Kinetic Theory of Transient Condensation and Evaporation at a Plane Surface

The phenomenon of transient condensation onto, or evaporation from, a liquid sheet in contact with its pure vapor is treated from a kinetic theory viewpoint. The Maxwell moment method is used to formulate the detailed transient problem. A steady surface mass flux rate exists for times large in comparison with the collision time, that is, in the continuum regime, and explicit formulas are given for this limit. The complete gasdynamic field, however, is nonsteady for all times. The calculations are carried out utilizing four moments, and the effects of incorporating additional moments are negligible. Finally, the analysis is extended to incorporate imperfect mass and temperature accommodation. Examination of the transient solution and a matched asymptotic "quasisteady" solution shows that the gasdynamic field consists of a diffusion process near the liquid surface coupled through an expansion or compression wave to the constant far field state

Gravitational Correction to Running of Gauge Couplings

We calculate the contribution of graviton exchange to the running of gauge couplings at lowest non-trivial order in perturbation theory. Including this contribution in a theory that features coupling constant unification does not upset this unification, but rather shifts the unification scale. When extrapolated formally, the gravitational correction renders all gauge couplings asymptotically free.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; v2: Clarified awkward sentences and notations. Corrected typos. Added references and discussion thereof in introduction. Minor copy editting changes to agree with version to be published in Physical Review Letter

On the degenerated soft-mode instability

We consider instabilities of a single mode with finite wavenumber in inversion symmetric spatially one dimensional systems, where the character of the bifurcation changes from sub- to supercritical behaviour. Starting from a general equation of motion the full amplitude equation is derived systematically and formulas for the dependence of the coefficients on the system parameters are obtained. We emphasise the importance of nonlinear derivative terms in the amplitude equation for the behaviour in the vicinity of the bifurcation point. Especially the numerical values of the corresponding coefficients determine the region of coexistence between the stable trivial solution and stable spatially periodic patterns. Our approach clearly shows that similar considerations fail for the case of oscillatory instabilities.Comment: 16 pages, uses iop style files, manuscript also available at ftp://athene.fkp.physik.th-darmstadt.de/pub/publications/wolfram/jpa_97/ or at http://athene.fkp.physik.th-darmstadt.de/public/wolfram_publ.html. J. Phys. A in pres