Dissipative particle dynamics simulations of polymeric melts in a start-up of shear flow as a function of ramp time to its steady state value is studied. Herein, we report the molecular findings showing the effect of ramp time on the formation of shear banded structures and chain relaxation behavior. Specifically, it is shown that shear banding emerges at a rapid start-up; however, homogeneous shear prevails when the deformation rate ramp time is sufficiently slow. This finding is in full consistency with prior continuum level linear stability analysis of shear banding in start-up of shear flows as well as experimental observations of entangled DNA and polymer solutions. Further, it has been revealed that the ratio of the longest chain orientation relaxation time to that of the time for the imposed deformation rate to reach its steady state value plays a central role in determining whether local strain inhomogeneities that lead to the formation of shear banded flow structures are created. In addition, we have shown that the gradient of the number of entanglements along the velocity gradient direction should reach a critical value for the creation of localized strain inhomogeneity. Moreover, the relation between the local process leading to shear banded flows and the relaxation mechanism of the chain is discussed. Overall, a molecular picture for the interrelation between the longest chain orientation and stress relaxation time, local inhomogeneities, and shear banding has been proposed and corroborated with extensive analysis.

Using numerical simulations we examine colloids with a long-range Coulomb interaction confined in a two-dimensional trough potential undergoing dynamical compression. As the depth of the confining well is increased, the colloids move via elastic distortions interspersed with intermittent bursts or avalanches of plastic motion. In these avalanches, the colloids rearrange to minimize their colloid-colloid repulsive interaction energy by adopting an average lattice constant that is isotropic despite the anisotropic nature of the compression. The avalanches take the form of shear banding events that decrease or increase the structural order of the system. At larger compression, the avalanches are associated with a reduction of the number of rows of colloids that fit within the confining potential, and between avalanches the colloids can exhibit partially crystalline or anisotropic ordering. The colloid velocity distributions during the avalanches have a non-Gaussian form with power-law tails and exponents that are consistent with those found for the velocity distributions of gliding dislocations. We observe similar behavior when we subsequently decompress the system, and find a partially hysteretic response reflecting the irreversibility of the plastic events.

The self-assembly of highly anisotropic colloidal particles leads to a rich variety of morphologies whose properties are just beginning to be understood. This article uses computer simulations to probe a particle-scale perturbation of a commonly studied colloidal assembly, a monolayer membrane composed of rodlike $\mathit{fd}$ viruses in the presence of a polymer depletant. Motivated by experiments currently in progress, we simulate the interaction between a microtubule and a monolayer membrane as the microtubule “pokes” and penetrates the membrane face-on. Both the viruses and the microtubule are modeled as hard spherocylinders of the same diameter, while the depletant is modeled using ghost spheres. We find that the force exerted on the microtubule by the membrane is zero either when the microtubule is completely outside the membrane or when it has fully penetrated the membrane. The microtubule is initially repelled by the membrane as it begins to penetrate but experiences an attractive force as it penetrates further. We assess the roles played by translational and rotational fluctuations of the viruses and the osmotic pressure of the polymer depletant. We find that rotational fluctuations play a more important role than the translational ones. The dependence on the osmotic pressure of the depletant of the width and height of the repulsive barrier and the depth of the attractive potential well is consistent with the assumed depletion-induced attractive interaction between the microtubule and viruses. We discuss the relevance of these studies to the experimental investigations.

We use the laser tweezers to create isolated pairs of topological point defects in a form of radial and hyperbolic hedgehogs, located close and attracted to a thin fiber with perpendicular surface orientation of nematic liquid crystal molecules in a thin planar nematic cell. We study the time evolution of the interaction between the two monopoles by monitoring their movement and reconstructing their trajectories and velocities. We find that there is a crossover in the pair interaction force between the radial and hyperbolic hedgehog. At small separation $d$, the elastic force between the opposite monopoles results in an increase of the attractive force with respect to the far field, and their relative velocity $v$ scales as a $v\left(d\right)\propto d^{-2\pm 0.2}$ power law. At large separations, the two oppositely charged monopoles can either attract or repel with constant interaction force. We explain this strange far-field behavior by the experimental inaccuracy in setting the fiber exactly perpendicular to the cell director.

