Coherent structures are ubiquitous in turbulent flows and play a key role in transport. The most important coherent structures in thermal turbulence are plumes. Despite being the primary heat carriers, the potential of manipulating thermal plumes to transport more heat has been overlooked so far. Unlike some other forms of energy transport, such as electromagnetic or sound waves, heat flow in fluids is generally difficult to manipulate, as it is associated with the random motion of molecules and atoms. Here we report how a simple geometrical confinement can lead to the condensation of elementary plumes. The result is the formation of highly coherent system-sized plumes and the emergence of a new regime of convective thermal turbulence characterized by universal temperature profiles and significantly enhanced heat transfer. It is also found that the universality of the temperature profiles and heat transport originate from the geometrical properties of the coherent structures, i.e., the thermal plumes. Therefore, in contrast to the classical regime, boundary layers in this plume-controlled regime are being controlled, rather than controlling.

A novel investigation of the nature of intermittency in incompressible, homogeneous, and isotropic turbulence is performed by a numerical study of the Navier-Stokes equations constrained on a fractal Fourier set. The robustness of the energy transfer and of the vortex stretching mechanisms is tested by changing the fractal dimension $D$ from the original three dimensional case to a strongly decimated system with $D=2.5$, where only about 3% of the Fourier modes interact. This is a unique methodology to probe the statistical properties of the turbulent energy cascade, without breaking any of the original symmetries of the equations. While the direct energy cascade persists, deviations from the Kolmogorov scaling are observed in the kinetic energy spectra. A model in terms of a correction with a linear dependency on the codimension of the fractal set $E(k)\sim k^{-5/3+3-D}$ explains the results. At small scales, the intermittency of the vorticity field is observed to be quasisingular as a function of the fractal mode reduction, leading to an almost Gaussian statistics already at $D\sim 2.98$. These effects must be connected to a genuine modification in the triad-to-triad nonlinear energy transfer mechanism.

Complete determination of the polarization state of light requires at least four distinct projective measurements of the associated Stokes vector. Stability of state reconstruction, however, hinges on the condition number $\kappa$ of the corresponding instrument matrix. Optimization of redundant measurement frames with an arbitrary number of analysis states, $m$, is considered in this Letter in the sense of minimization of $\kappa$. The minimum achievable $\kappa$ is analytically found and shown to be independent of $m$, except for $m=5$ where this minimum is unachievable. Distribution of the optimal analysis states over the Poincaré sphere is found to be described by spherical 2 designs, including the Platonic solids as special cases. Higher order polarization properties also play a key role in nonlinear, stochastic, and quantum processes. Optimal measurement schemes for nonlinear measurands of degree $t$ are hence also considered and found to correspond to spherical $2t$ designs, thereby constituting a generalization of the concept of mutually unbiased bases.

A theory of partial flame propagation driven by the gravitational field is developed. Using the on-shell approach, equations for the gas velocity distributions and the front shape of a steady flame are obtained and solved numerically. It is found that the solutions describing upward flame propagation come in pairs having close propagation speeds, and that the effect of strong gravity is to reverse the burnt gas velocity profile generated by the flame. On the basis of these results, a complete explanation is given of the intricate observed behavior of flames near the limits of inflammability, including the dependence of the inflammability range on the size of the combustion domain, the large distances of partial flame propagation, and the progression of flame extinction.

We show, experimentally and numerically, that a mode-locked fiber laser can operate in a regime where two dissipative soliton solutions coexist and the laser will periodically switch between the solutions. The two dissipative solitons differ in their pulse energy and spectrum. The switching can be controlled by an external perturbation and triggered even when switching does not occur spontaneously. Numerical simulations unveil the importance of the double-minima loss spectrum and nonlinear gain to the switching dynamics.

Linear gravity water waves are highly dispersive; therefore, the spreading of initially short wave trains characterizes water surface waves, and is a universal property of a dispersive medium. Only if there is sufficient nonlinearity does this envelope admit solitary solutions which do not spread and remain in fixed forms. Here, in contrast to the nonlinear localized wave packets, we present both theoretically and experimentally a new type of linearly nondispersive water wave, having a cosine-Gauss envelope, as well as its higher-order Hermite cosine-Gauss variations. We show that these waves preserve their width despite the inherent dispersion while propagating in an 18-m wave tank, accompanied by a slowly varying carrier-envelope phase. These wave packets exhibit self-healing; i.e., they are restored after bypassing an obstacle. We further demonstrate that these nondispersive waves are robust to weakly nonlinear perturbations. In the strong nonlinear regime, symmetry breaking of these waves is observed, but their cosine-Gauss shapes are still approximately preserved during propagation.

