arXiv subjects

Eduardo Vitral

Publications and source records attributed to Eduardo Vitral.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Phase-field model for a weakly compressible soft layered material: morphological transitions on smectic-isotropic interfaces

A coupled phase-field and hydrodynamic model is introduced to describe a two-phase, weakly compressible smectic (layered phase) in contact with an isotropic fluid of different density. A non-conserved smectic order parameter is coupled to a conserved mass density in order to accommodate non-solenoidal flows near the smectic-isotropic boundary arising from density contrast between the two phases. The model aims to describe morphological transitions in smectic thin films under heat treatment, in which arrays of focal conic defects lead to conical pyramids and concentric rings through curvature dependent evaporation of smectic layers. The model leads to an extended thermodynamic relation at a curved surface that includes its Gaussian curvature, non-classical stresses at the boundary and flows arising from density gradients. The temporal evolution given by the model conserves the overall mass of the liquid crystal while still allowing for the modulated smectic structure to grow or shrink. A numerical solution of the governing equations reveals that pyramidal domains are sculpted at the center of focal conics upon a temperature increase, which display tangential flows at their surface. Other cases investigated include the possible coalescence of two cylindrical stacks of smectic layers, formation of droplets, and the interactions between focal conic domains through flow.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2021

Stripe patterns orientation resulting from nonuniform forcings and other competitive effects in the Swift-Hohenberg dynamics

Spatio-temporal pattern formation in complex systems presents rich nonlinear dynamics which leads to the emergence of periodic nonequilibrium structures. One of the most prominent equations for the theoretical and numerical study of the evolution of these textures is the Swift-Hohenberg (SH) equation, which presents a bifurcation parameter (forcing) that controls the dynamics by changing the energy landscape of the system, and has been largely employed in phase-field models. Though a large part of the literature on pattern formation addresses uniformly forced systems, nonuniform forcings are also observed in several natural systems, for instance, in developmental biology and in soft matter applications. In these cases, an orientation effect due to forcing gradients is a new factor playing a role in the development of patterns, particularly in the class of stripe patterns, which we investigate through the nonuniformly forced SH dynamics. The present work addresses amplitude instability of stripe textures induced by forcing gradients, and the competition between the orientation effect of the gradient and other bulk, boundary, and geometric effects taking part in the selection of the emerging patterns. A weakly nonlinear analysis suggests that stripes are stable with respect to small amplitude perturbations when aligned with the gradient, and become unstable to such perturbations when when aligned perpendicularly to the gradient. This analysis is vastly complemented by a numerical work that accounts for other effects, confirming that forcing gradients drive stripe alignment, or even reorient them from preexisting conditions. However, we observe that the orientation effect does not always prevail in the face of competing effects, whose hierarchy is suggested to depend on the magnitude of the forcing gradient.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2021

Absence of obvious tidal tails around the globular cluster NGC 6397

In this work, we use $N-$body simulations performed on GPU to trace the past 10 Gyr dynamical history of a globular cluster (GC) similar to NGC~6397 in the tidal field of a Milky Way-like galaxy and we compare our simulated GCs with data from the third Gaia early data release. Our simulations predict, in contrast to what is deduced from the data, that such a cluster should present strong and extended tidal tails by more than 6 Gyr ago (right after the first third of its life), exceeding 1 kpc of length, and should be roughly disrupted by current time. We analyzed each of our initial conditions, such as initial mass and density parameters, as well as the dark matter shape, and we argue that the most likely reason for such discrepancy between the data and our simulations is related to the fact that we consider a purely baryonic cluster in the beginning of each model we test. We discuss that if our globular cluster was initially embedded in a dark matter minihalo, the latter could act as a protecting envelope, which prevents the tidal stripping of the luminous matter, while being itself gradually disrupted and removed in the course of the cluster evolution. This could explain why an insignificant amount of dark matter is required to describe the velocity dispersion in NGC~6397, up to at least a few half-mass radii.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

BALRoGO: Bayesian Astrometric Likelihood Recovery of Galactic Objects -- Global properties of over one hundred globular clusters with Gaia EDR3

