A spectral algorithm for community detection is presented. The algorithm consists of three stages: (1) matrix factorization of two matrix forms, square signless Laplacian for unipartite graphs and rectangular adjacency matrix for bipartite graphs, using singular value decompostion (SVD); (2) dimensionality reduction using an optimal linear approximation; and (3) clustering vertices using dot products in reduced dimensional space. The algorithm reveals communities in graphs without placing any restriction on the input network type or the output community type. It is applicable on unipartite or bipartite unweighted or weighted networks. It places no requirement on strict community membership and automatically reveals the number of clusters, their respective sizes and overlaps, and hierarchical modular organization. By representing vertices as vectors in real space, expressed as linear combinations of the orthogonal bases described by SVD, orthogonality becomes the metric for classifying vertices into communities. Results on several test and real world networks are presented, including cases where a mix of disjointed, overlapping, or hierarchical communities are known to exist in the network.

When a compressible viscous fluid is pumped through a linear channel by means of a running surface wave on the wall, energy is dissipated in the fluid. The rate of dissipation can be evaluated effectively from the work performed on the fluid by the wavy wall. Explicit expressions are derived for the rate of dissipation for a planar duct and a circular tube, valid to second order in the amplitude of the surface wave. In both cases the rate of dissipation shows a resonance as a function of frequency when the phase velocity of the surface wave equals the sound velocity of the fluid.

The role of quantum tunneling effect in the electron accretion current onto a negatively charged grain immersed in isotropic plasma is analyzed, within the quasiclassic approximation, for different plasma electron distribution functions, plasma parameters, and grain sizes. It is shown that this contribution can be small (negligible) for relatively large (micron-sized) dust grains in plasmas with electron temperatures of the order of a few electronvolts, but becomes important for nanosized dust grains (tens to hundreds of nanometers in diameter) in cold and ultracold plasmas (electron temperatures at approximately tens to hundreds of Kelvin), especially in plasmas with depleted high-energy “tails” in the electron energy distribution.

We consider nonlinear interactions between a relativistically strong laser beam and a plasma in the quantum regime. The collective behavior of electrons is modeled by a Klein-Gordon equation, which is nonlinearly coupled with the electromagnetic wave through the Maxwell and Poisson equations. This allows us to study nonlinear interactions between arbitrarily large-amplitude electromagnetic waves and a quantum plasma. We have used our system of nonlinear equations to study theoretically the parametric instabilities involving stimulated Raman scattering and modulational instabilities. A model for quasi-steady-state propagating electromagnetic wave packets is also derived, and which shows possibility of localized solitary structures in a quantum plasma. Numerical simulations demonstrate collapse and acceleration of electrons in the nonlinear stage of the modulational instability, as well as possibility of the wake-field acceleration of electrons to relativistic speeds by short laser pulses at nanometer length scales. Our study is relevant for understanding the localization of intense electromagnetic pulses in a quantum plasma with extremely high electron densities and relatively low temperature.

Computing the ground state of Ising spin-glass models with $p$-spin interactions is, in general, an NP-hard problem. In this work we show that unlike in the case of the standard Ising spin glass with two-spin interactions, computing ground states with $p=3$ is an NP-hard problem even in two space dimensions. Furthermore, we present generic exact and heuristic algorithms for finding ground states of $p$-spin models with high confidence for systems of up to several thousand spins.

We consider $N$ fermionic particles in a harmonic trap initially prepared in a thermal equilibrium state at temperature $\beta {}^{-1}$ and examine the probability density function (pdf) of the work done by a magnetic field slowly varying in time. The behavior of the pdf crucially depends on the number of particles $N$ but also on the temperature. At high temperatures ($\beta \ll 1$) the pdf is given by an asymmetric Laplace distribution for a single particle, and for many particles it approaches a Gaussian distribution with variance proportional to $N/\beta {}^2$. At low temperatures the pdf becomes strongly peaked at the center with a variance that still linearly increases with $N$ but exponentially decreases with the temperature. We point out the consequences of these findings for the experimental confirmation of the Jarzynski equality such as the low probability issue at high temperatures and its solution at low temperatures, together with a discussion of the crossover behavior between the two temperature regimes.

Starting from the fluctuating Boltzmann equation for smooth inelastic hard spheres or disks, closed equations for the fluctuating hydrodynamic fields to Navier-Stokes order are derived. This requires deriving constitutive relations for both the fluctuating fluxes and the correlations of the random forces. The former are identified as having the same form as the macroscopic average fluxes and involving the same transport coefficients. On the other hand, the random force terms exhibit two peculiarities as compared with their elastic limit for molecular systems. First, they are not white but have some finite relaxation time. Second, their amplitude is not determined by the macroscopic transport coefficients but involves new coefficients.

