Statistical Analysis of Lineaments and their Relation to Fracturing, Faulting, and Halokinesis in the East Texas Basin

UT Librarie

Report of Investigations No. 143 Natural Strain in Diapiric and Glacial Rock Salt, with Emphasis on Oakwood Dome, East Texas

UT Librarie

Persistent currents in a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of disorder

We examine bosonic atoms that are confined in a toroidal, quasi-one-dimensional trap, subjected to a random potential. The resulting inhomogeneous atomic density is smoothened for sufficiently strong, repulsive interatomic interactions. Statistical analysis of our simulations show that the gas supports persistent currents, which become more fragile due to the disorder.Comment: 5 pages, RevTex, 3 figures, revised version, to appear in JLT

Stability of persistent currents in a Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a toroidal trap

Motivated by recent experiments in Bose-Einstein condensed atoms that have been confined in toroidal traps, we examine the stability of persistent currents in such systems. We investigate the extent that the stability of these currents may be tunable, and the possible difficulties in their creation and detection.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Closure of open wellbores in creeping salt sheets

Safe exploration and production of pre-salt (or subsalt) hydrocarbons require that drilling operations be optimized. We introduce analytical models of wellbore closure, accounting for variations in both the wellbore net pressure and far-field flow rate of an autochthonous or allochthonous salt sheet penetrated by the wellbore. We demonstrate how closure rates of such a wellbore evolve for increasingly stronger Rankine flow. For high viscosity salt (?10^18 Pa s) the wellbore closes by a pure sink flow without any Rankine shift from its vertical trajectory path. For low viscosity salt (?10^16 Pa s) Rankine flow dominates.Wellbore closure in salt sheets may vary within the same wellbore due to differential tectonic creep rates at different depths. Mitigation of wellbore closure by, for example, reaming, jarring, brine solution and thermal control, is most effective if spatial variation in closure rates is understood and quantified. Evaluation of wellbore closure rates due to salt creep should be customarily included in wellbore stability analyses before drilling and during well monitoring.Geoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Rankine models for time-dependent gravity spreading of terrestrial source flows over subplanar slopes

Geological mass flows extruding from a point source include mud, lava, and salt issued from subsurface reservoirs and ice from surface feeders. The delivery of the material may occur via a salt stock, a volcanic pipe (for magma and mud flows), or a valley glacier (for ice). All these source flows are commonly skewed by a superposed far-field velocity vector imposed by the topographic slope and thus develop plumes having a wide range of shapes. The morphological evolution of the perimeter of the plumes (in plan view) can be simulated by varying the key parameters in a simple analytical flow description on the basis of Rankine equations. Our model systematically varies the strength of the point source relative to the downslope far-field velocity of its expelled mass. The flow lines are critically controlled by the relative speed of the two rates, which can be concisely expressed by the dimensionless Rankine number (Rk, introduced in this study). For steady flows, plume widths can be expressed as a function of Rk. The viscosity of the rock, mud, or lava mass involved in the gravity flow affects Rk and thus the appearance of the plumes. For unsteady source strength, Rk becomes time dependent and the plume width varies over time. The model flow shapes suggest that the plume shapes of natural gravity flows of terrestrial surface materials (mud, lava, salt, and ice) commonly express fast initial flux of the source, followed by an exponential decline of the source strength. Flows having initially higher Rk but otherwise equal life cycles create broader plumes. Peaks in the source flux due to magmatic pulsing during the eruption cycle can explain the formation of pillow lavas. Rather than instantaneously reaching full strength before declining, some natural source flows start by swelling slowly, leading to the creation of unique plume shapes like a flying saucerGeoscience & EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Coulomb anti-blockade in a Rydberg gas

We perform a comprehensive investigation of the coupling between a Rydberg-dressed atomic gas and an ultra-cold plasma. Using simultaneous time-resolved measurements of both neutral atoms and ions, we show that plasma formation occurs via a Coulomb anti-blockade mechanism, in which background ions DC Stark shift nearby atoms into resonance at specific distances. The result is a highly correlated growth of the Rydberg population that shares some similarities with that previously observed for van der Waals interactions. We show that a rate equation model that couples the laser-driven Rydberg gas to the ultra-cold plasma via a Coulomb anti-blockade mechanism accurately reproduces both the plasma formation and its subsequent decay. Using long-lived high angular momentum states as a probe, we also find evidence of a crossover from Coulomb anti-blockade to Coulomb blockade at high density. As well as shedding light on loss mechanisms in Rydberg-dressed gases, our results open new ways to create low-entropy states in ultra-cold plasmas

Rydberg-dressed Magneto-Optical Trap

We propose and demonstrate the laser cooling and trapping of Rydberg-dressed Sr atoms. By offresonantly coupling the excited state of a narrow (7 kHz) cooling transition to a high-lying Rydberg state, we transfer Rydberg properties such as enhanced electric polarizability to a stable magneto-optical trap operating at < 1 μK. Simulations show that it is possible to reach a regime where the long-range interaction between Rydberg-dressed atoms becomes comparable to the kinetic energy, opening a route to combining laser cooling with tunable long-range interactions