Evolution of world running record performances for men and women: physiological characteristics.

Running world records (WRs) contain information about physiological characteristics that determine running performance. The progression of WRs over time encode the evolution of these characteristics. Here we demonstrate that a previously established model for running performance describes WRs since 1918 for men and since 1984 for women with high accuracy.

Multiple Scattering Expansion for Dielectric Media: Casimir Effect.

Recent measurements of Casimir forces have provided evidence of an intricate modification of quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in complex geometries. Here we introduce a multiple scattering description for Casimir interactions between bodies of arbitrary shape and material composition, admitting an expansion as a sequence of inter- and intra-body wave scatterings. Interactions in complex geometries can be computed within the current experimental resolution from typically a few wave scatterings, notably without any a priori knowledge of the scattering amplitudes of the bodies.

Human running performance from real-world big data.

Wearable exercise trackers provide data that encode information on individual running performance. These data hold great potential for enhancing our understanding of the complex interplay between training and performance. Here we demonstrate feasibility of this idea by applying a previously validated mathematical model to real-world running activities of  ≈ 14,000 individuals with ≈ 1.

Dynamical heart beat correlations during running.

Fluctuations of the human heart beat constitute a complex system that has been studied mostly under resting conditions using conventional time series analysis methods. During physical exercise, the variability of the fluctuations is reduced, and the time series of beat-to-beat RR intervals (RRIs) become highly non-stationary. Here we develop a dynamical approach to analyze the time evolution of RRI correlations in running across various training and racing events under real-world conditions.

A minimal power model for human running performance.

Models for human running performances of various complexities and underlying principles have been proposed, often combining data from world record performances and bio-energetic facts of human physiology. The purpose of this work is to develop a novel, minimal and universal model for human running performance that employs a relative metabolic power scale. The main component is a self-consistency relation for the time dependent maximal power output.

Role of City Texture in Urban Heat Islands at Nighttime.

An urban heat island (UHI) is a climate phenomenon that results in an increased air temperature in cities when compared to their rural surroundings. In this Letter, the dependence of an UHI on urban geometry is studied. Multiyear urban-rural temperature differences and building footprints data combined with a heat radiation scaling model are used to demonstrate for more than 50 cities worldwide that city texture-measured by a building distribution function and the sky view factor-explains city-to-city variations in nocturnal UHIs.

Surface temperatures in New York City: Geospatial data enables the accurate prediction of radiative heat transfer.

Despite decades of research seeking to derive the urban energy budget, the dynamics of thermal exchange in the densely constructed environment is not yet well understood. Using New York City as a study site, we present a novel hybrid experimental-computational approach for a better understanding of the radiative heat transfer in complex urban environments. The aim of this work is to contribute to the calculation of the urban energy budget, particularly the stored energy.

Temperature distribution and heat radiation of patterned surfaces at short wavelengths.

We analyze the equilibrium spatial distribution of surface temperatures of patterned surfaces. The surface is exposed to a constant external heat flux and has a fixed internal temperature that is coupled to the outside heat fluxes by finite heat conductivity across the surface. It is assumed that the temperatures are sufficiently high so that the thermal wavelength (a few microns at room temperature) is short compared to all geometric length scales of the surface patterns.

Mechanisms of jamming in the Nagel-Schreckenberg model for traffic flow.

We study the Nagel-Schreckenberg cellular automata model for traffic flow by both simulations and analytical techniques. To better understand the nature of the jamming transition, we analyze the fraction of stopped cars P(v=0) as a function of the mean car density. We present a simple argument that yields an estimate for the free density where jamming occurs, and show satisfying agreement with simulation results.

Velocity statistics of the Nagel-Schreckenberg model.

The statistics of velocities in the cellular automaton model of Nagel and Schreckenberg for traffic are studied. From numerical simulations, we obtain the probability distribution function (PDF) for vehicle velocities and the velocity-velocity (vv) covariance function. We identify the probability to find a standing vehicle as a potential order parameter that signals nicely the transition between free congested flow for a sufficiently large number of velocity states.

Interplay of curvature and temperature in the Casimir-Polder interaction.

We study the Casimir-Polder interaction at finite temperatures between a polarizable small, anisotropic particle and a non-planar surface using a derivative expansion. We obtain the leading and the next-to-leading curvature corrections to the interaction for low and high temperatures. Explicit results are provided for the retarded limit in the presence of a perfectly conducting surface.

Demonstration of angle-dependent Casimir force between corrugations.

The normal Casimir force between a sinusoidally corrugated gold coated plate and a sphere was measured at various angles between the corrugations using an atomic force microscope. A strong dependence on the orientation angle of the corrugation is found. The measured forces were found to deviate from the proximity force approximation and are in agreement with the theory based on the gradient expansion including correlation effects of geometry and material properties.

Exact results for classical Casimir interactions: Dirichlet and Drude model in the sphere-sphere and sphere-plane geometry.

Analytic expressions that describe Casimir interactions over the entire range of separations have been limited to planar surfaces. Here we derive analytic expressions for the classical or high-temperature limit of Casimir interactions between two spheres (interior and exterior configurations), including the sphere-plane geometry as a special case, using bispherical coordinates. We consider both Dirichlet boundary conditions and metallic boundary conditions described by the Drude model.

