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1. Electromagnetic Casimir–Polder Interaction for a Conducting Cone

   https://doi.org/10.3390/physics5040065  

   Graham, Noah (December 2023, Physics)

   Klimchitskaya, Galina L.; Mostepanenko, Vladimir M. (Ed.)

   Using the formulation of the electromagnetic Green’s function of a perfectly conducting cone in terms of analytically continued angular momentum, we compute the Casimir–Polder interaction energy of a cone with a polarizable particle. We introduce this formalism by first reviewing the analogous approach for a perfectly conducting wedge, and then demonstrate the calculation through numerical evaluation of the resulting integrals. 

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2. Understanding dynamics in coarse-grained models. V. Extension of coarse-grained dynamics theory to non-hard sphere systems

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0254388  

   Jin, Jaehyeok; Voth, Gregory A (March 2025, The Journal of Chemical Physics)

   Coarse-grained (CG) modeling has gained significant attention in recent years due to its wide applicability in enhancing the spatiotemporal scales of molecular simulations. While CG simulations, often performed with Hamiltonian mechanics, faithfully recapitulate structural correlations at equilibrium, they lead to ambiguously accelerated dynamics. In Paper I [J. Jin, K. S. Schweizer, and G. A. Voth, J. Chem. Phys. 158(3), 034103 (2023)], we proposed the excess entropy scaling relationship to understand the CG dynamics. Then, in Paper II [J. Jin, K. S. Schweizer, and G. A. Voth, J. Chem. Phys. 158(3), 034104 (2023)], we developed a theory to map the CG system into a dynamically consistent hard sphere system to analytically derive an expression for fast CG dynamics. However, many chemical and physical systems do not exhibit hard sphere-like behavior, limiting the extensibility of the developed theory. In this paper, we aim to generalize the theory to the non-hard sphere system based on the Weeks–Chandler–Andersen perturbation theory. Since non-hard sphere-like CG interactions affect the excess entropy term as it deviates from the hard sphere description, we explicitly account for the extra entropy to correct the non-hard sphere nature of the system. This approach is demonstrated for two different types of interactions seen in liquids, and we further provide a generalized description for any CG models using the generalized Gaussian CG models using Gaussian basis sets. Altogether, this work allows for extending the range and applicability of the hard sphere CG dynamics theory to a myriad of CG liquids. 

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3. Emergence of the London Millennium Bridge instability without synchronisation

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27568-y  

   Belykh, Igor; Bocian, Mateusz; Champneys, Alan R.; Daley, Kevin; Jeter, Russell; Macdonald, John H. G.; McRobie, Allan (December 2021, Nature Communications)

   Abstract The pedestrian-induced instability of the London Millennium Bridge is a widely used example of Kuramoto synchronisation. Yet, reviewing observational, experimental, and modelling evidence, we argue that increased coherence of pedestrians’ foot placement is a consequence of, not a cause of the instability. Instead, uncorrelated pedestrians produce positive feedback, through negative damping on average, that can initiate significant lateral bridge vibration over a wide range of natural frequencies. We present a simple general formula that quantifies this effect, and illustrate it through simulation of three mathematical models, including one with strong propensity for synchronisation. Despite subtle effects of gait strategies in determining precise instability thresholds, our results show that average negative damping is always the trigger. More broadly, we describe an alternative to Kuramoto theory for emergence of coherent oscillations in nature; collective contributions from incoherent agents need not cancel, but can provide positive feedback on average, leading to global limit-cycle motion. 

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4. Zentropy Theory for Positive and Negative Thermal Expansion

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11669-022-00942-z  

   Liu, Zi-Kui; Wang, Yi; Shang, Shun-Li (January 2022, Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion)

   It has been observed in both natural and man-made materials that volume sometimes decreases with increasing temperature. Though mechanistic understanding has been gained for some individual materials, a general answer to the question “Why does volume sometimes decrease with the increase of temperature?” remains lacking. Based on the thermodynamic relation that the derivative of volume with respect to temperature, i.e., thermal expansion, is equal to the negative derivative of entropy with respect to pressure, we developed a general theory in terms of multiscale entropy to understand and predict the change of volume as a function of temperature, which is termed as zentropy theory in the present work. It is shown that a phase at high temperatures is a statistical representation of the ground-state stable and multiple nonground-state metastable configurations. It is demonstrated that when the volumes of the nonground-state configurations with high probabilities are smaller than that of the ground-state configuration, the volume of the phase may decrease with the increase of temperature in certain ranges of temperature-pressure combinations, depicting the negative divergency of thermal expansion at the critical point. As examples, positive and negative divergencies of thermal expansion are predicted at the critical points of Ce and Fe3Pt, respectively, along with the temperature and pressure ranges for abnormally positive and negative thermal expansions. The authors believe that the zentropy theory is applicable to predict anomalies of other physical properties of phases because the change of entropy drives the responses of a system to external stimuli. 

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5. Boundary behavior of compact manifolds with scalar curvature lower bounds and static quasi-local mass of tori

   https://doi.org/10.1090/proc/17223  

   Alaee, Aghil; Hung, Pei-Ken; Khuri, Marcus (March 2025, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society)

   A classic result of Shi and Tam states that a 2-sphere of positive Gauss and mean curvature bounding a compact 3-manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature must have total mean curvature not greater than that of the isometric embedding into Euclidean 3-space, with equality only for domains in this reference manifold. We generalize this result to 2-tori of Gauss curvature greater than $-<\#comment/>1$, which bound a compact 3-manifold having scalar curvature not less than $-<\#comment/>6$and at least one other boundary component satisfying a ‘trapping condition’. The conclusion is that the total weighted mean curvature is not greater than that of an isometric embedding into the Kottler manifold, with equality only for domains in this space. Examples are given to show that the assumption of a secondary boundary component cannot be removed. The result gives a positive mass theorem for the static Brown-York mass of tori, in analogy to the Shi-Tam positivity of the standard Brown-York mass, and represents the first such quasi-local mass positivity result for nonspherical surfaces. Furthermore, we prove a Penrose-type inequality in this setting. 

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