Distance-Regular Graphs Van Dam, Edwin R.; Koolen, Jack H.; Tanaka, Hajime
The Electronic journal of combinatorics,
04/2016, Letnik:
1000
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This is a survey of distance-regular graphs. We present an introduction to distance-regular graphs for the reader who is unfamiliar with the subject, and then give an overview of some developments in ...the area of distance-regular graphs since the monograph 'BCN' Brouwer, A.E., Cohen, A.M., Neumaier, A., Distance-Regular Graphs, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1989 was written.
Self-organization of active matter as well as driven granular matter in nonequilibrium dynamical states has attracted considerable attention not only from the fundamental and application viewpoints ...but also as a model to understand the occurrence of such phenomena in nature. These systems share common features originating from their intrinsically out-of-equilibrium nature, and how energy dissipation affects the state selection in such nonequilibrium states remains elusive. As a simple model system, we consider a nonequilibrium stationary state maintained by continuous energy input, relevant to industrial processing of granular materials by vibration and/or flow. More specifically, we experimentally study roles of dissipation in self-organization of a driven granular particle monolayer. We find that the introduction of strong inelasticity entirely changes the nature of the liquid-solid transition from two-step (nearly) continuous transitions (liquid-hexatic-solid) to a strongly discontinuous first-order-like one (liquid-solid), where the two phases with different effective temperatures can coexist, unlike thermal systems, under a balance between energy input and dissipation. Our finding indicates a pivotal role of energy dissipation and suggests a novel principle in the self-organization of systems far from equilibrium. A similar principle may apply to active matter, which is another important class of out-of-equilibrium systems. On noting that interaction forces in active matter, and particularly in living systems, are often nonconservative and dissipative, our finding may also shed new light on the state selection in these systems.
Glassy states are formed if crystallization is avoided upon cooling or increasing density. However, the physical factors controlling the ease of vitrification and the nature of glass transition ...remain elusive. Among various glass-forming systems, colloidal liquids are one of the most ideal glass-forming systems because of the simplicity and controllability of the interactions. We use numerical simulations of two-dimensional polydisperse and binary hard discs to tackle both of these longstanding questions. For polydisperse systems, we systematically control the polydispersity, which can be regarded as the strength of frustration effects on crystallization. We reveal that crystal-like hexatic order grows in size and lifetime with an increase in the colloid volume fraction or with a decrease in polydispersity (or frustration). We stress that hexatic ordering in hard disc systems is a direct consequence of dense packing and a manifestation of low configurational entropy. Our study suggests an intriguing scenario that the strength of frustration controls both the ease of vitrification and the nature of the glass transition. Vitrification may be a process of hidden crystal-like ordering under frustration for this system. This may provide not only a physical basis for glass formation, but also an answer to another longstanding question on the structure of amorphous materials: 'order in disorder' may be an intrinsic feature of a glassy state of many materials. For binary mixtures, on the other hand, the relevant structural feature linked to slow dynamics is not hexatic order, but an amorphous structure of low structural entropy. These results suggest that slow dynamics is associated with bond orientational order linked to the crystal for a weakly frustrated system, whereas to amorphous structures of low configurational entropy for a strongly frustrated system. This suggests an intrinsic link between structure and dynamics in glass-forming materials: slow dynamics is linked to structuring ('glassy ordering') towards low configurational entropy. We discuss the nature of 'glassy order' responsible for slow dynamics.
There are at least three fundamental states of matter, depending upon temperature and pressure: gas, liquid, and solid (crystal). These states are separated by first-order phase transitions between ...them. In both gas and liquid phases a complete translational and rotational symmetry exist, whereas in a solid phase both symmetries are broken. In intermediate phases between liquid and solid, which include liquid crystal and plastic crystal phases, only one of the two symmetries is preserved. Among the fundamental states of matter, the liquid state is the most poorly understood. We argue that it is crucial for a better understanding of liquids to recognize that a liquid generally has the tendency to have a local structural order and its presence is intrinsic and universal to any liquid. Such structural ordering is a consequence of many-body correlations, more specifically, bond angle correlations, which we believe are crucial for the description of the liquid state. We show that this physical picture may naturally explain difficult unsolved problems associated with the liquid state, such as anomalies of water-type liquids (water, Si, Ge, ...), liquid-liquid transition, liquid-glass transition, crystallization and quasicrystal formation, in a unified manner. In other words, we need a new order parameter representing a low local free-energy configuration, which is a bond orientational order parameter in many cases, in addition to a density order parameter for the physical description of these phenomena. Here we review our two-order-parameter model of liquid and consider how transient local structural ordering is linked to all of the above-mentioned phenomena. The relationship between these phenomena is also discussed.
Graphical abstract
Orientational ordering is key to functional materials with switching capability, such as nematic liquid crystals and ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials. We explored the confinement of nematic ...liquid crystals in bicontinuous porous structures with smooth surfaces that locally impose normal orientational order on the liquid crystal. We find that frustration leads to a high density of topological defect lines permeating the porous structures, and that most defect lines are made stable by looping around solid portions of the confining material. Because many defect trajectories are possible, these systems are highly metastable and efficient in memorizing the alignment forced by external fields. Such memory effects have their origin in the topology of the confining surface and are maximized in a simple periodic bicontinuous cubic structure. We also show that nematic liquid crystals in random porous networks exhibit a disorder-induced slowing-down typical of glasses that originates from activated collisions and rearrangements of defect lines. Our findings offer the possibility to functionalize orientationally ordered materials through topological confinement.
When a liquid is rapidly quenched to a temperature below the glass-transition point, it is driven out of equilibrium; it then slowly relaxes to a (quasi)equilibrium state. This slow relaxation ...process is called aging. By definition, any glasses are inevitably in the process of aging and actually slowly evolving with time. Thus the study of aging phenomena is of fundamental importance for understanding not only the nonequilibrium nature of the glass transition, but also the stability of glassy materials. Here we consider aging after a rather shallow quench, for which a system is still able to reach (metastable) equilibrium. By using polydisperse colloidal liquids as a model, we show the validity of dynamical scaling that there is only one relevant length scale not only for a quasiequilibrium supercooled state but also for a nonequilibrium process of aging, which is reminiscent of dynamical critical phenomena. Our finding indicates that the aging toward (metastable) equilibrium may be regarded as the growth process of critical-like fluctuations of static order associated with low-free-energy configurations, further suggesting that this ordering is the origin of cooperative slow dynamics in the systems studied. The generality of this statement for other glass-forming systems remains for a future study.
Spatial search on graphs is one of the most important algorithmic applications of quantum walks. To show that a quantum-walk-based search is more efficient than a random-walk-based search is a ...difficult problem, which has been addressed in several ways. Usually, graph symmetries aid in the calculation of the algorithm’s computational complexity, and Johnson graphs are an interesting class regarding symmetries because they are regular, Hamilton-connected, vertex- and distance-transitive. In this work, we show that spatial search on Johnson graphs by continuous-time quantum walk achieves the Grover lower bound
π
N
/
2
with success probability 1 asymptotically for every fixed diameter, where
N
is the number of vertices. The proof is mathematically rigorous and can be used for other graph classes.
PDF
