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Xin An

Publications and source records attributed to Xin An.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2022

Fast inverse transform sampling of non-Gaussian distribution functions in space plasmas

Non-Gaussian distributions are commonly observed in collisionless space plasmas. Generating samples from non-Gaussian distributions is critical for the initialization of particle-in-cell simulations that investigate their driven and undriven dynamics. To this end, we report a computationally efficient, robust tool, Chebsampling, to sample general distribution functions in one and two dimensions. This tool is based on inverse transform sampling with function approximation by Chebyshev polynomials. We demonstrate practical uses of Chebsampling through sampling typical distribution functions in space plasmas.

physics.plasm-ph↗
arXiv2022

Configuration of magnetotail current sheet prior to magnetic reconnection onset

The magnetotail current sheet configuration determines magnetic reconnection properties that control the substorm onset, one of the most energetic phenomena in the Earth's magnetosphere. The quiet-time current sheet is often approximated as a two-dimensional (2D) magnetic field configuration balanced by isotropic plasma pressure gradients. However, reconnection onset is preceded by the current sheet thinning and the formation of a nearly one-dimensional (1D) magnetic field configuration. In this study, using particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate the force balance of such thin current sheets when they are driven by plasma inflow. We demonstrate that the magnetic field configuration transitions from 2D to 1D thanks to the formation of plasma pressure nongyrotropy and reveal its origin in the nongyrotropic terms of the ion distributions. We show that substorm onset may be controlled by the instability and dynamics of such nongyrotropic current sheets, having properties much different from the most commonly investigated 2D isotropic configuration.

physics.space-ph↗
arXiv2022

Baryon transport and the QCD critical point

Fireballs created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at different beam energies have been argued to follow different trajectories in the QCD phase diagram in which the QCD critical point serves as a landmark. Using a (1+1)-dimensional model setting with transverse homogeneity, we study the complexities introduced by the fact that the evolution history of each fireball cannot be characterized by a single trajectory but rather covers an entire swath of the phase diagram, with the finally emitted hadron spectra integrating over contributions from many different trajectories. Studying the phase diagram trajectories of fluid cells at different space-time rapidities, we explore how baryon diffusion shuffles them around, and how they are affected by critical dynamics near the QCD critical point. We find a striking insensitivity of baryon diffusion to critical effects. Its origins are analyzed and possible implications discussed.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2021

The BEST framework for the search for the QCD critical point and the chiral magnetic effect

The Beam Energy Scan Theory (BEST) Collaboration was formed with the goal of providing a theoretical framework for analyzing data from the Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The physics goal of the BES program is the search for a conjectured QCD critical point as well as for manifestations of the chiral magnetic effect. We describe progress that has been made over the previous five years. This includes studies of the equation of state and equilibrium susceptibilities, the development of suitable initial state models, progress in constructing a hydrodynamic framework that includes fluctuations and anomalous transport effects, as well as the development of freezeout prescriptions and hadronic transport models. Finally, we address the challenge of integrating these components into a complete analysis framework. This document describes the collective effort of the BEST Collaboration and its collaborators around the world.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2021

Baryon diffusion near the QCD critical point

Fireballs created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at different beam energies have been argued to follow different trajectories in the QCD phase diagram in which the QCD critical point serves as a landmark. Using a (1+1)-dimensional model setting with transverse homogeneity, we study the complexities introduced by the fact that the evolution history of each fireball cannot be characterized by a single trajectory but rather covers an entire swath of the phase diagram, with the finally emitted hadron spectra integrating over contributions from many different trajectories. Studying the phase diagram trajectories of fluid cells at different space-time rapidities, we explore how baryon diffusion shuffles them around, and how they are affected by critical dynamics near the QCD critical point. We find a striking insensitivity of baryon diffusion to critical effects. Its origins are analyzed and possible implications discussed.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2021

Evolution of Non-Gaussian Hydrodynamic Fluctuations

In the context of the search for the QCD critical point using non-Gaussian fluctuations, we obtain the evolution equations for non-Gaussian cumulants to the leading order of the systematic expansion in the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. We develop a diagrammatic technique in which the leading order contributions are given by tree diagrams. We introduce a Wigner transform for multipoint correlators and derive the evolution equations for three- and four-point Wigner functions for the problem of nonlinear stochastic diffusion with multiplicative noise.

