[en] Density modulation of charged particle beams may occur as a consequence of deliberate action, or may occur inadvertently because of imperfections in the particle source or acceleration method. In the case of intense beams, where space charge and external focusing govern the beam dynamics, density modulation may under some circumstances be converted to velocity modulation, with a corresponding conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy. Whether this will occur depends on the properties of the beam and the initial modulation. This paper describes the evolution of discrete and continuous density modulations on intense beams, and discusses three recent experiments related to the dynamics of density-modulated electron beams

[en] We study the potential energy landscape underlying the motion of monatomic liquids by quenching from random initial configurations (stochastic configurations) to the nearest local minimum of the potential energy. We show that this procedure reveals the underlying potential energy surface directly. This is in contrast to the common technique of quenching from a molecular dynamics trajectory which does not allow a direct view of the underlying potential energy surface, but needs to be corrected for thermodynamic weighting factors

[en] A relativistic, warm fluid model of a nonequilibrium, collisionless plasma is developed and applied to examine nonlinear Langmuir waves excited by relativistically-intense, short-pulse lasers. Closure of the covariant fluid theory is obtained via an asymptotic expansion assuming a non-relativistic plasma temperature. The momentum spread is calculated in the presence of an intense laser field and shown to be intrinsically anisotropic. Coupling between the transverse and longitudinal momentum variances is enabled by the laser field. A generalized dispersion relation is derived for langmuir waves in a thermal plasma in the presence of an intense laser field. Including thermal fluctuations in three velocity-space dimensions, the properties of the nonlinear electron plasma wave, such as the plasma temperature evolution and nonlinear wavelength, are examined, and the maximum amplitude of the nonlinear oscillation is derived. The presence of a relativistically intense laser pulse is shown to strongly influence the maximum plasma wave amplitude for non-relativistic phase velocities owing to the coupling between the longitudinal and transverse momentum variances.

[en] The spin-echo approach is extended to include biocomplexes for which the interaction with dynamical noise, produced by the protein environment, is strong. Significant restoration of the free induction decay signal due to homogeneous (decoherence) and inhomogeneous (dephasing) broadening is demonstrated analytically and numerically for both an individual dimer of interacting chlorophylls and for an ensemble of dimers. Here, our approach does not require the use of small interaction constants between the electron states and the protein fluctuations. It is based on an exact and closed system of ordinary differential equations that can be easily solved for a wide range of parameters that are relevant for bioapplications.

[en] The temperature equilibration rate in dense hydrogen (for both T_i > T_e and T_i < T_e) has been calculated with large-scale molecular dynamics simulations for temperatures between 10 and 300 eV and densities between 10²⁰/cc to 10²⁴/cc. Careful attention has been devoted to convergence of the simulations, including the role of semiclassical potentials. We find that for Coulomb logarithms L ∼> 1, Brown-Preston-Singleton (Brown et al., Phys. Rep. 410, 237 (2005)) with the sub-leading corrections and the fit of Gericke-Murillo-Schlanges (Gericke et al., PRE 65, 036418 (2003)) to the T-matrix evaluation of the collision operator, agrees with the MD data to within the error bars of the simulation. For more strongly-coupled plasmas where L ∼< 1, our numerical results are consistent with the fit of Gericke-Murillo-Schlanges

[en] Our quasielastic neutron scattering experiments and molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate that a sufficiently high hydration level is a prerequisite for the temperature-dependent dynamic crossover on the time scale of hundreds of picoseconds in the surface water on rutile (TiO2). Below the hydration level corresponding to the monolayer coverage of mobile surface water, a weak temperature dependence of the relaxation times with no apparent dynamic crossover is observed. We associate the dynamic crossover with inter-layer jumps of the mobile water molecules, which become possible only at a sufficiently high hydration level

[en] The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and quasicrystalline self-organization of colloids, we develop truncated pyramidal particles that form nematic elastic dipoles with long-range electrostaticlike and geometry-guided low-symmetry short-range interactions. Using a combination of nonlinear optical imaging, laser tweezers, and video microscopy, we characterize colloidal pair interactions and demonstrate unusual forms of self-tiling of these particles into crystalline, quasicrystalline, and other arrays. Here, our findings are explained using an electrostatics analogy along with liquid crystal elasticity and symmetry breaking considerations, potentially expanding photonic and electro-optic applications of colloids.

[en] In a granular gas, inelastic collisions create an instability in which the constituent particles cluster heterogeneously. These clusters then interact with each other, further decreasing their kinetic energy. We report experiments of the free collisions of dense clusters of particles in a two-dimensional geometry. The particles are composed of solid CO2, which float nearly frictionlessly on a hot surface due to sublimated vapor. After two dense clusters of ≈100 particles collide, there are two distinct stages of evolution. First, the translational kinetic energy rapidly decreases by over 90% as a “jamming front” sweeps across each cluster. Subsequently, the kinetic energy decreases more slowly as the particles approach the container boundaries. In this regime, the measured velocity distributions are non-Gaussian with long tails. Finally, we compare our experiments to computer simulations of colliding, two-dimensional, granular clusters composed of circular, viscoelastic particles with friction.

[en] In materials science and many other research areas, models are frequently inferred without considering their generalization to unseen data. Here, we apply statistical learning using cross-validation to obtain an optimally predictive coarse-grained description of a two-dimensional kinetic nearest-neighbor Ising model with Glauber dynamics (GD) based on the stochastic Ginzburg-Landau equation (sGLE). The latter is learned from GD “training” data using a log-likelihood analysis, and its predictive ability for various complexities of the model is tested on GD “test” data independent of the data used to train the model on. Using two different error metrics, we perform a detailed analysis of the error between magnetization time trajectories simulated using the learned sGLE coarse-grained description and those obtained using the GD model. We show that both for equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium GD training trajectories, the standard phenomenological description using a quartic free energy does not always yield the most predictive coarse-grained model. Moreover, increasing the amount of training data can shift the optimal model complexity to higher values. Our results are promising in that they pave the way for the use of statistical learning as a general tool for materials modeling and discovery.

[en] By using three tunable wavelengths on different cones of laser beams on the National Ignition Facility, numerical simulations show that the energy transfer between beams can be tuned to redistribute the energy within the cones of beams most prone to backscatter instabilities. These radiative hydrodynamics and laser-plasma interaction simulations have been tested against large scale hohlraum experiments with two tunable wavelengths, and reproduce the hohlraum energetics and symmetry. Using a third wavelength provides a greater level of control of the laser energy distribution and coupling in the hohlraum, and could significantly reduce stimulated Raman scattering losses and increase the hohlraum radiation drive while maintaining a good implosion symmetry.