Daily Papers

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is a noninvasive imaging modality for quantifying the viscoelastic properties of soft tissues from shear wave propagation. Recovering the complex-valued shear modulus from measured displacement fields leads to a severely ill-posed inverse problem, particularly in the presence of noise and limited boundary excitations. We investigate adjoint-based optimization, convolutional neural network (CNN) reconstruction, and a hybrid framework combining both approaches. The forward model is based on a scalar form of the modified stationary Stokes system with a complex shear modulus. We establish well-posedness of the forward problem, existence of minimizers, and first-order optimality conditions for the adjoint-based formulation, and implement a nonlinear conjugate-gradient method with Armijo line search. While PDE-constrained optimization can accurately refine coefficient reconstructions, its performance depends strongly on initialization. We therefore construct a two-dimensional CNN that maps complex-valued displacement measurements to spatially varying complex shear modulus fields and provides rapid, informative initial reconstructions. The proposed hybrid method uses the CNN reconstruction to initialize the adjoint-based optimization, yielding faster convergence and improved accuracy. The CNN is trained on coefficient fields containing individual perturbations and tested on both individual and previously unseen combined configurations. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the CNN generalizes to these more challenging configurations, while subsequent PDE-constrained optimization further refines the reconstructed coefficient. These results demonstrate the potential of combining data-driven initialization with physics-based optimization for efficient and accurate MRE reconstruction.

Nonlinear elastic properties of polymers and polymeric composites are essential for accurate prediction of their response to dynamic loads, which is crucial in a wide range of applications. These properties can be affected by strain rate, temperature, and pressure. The temperature susceptibility of nonlinear elastic moduli of polymers remains poorly understood. We have recently observed a significant frequency dependence of the nonlinear elastic (Murnaghan) moduli of polystyrene. In this paper we expand this analysis by the temperature dependence. The measurement methodology was based on the acousto-elastic effect, and involved analysis of the dependencies of velocities of longitudinal and shear single-frequency ultrasonic waves in the sample on the applied static pressure. Measurements were performed at different temperatures in the range of 25-65 {\deg}C and at different frequencies in the range of 0.75-3 MHz. The temperature susceptibility of the nonlinear moduli l and m was found to be two orders of magnitude larger than that of linear moduli lambda and mu. At the same time, the observed variations of n modulus with temperature were low and within the measurement tolerance. The observed tendencies can be explained by different influence of pressure on relaxation processes in the material at different temperatures.

We consider the matrix composite materials (CM) of either random (statistically homogeneous or inhomogeneous), periodic, or deterministic (neither random nor periodic) structures. CMs exhibit linear or nonlinear behavior, coupled or uncoupled multi-physical phenomena, locally elastic, weakly nonlocal (strain gradient and stress gradient), or strongly nonlocal (strain-type and displacement-type, peridynamics) phase properties. A modified Computational Analytical Micromechanics (CAM) approach introduces an exact Additive General Integral Equation (AGIE) for CMs of any structure and phase properties mentioned above. The unified iteration solution of static AGIEs is adapted to the body force with compact support serving as a fundamentally new universal training parameter. The approach also establishes a critical threshold for filtering out unsuitable sub-datasets of effective parameters through a novel Representative Volume Element (RVE) concept, which extends Hill's classical framework. This RVE concept eliminates sample size, boundary layer, and edge effects, making it applicable to CMs of any structure and phase properties, regardless of local or nonlocal, linear or nonlinear. Incorporating this new RVE concept into machine learning and neural network techniques enables the construction of any unpredefined surrogate nonlocal operators. The methodology is structured as a modular, block-based framework, allowing independent development and refinement of software components. This flexible, robust AGIE-CAM framework integrates data-driven, multi-scale, and multi-physics modeling, accelerating research in CM of any microtopology and phase properties considered. The AGIE-CAM framework represents a groundbreaking paradigm shift in the micromechanics of composites, redefining the very philosophy that underpins our understanding of their behavior at the microscopic level.