hep-th↗
arXiv2020

Nonlinear Landau resonant interaction between kinetic Alfvén waves and thermal electrons: Excitation of time domain structures

Phase space holes, double layers and other solitary electric field structures, referred to as time domain structures (TDSs), often occur around dipolarization fronts in the Earth's inner magnetosphere. They are considered to be important because of their role in the dissipation of the injection energy and their potential for significant particle scattering and acceleration. Kinetic Alfvén waves are observed to be excited during energetic particle injections, and are typically present in conjunction with TDS observations. Despite the availability of a large number of spacecraft observations, the origin of TDSs and their relation to kinetic Alfvén waves remains poorly understood to date. Part of the difficulty arises from the vast scale separations between kinetic Alfvén waves and TDSs. Here, we demonstrate that TDSs can be excited by electrons in nonlinear Landau resonance with kinetic Alfvén waves. These electrons get trapped by the parallel electric field of kinetic Alfvén waves, form localized beam distributions, and subsequently generate TDSs through beam instabilities. A big picture emerges as follows: macroscale dipolarization fronts first transfer the ion flow (kinetic) energy to kinetic Alfvén waves at intermediate scale, which further channel the energy to TDSs at the microscale and eventually deposit the energy to the thermal electrons in the form of heating. In this way, the ion flow energy associated with dipolarization fronts is effectively dissipated in a cascade from large to small scales in the inner magnetosphere.

physics.space-ph↗
arXiv2020

Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations of foreshock transients at their very early stage

Foreshock transients are ion kinetic structures in the ion foreshock. Due to their dynamic pressure perturbations, they can disturb the bow shock and magnetosphere-ionosphere system. They can also accelerate particles contributing to shock acceleration. However, it is still unclear how exactly they form. Recent particle-in-cell simulations point out the important role of electric field and Hall current in the formation process. To further examine this, we use data from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission to apply case studies on two small (1000-2000 km) foreshock transient events that just started to form. In event 1 where MMS were in a tetrahedral formation, we show that the current density configuration, which determined the magnetic field profile, was mainly driven by Hall currents generated by demagnetized foreshock ions. The resulting time variation of the magnetic field induced electric field that drove cold plasma moving outward with magnetic field lines. In event 2 where MMS were in a string-of-pearls formation, we analyze the evolution of field and plasma parameters. We show that the magnetic flux and mass flux were transported outward from the core resulting in the steepening of the boundary. The steepened boundary, which trapped more foreshock ions and caused stronger demagnetization of foreshock ions, nonlinearly further enhanced the Hall current. Based on our observations, we propose a physical formation process that the positive feedback of foreshock ions on the varying magnetic field caused by the foreshock ion Hall current enables an instability and the growth of the structure.

physics.space-ph↗
arXiv2020

Formation of foreshock transients and associated secondary shocks

Upstream of shocks, the foreshock is filled with hot ions. When these ions are concentrated and thermalized around a discontinuity, a diamagnetic cavity bounded by compressional boundaries, referred to as a foreshock transient, forms. Sometimes, the upstream compressional boundary can further steepen into a secondary shock, which has been observed to accelerate particles and contribute to the primary shock acceleration. However, secondary shock formation conditions and processes are not fully understood. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we reveal how secondary shocks are formed. From 1D simulations, we show that electric fields play a critical role in shaping the shock's magnetic field structure, as well as in coupling the energy of hot ions to that of the shock. We demonstrate that larger thermal speed and concentration ratio of hot ions favors the formation of a secondary shock. From a more realistic 2D simulation, we examine how a discontinuity interacts with foreshock ions leading to the formation of a foreshock transient and a secondary shock. Our results imply that secondary shocks are more likely to occur at primary shocks with higher Mach number. With the secondary shock's previously proven ability to accelerate particles in cooperation with a planetary bow shock, it is even more appealing to consider them in particle acceleration of high Mach number astrophysical shocks.

