Numerical investigation of high-speed droplet impact using a multiscale two-fluid approach

A single droplet impact onto solid surfaces remains a fundamental and challenging topic in both experimental and numerical studies with significant importance in a plethora of industrial applications, ranging from printing technologies to fuel injection in internal combustion engines. Under high-speed impact conditions, additional complexities arise as a result of the prompt droplet splashing and the subsequent violent fragmentation; thus, different flow regimes and a vast spectrum of sizes for the produced secondary flow structures coexist in the flow field. The present work introduces a numerical methodology to capture the multiscale processes involved with respect to local topological characteristics. The proposed methodology concerns a compressible Σ-Υ two-fluid model with dynamic interface sharpening based on an advanced flow topology detection algorithm. The model has been developed in OpenFOAM® and provides the flexibility of dealing with the multiscale character of droplet splashing, by switching between a sharp and a diffuse interface within the Eulerian-Eulerian framework in segregated and dispersed flow regions, respectively. An additional transport equation for the interface surface area density (Σ) introduces important information for the sub-grid scale phenomena, which is exploited in the dispersed flow regions to provide an insight into the extended cloud of secondary droplets after impact on the target. A high-speed water droplet impact case has been examined and evaluated against new experimental data; these refer to a millimetre size droplet impacting a solid dry smooth surface at velocity as high as 150m/s, which corresponds to a Weber number of ~7.6×10^5. At the investigated impact conditions compressibility effects dominate the early stages of droplet splashing. A strong shock wave forms and propagates inside the droplet, where transonic Mach numbers occur; local Mach numbers up to 2.5 are observed for the expelled surrounding gas outside the droplet. The proposed numerical approach is found to capture relatively accurately the phenomena and provide significant information regarding the produced flow structure dimensions, which is not available from the experiment

Inelastic light scattering and the excited states of many-electron quantum dots

A consistent calculation of resonant inelastic (Raman) scattering amplitudes for relatively large quantum dots, which takes account of valence-band mixing, discrete character of the spectrum in intermediate and final states, and interference effects, is presented. Raman peaks in charge and spin channels are compared with multipole strengths and with the density of energy levels in final states. A qualitative comparison with the available experimental results is given.Comment: 5 pages, accepted in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Neural-network selection of high-redshift radio quasars, and the luminosity function at z~4

We obtain a sample of 87 radio-loud QSOs in the redshift range 3.6<z<4.4 by cross-correlating sources in the FIRST radio survey S{1.4GHz} > 1 mJy with star-like objects having r <20.2 in SDSS Data Release 7. Of these 87 QSOs, 80 are spectroscopically classified in previous work (mainly SDSS), and form the training set for a search for additional such sources. We apply our selection to 2,916 FIRST-DR7 pairs and find 15 likely candidates. Seven of these are confirmed as high-redshift quasars, bringing the total to 87. The candidates were selected using a neural-network, which yields 97% completeness (fraction of actual high-z QSOs selected as such) and an efficiency (fraction of candidates which are high-z QSOs) in the range of 47 to 60%. We use this sample to estimate the binned optical luminosity function of radio-loud QSOs at $z\sim 4$, and also the LF of the total QSO population and its comoving density. Our results suggest that the radio-loud fraction (RLF) at high z is similar to that at low-z and that other authors may be underestimating the fraction at high-z. Finally, we determine the slope of the optical luminosity function and obtain results consistent with previous studies of radio-loud QSOs and of the whole population of QSOs. The evolution of the luminosity function with redshift was for many years interpreted as a flattening of the bright end slope, but has recently been re-interpreted as strong evolution of the break luminosity for high-z QSOs, and our results, for the radio-loud population, are consistent with this.Comment: 20 pages. Accepted for publication in MNRAS on 3 March 201

Texture Zeros and Weak Basis Transformations

We investigate the physical meaning of some of the "texture zeros" which appear in most of the Ansatze on quark masses and mixings. It is shown that starting from arbitrary quark mass matrices and making a suitable weak basis transformation one can obtain some of these sets of zeros which therefore have no physical content. We then analyse the physical implications of a four-texture zero Ansatz which is in agreement with all present experimental data.Comment: 11 pages, typeset using revte

Diluted Graphene Antiferromagnet

We study RKKY interactions between local magnetic moments for both doped and undoped graphene. We find in both cases that the interactions are primarily ferromagnetic for moments on the same sublattice, and antiferromagnetic for moments on opposite sublattices. This suggests that at sufficiently low temperatures dilute magnetic moments embedded in graphene can order into a state analogous to that of a dilute antiferromagnet. We find that in the undoped case one expects no net magnetic moment, and demonstrate numerically that this effect generalizes to ribbons where the magnetic response is strongest at the edge, suggesting the possibility of an unusual spin-transfer device. For doped graphene we find that moments at definite lattice sites interact over longer distances than those placed in interstitial sites of the lattice ($1/R^2$ vs. $1/R^3$) because the former support a Kohn anomaly that is suppressed in the latter due to the absence of backscattering.Comment: 5 pages, two figures include

Signals for New Spin-1 Resonances in Electroweak Gauge Boson Pair Production at the LHC

The mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) will be directly scrutinized soon at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We analyze the LHC potential to look for new vector bosons associated with the EWSB sector. We present a possible model independent approach to search for these new spin--1 resonances. We show that the analyses of the processes pp --> l^+ l^- Emiss_T, l^\pm j j Emiss_T, l^\pm l^+ l^- Emiss_T, and l^+ l^- j j (with l=e or \mu and j=jet) have a large reach at the LHC and can lead to the discovery or exclusion of many EWSB scenarios such as Higgsless models.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Linear and nonlinear coupling of quantum dots in microcavities

We discuss the topical and fundamental problem of strong-coupling between a quantum dot an the single mode of a microcavity. We report seminal quantitative descriptions of experimental data, both in the linear and in the nonlinear regimes, based on a theoretical model that includes pumping and quantum statistics.Comment: Proceedings of the symposium Nanostructures: Physics and Technology 2010 (http://www.ioffe.ru/NANO2010), 2 pages in proceedings styl

Megawatt solar power systems for lunar surface operations

The work presented here shows that a solar power system can provide power on the order of one megawatt to a lunar base with a fairly high specific power. The main drawback to using solar power is still the high mass, and therefore, cost of supplying energy storage through the solar night. The use of cryogenic reactant storage in a fuel cell system, however, greatly reduces the total system mass over conventional energy storage schemes

A scanning electron microscope study of the male copulatory sclerite of the monogenean Diplectanum aequans

The cirrus of a monogenean Diplectanum aequans was isolated by treatment with sodium carbonate solution and studied with a scanning electron microscope. The method may be used in studies of the functional morphology and taxonomy of other organism