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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In 1967, the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor to the present Department of Energy, announced the project to construct a 200 GeV proton accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This accelerator makes it possible to study the interaction between two protons both highly relativistic in the center-of-mass system. This announcement motivated Cheng and one of the authors to initiate a program, using relativistic gauge quantum field theory, to study the high-energy behavior of hadron scattering. Perhaps the most unexpected result from this study is that all total cross sections must increase without bound at high energies . Another motivation for that investigation was to accept the challenge issued by Oppenheimer  at his concluding talk at the 1958 Rochester meeting at CERN. He said at that time:

”There are areas where we know very little – extremely high energy collisions, for example – where little can be done by anyone.”

Three years after the theoretical prediction of the increasing total cross sections, experiments at the CERN Intersecting Storage Rings confirmed that the proton-proton total cross section indeed turns around and started to increase , and this data made possible to give the first quantitative predictions for future experiments on the total cross sections for $`p\overline{p},\pi ^\pm p,K^\pm p`$ . Careful phenomenology incorporating this increasing hadronic cross sections, called the impact-picture, was first carried out in 1978 . Five years later, when more data became available, the parameters of this phenomenology were revised . It was found that the changes of the values are quite small. These revised parameters have been used extensively to make various predictions, including for example the Coulomb interference effects and increasing integrated elastic cross section for proton-proton scattering up to 40 TeV in the center-of-mass energy, the proposed energy for the Superconducting Super Collider which was never built . All the predictions that can be confirmed experimentally have been confirmed . A recent chapter in a book gives a summary of the development up to this point . Nevertheless, since it is by now nearly two decades since the 1984 parameters were obtained, it is the opportune time to take another look at the parameters. This is one of the purpose of the present paper. Another purpose is to extend the phenomenology from the cases of proton-proton and proton-antiproton scattering to four other processes, namely $`\pi ^\pm p,K^\pm p`$. The increasing total cross sections for these four processes were last investigated in 1973, nearly thirty years ago, and these predictions are in an even greater need of updating. It should perhaps be mentioned that the 1973 prediction for the $`\pi ^{}p`$ case has been well confirmed by later data .

When we made our previous analysis in 1979 and 1984, some experimental data were still preliminary, but since then they have been completed, so it is worth to ”revisit” our model by making an analysis with a full set of final data points. In the next section, we recall the main features of the model we use to describe elastic scattering and we will explain our parametrization. Section 3 is devoted to the presentation of the numerical results for $`\pi p`$, $`Kp`$ scattering and for $`pp`$, $`\overline{p}p`$ scattering with some comparison between the present and the previous determination of the parameters. We also give predictions for future experiments at BNL-RHIC and CERN-LHC. Our concluding remarks are given in section 4.

## 2 Description of the scattering amplitudes

In the impact-picture representation, the spin-independent scattering amplitude111 Here we neglect the spin-dependent amplitude which was considered in Refs.  for the description of polarizations and spin correlation parameters., for $`pp`$ and $`\overline{p}p`$ elastic scattering, reads as

$$a(s,t)=\frac{is}{2\pi }e^{i𝐪𝐛}(1e^{\mathrm{\Omega }_0(s,𝐛)})𝑑𝐛,$$
(1)
where $`𝐪`$ is the momentum transfer ($`t=𝐪^2`$) and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0(s,𝐛)`$ is defined to be the opaqueness at impact parameter $`𝐛`$ and at a given energy $`s`$. We take

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_0(s,𝐛)=S_0(s)F(𝐛^2)+R_0(s,𝐛),$$
(2)
the first term is associated with the ”Pomeron” exchange, which generates the diffractive component of the scattering and the second term is the Regge background. The Pomeron energy dependence is given by the crossing symmetric expression

$$S_0(s)=\frac{s^c}{(\mathrm{ln}s)^c^{}}+\frac{u^c}{(\mathrm{ln}u)^c^{}},$$
(3)
where $`u`$ is the third Mandelstam variable. The choice one makes for $`F(𝐛^2)`$ is crucial and we take the Bessel transform of

$$\stackrel{~}{F}(t)=f[G(t)]^2\frac{a^2+t}{a^2t},$$
(4)
where $`G(t)`$ stands for the proton ”nuclear form factor”, parametrized like the electromagnetic form factor, as a two poles,

