Gravitation and Duality Symmetry

By generalizing the Hodge dual operator to the case of soldered bundles, and working in the context of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity, an analysis of the duality symmetry in gravitation is performed. Although the basic conclusion is that, at least in the general case, gravitation is not dual symmetric, there is a particular theory in which this symmetry shows up. It is a self dual (or anti-self dual) teleparallel gravity in which, due to the fact that it does not contribute to the interaction of fermions with gravitation, the purely tensor part of torsion is assumed to vanish. The ensuing fermionic gravitational interaction is found to be chiral. Since duality is intimately related to renormalizability, this theory may eventually be more amenable to renormalization than teleparallel gravity or general relativity.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Version 2: minor presentation changes, references added. Accepted for publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Localization properties of a tight-binding electronic model on the Apollonian network

An investigation on the properties of electronic states of a tight-binding Hamiltonian on the Apollonian network is presented. This structure, which is defined based on the Apollonian packing problem, has been explored both as a complex network, and as a substrate, on the top of which physical models can defined. The Schrodinger equation of the model, which includes only nearest neighbor interactions, is written in a matrix formulation. In the uniform case, the resulting Hamiltonian is proportional to the adjacency matrix of the Apollonian network. The characterization of the electronic eigenstates is based on the properties of the spectrum, which is characterized by a very large degeneracy. The $2\pi /3$ rotation symmetry of the network and large number of equivalent sites are reflected in all eigenstates, which are classified according to their parity. Extended and localized states are identified by evaluating the participation rate. Results for other two non-uniform models on the Apollonian network are also presented. In one case, interaction is considered to be dependent of the node degree, while in the other one, random on-site energies are considered.Comment: 7pages, 7 figure

Screening effects in flow through rough channels

A surprising similarity is found between the distribution of hydrodynamic stress on the wall of an irregular channel and the distribution of flux from a purely Laplacian field on the same geometry. This finding is a direct outcome from numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations for flow at low Reynolds numbers in two-dimensional channels with rough walls presenting either deterministic or random self-similar geometries. For high Reynolds numbers, when inertial effects become relevant, the distribution of wall stresses on deterministic and random fractal rough channels becomes substantially dependent on the microscopic details of the walls geometry. In addition, we find that, while the permeability of the random channel follows the usual decrease with Reynolds, our results indicate an unexpected permeability increase for the deterministic case, i.e., ``the rougher the better''. We show that this complex behavior is closely related with the presence and relative intensity of recirculation zones in the reentrant regions of the rough channel.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Non-nequilibrium model on Apollonian networks

We investigate the Majority-Vote Model with two states ($-1,+1$) and a noise $q$ on Apollonian networks. The main result found here is the presence of the phase transition as a function of the noise parameter $q$. We also studies de effect of redirecting a fraction $p$ of the links of the network. By means of Monte Carlo simulations, we obtained the exponent ratio $\gamma/\nu$, $\beta/\nu$, and $1/\nu$ for several values of rewiring probability $p$. The critical noise was determined $q_{c}$ and $U^{*}$ also was calculated. The effective dimensionality of the system was observed to be independent on $p$, and the value $D_{eff} \approx1.0$ is observed for these networks. Previous results on the Ising model in Apollonian Networks have reported no presence of a phase transition. Therefore, the results present here demonstrate that the Majority-Vote Model belongs to a different universality class as the equilibrium Ising Model on Apollonian Network.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Conditions for non-monotonic vortex interaction in two-band superconductors

We describe a semi-analytic approach to the two-band Ginzburg-Landau theory, which predicts the behavior of vortices in two-band superconductors. We show that the character of the short-range vortex-vortex interaction is determined by the sign of the normal domain - superconductor interface energy, in analogy with the conventional differentiation between type-I and type-II superconductors. However, we also show that the long-range interaction is determined by a modified Ginzburg-Landau parameter $\kappa^*$, different from the standard $\kappa$ of a bulk superconductor. This opens the possibility for non-monotonic vortex-vortex interaction, which is temperature-dependent, and can be further tuned by alterations of the material on the microscopic scale

Multiple Invaded Consolidating Materials

We study a multiple invasion model to simulate corrosion or intrusion processes. Estimated values for the fractal dimension of the invaded region reveal that the critical exponents vary as function of the generation number $G$, i.e., with the number of times the invasion process takes place. The averaged mass $M$ of the invaded region decreases with a power-law as a function of $G$, $M\sim G^{\beta}$, where the exponent $\beta\approx 0.6$. We also find that the fractal dimension of the invaded cluster changes from $d_{1}=1.887\pm0.002$ to $d_{s}=1.217\pm0.005$. This result confirms that the multiple invasion process follows a continuous transition from one universality class (NTIP) to another (optimal path). In addition, we report extensive numerical simulations that indicate that the mass distribution of avalanches $P(S,L)$ has a power-law behavior and we find that the exponent $\tau$ governing the power-law $P(S,L)\sim S^{-\tau}$ changes continuously as a function of the parameter $G$. We propose a scaling law for the mass distribution of avalanches for different number of generations $G$.Comment: 8 pages and 16 figure