Succession of Resonances to Achieve Internal Wave Turbulence.

We study experimentally the interaction of nonlinear internal waves in a stratified fluid confined in a trapezoidal tank. The setup has been designed to produce internal wave turbulence from monochromatic and polychromatic forcing through three processes. The first is a linear transfer in wavelength obtained by wave reflection on inclined slopes, leading to an internal wave attractor which has a broad wave number spectrum.

Effective negative specific heat by destabilization of metastable states in dipolar systems.

We study dipolarly coupled three-dimensional spin systems in both the microcanonical and the canonical ensembles by introducing appropriate numerical methods to determine the microcanonical temperature and by realizing a canonical model of heat bath. In the microcanonical ensemble, we show the existence of a branch of stable antiferromagnetic states in the low-energy region. Other metastable ferromagnetic states exist in this region: by externally perturbing them, an effective negative specific heat is obtained.

Instabilities and relaxation to equilibrium in long-range oscillator chains.

We study instabilities and relaxation to equilibrium in a long-range extension of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPU) oscillator chain by exciting initially the lowest Fourier mode. Localization in mode space is stronger for the long-range FPU model. This allows us to uncover the sporadic nature of instabilities, i.

Nonlinear fate of internal wave attractors.

We present a laboratory study on the instability of internal wave attractors in a trapezoidal fluid domain filled with uniformly stratified fluid. Energy is injected into the system via standing-wave-type motion of a vertical wall. Attractors are found to be destroyed by parametric subharmonic instability via a triadic resonance which is shown to provide a very efficient energy pathway from long to short length scales.

Spatial model of autocatalytic reactions.

Biological cells with all of their surface structure and complex interior stripped away are essentially vesicles--membranes composed of lipid bilayers which form closed sacs. Vesicles are thought to be relevant as models of primitive protocells, and they could have provided the ideal environment for prebiotic reactions to occur. In this paper, we investigate the stochastic dynamics of a set of autocatalytic reactions, within a spatially bounded domain, so as to mimic a primordial cell.

Enhanced stochastic oscillations in autocatalytic reactions.

We study a simplified scheme of k coupled autocatalytic reactions, previously introduced by Togashi and Kaneko. The role of stochastic fluctuations is elucidated through the use of the van Kampen system-size expansion and the results compared with direct stochastic simulations. Regular temporal oscillations are predicted to occur for the concentration of the various chemical constituents, with an enhanced amplitude resulting from a resonance which is induced by the intrinsic graininess of the system.

Phase space gaps and ergodicity breaking in systems with long-range interactions.

We study a generalized isotropic XY model which includes both two- and four-spin mean-field interactions. This model can be solved in the microcanonical ensemble. It is shown that in certain parameter regions the model exhibits gaps in the magnetization at fixed energy, resulting in ergodicity breaking.

Maximum entropy principle explains quasistationary states in systems with long-range interactions: the example of the Hamiltonian mean-field model.

A generic feature of systems with long-range interactions is the presence of quasistationary states with non-Gaussian single particle velocity distributions. For the case of the Hamiltonian mean-field model, we demonstrate that a maximum entropy principle applied to the associated Vlasov equation explains known features of such states for a wide range of initial conditions. We are able to reproduce velocity distribution functions with an analytic expression which is derived from the theory with no adjustable parameters.

Prediction of anomalous diffusion and algebraic relaxations for long-range interacting systems, using classical statistical mechanics.

We explain the ubiquity and extremely slow evolution of non-Gaussian out-of-equilibrium distributions for the Hamiltonian mean-field model, by means of traditional kinetic theory. Deriving the Fokker-Planck equation for a test particle, one also unambiguously explains and predicts striking slow algebraic relaxation of the momenta autocorrelation, previously found in numerical simulations. Finally, angular anomalous diffusion are predicted for a large class of initial distributions.

Thermodynamics of the self-gravitating ring model.

We present the phase diagram, in both the microcanonical and the canonical ensemble, of the self-gravitating-ring (SGR) model, which describes the motion of equal point masses constrained on a ring and subject to 3D gravitational attraction. If the interaction is regularized at short distances by the introduction of a softening parameter, a global entropy maximum always exists, and thermodynamics is well defined in the mean-field limit. However, ensembles are not equivalent and a phase of negative specific heat in the microcanonical ensemble appears in a wide intermediate energy region, if the softening parameter is small enough.

The anti-FPU problem.

We present a detailed analysis of the modulational instability of the zone-boundary mode for one and higher-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattices. Following this instability, a process of relaxation to equipartition takes place, which we have called the Anti-FPU problem because the energy is initially fed into the highest frequency part of the spectrum, at variance with the original FPU problem (low frequency excitations of the lattice). This process leads to the formation of chaotic breathers in both one and two dimensions.

Statistical theory of high-gain free-electron laser saturation.

We propose an approach, based on statistical mechanics, to predict the saturated state of a single-pass, high-gain free-electron laser. In analogy with the violent relaxation process in self-gravitating systems and in the Euler equation of two-dimensional turbulence, the initial relaxation of the laser can be described by the statistical mechanics of an associated Vlasov equation. The laser field intensity and the electron bunching parameter reach a quasistationary value which is well fitted by a Vlasov stationary state if the number of electrons N is sufficiently large.

Out-of-equilibrium states as statistical equilibria of an effective dynamics in a system with long-range interactions.

We study the formation of coherent structures in a system with long-range interactions where particles moving on a circle interact through a repulsive cosine potential. Nonequilibrium structures are shown to correspond to statistical equilibria of an effective dynamics, which is derived using averaging techniques. This simple behavior might be a prototype of others observed in more complicated systems with long-range interactions, such as two-dimensional incompressible fluids and wave-particle interaction in a plasma.