3,908 research outputs found
Effective zero-thickness model for a conductive membrane driven by an electric field
The behavior of a conductive membrane in a static (DC) electric field is
investigated theoretically. An effective zero-thickness model is constructed
based on a Robin-type boundary condition for the electric potential at the
membrane, originally developed for electrochemical systems. Within such a
framework, corrections to the elastic moduli of the membrane are obtained,
which arise from charge accumulation in the Debye layers due to capacitive
effects and electric currents through the membrane and can lead to an
undulation instability of the membrane. The fluid flow surrounding the membrane
is also calculated, which clarifies issues regarding these flows sharing many
similarities with flows produced by induced charge electro-osmosis (ICEO).
Non-equilibrium steady states of the membrane and of the fluid can be
effectively described by this method. It is both simpler, due to the zero
thickness approximation which is widely used in the literature on fluid
membranes, and more general than previous approaches. The predictions of this
model are compared to recent experiments on supported membranes in an electric
field.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
The Casimir effect for the Bose-Gas in Slabs
We study the Casimir effect for the perfect Bose-gase in the slab geometry
for various boundary conditions. We show that the grand canonical potential per
unit area at the bulk critical chemical potential has the standard
asymptotic form with universal Casimir terms.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to Europhysics LettersWe study the Casimir effect
for the perfect Bose-gase in the slab geometry for various boundary
conditions. We show that the grand canonical potential per unit area at the
bulk critical chemical potential has the standard asymptotic form
with universal Casimir term
The curvature of semidirect product groups associated with two-component Hunter-Saxton systems
In this paper, we study two-component versions of the periodic Hunter-Saxton
equation and its -variant. Considering both equations as a geodesic flow
on the semidirect product of the circle diffeomorphism group \Diff(\S) with a
space of scalar functions on we show that both equations are locally
well-posed. The main result of the paper is that the sectional curvature
associated with the 2HS is constant and positive and that 2HS allows for a
large subspace of positive sectional curvature. The issues of this paper are
related to some of the results for 2CH and 2DP presented in [J. Escher, M.
Kohlmann, and J. Lenells, J. Geom. Phys. 61 (2011), 436-452].Comment: 19 page
A note on multi-dimensional Camassa-Holm type systems on the torus
We present a -component nonlinear evolutionary PDE which includes the
-dimensional versions of the Camassa-Holm and the Hunter-Saxton systems as
well as their partially averaged variations. Our goal is to apply Arnold's
[V.I. Arnold, Sur la g\'eom\'etrie diff\'erentielle des groupes de Lie de
dimension infinie et ses applications \`a l'hydrodynamique des fluides
parfaits. Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 16 (1966) 319-361], [D.G. Ebin and J.E.
Marsden, Groups of diffeomorphisms and the motion of an incompressible fluid.
Ann. of Math. 92(2) (1970) 102-163] geometric formalism to this general
equation in order to obtain results on well-posedness, conservation laws or
stability of its solutions. Following the line of arguments of the paper [M.
Kohlmann, The two-dimensional periodic -equation on the diffeomorphism group
of the torus. J. Phys. A.: Math. Theor. 44 (2011) 465205 (17 pp.)] we present
geometric aspects of a two-dimensional periodic --equation on the
diffeomorphism group of the torus in this context.Comment: 14 page
Nonlinear electrochemical relaxation around conductors
We analyze the simplest problem of electrochemical relaxation in more than
one dimension - the response of an uncharged, ideally polarizable metallic
sphere (or cylinder) in a symmetric, binary electrolyte to a uniform electric
field. In order to go beyond the circuit approximation for thin double layers,
our analysis is based on the Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) equations of dilute
solution theory. Unlike most previous studies, however, we focus on the
nonlinear regime, where the applied voltage across the conductor is larger than
the thermal voltage. In such strong electric fields, the classical model
predicts that the double layer adsorbs enough ions to produce bulk
concentration gradients and surface conduction. Our analysis begins with a
general derivation of surface conservation laws in the thin double-layer limit,
which provide effective boundary conditions on the quasi-neutral bulk. We solve
the resulting nonlinear partial differential equations numerically for strong
fields and also perform a time-dependent asymptotic analysis for weaker fields,
where bulk diffusion and surface conduction arise as first-order corrections.
