1,005 research outputs found
Supersonic dislocations observed in a plasma crystal
Experimental results on the dislocation dynamics in a two-dimensional plasma
crystal are presented. Edge dislocations were created in pairs in lattice
locations where the internal shear stress exceeded a threshold and then moved
apart in the glide plane at a speed higher than the sound speed of shear waves,
. The experimental system, a plasma crystal, allowed observation of this
process at an atomistic (kinetic) level. The early stage of this process is
identified as a stacking fault. At a later stage, supersonically moving
dislocations generated shear-wave Mach cones
Cosmic ray secondary nuclei and the structure of the galaxy
The consequencies of diffusive acceleration of cosmic rays in supernova shocks propagation through an inhomogeneous interstellar medium are explored. The acceleration takes place in the hot, tenuous, intercloud gas, while nuclear collisions, leading to the production of cosmic ray secondaries, predominantly occur in those regions where the supernova shocks collide with interstellar clouds. A simple model is used to calculate the interaction of a (cosmic ray + gas) shock with a cloud, and thus determine the gross topology. Extending this to the whole system, using mean cloud sizes and space densities, allows us to calculate the secondary/primary cosmic ray abundance ratios for light and heavy nuclei
Anisotropic shear melting and recrystallization of a two-dimensional complex (dusty) plasma
A two-dimensional plasma crystal was melted by suddenly applying localized
shear stress. A stripe of particles in the crystal was pushed by the radiation
pressure force of a laser beam. We found that the response of the plasma
crystal to stress and the eventual shear melting depended strongly on the
crystal's angular orientation relative to the laser beam. Shear stress and
strain rate were measured, from which the spatially resolved shear viscosity
was calculated. The latter was shown to have minima in the regions with high
velocity shear, thus demonstrating shear thinning. Shear-induced reordering was
observed in the steady-state flow, where particles formed strings aligned in
the flow direction.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Physical Review
Binary crystals in two-dimensional two-component Yukawa mixtures
The zero-temperature phase diagram of binary mixtures of particles
interacting via a screened Coulomb pair potential is calculated as a function
of composition and charge ratio. The potential energy obtained by a Lekner
summation is minimized among a variety of candidate two-dimensional crystals. A
wealth of different stable crystal structures is identified including
structures [ particles correspond to large
(small) charge.] Their elementary cells consist of triangular, square or
rhombic lattices of the particles with a basis comprising various
structures of and particles. For small charge asymmetry there are no
intermediate crystals besides the pure and triangular crystals.Comment: RevTeX 4 - 17 pages - 6 main figure
Probing non-Gaussianities on Large Scales in WMAP5 and WMAP7 Data using Surrogates
Probing Gaussianity represents one of the key questions in modern cosmology,
because it allows to discriminate between different models of inflation. We
test for large-scale non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
in a model-independent way. To this end, so-called first and second order
surrogates are generated by first shuffling the Fourier phases belonging to the
scales not of interest and then shuffling the remaining phases for the length
scales under study. Using scaling indices as test statistics we find highly
significant signatures for both non-Gaussianities and asymmetries on large
scales for the WMAP data of the CMB. We find remarkably similar results when
analyzing different ILC-maps based on the WMAP five and seven year data. Such
features being independent from the map-making procedure would disfavor the
fundamental principle of isotropy as well as canonical single-field slow-roll
inflation - unless there is some undiscovered systematic error in the
collection or reduction of the CMB data or yet unknown foreground
contributions.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of Moriond Cosmology
201
Microstructure of a liquid complex (dusty) plasma under shear
The microstructure of a strongly coupled liquid undergoing a shear flow was
studied experimentally. The liquid was a shear melted two-dimensional plasma
crystal, i.e., a single-layer suspension of micrometer-size particles in a rf
discharge plasma. Trajectories of particles were measured using video
microscopy. The resulting microstructure was anisotropic, with compressional
and extensional axes at around to the flow direction.
Corresponding ellipticity of the pair correlation function or
static structure factor gives the (normalized) shear rate of the
flow.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
- …