arXiv subjects

Hans J. Herrmann

Publications and source records attributed to Hans J. Herrmann.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Clout, Activists and Budget: The Road to Presidency

Political campaigns involve, in the simplest case, two competing campaign groups which try to obtain a majority of votes. We propose a novel mathematical framework to study political campaign dynamics on social networks whose constituents are either political activists or persuadable individuals. Activists are convinced and do not change their opinion and they are able to move around in the social network to motivate persuadable individuals to vote according to their opinion. We describe the influence of the complex interplay between the number of activists, political clout, budgets, and campaign costs on the campaign result. We also identify situations where the choice of one campaign group to send a certain number of activists already pre-determines their victory. Moreover, we show that a candidate's advantage in terms of political clout can overcome a substantial budget disadvantage or a lower number of activists, as illustrated by the US presidential election 2016.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

Tomographic Study of Internal Erosion of Particle Flows in Porous Media

In particle-laden flows through porous media, porosity and permeability are significantly affected by the deposition and erosion of particles. Experiments show that the permeability evolution of a porous medium with respect to a particle suspension is not smooth, but rather exhibits significant jumps followed by longer periods of continuous permeability decrease. Their origin seems to be related to internal flow path reorganization by avalanches of deposited material due to erosion inside the porous medium. We apply neutron tomography to resolve the spatio-temporal evolution of the pore space during clogging and unclogging to prove the hypothesis of flow path reorganization behind the permeability jumps. This mechanistic understanding of clogging phenomena is relevant for a number of applications from oil production to filters or suffosion as the mechanisms behind sinkhole formation.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

Schramm-Loewner evolution and perimeter of percolation clusters of correlated random landscapes

Motivated by the fact that many physical landscapes are characterized by long-range height-height correlations that are quantified by the Hurst exponent H, we investigate the statistical properties of the iso-height lines of correlated surfaces in the framework of Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE). We show numerically that in the continuum limit the external perimeter of a percolating cluster of correlated surfaces with H between -1 and zero is statistically equivalent to SLE curves. Our results suggest that the external perimeter also retains the Markovian properties, confirmed by the absence of time correlations in the driving function and the fact that the latter is Gaussian distributed for any specific time. We also confirm that for all H the variance of the winding angle grows logarithmically with size.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2017

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of the Dirac fluid of charge carriers on graphene

We provide numerical evidence that a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability occurs in the Dirac fluid of electrons in graphene and can be detected in current experiments. This instability appears for electrons in the viscous regime passing though a micrometer-scale obstacle and affects measurements on the time scale of nanoseconds. A possible realization with a needle-shaped obstacle is proposed to produce and detect this instability by measuring the electric potential difference between contact points located before and after the obstacle. We also show that, for our setup, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability leads to the formation of whirlpools similar to the ones reported in Bandurin et al. [Science 351, 1055 (2016)]. To perform the simulations, we develop a lattice Boltzmann method able to recover the full dissipation in a fluid of massless particles.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Critical bursts in filtration

Particle detachment bursts during the flow of suspensions through porous media are a phenomenon that can severely affect the efficiency of deep bed filters. Despite the relevance in several industrial fields, little is known about the statistical properties and the temporal organization of these events. We present experiments of suspensions of deionized water carrying quartz particles pushed with a peristaltic pump through a filter of glass beads measuring simultaneously pressure drop, flux and suspension solid fraction. We find that the burst size distribution scales consistently with a power-law, suggesting that we are in the presence of a novel experimental realization of a self-organized critical system. Temporal correlations are present in the time series, alike in other phenomena as earthquakes or neuronal activity bursts, and also an analog to Omori's law can be shown. The understanding of bursts statistics could provide novel insights in different fields, e.g. in filter and petroleum industries.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

