Biomedical subjects

Pablo I Hurtado

Publications and source records attributed to Pablo I Hurtado.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Simplest piston problem. I. Elastic collisions.

We study the dynamics of three elastic particles in a finite interval where two light particles are separated by a heavy "piston." The piston undergoes surprisingly complex motion that is oscillatory at short time scales but seemingly chaotic at longer scales. The piston also makes long-duration excursions close to the ends of the interval that stem from the breakdown of energy equipartition. Many of these dynamical features can be understood by mapping the motion of three particles on the line onto the trajectory of an elastic billiard in a highly skewed tetrahedral region. We exploit this picture to construct a qualitative random walk argument that predicts a power-law tail, with exponent -3/2, for the distribution of time intervals between successive piston crossings of the interval midpoint. These predictions are verified by numerical simulations.

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PubMed2006

Simplest piston problem. II. Inelastic collisions.

We study the dynamics of three particles in a finite interval, in which two light particles are separated by a heavy "piston," with elastic collisions between particles but inelastic collisions between the light particles and the interval ends. A symmetry breaking occurs in which the piston migrates near one end of the interval and performs small-amplitude periodic oscillations on a logarithmic time scale. The properties of this dissipative limit cycle can be understood simply in terms of a effective restitution coefficient picture. Many dynamical features of the three-particle system closely resemble those of the many-body inelastic piston problem.

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PubMed2006

Breakdown of hydrodynamics in a simple one-dimensional fluid.

We investigate the behavior of a one-dimensional diatomic fluid under a shock wave excitation. We find that the properties of the resulting shock wave are in striking contrast with those predicted by hydrodynamic and kinetic approaches; e.g., the hydrodynamic profiles relax algebraically toward their equilibrium values. Deviations from local thermodynamic equilibrium are persistent, decaying as a power law of the distance to the shock layer. Nonequipartition is observed infinitely far from the shock wave, and the velocity-distribution moments exhibit multiscaling. These results question the validity of simple hydrodynamic theories to understand collective behavior in 1D fluids.

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PubMed2005

Entangled networks, synchronization, and optimal network topology.

A new family of graphs, entangled networks, with optimal properties in many respects, is introduced. By definition, their topology is such that it optimizes synchronizability for many dynamical processes. These networks are shown to have an extremely homogeneous structure: degree, node distance, betweenness, and loop distributions are all very narrow. Also, they are characterized by a very interwoven (entangled) structure with short average distances, large loops, and no well-defined community structure. This family of nets exhibits an excellent performance with respect to other flow properties such as robustness against errors and attacks, minimal first-passage time of random walks, efficient communication, etc. These remarkable features convert entangled networks in a useful concept, optimal or almost optimal in many senses, and with plenty of potential applications in computer science or neuroscience.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Strong shock waves and nonequilibrium response in a one-dimensional gas: a Boltzmann equation approach.

We investigate the nonequilibrium behavior of a one-dimensional binary fluid on the basis of Boltzmann equation, using an infinitely strong shock wave as probe. Density, velocity, and temperature profiles are obtained as a function of the mixture mass ratio mu. We show that temperature overshoots near the shock layer, and that heavy particles are denser, slower, and cooler than light particles in the strong nonequilibrium region around the shock. The shock width omega(mu), which characterizes the size of this region, decreases as omega(mu) approximately mu(1/3) for mu-->0. In this limit, two very different length scales control the fluid structure, with heavy particles equilibrating much faster than light ones. Hydrodynamic fields relax exponentially toward equilibrium: phi(chi) approximately exp[-chi/lambda]. The scale separation is also apparent here, with two typical scales, lambda1 and lambda2, such that lambda1 approximately mu(1/2 as mu-->0, while lambda2, which is the slow scale controlling the fluid's asymptotic relaxation, increases to a constant value in this limit. These results are discussed in light of recent numerical studies on the nonequilibrium behavior of similar one-dimensional binary fluids.

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