By means of variational methods and systematic numerical analysis, we demonstrate the existence of metastable solitons in three dimensional (3D) free space, in the context of binary atomic condensates combining contact self-attraction and spin-orbit coupling, which can be engineered by available experimental techniques. Depending on the relative strength of the intra- and intercomponent attraction, the stable solitons feature a semivortex or mixed-mode structure. In spite of the fact that the local cubic self-attraction gives rise to the supercritical collapse in 3D, and hence the setting produces no true ground state, the solitons are stable against small perturbations, motion, and collisions.

Chaotic eigenstates of quantum systems are known to localize on either side of a classical partial transport barrier if the flux connecting the two sides is quantum mechanically not resolved due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty. Surprisingly, in open systems with escape chaotic resonance states can localize even if the flux is quantum mechanically resolved. We explain this using the concept of conditionally invariant measures from classical dynamical systems by introducing a new quantum mechanically relevant class of such fractal measures. We numerically find quantum-to-classical correspondence for localization transitions depending on the openness of the system and on the decay rate of resonance states.

In 1964 Bloembergen and Shen predicted that Raman gain could be suppressed if the rates of phonon creation and annihilation (by inelastic scattering) exactly balance. This is only possible if the momentum required for each process is identical, i.e., phonon coherence waves created by pump-to-Stokes scattering are identical to those annihilated in pump-to-anti-Stokes scattering. In bulk gas cells, this can only be achieved over limited interaction lengths at an oblique angle to the pump axis. Here we report a simple system that provides dramatic Raman gain suppression over long collinear path lengths in hydrogen. It consists of a gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber whose zero dispersion point is pressure adjusted to lie close to the pump laser wavelength. At a certain precise pressure, stimulated generation of Stokes light in the fundamental mode is completely suppressed, allowing other much weaker phenomena such as spontaneous Raman scattering to be explored at high pump powers.

The effects of particle inertia, particle shape, and fluid shear on particle rotation are examined using direct numerical simulation of turbulent channel flow. Particles at the channel center (nearly isotropic turbulence) and near the wall (highly sheared flow) show different rotation patterns and surprisingly different effects of particle inertia. Oblate particles at the center tend to rotate orthogonally to their symmetry axes, whereas prolate particles rotate around their symmetry axes. This trend is weakened by increasing inertia so that highly inertial oblate spheroids rotate nearly isotropically about their principle axes at the channel center. Near the walls, inertia does not move the rotation of spheroids towards isotropy but, rather, reverses the trend, causing oblate spheroids to rotate strongly about their symmetry axes and prolate spheroids to rotate normal to their symmetry axes. The observed phenomena are mostly ascribed to preferential orientations of the spheroids.

The conventional approach to the turbulent energy cascade, based on Richardson-Kolmogorov phenomenology, ignores the topology of emerging vortices, which is related to the helicity of the turbulent flow. It is generally believed that helicity can play a significant role in turbulent systems, e.g., supporting the generation of large-scale magnetic fields, but its impact on the energy cascade to small scales has never been observed. We suggest, for the first time, a generalized phenomenology for isotropic turbulence with an arbitrary spectral distribution of the helicity. We discuss various scenarios of direct turbulent cascades with new helicity effect, which can be interpreted as a hindering of the spectral energy transfer. Therefore, the energy is accumulated and redistributed so that the efficiency of nonlinear interactions will be sufficient to provide a constant energy flux. We confirm our phenomenology by high Reynolds number numerical simulations based on a shell model of helical turbulence. The energy in our model is injected at a certain large scale only, whereas the source of helicity is distributed over all scales. In particular, we found that the helical bottleneck effect can appear in the inertial interval of the energy spectrum.

Spatial modulation of the incident wave front has become a powerful method for controlling the diffusive transport of light in disordered media; however, such interference-based control is intrinsically sensitive to frequency detuning. Here, we show analytically and numerically that certain wave fronts can exhibit strongly enhanced total transmission or absorption across bandwidths that are orders of magnitude broader than the spectral correlation width of the speckles. Such broadband enhancement is possible due to long-range correlations in coherent diffusion, which cause the spectral degrees of freedom to scale as the square root of the bandwidth rather than the bandwidth itself.

We present a numerical study of the statistical properties of three-dimensional dissipative turbulent flows at scales larger than the forcing scale. Our results indicate that the large scale flow can be described to a large degree by the truncated Euler equations with the predictions of the zero flux solutions given by absolute equilibrium theory, both for helical and nonhelical flows. Thus, the functional shape of the large scale spectra can be predicted provided that scales sufficiently larger than the forcing length scale but also sufficiently smaller than the box size are examined. Deviations from the predictions of absolute equilibrium are discussed.