Thermal flickers: A semianalytical approach

In order to enhance physical insight into the nature of thermal oscillations arising from a thin helium burning shell, the behavior in its phase plane of a simple two zone model which, however, contains all the relevant physics is analyzed. This simple model very naturally reproduces thermal flickers and is relatively insensitive to all but two parameters

Dynamics of many-particle fragmentation in a Cellular Automaton model

A 3D Cellular Automaton model developed by the authors to deal with the dynamics of N-body interactions has been adapted to investigate the head-on collision of two identical bound clusters of particles, and the ensuing process of fragmentation. The range of impact energies is chosen low enough, to secure that a compound bound cluster can be formed. The model is devised to simulate the laboratory set-up of fragmentation experiments as monitored by 4pi detectors. The particles interact via a Lennard-Jones potential. At low impact energies the numerical experiments following the dynamics of the individual particles indicate a phase of energy sharing among all the particles of the compound cluster. Fragments of all sizes are then found to evaporate from the latter cluster. The cluster sizes, measured in our set-up by simulated 4pi detectors, conform to a power law of exponent around 2.6.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Wave chaos in rapidly rotating stars

Effects of rapid stellar rotation on acoustic oscillation modes are poorly understood. We study the dynamics of acoustic rays in rotating polytropic stars and show using quantum chaos concepts that the eigenfrequency spectrum is a superposition of regular frequency patterns and an irregular frequency subset respectively associated with near-integrable and chaotic phase space regions. This opens new perspectives for rapidly rotating star seismology and also provides a new and potentially observable manifestation of wave chaos in a large scale natural system.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

FACTS AND IDEAS IN MODERN COSMOLOGY

A review of the principles of observational testing of cosmological theories is given with a special emphasis on the distinction between observational facts and theoretical hypotheses. A classification of modern cosmological theories and possible observational tests for these theories is presented. The main rival cosmological models are analyzed from the point of view of observational testing of their initial hypothesis. A comparison of modern observational data with theoretical predictions is presented. In particular we discuss in detail the validity of the two basic assumptions of modern cosmology that are the Cosmological Principle and the Expanding Space Paradigm. It is found that classical paradigms need to be reanalyzed and that it is necessary to develop crucial cosmological tests to discriminate alternative theories.Comment: 84 pages, latex, figures are available to F.S.L ([email protected]). Accepted for publication in Vistas In astronomy, Vol.38, Part.4, 199

CA Simulations of 2D Stellar Atmosphere Pulsations

We develop a new version of a Cellular Automaton (CA) for the simulation of the dynamics of a stellar atmosphere sitting on top of an inert core, and specified by the following physical input parameters: mass, radius and luminosity of core, and mass of atmosphere. The CA incorporates various parametrised simulation schemes of the instability mechanism (essentially ionisation). The initial state in all of our numerical experiments is a radially symmetric atmosphere of exponential density run and uniform temperature (input parameters: density scale– height and temperature of atmosphere). The initial atmosphere is not in hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium. After a transient stage, the system relaxes, for certain ranges of the parameters of the instability mechanism, towards a state of nontrivial dynamical behaviour: Local heat–driven circulations are set up which may range from nearly stationary and spatially symmetric cellular patterns to temporally and spatially irregularly fluctuating velocity fields. The traditional radial symmetry of the density pattern is broken, so that the star acquires a globally non–spherical shape. The residual non–stationary component, when integrated over the star to produce the counterpart of an observational velocity curve of a variable star, shows an irregular cyclic behaviour which does not have the signature of low–dimensional deterministic chaos

Dynamic Catastrophes in Stars

The invariance of the equations of linear stability of a physical system under a change of sign of the dependent variables implies that we cannot foresee, once an instability is detected, in which direction the system will evolve. In the context of radial dynamical stability this means that the linear analysis does not allow us to discriminate between a subsequent contraction or expansion. To fix up the arrow of the evolution beyond the onset of the instability, a nonlinear analysis is required.</jats:p