We study the permeability of quasi-two-dimensional porous structures of randomly placed overlapping monodisperse circular and elliptical grains. Measurements in microfluidic devices and lattice Boltzmann simulations demonstrate that the permeability is determined by the Euler characteristic of the conducting phase. We obtain an expression for the permeability that is independent of the percolation threshold and shows agreement with experimental and simulated data over a wide range of porosities. Our approach suggests that the permeability explicitly depends on the overlapping probability of grains rather than their shape.

Owing to its two-dimensional electronic structure, graphene exhibits many unique properties. One of them is a wave vector and temperature dependent plasmon in the infrared range. Theory predicts that due to these plasmons, graphene can be used as a universal material to enhance nanoscale radiative heat exchange for any dielectric substrate. Here we report on radiative heat transfer experiments between SiC and a ${\mathrm{SiO}}_2$ sphere that have nonmatching phonon polariton frequencies, and thus only weakly exchange heat in near field. We observed that the heat flux contribution of graphene epitaxially grown on SiC dominates at short distances. The influence of plasmons on radiative heat transfer is further supported with measurements for doped silicon. These results highlight graphene’s strong potential in photonic near field and energy conversion devices.

An antibubble is a spherical air film that is immersed in a surfactant mixture and drains under the action of hydrostatic pressure. A dynamical model of this film is proposed that accounts for the surface shear viscosity effects in the case of purely viscous interfaces, which applies for surfactants whose adsorption rate is much larger than advection rate and at a concentration much above the critical micelle concentration. Our model shows that the lifetime of the antibubbles in this case increases with surface shear viscosity, denoted $\epsilon$, whose value is measured independently, all in agreement with experimental measurements. We also found that the critical thickness, $h_c$, at film rupture due to van der Waals interactions slightly depends on the surface shear viscosity, namely $h_c\propto {\epsilon }^{1/6}$.

Convective mixing in porous media is triggered by a Rayleigh-Bénard-type hydrodynamic instability as a result of an unstable density stratification of fluids. While convective mixing has been studied extensively, the fundamental behavior of the dissolution flux and its dependence on the system parameters are not yet well understood. Here, we show that the dissolution flux and the rate of fluid mixing are determined by the mean scalar dissipation rate. We use this theoretical result to provide computational evidence that the classical model of convective mixing in porous media exhibits, in the regime of high Rayleigh number, a dissolution flux that is constant and independent of the Rayleigh number. Our findings support the universal character of convective mixing and point to the need for alternative explanations for nonlinear scalings of the dissolution flux with the Rayleigh number, recently observed experimentally.

Optical frequency combs based on mode-locked lasers have proven to be invaluable tools for a wide range of applications in precision spectroscopy and metrology. A novel principle of optical frequency comb generation in whispering-gallery mode microresonators (“microcombs”) has been developed recently, which represents a promising route towards chip-level integration and out-of-the-lab use of these devices. Presently, two families of microcombs have been demonstrated: Combs with electronically detectable mode spacing that can be directly stabilized, and broadband combs with up to octave-spanning spectra but mode spacings beyond electronic detection limits. However, it has not yet been possible to achieve these two key requirements simultaneously, as will be critical for most microcomb applications. Here we present a route to overcome this problem by interleaving an electro-optic comb with the spectrum from a parametric microcomb. This allows, for the first time, direct control and stabilization of a microcomb spectrum with large mode spacing ($>140\mathrm{GHz}$) with no need for an additional mode-locked laser frequency comb. The attained residual 1-sec instability of the microcomb comb spacing is ${10}^{-15}$, with a microwave reference limited absolute instability of ${10}^{-12}$ at a 140 GHz mode spacing.

We present a new interferometer technique whereby multiple extreme ultraviolet light pulses are generated at different positions within a single laser focus (i.e., from successive sources) with a highly controllable time delay. The interferometer technique is tested with two generating media to create two extreme ultraviolet light pulses with a time delay between them. The delay is found to be a consequence of the Gouy phase shift. Ultimately the apparatus is capable of accessing unprecedented time scales by allowing stable and repeatable delays as small as 100 zs.

