Optimal Estimates for the Electric Field in Two-Dimensions

The purpose of this paper is to set out optimal gradient estimates for solutions to the isotropic conductivity problem in the presence of adjacent conductivity inclusions as the distance between the inclusions goes to zero and their conductivities degenerate. This difficult question arises in the study of composite media. Frequently in composites, the inclusions are very closely spaced and may even touch. It is quite important from a practical point of view to know whether the electric field (the gradient of the potential) can be arbitrarily large as the inclusions get closer to each other or to the boundary of the background medium. In this paper, we establish both upper and lower bounds on the electric field in the case where two circular conductivity inclusions are very close but not touching. We also obtain such bounds when a circular inclusion is very close to the boundary of a circular domain which contains the inclusion. The novelty of these estimates, which improve and make complete our earlier results published in Math. Ann., is that they give an optimal information about the blow-up of the electric field as the conductivities of the inclusions degenerate.Comment: 26 page

Robust Cardiac Motion Estimation using Ultrafast Ultrasound Data: A Low-Rank-Topology-Preserving Approach

Cardiac motion estimation is an important diagnostic tool to detect heart diseases and it has been explored with modalities such as MRI and conventional ultrasound (US) sequences. US cardiac motion estimation still presents challenges because of the complex motion patterns and the presence of noise. In this work, we propose a novel approach to estimate the cardiac motion using ultrafast ultrasound data. -- Our solution is based on a variational formulation characterized by the L2-regularized class. The displacement is represented by a lattice of b-splines and we ensure robustness by applying a maximum likelihood type estimator. While this is an important part of our solution, the main highlight of this paper is to combine a low-rank data representation with topology preservation. Low-rank data representation (achieved by finding the k-dominant singular values of a Casorati Matrix arranged from the data sequence) speeds up the global solution and achieves noise reduction. On the other hand, topology preservation (achieved by monitoring the Jacobian determinant) allows to radically rule out distortions while carefully controlling the size of allowed expansions and contractions. Our variational approach is carried out on a realistic dataset as well as on a simulated one. We demonstrate how our proposed variational solution deals with complex deformations through careful numerical experiments. While maintaining the accuracy of the solution, the low-rank preprocessing is shown to speed up the convergence of the variational problem. Beyond cardiac motion estimation, our approach is promising for the analysis of other organs that experience motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 201

Mathematical analysis of plasmonic nanoparticles: the scalar case

Localized surface plasmons are charge density oscillations confined to metallic nanoparticles. Excitation of localized surface plasmons by an electromagnetic field at an incident wavelength where resonance occurs results in a strong light scattering and an enhancement of the local electromagnetic fields. This paper is devoted to the mathematical modeling of plasmonic nanoparticles. Its aim is threefold: (i) to mathematically define the notion of plasmonic resonance and to analyze the shift and broadening of the plasmon resonance with changes in size and shape of the nanoparticles; (ii) to study the scattering and absorption enhancements by plasmon resonant nanoparticles and express them in terms of the polarization tensor of the nanoparticle. Optimal bounds on the enhancement factors are also derived; (iii) to show, by analyzing the imaginary part of the Green function, that one can achieve super-resolution and super-focusing using plasmonic nanoparticles. For simplicity, the Helmholtz equation is used to model electromagnetic wave propagation

On the spectrum of a waveguide with periodic cracks

The spectral problem on a periodic domain with cracks is studied. An asymptotic form of dispersion relations is calculated under assumption that the opening of the cracks is small

The essential spectrum of the Neumann–Poincaré operator on a domain with corners

Exploiting the homogeneous structure of a wedge in the complex plane, we compute the spectrum of the anti-linear Ahlfors-Beurling transform acting on the associated Bergman space. Consequently, the similarity equivalence between the Ahlfors--Beurling transform and the Neumann-Poincare operator provides the spectrum of the latter integral operator on a wedge. A localization technique and conformal mapping lead to the first complete description of the essential spectrum of the Neumann-Poincare operator on a planar domain with corners, with respect to the energy norm of the associated harmonic field

Enhancement of near-cloaking. Part II: the Helmholtz equation

The aim of this paper is to extend the method of improving cloaking structures in the conductivity to scattering problems. We construct very effective near-cloaking structures for the scattering problem at a fixed frequency. These new structures are, before using the transformation optics, layered structures and are designed so that their first scattering coefficients vanish. Inside the cloaking region, any target has near-zero scattering cross section for a band of frequencies. We analytically show that our new construction significantly enhances the cloaking effect for the Helmholtz equation.Comment: 16pages, 12 fugure