5,420 research outputs found
On the Microscopic Foundations of Elasticity
The modeling of the elastic properties of disordered or nanoscale solids
requires the foundations of the theory of elasticity to be revisited, as one
explores scales at which this theory may no longer hold. The only cases for
which microscopically based derivations of elasticity are documented are
(nearly) uniformly strained lattices. A microscopic approach to elasticity is
proposed. As a first step, microscopically exact expressions for the
displacement, strain and stress fields are derived. Conditions under which
linear elastic constitutive relations hold are studied theoretically and
numerically. It turns out that standard continuum elasticity is not
self-evident, and applies only above certain spatial scales, which depend on
details of the considered system and boundary conditions. Possible relevance to
granular materials is briefly discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX2e with svjour.cls and svepj.clo, submitted
to EPJ E, minor error corrected in v
Hardness Amplification of Optimization Problems
In this paper, we prove a general hardness amplification scheme for optimization problems based on the technique of direct products.
We say that an optimization problem ? is direct product feasible if it is possible to efficiently aggregate any k instances of ? and form one large instance of ? such that given an optimal feasible solution to the larger instance, we can efficiently find optimal feasible solutions to all the k smaller instances. Given a direct product feasible optimization problem ?, our hardness amplification theorem may be informally stated as follows:
If there is a distribution D over instances of ? of size n such that every randomized algorithm running in time t(n) fails to solve ? on 1/?(n) fraction of inputs sampled from D, then, assuming some relationships on ?(n) and t(n), there is a distribution D\u27 over instances of ? of size O(n??(n)) such that every randomized algorithm running in time t(n)/poly(?(n)) fails to solve ? on 99/100 fraction of inputs sampled from D\u27.
As a consequence of the above theorem, we show hardness amplification of problems in various classes such as NP-hard problems like Max-Clique, Knapsack, and Max-SAT, problems in P such as Longest Common Subsequence, Edit Distance, Matrix Multiplication, and even problems in TFNP such as Factoring and computing Nash equilibrium
Particle displacements in the elastic deformation of amorphous materials: local fluctuations vs. non-affine field
We study the local disorder in the deformation of amorphous materials by
decomposing the particle displacements into a continuous, inhomogeneous field
and the corresponding fluctuations. We compare these fields to the commonly
used non-affine displacements in an elastically deformed 2D Lennard-Jones
glass. Unlike the non-affine field, the fluctuations are very localized, and
exhibit a much smaller (and system size independent) correlation length, on the
order of a particle diameter, supporting the applicability of the notion of
local "defects" to such materials. We propose a scalar "noise" field to
characterize the fluctuations, as an additional field for extended continuum
models, e.g., to describe the localized irreversible events observed during
plastic deformation.Comment: Minor corrections to match the published versio
Quantum Cryptography with Orthogonal States?
This is a Comment on Phys Rev Lett 75 (1995) 1239, by Goldenberg and VaidmanComment: 3 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure on separate page Final version in Phys Rev
Lett 77 (1996) 326
Stress response inside perturbed particle assemblies
The effect of structural disorder on the stress response inside three
dimensional particle assemblies is studied using computer simulations of
frictionless sphere packings. Upon applying a localised, perturbative force
within the packings, the resulting {\it Green's} function response is mapped
inside the different assemblies, thus providing an explicit view as to how the
imposed perturbation is transmitted through the packing. In weakly disordered
arrays, the resulting transmission of forces is of the double-peak variety, but
with peak widths scaling linearly with distance from the source of the
perturbation. This behaviour is consistent with an anisotropic elasticity
response profile. Increasing the disorder distorts the response function until
a single-peak response is obtained for fully disordered packings consistent
with an isotropic description.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure captions To appear in Granular Matte
Towards a General Direct Product Testing Theorem
The Direct Product encoding of a string a in {0,1}^n on an underlying domain V subseteq ([n] choose k), is a function DP_V(a) which gets as input a set S in V and outputs a restricted to S. In the Direct Product Testing Problem, we are given a function F:V -> {0,1}^k, and our goal is to test whether F is close to a direct product encoding, i.e., whether there exists some a in {0,1}^n such that on most sets S, we have F(S)=DP_V(a)(S). A natural test is as follows: select a pair (S,S\u27)in V according to some underlying distribution over V x V, query F on this pair, and check for consistency on their intersection. Note that the above distribution may be viewed as a weighted graph over the vertex set V and is referred to as a test graph.
The testability of direct products was studied over various domains and test graphs: Dinur and Steurer (CCC \u2714) analyzed it when V equals the k-th slice of the Boolean hypercube and the test graph is a member of the Johnson graph family. Dinur and Kaufman (FOCS \u2717) analyzed it for the case where V is the set of faces of a Ramanujan complex, where in this case V=O_k(n). In this paper, we study the testability of direct products in a general setting, addressing the question: what properties of the domain and the test graph allow one to prove a direct product testing theorem?
Towards this goal we introduce the notion of coordinate expansion of a test graph. Roughly speaking a test graph is a coordinate expander if it has global and local expansion, and has certain nice intersection properties on sampling. We show that whenever the test graph has coordinate expansion then it admits a direct product testing theorem. Additionally, for every k and n we provide a direct product domain V subseteq (n choose k) of size n, called the Sliding Window domain for which we prove direct product testability
Force Chains, Microelasticity and Macroelasticity
It has been claimed that quasistatic granular materials, as well as nanoscale
materials, exhibit departures from elasticity even at small loadings. It is
demonstrated, using 2D and 3D models with interparticle harmonic interactions,
that such departures are expected at small scales [below O(100) particle
diameters], at which continuum elasticity is invalid, and vanish at large
scales. The models exhibit force chains on small scales, and force and stress
distributions which agree with experimental findings. Effects of anisotropy,
disorder and boundary conditions are discussed as well.Comment: 4 pages, 11 figures, RevTeX 4, revised and resubmitted to Phys. Rev.
Let
Error Prevention Scheme with Four Particles
It is shown that a simplified version of the error correction code recently
suggested by Shor exhibits manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect. Thus,
under certain conditions, protection of an unknown quantum state is achieved.
Error prevention procedures based on four-particle and two-particle encoding
are proposed and it is argued that they have feasible practical
implementations.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, references updated and improved protocol adde
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