Thin Film Formation During Splashing of Viscous Liquids

After impact onto a smooth dry surface, a drop of viscous liquid initially spreads in the form of a thick lamella. If the drop splashes, it first emits a thin fluid sheet that can ultimately break up into droplets causing the splash. Ambient gas is crucial for creating this thin sheet. The time for sheet ejection, $t_{ejt}$, depends on impact velocity, liquid viscosity, gas pressure and molecular weight. A central air bubble is trapped below the drop at pressures even below that necessary for this sheet formation. In addition, air bubbles are entrained underneath the spreading lamella when the ejected sheet is present. Air entrainment ceases at a lamella velocity that is independent of drop impact velocity as well as ambient gas pressure.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

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

Inverse magnetic catalysis from the properties of the QCD coupling in a magnetic field

We compute the vacuum one-loop quark-gluon vertex correction at zero temperature in the presence of a magnetic field. From the vertex function we extract the effective quark-gluon coupling and show that it grows with increasing magnetic field strength. The effect is due to a subtle competition between the color charge associated to gluons and the color charge associated to quarks, the former being larger than the latter. In contrast, at high temperature the effective thermo-magnetic coupling results exclusively from the contribution of the color charge associated to quarks. This produces a decrease of the coupling with increasing field strength. We interpret the results in terms of a geometrical effect whereby the magnetic field induces, on average, a closer distance between the (electrically charged) quarks and antiquarks. At high temperature, since the effective coupling is proportional only to the color charge associated to quarks, such proximity with increasing field strength makes the effective coupling decrease due to asymptotic freedom. In turn, this leads to a decreasing quark condensate. In contrast, at zero temperature both the effective strong coupling and the quark condensate increase with increasing magnetic field. This is due to the color charge associated to gluons dominating over that associated to quarks, with both having the opposite sign. Thus, the gluons induce a kind of screening of the quark color charge, in spite of the quark-antiquark proximity. The implications of these results for the inverse magnetic catalysis phenomenon are discussed.Comment: Expanded discussion, references added. Version to appear in Phys. Lett.