13,060 research outputs found
Jeans instability of a galactic disk embedded in a live dark halo
We investigate the Jeans instability of a galactic disk embedded in a
dynamically responsive dark halo. It is shown that the disk-halo system becomes
nominally Jeans unstable. On small scales the instability is suppressed, if the
Toomre stability index Q_T is higher than a certain threshold, but on large
scales the Jeans instability sets invariably in. However, using a simple
self-consistent disk-halo model it is demonstrated that this occurs on scales
which are much larger than the system so that this is indeed only a nominal
effect. From a practical point of view the Jeans instability of galactic disks
is not affected by a live dark halo.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, accepted by Astron. Astrophy
Castaing's instability in a trapped ultra-cold gas
We consider a trapped ultra-cold gas of (non-condensed) bosons with two
internal states (described by a pseudo spin) and study the stability of a
longitudinal pseudo spin polarization gradient. For this purpose, we
numerically solve a kinetic equation corresponding to a situation close to an
experiment at JILA. It shows the presence of Castaing's instability of
transverse spin polarization fluctuations at long wavelengths. This phenomenon
could be used to create spontaneous transverse spin waves.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; equation (8) corrected; submitted to EPJ
Collisionless Hydrodynamics of Doped Graphene in a Magnetic Field
The electrodynamics of a two-dimensional gas of massless fermions in graphene
is studied by a collisionless hydrodynamic approach. A low-energy dispersion
relation for the collective modes (plasmons) is derived both in the absence and
in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field. The results for graphene are
compared to those for a standard two-dimensional gas of massive electrons. We
further compare the results within the classical hydrodynamic approach to the
full quantum mechanical calculation in the random phase approximation. The
low-energy dispersion relation is shown to be a good approximation at small
wave vectors. The limitations of this approach at higher order is also
discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Hard discs under steady shear: comparison of Brownian dynamics simulations and mode coupling theory
Brownian dynamics simulations of bidisperse hard discs moving in two
dimensions in a given steady and homogeneous shear flow are presented close to
and above the glasstransition density. The stationary structure functions and
stresses of shear-melted glass are compared quantitatively to parameter-free
numerical calculations of monodisperse hard discs using mode coupling theory
within the integration through transients framework. Theory qualitatively
explains the properties of the yielding glass but quantitatively
overestimatesthe shear-driven stresses and structural anisotropies.Comment: 1. The original Phil. Trans. R. Soc. contains an error in the caption
of the y-axes of the upper left panel in figure 9: There's a factor
\dot{\gamma} missing in the denominato
Dynamical friction force exerted on spherical bodies
We present a rigorous calculation of the dynamical friction force exerted on
a spherical massive perturber moving through an infinite homogenous system of
field stars. By calculating the shape and mass of the polarization cloud
induced by the perturber in the background system, which decelerates the motion
of the perturber, we recover Chandrasekhar's drag force law with a modified
Coulomb logarithm. As concrete examples we calculate the drag force exerted on
a Plummer sphere or a sphere with the density distribution of a Hernquist
profile. It is shown that the shape of the perturber affects only the exact
form of the Coulomb logarithm. The latter converges on small scales, because
encounters of the test and field stars with impact parameters less than the
size of the massive perturber become inefficient. We confirm this way earlier
results based on the impulse approximation of small angle scatterings.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted in MNRA
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