4,255 research outputs found
Critical behavior of an Ising model with aperiodic interactions
We write exact renormalization-group recursion relations for a ferromagnetic
Ising model on the diamond hierarchical lattice with an aperiodic distribution
of exchange interactions according to a class of generalized two-letter
Fibonacci sequences. For small geometric fluctuations, the critical behavior is
unchanged with respect to the uniform case. For large fluctuations, the uniform
fixed point in the parameter space becomes fully unstable. We analyze some
limiting cases, and propose a heuristic criterion to check the relevance of the
fluctuations.Comment: latex file, 5 figures, accepted by Braz. Jour. Phy
Polydispersity Effects in the Dynamics and Stability of Bubbling Flows
The occurrence of swarms of small bubbles in a variety of industrial systems
enhances their performance. However, the effects that size polydispersity may
produce on the stability of kinematic waves, the gain factor, mean bubble
velocity, kinematic and dynamic wave velocities is, to our knowledge, not yet
well established. We found that size polydispersity enhances the stability of a
bubble column by a factor of about 23% as a function of frequency and for a
particular type of bubble column. In this way our model predicts effects that
might be verified experimentally but this, however, remain to be assessed. Our
results reinforce the point of view advocated in this work in the sense that a
description of a bubble column based on the concept of randomness of a bubble
cloud and average properties of the fluid motion, may be a useful approach that
has not been exploited in engineering systems.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, presented at the 3rd NEXT-SigmaPhi International
Conference, 13-18 August, 2005, Kolymbari, Cret
A thermodynamical fiber bundle model for the fracture of disordered materials
We investigate a disordered version of a thermodynamic fiber bundle model
proposed by Selinger, Wang, Gelbart, and Ben-Shaul a few years ago. For simple
forms of disorder, the model is analytically tractable and displays some new
features. At either constant stress or constant strain, there is a non
monotonic increase of the fraction of broken fibers as a function of
temperature. Moreover, the same values of some macroscopic quantities as stress
and strain may correspond to different microscopic cofigurations, which can be
essential for determining the thermal activation time of the fracture. We argue
that different microscopic states may be characterized by an experimentally
accessible analog of the Edwards-Anderson parameter. At zero temperature, we
recover the behavior of the irreversible fiber bundle model.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Putrescine is involved in Arabidopsis freezing tolerance and cold acclimation by regulating abscisic acid levels in response to low temperature
Phase diagram of a model for a binary mixture of nematic molecules on a Bethe lattice
We investigate the phase diagram of a discrete version of the Maier-Saupe
model with the inclusion of additional degrees of freedom to mimic a
distribution of rodlike and disklike molecules. Solutions of this problem on a
Bethe lattice come from the analysis of the fixed points of a set of nonlinear
recursion relations. Besides the fixed points associated with isotropic and
uniaxial nematic structures, there is also a fixed point associated with a
biaxial nematic structure. Due to the existence of large overlaps of the
stability regions, we resorted to a scheme to calculate the free energy of
these structures deep in the interior of a large Cayley tree. Both
thermodynamic and dynamic-stability analyses rule out the presence of a biaxial
phase, in qualitative agreement with previous mean-field results
Spatial rogue waves in photorefractive SBN crystals
We report on the excitation of large-amplitude waves, with a probability of
around 1% of total peaks, on a photorefractive SBN crystal by using a simple
experimental setup at room temperature. We excite the system using a narrow
Gaussian beam and observe different dynamical regimes tailored by the value and
time rate of an applied voltage. We identify two main dynamical regimes: a
caustic one for energy spreading and a speckling one for peak emergence. Our
observations are well described by a two-dimensional Schr\"odinger model with
saturable local nonlinearity.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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