7,662 research outputs found
Vortex line representation for flows of ideal and viscous fluids
It is shown that the Euler hydrodynamics for vortical flows of an ideal fluid
coincides with the equations of motion of a charged {\it compressible} fluid
moving due to a self-consistent electromagnetic field. Transition to the
Lagrangian description in a new hydrodynamics is equivalent for the original
Euler equations to the mixed Lagrangian-Eulerian description - the vortex line
representation (VLR). Due to compressibility of a "new" fluid the collapse of
vortex lines can happen as the result of breaking (or overturning) of vortex
lines. It is found that the Navier-Stokes equation in the vortex line
representation can be reduced to the equation of the diffusive type for the
Cauchy invariant with the diffusion tensor given by the metric of the VLR
On the conformational structure of a stiff homopolymer
In this paper we complete the study of the phase diagram and conformational
states of a stiff homopolymer. It is known that folding of a sufficiently stiff
chain results in formation of a torus. We find that the phase diagram obtained
from the Gaussian variational treatment actually contains not one, but several
distinct toroidal states distinguished by the winding number. Such states are
separated by first order transition curves terminating in critical points at
low values of the stiffness. These findings are further supported by
off-lattice Monte Carlo simulation. Moreover, the simulation shows that the
kinetics of folding of a stiff chain passes through various metastable states
corresponding to hairpin conformations with abrupt U-turns.Comment: 9 pages, 16 PS figures. Journal of Chemical Physics, in pres
Topological defect formation in quenched ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensates
We study the dynamics of the quantum phase transition of a ferromagnetic
spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate from the polar phase to the broken-axisymmetry
phase by changing magnetic field, and find the spontaneous formation of spinor
domain walls followed by the creation of polar-core spin vortices. We also find
that the spin textures depend very sensitively on the initial noise
distribution, and that an anisotropic and colored initial noise is needed to
reproduce the Berkeley experiment [Sadler et al., Nature 443, 312 (2006)]. The
dynamics of vortex nucleation and the number of created vortices depend also on
the manner in which the magnetic field is changed. We point out an analogy
between the formation of spin vortices from domain walls in a spinor BEC and
that of vortex-antivortex pairs from dark solitons in a scalar BEC.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure
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