We address the problem of a microscopic derivation of the Langevin equation for a weakly relativistic Brownian particle. A noncovariant Hamiltonian model is adopted, in which the free motion of particles is described relativistically while their interaction is treated classically, i.e., by means of action-to-a-distance interaction potentials. Relativistic corrections to the classical Langevin equation emerge as nonlinear dissipation terms and originate from the nonlinear dependence of the relativistic velocity on momentum. On the other hand, similar nonlinear dissipation forces also appear as classical (nonrelativistic) corrections to the weak-coupling approximation. It is shown that these classical corrections, which are usually ignored in phenomenological models, may be of the same order of magnitude, if not larger than, relativistic ones. The interplay of relativistic corrections and classical beyond-the-weak-coupling contributions determines the sign of the leading nonlinear dissipation term in the Langevin equation and thus is qualitatively important.

An approach has been proposed for the description of the dispersion transition of a nonwetting liquid in confinement. This approach describes intrusion and extrusion processes for the ground state of a disordered porous medium, which is characterized by the formation of a fractal percolation cluster. The observed transition of the system of liquid nanoclusters in confinement to a metastable state in a narrow range of degrees of filling and temperatures has been explained by the appearance of a potential barrier owing to fluctuations of the collective “multiparticle interaction” of liquid nanoclusters in neighboring pores of different sizes on the shell of the fractal percolation cluster of filled pores. The energy of the metastable state forms a potential relief in the space of the porous medium with many maxima and minima. The volume of the dispersed liquid in the metastable state has been calculated within the analytical percolation theory for the ground state with the infinite percolation cluster. The extrusion-time distribution function of pores has been calculated. It has been found that the volume of the nonwetting liquid remaining in the porous medium decreases with time according to a power law. Relaxation in the system under study is a multistep process involving discontinuous equilibrium and overcoming of many local maxima of the potential relief. The formation of the metastable state of the trapped nonwetting liquid has been attributed to the nonergodicity of the disordered porous medium. The model reproduces the observed dependence of the volume of the dispersed liquid both on the degree of filling and on the temperature.

We study the planar matching problem, defined by a symmetric random matrix with independent identically distributed entries, taking values zero and one. We show that the existence of a perfect planar matching structure is possible only above a certain critical density, $p_c$, of allowed contacts (i.e., of ones). Using a formulation of the problem in terms of Dyck paths and a matrix model of planar contact structures, we provide an analytical estimation for the value of the transition point, $p_c$, in the thermodynamic limit. This estimation is close to the critical value, $p_c\approx 0.379$, obtained in numerical simulations based on an exact dynamical programming algorithm. We characterize the corresponding critical behavior of the model and discuss the relation of the perfect-imperfect matching transition to the known molten-glass transition in the context of random RNA secondary structure formation. In particular, we provide strong evidence supporting the conjecture that the molten-glass transition at $T=0$ occurs at $p_c$.

We discuss the product of $M$ rectangular random matrices with independent Gaussian entries, which have several applications, including wireless telecommunication and econophysics. For complex matrices an explicit expression for the joint probability density function is obtained using the Harish-Chandra-Itzykson-Zuber integration formula. Explicit expressions for all correlation functions and moments for finite matrix sizes are obtained using a two-matrix model and the method of biorthogonal polynomials. This generalizes the classical result for the so-called Wishart-Laguerre Gaussian unitary ensemble (or chiral unitary ensemble) at $M=1$, and previous results for the product of square matrices. The correlation functions are given by a determinantal point process, where the kernel can be expressed in terms of Meijer $G$-functions. We compare the results with numerical simulations and known results for the macroscopic level density in the limit of large matrices. The location of the end points of support for the latter are analyzed in detail for general $M$. Finally, we consider the so-called ergodic mutual information, which gives an upper bound for the spectral efficiency of a MIMO communication channel with multifold scattering.

The transport coefficients of a granular binary mixture driven by a stochastic bath with friction are determined from the inelastic Boltzmann kinetic equation. A normal solution is obtained via the Chapman-Enskog method for states near homogeneous steady states. The mass, momentum, and heat fluxes are determined to first order in the spatial gradients of the hydrodynamic fields, and the associated transport coefficients are identified. They are given in terms of the solutions of a set of coupled linear integral equations. As in the monocomponent case, since the collisional cooling cannot be compensated for locally by the heat produced by the external driving, the reference distributions (zeroth-order approximations) $f_i^{\left(0\right)}$ ($i=1,2$) for each species depend on time through their dependence on the pressure and the temperature. Explicit forms for the diffusion transport coefficients and the shear viscosity coefficient are obtained by assuming the steady-state conditions and by considering the leading terms in a Sonine polynomial expansion. A comparison with previous results obtained for granular Brownian motion and by using a (local) stochastic thermostat is also carried out. The present work extends previous theoretical results derived for monocomponent dense gases [Garzó, Chamorro, and Vega Reyes, Phys. Rev. E 87, 032201 (2013)] to granular mixtures at low density.

Using Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations we investigate the impact of shear flow on structural and dynamical properties of a system of charged colloids confined to a narrow slit pore. Our model consists of spherical microions interacting through a Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) and a soft-sphere potential. The DLVO parameters were chosen according to a system of moderately charged silica particles (with valence $Z\sim 35$) in a solvent of low ionic strength. At the confinement conditions considered, the colloids form two well-pronounced layers. In the present study we investigate shear-induced transitions of the translational order and dynamics in the layers, including a discussion of the translational diffusion. In particular, we show that diffusion in the shear-melted state can be described by an analytical model involving a single shear-driven particle in a harmonic trap. We also explore the emergence of zigzag motion characterized by spatiotemporal oscillations of the particles in the layers in the vorticity direction. Similar behavior has been recently observed in experiments of much thicker colloidal films.

We study the stability and roughness of propagating cracks in heterogeneous brittle two-dimensional elastic materials. We begin by deriving an equation of motion describing the dynamics of such a crack in the framework of linear elastic fracture mechanics, based on the Griffith criterion and the principle of local symmetry. This result allows us to extend the stability analysis of Cotterell and Rice [B. Cotterell and J. R. Rice, Int. J. Fract. 16, 155 (1980)] to disordered materials. In the stable regime we find stochastic crack paths. Using tools of statistical physics, we obtain the power spectrum of these paths and their probability distribution function and conclude that they do not exhibit self-affinity. We show that a real-space fractal analysis of these paths can lead to the wrong conclusion that the paths are self-affine. To complete the picture, we unravel a systematic bias in such real-space methods and thus contribute to the general discussion of reliability of self-affine measurements.

We study the interaction between a nanoparticle and the surface of a solid in the framework of the local-field method. Assuming that the nanoparticle is characterized by a finite nonlinear polarizability, we obtain the interaction potential that is repulsive at short range and has an attractive long-range tail. Our numerical analysis shows that this potential strongly depends on the shape and size of the particle. Further, we study the particle-surface interaction in the presence of a surface plasmon polariton propagating along the interface. It is shown that the excitation of the surface wave leads to a drastic (about one order of magnitude) increase in the binding energy. Potential applications of this effect are discussed.

We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core-shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response is dominated by bending. To generate the transitions, we consider the case where the surface area of the liquid layer is increased for a fixed amount of interior elastic material. We find that generically there is a critical excess surface area at which the isotropic sphere becomes unstable to buckling. At this point it adopts a lower symmetry wrinkled structure that can be described by a spherical harmonic deformation. We study the dependence of the buckled sphere and critical excess area of the transition on the elastic parameters and size of the system. We also relate our results to recent experiments on the wrinkling of gel-filled vesicles as their interior volume is reduced. The theory may have broader applications to a variety of related structures from the macroscopic to the microscopic, including the wrinkling of dried peas, raisins, as well as the cell nucleus.

RNA-protein interactions control the fate of cellular RNAs and play an important role in gene regulation. An interdependency between such interactions allows for the implementation of logic functions in gene regulation. We investigate the interplay between RNA-binding partners in the context of the statistical physics of RNA secondary structure and define a linear correlation function between the two partners as a measurement of the interdependency of their binding events. We demonstrate the emergence of a long-range power-law behavior of this linear correlation function. This suggests RNA secondary structure driven interdependency between binding sites as a general mechanism for combinatorial post-transcriptional gene regulation.

