5,825 research outputs found
Parametric instabilities in magnetized multicomponent plasmas
This paper investigates the excitation of various natural modes in a
magnetized bi-ion or dusty plasma. The excitation is provided by parametrically
pumping the magnetic field. Here two ion-like species are allowed to be fully
mobile. This generalizes our previous work where the second heavy species was
taken to be stationary. Their collection of charge from the background neutral
plasma modifies the dispersion properties of the pump and excited waves. The
introduction of an extra mobile species adds extra modes to both these types of
waves. We firstly investigate the pump wave in detail, in the case where the
background magnetic field is perpendicular to the direction of propagation of
the pump wave. Then we derive the dispersion equation relating the pump to the
excited wave for modes propagating parallel to the background magnetic field.
It is found that there are a total of twelve resonant interactions allowed,
whose various growth rates are calculated and discussed.Comment: Published in May 2004; this is a late submission to the archive. 14
pages, 8 figure
Solitary Dust--Acoustic Waves in a Plasma with Two-Temperature Ions and Distributed Grain Size
The propagation of weakly nonlinear dust--acoustic waves in a dusty plasma
containing two ion species with different temperatures is explored. The
nonlinear equations describing both the quadratic and cubic plasma
nonlinearities are derived. It is shown that the properties of dust--acoustic
waves depend substantially on the grain size distribution. In particular, for
solitary dust--acoustic waves with a positive potential to exist in a plasma
with distributed grain size, it is necessary that the difference between the
temperatures of two ion species be large that that in the case of unusized
grains.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Parametric instability in dark molecular clouds
The present work investigates the parametric instability of parallel
propagating circularly polarized Alfven(pump) waves in a weakly ionized
molecular cloud. It is shown that the relative drift between the plasma
particles gives rise to the Hall effect resulting in the modified pump wave
characteristics. Although the linearized fluid equations with periodic
coefficients are difficult to solve analytically, it is shown that a linear
transformation can remove the periodic dependence. The resulting linearized
equations with constant coefficients are used to derive an algebraic dispersion
relation. The growth rate of the parametric instability is a sensitive function
of the amplitude of the pump wave as well as to the ratio of the pump and the
modified dust-cyclotron frequencies. The instability is insensitive to the
plasma-beta The results are applied to the molecular clouds.Comment: 27 page, 5 figures, accepted in Ap
Absolute and convective instabilities of parallel propagating circularly polarized Alfven waves: Beat instability
Ruderman and Simpson [Phys. Plasmas 11, 4178 (2004)] studied the absolute and convective decay instabilities of parallel propagating circularly polarized Alfven waves in plasmas where the sound speed c(S) is smaller than the Alfven speed upsilon(A). We extend their analysis for the beat instability which occurs in plasmas with c(S)>upsilon(A). We assume that the dimensionless amplitude of the circularly polarized Alfven wave (pump wave), a, is small. Applying Briggs' method we study the problem analytically using expansions in power series with respect to a. It is shown that the pump wave is absolutely unstable in a reference frame moving with the velocity U with respect to the rest plasma if U-lU-r, the instability is convective. The signaling problem is studied in a reference frame where the pump wave is convectively unstable. It is shown that the spatially amplifying waves exist only when the signaling frequency is in two narrow symmetric frequency bands with the widths of the order of a(3). These results enable us to extend for the case when c(S)>upsilon(A) the conclusions, previously made for the case when c(S)<upsilon(A), that circularly polarized Alfven waves propagating in the solar wind are convectively unstable in a reference frame of any spacecraft moving with the velocity not exceeding a few tens of km/s in the solar reference frame. The characteristic scale of spatial amplification for these waves exceeds 1 a.u
Effects of noise and confidence thresholds in nominal and metric Axelrod dynamics of social influence
We study the effects of bounded confidence thresholds and of interaction and
external noise on Axelrod's model of social influence. Our study is based on a
combination of numerical simulations and an integration of the mean-field
Master equation describing the system in the thermodynamic limit. We find that
interaction thresholds affect the system only quantitatively, but that they do
not alter the basic phase structure. The known crossover between an ordered and
a disordered state in finite systems subject to external noise persists in
models with general confidence threshold. Interaction noise here facilitates
the dynamics and reduces relaxation times. We also study Axelrod systems with
metric features, and point out similarities and differences compared to models
with nominal features. Metric features are used to demonstrate that a small
group of extremists can have a significant impact on the opinion dynamics of a
population of Axelrod agents.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
Polarity patterns of stress fibers
Stress fibers are contractile actomyosin bundles commonly observed in the
cytoskeleton of metazoan cells. The spatial profile of the polarity of actin
filaments inside contractile actomyosin bundles is either monotonic (graded) or
periodic (alternating). In the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics,
we write the constitutive equations for a polar, active, elastic
one-dimensional medium. An analysis of the resulting equations for the dynamics
of polarity shows that the transition from graded to alternating polarity
patterns is a nonequilibrium Lifshitz point. Active contractility is a
necessary condition for the emergence of sarcomeric, alternating polarity
patterns.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Numerical simulations versus theoretical predictions for a non-Gaussian noise induced escape problem in application to full counting statistics
A theoretical approach for characterizing the influence of asymmetry of noise distribution on the escape rate
of a multistable system is presented. This was carried out via the estimation of an action, which is defined as
an exponential factor in the escape rate, and discussed in the context of full counting statistics paradigm. The
approach takes into account all cumulants of the noise distribution and demonstrates an excellent agreement with
the results of numerical simulations. An approximation of the third-order cumulant was shown to have limitations
on the range of dynamic stochastic system parameters. The applicability of the theoretical approaches developed
so far is discussed for an adequate characterization of the escape rate measured in experiments
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