$$G(t)=\frac{1}{(1t/m_1^2)(1t/m_2^2)}.$$
(5)
The slowly varying function occuring in Eq.(4), reflects the approximate proportionality between the charge density and the hadronic matter distribution inside a proton. So the Pomeron part of the amplitude depends on only six parameters $`c,c^{},m_1,m_2,f,`$ and $`a`$. The asymptotic energy regime of hadronic interactions are controlled by $`c`$ and $`c^{}`$, which will be kept, for all elastic reactions, at the values obtained in 1984 , namely

$$c=0.167\text{and}c^{}=0.748.$$
(6)
The remaing four parameters are related, more specifically to the reaction $`pp`$ ($`\overline{p}p`$) and they will be slightly re-adjusted from the use of a new set of data.

We now turn to the Regge background. A generic Regge exchange amplitude has an expression of the form

$$\stackrel{~}{R}_i(s,t)=C_ie^{b_it}\left[1\pm e^{i\pi \alpha _i(t)}\right](\frac{s}{s_0})^{\alpha _i(t)},$$
(7)
where $`C_ie^{b_it}`$ is the Regge residue, $`\pm `$ is the signature factor, $`\alpha _i(t)=\alpha _{0i}+\alpha _i^{^{}}t`$ is a standard linear Regge trajectory and $`s_0=1`$GeV2. If we consider the sum over all the allowed Regge trajectories $`\stackrel{~}{R}_0(s,t)=_i\stackrel{~}{R}_i(s,t)`$, the Regge background $`R_0(s,𝐛)`$ in Eq. (2) is the Bessel transform of $`\stackrel{~}{R}_0(s,t)`$. In $`pp`$ ($`\overline{p}p`$) elastic scattering, the allowed Regge exchanges are $`A_2`$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$, so the Regge background involves several additional parameters, we will come back to them.

Let us now consider the case of $`\pi p`$ elastic scattering. The scattering amplitude is also defined by Eq. (1) and we keep the same structure for the opaqueness Eq. (2). However, for the Pomeron exchange, we assume that the nuclear matter density is the product of the proton and the pion contributions. So with this reasonable hypothesis, we write similarly to Eq. (4),

$$\stackrel{~}{F}(t)=f_\pi G(t)F_\pi (t)\frac{a_\pi ^2+t}{a_\pi ^2t}.$$
(8)
Here $`G(t)`$ is given by Eq. (5) with the same parameters values $`m_1,m_2`$ as in the proton case and $`F_\pi (t)`$ is the pion ”nuclear form factor”, we parametrize like the pion electromagnetic form factor, as a single pole $`1/(1t/m_{3\pi }^2)`$ . Therefore the Pomeron term for $`\pi p`$ elastic scattering involves three additional free parameters $`f_\pi `$, $`m_{3\pi }`$, and $`a_\pi `$. The Regge background is simpler in this case since the only allowed Regge exchange is $`\rho `$ and we have taken for the generic amplitude an expression of the form Eq. (7), with the same Regge trajectory as before, only the Regge residue being different.

Finally in the case of $`Kp`$ elastic scattering, for the Pomeron exchange the procedure is the same as for $`\pi p`$ and the use of an expression like Eq. (8) leads to the introduction of three further free parameters $`f_K`$, $`m_{3K}`$, and $`a_K`$. However the Regge background is a little bit more complicated, since the allowed Regge exchanges are $`A_2`$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$, as in the $`pp`$ ($`\overline{p}p`$) reaction. The same Regge trajectories will be used and again only the Regge residues are different.

To summarize, for all the cases we are considering, the elastic scattering amplitude reduces to a Bessel transform

$$a(s,t)=is_0^{\mathrm{}}J_0(b\sqrt{t})(1e^{\mathrm{\Omega }_0(s,𝐛)})b𝑑b.$$
(9)
We define the ratio of real to imaginary parts of the forward amplitude

$$\rho (s)=\frac{\text{Re}a(s,t=0)}{\text{Im}a(s,t=0)},$$
(10)
the total cross section

$$\sigma _{tot}(s)=\frac{4\pi }{s}\text{Im}a(s,t=0)$$
(11)
and the differential cross section

$$\frac{d\sigma (s,t)}{dt}=\frac{\pi }{s^2}|a(s,t)|^2.$$
(12)
This completes the description of the scattering amplitudes and we now turn to the phenomenological results and predictions for future experiments.