We also derive various dimensionless parameters comparing surface to bulk
transport processes, which generalize the Bikerman-Dukhin number. Our results
have basic relevance for double-layer charging dynamics and nonlinear
electrokinetics in the ubiquitous PNP approximation.Comment: 25 pages, 17 figures, 4 table
The Recent Star Formation in NGC 6822: an Ultraviolet Study
We characterize the star formation in the low-metallicity galaxy NGC 6822
over the past few hundred million years, using GALEX far-UV (FUV, 1344-1786 A)
and near-UV (NUV, 1771-2831 A) imaging, and ground-based Ha imaging. From GALEX
FUV image, we define 77 star-forming (SF) regions with area >860 pc^2, and
surface brightness <=26.8 mag(AB)arcsec^-2, within 0.2deg (1.7kpc) of the
center of the galaxy. We estimate the extinction by interstellar dust in each
SF region from resolved photometry of the hot stars it contains: E(B-V) ranges
from the minimum foreground value of 0.22mag up to 0.66+-0.21mag. The
integrated FUV and NUV photometry, compared with stellar population models,
yields ages of the SF complexes up to a few hundred Myr, and masses from 2x10^2
Msun to 1.5x10^6 Msun. The derived ages and masses strongly depend on the
assumed type of interstellar selective extinction, which we find to vary across
the galaxy. The total mass of the FUV-defined SF regions translates into an
average star formation rate (SFR) of 1.4x10^-2 Msun/yr over the past 100 Myr,
and SFR=1.0x10^-2 Msun/yr in the most recent 10 Myr. The latter is in agreement
with the value that we derive from the Ha luminosity, SFR=0.008 Msun/yr. The
SFR in the most recent epoch becomes higher if we add the SFR=0.02 Msun/yr
inferred from far-IR measurements, which trace star formation still embedded in
dust (age <= a few Myr).Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 21 pages, 6 figures, 3 table
Luminosity-Metallicity Relation for dIrr Galaxies in the Near-Infrared
(abridged) The present work is a first step to collect homogeneous abundances
and near-infrared (NIR) luminosities for a sample of dwarf irregular (dIrr)
galaxies, located in nearby groups. The use of NIR luminosities is intended to
provide a better proxy to mass than the blue luminosities commonly used in the
literature; in addition, selecting group members reduces the impact of
uncertain distances. Accurate abundances are derived to assess the galaxy
metallicity. Optical spectra are collected for Hii regions in the dIrrs,
allowing the determination of oxygen abundances by means of the
temperature-sensitive method. For each dIrr galaxy H-band imaging is performed
and the total magnitudes are measured via surface photometry. This high-quality
database allows us to build a well-defined luminosity-metallicity relation in
the range -13 >= M(H) >= -20. The scatter around its linear fit is reduced to
0.11 dex, the lowest of all relations currently available. There might exist a
difference between the relation for dIrrs and the relation for giant galaxies,
although a firm conclusion should await direct abundance determinations for a
significant sample of massive galaxies. This new dataset provides an improved
luminosity-metallicity relation, based on a standard NIR band, for dwarf
star-forming galaxies. The relation can now be compared with some confidence to
the predictions of models of galaxy evolution. Exciting follow-ups of this work
are (a) exploring groups with higher densities, (b) exploring nearby galaxy
clusters to probe environmental effects on the luminosity-metallicity relation,
and (c) deriving direct oxygen abundances in the central regions of
star-forming giant galaxies, to settle the question of a possible dichotomy
between the chemical evolution of dwarfs and that of massive galaxies.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted by A&
Shear Viscosity of Clay-like Colloids in Computer Simulations and Experiments
Dense suspensions of small strongly interacting particles are complex
systems, which are rarely understood on the microscopic level. We investigate
properties of dense suspensions and sediments of small spherical Al_2O_3
particles in a shear cell by means of a combined Molecular Dynamics (MD) and
Stochastic Rotation Dynamics (SRD) simulation. We study structuring effects and
the dependence of the suspension's viscosity on the shear rate and shear
thinning for systems of varying salt concentration and pH value. To show the
agreement of our results to experimental data, the relation between bulk pH
value and surface charge of spherical colloidal particles is modeled by
Debye-Hueckel theory in conjunction with a 2pK charge regulation model.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
The Gas Content in Galactic Disks: Correlation with Kinematics
We consider the relationship between the total HI mass in late-type galaxies
and the kinematic properties of their disks. The mass for galaxies with
a wide variety of properties, from dwarf dIrr galaxies with active star
formation to giant low-brightness galaxies, is shown to correlate with the
product ( is the rotational velocity, and is the radial
photometric disks scale length), which characterizes the specific angular
momentum of the disk. This relationship, along with the anticorrelation between
the relative mass of HI in a galaxy and , can be explained in terms of the
previously made assumption that the gas density in the disks of most galaxies
is maintained at a level close to the threshold (marginal) stability of a
gaseous layer to local gravitational perturbations. In this case, the
regulation mechanism of the star formation rate associated with the growth of
local gravitational instability in the gaseous layer must play a crucial role
in the evolution of the gas content in the galactic disk.Comment: revised version to appear in Astronomy Letters, 8 pages, 5 EPS
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Ab initio many-body calculations on infinite carbon and boron-nitrogen chains
In this paper we report first-principles calculations on the ground-state
electronic structure of two infinite one-dimensional systems: (a) a chain of
carbon atoms and (b) a chain of alternating boron and nitrogen atoms. Meanfield
results were obtained using the restricted Hartree-Fock approach, while the
many-body effects were taken into account by second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset
perturbation theory and the coupled-cluster approach. The calculations were
performed using 6-31 basis sets, including the d-type polarization
functions. Both at the Hartree-Fock (HF) and the correlated levels we find that
the infinite carbon chain exhibits bond alternation with alternating single and
triple bonds, while the boron-nitrogen chain exhibits equidistant bonds. In
addition, we also performed density-functional-theory-based local density
approximation (LDA) calculations on the infinite carbon chain using the same
basis set. Our LDA results, in contradiction to our HF and correlated results,
predict a very small bond alternation. Based upon our LDA results for the
carbon chain, which are in agreement with an earlier LDA calculation
calculation [ E.J. Bylaska, J.H. Weare, and R. Kawai, Phys. Rev. B 58, R7488
(1998).], we conclude that the LDA significantly underestimates Peierls
distortion. This emphasizes that the inclusion of many-particle effects is very
important for the correct description of Peierls distortion in one-dimensional
systems.Comment: 3 figures (included). To appear in Phys. Rev.
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