12,719 research outputs found
Transformation seismology: composite soil lenses for steering surface elastic Rayleigh waves.
Metamaterials are artificially structured media that exibit properties beyond those usually encountered in nature. Typically they are developed for electromagnetic waves at millimetric down to nanometric scales, or for acoustics, at centimeter scales. By applying ideas from transformation optics we can steer Rayleigh-surface waves that are solutions of the vector Navier equations of elastodynamics. As a paradigm of the conformal geophysics that we are creating, we design a square arrangement of Luneburg lenses to reroute Rayleigh waves around a building with the dual aim of protection and minimizing the effect on the wavefront (cloaking). To show that this is practically realisable we deliberately choose to use material parameters readily available and this metalens consists of a composite soil structured with buried pillars made of softer material. The regular lattice of inclusions is homogenized to give an effective material with a radially varying velocity profile and hence varying the refractive index of the lens. We develop the theory and then use full 3D numerical simulations to conclusively demonstrate, at frequencies of seismological relevance 3–10 Hz, and for low-speed sedimentary soil (v(s): 300–500 m/s), that the vibration of a structure is reduced by up to 6 dB at its resonance frequency
Bosonization and density-matrix renormalization group studies of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase and irrational magnetization plateaus in coupled chains
We review the properties of two coupled fermionic chains, or ladders, under a
magnetic field parallel to the lattice plane. Results are computed by
complementary analytical (bosonization) and numerical (density-matrix
renormalization group) methods which allows a systematic comparison. Limiting
cases such as coupled bands and coupled chains regimes are discussed. We
particularly focus on the evolution of the superconducting correlations under
increasing field and on the presence of irrational magnetization plateaus. We
found the existence of large doping-dependent magnetization plateaus in the
weakly-interacting and strong-coupling limits and in the non-trivial case of
isotropic couplings. We report on the existence of extended
Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phases within the isotropic t-J and Hubbard
models, deduced from the evolution of different observables under magnetic
field. Emphasis is put on the variety of superconducting order parameters
present at high magnetic field. We have also computed the evolution of the
Luttinger exponent corresponding to the ungaped spin mode appearing at finite
magnetization. In the coupled chain regime, the possibility of having polarized
triplet pairing under high field is predicted by bosonization.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figure
Turbulent-like fluctuations in quasistatic flow of granular media
We analyze particle velocity fluctuations in a simulated granular system
subjected to homogeneous quasistatic shearing. We show that these fluctuations
share the following scaling characteristics of fluid turbulence in spite of
their different physical origins: 1) Scale-dependent probability distribution
with non-Guassian broadening at small time scales; 2) Power-law spectrum,
reflecting long-range correlations and the self-affine nature of the
fluctuations; 3) Superdiffusion with respect to the mean background flow
Haldane charge conjecture in one-dimensional multicomponent fermionic cold atoms
A Haldane conjecture is revealed for spin-singlet charge modes in
2N-component fermionic cold atoms loaded into a one-dimensional optical
lattice. By means of a low-energy approach and DMRG calculations, we show the
emergence of gapless and gapped phases depending on the parity of for
attractive interactions at half-filling. The analogue of the Haldane phase of
the spin-1 Heisenberg chain is stabilized for N=2 with non-local string charge
correlation, and pseudo-spin 1/2 edge states. At the heart of this even-odd
behavior is the existence of a spin-singlet pseudo-spin operator which
governs the low-energy properties of the model for attractive interactions and
gives rise to the Haldane physics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Competing orders in one-dimensional half-filled multicomponent fermionic cold atoms: The Haldane-charge conjecture
We investigate the nature of the Mott-insulating phases of half-filled
2N-component fermionic cold atoms loaded into a one-dimensional optical
lattice. By means of conformal field theory techniques and large-scale DMRG
calculations, we show that the phase diagram strongly depends on the parity of
. First, we single out charged, spin-singlet, degrees of freedom, that carry
a pseudo-spin allowing to formulate a Haldane conjecture: for
attractive interactions, we establish the emergence of Haldane insulating
phases when is even, whereas a metallic behavior is found when is odd.
We point out that the cases do \emph{not} have the generic properties
of each family. The metallic phase for odd and larger than 1 has a
quasi-long range singlet pairing ordering with an interesting edge-state
structure. Moreover, the properties of the Haldane insulating phases with even
further depend on the parity of N/2. In this respect, within the low-energy
approach, we argue that the Haldane phases with N/2 even are not topologically
protected but equivalent to a topologically trivial insulating phase and thus
confirm the recent conjecture put forward by Pollmann {\it et al.} [Pollmann
{\it et al.}, arXiv:0909.4059 (2009)].Comment: 25 pages, 20 figure
Self-Similar Anisotropic Texture Analysis: the Hyperbolic Wavelet Transform Contribution
Textures in images can often be well modeled using self-similar processes
while they may at the same time display anisotropy. The present contribution
thus aims at studying jointly selfsimilarity and anisotropy by focusing on a
specific classical class of Gaussian anisotropic selfsimilar processes. It will
first be shown that accurate joint estimates of the anisotropy and
selfsimilarity parameters are performed by replacing the standard 2D-discrete
wavelet transform by the hyperbolic wavelet transform, which permits the use of
different dilation factors along the horizontal and vertical axis. Defining
anisotropy requires a reference direction that needs not a priori match the
horizontal and vertical axes according to which the images are digitized, this
discrepancy defines a rotation angle. Second, we show that this rotation angle
can be jointly estimated. Third, a non parametric bootstrap based procedure is
described, that provides confidence interval in addition to the estimates
themselves and enables to construct an isotropy test procedure, that can be
applied to a single texture image. Fourth, the robustness and versatility of
the proposed analysis is illustrated by being applied to a large variety of
different isotropic and anisotropic self-similar fields. As an illustration, we
show that a true anisotropy built-in self-similarity can be disentangled from
an isotropic self-similarity to which an anisotropic trend has been
superimposed
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