Nematic colloids exhibit a large diversity of topological defects and structures induced by colloidal particles in the orientationally ordered liquid crystal host fluids. These defects and field configurations define elastic interactions and medium-mediated self-assembly, as well as serve as model systems in exploiting the richness of interactions between topologies and geometries of colloidal surfaces, nematic fields, and topological singularities induced by particles in the nematic bulk and at nematic-colloidal interfaces. Here we demonstrate formation of quarter-strength surface-pinned disclinations, as well as a large variety of director field configurations with splitting and reconnections of singular defect lines, prompted by colloidal particles with sharp edges and size large enough to define strong boundary conditions. Using examples of faceted ring-shaped particles of genus $g=1$, we explore transformation of defect lines as they migrate between locations in the bulk of the nematic host to edge-pinned locations at the surfaces of particles and vice versa, showing that this behavior is compliant with topological constraints defined by mathematical theorems. We discuss how transformation of bulk and surface defect lines induced by faceted colloids can enrich the diversity of elasticity-mediated colloidal interactions and how these findings may impinge on prospects of their controlled reconfigurable self-assembly in nematic hosts.

It is known [H. G. E. Hentschel et al., Phys. Rev. E 83, 061101 (2011)] that amorphous solids at zero temperature do not possess a nonlinear elasticity theory: besides the shear modulus, which exists, none of the higher order coefficients exist in the thermodynamic limit. Here we show that the same phenomenon persists up to temperatures comparable to that of the glass transition. The zero-temperature mechanism due to the prevalence of dangerous plastic modes of the Hessian matrix is replaced by anomalous stress fluctuations that lead to the divergence of the variances of the higher order elastic coefficients. The conclusion is that in amorphous solids elasticity can never be decoupled from plasticity: the nonlinear response is very substantially plastic.

One of the promising capabilities of magnetic microswimmers is towing a cargo, which can be used for targeted drug delivery or performing tissue biopsy. A key question is what should be the optimal size ratio between the cargo and the swimmer's flexible tail. This question is addressed here for the simplest theoretical model of a magnetic microswimmer undergoing planar undulations—a spherical load connected by a torsion spring to a rigid slender link. The swimmer's dynamic is formulated and leading-order expressions for its motion are obtained explicitly under small-amplitude approximation. Optimal combinations of magnetic actuation frequency, torsion stiffness, and tail length for maximizing displacement, average speed, or energetic efficiency are obtained. The theoretical results are compared with reported experiments in several types of cargo-towing magnetic microswimmers.

Broadband terahertz (THz) radiation with extremely high peak power, generated by the interaction of a femtosecond laser with a thin solid target, has been investigated via particle-in-cell simulations. The spatial (angular) and temporal profiles of the THz radiation reveal that it is caused by the coherent transition radiation emitted when laser-produced hot electrons pass through the front or rear surface of the target. Dependence of the THz radiation on laser and target parameters is studied; it is shown to have a strong correlation with hot electron production. The THz radiation conversion efficiency can be as high as a few times ${10}^{-3}$. This radiation is not only a potentially high power THz source, but may also be used as a unique diagnostic of hot electron generation and transport in relativistic laser-solid interactions.

The Gibbs canonical state, as a maximum entropy density matrix, represents a quantum system in equilibrium with a thermostat. This state plays an essential role in thermodynamics and serves as the initial condition for nonequilibrium dynamical simulations. We solve a long standing problem for computing the Gibbs state Wigner function with nearly machine accuracy by solving the Bloch equation directly in the phase space. Furthermore, the algorithms are provided yielding high quality Wigner distributions for pure stationary states as well as for Thomas-Fermi and Bose-Einstein distributions. The developed numerical methods furnish a long-sought efficient computation framework for nonequilibrium quantum simulations directly in the Wigner representation.

This paper addresses an important fundamental question: the differences between wave propagation in fractured porous media with a uniform matrix (constant bulk modulus) and those in which the matrix is heterogeneous with its bulk modulus distributed spatially. The analysis of extensive experimental data [Phys. Rev. E 71, 046301 (2005)] indicated that such distributions are self-affine and induce correlations at all the relevant length scales. The comparison is important from a practical view point because in many of the traditional models of fractured rock, particularly those that are used to study wave propagation or fit some data, the matrix is assumed to be uniform. Using extensive numerical simulation of propagation of acoustic waves, we present strong evidence indicating that the waves' amplitude in a fractured porous medium with a heterogeneous matrix decays exponentially with the distance from the source. This is in sharp contrast with a fractured porous medium with a uniform matrix in which not only the waves' amplitude decays with the distance as a stretched exponential function, but the exponent that characterizes the function is also dependent upon the fracture density. The localization length depends on the correlations in the spatial distribution of the bulk modulus, as well as the fracture density. The mean speed of the waves varies linearly with the fractures' mean orientation.