At impact of a liquid drop on a solid surface, an air bubble can be entrapped. Here, we show that two competing effects minimize the (relative) size of this entrained air bubble: for large drop impact velocity and large droplets, the inertia of the liquid flattens the entrained bubble, whereas for small impact velocity and small droplets, capillary forces minimize the entrained bubble. However, we demonstrate experimentally, theoretically, and numerically that in between there is an optimum, leading to maximal air bubble entrapment. For a 1.8 mm diameter ethanol droplet, this optimum is achieved at an impact velocity of $0.25\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$. Our results have a strong bearing on various applications in printing technology, microelectronics, immersion lithography, diagnostics, or agriculture.

We demonstrate, via simulations of asymptotically reduced equations describing rotationally constrained Rayleigh-Bénard convection, that the efficiency of turbulent motion in the fluid bulk limits overall heat transport and determines the scaling of the nondimensional Nusselt number $\mathrm{Nu}$ with the Rayleigh number $\mathrm{Ra}$, the Ekman number $E$, and the Prandtl number $\sigma$. For $E\ll 1$ inviscid scaling theory predicts and simulations confirm the large $\mathrm{Ra}$ scaling law $\mathrm{Nu}-1\approx C_1{\sigma }^{-1/2}\mathrm{R}{\mathrm{a}}^{3/2}{E}^2$, where $C_1$ is a constant, estimated as $C_1\approx 0.04\pm 0.0025$. In contrast, the corresponding result for nonrotating convection, $\mathrm{Nu}-1\approx C_2\mathrm{R}{\mathrm{a}}^{\alpha }$, is determined by the efficiency of the thermal boundary layers (laminar: $0.28\lesssim \alpha \lesssim 0.31$, turbulent: $\alpha \sim 0.38$). The $3/2$ scaling law breaks down at Rayleigh numbers at which the thermal boundary layer loses rotational constraint, i.e., when the local Rossby number $\approx 1$. The breakdown takes place while the bulk Rossby number is still small and results in a gradual transition to the nonrotating scaling law. For low Ekman numbers the location of this transition is independent of the mechanical boundary conditions.

We show that extreme vacuum pressures can be measured with current technology by detecting the photons produced by the relativistic Thomson scattering of ultraintense laser light by the electrons of the medium. We compute the amount of radiation scattered at different frequencies and angles when a Gaussian laser pulse crosses a vacuum tube and design strategies for the efficient measurement of pressure. In particular, we show that a single day experiment at a high repetition rate petawatt laser facility such as Vega, that will be operating in 2014 in Salamanca, will be sensitive, in principle, to pressures $p$ as low as ${10}^{-16}\mathrm{Pa}$, and will be able to provide highly reliable measurements for $p\gtrsim {10}^{-14}\mathrm{Pa}$.

Although the cardinal attribute of turbulence is the velocity fluctuations, these fluctuations have been ignored in theories of the frictional drag of turbulent flows. Our goal is to test a new theory that links the frictional drag to the spectral exponent $\alpha$, a property of the velocity fluctuations in a flow. We use a soap-film channel wherein for the first time the value of $\alpha$ can be switched between 3 and $5/3$, the two theoretically possible values in soap-film flows. To induce turbulence with $\alpha =5/3$, we make one of the edges of the soap-film channel serrated. Remarkably, the new theory of the frictional drag holds in both soap-film flows (for either value of the spectral exponent $\alpha$) and ordinary pipe flows (where $\alpha =5/3$), even though these types of flow are governed by different equations.

Complex dielectric media often appear opaque because light traveling through them is scattered multiple times. Although the light scattering is a random process, different paths through the medium can be correlated encoding information about the medium. Here, we present spectroscopic measurements of nonuniversal intensity correlations that emerge when embedding quantum emitters inside a disordered photonic crystal that is found to Anderson-localize light. The emitters probe in situ the microscopic details of the medium, and imprint such near-field properties onto the far-field correlations. Our findings provide new ways of enhancing light-matter interaction for quantum electrodynamics and energy harvesting, and may find applications in subwavelength diffuse-wave spectroscopy for biophotonics.

The aim of this letter is to assess existing theories for Rayleigh–Taylor small turbulent scales. For this purpose, we propose to adapt the Monin-Yaglom relation to the Rayleigh–Taylor turbulence context. A special emphasis is put on the inhomogeneity of the flow and on the effect of buoyancy forces. This relation is then used to show that, among existing theories, the standard Kolmogorov–Obukhov theory should apply to Rayleigh–Taylor turbulence in the limit of a large Reynolds number, large times, and small scales.

