The mixing between two miscible liquids subject to vertical vibrations is studied by way of experiments and a two-dimensional numerical model. The experimental setup consisted of a rectangular cell in which the lighter fluid was placed above the denser one. The diffuse interface was then visualized by a high-speed camera. After an initial period of diffusion growth, the interface becomes unstable with a defined wavelength, which depends on the amplitude and frequency of the acceleration. The waviness of the interfacial region disappears once the mixing of the two fluids takes place. The mixing is characterized by a mixing layer thickness (MLT) which measures the thickness of the mixed region between the two pure fluid domains. We find that the MLT shows an exponential growth with time due to an initial fingering that appears at the interface and then a growth with a defined slope after the mixing takes place. The MLT also increases with amplitude of driving motion. Experimentally determined MLTs are always greater than those determined by computations since the latter assume a jump discontinuity between the fluids prior to shaking, whereas in an experiment an initial diffusive region establishes itself prior to shaking and this is destabilizing. In addition, it is found from computations that mixing is best for low gravity levels at earlier times and high gravity levels at longer times. Explanations are advanced for each of these observations.

As an alterative version of the lattice Boltzmann models, the multiple relaxation time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann model introduces much less numerical boundary slip than the single relaxation time (SRT) lattice Boltzmann model if some special relationship between the relaxation time parameters is chosen. On the other hand, most current versions of the immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann method, which was first introduced by Feng and improved by many other authors, suffer from numerical boundary slip as has been investigated by Le and Zhang. To reduce such a numerical boundary slip, an immerse boundary lattice Boltzmann model based on multiple relaxation times is proposed in this paper. A special formula is given between two relaxation time parameters in the model. A rigorous analysis and the numerical experiments carried out show that the numerical boundary slip reduces dramatically by using the present model compared to the single-relaxation-time-based model.

The nontrivial dependence of the asymptotic diffusion on noise intensity has been studied for a Hamiltonian flow mimicking the Gulf Jet Stream. Three different diffusion regimes have been observed depending on the noise intensity. For intermediate noise the asymptotic diffusion decreases with noise intensity at a rate which is linearly dependent to the flow's meander amplitude. Increasing the noise the fluid transport passes through a superdiffusive regime and finally becomes diffusive again at large noise intensities. The presence of inner circulation regimes in the flow has been found to be determinant to explain the observed behavior.

We study the nonlinear dynamics of a homogeneous DNA chain that is based on site-dependent finite stacking and pairing enthalpies. We introduce an extended nonlinear Schrödinger equation describing the dynamics of modulated wave in DNA model. We obtain envelope bright solitary waves with compact support as a solution. Analytical criteria of existence of this solution are derived. The stability of bright compactons is confirmed by numerical simulations of the exact equations of the lattice. The impact of the finite stacking energy is investigated, and we show that some of these compact bright solitary waves are robust, while others decompose very quickly depending on the finite stacking parameters.

This is the first part of a two-part study on the generation of droplets at a microfluidic T-junction operating in the transition regime where confinement of the droplet creates a large squeezing pressure that influences droplet formation. In this regime, the operation of the T-junction depends on the geometry of the intersection (height-to-width ratio, inlet width ratio), capillary number, flow ratio, and viscosity ratio of the two phases. Here in paper I we presented our experimental observations through the analysis of high-speed videos of the droplet formation process. Various parameters are tracked during the formation cycle such as the shape of the droplet (penetration depth and neck), interdroplet spacing, production rate, and flow of both phases across several T-junction designs and flow conditions. Generally, the formation process is defined by a two-stage model consisting of an initial filling stage followed by a necking stage. However, video evidence suggests the inclusion of a third stage, which we term the lag stage, at the beginning of the formation process that accounts for the retraction of the interface back into the injection channel after detachment. Based on the observations made in this paper, a model is developed to describe the formation process in paper II, which can be used to understand the design and operation of T-junction generators in the transition regime.

This is the second part of a two-part study on the generation of droplets at a microfluidic T-junction operating in the transition regime. In the preceding paper [Phys. Rev. E 85, 016322 (2012)], we presented our experimental observations of droplet formation and decomposed the process into three sequential stages defined as the lag, filling, and necking stages. Here we develop a model that describes the performance of microfluidic T-junction generators working in the squeezing to transition regimes where confinement of the droplet dominates the formation process. The model incorporates a detailed geometric description of the drop shape during the formation process combined with a force balance and necking criteria to define the droplet size, production rate, and spacing. The model inherently captures the influence of the intersection geometry, including the channel width ratio and height-to-width ratio, capillary number, and flow ratio, on the performance of the generator. The model is validated by comparing it to speed videos of the formation process for several T-junction geometries across a range of capillary numbers and viscosity ratios.

The recent discovery that for large Hilbert spaces, almost all (that is, typical) Hamiltonians have eigenstates that place small subsystems in thermal equilibrium, has shed much light on the origins of irreversibility and thermalization. Here we give numerical evidence that many-body lattice systems generically approach typicality as the number of subsystems is increased, and thus provide further support for the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our results indicate that the deviation of many-body systems from typicality decreases exponentially with the number of systems. Further, by averaging over a number of randomly selected nearest-neighbor interactions, we obtain a powerlaw for the atypicality as a function of the Hilbert space dimension, distinct from the power law possessed by random Hamiltonians.

We present a theoretical, numerical, and experimental study about the sliding motion of an angular particle down a vibrated smooth plane. The model is based on a Coulomb's friction law with a unique friction coefficient. The model is solved numerically and is tested with controlled experiments. Different motion regimes are identified and the particle behavior is governed by two dimensionless parameters. The comparison between experimental and numerical results gives an indirect access to the dynamic friction coefficient.

The dewetting dynamics of an ultrathin film is studied in the presence of evaporation—or reaction—of adatoms on the substrate. KMC simulations are in good agreement with an analytical model with diffusion, rim facetting, and substrate sublimation. As sublimation is increased, we find a transition from the usual dewetting regime where the front slows down with time, to a sublimation-controlled regime where the front velocity is approximately constant. The rim width exhibits an unexpected nonmonotonous behavior, with a maximum in time.

The modular structure of a network is closely related to the dynamics toward clustering. In this paper, a method for community detection is proposed via the clustering dynamics of a network. The initial phases of the nodes in the network are given randomly, and then they evolve according to a set of dedicatedly designed differential equations. The phases of the nodes are naturally separated into several clusters after a period of evolution, and each cluster corresponds to a community in the network. For the networks with overlapping communities, the phases of the overlapping nodes will evolve to the interspace of the two communities. The proposed method is illustrated with applications to both synthetically generated and real-world complex networks.

Based on a fiber bundle model of subcritical fracture with localized load sharing, we show that the interplay of threshold disorder and the inhomogeneous stress field gives rise to a rich dynamics with intriguing aspects. In the model, fibers fail either due to immediate breaking or to a slow damage process. When the disorder is strong, a large amount of damage occurs, which is randomly diffused over the system; however, for weak disorder, a single growing crack is formed, which proceeds in a large number of localized bursts. The microstructure of cracks is characterized by a power-law size distribution, which is analogous to percolation in the regime of diffusive damage; however, it becomes significantly steeper when a single crack dominates. Simulations showed that the size distribution of breaking bursts and of the waiting times in between have a power-law functional form with a load-dependent cutoff. The burst size exponent proved to be independent of the damage process; however, it strongly depends on the external load with a minimum value of 1.75. The waiting time distribution is sensitive to the details of the damage process with an exponent decreasing from 2.0 to 1.4 as bursts get more and more localized to an advancing crack front.

Laser-induced breakdown of an optically trapped nanoparticle is a unique system for studying cavitation dynamics. It offers additional degrees of freedom, namely the nanoparticle material, its size, and the relative position between the laser focus and the center of the optically trapped nanoparticle. We quantify the spatial and temporal dynamics of the cavitation and secondary bubbles created in this system and use hydrodynamic modeling to quantify the observed dynamic shear stress of the expanding bubble. In the final stage of bubble collapse, we visualize the formation of multiple submicrometer secondary bubbles around the toroidal bubble on the substrate. We show that the pattern of the secondary bubbles typically has its circular symmetry broken along an axis whose unique angle rotates over time. This is a result of vorticity along the jet towards the boundary upon bubble collapse near solid boundaries.

We present a theoretical scheme to calculate the electrophoretic motion of charged colloidal particles immersed in complex (non-Newtonian) fluids possessing shear-rate-dependent viscosities. We demonstrate that this non-Newtonian rheology leads to an explicit shape and size dependence of the electrophoretic velocity of a uniformly charged particle in the thin-Debye-layer regime, in contrast to electrophoresis in Newtonian fluids. This dependence is caused by non-Newtonian stresses in the bulk (electroneutral) fluid outside the Debye layer, whose magnitude is naturally characterized in an electrophoretic Deborah number.

We introduce a new mechanism for the propulsion and separation by chirality of small ferromagnetic particles suspended in a liquid. Under the action of a uniform dc magnetic field $\mathbf{H}$ and an ac electric field $\mathbf{E}$ isomers with opposite chirality move in opposite directions. Such a mechanism could have a significant impact on a wide range of emerging technologies. The component of the chiral velocity that is odd in $\mathbf{H}$ is found to be proportional to the intrinsic orbital and spin angular momentum of the magnetized electrons. This effect arises because a ferromagnetic particle responds to the applied torque as a small gyroscope.

Structures of Coulomb clusters formed by dust particles in a plasma are studied by numerical simulation. Our study reveals the presence of various types of self-organized structures of a cluster confined in a prolate spheroidal electrostatic potential. The stable configurations depend on a prolateness parameter for the confining potential as well as on the number of dust particles in a cluster. One-dimensional string, two-dimensional zigzag structure and three-dimensional double helical structure are found as a result of the transition controlled by the prolateness parameter. The formation of stable double helical structures resulted from the transition associated with the instability of angular perturbations on double strings. Analytical perturbation study supports the findings of numerical simulations.

We discuss an effective field theory (EFT) approach to the computation of fluctuation-induced interactions between particles bound to a thermally fluctuating fluid surface controlled by surface tension. By describing particles as points, EFT avoids computing functional integrals subject to difficult constraints. Still, all information pertaining to particle size and shape is systematically restored by amending the surface Hamiltonian with a derivative expansion. The free energy is obtained as a cumulant expansion, for which straightforward techniques exist. We derive a completedescription for rigid axisymmetric objects, which allows us to develop a full asymptotic expansion—in powers of the inverse distance—for the pair interaction. We also demonstrate by a few examples the efficiency with which multibody interactions can be computed. Moreover, although the main advantage of the EFT approach lies in explicit computation, we discuss how one can infer certain features of cases involving flexible or anisotropic objects. The EFT description also permits a systematic computation of ground-state surface-mediated interactions, which we illustrate with a few examples.

The influence of the network's structure on the dynamics of spreading processes has been extensively studied in the last decade. Important results that partially answer this question show a weak connection between the macroscopic behavior of these processes and specific structural properties in the network, such as the largest eigenvalue of a topology related matrix. However, little is known about the direct influence of the network topology on the microscopic level, such as the influence of the (neighboring) network on the probability of a particular node's infection. To answer this question, we derive both an upper and a lower bound for the probability that a particular node is infective in a susceptible-infective-susceptible model for two cases of spreading processes: reactive and contact processes. The bounds are derived by considering the $n-$hop neighborhood of the node; the bounds are tighter as one uses a larger $n-$hop neighborhood to calculate them. Consequently, using local information for different neighborhood sizes, we assess the extent to which the topology influences the spreading process, thus providing also a strong macroscopic connection between the former and the latter. Our findings are complemented by numerical results for a real-world email network. A very good estimate for the infection density $\rho$ is obtained using only two-hop neighborhoods, which account for 0.4$\%$ of the entire network topology on average.

Inwardly rotating spirals (IRSs) have attracted great attention since their observation in an oscillatory reaction-diffusion system. However, IRSs have not yet been reported in planar excitable media. In the present work we investigate rotating waves in a nonuniform excitable medium, consisting of an inner disk part surrounded by an outer ring part with different excitabilities, by numerical simulations of a simple FitzHugh-Nagumo model. Depending on the excitability of the medium as well as the inhomogeneity, we find the occurrence of IRSs, of which the excitation propagates inwardly to the geometrical spiral tip.

The energy loss and penetration of multi-megelectronvolt protons into a uniform deuterium-tritium (DT) plasma has been calculated. The effects of nuclear elastic scattering and Coulomb interactions are treated from a unified point of view. In general, multiple scattering enhances the proton linear-energy transfer along the initial proton direction, thus the energy deposition increases near the end of its range. The net effect of multiple scattering is to reduce the penetration from 1.20 to 1.02 $\text{g}{\text{cm}}^{-2}$ for 12 MeV protons in a $\rho =500$ $\text{g}{\text{cm}}^{-3}$ plasma at $T=5$ keV. These results should have relevance to proton fast ignition, specifically to energy deposition calculations that critically assess quantitative ignition requirements.