A laser-driven plasma beat wave, propagating through a plasma with a periodic density modulation, can generate two sideband plasma waves. One sideband moves with a smaller phase velocity than the pump plasma wave and the other propagates with a larger phase velocity. The plasma beat wave with a smaller phase velocity can accelerate modest-energy electrons to gain substantial energy and the electrons are further accelerated by the main plasma wave. The large phase velocity plasma wave can accelerate these electrons to higher energies. As a result, the electrons can attain high energies during the acceleration by the plasma waves in the presence of a periodic density modulation. The analytical results are compared with particle-in-cell simulations and are found to be in reasonable agreement.

A simple, semianalytical model is proposed for nonrelativistic Coulomb explosion of a uniformly charged spheroid. This model allows us to derive the time-dependent particle energy distributions. Simple expressions are also given for the characteristic explosion time and maximum particle energies in the limits of extreme prolate and oblate spheroids as well as for the sphere. Results of particle simulations are found to be in remarkably good agreement with the model.

A generalized dressing method is presented for integration of the nonlinear evolution equation of the coherent density function describing partially coherent wave propagation in a noninstantaneous Kerr media. As an example an exact, partially coherent multisource N-soliton solution is derived. It is also demonstrated how this method is applicable for construction of solutions to the equivalent coupled system of nonlinear Schrödinger equations of the self-consistent multimode theory.

We present a methodology for calculating the electromagnetic radiation from accelerated charged particles. Our formulation—the “endpoint formulation”—combines numerous results developed in the literature in relation to radiation arising from particle acceleration using a complete, and completely general, treatment. We do this by describing particle motion via a series of discrete, instantaneous acceleration events, or “endpoints,” with each such event being treated as a source of emission. This method implicitly allows for particle creation and destruction, and is suited to direct numerical implementation in either the time or frequency domains. In this paper we demonstrate the complete generality of our method for calculating the radiated field from charged particle acceleration, and show how it reduces to the classical named radiation processes such as synchrotron, Tamm’s description of Vavilov-Cherenkov, and transition radiation under appropriate limits. Using this formulation, we are immediately able to answer outstanding questions regarding the phenomenology of radio emission from ultra-high-energy particle interactions in both the earth’s atmosphere and the moon. In particular, our formulation makes it apparent that the dominant emission component of the Askaryan effect (coherent radio-wave radiation from high-energy particle cascades in dense media) comes from coherent “bremsstrahlung” from particle acceleration, rather than coherent Vavilov-Cherenkov radiation.

We studied the drag and lift forces acting on an inclined plate while it is dragged on the surface of a granular media, both in experiment and in numerical simulation. In particular, we investigated the influence of the horizontal velocity of the plate and its angle of attack. We show that a steady wedge of grains is moved in front of the plow and that the lift and drag forces are proportional to the weight of this wedge. These constants of proportionality vary with the angle of attack but not (or only weakly) on the velocity. We found a universal effective friction law that accounts for the dependence on all the above-mentioned parameters. The stress and velocity fields are calculated from the numerical simulations and show the existence of a shear band under the wedge and that the pressure is nonhydrostatic. The strongest gradients in stress and shear occur at the base of the plow where the dissipation rate is therefore highest.

We formulate a density functional theory that describes the phase behavior of hard rods and depleting polymers, as realized in recent experiments on suspensions of fd virus and nonadsorbing polymer. The theory predicts the relative stability of nematic droplets, stacked smectic columns, and a recently discovered phase of isolated monolayers of rods, or colloidal membranes. We find that a minimum rod aspect ratio is required for stability of colloidal membranes and that collective protrusion undulations are the dominant effect that stabilizes this phase. The theoretical predictions are shown to be qualitatively consistent with experimental and computational results.

We observe a Fano-like resonance in a magnetically polarizable nanofluid. Under an external magnetic field, the transmittance spectrum of a ferrofluid emulsion containing droplet size of ∼220 nm shows an enhanced peak with a Fano-like profile, which is attributed to a localized waveguide resonance from random array of tubes with charged inner surface that are formed by the alignment of the droplets. Furthermore, by varying the magnetic field, the Fano profile is tuned and an opaque emulsion is turned into a transparent one. This finding may have interesting applications in tunable photonic devices.

Many types of bacteria can survive under stress by switching stochastically between two different phenotypes: the “normals” who multiply fast, but are vulnerable to stress, and the “persisters” who hardly multiply, but are resilient to stress. Previous theoretical studies of such bacterial populations have focused on the fitness: the asymptotic rate of unbounded growth of the population. Yet for an isolated population of established (and not very large) size, a more relevant measure may be the population extinction risk due to the interplay of adverse extrinsic variations and intrinsic noise of birth, death and switching processes. Applying a WKB approximation to the pertinent master equation of such a two-population system, we quantify the extinction risk, and find the most likely path to extinction under both favorable and adverse conditions. Analytical results are obtained both in the biologically relevant regime when the switching is rare compared with the birth and death processes, and in the opposite regime of frequent switching. We show that rare switches are most beneficial in reducing the extinction risk.