We show that Hertzian particle contacts are the underlying cause of the as-yet-unexplained noninteger power laws in weakly nonlinear rheology. In the medium amplitude oscillatory shear (MAOS) region, the cubic scaling of the leading order nonlinear shear stress (σ_3 sim γ_0^{m_3}, m_3=3) is the standard expectation. Expanding on the work by Natalia et al. [J. Rheol. 64 625-635 (2020)], we report an extensive data set of noncubical, noninteger power law scalings m_3 for particle suspensions in two immiscible fluids with a capillary attractive interaction, known as capillary suspensions. Here, we show that distinct power law exponents are found for the storage and loss moduli and these noninteger scalings occur at every secondary fluid concentration for two different contact angles. These compelling results indicate that the noninteger scalings are related to the underlying microstructure of capillary suspensions. We show that the magnitude of the third harmonic elastic stress scaling m_3,elastic originates from Hertzian-like contacts in combination with the attractive capillary force. The related third harmonic viscous stress scaling m_3,viscous is, found to be associated with adhesive-controlled friction. These observations, conducted for a wide range of compositions, can help explain previous reports of noninteger scaling for materials involving particle contacts and offers a new opportunity using the variable power law exponent of MAOS rheology to reveal the physics of particle bonds and friction in the rheological response under low deformation instead of at very high shear rates.

In this work, we investigate the transient rheological behavior of two soft glassy materials: a clay dispersion and a silica gel, emphasizing their unconventional shear stress build-up behavior under conditions of constant imposed strain. For both materials, the elastic modulus and static yield stress undergo time-dependent evolution or aging. In addition, following an intense period of pre-shearing (i.e. shear-melting or destructuration), the material relaxation time is observed to show a stronger than linear dependence on the sample age, suggestive of hyper-aging dynamics. We show that these features are consistent with non-monotonic steady-state shear stress/shear rate flow curves characterized by a local stress minimum. When a steady shear flow is suddenly ceased, and the total imposed sample strain is held constant, both materials show an initial relaxation of the shear stress followed by a period of shear stress buildup, resulting in a local minimum in the evolution of shear stress with time. For the clay dispersion, the intensity of these effects increases with higher pre-shear rates, whereas for the silica gel, the effects are largely independent of the pre-shear rate. We also propose a simple time-dependent linear Maxwell model, which qualitatively predicts the experimentally observed trends in which the shear stress build-up is directly related to a monotonic increase in the elastic modulus, giving keen insight into this peculiar phenomenon.

The Helmholtz equation governs time-harmonic wave propagation, and in dissipative media a complex modulus renders its squared wavenumber κ^2 complex. Inferring such fields from sparse, noisy data calls for solvers that also quantify their own uncertainty. Physics-informed Gaussian-process (GP) regression supplies this by returning a posterior over the solution, yet operator-conditioned formulations have been developed almost exclusively for real-valued fields. We extend operator-informed GP regression to complex-valued Helmholtz problems by realifying the complex operator into an equivalent coupled real block, which enables inference with standard real-valued GP conditioning. The construction admits a family of priors, from a proper diagonal prior to coregionalized and multiscale variants, and conditions on PDE residuals and boundary traces. On benchmark problems in one to three dimensions, the solver is competitive with finite-difference and neural-network baselines at a far smaller interior-constraint budget. Unlike those deterministic baselines, it returns a posterior over the complex wavefield rather than a point estimate. Applied to in vivo brain magnetic resonance elastography, a proper multiscale prior reconstructs the shear curl field to a correlation of 0.77 with measurement, above a 0.75 target. The gain arises from the multiscale kernel rather than from real--imaginary coupling. We further identify a low-frequency accuracy ceiling set by model mismatch and a posterior uncertainty that is not yet calibrated. Calibrated uncertainty therefore emerges as the central next step for probabilistic wavefield inference in dissipative media.

The nonlinear rheology of a soft glassy material is captured by its constitutive relation, shear stress vs shear rate, which is most generally obtained by sweeping up or down the shear rate over a finite temporal window. For a huge amount of complex fluids, the up and down sweeps do not superimpose and define a rheological hysteresis loop. By means of extensive rheometry coupled to time-resolved velocimetry, we unravel the local scenario involved in rheological hysteresis for various types of well-studied soft materials. We introduce two observables that quantify the hysteresis in macroscopic rheology and local velocimetry respectively, as a function of the sweep rate δt^{-1}. Strikingly, both observables present a robust maximum with δt, which defines a single material-dependent timescale that grows continuously from vanishingly small values in simple yield stress fluids to large values for strongly time-dependent materials. In line with recent theoretical arguments, these experimental results hint at a universal timescale-based framework for soft glassy materials, where inhomogeneous flows characterized by shear bands and/or pluglike flow play a central role.

