Spinning jets

A fluid jet with a finite angular velocity is subject to centripetal forces in addition to surface tension forces. At fixed angular momentum, centripetal forces become large when the radius of the jet goes to zero. We study the possible importance of this observation for the pinching of a jet within a slender jet model. A linear stability analysis shows the model to break down at low viscosities. Numerical simulations indicate that angular momentum is expelled from the pinch region so fast that it becomes asymptotically irrelevant in the limit of the neck radius going to zero

Nuclear shadowing and prompt photons at relativistic hadron colliders

The production of prompt photons at high energies provides a direct probe of the dynamics of the strong interactions. In particular, one expect that it could be used to constrain the behavior of the nuclear gluon distribution in $pA$ and $AA$ collisions. In this letter we investigate the influence of nuclear effects in the production of prompt photons and estimate the transverse momentum dependence of the nuclear ratios $R_{pA} = {\frac{d\sigma (pA)}{dy d^2 p_T}} / A {\frac{d\sigma (pp)}{dy d^2 p_T}}$ and $R_{AA} = {\frac{d\sigma (AA)}{dy d^2 p_T}} / A^2 {\frac{d\sigma (pp)}{dy d^2 p_T}}$ at RHIC and LHC energies. We demonstrate that the study of these observables can be useful to determine the magnitude of the shadowing and antishadowing effects in the nuclear gluon distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Version to be published in PR

On the stabilization of ion sputtered surfaces

The classical theory of ion beam sputtering predicts the instability of a flat surface to uniform ion irradiation at any incidence angle. We relax the assumption of the classical theory that the average surface erosion rate is determined by a Gaussian response function representing the effect of the collision cascade and consider the surface dynamics for other physically-motivated response functions. We show that although instability of flat surfaces at any beam angle results from all Gaussian and a wide class of non-Gaussian erosive response functions, there exist classes of modifications to the response that can have a dramatic effect. In contrast to the classical theory, these types of response render the flat surface linearly stable, while imperceptibly modifying the predicted sputter yield vs. incidence angle. We discuss the possibility that such corrections underlie recent reports of a ``window of stability'' of ion-bombarded surfaces at a range of beam angles for certain ion and surface types, and describe some characteristic aspects of pattern evolution near the transition from unstable to stable dynamics. We point out that careful analysis of the transition regime may provide valuable tests for the consistency of any theory of pattern formation on ion sputtered surfaces