Contact of Single Asperities with Varying Adhesion: Comparing Continuum Mechanics to Atomistic Simulations

Atomistic simulations are used to test the equations of continuum contact mechanics in nanometer scale contacts. Nominally spherical tips, made by bending crystals or cutting crystalline or amorphous solids, are pressed into a flat, elastic substrate. The normal displacement, contact radius, stress distribution, friction and lateral stiffness are examined as a function of load and adhesion. The atomic scale roughness present on any tip made of discrete atoms is shown to have profound effects on the results. Contact areas, local stresses, and the work of adhesion change by factors of two to four, and the friction and lateral stiffness vary by orders of magnitude. The microscopic factors responsible for these changes are discussed. The results are also used to test methods for analyzing experimental data with continuum theory to determine information, such as contact area, that can not be measured directly in nanometer scale contacts. Even when the data appear to be fit by continuum theory, extracted quantities can differ substantially from their true values

Broadband stimulated four-wave parametric conversion on a tantalum pentoxide photonic chip

We exploit the large third order nonlinear susceptibility (?(3) or “Chi 3”) of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) planar waveguides and realize broadband optical parametric conversion on-chip. We use a co-linear pump-probe configuration and observe stimulated four wave parametric conversion when seeding either in the visible or the infrared. Pumping at 800 nm we observe parametric conversion over a broad spectral range with the parametric idler output spanning from 1200 nm to 1600 nm in infrared wavelengths and from 555 nm to 600 nm in visible wavelengths. Our demonstration of on-chip stimulated four wave parametric conversion introduces Ta2O5 as a novel material for broadband integrated nonlinear photonic circuit applications

Extreme case of Faraday effect: magnetic splitting of ultrashort laser pulses in plasmas

The Faraday effect, caused by a magnetic-field-induced change in the optical properties, takes place in a vast variety of systems from a single atomic layer of graphenes to huge galaxies. Currently, it plays a pivot role in many applications such as the manipulation of light and the probing of magnetic fields and material's properties. Basically, this effect causes a polarization rotation of light during its propagation along the magnetic field in a medium. Here, we report an extreme case of the Faraday effect where a linearly polarized ultrashort laser pulse splits in time into two circularly polarized pulses of opposite handedness during its propagation in a highly magnetized plasma. This offers a new degree of freedom for manipulating ultrashort and ultrahigh power laser pulses. Together with technologies of ultra-strong magnetic fields, it may pave the way for novel optical devices, such as magnetized plasma polarizers. In addition, it may offer a powerful means to measure strong magnetic fields in laser-produced plasmas.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Fluid Flows of Mixed Regimes in Porous Media

In porous media, there are three known regimes of fluid flows, namely, pre-Darcy, Darcy and post-Darcy. Because of their different natures, these are usually treated separately in literature. To study complex flows when all three regimes may be present in different portions of a same domain, we use a single equation of motion to unify them. Several scenarios and models are then considered for slightly compressible fluids. A nonlinear parabolic equation for the pressure is derived, which is degenerate when the pressure gradient is either small or large. We estimate the pressure and its gradient for all time in terms of initial and boundary data. We also obtain their particular bounds for large time which depend on the asymptotic behavior of the boundary data but not on the initial one. Moreover, the continuous dependence of the solutions on initial and boundary data, and the structural stability for the equation are established.Comment: 33 page

A new approach to the derivation of dynamic information from ionosonde measurements

International audienceA new approach is developed to derive dynamic information near the peak of the ionospheric F-layer from ionosonde measurements. This approach avoids deducing equivalent winds from the displacement of the observed peak height from a no-wind equilibrium height, so it need not determine the no-wind equilibrium height which may limit the accuracy of the deduced winds, as did the traditional servo theory. This approach is preliminarily validated with comparisons of deduced equivalent winds with the measurements from the Fabry-Perot interferometer, the Millstone Hill incoherent scatter radar and with previous works. Examples of vertical components of equivalent winds (VEWs), over Wuhan (114.4° E, 30.6° N, 45.2° dip), China in December 2000 are derived from Wuhan DGS-256 Digisonde data. The deduced VEWs show large day-to-day variations during the winter, even in low magnetic activity conditions. The diurnal pattern of average VEWs is more complicated than that predicted by the empirical Horizontal Wind Model (HWM). Using an empirical electric field model based on the observations from Jicamarca radar and satellites, we investigate the contributions to VEWs from neutral winds and from electric fields at the F-layer peak. If the electric field model is reasonable for Wuhan during this period, the neutral winds contribute mostly to the VEWs, and the contribution from the E × B drifts is insignificant