In this Brief Report we show that key parameters, the fragility $m_p$ and activation volume ΔV, which characterize the sensitivity of molecular dynamics near the glass transition to temperature and pressure changes, respectively, reflect molecular properties in a nonequivalent way. Our comparative study of fragilities and activation volumes of isomeric pentiols provides evidence that the parameter $m_p$ can distinguish different H-bonded structures, even if molecular volumes are similar; however, the value of ΔV recognizes mainly the size of a relaxing molecular unit and correlates to the length scale of molecular cooperativity. Thus there is a striking difference in information given by $m_p$ and ΔV.

Community structure is one of the most important properties in networks, and community detection has received an enormous amount of attention in recent years. Modularity is by far the most used and best known quality function for measuring the quality of a partition of a network, and many community detection algorithms are developed to optimize it. However, there is a resolution limit problem in modularity optimization methods. In this study, a memetic algorithm, named Meme-Net, is proposed to optimize another quality function, modularity density, which includes a tunable parameter that allows one to explore the network at different resolutions. Our proposed algorithm is a synergy of a genetic algorithm with a hill-climbing strategy as the local search procedure. Experiments on computer-generated and real-world networks show the effectiveness and the multiresolution ability of the proposed method.

By using the most sensitive two-point correlation functions introduced to date, we reconstruct the microstructures of two-phase random media with heretofore unattained accuracy. Such media arise in a host of contexts, including porous and composite media, ecological structures, biological media, and astrophysical structures. The aforementioned correlation functions are special cases of the so-called canonical $n$-point correlation function $H_n$ and generalize the ones that have been recently employed to advance our ability to reconstruct complex microstructures [Y. Jiao, F. H. Stillinger, and S. Torquato, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 106, 17634 (2009)]. The use of these generalized correlation functions is tantamount to dilating or eroding a reference phase of the target medium and incorporating the additional topological information of the modified media, thereby providing more accurate reconstructions of percolating, filamentary, and other topologically complex microstructures. We apply our methods to a multiply connected “donut” medium and a dilute distribution of “cracks” (a set of essentially zero measure), demonstrating improved accuracy in both cases with implications for higher-dimensional and biconnected two-phase systems. The high information content of the generalized two-point correlation functions suggests that it would be profitable to explore their use to characterize the structural and physical properties of not only random media, but also molecular systems, including structural glasses.

We explore the lasing mode selection between the chaotic and scarred modes in stadium-shaped vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Experimental results reveal that the spatial gain distribution in the active layer of a VCSEL can be modified via the aperture size to favor the generation of either the chaotic or the scarred modes. Experimentally obtained chaotic and scarred modes are further employed to perform statistical analysis of wave function intensities for making a comparison with predictions based on the nonlinear σ model. We verify that the scarring effect can be quantitatively relevant to the weak-localization correction in the intensity probability distribution.

We calculate the ion and composition distributions around colloid particles in an aqueous mixture, accounting for preferential adsorption, electrostatic interaction, selective solvation among ions and polar molecules, and composition-dependent ionization. On the colloid surface, we predict a precipitation transition induced by a strong preference of hydrophilic ions to water and a prewetting transition between weak and strong adsorption and ionization. These transition lines extend far from the solvent coexistence curve in the plane of the interaction parameter $\chi$ (or the temperature) and the average solvent composition. The colloid interaction is drastically altered by these phase transitions on the surface. In particular, the interaction is much amplified on bridging of wetting layers formed above the precipitation line. Such wetting layers can either completely or partially cover the colloid surface depending on the average solvent composition.

Based on the trajectories of the separation between water molecule pairs from MD simulations, we investigate the bond breakage dynamics in bulk water. From the spectrum of mean first-passage times, the Fokker-Planck equation allows us to derive the diffusivity profile along the separation coordinate and thus to unambiguously disentangle the effects of free-energy and local friction on the separation kinetics. For tightly coordinated water, the friction is six times higher than in bulk, which can be interpreted in terms of a dominant reaction path that involves additional orthogonal coordinates.

In this paper we report the dynamics of charge carriers and relaxation in polymer electrolytes based on polyethylene oxide (PEO), lithium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) and 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (BMPTFSI) ionic liquid prepared by solution cast technique. It has been observed that the incorporation of BMPTFSI into PEO-LiTFSI electrolyte is an effective way for increasing the amorphous phase to a large extent. It has also been observed that both the glass transition and melting temperatures decrease with the increase of BMPTFSI concentration. The ionic conductivity of these polymer electrolytes increases with the increase of BMPTFSI concentration. The highest ionic conductivity obtained at 25 °C is ∼3$\times$10${}^{-4}$ S cm${}^{-1}$ for the electrolyte containing 60 wt % BMPTFSI and ethylene oxide (EO)/Li ratio of 20. The temperature dependence of the dc conductivity and the hopping frequency show Vogel-Tamman-Fulcher type behavior indicating a strong coupling between the ionic and the polymer chain segmental motions. The frequency dependence of the ac conductivity exhibits a power law with an exponent $n$ which decreases with the increase of temperature. The scaling of the ac conductivity indicates that relaxation dynamics of charge carriers follows a common mechanism for all temperatures and BMPTFSI concentrations. We have also presented the electric modulus data which have been analyzed in the framework of a Havriliak-Negami equation and the shape parameters obtained by the analysis show slight temperature dependence, but change sharply with BMPTFSI concentration. The stretched exponent β obtained from Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts fit to the modulus data is much lower than unity signifying that the relaxation is highly nonexponential. The decay function obtained from analysis of experimental modulus data is highly asymmetric with time.

