Weil-Petersson Teichm\"uller space

The paper presents some recent results on the Weil-Petersson geometry theory of the universal Teichm\"uller space, a topic which is important in Teichm\"uller theory and has wide applications to various areas such as mathematical physics, differential equation and computer vision. \noindent (1) It is shown that a sense-preserving homeomorphism $h$ on the unit circle belongs to the Weil-Petersson class, namely, $h$ can be extended to a quasiconformal mapping to the unit disk whose Beltrami coefficient is squarely integrable in the Poincar\'e metric if and only if $h$ is absolutely continuous such that $\log h'$ belongs to the Sobolev class $H^{\frac 12}$. This solves an open problem posed by Takhtajan-Teo [TT2] in 2006 and investigated later by Figalli [Fi], Gay-Balmaz-Marsden-Ratiu ([GMR], [GR]) and others. \noindent The intrinsic characterization (1) of the Weil-Petersson class has the following applications which are also explored in this paper: \noindent (2) It is proved that there exists a quasisymmetric homeomorphism of the Weil-Petersson class which belongs neither to the Sobolev class $H^{\frac 32}$ nor to the Lipschitz class $\Lambda^1$, which was conjectured very recently by Gay-Balmaz-Ratiu [GR] when studying the classical Euler-Poincar\'e equation in the new setting that the involved sense-preserving homeomorphisms on the unit circle belong to the Weil-Petersson class. \noindent (3) It is proved that the flows of the $H^{\frac 32}$ vector fields on the unit circle are contained in the Weil-Petersson class, which was also conjectured by Gay-Balmaz-Ratiu [GR] during their above mentioned research. \noindent (4) A new metric is introduced on the Weil-Petersson Teichm\"uller space and is shown to be topologically equivalent to the Weil-Petersson metric.Comment: 33 page

Dimensional study of the dynamical arrest in a random Lorentz gas

The random Lorentz gas is a minimal model for transport in heterogeneous media. Upon increasing the obstacle density, it exhibits a growing subdiffusive transport regime and then a dynamical arrest. Here, we study the dimensional dependence of the dynamical arrest, which can be mapped onto the void percolation transition for Poisson-distributed point obstacles. We numerically determine the arrest in dimensions d=2-6. Comparing the results with standard mode-coupling theory reveals that the dynamical theory prediction grows increasingly worse with $d$. In an effort to clarify the origin of this discrepancy, we relate the dynamical arrest in the RLG to the dynamic glass transition of the infinite-range Mari-Kurchan model glass former. Through a mixed static and dynamical analysis, we then extract an improved dimensional scaling form as well as a geometrical upper bound for the arrest. The results suggest that understanding the asymptotic behavior of the random Lorentz gas may be key to surmounting fundamental difficulties with the mode-coupling theory of glasses.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Nucleation in binary polymer blends: Effects of foreign mesoscopic spherical particles

We study nucleation in binary polymer blends in the presence of mesoscopic spherical particles using self-consistent field theory, considering both heterogeneous and homogeneous nucleation mechanisms. Heterogeneous nucleation is found to be highly sensitive to surface selectivity and particle size, with rather subtle dependence on the particle size. Particles that preferentially adsorb the nucleating species generally favor heterogeneous nucleation. For sufficiently strong adsorption, barrierless nucleation is possible. By comparing the free energy barrier for homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation, we construct a kinetic phase diagram

Model of random packings of different size balls

We develop a model to describe the properties of random assemblies of polydisperse hard spheres. We show that the key features to describe the system are (i) the dependence between the free volume of a sphere and the various coordination numbers between the species, and (ii) the dependence of the coordination numbers with the concentration of species; quantities that are calculated analytically. The model predicts the density of random close packing and random loose packing of polydisperse systems for a given distribution of ball size and describes packings for any interparticle friction coefficient. The formalism allows to determine the optimal packing over different distributions and may help to treat packing problems of non-spherical particles which are notoriously difficult to solve.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure