Energy bursts in fiber bundle models of composite materials

As a model of composite materials, a bundle of many fibers with stochastically distributed breaking thresholds for the individual fibers is considered. The bundle is loaded until complete failure to capture the failure scenario of composite materials under external load. The fibers are assumed to share the load equally, and to obey Hookean elasticity right up to the breaking point. We determine the distribution of bursts in which an amount of energy $E$ is released. The energy distribution follows asymptotically a universal power law $E^{-5/2}$, for any statistical distribution of fiber strengths. A similar power law dependence is found in some experimental acoustic emission studies of loaded composite materials.Comment: 5 pages, 4 fig

Resonantly enhanced nonlinear optics in semiconductor quantum wells: An application to sensitive infrared detection

A novel class of coherent nonlinear optical phenomena, involving induced transparency in quantum wells, is considered in the context of a particular application to sensitive long-wavelength infrared detection. It is shown that the strongest decoherence mechanisms can be suppressed or mitigated, resulting in substantial enhancement of nonlinear optical effects in semiconductor quantum wells.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, replaced with revised versio

Discrete Fracture Model with Anisotropic Load Sharing

A two-dimensional fracture model where the interaction among elements is modeled by an anisotropic stress-transfer function is presented. The influence of anisotropy on the macroscopic properties of the samples is clarified, by interpolating between several limiting cases of load sharing. Furthermore, the critical stress and the distribution of failure avalanches are obtained numerically for different values of the anisotropy parameter $\alpha$ and as a function of the interaction exponent $\gamma$. From numerical results, one can certainly conclude that the anisotropy does not change the crossover point $\gamma_c=2$ in 2D. Hence, in the limit of infinite system size, the crossover value $\gamma_c=2$ between local and global load sharing is the same as the one obtained in the isotropic case. In the case of finite systems, however, for $\gamma\le2$, the global load sharing behavior is approached very slowly

Failure avalanches in fiber bundles for discrete load increase

The statistics of burst avalanche sizes $n$ during failure processes in a fiber bundle follows a power law, $D(n)\sim n^{-\xi}$, for large avalanches. The exponent $\xi$ depends upon how the avalanches are provoked. While it is known that when the load on the bundle is increased in a continuous manner, the exponent takes the value $\xi=5/2$, we show that when the external load is increased in discrete and not too small steps, the exponent value $\xi=3$ is relevant. Our analytic treatment applies to bundles with a general probability distribution of the breakdown thresholds for the individual fibers. The pre-asymptotic size distribution of avalanches is also considered.Comment: 4 pages 2 figure

On the cohomology of Young modules for the symmetric group

The main result of this paper is an application of the topology of the space $Q(X)$ to obtain results for the cohomology of the symmetric group on $d$ letters, $\Sigma_d$, with `twisted' coefficients in various choices of Young modules and to show that these computations reduce to certain natural questions in representation theory. The authors extend classical methods for analyzing the homology of certain spaces $Q(X)$ with mod-$p$ coefficients to describe the homology \HH_{\bullet}(\Sigma_d, V^{\otimes d}) as a module for the general linear group $GL(V)$ over an algebraically closed field $k$ of characteristic $p$. As a direct application, these results provide a method of reducing the computation of $\text{Ext}^{\bullet}_{\Sigma_{d}}(Y^{\lambda},Y^{\mu})$ (where $Y^{\lambda}$, $Y^{\mu}$ are Young modules) to a representation theoretic problem involving the determination of tensor products and decomposition numbers. In particular, in characteristic two, for many $d$, a complete determination of \Hs Y^\lambda) can be found. This is the first nontrivial class of symmetric group modules where a complete description of the cohomology in all degrees can be given. For arbitrary $d$ the authors determine \HH^i(\Sigma_d,Y^\lambda) for $i=0,1,2$. An interesting phenomenon is uncovered--namely a stability result reminiscent of generic cohomology for algebraic groups. For each $i$ the cohomology \HH^i(\Sigma_{p^ad}, Y^{p^a\lambda}) stabilizes as $a$ increases. The methods in this paper are also powerful enough to determine, for any $p$ and $\lambda$, precisely when \HH^{\bullet}(\sd,Y^\lambda)=0. Such modules with vanishing cohomology are of great interest in representation theory because their support varieties constitute the representation theoretic nucleus.Comment: Substantially revised, original stability conjecture proven for all primes. To appear, Advances in Mathematic

Optical quenching and recovery of photoconductivity in single-crystal diamond

We study the photocurrent induced by pulsed-light illumination (pulse duration is several nanoseconds) of single-crystal diamond containing nitrogen impurities. Application of additional continuous-wave light of the same wavelength quenches pulsed photocurrent. Characterization of the optically quenched photocurrent and its recovery is important for the development of diamond based electronics and sensing