An all-atom molecular dynamics simulation shows concentration-dependent like-charge ion pairing of the guanidinium ion in an aqueous solution of guanidinium chloride. We have observed two types of like-charge ion pairing for guanidinium ions, namely, stacked ion pairs and solvent-separated ion pairs. Interestingly, both of these like-charge ion-pair formations are dependent on the concentration of guanidinium chloride in water. The probability of stacked like-charge ion-pair formation decreases, whereas, the probability of solvent-separated like-charge pairing increases as the concentration of guanidinium chloride increases, which is shown from radial distribution functions and is confirmed from the energy calculations. Besides like-charge ion-pair formation, we also investigated guanidinium chloride induced changes in water structure. Hydrogen-bond analysis indicates that guanidinium chloride does not alter the strict-hydrogen-bonding patterns of water, whereas, it breaks the bend-hydrogen bond and the non-hydrogen-bonding patterns. Tetrahedral order, nearest neighbor orientation, and distance distribution of water molecules around a probe water molecule show the extent of water structure distortion.

We study a system consisting of diffusively coupled noisy bistable elements on a scale-free random network. This system exhibits an order-disorder phase transition as the noise intensity is varied. The phase ordering process takes place consecutively and in order of the degrees, reflecting strong degree heterogeneity of the scale-free network. A nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation describing the network dynamics is derived under mean-field approximation of the network, and is used to explain the phase ordering dynamics of the system.

The onset of dynamic activity is studied in heterogeneous populations of globally coupled units such that each unit is either excitable or oscillatory depending on its parameter. By varying the mean of the parameter distribution as well as coupling strength, we show that all or part of the populations studied have common features: similar phase diagrams, hysteresis near or at the onset of dynamic activity, and a fractional power law obeyed by an order parameter. A simplified model is proposed to explain these results.

We study a variant of the classic viscous fingering instability in Hele-Shaw cells where the interface separating the fluids is elastic, and presents a curvature-dependent bending rigidity. By employing a second-order mode-coupling approach we investigate how the elastic nature of the interface influences the morphology of emerging interfacial patterns. This is done by focusing our attention on a conventionally stable situation in which the fluids involved have the same viscosity. In this framework, we show that the inclusion of nonlinear effects plays a crucial role in inducing sizable interfacial instabilities, as well as in determining the ultimate shape of the pattern-forming structures. Particularly, we have found that the emergence of either narrow or wide fingers can be regulated by tuning a rigidity fraction parameter. Our weakly nonlinear findings reinforce the importance of the so-called curvature weakening effect, which favors the development of fingers in regions of lower rigidity.

In vertically vibrated starch suspensions, we observe bifurcations from stable holes to replicating holes. Above a certain acceleration, finite-amplitude deformations of the vibrated surface continue to grow until void penetrates fluid layers, and a hole forms. We studied experimentally and theoretically the parameter dependence of the holes and their stabilities. In suspensions of small dispersed particles, the circular shapes of the holes are stable. However, we find that larger particles or lower surface tension of water destabilize the circular shapes; this indicates the importance of capillary forces acting on the dispersed particles. Around the critical acceleration for bifurcation, holes show intermittent large deformations as a precursor to hole replication. We applied a phenomenological model for deformable domains, which is used in reaction-diffusion systems. The model can explain the basic dynamics of the holes, such as intermittent behavior, probability distribution functions of deformation, and time intervals of replication. Results from the phenomenological model match the linear growth rate below criticality that was estimated from experimental data.

A homogeneous thin plate often flutters while falling through a fluid under gravity. The center of gravity of the plate moves back-and-forth horizontally and the plate tilting angle oscillates symmetrically from the horizontal. Here we show that such a scenario is qualitatively changed for a plate with noncoinciding centers of gravity and buoyancy due to an inhomogeneous mass distribution. Mismatch of the centers causes an external torque that breaks the symmetry of rotational motion, shifts the mean tilting position from the horizontal, and leads to a net horizontal plate displacement. In laboratory experiments with a Reynolds number around 1500, we found that the net horizontal displacement scales linearly with the separation between the centers up to a critical value, beyond which the plate falls vertically in an edge-on configuration with the heavier side downward. Experimental results are compared to predictions of a quasi-steady numerical model. Our work demonstrates that motion of freely moving objects in a fluid depends sensitively on external torques, which potentially can be used as an effective control method.

