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Gravitational plane waves and their detection start the chapter off in parallel with electromagnetic plane waves and their detection. Geodesic deviation is reviewed and allows for a brief introduction to LIGO. The stress tensor source of radiation (and therefore, at least local, plane waves) and its conservation of energy and momentum are tied to the radiation solution of the linearized form of Einstein’s equation. A highlight is the role of gauge freedom in making gravitational plane waves physically relevant (by gauge fixing to reveal the underlying plus and cross polarizations). Power loss to gravitational radiation is discussed in the linearized limit by comparison with electric quadrupole radiation.
This chapter argues that the main arguments which lead many philosophers to reject substance dualism can be parodied and transformed into arguments against substance dualism’s main competitor, the thesis that we are composite physical objects. The upshot of the chapter is that those considerations commonly thought to undermine substance dualism are indecisive at best, since they can be parodied. The arguments discussed include: parsimony-based arguments; the argument from causal closure/exclusion; the argument from conservation laws; the argument from the correlation between mental states and brain states; arguments to the effect that souls require an implausible cutoff point, in either evolutionary history or in fetal development, before which there is no soul and after which there is a soul; and arguments to the effect that substance dualism leads to an implausible skepticism regarding our ability to reidentify people over time.
The problem of inverting the total divergence operator is central to finding components of a given conservation law. This might not be taxing for a low-order conservation law of a scalar partial differential equation, but integrable systems have conservation laws of arbitrarily high order that must be found with the aid of computer algebra. Even low-order conservation laws of complex systems can be hard to find and invert. This paper describes a new, efficient approach to the inversion problem. Two main tools are developed: partial Euler operators and partial scalings. These lead to a line integral formula for the inversion of a total derivative and a procedure for inverting a given total divergence concisely.
Noether’s first theorem, in its modern form, does not establish a one-way explanatory arrow from symmetries to conservation laws, but such an arrow is widely assumed in discussions of the theorem in the physics and philosophy literature. It is argued here that there are pragmatic reasons for privileging symmetries, even if they do not strictly justify explanatory priority. To this end, some practical factors are adduced as to why Noether’s direct theorem seems to be more well-known and exploited than its converse, with special attention being given to the sometimes overlooked nature of Noether’s converse result and to its strengthened version due to Luis Martínez Alonso in 1979 and independently Peter Olver in 1986.
The equationsgoverning the motion of a fluid modeled as a continuum are developed in integral and differential forms. The physical phenomena at playarebriefly discussed, and the mathematical structure of the resulting conservation laws is analyzed in detail.
Conservation laws (or balance equations) are introduced together with their representation as field and integral equations, jump relations. Some special stress fields are introduced as examples.
Conservation laws and the energy–momentum–stress pseudotensor; the cosmological principle and the structure of the universe at large, the Robertson–Walker metric and the Friedman universe(s), Hubble’s law, the expansion of the universe, and the cosmological constant.
An enormous advantage of using Lagrangian methods in mechanics is the simplifications that can occur when a system is constrained or if there are symmetries of some kind in the environment of the system. Constraints can be used to reduce the number of generalized coordinates so that solutions become more practicable. In this chapter we will illustrate this fact using the example of contact forces, and demonstrate the use of Lagrange multipliers to learn about the contact forces themselves. Constraints are also typically associated with the breaking of symmetries. Lagrangian mechanics allows us to efficiently explore the relationship between symmetries in a physical situation and dynamical quantities that are conserved. These properties are nicely summarized in a theorem by the German mathematician Emmy Noether (1882--1935), and provide us with deep insight into the physics -- in addition to helping us make important technical simplifications while solving problems. We first discuss constraints and contact forces, and then symmetries and conservation laws.
The introduction describes the main problems of mental causation, their interrelations, and their history. The first problem is the interaction problem, the problem of how the mind and the physical world can interact at all. The second problem is the exclusion problem, the problem of how the mind can have physical effects given that these physical effects already have physical causes. How severe the problems are depends on the nature of the mind. The more intimate the relation between the mental and the physical, the more pressing the problems become. How severe the problems are also depends on the nature of causation. If causation requires the transference of a physical quantity, the problems are much harder to solve than if it suffices for causation if the cause makes a difference to the effect. The introduction outlines the history of the problems from Descartes to the twentieth century.
The present paper concerns the system ut + [ϕ(u)]x = 0, vt + [ψ(u)v]x = 0 having distributions as initial conditions. Under certain conditions, and supposing ϕ, ψ: ℝ → ℝ functions, we explicitly solve this Cauchy problem within a convenient space of distributions u,v. For this purpose, a consistent extension of the classical solution concept defined in the setting of a distributional product (not constructed by approximation processes) is used. Shock waves, δ-shock waves, and also waves defined by distributions that are not measures are presented explicitly as examples. This study is carried out without assuming classical results about conservation laws. For reader's convenience, a brief survey of the distributional product is also included.
We prove the stability with respect to the flux of solutions to initial – boundary value problems for scalar non autonomous conservation laws in one space dimension. Key estimates are obtained through a careful construction of the solutions.