Action potential initiation (API) is a crucial step in neural information integration and communication. A stable site of API is beneficial for neural coding. A specialized band with a high density of sodium channels in the axon initial segment has been proved as the primary site of API. In this paper we investigate the role of a dense sodium-channel band in the threshold and the location of API of a neuron with a multicompartment model. It is shown that the threshold of the injected current for API is enhanced by a farther distance between the stimulated site and the band and lowered by an increase of the sodium-channel density and the bandwidth. There exists an optimal location of the dense sodium-channel band, which enables the lowest threshold for API. In the case of an excitable dendrite, the site of API shifts from the band to the stimulated dendritic site with increasing stimuli strength. A larger bandwidth and higher sodium-channel density elevate the stability of the sodium-channel band as the site of API and an optimal band position enables the highest stability.

The melting transition of finite three-dimensional dust clouds (Yukawa balls) from a solid-like to a liquid-like state is systematically studied with high spatial and temporal resolution of the individual grains by means of stereoscopy. Two different melting scenarios are reported: Melting is induced first by an increase of plasma power, and second by laser-induced heating. The experiments confirm that melting starts with a loss of orientational correlation, followed by a loss of the radial order upon further heating. While the plasma-power melting is driven via the ion wakefield, laser heating provides a more equilibrium scenario. The internal loss of correlations is well captured by the triple correlation function (TCF) which is insensitive to particle exchanges and the rotation of the cluster as a whole. The critical Coulomb coupling parameter for $N=35$ is determined as ${\Gamma }_{\mathrm{crit}}\approx 570$. The experimental findings are in good agreement with thermodynamic Monte Carlo simulations.

We consider the directed motion of a Brownian particle in a two-well periodic potential with time-varying barriers and wells described by arbitrary periodic functions of time, $v\left(t\right)$ and $u\left(t\right)$, alternating with the period $\tau$. In the framework of the low-temperature kinetic approach, we obtain explicit formulas for the probabilities of finding the particle in potential wells, average velocity of directed motion, input energy $P_{\mathrm{in}}$ and useful work $P_{\mathrm{out}}$ against additionally introduced stationary load force $f$. These formulas are considerably simplified by the assumption of the quasiequilibrium regime of motion corresponding to small values of $u\left(t\right)$ and $f$. It is shown that depending on the same or opposite parity of the functions $v\left(t\right)$ and $u\left(t\right)$ with respect to time reversal, the motion direction of a Brownian particle is retained or reversed under the reversal of the direction of movement along the ($v-u$) loop in the phase space of the functions $v\left(t\right)$ and $u\left(t\right)$, and the nondiagonal kinetic coefficients are mutually symmetric or antisymmetric. In the adiabatic limit $\tau \to \infty$, the average velocity is proportional to ${\tau }^{-1}$ in two cases: (i) the above loop has a nonzero area, (ii) the functions $v\left(t\right)$ and $u\left(t\right)$ are proportional to each other (zero loop area) and include intervals of fast changes with small durations ${\tau }_0$ on the period $\tau$ of their variations. In both of these cases, the efficiency of energy conversion, $\eta =P_{\mathrm{out}}/P_{\mathrm{in}}$, tends to unity at large variations of the barriers $v\left(t\right)$. In the second case, the deviation of $\eta$ from unity can be split into two contributions: The former decreases exponentially with increasing amplitude $v_0$ of $v\left(t\right)$, while the latter is a small nonadiabatic correction proportional to $v_0^{-3/2}$. It is the nonadiabatic correction that limits high efficiencies at large variations of barriers.

The present paper deals with the force experienced by a wall overflowed by a granular avalanche. First, we briefly report laboratory tests on dry granular avalanches overflowing a wall down a rough channel. In the first step, the thickness and velocity of the control flows without a wall are measured. In the second step, a wall is mounted to obstruct the flow and the normal force experienced by the wall is measured. Then a set of equations based on depth-averaged momentum conservation, making it possible to derive the time-varying force on the wall, is described. The model was proposed and calibrated in two-dimensional (2D) discrete numerical simulations in an earlier work [Chanut, Faug, and Naaim, Phys. Rev. E 82, 041302 (2010)]. This model takes into account the fact that a quasistatic stagnant zone is established upstream of the wall and coexists with an inertial flowing zone above. For a large range of slopes, the model's prediction is successfully compared to experimental data with a reasonable estimation of the incoming flow density and in spite of some rough assumptions made to describe the dynamics of the dead zone. Finally, the results are analyzed with regard to previous 2D discrete numerical simulations and we discuss future work to be undertaken on the dynamics of the dead zone established upstream of the wall.