## 3 Phenomenological results and predictions

We have made a global fit for all the elastic reactions under study and for all of them we have introduced a lower cutoff at $`p_{lab}=100\text{Gev/c}`$. When making the fit we have analyzed high energy experimental $`pp`$ ($`\overline{p}p`$) data including a set of 369 points coming from ISR, SPS and Tevatron experiments on $`\rho (s)`$, $`\sigma _{tot}(s)`$ and $`d\sigma (s,t)/dt`$. The new $`pp`$ ($`\overline{p}p`$) Pomeron parameters are listed in Table 1 together with those obtained in our previous analysis. We notice that these four parameters have changed only slightly, within a few percents. The $`C`$ values of the Regge residues are given in Table 4. The parameters $`b`$ are zero except for the $`\rho `$ contribution for which we found $`b_\rho =8.54`$. Let us notice that the Regge exchanges have been eikonalized so the intercept and the slope of the trajectories are effective parameters whose values are given in Table 4. However we notice that the three intercepts are close to 1/3 and the $`A_2`$ and $`\rho `$ slopes have the standard value $`\alpha ^{^{}}`$= 1GeV-2, whereas the $`\omega `$ slope is slightly smaller. A detailed $`\chi ^2`$ analysis is presented in Table 4, where the present solution which is a fit to the data is compared to the 1984 solution, which is a prediction made with the same set of data. We notice a substantial improvement in the $`\chi ^2`$, since we have now a $`\chi ^2/\text{pt}=4.45`$. A comparison of our model with experimental data is given in the Figs. 1-6. In Fig. 7 and Fig. 8, we display some predictions for future measurements at BNL-RHIC and CERN-LHC, respectively.

For $`\pi ^\pm p`$ elastic scattering, from 113 data points we have obtained the following Pomeron parameters values :

$$m_{3\pi }=0.7665,f_\pi =4.2414,a_\pi =2.3272.$$

Due to the lack of very high energy data for these reactions, the Regge contributions play a non negligible role in the fit we made with a cut at $`p_{lab}=100\text{GeV/c}`$. The only allowed Regge exchange is $`\rho `$ and we find $`C_\rho =4.1624`$ and $`b_\rho =4.2704`$. A detailed $`\chi ^2`$ analysis of the data is given in Table 5 and we have a $`\chi ^2/\text{pt}=4`$. A comparison of our model with experimental data is given in Figs. 9-12 and in Fig. 13 we give some predictions for future measurements at CERN-LHC.

Finally for $`K^\pm p`$ elastic scattering where we used 212 data points, the procedure is the same as in the $`\pi ^\pm p`$ case and the Pomeron parameters obtained from the fit are

$$m_{3K}=1.1391,f_K=3.6729,a_K=1.9913.$$

For these reactions the allowed exchanges are the $`A_2`$, $`\rho `$ and $`\omega `$. We have kept the same trajectories as in the $`pp`$ case, with $`b_{A2}=b_\omega =8.5409`$, and $`b_\rho =4.2704`$ and the values of the corresponding C parameters are listed in Table 7. A detailed $`\chi ^2`$ analysis of the data is given in Table 7 and we have a $`\chi ^2/\text{pt}=1.5`$. A comparison of our model with experimental data is given in Figs. 14-17 and in Fig. 18 we give some predictions for future measurements at CERN-LHC. It might be possible to expect future measurements at BNL-RHIC with extracted $`\pi ^\pm `$, $`K^\pm `$ beams, to improve the available data.

## 4 Concluding remarks

In one of the earliest phenomenological analyses  that incorporated the theoretical predictions of increasing cross sections , results were obtained not only for $`pp`$ and $`p\overline{p}`$ total cross sections but also for those of $`\pi ^+p`$, $`\pi ^{}p`$, $`K^+p`$ and $`K^{}p`$. Since then, efforts in this direction have been concentrated on studying the cross sections for $`pp`$ and $`p\overline{p}`$ scattering .

