Modeling incompressible thermal flows using a central-moment-based lattice Boltzmann method

In this paper, a central-moment-based lattice Boltzmann (CLB) method for incompressible thermal flows is proposed. In the method, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and the convection-diffusion equation for the temperature field are sloved separately by two different CLB equations. Through the Chapman-Enskog analysis, the macroscopic governing equations for incompressible thermal flows can be reproduced. For the flow field, the tedious implementation for CLB method is simplified by using the shift matrix with a simplified central-moment set, and the consistent forcing scheme is adopted to incorporate forcing effects. Compared with several D2Q5 multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann methods for the temperature equation, the proposed method is shown to be better Galilean invariant through measuring the thermal diffusivities on a moving reference frame. Thus a higher Mach number can be used for convection flows, which decreases the computational load significantly. Numerical simulations for several typical problems confirm the accuracy, efficiency, and stability of the present method. The grid convergence tests indicate that the proposed CLB method for incompressible thermal flows is of second-order accuracy in space

Theory of resonant spin Hall effect

A biref review is presented on resonant spin Hall effect, where a tiny external electric field induces a saturated spin Hall current in a 2-dimensional electron or hole gas in a perpendicular magnetic field. The phenomenon is attributted to the energy level crossing associated with the spin-orbit coupling and the Zeeman splitting. We summarize recent theoretical development of the effect in various systems and discuss possible experiments to observe the effect.Comment: 5 pages with 1 figure

Comment on 'Note on the dog-and-rabbit chase problem in introductory kinematics'

We comment on the recent paper by Yuan Qing-Xin and Du Yin-Xiao (Eur. J. Phys. 29 (2008) N43-N45).Comment: 2 pages, no figure

Frequency pulling and mixing of relaxation oscillations in superconducting nanowires

Many superconducting technologies such as rapid single flux quantum computing (RSFQ) and superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) rely on the modulation of nonlinear dynamics in Josephson junctions for functionality. More recently, however, superconducting devices have been developed based on the switching and thermal heating of nanowires for use in fields such as single photon detection and digital logic. In this paper, we use resistive shunting to control the nonlinear heating of a superconducting nanowire and compare the resulting dynamics to those observed in Josephson junctions. We show that interaction of the hotspot growth with the external shunt produces high frequency relaxation oscillations with similar behavior as observed in Josephson junctions due to their rapid time constants and ability to be modulated by a weak periodic signal. In particular, we use a microwave drive to pull and mix the oscillation frequency, resulting in phase locked features that resemble the AC Josephson effect. New nanowire devices based on these conclusions have promising applications in fields such as parametric amplification and frequency multiplexing