Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Crossing Of Disclinations In Nematic Slabs, T. Ishikawa, Oleg Lavrentovich Jan 1998

Crossing Of Disclinations In Nematic Slabs, T. Ishikawa, Oleg Lavrentovich

Oleg Lavrentovich

It is shown experimentally that crossing and intercommutation of disclinations in a bounded nematic cell depend on surface orientation of the director and the relative strength of disclinations. Lines of opposite strength switch the pinned ends between the bounding plates and vanish independently of each other if the surface orientation is tangential. In contrast, tilted surface orientation preserves the stability of lines.


Integrable Unsteady Motion With An Application To Ocean Eddies, A. D. Kirwan Jr., Bruce L. Lipphardt Jan 1998

Integrable Unsteady Motion With An Application To Ocean Eddies, A. D. Kirwan Jr., Bruce L. Lipphardt

CCPO Publications

Application of the Brown-Samelson theorem, which shows that particle motion is integrable in a class of vorticity-conserving, two-dimensional incompressible hows, is extended here to a class of explicit time dependent dynamically balanced flows in multilayered systems. Particle motion for nonsteady two-dimensional flows with discontinuities in the vorticity or potential vorticity fields (modon solutions) is shown to be integrable. An example of a two-layer modon solution constrained by observations of a Gulf Stream ring system is discussed.