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- Chan, Chi-kwan, et al.
(author)
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Dynamics of saturated energy condensation in two-dimensional turbulence
- 2012
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In: Physical Review E. Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics. - 1539-3755 .- 1550-2376. ; 85:3, s. 036315-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In two-dimensional forced Navier-Stokes turbulence, energy cascades to the largest scales in the system to form a pair of coherent vortices known as the Bose condensate. We show, both numerically and analytically, that the energy condensation saturates and the system reaches a statistically stationary state. The time scale of saturation is inversely proportional to the viscosity and the saturation energy level is determined by both the viscosity and the force. We further show that, without sufficient resolution to resolve the small-scale enstrophy spectrum, numerical simulations can give a spurious result for the saturation energy level. We also find that the movement of the condensate is similar to the motion of an inertial particle with an effective drag force. Furthermore, we show that the profile of the saturated coherent vortices can be described by a Gaussian core with exponential wings.
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2. |
- Chan, Chi-Kwan, et al.
(author)
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GRay : A massively parallel gpu-based code for ray tracing in relativistic spacetimes
- 2013
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In: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 777:1, s. 13-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We introduce GRay, a massively parallel integrator designed to trace the trajectories of billions of photons in a curved spacetime. This graphics-processing-unit (GPU)-based integrator employs the stream processing paradigm, is implemented in CUDA C/C++, and runs on nVidia graphics cards. The peak performance of GRay using single-precision floating-point arithmetic on a single GPU exceeds 300 GFLOP (or 1 ns per photon per time step). For a realistic problem, where the peak performance cannot be reached, GRay is two orders of magnitude faster than existing central-processing-unit-based ray-tracing codes. This performance enhancement allows more effective searches of large parameter spaces when comparing theoretical predictions of images, spectra, and light curves from the vicinities of compact objects to observations. GRay can also perform on-the-fly ray tracing within general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic algorithms that simulate accretion flows around compact objects. Making use of this algorithm, we calculate the properties of the shadows of Kerr black holes and the photon rings that surround them. We also provide accurate fitting formulae of their dependencies on black hole spin and observer inclination, which can be used to interpret upcoming observations of the black holes at the center of the Milky Way, as well as M87, with the Event Horizon Telescope.
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