At the gravity current nose, the depth and velocity change over a distance comparable with the depth, with appreciable vertical acceleration and mixing. The hydrostatic approximation and the depth-uniform interior model do not resolve that structure. A suitable gravity-current front condition is
with a positive, order-one Froude number determined by the nose closure and geometry. It is not fixed by the interior equations alone. This definition uses ; if the front condition is expressed using , its numerical coefficient changes by .
For a late-time gravity-current box model, take the depth and particle volume fraction to be uniform over , and neglect entrainment and resuspension. The initial volume is , so
The total particle volume is . Deposition over the projected boundary width gives . With the specified hindered settling factor, the prismatic triangular-channel gravity-current box model is
Initializing this approximate model with and matches the original volume and concentration; it does not assert that the immediate dam-break flow is a uniform box.
Eliminate time to obtain
Since the left primitive is , the hindered-settling runout invariant in a prismatic triangular channel is
This relation, the volume constraint and determine the late-time evolution. If desired, the time is given by the quadrature . The physical branch has nonnegative right-hand side in the boxed relation; it ends when that expression reaches zero.
Thus the limiting runout length of a gravity current, measured from the closed end, is
The advance beyond the dam is . In the dilute limit, . The ideal model approaches its finite runout length of a gravity current only as : near the limit decays exponentially with rate and the front speed tends to zero. The exponent uses the prismatic triangular geometry; a channel widening with has a different volume constraint and runout law.
Continue with downward coordinate and . By Stokes drag law, the small-particle isolated settling velocity is . Normalize concentrations by : write . In suspension the specified independent hindered settling laws give fluxes and . The initial state is .
Two upper sedimentation shocks clear the species separately. The faster front removes large particles, leaving behind it; the small concentration is unchanged across this front because the species fluxes are independent. The slower front separates that small-only suspension from clear fluid. Their downward velocities are
There is also a growing mixed deposit at the bottom. Let its normalized solid concentrations be , with , and let its upward speed magnitude be . Applying the Rankine-Hugoniot condition to each species gives
Adding these relations proves
The deposited flux is zero even though each species occupies only part of the packing: the settling law applies to the suspension, while the deposit is a separate stationary state. These jump relations determine the deposit composition from sedimentation jump conditions.
The large-particle clearing front has height and meets the mixed-deposit front at height . Thus
At this merger all large particles have entered the deposit. Only the small particles remain suspended, at normalized concentration . The new material deposited above the mixed layer is pure small-particle solid, at total concentration . Its sedimentation shock therefore has downward speed
For , the deposit top and the remaining clearing front have heights
Their meeting, or the total solid-volume balance, gives
This is two-stage bidisperse batch sedimentation: the fast species finishes first, followed by deposition of the remaining slow species.
The final solid composition by volume, and also by mass because the particle densities are identical, is
The upper pure-small layer has thickness . As checks, accounts for all large-particle solid volume, and accounts for all small-particle solid volume, in units of . If “percentage of particles” means number rather than volume, a large sphere occupies eight times the volume of a small sphere: the mixed bottom layer contains large particles by number and small. The upper layer remains entirely small under either convention.
Figure 1.
Bidisperse sedimentation: three initial shocks, merger at t1 and h1, final settling at t2 and h2, and solid-volume composition of the deposit
. Details.
At a fixed height, first determine the stored quantities per unit vertical height and per unit length along the line source. With , the triangular-profile line plume has the useful profile integral
The geometric volume is ; the mass is . The upward momentum is , while the buoyancy force is . Thus
Here positive buoyancy corresponds to a rising light plume. If instead buoyancy is defined kinematically, divide by ; the density-weighted convention here is the one matching the printed equations.
Multiply each local density by the vertical velocity to obtain the fluxes through a horizontal section, still per unit source length:
In particular, the stored momentum equals the mass flux , and the buoyancy flux is . The different triangular-profile factors in storage and flux must not be replaced by top-hat coefficients.
Apply volume conservation, mass conservation and vertical momentum flux balance to a slice of the triangular-profile line plume. Ambient ingestion contributes of volume and of mass per unit height and source length. The ambient is quiescent, so it supplies no leading vertical momentum. The integrated driving force is the stored buoyancy . Using the quantities from part (a), the non-Boussinesq triangular-profile line-plume balances are
Together with Batchelor entrainment, these are three equations for . They neglect viscous boundary stresses and streamwise pressure-force corrections within the integral-plume approximation.
Multiplying volume conservation by and subtracting times mass conservation cancels the ambient sources exactly, giving
This is buoyancy conservation in the homogeneous ambient; it is a consequence of the first two balances, not an additional independent equation.
Now take the Boussinesq approximation in inertia and entrainment, retaining the small density deficit in buoyancy. Then , and . Consequently
The mass source is . Substitution into the mass conservation, momentum and buoyancy balances gives the unsteady Boussinesq triangular-profile line-plume balances
These use density-weighted mass and momentum fluxes. Removing from some flux definitions while retaining it in the source would mix incompatible conventions.
Take a homogeneous comoving cell of physical volume and total entropy . At vanishing chemical potential, the reversible first law of thermodynamics reads
For an extensive equilibrium system, the thermodynamic Euler relation is . At this gives
The supplied pressure identity verifies consistency directly: implies
The thermodynamic Euler relation fixes the additive normalization that a differential identity alone would leave undetermined.
For adiabatic cosmological expansion, the cosmological perfect-fluid continuity equation gives , while . Hence
This proves cosmological entropy conservation in the stated perfect-fluid approximation. Kinetic equilibrium alone does not guarantee adiabatic evolution: entropy injection, dissipative stresses or out-of-equilibrium reactions would require additional source terms. Those effects are implicitly excluded in this calculation.
For finite-thickness disk relaxation, assume a well-separated range and approximately virialized self-gravity. The three factors have distinct origins. Replacing the characteristic encounter speed by shortens the diffusion time by : the variance-production rate has one inverse power of speed, and the target random velocity squared has two powers. Concentrating the same number of stars into volume of order , rather than , raises the number volume density by and shortens the time by . Finally, only separations below the thickness sample a three-dimensional encounter geometry. The logarithmic upper cutoff becomes , and therefore the inverse-logarithm time acquires . More distant encounters have the planar geometry and provide a convergent, non-logarithmic correction. A smaller Coulomb logarithm in stellar dynamics actually partly offsets the first two shortenings.
Thus, using the same cutoff for this comparison,
For actual point particles the disk cutoff is , whereas the spherical one is ; one must use the appropriate cutoff in each logarithm rather than silently identifying them. For a softened calculation it is instead of order the larger of the weak-deflection scale and the softening length. The formula is not valid when approaches that cutoff.
Write and , with simulation duration and allowed fractional diffusion . Combining the paper's spherical normalization and its comparison formula gives the leading criterion
The spherical comparison logarithm cancels when its numerical convention and a common comparison cutoff are used; order-one shape factors remain approximate. In an unsoftened disk with , . Hence the implicit requirement is , in the regime . For , the stellar relaxation time is of order of the spherical value apart from logarithms; gives a time of order 100 crossing times in this estimate. Negligible relaxation over that duration requires an additional margin. A disk generally needs far more particles than a round galaxy for the same relaxation tolerance; no universal minimum follows without duration, thickness and softening. Collective spiral or bending responses are a separate source of evolution even in a collisionless stellar system.
For a regular Lagrangian define the canonical momentum components . Require the velocity Hessian to be invertible locally so that the velocities can be expressed in terms of . The Legendre transform in mechanics defines
The explicit time argument cannot generally be omitted when the given Lagrangian depends on time. Its differential is , since the terms cancel. The Euler-Lagrange equations give , and comparison yields Hamilton's equations:
For the time-independent stellar gravitational potential below, is conserved. Its sign convention differs from the binding energy in question 2: here is the ordinary specific orbital energy.
The prescribed nondegenerate prolate spheroidal coordinates require ; equality collapses the coordinate family. Their physical velocity components are , and . Per unit stellar mass the Lagrangian is , so . Its Hamiltonian is
This uses acceleration , as specified, rather than importing the opposite gravitational potential convention.
For the Stäckel potential, use the Hamilton-Jacobi equation with principal function . Axisymmetry makes constant. Write and . Multiplying by and using
separates it as , where . Each side depends on its own coordinate only and therefore equals a constant, chosen as . Here is the generating function of the gravitational potential, not the gravitational constant. Hence
This proves the conserved axisymmetric Stäckel third integral. Eliminating between the two expressions and using gives
At regular generic phase-space points the three separation constants are independent; special circular or degenerate orbits can reduce their local independence. Thus the model is an integrable Hamiltonian system.