We present BALRoGO: Bayesian Astrometric Likelihood Recovery of Galactic Objects, a public code to measure the centers, effective radii, and bulk proper motions of Milky Way globular clusters and Local Group dwarf spheroidals, whose data are mixed with Milky Way field stars. Our approach presents innovative methods such as surface density fits allowing for strong interloper contamination and proper motion fits using a Pearson VII distribution for interlopers, instead of classic Gaussian-mixture recipes. We also use non-parametric approaches to represent the color-magnitude diagram of such stellar systems based in their membership probabilities, previously derived from surface density and proper motion fits. The robustness of our method is verified by comparing its results with previous estimates from the literature as well as by testing it on mock data from N-body simulations. We applied BALRoGO to Gaia EDR3 data for over one hundred Milky Way globular clusters and nine Local Group dwarf spheroidals, and we provide positions, effective radii, and bulk proper motions. Finally, we make our algorithm available as an open source software.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Role of Gaussian curvature on local equilibrium and dynamics of smectic-isotropic interfaces

Recent research on interfacial instabilities of smectic films has shown unexpected morphologies that are not fully explained by classical local equilibrium thermodynamics. Annealing focal conic domains can lead to conical pyramids, changing the sign of the Gaussian curvature, and exposing smectic layers at the interface. In order to explore the role of the Gaussian curvature on the stability and evolution of the film-vapor interface, we introduce a phase field model of a smectic-isotropic system as a first step in the study. Through asymptotic analysis of the model, we generalize the classical condition of local equilibrium, the Gibbs-Thomson equation, to include contributions from surface bending and torsion, and a dependence on the layer orientation at the interface. A full numerical solution of the phase field model is then used to study the evolution of focal conic structures in smectic domains in contact with the isotropic phase via local evaporation and condensation of smectic layers. As in experiments, numerical solutions show that pyramidal structures emerge near the center of the focal conic owing to evaporation of adjacent smectic planes and to their orientation relative to the interface. Near the center of the focal conic domain, a correct description of the motion of the interface requires the additional curvature terms obtained in the asymptotic analysis, thus clarifying the limitations in modeling motion of hyperbolic surfaces solely driven by mean curvature.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2021

Does NGC 6397 contain an intermediate-mass black hole or a more diffuse inner subcluster?

We analyze proper motions from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the second Gaia data release along with line-of-sight velocities from the MUSE spectrograph to detect imprints of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) in the center of the nearby, core-collapsed, globular cluster NGC 6397. For this, we use the new MAMPOSSt-PM Bayesian mass-modeling code, along with updated estimates of the surface density profile of NGC 6397. We consider different priors on velocity anisotropy and on the size of the central mass, and we also separate the stars into components of different mean mass to allow for mass segregation. The velocity ellipsoid is very isotropic throughout the cluster, as expected in post-core collapsed clusters subject to as strong a Galactic tidal field as NGC 6397. There is strong evidence for a central dark component of 0.8 to 2% of the total mass of the cluster. However, we find robust evidence disfavoring a central IMBH in NGC 6397, preferring instead a diffuse dark inner subcluster of unresolved objects with a total mass of 1000 to 2000 solar masses, half of which is concentrated within 6 arcsec (2% of the stellar effective radius). These results require the combination of HST and Gaia data: HST for the inner diagnostics and Gaia for the outer surface density and velocity anisotropy profiles. The small effective radius of the diffuse dark component suggests that it is composed of compact stars (white dwarfs and neutron stars) and stellar-mass black holes, whose inner locations are caused by dynamical friction given their high progenitor masses. We show that stellar-mass black holes should dominate the mass of this diffuse dark component, unless more than 25 per cent escape from the cluster. Their mergers in the cores of core-collapsed globular clusters could be an important source of the gravitational wave events detected by LIGO.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Model of the dynamics of an interface between a smectic phase and an isotropic phase of different density

