Dynamics of Viscoplastic Deformation in Amorphous Solids

We propose a dynamical theory of low-temperature shear deformation in amorphous solids. Our analysis is based on molecular-dynamics simulations of a two-dimensional, two-component noncrystalline system. These numerical simulations reveal behavior typical of metallic glasses and other viscoplastic materials, specifically, reversible elastic deformation at small applied stresses, irreversible plastic deformation at larger stresses, a stress threshold above which unbounded plastic flow occurs, and a strong dependence of the state of the system on the history of past deformations. Microscopic observations suggest that a dynamically complete description of the macroscopic state of this deforming body requires specifying, in addition to stress and strain, certain average features of a population of two-state shear transformation zones. Our introduction of these new state variables into the constitutive equations for this system is an extension of earlier models of creep in metallic glasses. In the treatment presented here, we specialize to temperatures far below the glass transition, and postulate that irreversible motions are governed by local entropic fluctuations in the volumes of the transformation zones. In most respects, our theory is in good quantitative agreement with the rich variety of phenomena seen in the simulations.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

Nonlinear Stress Fluctuation Dynamics of Sheared Disordered Wet Foam

Sheared wet foam, which stores elastic energy in bubble deformations, relaxes stress through bubble rearrangements. The intermittency of bubble rearrangements in foam leads to effectively stochastic drops in stress that are followed by periods of elastic increase. We investigate global characteristics of highly disordered foams over three decades of strain rate and almost two decades of system size. We characterize the behavior using a range of measures: average stress, distribution of stress drops, rate of stress drops, and a normalized fluctuation intensity. There is essentially no dependence on system size. As a function of strain rate, there is a change in behavior around shear rates of $0.07 {\rm s^{-1}}$.Comment: accepted to Physical Review

Plastic Flow in Two-Dimensional Solids

A time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model of plastic deformation in two-dimensional solids is presented. The fundamental dynamic variables are the displacement field \bi u and the lattice velocity {\bi v}=\p {\bi u}/\p t. Damping is assumed to arise from the shear viscosity in the momentum equation. The elastic energy density is a periodic function of the shear and tetragonal strains, which enables formation of slips at large strains. In this work we neglect defects such as vacancies, interstitials, or grain boundaries. The simplest slip consists of two edge dislocations with opposite Burgers vectors. The formation energy of a slip is minimized if its orientation is parallel or perpendicular to the flow in simple shear deformation and if it makes angles of $\pm \pi/4$ with respect to the stretched direction in uniaxial stretching. High-density dislocations produced in plastic flow do not disappear even if the flow is stopped. Thus large applied strains give rise to metastable, structurally disordered states. We divide the elastic energy into an elastic part due to affine deformation and a defect part. The latter represents degree of disorder and is nearly constant in plastic flow under cyclic straining.Comment: 16pages, Figures can be obtained at http://stat.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/index-e.htm

The brightest OH maser in the sky: a flare of emission in W75 N

A flare of maser radio emission in the OH-line 1665 MHz has been discovered in the star forming region W75 N in 2003, with the flux density of about 1000 Jy. At the time it was the strongest OH maser detected during the whole history of observations since the discovery of cosmic masers in 1965. The flare emission is linearly polarized with a degree of polarization near 100%. A weaker flare with a flux of 145 Jy was observed in this source in 2000 - 2001, which was probably a precursor of the powerful flare. Intensity of two other spectral features has decreased after beginning of the flare. Such variation of the intensity of maser condensation emission (increasing of one and decreasing of the other) can be explained by passing of the magneto hydrodynamic shock across regions of enhanced gas concentration.Comment: 9 pages with 2 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy Letter

Sheared Solid Materials

We present a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model of nonlinear elasticity in solid materials. We assume that the elastic energy density is a periodic function of the shear and tetragonal strains owing to the underlying lattice structure. With this new ingredient, solving the equations yields formation of dislocation dipoles or slips. In plastic flow high-density dislocations emerge at large strains to accumulate and grow into shear bands where the strains are localized. In addition to the elastic displacement, we also introduce the local free volume {\it m}. For very small $m$ the defect structures are metastable and long-lived where the dislocations are pinned by the Peierls potential barrier. However, if the shear modulus decreases with increasing {\it m}, accumulation of {\it m} around dislocation cores eventually breaks the Peierls potential leading to slow relaxations in the stress and the free energy (aging). As another application of our scheme, we also study dislocation formation in two-phase alloys (coherency loss) under shear strains, where dislocations glide preferentially in the softer regions and are trapped at the interfaces.Comment: 16pages, 11figure

SOFIA observations of far-infrared hydroxyl emission toward classical ultracompact HII/OH maser regions