Given a vector field on a manifold $M$, we define a globally conserved quantity to be a differential form whose Lie derivative is exact. Integrals of conserved quantities over suitable submanifolds are constant under time evolution, the Kelvin circulation theorem being a well-known special case. More generally, conserved quantities are well behaved under transgression to spaces of maps into $M$. We focus on the case of multisymplectic manifolds and Hamiltonian vector fields. Our main result is that in the presence of a Lie group of symmetries admitting a homotopy co-momentum map, one obtains a whole family of globally conserved quantities. This extends a classical result in symplectic geometry. We carry this out in a general setting, considering several variants of the notion of globally conserved quantity.
We describe experimental tests of the effects of spinning bodies, which include precessions of spins as well as orbital perturbations. We give a technical and historical review of Gravity Probe B, a space experiment to measure the precession of orbiting gyroscopes, and the LAGEOS measurements of orbital perturbations, induced by the spinning Earth. We review experimental tests of post-Newtonian conservation laws, and the bounds on the relevant PPN parameters.
We propose a fully conservative and less oscillatory multi-moment scheme for the approximation of hyperbolic conservation laws. The proposed scheme (CIP-CSL3ENO) is based on two CIP-CSL3 schemes and the essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) scheme. In this paper, we also propose an ENO indicator for the multimoment framework, which intentionally selects non-smooth stencil but can efficiently minimize numerical oscillations. The proposed scheme is validated through various benchmark problems and a comparison with an experiment of two droplets collision/separation. The CIP-CSL3ENO scheme shows approximately fourth-order accuracy for smooth solution, and captures discontinuities and smooth solutions simultaneously without numerical oscillations for solutions which include discontinuities. The numerical results of two droplets collision/separation (3D free surface flow simulation) show that the CIP-CSL3ENO scheme can be applied to various types of fluid problems not only compressible flow problems but also incompressible and 3D free surface flow problems.
The nonlinear Dirac equation is an important model in quantum physics with a set of conservation laws and a multi-symplectic formulation. In this paper, we propose energy-preserving and multi-symplectic wavelet algorithms for this model. Meanwhile, we evidently improve the efficiency of these algorithms in computations via splitting technique and explicit strategy. Numerical experiments are conducted during long-term simulations to show the excellent performances of the proposed algorithms and verify our theoretical analysis.
The nonlinear and weakly dispersive Serre equations contain higher-order dispersive terms. These include mixed spatial and temporal derivative flux terms which are difficult to handle numerically. These terms can be replaced by an alternative combination of equivalent temporal and spatial terms, so that the Serre equations can be written in conservation law form. The water depth and new conserved quantities are evolved using a second-order finite-volume scheme. The remaining primitive variable, the depth-averaged horizontal velocity, is obtained by solving a second-order elliptic equation using simple finite differences. Using an analytical solution and simulating the dam-break problem, the proposed scheme is shown to be accurate, simple to implement and stable for a range of problems, including flows with steep gradients. It is only slightly more computationally expensive than solving the shallow water wave equations.
In [SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 35(2)(2013), A1049-A1072], a class of multi-domain hybrid DG and WENO methods for conservation laws was introduced. Recent applications of this method showed that numerical instability may encounter if the DG flux with Lagrangian interpolation is applied as the interface flux during the moment of conservative coupling. In this continuation paper, we present a more robust approach in the construction of DG flux at the coupling interface by using WENO procedures of reconstruction. Based on this approach, such numerical instability is overcome very well. In addition, the procedure of coupling a DG method with a WENO-FD scheme on hybrid meshes is disclosed in detail. Typical testing cases are employed to demonstrate the accuracy of this approach and the stability under the flexibility of using either WENO-FD flux or DG flux at the moment of requiring conservative coupling.
For scalar conservation laws in one space dimension with a flux function discontinuous inspace, there exist infinitely many classes of solutions which are L1 contractive.Each class is characterized by a connection (A,B) which determines the interface entropy. Forsolutions corresponding to a connection (A,B), there exists convergent numerical schemesbased on Godunov or Engquist−Osher schemes. The natural question is how to obtain schemes,corresponding to computationally less expensive monotone schemes like Lax−Friedrichs etc., usedwidely in applications. In this paper we completely answer this question for more general(A,B)stable monotone schemes using a novel construction of interface flux function. Then fromthe singular mapping technique of Temple and chain estimate of Adimurthi and Gowda, weprove the convergence of the schemes.
The local one-dimensional multisymplectic scheme (LOD-MS) is developed for the three-dimensional (3D) Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation in Bose-Einstein condensates. The idea is originated from the advantages of multisymplectic integrators and from the cheap computational cost of the local one-dimensional (LOD) method. The 3D GP equation is split into three linear LOD Schrödinger equations and an exactly solvable nonlinear Hamiltonian ODE. The three linear LOD Schrödinger equations are multisymplectic which can be approximated by multisymplectic integrator (MI). The conservative properties of the proposed scheme are investigated. It is mass-preserving. Surprisingly, the scheme preserves the discrete local energy conservation laws and global energy conservation law if the wave function is variable separable. This is impossible for conventional MIs in nonlinear Hamiltonian context. The numerical results show that the LOD-MS can simulate the original problems very well. They are consistent with the numerical analysis.