Soft modulated phases have been shown to undergo complex morphological transitions, in which layer remodeling induced by mean and Gaussian curvatures plays a major role. This is the case in smectic films under thermal treatment, where focal conics can be reshaped into conical pyramids and concentric ring structures. We build on earlier research on a smectic-isotropic, two phase configuration in which diffusive evolution of the interface was driven by curvature, while mass transport was neglected. Here, we explicitly consider evaporation-condensation processes in a smectic phase with mass transport through a coexisting isotropic fluid phase, as well as the hydrodynamic stresses at the interface and the resulting flows. By employing the Coleman-Noll procedure, we derive a phase-field model that accounts for a varying density field coupled to smectic layering of the order parameter. The resulting equations govern the evolution of an interface between a modulated phase and an isotropic fluid phase with distinct densities, and they capture compressibility effects in the interfacial region and topological transitions. We first verify a numerical implementation of the governing equations by examining the dispersion relation for interfacial transverse modes. The inverse decay rate is shown to scale as $Q^{2}$ ($Q$ is the wavenumber of the perturbation) due to hydrodynamic effects, instead of the $Q^{4}$ expected for diffusive decay. Then, by integrating the equations forward in time, we investigate fluid flow on distorted layers and focal conics, and show how interfacial stresses and density contrast significantly determine the structure of the flow and the evolution of the configuration.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Spiral defect chaos in Rayleigh-Bénard convection: Asymptotic and numerical studies of azimuthal flows induced by rotating spirals

Rotating spiral patterns in Rayleigh-Bénard convection are known to induce azimuthal flows, which raises the question of how different neighboring spirals interact with each other in spiral chaos, and the role of hydrodynamics in this regime. Far from the core, we show that spiral rotations lead to an azimuthal body force that is irrotational and of magnitude proportional to the topological index of the spiral and its angular frequency. The force, although irrotational, cannot be included in the pressure field as it would lead to a nonphysical, multivalued pressure. We calculate the asymptotic dependence of the resulting flow, and show that it leads to a logarithmic dependence of the azimuthal velocity on distance r away from the spiral core in the limit of negligible damping coefficient. This solution dampens to approximately $1/r$ when accounting for no-slip boundary conditions for the convection cell's plate. This flow component can provide additional hydrodynamic interactions among spirals including those observed in spiral defect chaos. We show that the analytic prediction for the azimuthal velocity agrees with numerical results obtained from both two-dimensional generalized Swift-Hohenberg and three-dimensional Boussinesq models, and find that the velocity field is affected by the size and charges of neighboring spirals. Numerically, we identify a correlation between the appearance of spiral defect chaos and the balancing between the mean-flow advection and the diffusive dynamics related to roll unwinding.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

A Precise Analytical Approximation for the Deprojection of the Sérsic Profile

The Sérsic model is known to fit well the surface brightness (or surface density) profiles of elliptical galaxies and galaxy bulges, and possibly for dwarf spheroidal galaxies and globular clusters. The deprojected density and mass profiles are important for many astrophysical applications, in particular for mass-orbit modeling of these systems. However, the exact deprojection formula for the Sérsic model employs special functions not available in most computer languages. We show that all previous analytical approximations to the 3D density profile are imprecise at low Sérsic index ($n \lesssim 1.5$). We have derived a more precise analytical approximation to the deprojected Sérsic density profile by fitting two-dimensional 10th-order polynomials to the differences of the logarithms of the numerical deprojection and of the analytical approximation by Lima Neto et al. (1999, LGM) of the density profile on one hand and of the mass profile on the other. Our LGM-based polynomial fits have typical relative precision better than $0.2\%$ for both density and mass profiles, for Sérsic indices $0.5 \leq n \leq 10$ and radii $0.001 < r/R_{\rm e} < 1000$. Our approximation is much more precise than those of LGM, Simonneau & Prada (1999, 2004), Trujillo et al. (2002) for non-half-integer values of the index, and of Emsellem & van de Ven (2008) for non-one-tenth-integer values with $n \lesssim 3$, and are nevertheless more than $0.2\%$ precise for larger Sérsic indices, for both density and mass profiles. An appendix compares the deprojected Sérsic profiles with those of the popular simple models from Plummer (1911), Jaffe (1983), Hernquist (1990), Navarro et al. (1996), and Einasto (1965).

astro-ph.GA↗