arXiv subjects

A. Vulpiani

Publications and source records attributed to A. Vulpiani.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Combustion dynamics in steady compressible flows

We study the evolution of a reactive field advected by a one-dimensional compressible velocity field and subject to an ignition-type nonlinearity. In the limit of small molecular diffusivity the problem can be described by a spatially discretized system, and this allows for an efficient numerical simulation. If the initial field profile is supported in a region of size l < lc one has quenching, i.e., flame extinction, where lc is a characteristic length-scale depending on the system parameters (reacting time, molecular diffusivity and velocity field). We derive an expression for lc in terms of these parameters and relate our results to those obtained by other authors for different flow settings.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2007

Violation of the Einstein relation in Granular Fluids: the role of correlations

We study the linear response in different models of driven granular gases. In some situations, even if the the velocity statistics can be strongly non-Gaussian, we do not observe appreciable violations of the Einstein formula for diffusion versus mobility. The situation changes when strong correlations between velocities and density are present: in this case, although a form of fluctuation-dissipation relation holds, the differential velocity response of a particle and its velocity self-correlation are no more proportional. This happens at high densities and strong inelasticities, but still in the fluid-like (and ergodic) regime.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2005

Turbulence and coarsening in active and passive binary mixtures

Phase separation between two fluids in two-dimensions is investigated by means of Direct Numerical Simulations of coupled Navier-Stokes and Cahn-Hilliard equations. We study the phase ordering process in the presence of an external stirring acting on the velocity field. For both active and passive mixtures we find that, for a sufficiently strong stirring, coarsening is arrested in a stationary dynamical state characterized by a continuous rupture and formation of finite domains. Coarsening arrest is shown to be independent of the chaotic or regular nature of the flow.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2005

Mixing and reaction efficiency in closed domains

We present a numerical study of mixing and reaction efficiency in closed domains. In particular we focus our attention on laminar flows. In the case of inert transport the mixing properties of the flows strongly depend on the details of the Lagrangian transport. We also study the reaction efficiency. Starting with a little spot of product we compute the time needed to complete the reaction in the container. We found that the reaction efficiency is not strictly related to the mixing properties of the flow. In particular, reaction acts as a "dynamical regulator".

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2005

Large-scale effects on meso-scale modeling for scalar transport

The transport of scalar quantities passively advected by velocity fields with a small-scale component can be modeled at meso-scale level by means of an effective drift and an effective diffusivity, which can be determined by means of multiple-scale techniques. We show that the presence of a weak large-scale flow induces interesting effects on the meso-scale scalar transport. In particular, it gives rise to non-isotropic and non-homogeneous corrections to the meso-scale drift and diffusivity. We discuss an approximation that allows us to retain the second-order effects caused by the large-scale flow. This provides a rather accurate meso-scale modeling for both asymptotic and pre-asymptotic scalar transport properties. Numerical simulations in model flows are used to illustrate the importance of such large-scale effects.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2005

Thin front propagation in random shear flows

Front propagation in time dependent laminar flows is investigated in the limit of very fast reaction and very thin fronts, i.e. the so-called geometrical optics limit. In particular, we consider fronts evolving in time correlated random shear flows, modeled in terms of Ornstein-Uhlembeck processes. We show that the ratio between the time correlation of the flow and an intrinsic time scale of the reaction dynamics (the wrinkling time $t_w$) is crucial in determining both the front propagation speed and the front spatial patterns. The relevance of time correlation in realistic flows is briefly discussed in the light of the bending phenomenon, i.e. the decrease of propagation speed observed at high flow intensities.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2005

Resemblances and differences in mechanisms of noise-induced resonance

Systems showing stochastic resonance (SR) or coherent resonance (CR) share some features, in particular the nearby periodic character of the signal. We show that in spite of this resemblance the different underlying dynamics can be detected in experimental data by studying the histogram of inter-spikes times and some statistical properties like two-times correlation functions. We discuss the possible relevance for climate modeling.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2004

Multiple-scale analysis and renormalization for pre-asymptotic scalar transport

Pre-asymptotic transport of a scalar quantity passively advected by a velocity field formed by a large-scale component superimposed to a small-scale fluctuation is investigated both analytically and by means of numerical simulations. Exploiting the multiple-scale expansion one arrives at a Fokker--Planck equation which describes the pre-asymptotic scalar dynamics. Such equation is associated to a Langevin equation involving a multiplicative noise and an effective (compressible) drift. For the general case, no explicit expression for both the effective drift and the effective diffusivity (actually a tensorial field) can be obtained. We discuss an approximation under which an explicit expression for the diffusivity (and thus for the drift) can be obtained. Its expression permits to highlight the important fact that the diffusivity explicitly depends on the large-scale advecting velocity. Finally, the robustness of the aforementioned approximation is checked numerically by means of direct numerical simulations.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2004

Introduction to chaos and diffusion

This contribution is relative to the opening lectures of the ISSAOS 2001 summer school and it has the aim to provide the reader with some concepts and techniques concerning chaotic dynamics and transport processes in fluids. Our intention is twofold: to give a self-consistent introduction to chaos and diffusion, and to offer a guide for the reading of the rest of this volume.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2004

Topological thermal instability and length of proteins

We present an analysis of the effects of global topology on the structural stability of folded proteins in thermal equilibrium with a heat bath. For a large class of single domain proteins, we computed the harmonic spectrum within the Gaussian Network Model (GNM) and determined the spectral dimension, a parameter describing the low frequency behaviour of the density of modes. We find a surprisingly strong correlation between the spectral dimension and the number of amino acids of the protein. Considering that larger spectral dimension value relate to more topologically compact folded state, our results indicate that for a given temperature and length of the protein, the folded structure corresponds to the less compact folding compatible with thermodynamic stability.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2003

