Lamellae Stability in Confined Systems with Gravity

The microphase separation of a diblock copolymer melt confined by hard walls and in the presence of a gravitational field is simulated by means of a cell dynamical system model. It is found that the presence of hard walls normal to the gravitational field are key ingredients to the formation of well ordered lamellae in BCP melts. To this effect the currents in the directions normal and parallel to the field are calculated along the interface of a lamellar domain, showing that the formation of lamellae parallel to the hard boundaries and normal to the field correspond to the stable configuration. Also, it is found thet the field increases the interface width.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physical Review

Coupled Map Modeling for Cloud Dynamics

A coupled map model for cloud dynamics is proposed, which consists of the successive operations of the physical processes; buoyancy, diffusion, viscosity, adiabatic expansion, fall of a droplet by gravity, descent flow dragged by the falling droplet, and advection. Through extensive simulations, the phases corresponding to stratus, cumulus, stratocumulus and cumulonimbus are found, with the change of the ground temperature and the moisture of the air. They are characterized by order parameters such as the cluster number, perimeter-to-area ratio of a cloud, and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure, LaTeX, mpeg simulations available at http://aurora.elsip.hokudai.ac.jp

The law of action and reaction for the effective force in a nonequilibrium colloidal system

We study a nonequilibrium Langevin many-body system containing two 'test' particles and many 'background' particles. The test particles are spatially confined by a harmonic potential, and the background particles are driven by an external driving force. Employing numerical simulations of the model, we formulate an effective description of the two test particles in a nonequilibrium steady state. In particular, we investigate several different definitions of the effective force acting between the test particles. We find that the law of action and reaction does not hold for the total mechanical force exerted by the background particles, but that it does hold for the thermodynamic force defined operationally on the basis of an idea used to extend the first law of thermodynamics to nonequilibrium steady states.Comment: 13 page

Jarzynski equality for the transitions between nonequilibrium steady states

Jarzynski equality [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 56}, 5018 (1997)] is found to be valid with slight modefication for the transitions between nonequilibrium stationary states, as well as the one between equilibrium states. Also numerical results confirm its validity. Its relevance for nonequilibrium thermodynamics of the operational formalism is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revte

Phase Separation Kinetics in a Model with Order-Parameter Dependent Mobility

We present extensive results from 2-dimensional simulations of phase separation kinetics in a model with order-parameter dependent mobility. We find that the time-dependent structure factor exhibits dynamical scaling and the scaling function is numerically indistinguishable from that for the Cahn-Hilliard (CH) equation, even in the limit where surface diffusion is the mechanism for domain growth. This supports the view that the scaling form of the structure factor is "universal" and leads us to question the conventional wisdom that an accurate representation of the scaled structure factor for the CH equation can only be obtained from a theory which correctly models bulk diffusion.Comment: To appear in PRE, figures available on reques

From Quantum Dynamics to the Canonical Distribution: General Picture and a Rigorous Example

Derivation of the canonical (or Boltzmann) distribution based only on quantum dynamics is discussed. Consider a closed system which consists of mutually interacting subsystem and heat bath, and assume that the whole system is initially in a pure state (which can be far from equilibrium) with small energy fluctuation. Under the "hypothesis of equal weights for eigenstates", we derive the canonical distribution in the sense that, at sufficiently large and typical time, the (instantaneous) quantum mechanical expectation value of an arbitrary operator of the subsystem is almost equal to the desired canonical expectation value. We present a class of examples in which the above derivation can be rigorously established without any unproven hypotheses.Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, no figures. The title, abstract and some discussions are modified to stress physical motivation of the work. References are added to [2]. This version will appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. There is an accompanying unpublished note (cond-mat/9707255

Coupled Maps on Trees

We study coupled maps on a Cayley tree, with local (nearest-neighbor) interactions, and with a variety of boundary conditions. The homogeneous state (where every lattice site has the same value) and the node-synchronized state (where sites of a given generation have the same value) are both shown to occur for particular values of the parameters and coupling constants. We study the stability of these states and their domains of attraction. As the number of sites that become synchronized is much higher compared to that on a regular lattice, control is easier to effect. A general procedure is given to deduce the eigenvalue spectrum for these states. Perturbations of the synchronized state lead to different spatio-temporal structures. We find that a mean-field like treatment is valid on this (effectively infinite dimensional) lattice.Comment: latex file (25 pages), 4 figures included. To be published in Phys. Rev.

The role of the alloy structure in the magnetic behavior of granular systems

The effect of grain size, easy magnetization axis and anisotropy constant distributions in the irreversible magnetic behavior of granular alloys is considered. A simulated granular alloy is used to provide a realistic grain structure for the Monte Carlo simulation of the ZFC-FC curves. The effect of annealing and external field is also studied. The simulation curves are in good agreement with the FC and ZFC magnetization curves measured on melt spun Cu-Co ribbons.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PR

Extended Clausius Relation and Entropy for Nonequilibrium Steady States in Heat Conducting Quantum Systems

Recently, in their attempt to construct steady state thermodynamics (SST), Komatsu, Nakagwa, Sasa, and Tasaki found an extension of the Clausius relation to nonequilibrium steady states in classical stochastic processes. Here we derive a quantum mechanical version of the extended Clausius relation. We consider a small system of interest attached to large systems which play the role of heat baths. By only using the genuine quantum dynamics, we realize a heat conducting nonequilibrium steady state in the small system. We study the response of the steady state when the parameters of the system are changed abruptly, and show that the extended Clausius relation, in which "heat" is replaced by the "excess heat", is valid when the temperature difference is small. Moreover we show that the entropy that appears in the relation is similar to von Neumann entropy but has an extra symmetrization with respect to time-reversal. We believe that the present work opens a new possibility in the study of nonequilibrium phenomena in quantum systems, and also confirms the robustness of the approach by Komtatsu et al.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figure

Noiseless Collective Motion out of Noisy Chaos

We consider the effect of microscopic external noise on the collective motion of a globally coupled map in fully desynchronized states. Without the external noise a macroscopic variable shows high-dimensional chaos distinguishable from random motion. With the increase of external noise intensity, the collective motion is successively simplified. The number of effective degrees of freedom in the collective motion is found to decrease as $-\log{\sigma^2}$ with the external noise variance $\sigma^2$. It is shown how the microscopic noise can suppress the number of degrees of freedom at a macroscopic level.Comment: 9 pages RevTex file and 4 postscript figure