There are perhaps two reasons why there has been a lack of progress on the cases of $`\pi ^\pm p`$ and $`K^\pm p`$ as compared with those of $`pp`$ and $`\overline{p}p`$. First, since the available experimental data for $`\pi ^\pm p`$ and $`K^\pm p`$ scattering are at lower energies, the Regge backgrounds play more prominent roles, and this complicates the phenomenological analysis. Secondly, there has been relatively little reason for analyzing such cases because, while the predictions for the $`pp`$ and $`\overline{p}p`$ cases are most relevant with new experimental data expected at higher and higher energies every few years, up until now the availability of high-energy data for $`\pi ^\pm p`$ and $`K^\pm p`$ elastic scattering has been very limited.

The present work is motivated by the realization that the basis for the second reason may change in the near future. The construction of the CERN-LHC, which is a proton collider of 7 TeV in each beam, will make it possible to have multi-TeV secondary beams of $`\pi ^\pm `$ and $`K^\pm `$. The scattering of such external secondary beams on protons will provide the much needed data for $`\pi ^\pm p`$ and $`K^\pm p`$ elastic scattering at high energies (see Figs. 13 and 18). For example, the center-of-mass energy of a 6 TeV $`\pi ^\pm `$ or $`K^\pm `$ and a stationary proton is about 106 GeV, close to that of ISR for $`pp`$ scattering. Encouraged by the likely irrelevance of this second reason, it has been possible to overcome the difficulty due to the first reason, namely the inclusion of more elaborate Regge backgrounds.

Looking forward, we believe that the present treatment of $`\pi ^\pm p`$ and $`K^\pm p`$ elastic scattering will make it possible to deal with a number of additional scattering processes. The most interesting process is perhaps the following:

$$p+pp+N(1440).$$
(13)
This high-energy process was studied nearly thirty years ago . Since $`N(1440)`$ has the same $`I(J^P)`$ as the proton, this is one of the simplest diffraction processes. This is to be contrasted with the elastic scatterings dealt with by most of the existing impact-picture phenomenologies, including the present paper. The diffraction process (13) and many similar ones can perhaps be studied experimentally at BNL-RHIC, and we look forward eagerly to such data in the near future.

Acknowledgments

The work of one of us (TTW) was supported in part by the US Department of Energy under Grant DE-FG02-84ER40158; he is also grateful for hospitality at the CERN Theoretical Physics Division.


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# Identified charged particle azimuthal anisotropy in PHENIX at RHIC

## 1 Introduction and Experimental Setup

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC is designed to measure a variety of observables in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The primary goal is to detect signals of the QGP. The v2 measurements  at RHIC energies have been performed in several experiments for inclusive charged particles and for identified particles. Extending the v2 measurements at higher pT region, especially with identified particles, is important to understand the origin of the v2 component: hydro-dynamic flow of compressed matter, the production of many mini-jets, etc. It has also been observed that v2 saturates at pT $``$ 2 GeV/c. The cause of this is not yet known, but it is worth noting that at this momentum the particle composition is very different than at low momentum in that the proton yield is comparable to the pion yield .

PHENIX has excellent particle identification at mid-rapidity. In this analysis, the time-of-flight (TOF) detector is used to identify final state hadrons up to 4 GeV/c in pT together with the central arm tracking system consisting of drift- and pad-chambers for momentum reconstruction. The beam counters (BBC) provide collision time and z-vertex position information. The two beam counters are located at $`|z|`$=1.5m from the collision point, surrounding the beam pipe with 64 photo-multiplier tubes, covering $`|\eta |=34`$. The large charged multiplicity at $`|\eta |=34`$ and non-zero signal of event anisotropy in this $`\eta `$ range enables us to measure the event reaction plane using the BBC with full azimuthal angle coverage. The standard method  for calculating and correcting (flattening) the reaction plane is applied here. In order to obtain an improved reaction plane resolution, a combined reaction plane is defined by averaging the reaction plane angles obtained from each BBC using the elliptic moment. The estimated resolution of the combined reaction plane, $`<cos2(\mathrm{\Phi }_{measured}\mathrm{\Phi }_{truth})>`$, is an average of 0.3 with a maximum of about 0.4.

