3,806 research outputs found
G-300: The first French Getaway Special microgravity measurements of fluid thermal conductivity
Thermal conductivity measurements on liquids are difficult to perform on Earth because of thermal motions due to convection. In microgravity, the convection due to buoyancy is evanescent, and a strong reduction of Rayleigh and Nusselt numbers can be expected. Three low viscosity liquids are selected to carry out the measurements; distilled water (standard) and two silicone oils. A modified hot plate method with a simplified guard ring is used; the reduction of convective motions permitted the use in the experimental cells of larger interplate distances and/or temperature differences than in Earth measurements, improving the accuracy. Comparisons between Earth and orbit results may help to understand the convection occurrence in the cells. Thermal, vibrational, and EMI tests have proved that the design satisfies the NASA requirements
Hypergeometric solutions to Schr\"odinger equations for the quantum Painlev\'e equations
We consider Schr\"odinger equations for the quantum Painlev\'e equations. We
present hypergeometric solutions of the Schr\"odinger equations for the quantum
Painlev\'e equations, as particular solutions. We also give a representation
theoretic correspondence between Hamiltonians of the Schr\"odinger equations
for the quantum Painlev\'e equations and those of the KZ equation or the
confluent KZ equations.Comment: 17 pages; Journal of Mathematical Physics (Vol.52, Issue 8) 201
Robust seismic velocity change estimation using ambient noise recordings
We consider the problem of seismic velocity change estimation using ambient
noise recordings. Motivated by [23] we study how the velocity change estimation
is affected by seasonal fluctuations in the noise sources. More precisely, we
consider a numerical model and introduce spatio-temporal seasonal fluctuations
in the noise sources. We show that indeed, as pointed out in [23], the
stretching method is affected by these fluctuations and produces misleading
apparent velocity variations which reduce dramatically the signal to noise
ratio of the method. We also show that these apparent velocity variations can
be eliminated by an adequate normalization of the cross-correlation functions.
Theoretically we expect our approach to work as long as the seasonal
fluctuations in the noise sources are uniform, an assumption which holds for
closely located seismic stations. We illustrate with numerical simulations and
real measurements that the proposed normalization significantly improves the
accuracy of the velocity change estimation
Thermodynamic time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations
We here present the complete analysis of experiments on driven Brownian
motion and electric noise in a circuit, showing that thermodynamic entropy
production can be related to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry in the
statistical description of these nonequilibrium systems. The symmetry breaking
can be expressed in terms of dynamical entropies per unit time, one for the
forward process and the other for the time-reversed process. These entropies
per unit time characterize dynamical randomness, i.e., temporal disorder, in
time series of the nonequilibrium fluctuations. Their difference gives the
well-known thermodynamic entropy production, which thus finds its origin in the
time asymmetry of dynamical randomness, alias temporal disorder, in systems
driven out of equilibrium.Comment: to be published in : Journal of Statistical Mechanics: theory and
experimen
Convective and absolute Eckhaus instability leading to modulated waves in a finite box
We report experimental study of the secondary modulational instability of a
one-dimensional non-linear traveling wave in a long bounded channel. Two
qualitatively different instability regimes involving fronts of spatio-temporal
defects are linked to the convective and absolute nature of the instability.
Both transitions appear to be subcritical. The spatio-temporal defects control
the global mode structure.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures (ReVTeX 4 and amsmath.sty), final versio
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