Excitation of trapped water waves by the forced motion of structures

A numerical and analytical investigation is made into the response of a fluid when a two-dimensional structure is forced to move in a prescribed fashion. The structure is constructed in such a way that it supports a trapped mode at one particular frequency. The fluid motion is assumed to be small and the time-domain equations for linear water-wave theory are solved numerically. In addition, the asymptotic behaviour of the resulting velocity potential is determined analytically from the relationship between the time- and frequency-domain solutions. The trapping structure has two distinct surface-piercing elements and the trapped mode exhibits a vertical ‘pumping’ motion of the fluid between the elements. When the structure is forced to oscillate at the trapped-mode frequency an oscillation which grows in time but decays in space is observed. An oscillatory forcing at a frequency different from that of the trapped mode produces bounded oscillations at both the forcing and the trappedmode frequency. A transient forcing also gives rise to a localized oscillation at the trapped-mode frequency which does not decay with time. Where possible, comparisons are made between the numerical and asymptotic solutions and good agreement is observed. The calculations described above are contrasted with the results from a similar forcing of a pair of semicircular cylinders which intersect the free surface at the same points as the trapping structure. For this second geometry no localized or unbounded oscillations are observed. The trapping structure is then given a sequence of perturbations which transform it into the two semicircular cylinders and the timedomain equations solved for a transient forcing of each structural geometry in the sequence. For small perturbations of the trapping structure, localized oscillations are produced which have a frequency close to that of the trapped mode but with amplitude that decays slowly with time. Estimates of the frequency and the rate of decay of the oscillation are made from the time-domain calculations. These values correspond to the real and imaginary parts of a pole in the complex force coefficient associated with a frequency-domain potential. An estimate of the position of this pole is obtained from calculations of the added mass and damping for the structure and shows good agreement with the time-domain results. Further time-domain calculations for a different trapping structure with more widely spaced elements show a number of interesting features. In particular, a transient forcing leads to persistent oscillations at two distinct frequencies, suggesting that there is either a second trapped mode, or a very lightly damped near-trapped mode. In addition a highly damped pumping mode is identified

Algorithmic Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Termination Problems for Affine Probabilistic Programs

In this paper, we consider termination of probabilistic programs with real-valued variables. The questions concerned are: 1. qualitative ones that ask (i) whether the program terminates with probability 1 (almost-sure termination) and (ii) whether the expected termination time is finite (finite termination); 2. quantitative ones that ask (i) to approximate the expected termination time (expectation problem) and (ii) to compute a bound B such that the probability to terminate after B steps decreases exponentially (concentration problem). To solve these questions, we utilize the notion of ranking supermartingales which is a powerful approach for proving termination of probabilistic programs. In detail, we focus on algorithmic synthesis of linear ranking-supermartingales over affine probabilistic programs (APP's) with both angelic and demonic non-determinism. An important subclass of APP's is LRAPP which is defined as the class of all APP's over which a linear ranking-supermartingale exists. Our main contributions are as follows. Firstly, we show that the membership problem of LRAPP (i) can be decided in polynomial time for APP's with at most demonic non-determinism, and (ii) is NP-hard and in PSPACE for APP's with angelic non-determinism; moreover, the NP-hardness result holds already for APP's without probability and demonic non-determinism. Secondly, we show that the concentration problem over LRAPP can be solved in the same complexity as for the membership problem of LRAPP. Finally, we show that the expectation problem over LRAPP can be solved in 2EXPTIME and is PSPACE-hard even for APP's without probability and non-determinism (i.e., deterministic programs). Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach to answer the qualitative and quantitative questions over APP's with at most demonic non-determinism.Comment: 24 pages, full version to the conference paper on POPL 201

Valley-selective optical Stark effect in monolayer WS2

Breaking space-time symmetries in two-dimensional crystals (2D) can dramatically influence their macroscopic electronic properties. Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are prime examples where the intrinsically broken crystal inversion symmetry permits the generation of valley-selective electron populations, even though the two valleys are energetically degenerate, locked by time-reversal symmetry. Lifting the valley degeneracy in these materials is of great interest because it would allow for valley-specific band engineering and offer additional control in valleytronic applications. While applying a magnetic field should in principle accomplish this task, experiments to date have observed no valley-selective energy level shifts in fields accessible in the laboratory. Here we show the first direct evidence of lifted valley degeneracy in the monolayer TMD WS2. By applying intense circularly polarized light, which breaks time-reversal symmetry, we demonstrate that the exciton level in each valley can be selectively tuned by as much as 18 meV via the optical Stark effect. These results offer a novel way to control valley degree of freedom, and may provide a means to realize new valley-selective Floquet topological phases in 2D TMDs

Wikipedia Usage Estimates Prevalence of Influenza-Like Illness in the United States in Near Real-Time

Circulating levels of both seasonal and pandemic influenza require constant surveillance to ensure the health and safety of the population. While up-to-date information is critical, traditional surveillance systems can have data availability lags of up to two weeks. We introduce a novel method of estimating, in near-real time, the level of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the United States (US) by monitoring the rate of particular Wikipedia article views on a daily basis. We calculated the number of times certain influenza- or health-related Wikipedia articles were accessed each day between December 2007 and August 2013 and compared these data to official ILI activity levels provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We developed a Poisson model that accurately estimates the level of ILI activity in the American population, up to two weeks ahead of the CDC, with an absolute average difference between the two estimates of just 0.27% over 294 weeks of data. Wikipedia-derived ILI models performed well through both abnormally high media coverage events (such as during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic) as well as unusually severe influenza seasons (such as the 2012–2013 influenza season). Wikipedia usage accurately estimated the week of peak ILI activity 17% more often than Google Flu Trends data and was often more accurate in its measure of ILI intensity. With further study, this method could potentially be implemented for continuous monitoring of ILI activity in the US and to provide support for traditional influenza surveillance tools

Strong, Weak and Branching Bisimulation for Transition Systems and Markov Reward Chains: A Unifying Matrix Approach

We first study labeled transition systems with explicit successful termination. We establish the notions of strong, weak, and branching bisimulation in terms of boolean matrix theory, introducing thus a novel and powerful algebraic apparatus. Next we consider Markov reward chains which are standardly presented in real matrix theory. By interpreting the obtained matrix conditions for bisimulations in this setting, we automatically obtain the definitions of strong, weak, and branching bisimulation for Markov reward chains. The obtained strong and weak bisimulations are shown to coincide with some existing notions, while the obtained branching bisimulation is new, but its usefulness is questionable

Trapped modes for off-centre structures in guides

The existence of trapped modes near obstacles in two-dimensional waveguides is well established when the centre-line of the guide is a line of symmetry for the geometry. In this paper we examine cases where no such line of symmetry exists. The boundary condition on the obstacle is of Neumann type and both Neumann and Dirichlet conditions on the guide walls are treated. A variety of techniques (variational methods, boundary integral equations, slender-body theory, modified residue calculus theory) are used to investigate trapped mode phenomena in a number of different frequency bands

Nonlinear optical probe of tunable surface electrons on a topological insulator

We use ultrafast laser pulses to experimentally demonstrate that the second-order optical response of bulk single crystals of the topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ is sensitive to its surface electrons. By performing surface doping dependence measurements as a function of photon polarization and sample orientation we show that second harmonic generation can simultaneously probe both the surface crystalline structure and the surface charge of Bi$_2$Se$_3$. Furthermore, we find that second harmonic generation using circularly polarized photons reveals the time-reversal symmetry properties of the system and is surprisingly robust against surface charging, which makes it a promising tool for spectroscopic studies of topological surfaces and buried interfaces