We consider the problem of how to determine the force laws in an amorphous system of interacting particles. Given the positions of the centers of mass of the constituent particles we propose an algorithm to determine the interparticle force laws. Having $n$ different types of constituents we determine the coefficients in the Laurent polynomials for the $n(n+1)/2$ possibly different force laws. A visual providing the particle positions in addition to a measurement of the pressure is all that is required. The algorithm proposed includes a part that can correct for experimental errors in the positions of the particles. Such a correction of unavoidable measurement errors is expected to benefit many experiments in the field.

We explore numerically the high-dimensional spatiotemporal chaos of Rayleigh-Bénard convection using covariant Lyapunov vectors. We integrate the three-dimensional and time-dependent Boussinesq equations for a convection layer in a shallow square box geometry with an aspect ratio of 16 for very long times and for a range of Rayleigh numbers. We simultaneously integrate many copies of the tangent space equations in order to compute the covariant Lyapunov vectors. The dynamics explored has fractal dimensions of $20\lesssim D_{\lambda }\lesssim 50$, and we compute on the order of 150 covariant Lyapunov vectors. We use the covariant Lyapunov vectors to quantify the degree of hyperbolicity of the dynamics and the degree of Oseledets splitting and to explore the temporal and spatial dynamics of the Lyapunov vectors. Our results indicate that the chaotic dynamics of Rayleigh-Bénard convection is nonhyperbolic for all of the Rayleigh numbers we have explored. Our results yield that the entire spectrum of covariant Lyapunov vectors that we have computed are tangled as indicated by near tangencies with neighboring vectors. A closer look at the spatiotemporal features of the Lyapunov vectors suggests contributions from structures at two different length scales with differing amounts of localization.

Locally decreasing the impulse transmitted by periodic pulses is shown to be a reliable method of taming chaos in starlike networks of dissipative nonlinear oscillators, leading to both synchronous periodic states and equilibria (oscillation death). Specifically, the paradigmatic model of damped kicked rotators is studied in which it is assumed that when the rotators are driven synchronously, i.e., all driving pulses transmit the same impulse, the networks display chaotic dynamics. It is found that the taming effect of decreasing the impulse transmitted by the pulses acting on particular nodes strongly depends on their number and degree of connectivity. A theoretical analysis is given explaining the basic physical mechanism as well as the main features of the chaos-control scenario.

Natural and man-made networks often possess locally treelike substructures. Taking such tree networks as our starting point, we show how the addition of links changes the synchronization properties of the network. We focus on two different methods of link addition. The first method adds single links that create cycles of a well-defined length. Following a topological approach, we introduce cycles of varying length and analyze how this feature, as well as the position in the network, alters the synchronous behavior. We show that in particular short cycles can lead to a maximum change of the Laplacian's eigenvalue spectrum, dictating the synchronization properties of such networks. The second method connects a certain proportion of the initially unconnected nodes. We simulate dynamical systems on these network topologies, with the nodes' local dynamics being either discrete or continuous. Here our main result is that a certain number of additional links, with the relative position in the network being crucial, can be beneficial to ensure stable synchronization.

The problem of synchronization of coupled Hamiltonian systems presents interesting features due to the mixed nature (regular and chaotic) of the phase space. We study these features by examining the synchronization of unidirectionally coupled area-preserving maps coupled by the Pecora-Caroll method. The master stability function approach is used to study the stability of the synchronous state and to identify the percentage of synchronizing initial conditions. The transient to synchronization shows intermittency with an associated power law. The mixed nature of the phase space of the studied map has notable effects on the synchronization times as is seen in the case of the standard map. Using finite-time Lyapunov exponent analysis, we show that the synchronization of the maps occurs in the neighborhood of invariant curves in the phase space. The phase differences of the coevolving trajectories show intermittency effects, due to the existence of stable periodic orbits contributing locally stable directions in the synchronizing neighborhoods. Furthermore, the value of the nonlinearity parameter, as well as the location of the initial conditions play an important role in the distribution of synchronization times. We examine drive response combinations which are chaotic-chaotic, chaotic-regular, regular-chaotic, and regular-regular. A range of scaling behavior is seen for these cases, including situations where the distributions show a power-law tail, indicating long synchronization times for at least some of the synchronizing trajectories. The introduction of coherent structures in the system changes the situation drastically. The distribution of synchronization times crosses over to exponential behavior, indicating shorter synchronization times, and the number of initial conditions which synchronize increases significantly, indicating an enhancement in the basin of synchronization. We discuss the implications of our results.

We study the importance of local structural properties in networks which have been evolved for a power-law scaling in their Laplacian spectrum. To this end, the degree distribution, two-point degree correlations, and degree-dependent clustering are extracted from the evolved networks and used to construct random networks with the prescribed distributions. In the analysis of these reconstructed networks it turns out that the degree distribution alone is not sufficient to generate the spectral scaling and the degree-dependent clustering has only an indirect influence. The two-point correlations are found to be the dominant characteristic for the power-law scaling over a broader eigenvalue range.