Targeted Recovery as an Effective Strategy against Epidemic Spreading

We propose a targeted intervention protocol where recovery is restricted to individuals that have the least number of infected neighbours. Our recovery strategy is highly efficient on any kind of network, since epidemic outbreaks are minimal when compared to the baseline scenario of spontaneous recovery. In the case of spatially embedded networks, we find that an epidemic stays strongly spatially confined with a characteristic length scale undergoing a random walk. We demonstrate numerically and analytically that this dynamics leads to an epidemic spot with a flat surface structure and a radius that grows linearly with the spreading rate.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

Edwards Statistical Mechanics for Jammed Granular Matter

In 1989, Sir Sam Edwards made the visionary proposition to treat jammed granular materials using a volume ensemble of equiprobable jammed states in analogy to thermal equilibrium statistical mechanics, despite their inherent athermal features. Since then, the statistical mechanics approach for jammed matter has garnered an extraordinary amount of attention by both theorists and experimentalists. Here, we review a systematic approach to jammed matter based on the Edwards statistical mechanical ensemble. We discuss the construction of microcanonical and canonical ensembles based on the volume function, which replaces the Hamiltonian in jammed systems. The importance of approximation schemes at various levels is emphasized leading to quantitative predictions for ensemble averaged quantities such as packing fractions and contact force distributions. An overview of the phenomenology of jammed states and experiments, simulations, and theoretical models scrutinizing the strong assumptions underlying Edwards' approach is given including recent results suggesting the validity of Edwards ergodic hypothesis for jammed states. A theoretical framework for packings whose constitutive particles range from spherical to non-spherical shapes like dimers, polymers, ellipsoids, spherocylinders or tetrahedra, hard and soft, frictional, frictionless and adhesive, monodisperse and polydisperse particles in any dimensions is discussed providing insight into an unifying phase diagram for all jammed matter. Furthermore, the connection between the Edwards' ensemble of metastable jammed states and metastability in spin-glasses is established. This highlights that the packing problem can be understood as a constraint satisfaction problem for excluded volume and force and torque balance leading to a unifying framework between the Edwards ensemble of equiprobable jammed states and out-of-equilibrium spin-glasses.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

The Mechanism behind Erosive Bursts in Porous Media

Erosion and deposition during flow through porous media can lead to large erosive bursts that manifest as jumps in permeability and pressure loss. Here we reveal that the cause of these bursts is the re-opening of clogged pores when the pressure difference between two opposite sites of the pore surpasses a certain threshold. We perform numerical simulations of flow through porous media and compare our predictions to experimental results, recovering with excellent agreement shape and power-law distribution of pressure loss jumps, and the behavior of the permeability jumps as function of particle concentration. Furthermore, we find that erosive bursts only occur for pressure gradient thresholds within the range of two critical values, independent on how the flow is driven. Our findings provide a better understanding of sudden sand production in oil wells and breakthrough in filtration.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

Spatial features of synaptic adaptation affecting learning performance

Recent studies have proposed that the diffusion of messenger molecules, such as monoamines, can mediate the plastic adaptation of synapses in supervised learning of neural networks. Based on these findings we developed a model for neural learning, where the signal for plastic adaptation is assumed to propagate through the extracellular space. We investigate the conditions allowing learning of Boolean rules in a neural network. Even fully excitatory networks show very good learning performances. Moreover, the investigation of the plastic adaptation features optimizing the performance suggests that learning is very sensitive to the extent of the plastic adaptation and the spatial range of synaptic connections.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2017

How images determine our visual search strategy

When searching for a target within an image our brain can adopt different strategies, but which one does it choose? This question can be answered by tracking the motion of the eye while it executes the task. Following many individuals performing various search tasks we distinguish between two competing strategies. Motivated by these findings, we introduce a model that captures the interplay of the search strategies and allows us to create artificial eye-tracking trajectories, which could be compared to the experimental ones. Identifying the model parameters allows us to quantify the strategy employed in terms of ensemble averages, characterizing each experimental cohort. In this way we can discern with high sensitivity the relation between the visual landscape and the average strategy, disclosing how small variations in the image induce changes in the strategy.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2017

Balance of excitation and inhibition determines 1/f power spectrum in neuronal networks