Nonlocal Phases of Local Quantum Mechanical Wavefunctions in Static and Time-Dependent Aharonov-Bohm Experiments

We show that the standard Dirac phase factor is not the only solution of the gauge transformation equations. The full form of a general gauge function (that connects systems that move in different sets of scalar and vector potentials), apart from Dirac phases also contains terms of classical fields that act nonlocally (in spacetime) on the local solutions of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation: the phases of wavefunctions in the Schr\"odinger picture are affected nonlocally by spatially and temporally remote magnetic and electric fields, in ways that are fully explored. These contributions go beyond the usual Aharonov-Bohm effects (magnetic or electric). (i) Application to cases of particles passing through static magnetic or electric fields leads to cancellations of Aharonov-Bohm phases at the observation point; these are linked to behaviors at the semiclassical level (to the old Werner & Brill experimental observations, or their "electric analogs" - or to recent reports of Batelaan & Tonomura) but are shown to be far more general (true not only for narrow wavepackets but also for completely delocalized quantum states). By using these cancellations, certain previously unnoticed sign-errors in the literature are corrected. (ii) Application to time-dependent situations provides a remedy for erroneous results in the literature (on improper uses of Dirac phase factors) and leads to phases that contain an Aharonov-Bohm part and a field-nonlocal part: their competition is shown to recover Relativistic Causality in earlier "paradoxes" (such as the van Kampen thought-experiment), while a more general consideration indicates that the temporal nonlocalities found here demonstrate in part a causal propagation of phases of quantum mechanical wavefunctions in the Schr\"odinger picture. This may open a direct way to address time-dependent double-slit experiments and the associated causal issuesComment: 49 pages, 1 figure, presented in Conferences "50 years of the Aharonov-Bohm effect and 25 years of the Berry's phase" (Tel Aviv and Bristol), published in Journ. Phys. A. Compared to the published paper, this version has 17 additional lines after eqn.(14) for maximum clarity, and the Abstract has been slightly modified and reduced from the published 2035 characters to the required 1920 character

Simulations of magnetic and magnetoelastic properties of Tb2Ti2O7 in paramagnetic phase

Magnetic and magnetoelastic properties of terbium titanate pyrochlore in paramagnetic phase are simulated. The magnetic field and temperature dependences of magnetization and forced magnetostriction in Tb2Ti2O7 single crystals and polycrystalline samples are calculated in the framework of exchange charge model of crystal field theory and a mean field approximation. The set of electron-deformation coupling constants has been determined. Variations of elastic constants with temperature and applied magnetic field are discussed. Additional strong softening of the crystal lattice at liquid helium temperatures in the magnetic field directed along the rhombic symmetry axis is predicted.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Four-week rapamycin treatment improves muscular dystrophy in a fukutin-deficient mouse model of dystroglycanopathy

Tissue mass-normalized values of cytochrome C reduced in vitro by succinate dehydrogenase from homogenized TAs of VEH- or RAPA-treated LC and KO mice. Two-way ANOVA. (PDF 291 kb

On the statistical interpretation of optical rogue waves

Numerical simulations are used to discuss various aspects of "optical rogue wave" statistics observed in noise-driven fiber supercontinuum generation associated with highly incoherent spectra. In particular, we consider how long wavelength spectral filtering influences the characteristics of the statistical distribution of peak power, and we contrast the statistics of the spectrally filtered SC with the statistics of both the peak power of the most red-shifted soliton in the SC and the maximum peak power across the full temporal field with no spectral selection. For the latter case, we show that the unfiltered statistical distribution can still exhibit a long-tail, but the extreme-events in this case correspond to collisions between solitons of different frequencies. These results confirm the importance of collision dynamics in supercontinuum generation. We also show that the collision-induced events satisfy an extended hydrodynamic definition of "rogue wave" characteristics.Comment: Paper accepted for publication in the European Physical Journal ST, Special Topics. Discussion and Debate: Rogue Waves - towards a unifying concept? To appear 201