A general kind of Brownian vortices is demonstrated by applying an external nonconservative force field to a colloidal particle bound by a conservative optical trapping force at a liquid-air interface. As the liquid medium is translated at a constant velocity with the bead trapped at the interface, the drag force near the surface provides enough rotational component to bias the particle’s thermal fluctuations in a circulatory motion. The interplay between the thermal fluctuations and the advection of the bead in constituting the vortex motions is studied, and we infer that the angular velocity of the circulatory motion offers a comparative measure of the interface fluctuations.

In surfaces with grainy features, the local roughness $w$ shows a crossover at a characteristic length $r_c$, with roughness exponent changing from ${\alpha }_1\approx 1$ to a smaller ${\alpha }_2$. The grain shape, the choice of $w$ or height-height correlation function (HHCF) $C$, and the procedure to calculate root-mean-square averages are shown to have remarkable effects on ${\alpha }_1$. With grains of pyramidal shape, ${\alpha }_1$ can be as low as $0.71$, which is much lower than the previous prediction $0.85$ for rounded grains. The same crossover is observed in the HHCF, but with initial exponent ${\chi }_1\approx 0.5$ for flat grains, while for some conical grains it may increase to ${\chi }_1\approx 0.7$. The universality class of the growth process determines the exponents ${\alpha }_2={\chi }_2$ after the crossover, but has no effect on the initial exponents ${\alpha }_1$ and ${\chi }_1$, supporting the geometric interpretation of their values. For all grain shapes and different definitions of surface roughness or HHCF, we still observe that the crossover length $r_c$ is an accurate estimate of the grain size. The exponents obtained in several recent experimental works on different materials are explained by those models, with some surface images qualitatively similar to our model films.

Starting from a phase-field description of the isothermal solidification of a dilute binary alloy, we establish a model where capillary waves of the solidification front interact with the diffusive concentration field of the solute. The model does not rely on the sharp-interface assumption and includes nonequilibrium effects, relevant in the rapid-growth regime. In many applications it can be evaluated analytically, culminating in the appearance of an instability that, interfering with the Mullins-Sekerka instability, is similar to that found by Cahn in grain-boundary motion.

A small quantity of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) dispersed in an achiral liquid crystal (LC) matrix transmits chirality a short distance into the LC, and the LC+CNT mixture is found to exhibit a bulklike electroclinic effect in the nematic phase. The magnitude of the effect increases rapidly on cooling, showing significant pretransitional behavior on approaching the nematic-smectic-$A$ transition temperature ($T_{\mathrm{NA}}$) from above. The variation of the electroclinic coefficient is negligible over the frequency range 100 Hz to 100 kHz in the in the nematic phase well above ${\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{NA}}$ and in the smectic-$A$ phase, whereas the electroclinic coefficient falls off significantly with increasing frequency just above ${\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{NA}}$.

Spatial-point data sets, generated from a wide range of physical systems and mathematical models, can be analyzed by counting the number of objects in equally sized bins. We find that the bin counts are related to the Pólya distribution. New measures are developed which indicate whether or not a spatial data set, generated from an exclusion process, is at its most evenly distributed state, the complete spatial randomness (CSR) state. To this end, we define an index in terms of the variance between the bin counts. Limiting values of the index are determined when objects have access to the entire domain and when there are subregions of the domain that are inaccessible to objects. Using three case studies (Lagrangian fluid particles in chaotic laminar flows, cellular automata agents in discrete models, and biological cells within colonies), we calculate the indexes and verify that our theoretical CSR limit accurately predicts the state of the system. These measures should prove useful in many biological applications.

Since gene regulatory systems sometimes contain only a small number of molecules, these systems are not described well by macroscopic rate equations; a master equation approach is needed for such cases. We develop an approximation scheme for dealing with the stochasticity of the gene regulatory systems. Using an effective interaction concept, original master equations can be reduced to simpler master equations, which can be solved analytically. We apply the approximation scheme to self-regulating systems with monomer or dimer interactions, and a two-gene system with an exclusive switch. The approximation scheme can recover the bistability of the exclusive switch adequately.

