially
equivalent local picture. Within this regime, the weak conditions dominate
while in the opposite regime where the action is not much larger than Planck's
constant, the strong conditions dominate.Comment: 8 pages, 2 eps figure
- …