physics.space-ph↗
arXiv2020

Unified view of nonlinear wave structures associated with whistler-mode chorus

A range of nonlinear wave structures, including Langmuir waves, unipolar electric fields and bipolar electric fields, are often observed in association with whistler-mode chorus waves in the near-Earth space. We demonstrate that the three seemingly different nonlinear wave structures originate from the same nonlinear electron trapping process by whistler-mode chorus waves. The ratio of the Landau resonant velocity to the electron thermal velocity controls the type of nonlinear wave structures that will be generated.

physics.space-ph↗
arXiv2020

Relativistic Dynamics of Fluctuations and QCD Critical Point

We review the recent development on a systematic deterministic formalism describing dynamics of both bulk and fluctuations in an arbitrary relativistic hydrodynamic flow carrying conserved charges. In particular, we discuss the implementation of such general formalism near the QCD critical point.

hep-th↗
arXiv2019

Fluctuation dynamics in a relativistic fluid with a critical point

To describe dynamics of bulk and fluctuations near the QCD critical point we develop general relativistic fluctuation formalism for a fluid carrying baryon charge. Feedback of fluctuations modifies hydrodynamic coefficients including bulk viscosity and conductivity and introduces nonlocal and non-instantaneous terms in constitutive equations. We perform necessary ultraviolet (short-distance) renormalization to obtain cutoff independent deterministic equations suitable for numerical implementation. We use the equations to calculate the universal non-analytic small-frequency dependence of transport coefficients due to fluctuations (long-time tails). Focusing on the critical mode we show how this general formalism matches existing Hydro+ description of fluctuations near the QCD critical point and nontrivially extends it inside and outside of the critical region.

hep-th↗
arXiv2019

EmoSense: Computational Intelligence Driven Emotion Sensing via Wireless Channel Data

Emotion is well-recognized as a distinguished symbol of human beings, and it plays a crucial role in our daily lives. Existing vision-based or sensor-based solutions are either obstructive to use or rely on specialized hardware, hindering their applicability. This paper introduces EmoSense, a first-of-its-kind wireless emotion sensing system driven by computational intelligence. The basic methodology is to explore the physical expression of emotions from wireless channel response via data mining. The design and implementation of EmoSense {face} two major challenges: extracting physical expression from wireless channel data and recovering emotion from the corresponding physical expression. For the former, we present a Fresnel zone based theoretical model depicting the fingerprint of the physical expression on channel response. For the latter, we design an efficient computational intelligence driven mechanism to recognize emotion from the corresponding fingerprints. We prototyped EmoSense on the commodity WiFi infrastructure and compared it with main-stream sensor-based and vision-based approaches in the real-world scenario. The numerical study over $3360$ cases confirms that EmoSense achieves a comparable performance to the vision-based and sensor-based rivals under different scenarios. EmoSense only leverages the low-cost and prevalent WiFi infrastructures and thus constitutes a tempting solution for emotion sensing.

cs.HC↗
arXiv2019

Resonant excitation of whistler waves by a helical electron beam

Chorus-like whistler-mode waves that are known to play a fundamental role in driving radiation-belt dynamics are excited on the Large Plasma Device by the injection of a helical electron beam into a cold plasma. The mode structure of the excited whistler wave is identified using a phase-correlation technique showing that the waves are excited through a combination of Landau resonance, cyclotron resonance and anomalous cyclotron resonance. The dominant wave mode excited through cyclotron resonance is quasi-parallel propagating, whereas wave modes excited through Landau resonance and anomalous cyclotron resonance propagate at oblique angles that are close to the resonance cone. An analysis of the linear wave growth rates captures the major observations in the experiment. The results have important implications for the generation process of whistler waves in the Earth's inner magnetosphere.

physics.plasm-ph↗
arXiv2019

Linear unstable whistler eigenmodes excited by a finite electron beam

Electron beam-generated whistler waves are widely found in the Earth's space plasma environment and are intricately involved in a number of phenomena. Here we study the linear growth of whistler eigenmodes excited by a finite gyrating electron beam, to facilitate the interpretation of relevant experiments on beam-generated whistler waves in the Large Plasma Device at UCLA. A linear instability analysis for an infinite gyrating beam is first performed. It is shown that whistler waves are excited through a combination of cyclotron resonance, Landau resonance and anomalous cyclotron resonance, consistent with our experimental results. By matching the whistler eigenmodes inside and outside the beam at the boundary, a linear growth rate is obtained for each wave mode and the corresponding mode structure is constructed. These eigenmodes peak near the beam boundary, leak out of the beam region and decay to zero far away from the beam.