## 2 Results and Interpretation

Charged particles are measured in the central arm spectrometers ($`|\eta |<0.35`$). In the present analysis, the pT range of the particle identification is 0.2 $`<`$ pT $`<`$ 3 GeV/c for pions, 0.3 $`<`$ pT $`<`$ 2 GeV/c for kaons, and 0.5 $`<`$ pT $`<`$ 4 GeV/c for protons. The centrality of the collision is defined by the correlation between the total number of particles measured in the BBC and the total energy measured in zero degree calorimeter.

Figure 2 shows the centrality dependence of v2 for inclusive charged particles measured at mid-rapidity ($`|\eta |<0.35`$) with respect to three different reaction planes: two determined using each beam counter separately, and one determined from the combination of the two beam counters. Here R.P. stands for the reaction plane within the $`\eta `$ range shown in the figure. The three results agree well, indicating that the resolution for the different reaction planes is well understood. The v2 parameter decreases for both peripheral and central collisions with a maximum at about 50$`\%`$ of the geometric cross section. The reduction of v2 for peripheral events might indicate that non-flow contributions are less significant in this analysis because of the large rapidity gap between the reaction plane and the central tracking arm acceptance of about 3 units. The data are consistent with a $`<sin2(\varphi \mathrm{\Phi })>`$ distribution (represented by the open symbols), which is expected to be zero. Figure 2 shows the transverse momentum dependence of v2 for inclusive charged particles with respect to the combined reaction plane for minimum-bias events. The data above a pT of 2 GeV/c clearly show a deviation from the linear behavior seen at smaller pT. The solid line is from a hydro-dynamic calculation . The three dashed lines are from a hydro + pQCD calculation with three different gluon densities (from top to bottom, dNg/dy = 1000, 500, and 200) .

Figure 3, the transverse momentum dependence of v2 for identified particles is shown. The solid circles show $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$, the open triangles show $`K^+`$ and $`K^{}`$, and the open squares show $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$. The left panel shows negatively charged particles, while the right panel shows positively charged particles. The solid lines represent hydro-dynamic calculation  including a first-order phase transition with a freeze out temperature of 120 MeV. The data show that at lower pT ($`<`$ 2 GeV/c) the lighter mass particles have a larger v2 at a given pT, which is reproduced by the model calculations. However, the data and the calculation deviate at higher pT. Lighter particles seem to deviate from the hydro-dynamic behavior at lower pT than for the heavier particles. Consequently, the mass dependence of v2 for pT above 2 GeV/c is reversed. Since the particle identification capability for $`K/p`$ separation goes up to 4 GeV/c, the combined $`\pi `$ and $`K`$ can be compared with protons up to 4 GeV/c. The v2 value from the combined $`\pi `$ and $`K`$ are shown in figure 4 in order to clearly show their difference from the $`p`$ and $`\overline{p}`$. The reversed trend of v2 at pT above 2 GeV/c is clearly seen.

## 3 Summary

The value of v2 for identified and inclusive charged particles are measured at mid-rapidity with respect to the reaction plane defined in the forward and backward rapidity regions in 200 GeV Au+Au collisions in the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. The v2 value of inclusive charged particles decreases for both peripheral and central collisions with a maximum at about 50$`\%`$ of the geometric cross section. The v2 value increases linearly with pT at lower pT and saturates around 2 GeV/c. The v2 parameter for identified particles follows a hydro-dynamic behavior up to 2 GeV/c in pT, where the lighter mass particles have larger v2 at a given pT. However, there is an indication that the trend of this mass dependence reverses at higher pT.


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# Adaptation using hybridized genetic crossover strategies

## Abstract

We present a simple game which mimics the complex dynamics found in most natural and social systems. Intelligent players modify their strategies periodically, depending on their performances. We propose that the agents use hybridized one-point genetic crossover mechanism, inspired by genetic evolution in biology, to modify the strategies and replace the bad strategies. We study the performances of the agents under different conditions and investigate how they adapt themselves in order to survive or be the best, by finding new strategies using the highly effective mechanism we proposed.