We demonstrate the realization of a coherent random fiber laser (RFL) in the extremely weakly scattering regime, which contains a dispersive solution of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes nanoparticles (NPs) and laser dye pyrromethene 597 in carbon disulfide that was injected into a hollow optical fiber. Multiple scattering of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes NPs greatly enhanced by the waveguide confinement effect was experimentally verified to account for coherent lasing observed in our RFL system. This Letter extends the NPs-based RFLs from the incoherent regime to the coherent regime.

We show that the temporal correlations between two light beams arising from a broadband thermal-like source can be controlled in the femtosecond regime. Specifically, by introducing spectral phase-only masks in the path of one of the beams, we show that the timing and strength of the photon correlations can be programmed on demand. This example demonstrates that the interbeam second-order coherence function propagates as a phase-sensitive ultrafast wave packet in the path towards the detectors, and is thus, susceptible to be modified by acting on just one of the beams. For quite some time, it has been thought that this could only happen with sources showing time-energy entanglement. Our work shows that such a property is due to the existence of a certain type of correlation, but not necessarily the entanglement.

One of the most challenging and basic problems in elastic rod dynamics is a description of rods in contact that prevents any unphysical self-intersections. Most previous works addressed this issue through the introduction of short-range potentials. We study the dynamics of elastic rods with perfect rolling contact which is physically relevant for rods with a rough surface. Such dynamics cannot be described by the introduction of any kind of potential. We show that, surprisingly, the presence of rolling contact in rod dynamics leads to highly complex behavior even for the evolution of small disturbances.

We unveil the generation of universal morphologies of fluid interfaces by radiation pressure regardless of the nature of the wave, whether acoustic or optical. Experimental observations reveal interface deformations endowed with steplike features that are shown to result from the interplay between the wave propagation and the shape of the interface. The results are supported by numerical simulations and a quantitative interpretation based on the waveguiding properties of the field is provided.

We show that subterahertz transmission of the superconducting metamaterial, an interlinked two-dimensional network of subwavelength resonators connected by a continuous superconducting wire loop, can be dynamically modulated by passing electrical current through it. We have identified the main mechanisms of modulation that correspond to the suppression of the superconductivity in the network by magnetic field and heat dissipation. Using the metamaterial fabricated from thin niobium film, we were able to demonstrate a transmission modulation depth of up to 45% and a bandwidth of at least 100 kHz. The demonstrated approach may be implemented with other superconducting materials at frequencies below the superconducting gap in the THz and subterahertz bands.

Resonant tunneling of surface polaritons across a subwavelength vacuum gap between two polar or metallic bodies at different temperatures leads to an almost monochromatic heat transfer which can exceed by several orders of magnitude the far-field upper limit predicted by Planck’s blackbody theory. However, despite its strong magnitude, this transfer is very far from the maximum theoretical limit predicted in the near field. Here we propose an amplifier for the photon heat tunneling based on a passive relay system intercalated between the two bodies, which is able to partially compensate the intrinsic exponential damping of energy transmission probability thanks to three-body interaction mechanisms. As an immediate corollary, we show that the exalted transfer observed in the near field between two media can be exported at larger separation distances using such a relay. Photon heat tunneling assisted by three-body interactions enables novel applications for thermal management at nanoscale, near-field energy conversion and infrared spectroscopy.

This work presents the experimental observation of the nonfactorable near-field spatiotemporal correlation of ultrabroadband twin beams generated by parametric down-conversion, in an interferometric-type experiment using sum frequency generation, where both the temporal and the spatial degrees of freedom of parametric down-conversion light are controlled with high resolution. The revealed correlation is skewed in space-time in accordance with the X structure predicted by the theory.

We experimentally investigate the interplay between spatial shock waves and the degree of disorder during nonlinear optical propagation in a thermal defocusing medium. We characterize the way the shock point is affected by the amount of disorder and scales with wave amplitude. Evidence for the existence of a phase diagram in terms of nonlinearity and amount of randomness is reported. The results are in quantitative agreement with a theoretical approach based on the hydrodynamic approximation.