For the intended regular, phase-mixed steady model, Jeans theorem permits a galactic distribution function . At any fixed point, and depend on and only through their squares, and depends only on . Thus is even separately in and , whether or not it is even in . Odd integration proves velocity-ellipsoid alignment in a Stäckel potential:
The argument allows azimuthal streaming: it does not require zero mean . The means in the two meridional directions vanish, so the off-diagonal velocity covariance also vanishes. Second moments must exist for this conclusion.
There is a hypothesis behind the printed universal wording. On a generic nonresonant regular invariant torus, a continuous steady distribution is constant along a dense orbit and hence depends only on the torus integrals; this justifies the phase-mixed form. Bare stationarity alone is not sufficient in a degenerate resonant gravitational potential with additional integrals. For example is a Stäckel Hamiltonian: choose , up to a constant vacuum shift. The additional conserved quantity gives a positive normalizable steady tracer for . Its local . At azimuth zero and a regular point where the direction has a radial component, this gives nonzero . This tracer need not itself source the harmonic gravitational potential. It exhibits why the stronger, ordinary phase-mixed three-integral assumption is necessary instead of claiming that every imaginable steady distribution has the asserted alignment.
The geometry follows by multiplying the coordinate-defining equation and evaluating at :
Constant surfaces are prolate spheroids, with equatorial semiaxis and polar semiaxis . Constant interior surfaces are two-sheeted hyperboloids. Their common foci lie at . The orbit volume in an axisymmetric Stäckel potential is determined by
Its allowed coordinate intervals have turning boundaries or coordinate endpoints. A typical bound orbit with oscillates between inner and outer spheroids, oscillates vertically between hyperboloidal limits, and circulates about the symmetry axis with . The equatorial fold joins the positive and negative branches; it is not necessarily a physical turning point in .
Figure 1.
Geometric volume swept out by an orbit
. Original schematic coordinate-bounded orbit volume. The meridional section and cutaway azimuthal sweep show inner/outer confocal spheroids and upper/lower hyperboloidal boundaries. Illustrative intervals are , with , . These are geometric examples, not a numerically integrated orbit in a specified gravitational potential. Details.
For three incommensurate frequencies, the regular trajectory densely samples its projected allowed volume, with nonuniform occupation determined by its speeds. It does not follow one coordinate surface, and it need not close. Resonant orbits may be closed or lie in a smaller projected set; confines azimuthal motion to a meridional plane (with the usual axis coordinate qualification), and circular or equatorial limits are also lower-dimensional. Smooth Stäckel separation removes the generic chaotic behavior of nonintegrable potentials; it does not assert that every orbit fills a three-dimensional volume.
For a reversible change, the first law of thermodynamics is . Using the monatomic internal energy,
Along the constant-volume leg, , so heat is absorbed. Along the constant-pressure return leg, , so heat is emitted. The work signs are zero on and negative, or work on the gas, on .
The defining integral is well-defined and bounded for every dimension: and the multiplier is supported on a finite-volume ball. However the asserted general-dimensional conclusion is false for the Euclidean radial cutoff printed in the original PDF. The nonintegrability of a radial triangular Fourier cutoff in three dimensions is a source issue, not an omitted conjugate or OCR substitution.
For a direct counterexample in , take the Schwartz function , whose Fourier transform is the same Gaussian. With and , radial integration gives
The amplitude vanishes at both endpoints, and . Two integrations by parts, with a further one to bound the remainder, give
The integral diverges logarithmically for every fixed . For example, restrict to the periodic subintervals on which ; the error is smaller than half the leading term at sufficiently large . Thus , even for this smooth integrable .
The familiar intended argument is valid in one dimension. There the inverse Fourier kernel is
and by Fubini's theorem. Its mass outside any fixed neighbourhood of zero tends to zero by scaling, so
by continuity of translations in . For arbitrary dimension, replacing the radial cutoff by the product gives a tensor product of these integrable kernels and the same approximate identity proof. These are explicit valid repairs, not claims that the PDF specified a product cutoff.
The expansion about the liquid-gas critical point is
Differentiating at fixed gives the requested . At coexistence , so to leading nontrivial order keep the cubic odd part .
Let , for this leading cubic model. Equality of endpoint pressures gives . The Maxwell condition in pressure coordinates is . Since the endpoint pressures agree, its first term vanishes, leaving
If , these two equations would imply , contrary to distinct phases. Therefore , and the pressure equality gives . Hence
Thus the coexistence gap has exponent one half. The printed equality is a leading-order statement, not an exact identity for the full Van der Waals equation. Discarded asymmetric terms shift both phase volumes at higher order. This distinction is needed even though the leading cubic calculation has exact antisymmetry within its truncation.