The behaviour of most of the complex systems found in natural and social environments can be characterized by the competition among interacting agents for scarce resources and their adaptation to the environment parisi ; huberman ; nowak ; lux ; arthur . The agents could be diverse in form and in capability, for example, cells in an immune system to great firms in a business centre. In these dynamically evolving complex systems the nature of agents and their manners differ. In order to have a deeper understanding of the interactions of the large number of agents, one should study the capabilities of the individual agents. An agent’s behaviour may be thought of as a collection of rules governing “responses” to “stimuli”. For example, if one sees a predator, then one should run, or if the stock indices fall then one should take immediate action, and so on. Therefore, in order to model any complex dynamically adaptive system, a major concern is the selection and representation of the stimuli and responses, since the behaviour and strategies of the component agents are determined thereby. In a model, the rules of action are a straightforward way to describe agents’ strategies. One studies the behaviour of the agents by looking at the rules acting sequentially. Then one considers “adaptation”, which is described in biology as a process by which an organism tries to fit itself into its environment. The organism’s experience guides it to change its structure so that as time passes, the organism makes better use of the environment for its own benefit. The timescales over which the agents adapt vary from one system to another. For example, adaptive changes in the immune system take hours to days, adaptive changes in a firm take usually months to years, and adaptive changes in the ecosystem require years to several millennia.

In complex adaptive systems, a major part of the environment of a particular agent includes other adaptive agents. Thus, a considerable amount of an agent’s effort goes in adaptation to the other agents. This feature is the main source of the interesting temporal patterns that these complex adaptive systems produce. For example, in financial markets, human beings react with strategy and foresight by considering outcomes that might result as a consequence of their behaviour.This brings in a new dimension to the system, namely rational actions, which are not innate to agents in natural environments. To handle this new dimension, game theory is used. It helps in making decisions when a number of rational agents are involved under conditions of conflict and competition game . However, game theory and other conventional theories in economics, study patterns in behavioural equilibrium that induce no further interaction. These consistent patterns are quite different from the temporal patterns that the complex adaptive systems produce.

In this letter, we study a simple game which has most of the discussed features of a complex adaptive system. The “mixed” strategies which the agents use to decide the course of action must be good, especially when the agents have to be the best in order to survive– similar to the idea of “survival of the fittest” in biology. So just as an organism adapts itself in the natural environment, we propose that “intelligent” agents in the game adapt themselves by modifying their strategies from time to time, depending on their current performances. We also borrow the concept of “hybridization” from biology and use it to modify the strategies in the course of the game, in the same way as in genetic algorithms holland ; goldberg ; lawrence . Therefore, our game is a variant of the intelligent minority game introduced in Marko1 , based on the basic minority game challet1 ; challet2 ; cavagna ; riolo ; lamper . In the game we study here, we use the mechanism of hybridized genetic crossover where the two best strategies of an agent serve as the “parents” which it uses to create two new “children” using one-point genetic crossover lawrence ; Marko1  and then replaces two of its worst strategies with the children.

Our game consists of an odd number of agents $`N`$ who can perform only two actions denoted here by $`0`$ or $`1`$, at a given time $`t`$. For example, the two actions could be “buying” and “selling” commodities/assets. An agent wins the game if it is one of the members of the minority group. All the agents are assumed to have access to finite amount of “global” information: a common bit-string “memory” of the $`m`$ most recent outcomes. With this there are $`2^m`$ possible “history” bit-strings. Now, a “strategy” consists of two possible responses, which in the binary sense are an action $`0`$ or the opposite action $`1`$ to each possible history bit-strings. Thus, there are $`2^{2^m}`$ possible strategies constituting the whole “strategy space”. In our study, we use the “reduced strategy space” by picking only $`2^m`$ uncorrelated strategies, i.e., strategies which have Hamming distance $`d_H=1/2`$ challet3 .

At the beginning of the game, each agent randomly picks $`s`$ strategies which constitutes its pool. Each time the game has been played, time $`t`$ is incremented by unity and one “virtual” point is assigned to a strategy that has predicted the correct outcome and the best strategy is one which has the highest virtual point score. The performance of the player is measured by the number of times the player wins, and the strategy, which the player uses to win, gets a “real” point. The number of agents who have chosen a particular action, say $`1`$, is denoted by $`A_1(t)`$ and varies with time. The total utility of the system can be defined as

$$U(x_t)=(1\theta (x_M))x_t+\theta (x_M)(Nx_t),$$
(1)
where $`x_M=(N1)/2`$, $`x_t\{0,1,2,\mathrm{},N\}t`$, and

$$\theta (x_M)=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & \text{ when }x_tx_M\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{ when }x_t>x_M.\hfill \end{array}$$

When $`x_t\{x_M,x_M+1\}`$, the total utility of the system is maximum $`U_{max}`$ ($`=U(x_M)=U(x_M+1)`$) as the highest number of players win. The system is more efficient when the deviations from the maximum total utility $`U_{max}`$ are smaller, or in other words, the fluctuations in $`A_1(t)`$ around the mean become smaller.