The $1/f$-like decay observed in the power spectrum of electro-physiological signals, along with scale-free statistics of the so-called neuronal avalanches, constitute evidences of criticality in neuronal systems. Recent in vitro studies have shown that avalanche dynamics at criticality corresponds to some specific balance of excitation and inhibition, thus suggesting that this is a basic feature of the critical state of neuronal networks. In particular, a lack of inhibition significantly alters the temporal structure of the spontaneous avalanche activity and leads to an anomalous abundance of large avalanches. Here we study the relationship between network inhibition and the scaling exponent $β$ of the power spectral density (PSD) of avalanche activity in a neuronal network model inspired in Self-Organized Criticality (SOC). We find that this scaling exponent depends on the percentage of inhibitory synapses and tends to the value $β= 1$ for a percentage of about 30%. More specifically, $β$ is close to $2$, namely brownian noise, for purely excitatory networks and decreases towards values in the interval $[1,1.4]$ as the percentage of inhibitory synapses ranges between 20 and 30%, in agreement with experimental findings. These results indicate that the level of inhibition affects the frequency spectrum of resting brain activity and suggest the analysis of the PSD scaling behavior as a possible tool to study pathological conditions.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2017

Self-assembly and rheology of dipolar colloids in simple shear - studied by multi-particle collision dynamics

Magnetic nanoparticles in a colloidal solution self-assemble in various aligned structures, which has a profound influence on the flow behavior. However, the precise role of the microstructure in the development of the rheological response has not been reliably quantified. We investigate the self-assembly of dipolar colloids in simple shear using hybrid molecular dynamics and multi-particle collision dynamics simulations with explicit coarse-grained hydrodynamics; conduct simulated rheometric studies and apply micromechanical models to produce master curves, showing evidence of the universality of the structural behavior governed by the competition of the bonding (dipolar) and erosive (thermal and/or hydrodynamic) stresses. The simulations display viscosity changes across several orders of magnitude in fair quantitative agreement with various literature sources, substantiating the universality of the approach, which seems to apply generally across vastly different length scales and a broad range of physical systems.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Optimal array of sand fences

Sand fences are widely applied to prevent soil erosion by wind in areas affected by desertification. Sand fences also provide a way to reduce the emission rate of dust particles, which is triggered mainly by the impacts of wind-blown sand grains onto the soil and affects the Earth's climate. Many different types of fence have been designed and their effects on the sediment transport dynamics studied since many years. However, the search for the optimal array of fences has remained largely an empirical task. In order to achieve maximal soil protection using the minimal amount of fence material, a quantitative understanding of the flow profile over the relief encompassing the area to be protected including all employed fences is required. Here we use Computational Fluid Dynamics to calculate the average turbulent airflow through an array of fences as a function of the porosity, spacing and height of the fences. Specifically, we investigate the factors controlling the fraction of soil area over which the basal average wind shear velocity drops below the threshold for sand transport when the fences are applied. We introduce a cost function, given by the amount of material necessary to construct the fences. We find that, for typical sand-moving wind velocities, the optimal fence height (which minimizes this cost function) is around $50\,$cm, while using fences of height around $1.25\,$m leads to maximal cost.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2017

Critical behaviors in contagion dynamics

We study the critical behavior of a general contagion model where nodes are either active (e.g. with opinion A, or functioning) or inactive (e.g. with opinion B, or damaged). The transitions between these two states are determined by (i) spontaneous transitions independent of the neighborhood, (ii) transitions induced by neighboring nodes and (iii) spontaneous reverse transitions. The resulting dynamics is extremely rich including limit cycles and random phase switching. We derive a unifying mean-field theory. Specifically, we analytically show that the critical behavior of systems whose dynamics is governed by processes (i-iii) can only exhibit three distinct regimes: (a) uncorrelated spontaneous transition dynamics (b) contact process dynamics and (c) cusp catastrophes. This ends a long-standing debate on the universality classes of complex contagion dynamics in mean-field and substantially deepens its mathematical understanding.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2016

Gender differences in scientific collaborations: Women are more egalitarian than men

