25,804 research outputs found
Pattern Formation from Defect Chaos --- A Theory of Chevrons
For over 25 years it is known that the roll structure of electroconvection
(EC) in the dielectric regime in planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals has,
after a transition to defect chaos, the tendency to form chevron structures. We
show, with the help of a coarse-grained model, that this effect can generally
be expected for systems with spontaneously broken isotropy, that is lifted by a
small external perturbation. The linearized model as well as a nonlinear
extension are compared to simulations of a system of coupled amplitude
equations which generate chevrons out of defect chaos. The mechanism of chevron
formation is similar to the development of Turing patterns in reaction
diffusion systems.Comment: 17 pages, Latex, 11 PS-figures, submitted to Physica
Weakly Nonlinear Theory of Pattern-Forming Systems with Spontaneously Broken Isotropy
Quasi two-dimensional pattern forming systems with spontaneously broken
isotropy represent a novel symmetry class, that is experimentally accessible in
electroconvection of homeotropically aligned liquid crystals. We present a
weakly nonlinear analysis leading to amplitude equations which couple the
short-wavelength patterning mode with the Goldstone mode resulting from the
broken isotropy. The new coefficients in these equations are calculated from
the hydrodynamics. Simulations exhibit a new type of spatio-temporal chaos at
onset. The results are compared with experiments.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 4 PS-figures, to appear in PR
Orientational transition in nematic liquid crystals under oscillatory Poiseuille flow
We investigate the orientational behaviour of a homeotropically aligned
nematic liquid crystal subjected to an oscillatory plane Poiseuille flow
produced by an alternating pressure gradient. For small pressure amplitudes the
director oscillates within the flow plane around the initial homeotropic
position, whereas for higher amplitudes a spatially homogeneous transition to
out-of-plane director motion was observed for the first time. The orientational
transition was found to be supercritical and the measured frequency dependence
of the critical pressure amplitude in the range between 2 and 20 Hz was in
quantitative agreement with a recent theory.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Europhys. Let
Information Content in Decays and the Angular Moments Method
The time-dependent angular distributions of decays of neutral mesons into
two vector mesons contain information about the lifetimes, mass differences,
strong and weak phases, form factors, and CP violating quantities. A
statistical analysis of the information content is performed by giving the
``information'' a quantitative meaning. It is shown that for some parameters of
interest, the information content in time and angular measurements combined may
be orders of magnitude more than the information from time measurements alone
and hence the angular measurements are highly recommended. The method of
angular moments is compared with the (maximum) likelihood method to find that
it works almost as well in the region of interest for the one-angle
distribution. For the complete three-angle distribution, an estimate of
possible statistical errors expected on the observables of interest is
obtained. It indicates that the three-angle distribution, unraveled by the
method of angular moments, would be able to nail down many quantities of
interest and will help in pointing unambiguously to new physics.Comment: LaTeX, 34 pages with 9 figure
Axial symmetry and conformal Killing vectors
Axisymmetric spacetimes with a conformal symmetry are studied and it is shown
that, if there is no further conformal symmetry, the axial Killing vector and
the conformal Killing vector must commute. As a direct consequence, in
conformally stationary and axisymmetric spacetimes, no restriction is made by
assuming that the axial symmetry and the conformal timelike symmetry commute.
Furthermore, we prove that in axisymmetric spacetimes with another symmetry
(such as stationary and axisymmetric or cylindrically symmetric spacetimes) and
a conformal symmetry, the commutator of the axial Killing vector with the two
others mush vanish or else the symmetry is larger than that originally
considered. The results are completely general and do not depend on Einstein's
equations or any particular matter content.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, no figure
Long term monitoring of mode switching for PSR B0329+54
The mode switching phenomenon of PSR B0329+54 is investigated based on the
long-term monitoring from September 2003 to April 2009 made with the Urumqi 25m
radio telescope at 1540 MHz. At that frequency, the change of relative
intensity between the leading and trailing components is the predominant
feature of mode switching. The intensity ratios between the leading and
trailing components are measured for the individual profiles averaged over a
few minutes. It is found that the ratios follow normal distributions, where the
abnormal mode has a wider typical width than the normal mode, indicating that
the abnormal mode is less stable than the normal mode. Our data show that 84.9%
of the time for PSR B0329+54 was in the normal mode and 15.1% was in the
abnormal mode. From the two passages of eight-day quasi-continuous observations
in 2004, and supplemented by the daily data observed with 15 m telescope at 610
MHz at Jodrell Bank Observatory, the intrinsic distributions of mode timescales
are constrained with the Bayesian inference method. It is found that the gamma
distribution with the shape parameter slightly smaller than 1 is favored over
the normal, lognormal and Pareto distributions. The optimal scale parameters of
the gamma distribution is 31.5 minutes for the abnormal mode and 154 minutes
for the normal mode. The shape parameters have very similar values, i.e.
0.75^{+0.22}_{-0.17} for the normal mode and 0.84^{+0.28}_{-0.22} for the
abnormal mode, indicating the physical mechanisms in both modes may be the
same. No long-term modulation of the relative intensity ratios was found for
both the modes, suggesting that the mode switching was stable. The intrinsic
timescale distributions, for the first time constrained for this pulsar,
provide valuable information to understand the physics of mode switching.Comment: 31 pages,12 figures, Accepted by the Ap
- …