Nano-crystalline inclusions as a low-pass filter for thermal transport in a-Si

We use atomistic simulations to study the resonant acoustic modes and compare different calculations of the acoustic mean-free path in amorphous systems with nanometric crystalline spherical inclusions. We show that the resonant acoustic properties are not a simple combination of the vibrations in the inclusions and in the amorphous matrix. The presence of the inclusion affects the transport properties mainly in the frequency range separating simple scattering from multiple scattering processes. However, propagation of acoustic wavepackets is spatially heterogeneous and shows that the amorphous/crystalline interface acts as a low energy pass filter slowing down the high kinetic energy motion whatever the vibration frequency. These heterogeneities cannot be catched by the mean free path, but still they must play an important role in thermal transport, thus raising the question of the correct modeling of thermal transport in composite systems

Plasmon Decay: From QED to QCD

Upon using the same theoretical framework, I describe two interesting decay processes: the electromagnetic plasmon decay into neutrinos, which can be the dominant cooling mechanism for red giants and white dwarfs, and the gluonic plasmon decay into quarks, which can be measured in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 6 pages, 2 PostScript figures included (Talk given at the 3rd Workshop on Thermal Field Theories and their Applications, Banff, Canada, August 1993

Exact two-terminal reliability of some directed networks

The calculation of network reliability in a probabilistic context has long been an issue of practical and academic importance. Conventional approaches (determination of bounds, sums of disjoint products algorithms, Monte Carlo evaluations, studies of the reliability polynomials, etc.) only provide approximations when the network's size increases, even when nodes do not fail and all edges have the same reliability p. We consider here a directed, generic graph of arbitrary size mimicking real-life long-haul communication networks, and give the exact, analytical solution for the two-terminal reliability. This solution involves a product of transfer matrices, in which individual reliabilities of edges and nodes are taken into account. The special case of identical edge and node reliabilities (p and rho, respectively) is addressed. We consider a case study based on a commonly-used configuration, and assess the influence of the edges being directed (or not) on various measures of network performance. While the two-terminal reliability, the failure frequency and the failure rate of the connection are quite similar, the locations of complex zeros of the two-terminal reliability polynomials exhibit strong differences, and various structure transitions at specific values of rho. The present work could be extended to provide a catalog of exactly solvable networks in terms of reliability, which could be useful as building blocks for new and improved bounds, as well as benchmarks, in the general case

Improved one-sided deviation inequalities under regularity assumptions for product measures

This note is concerned with lower tail estimates for product measures. Some improved deviation inequalities are obtained for functions satisfying some regularity and monotonicity assumptions. The arguments are based on semigroup interpolation together with Harris's negative association inequality and hypercontractive estimates.Comment: 14 page