Combined effect of rotation and topography on shoaling oceanic internal solitary waves

Internal solitary waves commonly observed in the coastal ocean are often modeled by a nonlinear evolution equation of the Korteweg-de Vries type. Because these waves often propagate for long distances over several inertial periods, the effect of Earth's background rotation is potentially significant. The relevant extension of the Kortweg-de Vries is then the Ostrovsky equation, which for internal waves does not support a steady solitary wave solution. Recent studies using a combination of asymptotic theory, numerical simulations, and laboratory experiments have shown that the long time effect of rotation is the destruction of the initial internal solitary wave by the radiation of small-amplitude inertia-gravity waves, and the eventual emergence of a coherent, steadily propagating, nonlinear wave packet. However, in the ocean, internal solitary waves are often propagating over variable topography, and this alone can cause quite dramatic deformation and transformation of an internal solitary wave. Hence, the combined effects of background rotation and variable topography are examined. Then the Ostrovsky equation is replaced by a variable coefficient Ostrovsky equation whose coefficients depend explicitly on the spatial coordinate. Some numerical simulations of this equation, together with analogous simulations using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology General Circulation Model (MITgcm), for a certain cross section of the South China Sea are presented. These demonstrate that the combined effect of shoaling and rotation is to induce a secondary trailing wave packet, induced by enhanced radiation from the leading wave. © 2014 American Meteorological Society

Morphological Thermodynamics of Fluids: Shape Dependence of Free Energies

We examine the dependence of a thermodynamic potential of a fluid on the geometry of its container. If motion invariance, continuity, and additivity of the potential are fulfilled, only four morphometric measures are needed to describe fully the influence of an arbitrarily shaped container on the fluid. These three constraints can be understood as a more precise definition for the conventional term "extensive" and have as a consequence that the surface tension and other thermodynamic quantities contain, beside a constant term, only contributions linear in the mean and Gaussian curvature of the container and not an infinite number of curvatures as generally assumed before. We verify this numerically in the entropic system of hard spheres bounded by a curved wall.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Observation of an Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of atoms and weakly bound dimers

We discuss our recent observation of an atom-dimer Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of Cs atoms and Cs_2 Feshbach molecules [Nature Phys. 5, 227 (2009)]. We review our experimental procedure and present additional data involving a non-universal g-wave dimer state, to contrast our previous results on the universal s-wave dimer. We resolve a seeming discrepancy when quantitatively comparing our experimental findings with theoretical results from effective field theory.Comment: Conference Proceeding ICPEAC 2009 Kalamazoo, to appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Observation of an Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of atoms and weakly bound dimers

We discuss our recent observation of an atom-dimer Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of Cs atoms and Cs_2 Feshbach molecules [Nature Phys. 5, 227 (2009)]. We review our experimental procedure and present additional data involving a non-universal g-wave dimer state, to contrast our previous results on the universal s-wave dimer. We resolve a seeming discrepancy when quantitatively comparing our experimental findings with theoretical results from effective field theory.Comment: Conference Proceeding ICPEAC 2009 Kalamazoo, to appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Observation of an Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of atoms and weakly bound dimers

We discuss our recent observation of an atom-dimer Efimov resonance in an ultracold mixture of Cs atoms and Cs_2 Feshbach molecules [Nature Phys. 5, 227 (2009)]. We review our experimental procedure and present additional data involving a non-universal g-wave dimer state, to contrast our previous results on the universal s-wave dimer. We resolve a seeming discrepancy when quantitatively comparing our experimental findings with theoretical results from effective field theory.Comment: Conference Proceeding ICPEAC 2009 Kalamazoo, to appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Gravity-Induced Shape Transformations of Vesicles

We theoretically study the behavior of vesicles filled with a liquid of higher density than the surrounding medium, a technique frequently used in experiments. In the presence of gravity, these vesicles sink to the bottom of the container, and eventually adhere even on non - attractive substrates. The strong size-dependence of the gravitational energy makes large parts of the phase diagram accessible to experiments even for small density differences. For relatively large volume, non-axisymmetric bound shapes are explicitly calculated and shown to be stable. Osmotic deflation of such a vesicle leads back to axisymmetric shapes, and, finally, to a collapsed state of the vesicle.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX, 3 Postscript figures uuencode

What do emulsification failure and Bose-Einstein condensation have in common?

Ideal bosons and classical ring polymers formed via self-assembly, are known to have the same partition function, and so analogous phase transitions. In ring polymers, the analogue of Bose-Einstein condensation occurs when a ring polymer of macroscopic size appears. We show that a transition of the same general form occurs within a whole class of systems with self-assembly, and illustrate it with the emulsification failure of a microemulsion phase of water, oil and surfactant. As with Bose-Einstein condensation, the transition occurs even in the absence of interactions.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, typeset with EUROTeX, uses epsfi

Tilt Texture Domains on a Membrane and Chirality induced Budding

We study the equilibrium conformations of a lipid domain on a planar fluid membrane where the domain is decorated by a vector field representing the tilt of the stiff fatty acid chains of the lipid molecules, while the surrounding membrane is fluid and structureless. The inclusion of chirality in the bulk of the domain induces a novel budding of the membrane, which preempts the budding induced by a decrease in interfacial tension.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Coiling Instabilities in Multilamellar Tubes

Myelin figures are densely packed stacks of coaxial cylindrical bilayers that are unstable to the formation of coils or double helices. These myelin figures appear to have no intrinsic chirality. We show that such cylindrical membrane stacks can develop an instability when they acquire a spontaneous curvature or when the equilibrium distance between membranes is decreased. This instability breaks the chiral symmetry of the stack and may result in coiling. A unilamellar cylindrical vesicle, on the other hand, will develop an axisymmetric instability, possibly related to the pearling instability.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Depletion forces near a soft surface

We investigate excluded-volume effects in a bidisperse colloidal suspension near a flexible interface. Inspired by a recent experiment by Dinsmore et al. (Phys. Rev, Lett. 80, 409 (1998)), we study the adsorption of a mesoscopic bead on the surface and show that depletion forces could in principle lead to particle encapsulation. We then consider the effect of surface fluctuations on the depletion potential itself and construct the density profile of a polymer solution near a soft interface. Surprisingly we find that the chains accumulate at the wall, whereas the density displays a deficit of particles at distances larger than the surface roughness. This non-monotonic behavior demonstrates that surface fluctuations can have major repercusions on the properties of a colloidal solution. On average, the additional contribution to the Gibbs adsorbance is negative. The amplitude of the depletion potential between a mesoscopic bead and the surface increases accordingly.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure