Anand Oza

Pilot-wave hydrodynamics in a rotating frame: Exotic orbits

We present the results of a numerical investigation of droplets walking on a rotating vibrating fluid bath. The drops trajectory is described by an integro-differential equation, which is simulated numerically in various parameter regimes. As the forcing acceleration is progressively increased, stable circular orbits give way to wobbling orbits, which are succeeded in turn by instabilities of the orbital center characterized by steady drifting then discrete leaping. In the limit of large vibrational forcing, the walkers trajectory becomes chaotic, but its statistical behavior reflects the influence of the unstable orbital solutions. The study results in a complete regime diagram that summarizes the dependence of the walkers behavior on the system parameters. Our predictions compare favorably to the experimental observations of Harris and Bush [“Droplets walking in a rotating frame: from quantized orbits to multimodal statistics,” J. Fluid Mech. 739, 444–464 (2014)].

Pilot-wave dynamics in a harmonic potential: Quantization and stability of circular orbits.

We present the results of a theoretical investigation of the dynamics of a droplet walking on a vibrating fluid bath under the influence of a harmonic potential. The walking droplets horizontal motion is described by an integro-differential trajectory equation, which is found to admit steady orbital solutions. Predictions for the dependence of the orbital radius and frequency on the strength of the radial harmonic force field agree favorably with experimental data. The orbital quantization is rationalized through an analysis of the orbital solutions. The predicted dependence of the orbital stability on system parameters is compared with experimental data and the limitations of the model are discussed.

The onset of chaos in orbital pilot-wave dynamics

We present the results of a numerical investigation of the emergence of chaos in the orbital dynamics of droplets walking on a vertically vibrating fluid bath and acted upon by one of the three different external forces, specifically, Coriolis, Coulomb, or linear spring forces. As the vibrational forcing of the bath is increased progressively, circular orbits destabilize into wobbling orbits and eventually chaotic trajectories. We demonstrate that the route to chaos depends on the form of the external force. When acted upon by Coriolis or Coulomb forces, the droplets orbital motion becomes chaotic through a period-doubling cascade. In the presence of a central harmonic potential, the transition to chaos follows a path reminiscent of the Ruelle-Takens-Newhouse scenario.

Antipolar ordering of topological defects in active liquid crystals

ATP-driven microtubule-kinesin bundles can self-assemble into two-dimensional active liquid crystals (ALCs) that exhibit a rich creation and annihilation dynamics of topological defects, reminiscent of particle-pair production processes in quantum systems. This recent discovery has sparked considerable interest but a quantitative theoretical description is still lacking. We present and validate a minimal continuum theory for this new class of active matter systems by generalizing the classical Landau-de Gennes free-energy to account for the experimentally observed spontaneous buckling of motor-driven extensile microtubule bundles. The resulting model agrees with recently published data and predicts a regime of antipolar order. Our analysis implies that ALCs are governed by the same generic ordering principles that determine the non-equilibrium dynamics of dense bacterial suspensions and elastic bilayer materials. Moreover, the theory manifests an energetic analogy with strongly interacting quantum gases. Generally, our results suggest that complex non-equilibrium pattern-formation phenomena might be predictable from a few fundamental symmetry-breaking and scale-selection principles.

Hydrodynamic spin states

We present the results of a theoretical investigation of hydrodynamic spin states, wherein a droplet walking on a vertically vibrating fluid bath executes orbital motion despite the absence of an applied external field. In this regime, the walkers self-generated wave force is sufficiently strong to confine the walker to a circular orbit. We use an integro-differential trajectory equation for the droplets horizontal motion to specify the parameter regimes for which the innermost spin state can be stabilized. Stable spin states are shown to exhibit an analog of the Zeeman effect from quantum mechanics when they are placed in a rotating frame.

Optimization search effort over the control landscapes for open quantum systems with Kraus-map evolution

A quantum control landscape is defined as the expectation value of a target observable Θ as a function of the control variables. In this work, control landscapes for open quantum systems governed by Kraus map evolution are analyzed. Kraus maps are used as the controls transforming an initial density matrix ρi into a final density matrix to maximize the expectation value of the observable Θ. The absence of suboptimal local maxima for the relevant control landscapes is numerically illustrated. The dependence of the optimization search effort is analyzed in terms of the dimension of the system N, the initial state ρi and the target observable Θ. It is found that if the number of nonzero eigenvalues in ρi remains constant, the search effort does not exhibit any significant dependence on N. If ρi has no zero eigenvalues, then the computational complexity and the required search effort rise with N. The dimension of the top manifold (i.e., the set of Kraus operators that maximizes the objective) is found to positively correlate with the optimization search efficiency. Under the assumption of full controllability, incoherent control modeled by Kraus maps is found to be more efficient in reaching the same value of the objective than coherent control modeled by unitary maps. Numerical simulations are also performed for control landscapes with linear constraints on the available Kraus maps, and suboptimal maxima are not revealed for these landscapes.