Related papers: The Simplest Piston Problem I: Elastic Collisions
A detailed analysis of the adiabatic-piston problem reveals peculiar dynamical features that challenge the general belief that isolated systems necessarily reach a static equilibrium state. In particular, the fact that the piston behaves…
We study a one-dimensional hamiltonian chain of masses perturbed by an energy conserving noise. The dynamics is such that, according to its hamiltonian part, particles move freely in cells and interact with their neighbors through…
We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…
We consider a system of $N$ particles on the real line that evolves through iteration of the following steps: 1) every particle splits into two, 2) each particle jumps according to a prescribed displacement distribution supported on the…
The emergence of power laws that govern the large-time dynamics of a one-dimensional billiard of $N$ point particles is analysed. In the initial state, the resting particles are placed in the positive half-line $x\geqslant 0$ at equal…
A Poisson line process is a random set of straight lines contained in the plane, as the image of the map $(x,v)\mapsto (x+vt)_{t\in\mathbb{R}}$, for each point $(x,v)$ of a Poisson process in the space-velocity plane. By associating a step…
We study numerically stick slip motions in a model of blocks and springs being pulled slowly. The sliding friction is assumed to change dynamically with a state variable. The transition from steady sliding to stick-slip is subcritical in a…
We study the spontaneous motion, binary collisions, and collective dynamics of "polar disks", i.e. purpose-built particles which, when vibrated between two horizontal plates, move coherently along a direction strongly correlated to their…
We investigate by exact optimization method properties of two- and three-dimensional systems of elastic lines in presence of splayed columnar disorder. The ground state of many lines is separable both in 2d and 3d leading to a random walk…
Recent work on the dynamics of triaxial stellar systems is reviewed. The motion of boxlike orbits in realistic triaxial potentials is generically stochastic. The degree to which the stochasticity manifests itself in the dynamics depends on…
The sticking of a soft polystyrene colloidal particle to a planar glass plate was studied by a microrheological technique using an optical tweezer to trap the particle and a piezoelectric-stage to position the plate and to sinusoidally…
Diffusion in cell biology is important and complicated. Diffusing particles must contend with a complex environment as they make their way through the cell. We analyze a particular type of complexity that arises when diffusing particles…
The process of L\'evy walk, i.e., movement patterns described by heavy-tailed random walks, plays a role in various phenomena, from chemical and microbiological systems through marine predators to climate change. Recent experiments have…
The Hamiltonian dynamics of chains of nonlinearly coupled particles is numerically investigated in two and three dimensions. Simple, off-lattice homopolymer models are used to represent the interparticle potentials. Time averages of…
We study inelastic gases in two dimensions using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations. Our focus is the nature of the stationary state attained by rare injection of large amounts of energy to balance the dissipation due to…
The continuous limit of large systems of particles of finite size on the line is described. The particles are assumed to move freely and stick under collision, to form compound particles whose mass and size is the sum of the masses and…
We investigate the behaviour of a finite chain of Brownian particles, interacting through a pairwise quadratic potential, with one end of the chain fixed and the other end pulled away at slow speed, in the limit of slow speed and small…
We investigate the motion of a suspended non-Brownian sphere past a fixed cylindrical or spherical obstacle in the limit of zero Reynolds number for arbitrary particle-obstacle aspect ratios. We consider both a suspended sphere moving in a…
We continue the study of the time evolution of a system consisting of a piston in a cubical container of large size $L$ filled with an ideal gas. The piston has mass $M\sim L^2$ and undergoes elastic collisions with $N\sim L^3$ gas…
The free fall of three particles under Newtonian attraction allows to illustrate some of the complexities of the general three body problem. The total collapse or singularity that occurs when starting from one of the five central…