Nonequilibrium electromagnetic fluctuations: heat transfer and interactions.

The Casimir force between arbitrary objects in equilibrium is related to scattering from individual bodies. We extend this approach to heat transfer and Casimir forces in nonequilibrium cases where each body, and the environment, is at a different temperature. The formalism tracks the radiation from each body and its scatterings by the other objects.

Constraints on stable equilibria with fluctuation-induced (Casimir) forces.

We examine whether fluctuation-induced forces can lead to stable levitation. First, we analyze a collection of classical objects at finite temperature that contain fixed and mobile charges and show that any arrangement in space is unstable to small perturbations in position. This extends Earnshaw's theorem for electrostatics by including thermal fluctuations of internal charges.

Casimir forces between arbitrary compact objects.

We develop an exact method for computing the Casimir energy between arbitrary compact objects, either dielectrics or perfect conductors. The energy is obtained as an interaction between multipoles, generated by quantum current fluctuations. The objects' shape and composition enter only through their scattering matrices.

Casimir-force-driven ratchets.

We explore the nonlinear dynamics of two parallel periodically patterned metal surfaces that are coupled by the zero-point fluctuations of the electromagnetic field between them. The resulting Casimir force generates for asymmetric patterns with a time periodically driven surface-to-surface distance a ratchet effect, allowing for directed lateral motion of the surfaces in sizable parameter ranges. It is crucial to take into account inertia effects and hence chaotic dynamics which are described by Langevin dynamics.

Effect of planar defects on the stability of the Bragg glass phase of type-II superconductors.

It is shown that the Bragg glass phase can become unstable with respect to planar crystal defects as twin or grain boundaries. A single defect plane that is oriented parallel to the magnetic field as well as to one of the main axis of the Abrikosov flux line lattice is always relevant, whereas we argue that a plane with higher Miller index is irrelevant, even at large defect potentials. A finite density of parallel defects with random separations can be relevant even for larger Miller indices.

Casimir Interaction between a plate and a cylinder.

We find the exact Casimir force between a plate and a cylinder, a geometry intermediate between parallel plates, where the force is known exactly, and the plate sphere, where it is known at large separations. The force has an unexpectedly weak decay approximately L/[H3 ln(H/R)] at large plate-cylinder separations H (L and R are the cylinder length and radius), due to transverse magnetic modes. Path integral quantization with a partial wave expansion additionally gives a qualitative difference for the density of states of electric and magnetic modes, and corrections at finite temperatures.

Geometry and spectrum of Casimir forces.

We present a new approach to the Helmholtz spectrum for arbitrarily shaped boundaries and general boundary conditions. We derive the boundary induced change of the density of states in terms of the free Green's function from which we obtain nonperturbative results for the Casimir interaction between rigid surfaces. As an example, we compute the lateral electrodynamic force between two corrugated surfaces over a wide parameter range.

String picture for a model of frustrated quantum magnets and dimers.

We study the effect of quantum dynamics on geometrically frustrated magnets for a transverse field Ising model at finite temperatures. We develop a microscopic derivation of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson action for this model and show that it can be interpreted as the free energy of a 3D elastic lattice of noncrossing strings. As a first application, we quantitatively predict the phase diagram and correlations, confirming excellently a key prediction of recent simulations about the existence of unusual phase transitions and an ordered phase.

Dynamics of granular avalanches caused by local perturbations.

Surface flow of granular material is investigated within a continuum approach in two dimensions. The dynamics is described by the nonlinear coupling between a mobile layer and an erodible bed of static grains. Following previous studies, we use mass and momentum conservation to derive St.

Is there a glass transition in planar vortex systems?

The criteria for the existence of a glass transition in a planar vortex array with quenched disorder are studied. Applying a replica Bethe ansatz, we obtain for self-avoiding vortices the exact quenched average free energy and effective stiffness which is found to be in excellent agreement with recent numerical results for the related random bond dimer model [C. Zeng, P.

Probing the strong boundary shape dependence of the Casimir force.

We study the geometry dependence of the Casimir energy for deformed metal plates by a path integral quantization of the electromagnetic field. For the first time, we give a complete analytical result for the deformation induced change in Casimir energy delta E in an experimentally testable, nontrivial geometry, consisting of a flat and a corrugated plate. Our results show an interesting crossover for delta E as a function of the ratio of the mean plate distance H, to the corrugation length lambda: For lambda<>H.

Thermodynamic fingerprints of disorder in flux line lattices and other glassy mesoscopic systems.

We examine probability distributions for thermodynamic quantities in finite-sized random systems close to criticality. Guided by available exact results, a general ansatz is proposed for replicated free energies, which leads to scaling forms for cumulants of various macroscopic observables. For the specific example of a planar flux line lattice in a two-dimensional superconducting film near H(c1), we provide detailed scaling results for the statistics of the magnetic flux density, susceptibility, heat capacity, and their cross correlations, which can be tested in a recently used experimental setup [Bolle et al.