Super-Arrhenius dynamics for sub-critical crack growth in disordered brittle media

Taking into account stress fluctuations due to thermal noise, we study thermally activated irreversible crack growth in disordered media. The influence of material disorder on sub-critical growth of a single crack in two-dimensional brittle elastic material is described through the introduction of a rupture threshold distribution. We derive analytical predictions for crack growth velocity and material lifetime in agreement with direct numerical calculations. It is claimed that crack growth process is inhibited by disorder: velocity decreases and lifetime increases with disorder. More precisely, lifetime is shown to follow a super-Arrhenius law, with an effective temperature theta - theta_d, where theta is related to the thermodynamical temperature and theta_d to the disorder variance.Comment: Submitted to Europhysics Letter

Transition between Two Oscillation Modes

A model for the symmetric coupling of two self-oscillators is presented. The nonlinearities cause the system to vibrate in two modes of different symmetries. The transition between these two regimes of oscillation can occur by two different scenarios. This might model the release of vortices behind circular cylinders with a possible transition from a symmetric to an antisymmetric Benard-von Karman vortex street.Comment: 12 pages, 0 figure

Dissipative flow and vortex shedding in the Painlev\'e boundary layer of a Bose Einstein condensate

Raman et al. have found experimental evidence for a critical velocity under which there is no dissipation when a detuned laser beam is moved in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We analyze the origin of this critical velocity in the low density region close to the boundary layer of the cloud. In the frame of the laser beam, we do a blow up on this low density region which can be described by a Painlev\'e equation and write the approximate equation satisfied by the wave function in this region. We find that there is always a drag around the laser beam. Though the beam passes through the surface of the cloud and the sound velocity is small in the Painlev\'e boundary layer, the shedding of vortices starts only when a threshold velocity is reached. This critical velocity is lower than the critical velocity computed for the corresponding 2D problem at the center of the cloud. At low velocity, there is a stationary solution without vortex and the drag is small. At the onset of vortex shedding, that is above the critical velocity, there is a drastic increase in drag.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures (with 9 ps files

Subcritical crack growth in fibrous materials

We present experiments on the slow growth of a single crack in a fax paper sheet submitted to a constant force $F$. We find that statistically averaged crack growth curves can be described by only two parameters : the mean rupture time $\tau$ and a characteristic growth length $\zeta$. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process that takes into account the microstructure of cellulose fibers. The model is able to reproduce the shape of the growth curve, the dependence of $\zeta$ on $F$ as well as the effect of temperature on the rupture time $\tau$. We find that the length scale at which rupture occurs in this model is consistently close to the diameter of cellulose microfibrils

Onset of Wave Drag due to Generation of Capillary-Gravity Waves by a Moving Object as a Critical Phenomenon

The onset of the {\em wave resistance}, via generation of capillary gravity waves, of a small object moving with velocity $V$, is investigated experimentally. Due to the existence of a minimum phase velocity $V_c$ for surface waves, the problem is similar to the generation of rotons in superfluid helium near their minimum. In both cases waves or rotons are produced at $V>V_c$ due to {\em Cherenkov radiation}. We find that the transition to the wave drag state is continuous: in the vicinity of the bifurcation the wave resistance force is proportional to $\sqrt{V-V_c}$ for various fluids.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Energy Transport in an Ising Disordered Model

We introduce a new microcanonical dynamics for a large class of Ising systems isolated or maintained out of equilibrium by contact with thermostats at different temperatures. Such a dynamics is very general and can be used in a wide range of situations, including disordered and topologically inhomogenous systems. Focusing on the two-dimensional ferromagnetic case, we show that the equilibrium temperature is naturally defined, and it can be consistently extended as a local temperature when far from equilibrium. This holds for homogeneous as well as for disordered systems. In particular, we will consider a system characterized by ferromagnetic random couplings $J_{ij} \in [ 1 - \epsilon, 1 + \epsilon ]$. We show that the dynamics relaxes to steady states, and that heat transport can be described on the average by means of a Fourier equation. The presence of disorder reduces the conductivity, the effect being especially appreciable for low temperatures. We finally discuss a possible singular behaviour arising for small disorder, i.e. in the limit $\epsilon \to 0$.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Weakly nonlinear theory of grain boundary motion in patterns with crystalline symmetry

We study the motion of a grain boundary separating two otherwise stationary domains of hexagonal symmetry. Starting from an order parameter equation appropriate for hexagonal patterns, a multiple scale analysis leads to an analytical equation of motion for the boundary that shares many properties with that of a crystalline solid. We find that defect motion is generically opposed by a pinning force that arises from non-adiabatic corrections to the standard amplitude equation. The magnitude of this force depends sharply on the mis-orientation angle between adjacent domains so that the most easily pinned grain boundaries are those with an angle between four and eight degrees. Although pinning effects may be small, they do not vanish asymptotically near the onset of this subcritical bifurcation, and can be orders of magnitude larger than those present in smectic phases that bifurcate supercritically

Rayleigh-Benard Convection in Large-Aspect-Ratio Domains

The coarsening and wavenumber selection of striped states growing from random initial conditions are studied in a non-relaxational, spatially extended, and far-from-equilibrium system by performing large-scale numerical simulations of Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection in a large-aspect-ratio cylindrical domain with experimentally realistic boundaries. We find evidence that various measures of the coarsening dynamics scale in time with different power-law exponents, indicating that multiple length scales are required in describing the time dependent pattern evolution. The translational correlation length scales with time as $t^{0.12}$, the orientational correlation length scales as $t^{0.54}$, and the density of defects scale as $t^{-0.45}$. The final pattern evolves toward the wavenumber where isolated dislocations become motionless, suggesting a possible wavenumber selection mechanism for large-aspect-ratio convection.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

A simulation study of energy transport in the Hamiltonian XY-model

The transport properties of the planar rotator model on a square lattice are analyzed by means of microcanonical and non--equilibrium simulations. Well below the Kosterlitz--Thouless--Berezinskii transition temperature, both approaches consistently indicate that the energy current autocorrelation displays a long--time tail decaying as t^{-1}. This yields a thermal conductivity coefficient which diverges logarithmically with the lattice size. Conversely, conductivity is found to be finite in the high--temperature disordered phase. Simulations close to the transition temperature are insted limited by slow convergence that is presumably due to the slow kinetics of vortex pairs.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Statistical Mechanics: theory and experimen

Limitations on the smooth confinement of an unstretchable manifold

We prove that an m-dimensional unit ball D^m in the Euclidean space {\mathbb R}^m cannot be isometrically embedded into a higher-dimensional Euclidean ball B_r^d \subset {\mathbb R}^d of radius r < 1/2 unless one of two conditions is met -- (1)The embedding manifold has dimension d >= 2m. (2) The embedding is not smooth. The proof uses differential geometry to show that if d<2m and the embedding is smooth and isometric, we can construct a line from the center of D^m to the boundary that is geodesic in both D^m and in the embedding manifold {\mathbb R}^d. Since such a line has length 1, the diameter of the embedding ball must exceed 1.Comment: 20 Pages, 3 Figure