5,786 research outputs found
Volcanic eruptions from ghost magma chambers
Recent studies have proposed that magma reservoirs crystallized to a virtually rigid crystal-mush can be partially remelted by diffusion of hot fluids. We show that for a crystal mush with the composition of a K-trachyte from the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) Eruption, remelting can occur without a significant increase of the magma temperature, but simply by diffusion of H2O by the magmatic gases feeding the system. The CI origin is not the issue here, but rather the chemical and physical behavior of an almost solidified magma mass left over in a reservoir after a major eruption. To test our hypothesis, we run high pressure/high temperature laboratory experiments to study the kinetics of water diffusion, together with thermodynamics and fluid diffusion modelling. For small diffusivities, or large diffusion time, the remelting mechanism proposed above needs to be replaced by other processes as gas percolation or intrusion of a magmatic mass
Daemonic Ergotropy: Enhanced Work Extraction from Quantum Correlations
We investigate how the presence of quantum correlations can influence work
extraction in closed quantum systems, establishing a new link between the field
of quantum non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the one of quantum information
theory. We consider a bipartite quantum system and we show that it is possible
to optimise the process of work extraction, thanks to the correlations between
the two parts of the system, by using an appropriate feedback protocol based on
the concept of ergotropy. We prove that the maximum gain in the extracted work
is related to the existence of quantum correlations between the two parts,
quantified by either quantum discord or, for pure states, entanglement. We then
illustrate our general findings on a simple physical situation consisting of a
qubit system.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; RevTeX
Earth's rotation variability triggers explosive eruptions in subduction zones
The uneven Earth’s spinning has been reported to affect geological processes, i.e. tectonism, seismicity and volcanism, on a planetary scale. Here, we show that changes of the length of day (LOD) influence eruptive activity at subduction margins. Statistical analysis indicates that eruptions with volcanic explosivity index (VEI) ≥3 alternate along oppositely directed subduction zones as a function of whether the LOD increases or decreases. In particular, eruptions in volcanic arcs along contractional subduction zones, which are mostly E- or NE-directed, occur when LOD increases, whereas they are more frequent when LOD decreases along the opposite W- or SW-directed subduction zones that are rather characterized by upper plate extension and back-arc spreading. We find that the LOD variability determines a modulation of the horizontal shear stresses acting on the crust up to 0.4 MPa. An increase of the horizontal maximum stress in compressive regimes during LOD increment may favour the rupture of the magma feeder system wall rocks. Similarly, a decrease of the minimum horizontal stress in extensional settings during LOD lowering generates a larger differential stress, which may enhance failure of the magma-confining rocks. This asymmetric behaviour of magmatism sheds new light on the role of astronomical forces in the dynamics of the solid Earth
Work statistics, irreversible heat and correlations build-up in joining two spin chains
We investigate the influences of quantum many-body effects, such as
criticality and the existence of factorisation fields, in the thermodynamic
cost of establishing a bonding link between two independent quantum spin
chains. We provide a physical interpretation of the behavior of irreversible
work spent in such process by linking the phenomenology of such quantities to
the properties of the spectrum of the systemComment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Contribution to the FQMT13 special volum
Maars to calderas. End-members on a spectrum of explosive volcanic depressions
We discuss maar-diatremes and calderas as end-members on a spectrum of negative volcanic landforms (depressions) produced by explosive eruptions (note—we focus on calderas formed during explosive eruptions, recognizing that some caldera types are not related to such activity). The former are dominated by ejection of material during numerous discrete phreatomagmatic explosions, brecciation, and subsidence of diatreme fill, while the latter are dominated by subsidence over a partly evacuated magma chamber during sustained, magmatic volatile-driven discharge. Many examples share characteristics of both, including landforms that are identified as maars but preserve deposits from non-phreatomagmatic explosive activity, and ambiguous structures that appear to be coalesced maars but that also produced sustained explosive eruptions with likely magma reservoir subsidence. A convergence of research directions on issues related to magma-water interaction and shallow reservoir mechanics is an important avenue toward developing a unified picture of the maar-diatreme-caldera spectrum
On Known-Plaintext Attacks to a Compressed Sensing-based Encryption: A Quantitative Analysis
Despite the linearity of its encoding, compressed sensing may be used to
provide a limited form of data protection when random encoding matrices are
used to produce sets of low-dimensional measurements (ciphertexts). In this
paper we quantify by theoretical means the resistance of the least complex form
of this kind of encoding against known-plaintext attacks. For both standard
compressed sensing with antipodal random matrices and recent multiclass
encryption schemes based on it, we show how the number of candidate encoding
matrices that match a typical plaintext-ciphertext pair is so large that the
search for the true encoding matrix inconclusive. Such results on the practical
ineffectiveness of known-plaintext attacks underlie the fact that even
closely-related signal recovery under encoding matrix uncertainty is doomed to
fail.
Practical attacks are then exemplified by applying compressed sensing with
antipodal random matrices as a multiclass encryption scheme to signals such as
images and electrocardiographic tracks, showing that the extracted information
on the true encoding matrix from a plaintext-ciphertext pair leads to no
significant signal recovery quality increase. This theoretical and empirical
evidence clarifies that, although not perfectly secure, both standard
compressed sensing and multiclass encryption schemes feature a noteworthy level
of security against known-plaintext attacks, therefore increasing its appeal as
a negligible-cost encryption method for resource-limited sensing applications.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, accepted for
publication. Article in pres
Low-complexity Multiclass Encryption by Compressed Sensing
The idea that compressed sensing may be used to encrypt information from
unauthorised receivers has already been envisioned, but never explored in depth
since its security may seem compromised by the linearity of its encoding
process. In this paper we apply this simple encoding to define a general
private-key encryption scheme in which a transmitter distributes the same
encoded measurements to receivers of different classes, which are provided
partially corrupted encoding matrices and are thus allowed to decode the
acquired signal at provably different levels of recovery quality.
The security properties of this scheme are thoroughly analysed: firstly, the
properties of our multiclass encryption are theoretically investigated by
deriving performance bounds on the recovery quality attained by lower-class
receivers with respect to high-class ones. Then we perform a statistical
analysis of the measurements to show that, although not perfectly secure,
compressed sensing grants some level of security that comes at almost-zero cost
and thus may benefit resource-limited applications.
In addition to this we report some exemplary applications of multiclass
encryption by compressed sensing of speech signals, electrocardiographic tracks
and images, in which quality degradation is quantified as the impossibility of
some feature extraction algorithms to obtain sensitive information from
suitably degraded signal recoveries.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, accepted for publication.
Article in pres
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