Sculpting crystals one Burgers vector at a time: Toward colloidal lattice robot swarms

Plastic deformation of crystalline materials with isotropic particle attractions proceeds by the creation and migration of dislocations under the influence of external forces. If dislocations are produced and migrated under the action of local forces, then material shape change can occur without the application of surface forces. We investigate how particles with variable diameters can be embedded in colloidal monolayers to produce dislocations on demand. We find in simulation that when embedded clusters of variable diameter particles are taken through multiple cycles of swelling and shrinking, large cumulative plastic slip is produced by the creation and biased motion of dislocation pairs in the solid for embedded clusters of particular geometries. In this way, dislocations emitted by these clusters (biased “dislocation emitters”) can be used to reshape colloidal matter. Our results are also applicable to larger-scale swarms of robotic particles that organize into dense ordered two-dimensional (2D) arrangements. We conclude with a discussion of how dislocations fulfill for colloids the role sought by “metamodules” in lattice robotics research and show how successive applications of shear as a unit operation can produce shape change through slicing and swirling.

Survival rates of planets in open clusters: the Pleiades, Hyades, and Praesepe clusters

Context. In clustered environments, stellar encounters can liberate planets from their host stars via close encounters. Although the detection probability of planets suggests that the planet population in open clusters resembles that in the field, only a few dozen planet-hosting stars have been discovered in open clusters. Aims. We explore the survival rates of planets against stellar encounters in open clusters similar to the Pleiades, Hyades, and Praesepe and embedded clusters. Methods. We performed a series of N-body simulations of high-density and low-density open clusters, open clusters that grow via mergers of subclusters, and embedded clusters. We semi-analytically calculated the survival rate of planets in star clusters up to ~1 Gyr using relative velocities, masses, and impact parameters of intruding stars. Results. Less than 1.5% of close-in planets within 1 AU and at most 7% of planets with 1–10 AU are ejected by stellar encounters in clustered environments after the dynamical evolution of star clusters. If a planet population from 0.01–100 AU in an open cluster initially follows the probability distribution function of exoplanets with semi-major axis (ap) between 0.03 and 3 AU in the field discovered by RV surveys (∝ ap−0.6), the PDF of surviving planets beyond ~10 AU in open clusters can be slightly modified to ∝ ap−0.76. The production rate of free-floating planets (FFPs) per star is 0.0096–0.18, where we have assumed that all the stars initially have one giant planet with a mass of 1–13 MJup in a circular orbit. The expected frequency of FFPs is compatible with the upper limit on that of FFPs indicated by recent microlensing surveys. Our survival rates of planets in open clusters suggest that planets within 10 AU around FGKM-type stars are rich in relatively-young (≲10–100 Myr for open clusters and ~1–10 Myr for embedded clusters), less massive open clusters, which are promising targets for planet searches.

Standardization in the UV with Astrosat and its issues related to star cluster studies

The Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) is one of the payloads in Astrosat, the first Indian Space Observatory. The UVIT instrument has two 375 mm telescopes: one for the far-ultraviolet (FUV) channel (1300-1800 Å), and the other for the near-ultraviolet (NUV) channel (2000-3000 Å) and the visible (VIS) channel (3200-5500 Å). We shall discuss the issues with standardization in the UV with reference to Astrosat Observations (Cycle A04). I shall discuss the problems faced in data-analysis and how these in turn lead to serious issues dealing with the color-magnitude diagarms, membership and age of the young embedded clusters studied.

Dynamical equivalence, the origin of the Galactic field stellar and binary population, and the initial radius–mass relation of embedded clusters

In order to allow a better understanding of the origin of Galactic field populations, dynamical equivalence of stellar-dynamical systems has been postulated by Kroupa and Belloni et al. to allow mapping of solutions of the initial conditions of embedded clusters such that they yield, after a period of dynamical processing, the Galactic field population. Dynamically equivalent systems are defined to initially and finally have the same distribution functions of periods, mass ratios and eccentricities of binary stars. Here, we search for dynamically equivalent clusters using the mocca code. The simulations confirm that dynamically equivalent solutions indeed exist. The result is that the solution space is next to identical to the radius–mass relation of Marks & Kroupa, $\left( r_{\rm h}/{\rm pc} \right)= 0.1^{+0.07}_{-0.04}{\, } \left( M_{\rm ecl}/{\rm M}_{\odot } \right)^{0.13\pm 0.04}$. This relation is in good agreement with the observed density of molecular cloud clumps. According to the solutions, the time-scale to reach dynamical equivalence is about 0.5 Myr which is, interestingly, consistent with the lifetime of ultra-compact H ii regions and the time-scale needed for gas expulsion to be active in observed very young clusters as based on their dynamical modelling.