26,186 research outputs found
Nucleation Near the Spinodal: Limitations of Mean Field Density Functional Theory
We investigate the diverging size of the critical nucleus near the spinodal using the gradient theory ~GT! of van der Waals and Cahn and Hilliard and mean field density functional theory ~MFDFT!. As is well known, GT predicts that at the spinodal the free energy barrier to nucleation vanishes while the radius of the critical fluctuation diverges. We show numerically that the scaling behavior found by Cahn and Hilliard for these quantities holds quantitatively for both GT and MFDFT. We also show that the excess number of molecules Dg satisfies Cahn-Hilliard scaling near the spinodal and is consistent with the nucleation theorem. From the latter result, it is clear that the divergence of Dg is due to the divergence of the mean field isothermal compressibility of the fluid at the spinodal. Finally, we develop a Ginzburg criterion for the validity of the mean field scaling relations. For real fluids with short-range attractive interactions, the near-spinodal scaling behavior occurs in a fluctuation dominated regime for which the mean field theory is invalid. Based on the nucleation theorem and on Wang\u27s treatment of fluctuations near the spinodal in polymer blends, we infer a finite size for the critical nucleus at the pseudospinodal identified by Wang
Multifractal analysis of weighted networks by a modified sandbox algorithm
Complex networks have attracted growing attention in many fields. As a
generalization of fractal analysis, multifractal analysis (MFA) is a useful way
to systematically describe the spatial heterogeneity of both theoretical and
experimental fractal patterns. Some algorithms for MFA of unweighted complex
networks have been proposed in the past a few years, including the sandbox (SB)
algorithm recently employed by our group. In this paper, a modified SB
algorithm (we call it SBw algorithm) is proposed for MFA of weighted
networks.First, we use the SBw algorithm to study the multifractal property of
two families of weighted fractal networks (WFNs): "Sierpinski" WFNs and "Cantor
dust" WFNs. We also discuss how the fractal dimension and generalized fractal
dimensions change with the edge-weights of the WFN. From the comparison between
the theoretical and numerical fractal dimensions of these networks, we can find
that the proposed SBw algorithm is efficient and feasible for MFA of weighted
networks. Then, we apply the SBw algorithm to study multifractal properties of
some real weighted networks ---collaboration networks. It is found that the
multifractality exists in these weighted networks, and is affected by their
edge-weights.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication by Scientific Report
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