We numerically investigate the inverse energy cascade range of two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence. Our focus is on the universality of the Kolmogorov's phenomenology. In our direct numerical simulations, two types of forcing processes, the random forcing and the deterministic forcing, are employed besides the systematically varied numerical parameters. We first calculate the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations and confirm that results in the quasi steady state are consistent with the classical phenomenology for both types of forcing processes. It is also found that the difference in forcing process appears after the inverse energy cascade range reaches the system size; the dipole coherent vortices emerge and grow only when the random forcing is adopted. Then we add a large-scale drag term to the Navier-Stokes equations to obtain the statistically stationary state. When the random forcing is used, the scaling exponent of the energy spectrum in the stationary state starts to differ from the predicted $-5/3$ in the inverse energy cascade range as the infrared Reynolds number Re${}_d$ increases, where Re${}_d$ is defined as $k_f/k_d$ with the forcing wave number $k_f$ and the large-scale drag wave number $k_d$. That can be interpreted as a transition phenomenon in which the local maximum vorticity grows like an order parameter caused by excitation of strong coherent vortices. Strong coherent vortices emerge and grow after the quasi steady state and destroy the scaling law when Re${}_d$ is over a critical value. These coherent vortices are not due to the finite-size effect, unlike the dipole coherent vortices. On the other hand, when the deterministic forcing is adopted, strong coherent vortices are hardly seen and the $-5/3$ scaling law holds independently of Re${}_d$. We examine the cases of the combination of both types of forcing processes and find that formation of such coherent vortices is sensitive to the mechanism of the external forcing process as well as the numerical parameters. Several types of large-scale drag terms are also tested and their insignificant influence on these qualitative properties is revealed.

Variational principles are important in the investigation of large classes of physical systems. They can be used both as analytical methods as well as starting points for the formulation of powerful computational techniques such as dynamical optimization methods. Systems with charged objects in dielectric media and systems with magnetically active particles are important examples. In these examples and other important cases, the variational principles describing the system are required to obey a number of constraints. These constraints are implemented within the variational formulation by means of Lagrange multipliers. Such constrained variational formulations are in general not unique. For the application of efficient simulation methods, one must find specific formulations that satisfy a number of important conditions. An often required condition is that the functional be positive-definite, in other words, its extrema be actual minima. In this article, we present a general approach to attack the problem of finding, among equivalent variational functionals, those that generate true minima. The method is based on the modification of the Lagrange multiplier which allows us to generate large families of effective variational formulations associated with a single original constrained variational principle. We demonstrate its application to different examples and, in particular, to the important cases of Poisson and Poisson-Boltzmann equations. We show how to obtain variational formulations for these systems with extrema that are always minima.

We examine the initial dynamical behavior of dissolving microbubbles composed of carbon dioxide gas in highly viscous silicone oils over a range of flow rates and pressure conditions. Microfluidic periodic trains of CO${}_2$ bubbles are used to probe the interrelation between bubble dissolution and high-viscosity multiphase flows in microgeometries. We investigate bubble morphology from low to large capillary numbers and calculate the effective mass diffusion flux across the interface by tracking and monitoring individual bubbles during shrinkage. The initial flux is characterized using a dissolution coefficient that reveals the influence of the oil molecular weight on the dissolution process. Our findings show the possibility to control and exploit the interplay between capillary and mass transfer phenomena with highly viscous fluids in small-scale systems.

Recent experiments have measured the critical Casimir force acting on a colloid immersed in a binary liquid mixture near its continuous demixing phase transition and exposed to a chemically structured substrate. Motivated by these experiments, we study the critical behavior of a system, which belongs to the Ising universality class, for the film geometry with one planar wall chemically striped, such that there is a laterally alternating adsorption preference for the two species of the binary liquid mixture, which is implemented by surface fields. For the opposite wall we employ alternatively a homogeneous adsorption preference or homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions, which within a lattice model are realized by open boundary conditions. By means of mean-field theory, Monte Carlo simulations, and finite-size scaling analysis we determine the critical Casimir force acting on the two parallel walls and its corresponding universal scaling function. We show that in the limit of stripe widths small compared with the film thickness, on the striped surface the system effectively realizes Dirichlet boundary conditions, which generically do not hold for actual fluids. Moreover, the critical Casimir force is found to be attractive or repulsive, depending on the width of the stripes of the chemically patterned surface and on the boundary condition applied to the opposing surface.