By analyzing a unique dataset of more than 270,000 scientists, we discovered substantial gender differences in scientific collaborations. While men are more likely to collaborate with other men, women are more egalitarian. This is consistently observed over all fields and regardless of the number of collaborators a scientist has. The only exception is observed in the field of engineering, where this gender bias disappears with increasing number of collaborators. We also found that the distribution of the number of collaborators follows a truncated power law with a cut-off that is gender dependent and related to the gender differences in the number of published papers. Considering interdisciplinary research, our analysis shows that men and women behave similarly across fields, except in the case of natural sciences, where women with many collaborators are more likely to have collaborators from other fields.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2016

A mesoscopic approach to subcritical fatigue crack growth

We investigate a model for fatigue crack growth in which damage accumulation is assumed to follow a power law of the local stress amplitude, a form which can be generically justified on the grounds of the approximately self-similar aspect of microcrack distributions. Our aim is to determine the relation between model ingredients and the Paris exponent governing subcritical crack-growth dynamics at the macroscopic scale, starting from a single small notch propagating along a fixed line. By a series of analytical and numerical calculations, we show that, in the absence of disorder, there is a critical damage-accumulation exponent $γ$, namely $γ_c=2$, separating two distinct regimes of behavior for the Paris exponent $m$. For $γ>γ_c$, the Paris exponent is shown to assume the value $m=γ$, a result which proves robust against the separate introduction of various modifying ingredients. Explicitly, we deal here with (i) the requirement of a minimum stress for damage to occur; (ii) the presence of disorder in local damage thresholds; (iii) the possibility of crack healing. On the other hand, in the regime $γ<γ_c$ the Paris exponent is seen to be sensitive to the different ingredients added to the model, with rapid healing or a high minimum stress for damage leading to $m=2$ for all $γ<γ_c$, in contrast with the linear dependence $m=6-2γ$ observed for very long characteristic healing times in the absence of a minimum stress for damage. Upon the introduction of disorder on the local fatigue thresholds, which leads to the possible appearance of multiple cracks along the propagation line, the Paris exponent tends to $m\approx 4$ for $γ\lesssim 2$, while retaining the behavior $m=γ$ for $γ\gtrsim 4$.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2016

Impact of embedding on predictability of failure-recovery dynamics in networks

Failure, damage spread and recovery crucially underlie many spatially embedded networked systems ranging from transportation structures to the human body. Here we study the interplay between spontaneous damage, induced failure and recovery in both embedded and non-embedded networks. In our model the network's components follow three realistic processes that capture these features: (i) spontaneous failure of a component independent of the neighborhood (internal failure), (ii) failure induced by failed neighboring nodes (external failure) and (iii) spontaneous recovery of a component.We identify a metastable domain in the global network phase diagram spanned by the model's control parameters where dramatic hysteresis effects and random switching between two coexisting states are observed. The loss of predictability due to these effects depend on the characteristic link length of the embedded system. For the Euclidean lattice in particular, hysteresis and switching only occur in an extremely narrow region of the parameter space compared to random networks. We develop a unifying theory which links the dynamics of our model to contact processes. Our unifying framework may help to better understand predictability and controllability in spatially embedded and random networks where spontaneous recovery of components can mitigate spontaneous failure and damage spread in the global network.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2016

Evolution of Strength and Failure of SCC during Early Hydration

The early strength evolution of self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is studied by a set of non-standard mechanical tests for compressive, tensile, shear and bending failure. The results are applicable in an industrial environment for process control, e.g. of slip casting with adaptive molds in robotic fabrication. A procedure for collapsing data to a master evolution curve is presented that allows to distinguish two regimes in the evolution. In the first, the material is capable of undergoing large localized plastic deformation, as expected from thixotropic yield stress fluids. This is followed by a transition to cohesive frictional material behavior dominated by crack growth. The typical differences in tensile and compressive strength of hardened concrete are observed to originate at the transition. Finally, the evolution of a limit surface in principal stress space is constructed and discussed.

cond-mat.soft↗