Dislocations in uniaxial lamellar phases of liquid crystals, polymers and amphiphilic systems

Dislocations in soft condensed matter systems such as lamellar systems of polymers, liquid crystals and ternary mixtures of oil, water and surfactant (amphiphilic systems) are described in the framework of continuum elastic theory. These systems are the subject of studies of physics, chemistry and biology. They also find applications in the industry. Here we will discuss in detail the influence of dislocations on the bulk and surface properties of these lamellar phases. Especially the latter properties have only been recently studied in detail. We will present the experimental evidence of the existence of screw and edge dislocations in the systems and study their static properties such as: energy, line tension and core structure. Next we will show how does the surface influence the equilibrium position of dislocations in the system. We will give the theoretical predictions and present the experimental results on thin copolymer films, free standing films of liquid crystals and smectic droplets shapes. The surface is deformed by dislocations. These deformations are known as edge profiles. Surface deformations induce elastic interactions between edge dislocations. A new phenonenon discussed in our paper is the fluctuations induced interactions between edge dislocations.At suitable conditions edge dislocations can undergo an unbinding transition. Also a single dislocation loop in a smectic freely suspended film can undergo an unbinding transition. We shall also compute the equilibrium size of the loop contained between two hard walls. Finally we will discuss the dynamical bulk properties of dislocations such as: mobility (climb and glide),permeation, and helical instability of screw dislocations. Lubrication theory will also be discussed.Comment: plain TeX, 65 pages, review for International Journal of Modern Physics

Influence of the electric field on edge dislocations in smectics

The electric field applied perpendicularly to smectic layers breaks the rotational symmetry of the system. Consequently, the elastic energy associated with distortions induced by an edge dislocation diverges logarithmically with the size of the system. In freely suspended smectic films the dislocations in the absence of the electric field are located exactly in the middle of the film. The electric field above a certain critical value can shift them towards the surface. This critical field squared is a linear function of the surface tension and is inversly proportional to the thickness of the film. The equilibrium location of a dislocation in the smectic film subjected to the field is also calculated.Comment: Tex, 13 pages, submitted to J. de Physique II. (permanent e-mail address: [email protected]

Anti-deterministic behavior of discrete systems that are less predictable than noise

We present a new type of deterministic dynamical behaviour that is less predictable than white noise. We call it anti-deterministic (AD) because time series corresponding to the dynamics of such systems do not generate deterministic lines in Recurrence Plots for small thresholds. We show that although the dynamics is chaotic in the sense of exponential divergence of nearby initial conditions and although some properties of AD data are similar to white noise, the AD dynamics is in fact less predictable than noise and hence is different from pseudo-random number generators.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. See http://www.chaosandnoise.or

Scaling of internode distances in weighted complex networks

We extend the previously observed scaling equation connecting the internode distances and nodes' degrees onto the case of weighted networks. We show that the scaling takes a similar form in the empirical data obtained from networks characterized by different relations between node's strength and its degree. In the case of explicit equation for s(k) (e.g. linear or scale-free), the new coefficients of scaling equation can be easily obtained. We support our analysis with numerical simulations for Erdos-Renyi random graphs with different weight distributions.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to International Journal of Modern Physics

Emotional agents at the square lattice

We introduce and investigate by numerical simulations a number of models of emotional agents at the square lattice. Our models describe the most general features of emotions such as the spontaneous emotional arousal, emotional relaxation, and transfers of emotions between different agents. Group emotions in the considered models are periodically fluctuating between two opposite valency levels and as result the mean value of such group emotions is zero. The oscillations amplitude depends strongly on probability ps of the individual spontaneous arousal. For small values of relaxation times tau we observed a stochastic resonance, i.e. the signal to noise ratio SNR is maximal for a non-zero ps parameter. The amplitude increases with the probability p of local affective interactions while the mean oscillations period increases with the relaxation time tau and is only weakly dependent on other system parameters. Presence of emotional antenna can enhance positive or negative emotions and for the optimal transition probability the antenna can change agents emotions at longer distances. The stochastic resonance was also observed for the influence of emotions on task execution efficiency.Comment: 28 pages, 19 figures, 3 table

Anomalous oscillations of average transient lifetimes near crises

It is common that the average length of chaotic transients appearing as a consequence of crises in dynamical systems obeys a power low of scaling with the distance from the crisis point. It is, however, only a rough trend; in some cases considerable oscillations can be superimposed on it. In this letter we report anomalous oscillations due to the intertwined structure of basins of attraction. We also present a simple geometrical model that gives an estimate of the period and amplitude of these oscillations. The results obtained within the model coincide with those yielded by computer simulations of a kicked spin model and the Henon map.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure