Viscous coalescence of droplets: a Lattice Boltzmann study

The coalescence of two resting liquid droplets in a saturated vapor phase is investigated by Lattice Boltzmann simulations in two and three dimensions. We find that, in the viscous regime, the bridge radius obeys a t^{1/2}-scaling law in time with the characteristic time scale given by the viscous time. Our results differ significantly from the predictions of existing analytical theories of viscous coalescence as well as from experimental observations. While the underlying reason for these deviations is presently unknown, a simple scaling argument is given that describes our results well.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures; as published in Phys. Fluid

Boundary element based multiresolution shape optimisation in electrostatics

We consider the shape optimisation of high-voltage devices subject to electrostatic field equations by combining fast boundary elements with multiresolution subdivision surfaces. The geometry of the domain is described with subdivision surfaces and different resolutions of the same geometry are used for optimisation and analysis. The primal and adjoint problems are discretised with the boundary element method using a sufficiently fine control mesh. For shape optimisation the geometry is updated starting from the coarsest control mesh with increasingly finer control meshes. The multiresolution approach effectively prevents the appearance of non-physical geometry oscillations in the optimised shapes. Moreover, there is no need for mesh regeneration or smoothing during the optimisation due to the absence of a volume mesh. We present several numerical experiments and one industrial application to demonstrate the robustness and versatility of the developed approach.We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the EU commission through the FP7 Marie Curie IAPP project CASOPT (PIAP-GA-2008-230224). K.B. and F.C. thank for the additional support provided by EPSRC through #EP/G008531/1. J.Z. thanks for the support provided by the European Regional Development Fund in the IT4Innovations Centre of Excellence project (CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0070) and by the project SPOMECH – Creating a Multidisciplinary R&D Team for Reliable Solution of Mechanical Problems, reg. no. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0070 within the Operational Programme ‘Education for Competitiveness’ funded by the Structural Funds of the European Union and the state budget of the Czech Republic. Special thanks to Andreas Blaszczyk from the ABB Corporate Research Center Switzerland for fruitful discussions and for providing the industrial applications.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2015.05.01

Roughness gradient induced spontaneous motion of droplets on hydrophobic surfaces: A lattice Boltzmann study

The effect of a step wise change in the pillar density on the dynamics of droplets is investigated via three-dimensional lattice Boltzmann simulations. For the same pillar density gradient but different pillar arrangements, both motion over the gradient zone as well as complete arrest are observed. In the moving case, the droplet velocity scales approximately linearly with the texture gradient. A simple model is provided reproducing the observed linear behavior. The model also predicts a linear dependence of droplet velocity on surface tension. This prediction is clearly confirmed via our computer simulations for a wide range of surface tensions.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure

Vibrational pair cat states

Published versio

An efficient scheme for the deterministic maximal entanglement of N trapped ions

We propose a method for generating maximally entangled states of N two-level trapped ions. The method is deterministic and independent of the number of ions in the trap. It involves a controlled-NOT acting simultaneously on all the ions through a dispersive interaction. We explore the potential application of our scheme for high precision frequency standards.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, submitted to PRL, under review, Revised Version: Incorporated referee comment

Decoherence and robustness of parity-dependent entanglement in the dynamics of a trapped ion

We study the entanglement between the 2D vibrational motion and two ground state hyperfine levels of a trapped ion, Under particular conditions this entanglement depends on the parity of the total initial vibrational quanta. We study the robustness of this quantum coherence effect with respect to the presence of non-dissipative sources of decoherence, and of an imperfect initial state preparation.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure