Analytical study of tunneling times in flat histogram Monte Carlo

We present a model for the dynamics in energy space of multicanonical simulation methods that lends itself to a rather complete analytic characterization. The dynamics is completely determined by the density of states. In the \pm J 2D spin glass the transitions between the ground state level and the first excited one control the long time dynamics. We are able to calculate the distribution of tunneling times and relate it to the equilibration time of a starting probability distribution. In this model, and possibly in any model in which entering and exiting regions with low density of states are the slowest processes in the simulations, tunneling time can be much larger (by a factor of O(N)) than the equilibration time of the probability distribution. We find that these features also hold for the energy projection of single spin flip dynamics.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, published in Europhysics Letters (2005

Large time behavior for vortex evolution in the half-plane

In this article we study the long-time behavior of incompressible ideal flow in a half plane from the point of view of vortex scattering. Our main result is that certain asymptotic states for half-plane vortex dynamics decompose naturally into a nonlinear superposition of soliton-like states. Our approach is to combine techniques developed in the study of vortex confinement with weak convergence tools in order to study the asymptotic behavior of a self-similar rescaling of a solution of the incompressible 2D Euler equations on a half plane with compactly supported, nonnegative initial vorticity.Comment: 30 pages, no figure

The limit of vanishing viscosity for the incompressible 3D Navier-Stokes equations with helical symmetry

In this paper, we are concerned with the vanishing viscosity problem for the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations with helical symmetry, in the whole space. We choose viscosity-dependent initial \bu_0^\nu with helical swirl, an analogue of the swirl component of axisymmetric flow, of magnitude $\mathcal{O}(\nu)$ in the $L^2$ norm; we assume \bu_0^\nu \to \bu_0 in $H^1$. The new ingredient in our analysis is a decomposition of helical vector fields, through which we obtain the required estimates.Comment: 22page

Approximation of 2D Euler Equations by the Second-Grade Fluid Equations with Dirichlet Boundary Conditions

The second-grade fluid equations are a model for viscoelastic fluids, with two parameters: $\alpha > 0$, corresponding to the elastic response, and $\nu > 0$, corresponding to viscosity. Formally setting these parameters to $0$ reduces the equations to the incompressible Euler equations of ideal fluid flow. In this article we study the limits $\alpha, \nu \to 0$ of solutions of the second-grade fluid system, in a smooth, bounded, two-dimensional domain with no-slip boundary conditions. This class of problems interpolates between the Euler-$\alpha$ model ($\nu = 0$), for which the authors recently proved convergence to the solution of the incompressible Euler equations, and the Navier-Stokes case ($\alpha = 0$), for which the vanishing viscosity limit is an important open problem. We prove three results. First, we establish convergence of the solutions of the second-grade model to those of the Euler equations provided $\nu = \mathcal{O}(\alpha^2)$, as $\alpha \to 0$, extending the main result in [19]. Second, we prove equivalence between convergence (of the second-grade fluid equations to the Euler equations) and vanishing of the energy dissipation in a suitably thin region near the boundary, in the asymptotic regime $\nu = \mathcal{O}(\alpha^{6/5})$, $\nu/\alpha^2 \to \infty$ as $\alpha \to 0$. This amounts to a convergence criterion similar to the well-known Kato criterion for the vanishing viscosity limit of the Navier-Stokes equations to the Euler equations. Finally, we obtain an extension of Kato's classical criterion to the second-grade fluid model, valid if $\alpha = \mathcal{O}(\nu^{3/2})$, as $\nu \to 0$. The proof of all these results relies on energy estimates and boundary correctors, following the original idea by Kato.Comment: 20pages,1figur