Design of a system for controlling a levitating sphere in superfluid 3He at extremely low temperatures.

We present a new mechanical probe to study the properties of superfluid 3He at microkelvin temperatures down to 100 µK. The setup consists of a set of coils for levitating a superconducting sphere and controlling its motion in a wide variety of regimes. In particular, the realisation of motion of a levitating body at a uniform velocity presents both an experimental challenge and a promising direction into the study of the edge states in topological superfluid 3He-B. We include the theoretical study of the device stability and simulations to illustrate the capabilities of the control system.

Endophytic Microbes Are Tools to Increase Tolerance in Jasione Plants Against Arsenic Stress.

Seed microbiota is becoming an emergent area of research. Host plant microbial diversity is increasingly well described, yet relatively little is known about the stressors driving plant endomicrobiota at the metaorganism level. The present work examines the role of horizontal and vertical transmission of bacterial microbiota in response to abiotic stress generated by arsenic. Horizontal transmission is achieved by bioaugmentation with the endophyte Rhodococcus rhodochrous, while vertical transmission comes via maternal inheritance from seeds. To achieve this goal, all experiments were conducted with two Jasione species. J. montana is tolerant to arsenic (As), whereas J. sessiliflora, being phylogenetically close to J. montana, was not previously described as As tolerant. The Jasione core bacterial endophytes are composed of genera Pseudomonas, Ralstonia, Undibacterium, Cutibacterium, and Kocuria and family Comamanadaceae across different environmental conditions. All these operational taxonomic units (OTUs) coexisted from seeds to the development of the seedling, independently of As stress, or bioaugmentation treatment and Jasione species. R. rhodochrous colonized efficiently both species, driving the endomicrobiota structure of Jasione with a stronger effect than As stress. Despite the fact that most of the OTUs identified inside Jasione seeds and seedlings belonged to rare microbiota, they represent a large bacterial reservoir offering important physiological and ecological traits to the host. Jasione traits co-regulated with R. rhodochrous, and the associated microbiota improved the host response to As stress. NGS-Illumina tools provided further knowledge about the ecological and functional roles of plant endophytes.

Orbitropic Effect in Superfluid 3He B-phase Boundaries.

In this work, we study the influence of orbital viscosity on the evolution of the order-parameter and texture in the B phase of superfluid 3He near a moving boundary. From the redistribution of thermal quasiparticles within the texture, we develop a model which confers a substantial effective mass on the interface, and provides a new mechanism for friction as the boundary moves. We have tested the model against existing data for the motion of an A-B interface whose motion was controlled by a magnetic field. The model allows us to make predictions for the behaviour in experimental situations which involve texture rearrangement arising from motion of the B-phase boundary.

Mechanism of branching in negative ionization fronts.

When a strong electric field is applied to nonconducting matter, narrow channels of plasma called streamers may form. Branchlike patterns of streamers have been observed in anode directed discharges. We explain a mechanism for branching as the result of a balance between the destabilizing effect of impact ionization and the stabilizing effect of electron diffusion on ionization fronts. The dispersion relation for transversal perturbation of a planar negative front is obtained analytically when the ratio D between the electron diffusion coefficient and the intensity of the externally imposed electric field is small. We estimate the spacing lambda between streamers and deduce a scaling law lambda approximately D(1/3).

Ionization fronts in negative corona discharges.

We use a hydrodynamic minimal streamer model to study negative corona discharge. By reformulating the model in terms of a quantity called a shielding factor, we deduce laws for the evolution in time of both the radius and intensity of the ionization fronts. We also compute the evolution of the front thickness under the conditions for which it diffuses due to the geometry of the problem and show its self-similar character.

Stability of negative ionization fronts: Regularization by electric screening?

We recently have proposed that a reduced interfacial model for streamer propagation is able to explain spontaneous branching. Such models require regularization. In the present paper we investigate how transversal Fourier modes of a planar ionization front are regularized by the electric screening length. For a fixed value of the electric field ahead of the front we calculate the dispersion relation numerically. These results guide the derivation of analytical asymptotes for arbitrary fields: for small wave-vector k, the growth rate s(k) grows linearly with k, for large k, it saturates at some positive plateau value. We give a physical interpretation of these results.

Spontaneous branching of anode-directed streamers between planar electrodes.

Nonionized media subject to strong fields can become locally ionized by penetration of finger-shaped streamers. We study negative streamers between planar electrodes in a simple deterministic continuum approximation. We observe that, for sufficiently large fields, the streamer tip can split. This happens close to the limit of "ideal conductivity." Qualitatively, the tip splitting is due to a Laplacian instability quite like that in viscous fingering. For future quantitative analytical progress, our stability analysis of planar fronts identifies the screening length as a regularization mechanism.

How do sinking phytoplankton species manage to persist?

Phytoplankton require light for photosynthesis. Yet, most phytoplankton species are heavier than water and therefore sink. How can these sinking species persist? Somehow, the answer should lie in the turbulent motion that redisperses sinking phytoplankton over the vertical water column. Here, we show, using a reaction-advection-diffusion equation of light-limited phytoplankton, that there is a turbulence window sustaining sinking phytoplankton species in deep waters. If turbulent diffusion is too high, phytoplankton are mixed to great depths, and the depth-averaged light conditions are too low to allow net positive population growth. Conversely, if turbulent diffusion is too low, sinking phytoplankton populations end up at the ocean floor and succumb in the dark. At intermediate levels of turbulent diffusion, however, phytoplankton populations can outgrow both mixing rates and sinking rates. In this way, the reproducing population as a whole can maintain a position in the well-lit zone near the top of the water column, even if all individuals within the population have a tendency to sink. This theory unites earlier classic results by Sverdrup and Riley as well as our own recent findings and provides a new conceptual framework for the understanding of phytoplankton dynamics under the influence of mixing processes.