The rock-paper-scissors game is a paradigmatic model for biodiversity, with applications ranging from microbial populations to human societies. Research has shown, however, that mobility jeopardizes biodiversity by promoting the formation of spiral waves, especially if there is no conservation law in place for the total number of competing players. First, we show that even if such a conservation law applies, mobility still jeopardizes biodiversity in the spatial rock-paper-scissors game if only a small fraction of links of the square lattice is randomly rewired. Secondly, we show that zealots are very effective in taming the amplitude of oscillations that emerge due to mobility and/or interaction randomness, and this regardless of whether the later is quenched or annealed. While even a tiny fraction of zealots brings significant benefits, at 5% occupancy zealots practically destroy all oscillations regardless of the intensity of mobility, and regardless of the type and strength of randomness in the interaction structure. Interestingly, by annealed randomness the impact of zealots is qualitatively the same as by mobility, which highlights that fast diffusion does not necessarily destroy the coexistence of species, and that zealotry thus helps to recover the stable mean-field solution. Our results strengthen the important role of zealots in models of cyclic dominance, and they reveal fascinating evolutionary outcomes in structured populations that are a unique consequence of such uncompromising behavior.

The dynamics of magnetorheological fluids have typically been described by the Mason number, a governing parameter defined as the ratio between viscous and magnetic forces in the fluid. For most experimental suspensions of magnetic particles, surface forces, such as steric and electrostatic interactions, can significantly influence the dynamics. Here we propose a theory of a modified Mason number that accounts for surface forces and show that this modified Mason number is a function of interparticle distance. We demonstrate that this modified Mason number is accurate in describing the dynamics of a rotating pair of paramagnetic colloids of identical or mismatched sizes in either high or low salt solutions. The modified Mason number is confirmed to be pseudoconstant for particle pairs and particle chains undergoing a stable-metastable transition during rotation. The interparticle distance term can be calculated using theory or can be measured experimentally. This modified Mason number is more applicable to magnetorheological systems where surface forces are not negligible.

Microfluidic separation of magnetic particles is based on their capture by magnetized microcollectors while the suspending fluid flows past the microcollectors inside a microchannel. Separation of nanoparticles is often challenging because of strong Brownian motion. Low capture efficiency of nanoparticles limits their applications in bioanalysis. However, at some conditions, magnetic nanoparticles may undergo field-induced aggregation that amplifies the magnetic attractive force proportionally to the aggregate volume and considerably increases nanoparticle capture efficiency. In this paper, we have demonstrated the role of such aggregation on an efficient capture of magnetic nanoparticles (about 80 nm in diameter) in a microfluidic channel equipped with a nickel micropillar array. This array was magnetized by an external uniform magnetic field, of intensity as low as 6–10 kA/m, and experiments were carried out at flow rates ranging between 0.3 and $30 \mu \mathrm{L}/\min$. Nanoparticle capture is shown to be mostly governed by the Mason number Ma, while the dipolar coupling parameter α does not exhibit a clear effect in the studied range, 1.4 < α < 4.5. The capture efficiency Λ shows a strongly decreasing Mason number behavior, $\mathrm{\Lambda }\propto \mathrm{M}{\mathrm{a}}^{-1.78}$ within the range $32 \le$ Ma $\le$ 3250. We have proposed a simple theoretical model which considers destructible nanoparticle chains and gives the scaling behavior, $\mathrm{\Lambda }\propto \mathrm{M}{\mathrm{a}}^{-1.7}$, close to the experimental findings.

The extent to which active matter might be described by effective equilibrium concepts like temperature and pressure is currently being discussed intensely. Here, we study the simplest model, an ideal gas of noninteracting active Brownian particles. While the mechanical pressure exerted onto confining walls has been linked to correlations between particles' positions and their orientations, we show that these correlations are entirely controlled by boundary effects. We also consider a definition of local pressure, which describes interparticle forces in terms of momentum exchange between different regions of the system. We present three pieces of analytical evidence which indicate that such a local pressure exists, and we show that its bulk value differs from the mechanical pressure exerted on the walls of the system. We attribute this difference to the fact that the local pressure in the bulk does not depend on boundary effects, contrary to the mechanical pressure. We carefully examine these boundary effects using a channel geometry, and we show a virial formula for the pressure correctly predicts the mechanical pressure even in finite channels. However, this result no longer holds in more complex geometries, as exemplified for a channel that includes circular obstacles.