A numerical study of a class of TVD schemes for compressible mixing layers

At high Mach numbers the two-dimensional time-developing mixing layer develops shock waves, positioned around large-scale vortical structures. A suitable numerical method has to be able to capture the inherent instability of the flow, leading to the roll-up of vortices, and also must be able to capture shock waves when they develop. Standard schemes for low speed turbulent flows, for example spectral methods, rely on resolution of all flow-features and cannot handle shock waves, which become too thin at any realistic Reynolds number. The performance of a class of second-order explicit total variation diminishing (TVD) schemes on a compressible mixing layer problem was studied. The basic idea is to capture the physics of the flow correctly, by resolving down to the smallest turbulent length scales, without resorting to turbulence or sub-grid scale modeling, and at the same time capture shock waves without spurious oscillations. The present study indicates that TVD schemes can capture the shocks accurately when they form, but (without resorting to a finer grid) have poor accuracy in computing the vortex growth. The solution accuracy depends on the choice of limiter. However a larger number of grid points are in general required to resolve the correct vortex growth. The low accuracy in computing time-dependent problems containing shock waves as well as vortical structures is partly due to the inherent shock-capturing property of all TVD schemes. In order to capture shock waves without spurious oscillations these schemes reduce to first-order near extrema and indirectly produce clipping phenomena, leading to inaccuracy in the computation of vortex growth. Accurate simulation of unsteady turbulent fluid flows with shock waves will require further development of efficient, uniformly higher than second-order accurate, shock-capturing methods

Total Width of 125 GeV Higgs Boson

By using the LHC and Tevatron measurements of the cross sections to various decay channels relative to the standard model Higgs boson, the total width of the putative 125 GeV Higgs boson is determined as 6.1 +7.7-2.9 MeV. We describe a way to estimate the branching fraction for Higgs decay to dark matter. We also discuss a No-Go theorem for the gammagamma signal of the Higgs boson at the LHC.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

From the chiral magnetic wave to the charge dependence of elliptic flow

The quark-gluon plasma formed in heavy ion collisions contains charged chiral fermions evolving in an external magnetic field. At finite density of electric charge or baryon number (resulting either from nuclear stopping or from fluctuations), the triangle anomaly induces in the plasma the Chiral Magnetic Wave (CMW). The CMW first induces a separation of the right and left chiral charges along the magnetic field; the resulting dipolar axial charge density in turn induces the oppositely directed vector charge currents leading to an electric quadrupole moment of the quark-gluon plasma. Boosted by the strong collective flow, the electric quadrupole moment translates into the charge dependence of the elliptic flow coefficients, so that $v_2(\pi^+) < v_2(\pi^-)$ (at positive net charge). Using the latest quantitative simulations of the produced magnetic field and solving the CMW equation, we make further quantitative estimates of the produced $v_2$ splitting and its centrality dependence. We compare the results with the available experimental data.Comment: Contains 12 pages, 6 figures, written as a proceeding for the talk of Y. Burnier at the conference "P and CP-odd Effects in Hot and Dense Matter 2012" held in BN

Searching for Stoponium along with the Higgs boson

Stoponium, a bound state of top squark and its antiparticle in a supersymmetric model, may be found in the ongoing Higgs searches at the LHC. Its WW and ZZ detection ratios relative to the Standard Model Higgs boson can be more than unity from WW* threshold to the two Higgs threshold. The gamma gamma channel is equally promising. Some regions of the stoponium mass below 150 GeV are already being probed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.Comment: 10 pages 5 figure

Anomaly-induced Quadrupole Moment of the Neutron in Magnetic Field

The neutrons cannot possess a quadrupole moment in the vacuum. Nevertheless, we show that in the presence of an external magnetic field the neutrons acquire a new type of quadrupole moment $Q^{ij}= \chi\,\sigma^i B^j$ involving the components of spin and magnetic field. This "chiral magnetic" quadrupole moment arises from the interplay of the chiral anomaly and the magnetic field; we estimate its value for the neutron in the static limit, and find $\chi \simeq 1.35\cdot10^{-2}\,{\rm fm}^4$. The detection of the quadrupole moment of the neutron would provide a novel test of the role of the chiral anomaly in low-energy QCD and can be possible in the presence of both magnetic and inhomogeneous electric fields. The quadrupole moment of the neutron may affect e.g. the properties of neutron stars and magnetars.Comment: 2 pages; extended versio

On spurious steady-state solutions of explicit Runge-Kutta schemes

The bifurcation diagram associated with the logistic equation v sup n+1 = av sup n (1-v sup n) is by now well known, as is its equivalence to solving the ordinary differential equation u prime = alpha u (1-u) by the explicit Euler difference scheme. It has also been noted by Iserles that other popular difference schemes may not only exhibit period doubling and chaotic phenomena but also possess spurious fixed points. Runge-Kutta schemes applied to both the equation u prime = alpha u (1-u) and the cubic equation u prime = alpha u (1-u)(b-u) were studied computationally and analytically and their behavior was contrasted with the explicit Euler scheme. Their spurious fixed points and periodic orbits were noted. In particular, it was observed that these may appear below the linearized stability limits of the scheme and, consequently, computation may lead to erroneous results