For a thin spherical shell, the radial pressure force per unit volume is . By the shell theorem, the inward gravitational acceleration is , because exterior spherical shells contribute no force. Balancing force densities in hydrostatic equilibrium gives
The second equation is mass conservation; it closes the pressure-support equation once an equation of state is supplied.
Put , so . Balancing the viscous and pressure terms in the axisymmetric viscous-sheet stretching equations, together with fixed volume, suggests a similarity solution
The conservation of mass equation becomes
There is no ongoing source at the origin, so the integration constant vanishes and wherever . Thus . Substitution into radial force balance gives
A differentiable cannot have nonzero derivative on an interval while being fixed there at . Hence : the spreading sheet has uniform thickness.
At the material edge, . Since , the edge condition fixes . Fixed volume then fixes the radius. The self-similar spreading of a viscous oil slick is
The point-release idealization is singular at ; a finite initial uniform slick gives the same solution with a time shift.
The chemical potential is the change in internal energy when one particle is added at fixed entropy and volume:
Equivalently, for the Helmholtz free energy.
Let a microstate have energy and particle number . Maximizing the Gibbs entropy subject to normalization and fixed mean values of and is the maximum-entropy derivation of equilibrium ensembles. With Lagrange multipliers , , and , vary
The stationarity equation is . Normalization therefore gives the grand canonical ensemble
Here is the grand canonical partition function and is the Boltzmann constant.
For one fermionic quantum state of energy , the Pauli exclusion principle permits occupation numbers only . Its two grand-canonical weights are and , so its mean occupation is the Fermi-Dirac distribution
For a free nonrelativistic particle, . In a region of area , the number of wave-vector states in the annulus from to , including the two spin angular momentum states, is
Since , the two-dimensional free-electron density of states is constant:
We now use units in which , as in the question. At zero temperature, the Fermi-Dirac distribution is a step function, and hence
At positive temperature the same fixed particle number satisfies the exact relation
Thus
This is the low-temperature particle-number cancellation for constant density of states. Therefore, for , the mean number of particles in the energy interval is
Finally, compare the internal energy with its zero-temperature value. The thermally excited particles above and holes below have equal leading particle numbers, so their terms proportional to cancel. With ,
where the integral follows from the fermion-to-boson thermal integral ratio. Differentiation gives the linear low-temperature heat capacity of a two-dimensional Fermi gas:
The requested power law is therefore linear in , with exponent one.
At a fixed , both cylinder inequalities become
Thus the cross section is a square of side and area . Integrating these cross-sectional areas gives the volume of this bicylinder:
For any bounded volume with piecewise smooth closed boundary and outward unit normal vector , Gauss's law in integral form is
Thus the outward electric flux equals the enclosed electric charge divided by the vacuum permittivity. To prove it, apply the divergence theorem to the electric field and use its given divergence:
The classical proof assumes the requisite differentiability of the electric field. For piecewise smooth charge densities, one may apply the divergence theorem piece by piece and cancel the internal fluxes.
The original double integral covers the triangle . By Fubini's theorem, after reversing the order, runs from to and from to . Since a continuous function is integrable on this bounded region,
For the square pyramid, a horizontal section at height is a square of side : each vertex moves linearly from the base towards . Hence its cross-sectional area is , and its volume is . To use the identity just proved, choose :
The specific heat capacity is the energy needed per unit mass per unit increase in temperature. With constant, a small element of volume has mass and thermal energy , measured relative to the reference at which . Summing over gives
Choosing a different reference temperature only adds a time-independent constant to this energy, so it does not affect the heat balance with volumetric heat generation.
Integrate the steady state equation over and use the divergence theorem:
The zero heat flux condition makes the boundary term vanish. But and throughout a region of positive volume, so
a contradiction. Thus no steady-state solution exists. This is the insulated steady heat balance: positive internal heat generation continually increases the stored thermal energy when no heat can escape.
Solutions to all six questions and all optional parts. The surface-volume formula in Question 2(b) requires an appropriate enclosing surface and orientation. The symmetry claim in Question 6(a), as printed, also needs the coefficient to be even in ; a counterexample to the unrestricted claim is given.
Take in Green's second identity. Since , , on the unit sphere, and there,
The final term vanishes by the divergence theorem, because it equals . Therefore
We assume sufficient boundary regularity for the stated boundary values and integrals, or use the corresponding trace/limit formulation. This is the equality of volume and surface averages for a harmonic function, since the unit ball and sphere have volume and area .