Coarse-Grained Probabilistic Automata Mimicking Chaotic Systems

Discretization of phase space usually nullifies chaos in dynamical systems. We show that if randomness is associated with discretization dynamical chaos may survive and be indistinguishable from that of the original chaotic system, when an entropic, coarse-grained analysis is performed. Relevance of this phenomenon to the problem of quantum chaos is discussed.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2003

Relaxation of finite perturbations: Beyond the Fluctuation-Response relation

We study the response of dynamical systems to finite amplitude perturbation. A generalized Fluctuation-Response relation is derived, which links the average relaxation toward equilibrium to the invariant measure of the system and points out the relevance of the amplitude of the initial perturbation. Numerical computations on systems with many characteristic times show the relevance of the above relation in realistic cases.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2003

Topological thermal instability and the length of proteins

We present an analysis of the role of global topology on the structural stability of folded proteins in thermal equilibrium with a heat bath. For a large class of single domain proteins, we compute the harmonic spectrum within the Gaussian Network Model (GNM) and we determine the spectral dimension, a parameter describing the low frequency behaviour of the density of modes. We find a surprisingly strong correlation between the spectral dimension and the number of aminoacids of the protein. Considering that the larger the spectral dimension, the more topologically compact is the folded state, our results indicate that for a given temperature and length of the protein, the folded structure corresponds to the less compact folding compatible with thermodynamic stability.

cond-mat↗

arXiv2002

Data compression and learning in time sequences analysis

Motivated by the problem of the definition of a distance between two sequences of characters, we investigate the so-called learning process of typical sequential data compression schemes. We focus on the problem of how a compression algorithm optimizes its features at the interface between two different sequences $A$ and $B$ while zipping the sequence $A+B$ obtained by simply appending $B$ after $A$. We show the existence of a universal scaling function (the so-called learning function) which rules the way in which the compression algorithm learns a sequence $B$ after having compressed a sequence $A$. In particular it turns out that it exists a crossover length for the sequence $B$, which depends on the relative entropy between $A$ and $B$, below which the compression algorithm does not learn the sequence $B$ (measuring in this way the relative entropy between $A$ and $B$) and above which it starts learning $B$, i.e. optimizing the compression using the specific features of $B$. We check the scaling function on three main classes of systems: Bernoulli schemes, Markovian sequences and the symbolic dynamic generated by a non trivial chaotic system (the Lozi map). As a last application of the method we present the results of a recognition experiment, namely recognize which dynamical systems produced a given time sequence. We finally point out the potentiality of these results for segmentation purposes, i.e. the identification of homogeneous sub-sequences in heterogeneous sequences (with applications in various fields from genetic to time-series analysis).

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2002

Thin front propagation in steady and unsteady cellular flows

Front propagation in two dimensional steady and unsteady cellular flows is investigated in the limit of very fast reaction and sharp front, i.e., in the geometrical optics limit. In the steady case, by means of a simplified model, we provide an analytical approximation for the front speed, $v_{\scriptsize{f}}$, as a function of the stirring intensity, $U$, in good agreement with the numerical results and, for large $U$, the behavior $v_{\scriptsize{f}}\sim U/\log(U)$ is predicted. The large scale of the velocity field mainly rules the front speed behavior even in the presence of smaller scales. In the unsteady (time-periodic) case, the front speed displays a phase-locking on the flow frequency and, albeit the Lagrangian dynamics is chaotic, chaos in front dynamics only survives for a transient. Asymptotically the front evolves periodically and chaos manifests only in the spatially wrinkled structure of the front.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2002

Polymer transport by laminar flows

Polymer transport is investigated for two paradigmatic laminar flows having open and closed streamlines, respectively. For both types of flows we find transport depletion owing to the action of the polymers elastic degree of freedom. For flows with closed streamlines the leading mechanism for the observed transport reduction is the (dynamical) formation of barriers. For flows with open streamlines the reduction of transport is induced by the renormalization of the bare diffusion coefficient. Results have been obtained by means of Lagrangian simulations.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2001

Front speed enhancement in cellular flows

The problem of front propagation in a stirred medium is addressed in the case of cellular flows in three different regimes: slow reaction, fast reaction and geometrical optics limit. It is well known that a consequence of stirring is the enhancement of front speed with respect to the non-stirred case. By means of numerical simulations and theoretical arguments we describe the behavior of front speed as a function of the stirring intensity, $U$. For slow reaction, the front propagates with a speed proportional to $U^{1/4}$, conversely for fast reaction the front speed is proportional to $U^{3/4}$. In the geometrical optics limit, the front speed asymptotically behaves as $U/\ln U$.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2001

Inverse statistics of smooth signals: the case of two dimensional turbulence

The problem of inverse statistics (statistics of distances for which the signal fluctuations are larger than a certain threshold) in differentiable signals with power law spectrum, $E(k) \sim k^{-α}$, $3 \le α< 5$, is discussed. We show that for these signals, with random phases, exit-distance moments follow a bi-fractal distribution. We also investigate two dimensional turbulent flows in the direct cascade regime, which display a more complex behavior. We give numerical evidences that the inverse statistics of 2d turbulent flows is described by a multi-fractal probability distribution, i.e. the statistics of laminar events is not simply captured by the exponent $α$ characterizing the spectrum.

nlin.CD↗