A continuum model of crack propagation in brittle viscoelastic materials is presented and discussed. Thereby, the phenomenon of fracture is understood as an elastically induced nonequilibrium interfacial pattern formation process. In this spirit, a full description of a propagating crack provides the determination of the entire time dependent shape of the crack surface, which is assumed to be extended over a finite and self-consistently selected length scale. The mechanism of crack propagation, that is, the motion of the crack surface, is then determined through linear nonequilibrium transport equations. Here we consider two different mechanisms, a first-order phase transformation and surface diffusion. We give scaling arguments showing that steady-state solutions with a self-consistently selected propagation velocity and crack shape can exist provided that elastodynamic or viscoelastic effects are taken into account, whereas static elasticity alone is not sufficient. In this respect, inertial effects as well as viscous damping are identified to be sufficient crack tip selection mechanisms. Exploring the arising description of brittle fracture numerically, we study steady-state crack propagation in the viscoelastic and inertia limit as well as in an intermediate regime, where both effects are important. The arising free boundary problems are solved by phase field methods and a sharp interface approach using a multipole expansion technique. Different types of loading, mode I, mode III fracture, as well as mixtures of them, are discussed.

We provide a path integral treatment of the decoherence process induced by a heat bath on a single particle whose dynamics is classically chaotic and show that the decoherence rate is given by the Lyapunov exponent. The loss of coherence is charaterized by the purity, which is calculated semiclassically within diagonal approximation, when the particle initial state is a single Gaussian wave packet. The calculation is performed for weak dissipation and in the high-temperature limit. This situation allows us to simplify the heat bath description to a single random potential. Although the dissipative term is neglected in such approach, the fluctuating one can be treated phenomenologically to fit with the above regime. Our results are therefore valid for times shorter than the inverse of the dissipation rate.

A small amplitude perturbation analysis is developed to describe the effect of a uniform electric field on the dynamics of a lipid bilayer vesicle in a simple shear flow. All media are treated as leaky dielectrics and fluid motion is described by the Stokes equations. The instantaneous vesicle shape is obtained by balancing electric, hydrodynamic, bending, and tension stresses exerted on the membrane. We find that in the absence of ambient shear flow, it is possible that an applied stepwise uniform dc electric field could cause the vesicle shape to evolve from oblate to prolate over time if the encapsulated fluid is less conducting than the suspending fluid. For a vesicle in ambient shear flow, the electric field damps the tumbling motion, leading to a stable tank-treading state.

We study modulation instability (MI) of the discrete constant-background wave of the Ablowitz-Ladik (A-L) equation. We derive exact solutions of the A-L equation which are nonlinear continuations of MI at longer times. These periodic solutions comprise a family of two-parameter solutions with an arbitrary background field and a frequency of initial perturbation. The solutions are recurrent, since they return the field state to the original constant background solution after the process of nonlinear evolution has passed. These solutions can be considered as a complete resolution of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam paradox for the A-L system. One remarkable consequence of the recurrent evolution is the nonlinear phase shift gained by the constant background wave after the process. A particular case of this family is the rational solution of the first-order or fundamental rogue wave.

In this work we study the behavior of mesoscopic fluctuations of a fluid simulated by Multiparticle Collision Dynamics when this is applied together with a local thermostatting procedure that constrains the strength of temperature fluctuations. We consider procedures in which the thermostat interacts with the fluid at every simulation step as well as cases in which the thermostat is applied only at regular time intervals. Due to the application of the thermostat temperature fluctuations are forced to relax to equilibrium faster than they do in the nonthermostatted, constant-energy case. Depending on the interval of application of the thermostat, it is demonstrated that the thermodynamic state changes gradually from isothermal to adiabatic conditions. In order to exhibit this effect we compute from simulations diverse correlation functions of the hydrodynamic fluctuating fields. These correlation functions are compared with those predicted by a linearized hydrodynamic theory of a simple fluid in which a thermostat is applied locally. We find a good agreement between the model and the numerical results, which confirms that hydrodynamic fluctuations in Multiparticle Collision Dynamics in the presence of the thermostat have the properties expected for spontaneous fluctuations in fluids in contact with a heat reservoir.

In their work [J. Phys. A 33, 4427 (2000)], Bender, Brody, and Meister have shown by employing a two-state model of a particle confined in the one-dimensional infinite potential well that it is possible to construct a quantum-mechanical analog of the Carnot engine through changes of both the width of the well and the quantum state in a specific manner. Here, a discussion is developed about realizing the maximum power of such an engine, where the width of the well moves at low but finite speed. The efficiency of the engine at the maximum power output is found to be universal independently of any of the parameters contained in the model.