Compliance is a useful parametrization of tactile information that humans often utilize in manipulation tasks. It can be used to inform low-level contact-rich actions or characterize objects at a high-level. In robotic manipulation, existing approaches to estimate compliance have struggled to generalize across object shape and material. Using camera-based tactile sensors, we present a novel approach to parametrize compliance through Young's modulus E. We evaluate our method over a novel dataset of 285 common objects, including a wide array of shapes and materials with Young's moduli ranging from 5.0 kPa to 250 GPa. Data is collected over automated parallel grasps of each object. Combining analytical and data-driven approaches, we develop a hybrid system using a multi-tower neural network to analyze a sequence of tactile images from grasping. This system is shown to estimate the Young's modulus of unseen objects within an order of magnitude at 74.2% accuracy across our dataset. This is a drastic improvement over a purely analytical baseline, which exhibits only 28.9% accuracy. Importantly, this estimation system performs irrespective of object geometry and demonstrates robustness across object materials. Thus, it could be applied in a general robotic manipulation setting to characterize unknown objects and inform decision-making, for instance to sort produce by ripeness.

We present 3D DEM simulations of bidisperse granular packings to investigate their jamming densities, phi_J, and dimensionless bulk moduli, K, as a function of the size ratio, delta, and the concentration of small particles, X_{mathrm S}. We determine the partial and total bulk moduli for each packing and report the jamming transition diagram, i.e., the density or volume fraction marking both the first and second transitions of the system. At a large enough size difference, e.g., delta le 0.22, X^{*}_{mathrm S} divides the diagram with most small particles either non-jammed or jammed jointly with large ones. We find that the bulk modulus K jumps at X^{*}_{mathrm S}(delta = 0.15) approx 0.21, at the maximum jamming density, where both particle species mix most efficiently, while for X_{mathrm S} < X^{*}_{mathrm S} K is decoupled in two scenarios as a result of the first and second jamming transition. Along the second transition, K rises relative to the values found at the first transition, however, is still small compared to K at X^{*}_{mathrm S}. While the first transition is sharp, the second is smooth, carried by small-large interactions, while the small-small contacts display a transition. This demonstrates that for low enough delta and X_{mathrm S}, the jamming of small particles indeed impacts the internal resistance of the system. Our new results will allow tuning the bulk modulus K or other properties, such as the wave speed, by choosing specific sizes and concentrations based on a better understanding of whether small particles contribute to the jammed structure or not, and how the micromechanical structure behaves at either transition.

CNet is a C++/CUDA framework for building deep complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs) and optimizing complex functions by gradient descent with Wirtinger derivatives. Complex models are underexplored yet natural where data is intrinsically complex -- RF/IQ communications, MRI k-space, radar/SAR, audio spectra -- and phase carries information real networks discard. CNet is physics-native: a network is a cascade of complex (often unitary) operations on an amplitude vector, and classification is a Born-rule measurement p_k = |z_k|^2/||z||^2 rather than a softmax over real logits. Its library of complex layers makes conv(x,k) = IFFT(FFT(x).FFT(k)) learnable via signal-processing primitives -- spectral-padding local kernels (Pad), the inverse DFT, a magnitude nonlinearity |z|^2 (CModulus2), holomorphic powers z^M (CPower), and mean pooling (MeanPool) -- with GPU kernels for every layer, a GPU true-Adam optimizer, and a reduced-memory inference mode. Three studies. (1) A fully complex FNet-style causal language model, built on a new O(N log N) causal Fourier mixer, matches a param-matched real-valued causal FNet on tiny-shakespeare in under half the steps. We introduce Born-rule attention: a content-based causal mixer whose weights are quantum-measurement probabilities |<Q_k,K_j>|^2 of one token against another -- the first attention mechanism built on the Born rule. With rotary position embeddings and per-token complex normalization, a fully complex Born-rule model reaches 1.52 nats/char on tiny-shakespeare, matching softmax attention and beating the Fourier mixer by 0.23. (2,3) Two bottleneck analyses -- radio-modulation classification (RML2016.10a) and the Fourier phase problem of coherent-diffraction imaging -- isolate where CVNNs need new operators. The complex machinery learns the correct structure; open problems are concrete and operator-level. Code: https://github.com/crasmarum/CNet

We present an open-source Python library for simulating two-dimensional incompressible Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in stratified shear flows. The solver employs a fractional-step projection method with spectral Poisson solution via Fast Sine Transform, achieving second-order spatial accuracy. Implementation leverages NumPy, SciPy, and Numba JIT compilation for efficient computation. Four canonical test cases explore Reynolds numbers 1000--5000 and Richardson numbers 0.1--0.3: classical shear layer, double shear configuration, rotating flow, and forced turbulence. Statistical analysis using Shannon entropy and complexity indices reveals that double shear layers achieve 2.8times higher mixing rates than forced turbulence despite lower Reynolds numbers. The solver runs efficiently on standard desktop hardware, with 384times192 grid simulations completing in approximately 31 minutes. Results demonstrate that mixing efficiency depends on instability generation pathways rather than intensity measures alone, challenging Richardson number-based parameterizations and suggesting refinements for subgrid-scale representation in climate models.

We show that curve enumeration invariants of complex threefolds with nef anti-canonical bundle are determined by their values on local curves. This implies the MNOP conjecture of Maulik, Nekrasov, Okounkov, and Pandharipande relating Gromov--Witten and Donaldson--Pandharipande--Thomas invariants, for all complex threefolds with nef anti-canonical bundle (in particular, all Calabi--Yau threefolds) and primary insertions (no descendents), given its known validity for local curves due to Bryan, Okounkov, and Pandharipande. The main new technical ingredient in our work is a generic transversality result for holomorphic curves in complex manifolds. Due to the rigidity of complex structures, this result is necessarily weaker than the corresponding generic transversality property for holomorphic curves in almost complex manifolds. Despite this weaker nature, it is enough to obtain our main result by following the proof of the Gopakumar--Vafa integrality conjecture by Ionel and Parker.

Accurate mechanical properties (or materials) Young's modulus (E), Poisson's ratio (ν) and density (ρ) are essential for reliable physics simulation of digital worlds, but most 3D assets lack this information. We propose AdaVoMP, a method for predicting accurate dense spatially-varying (E, ν, ρ) for input 3D objects across representations, improving the resolution, accuracy, and memory efficiency over the state-of-the-art. The foundation of our technique is a sparse and adaptive voxel structure SAV that efficiently represents both the input 3D shape and the material field output. We replace the fixed-voxel model of the most accurate prior method, VoMP, with a novel sparse transformer encoder-decoder model that learns to generate a unique SAV autoregressively for every input shape to represent its materials, achieving a resolution 16^3times higher than prior art. Experiments show that AdaVoMP estimates more accurate volumetric properties, even with lesser test-time compute than all prior art. This allows us to convert high-resolution complex 3D objects into simulation-ready assets, resulting in realistic deformable simulations.

Layered viscoelastic interiors control the frequency dependence of planetary tidal dissipation, but repeated layered Love-number calculations are expensive in long-term orbital and spin integrations. Equivalent homogeneous rheologies provide a cheaper representation of the same response, but their effective parameters do not by themselves identify the interior layers they represent. We develop a local interpretation of such parameters by differentiating the layered-to-homogeneous construction about a fixed-geometry baseline, perturbing only selected layer rigidities and viscosities. We use the pole-residue representation of the degree-two Love number to construct a physical-to-effective transfer matrix. We then use its singular values, resolution matrix, and mode-dominance matrix to determine which physical perturbations are visible in the Love-number response and how they appear in effective-rheology coordinates. Applied to a five-layer lunar model, the full degree-two response is sensitive to seven of eight solid-layer rheological parameters. The single near-null direction is the inner-core rigidity, consistent with shielding by the fluid outer core and with the weak dependence of Love numbers on core elastic structure. Over the LLR frequency interval, fewer physical directions are visible. To first order, the elastic spring, isolated dashpot, and two Voigt elements reproduce the nine-pole response over this interval. Finite perturbations confirm the tangent prediction to within a few percent, with the validity radius limited by a nearly degenerate pair of long-timescale modes.

In this paper, we introduce tensor involved peridynamics, a unified framework for simulating both isotropic and anisotropic materials. While traditional peridynamics models effectively simulate isotropic materials, they face challenges with anisotropic materials and are prone to instability caused by zero energy modes. Our novel model extend the linear bond based peridynamics framework by incorporating the elastic tensor into the micrmodulus function, thereby ensuring stability for anisotropic materials without the need for additional corrections. For isotropic materials. the model mantains compatibility with conventional bond based peridynamics, assuming Possion's rations of 1/4 in 3D and 1/3 in 2D.Numerical experiments confirm the model's stability and accuracy across various scenarios. Additionally, we introduce a damage model for isotropic materials. validating its performance in predicting crack propagation paths in a 2D plate. The results show superior alignment with experimental date compared to traditional model.