No Arabic abstract
At mesoscopic scales electrolyte solutions are modeled by the fluctuating generalized Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) equations [J.-P. Peraud et al., Phys. Rev. F, 1(7):074103, 2016]. However, at length and time scales larger than the Debye scales, electrolytes are effectively electroneutral, and the charged-fluid PNP equations become too stiff to solve numerically. Here we formulate the isothermal incompressible equations of fluctuating hydrodynamics for reactive multispecies mixtures involving charged species in the electroneutral limit, and design a numerical algorithm to solve these equations. Our model does not assume a dilute electrolyte solution but rather treats all species on an equal footing, accounting for cross-diffusion and non-ideality using Maxwell-Stefan theory. By enforcing local electroneutrality as a constraint, we obtain an elliptic equation for the electric potential that replaces the Poisson equation in the fluctuating PNP equations. We develop a second-order midpoint predictor-corrector algorithm to solve either the charged-fluid or electroneutral equations with only a change of the elliptic solver. We use the electroneutral algorithm to study a gravitational fingering instability, triggered by thermal fluctuations, at an interface where an acid and base react to neutralize each other. Our results demonstrate that, because the four ions diffuse with very different coefficients, one must treat each ion as an individual species, and cannot treat the acid, base, and salt as neutral species. This emphasizes the differences between electrodiffusion and classical Fickian diffusion, even at electroneutral scales.
A pair of flat parallel surfaces, each freely diffusing along the direction of their separation, will eventually come into contact. If the shapes of these surfaces also fluctuate, then contact will occur when their centers of mass remain separated by a nonzero distance $ell$. Here we examine the statistics of $ell$ at the time of first contact for surfaces that evolve in time according to the Edwards-Wilkinson equation. We present a general approach to calculate its probability distribution and determine how its most likely value $ell^*$ depends on the surfaces lateral size $L$. We are motivated by an interest in the motion of interfaces between two phases at conditions of thermodynamic coexistence, and in particular the annihilation of domain wall pairs under periodic boundary conditions. Computer simulations of this scenario verify the predicted scaling behavior in two and three dimensions. In the latter case, slow growth where $ell^ast$ is an algebraic function of $log L$ implies that slab-shaped domains remain topologically intact until $ell$ becomes very small, contradicting expectations from equilibrium thermodynamics.
We develop numerical schemes for solving the isothermal compressible and incompressible equations of fluctuating hydrodynamics on a grid with staggered momenta. We develop a second-order accurate spatial discretization of the diffusive, advective and stochastic fluxes that satisfies a discrete fluctuation-dissipation balance, and construct temporal discretizations that are at least second-order accurate in time deterministically and in a weak sense. Specifically, the methods reproduce the correct equilibrium covariances of the fluctuating fields to third (compressible) and second (incompressible) order in the time step, as we verify numerically. We apply our techniques to model recent experimental measurements of giant fluctuations in diffusively mixing fluids in a micro-gravity environment [A. Vailati et. al., Nature Communications 2:290, 2011]. Numerical results for the static spectrum of non-equilibrium concentration fluctuations are in excellent agreement between the compressible and incompressible simulations, and in good agreement with experimental results for all measured wavenumbers.
With Monte Carlo methods we study the dynamic relaxation of a vortex state at the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition of the two-dimensional XY model. A local pseudo-magnetization is introduced to characterize the symmetric structure of the dynamic systems. The dynamic scaling behavior of the pseudo-magnetization and Binder cumulant is carefully analyzed, and the critical exponents are determined. To illustrate the dynamic effect of the topological defect, similar analysis for the the dynamic relaxation with a spin-wave initial state is also performed for comparison. We demonstrate that a limited amount of quenched disorder in the core of the vortex state may alter the dynamic universality class. Further, theoretical calculations based on the long-wave approximation are presented.
Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) is a novel particle method for mesoscale modeling of complex fluids. DPD particles are often thought to represent packets of real atoms, and the physical scale probed in DPD models are determined by the mapping of DPD variables to the corresponding physical quantities. However, the non-uniqueness of such mapping has led to difficulties in setting up simulations to mimic real systems and in interpreting results. For modeling transport phenomena where thermal fluctuations are important (e.g., fluctuating hydrodynamics), an area particularly suited for DPD method, we propose that DPD fluid particles should be viewed as only 1) to provide a medium in which the momentum and energy are transferred according to the hydrodynamic laws and 2) to provide objects immersed in the DPD fluids the proper random kicks such that these objects exhibit correct fluctuation behaviors at the macroscopic scale. We show that, in such a case, the choice of system temperature and mapping of DPD scales to physical scales are uniquely determined by the level of coarse-graining and properties of DPD fluids. We also verified that DPD simulation can reproduce the macroscopic effects of thermal fluctuation in particulate suspension by showing that the Brownian diffusion of solid particles can be computed in DPD simulations with good accuracy.
We carry out extensive direct path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) simulations of the uniform electron gas (UEG) at finite temperature for different values of the spin-polarization $xi$. This allows us to unambiguously quantify the impact of spin-effects on the momentum distribution function $n(mathbf{k})$ and related properties. We find that interesting physical effects like the interaction-induced increase in the occupation of the zero-momentum state $n(mathbf{0})$ substantially depend on $xi$. Our results further advance the current understanding of the UEG as a fundamental model system, and are of practical relevance for the description of transport properties of warm dense matter in an external magnetic field. All PIMC results are freely available online and can be used as a benchmark for the development of new methods and applications.