physics.plasm-ph↗
arXiv2019

Relativistic Hydrodynamic Fluctuations

We present a general systematic formalism for describing dynamics of fluctuations in an arbitrary relativistic hydrodynamic flow, including their feedback (known as long-time hydrodynamic tails). The fluctuations are described by two-point equal-time correlation functions. We introduce a definition of equal time in a situation where the local rest frame is determined by the local flow velocity, and a method of taking derivatives and Wigner transforms of such equal-time correlation functions, which we call confluent. We find that the equations for confluent Wigner functions not only resemble kinetic equations, but that the kinetic equation for phonons propagating on an arbitrary background nontrivially matches the equations for Wigner functions, including relativistic inertial and Coriolis forces due to acceleration and vorticity of the flow. We also describe the procedure of renormalization of short-distance singularities which eliminates cutoff dependence, allowing efficient numerical implementation of these equations.

hep-th↗
arXiv2018

On spinodal points and Lee-Yang edge singularities

We address a number of outstanding questions associated with the analytic properties of the universal equation of state of the $ϕ^4$ theory, which describes the critical behavior of the Ising model and ubiquitous critical points of the liquid-gas type. We focus on the relation between spinodal points that limit the domain of metastability for temperatures below the critical temperature, i.e., $T < T_{\rm c}$, and Lee-Yang edge singularities that restrict the domain of analyticity around the point of zero magnetic field $H$ for $T > T_{\rm c}$. The extended analyticity conjecture (due to Fonseca and Zamolodchikov) posits that, for $T < T_{\rm c}$, the Lee-Yang edge singularities are the closest singularities to the real $H$ axis. This has interesting implications, in particular, that the spinodal singularities must lie off the real $H$ axis for $d < 4$, in contrast to the commonly known result of the mean-field approximation. We find that the parametric representation of the Ising equation of state obtained in the $\varepsilon = 4-d$ expansion, as well as the equation of state of the ${\rm O}(N)$-symmetric $ϕ^4$ theory at large $N$, are both nontrivially consistent with the conjecture. We analyze the reason for the difficulty of addressing this issue using the $\varepsilon$ expansion. It is related to the long-standing paradox associated with the fact that the vicinity of the Lee-Yang edge singularity is described by Fisher's $ϕ^3$ theory, which remains nonperturbative even for $d\to 4$, where the equation of state of the $ϕ^4$ theory is expected to approach the mean-field result. We resolve this paradox by deriving the Ginzburg criterion that determines the size of the region around the Lee-Yang edge singularity where mean-field theory no longer applies.

hep-th↗
arXiv2017

Electrostatic and whistler instabilities excited by an electron beam

The electron beam-plasma system is ubiquitous in the space plasma environment. Here, using a Darwin particle-in-cell method, the excitation of electrostatic and whistler instabilities by a gyrating electron beam is studied in support of recent laboratory experiments. It is assumed that the total plasma frequency $ω_{pe}$ is larger than the electron cyclotron frequency $Ω_e$. The fast-growing electrostatic beam-mode waves saturate in a few plasma oscillations by slowing down and relaxing the electron beam parallel to the background magnetic field. Upon their saturation, the finite amplitude electrostatic beam-mode waves can resonate with the tail of the background thermal electrons and accelerate them to the beam parallel velocity. The slower-growing whistler waves are excited in primarily two resonance modes: (a) through Landau resonance due to the inverted slope of the beam electrons in the parallel velocity; (b) through cyclotron resonance by scattering electrons to both lower pitch angles and smaller energies. It is demonstrated that, for a field-aligned beam, the whistler instability can be suppressed by the electrostatic instability due to a faster energy transfer rate between beam electrons and the electrostatic waves. Such a competition of growth between whistler and electrostatic waves depends on the ratio of $ω_{pe}/Ω_e$. In terms of wave propagation, beam-generated electrostatic waves are confined to the beam region whereas beam-generated whistler waves transport energy away from the beam.

physics.plasm-ph↗