The hydroxyl radical (OH) is found in various environments within the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Milky Way and external galaxies, mostly either in diffuse interstellar clouds or in the warm, dense environments of newly formed low-mass and high-mass stars, i.e, in the dense shells of compact and ultracompact HII regions (UCHIIRs). Until today, most studies of interstellar OH involved the molecule's radio wavelength hyperfine structure (hfs) transitions. These lines are generally not in LTE and either masing or over-cooling complicates their interpretation. In the past, observations of transitions between different rotational levels of OH, which are at far-infrared wavelengths, have suffered from limited spectral and angular resolution. Since these lines have critical densities many orders of magnitude higher than the radio wavelength ground state hfs lines and are emitted from levels with more than 100 K above the ground state, when observed in emission, they probe very dense and warm material. We probe the warm and dense molecular material surrounding the UCHIIR/OH maser sources W3(OH), G10.62-0.39 and NGC 7538 IRS1 by studying the $^2\Pi_{{1/2}}, J = {3/2} - {1/2}$ rotational transition of OH in emission and, toward the last source also the molecule's $^2\Pi_{3/2}, J = 5/2 - 3/2$ ground-state transition in absorption. We used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to observe these OH lines, which are near 1.84 THz ($163 \mu$m) and 2.51 THz ($119.3 \mu$m). We clearly detect the OH lines, some of which are blended with each other. Employing non-LTE radiative transfer calculations we predict line intensities using models of a low OH abundance envelope versus a compact, high-abundance source corresponding to the origin of the radio OH lines.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A (SOFIA/GREAT special issue

21cm Absorption by Compact Hydrogen Disks Around Black Holes in Radio-Loud Nuclei of Galaxies

The clumpy maser disks observed in some galactic nuclei mark the outskirts of the accretion disk that fuels the central black hole and provide a potential site of nuclear star formation. Unfortunately, most of the gas in maser disks is currently not being probed; large maser gains favor paths that are characterized by a small velocity gradient and require rare edge-on orientations of the disk. Here we propose a method for mapping the atomic hydrogen distribution in nuclear disks through its 21cm absorption against the radio continuum glow around the central black hole. In NGC 4258, the 21cm optical depth may approach unity for high angular-resolution (VLBI) imaging of coherent clumps which are dominated by thermal broadening and have the column density inferred from X-ray absorption data, ~10^{23}/cm^2. Spreading the 21cm absorption over the full rotation velocity width of the material in front of the narrow radio jets gives a mean optical depth of ~0.1. Spectroscopic searches for the 21cm absorption feature in other galaxies can be used to identify the large population of inclined gaseous disks which are not masing in our direction. Follow-up imaging of 21cm silhouettes of accelerating clumps within these disks can in turn be used to measure cosmological distances.Comment: 4 page

Extremely high velocity gas from the massive YSOs in IRAS 17233-3606

Molecular outflows from high-mass young stellar objects provide an excellent way to study the star formation process, and investigate if they are scaled-up versions of their low-mass counterparts. We selected the nearby massive star forming region IRAS 17233-3606 in order to study the kinematics and physics along the molecular outflow(s) originating from this source. We observed IRAS 17233-3606 in CO, a typical tracer of gas associated with molecular outflow, with the Submillimeter Array in the (2-1) transition, and with the APEX telescope in the higher excitation (6-5) line. Additional infrared H2 observations were performed with the UKIRT telescope. The CO data were analysed using a LVG approach. Our data resolve the previously detected molecular outflow in at least three different components, one of them with a high collimation factor ~4, and characterised by emission at extremely high velocities (|v-v_{LSR}|>120 km s^{-1}). The estimate of the kinematical outflow parameters are typical of massive YSOs, and in agreement with the measured bolometric luminosity of the source. The kinematic ages of the flows are in the range 10^2-10^3 yr, and therefore point to young objects that still did not reach the main sequence.Comment: accepted for publication in A&

Neutrino mass from cosmology: Impact of high-accuracy measurement of the Hubble constant

Non-zero neutrino mass would affect the evolution of the Universe in observable ways, and a strong constraint on the mass can be achieved using combinations of cosmological data sets. We focus on the power spectrum of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, the Hubble constant H_0, and the length scale for baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) to investigate the constraint on the neutrino mass, m_nu. We analyze data from multiple existing CMB studies (WMAP5, ACBAR, CBI, BOOMERANG, and QUAD), recent measurement of H_0 (SHOES), with about two times lower uncertainty (5%) than previous estimates, and recent treatments of BAO from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We obtained an upper limit of m_nu < 0.2eV (95% C.L.), for a flat LambdaCDM model. This is a 40% reduction in the limit derived from previous H_0 estimates and one-third lower than can be achieved with extant CMB and BAO data. We also analyze the impact of smaller uncertainty on measurements of H_0 as may be anticipated in the near term, in combination with CMB data from the Planck mission, and BAO data from the SDSS/BOSS program. We demonstrate the possibility of a 5 sigma detection for a fiducial neutrino mass of 0.1eV or a 95% upper limit of 0.04eV for a fiducial of m_nu = 0eV. These constraints are about 50% better than those achieved without external constraint. We further investigate the impact on modeling where the dark-energy equation of state is constant but not necessarily -1, or where a non-flat universe is allowed. In these cases, the next-generation accuracies of Planck, BOSS, and 1% measurement of H_0 would all be required to obtain the limit m_nu < 0.05 - 0.06eV (95% C.L.) for the fiducial of m_nu = 0eV. The independence of systematics argues for pursuit of both BAO and H_0 measurements.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, 12 table

Boundary lubrication with a glassy interface

Recently introduced constitutive equations for the rheology of dense, disordered materials are investigated in the context of stick-slip experiments in boundary lubrication. The model is based on a generalization of the shear transformation zone (STZ) theory, in which plastic deformation is represented by a population of mesoscopic regions which may undergo non affine deformations in response to stress. The generalization we study phenomenologically incorporates the effects of aging and glassy relaxation. Under experimental conditions associated with typical transitions from stick-slip to steady sliding and stop start tests, these effects can be dominant, although the full STZ description is necessary to account for more complex, chaotic transitions