The players examine their performances after every time interval $`\tau `$, and we call $`\tau `$ the crossover time. If a player finds that he is among the fraction $`n`$ (where $`0<n<1`$) who are the worst performing players, he adapts himself and modifies his strategies. The mechanism by which the player creates new strategies is that of hybridized one-point genetic crossover, whereby he selects the two best strategies (“parents”) from his pool of $`s`$ strategies. Then using one point genetic crossover lawrence ; Marko1 , he creates two new strategies (“children”) and replaces his two worst strategies with the children. It should be noted that our mechanism of evolution of strategies is considerably different from earlier attempts challet1 ; li1 ; li2 . Here, the strategies are changed by the agents themselves and even though the strategy space evolves continuously, its size and dimensionality remain the same.

The time variations of the number of players $`A_1(t)`$ who choose action $`1`$ are plotted in Figure 1. We observe large fluctuations around the mean for the basic minority game in Figure 1 (a). In Figure 1 (b), we observe the effect of hybridized genetic crossovers on the fluctuations around the mean. Interestingly, the fluctuations disappear totally and the system stabilizes to a state where the total utility of the system is at maximum, since at each time step the highest number of players win the game. As expected, the behaviour depends on the parameter values for the system. For example, as we increase $`m`$ it is more unlikely that the system stabilizes. Also, we have to increase $`s`$, the size of the pool of strategies, in order that the system stabilizes. The dependence of the system’s stability on these parameters is being studied in details in Marko2 . So the important fact here is that the behaviour is totally different from the behaviour of the basic minority game, where increasing $`s`$ usually leads to larger deviations challet1 ; challet2 . It is also interesting to note that starting from a situation, similar to what is shown in Figure 1 (a), simply allowing the agents to adapt themselves by modifying their strategies using the mechanism we have proposed, drives the system towards a state where the total utility is optimized.

In Figure 2, we further analyze some measures related to the simulation in Figure 1 (b). If we plot the performances of the agents in a basic minority game, we find that the distribution of the performances is quite symmetric around the mean and the performances of the players do not vary remarkably during the game challet1 . However, in our model the competition is very stiff and there are lots of ups and downs in the performances, and finally, when the system reaches an optimal state, the players can be divided clearly into two groups depending on their performances, as shown in Figure 2 (a). The performances in all cases are scaled such that the mean performance is zero at every time step, so that we can compare them easily. Figure 2 (b) shows the evolution of the history. Since $`m=5`$, there are $`2^m=32`$ possible history bit strings denoted by a number between $`1`$ and $`32`$. Before the system reaches the optimal state, histories vary over the whole range of possible outcomes as shown in Figure 2 (b). But after reaching the stable state, the history is restricted to one value. So, one group wins while the other loses continuously, depending on the strategy spaces of the players. To study the differences in the strategies of each players’ pool after the system has reached the stable state, we have calculated the average Hamming distance for the players’ pools. Results are shown in Figure 2 (c). If all the strategies in a pool are similar, average Hamming distance is zero, for uncorrelated strategies, it is $`1/2`$ and for totally anti-correlated strategies $`1`$. Surprisingly, we find that for most of the players the average Hamming distance calculated for the whole pool is zero, which implies that the players have evolved their strategies and found only one strategy for use.

In order to study the efficiency of the system, we have introduced the study of the variation of the average total utility of the system $`U(x_t)`$ with time $`t`$. The results are shown in Figure 3. We find that for the basic minority game the total utility does not change much throughout the course of the game. However, in the game we study, we can clearly see that the total utility of the system increases as the time passes on and eventually saturates. We can define a characteristic time, called the “adaptation time” $`\lambda `$, during which the total utility reaches a saturation point. As intuitively expected, the adaptation time $`\lambda `$ depends on the parameters of the system. We defer the detailed studies and results for a future communication Marko2 . It is interesting to note that this utility measure is effective in characterizing an adaptive game.

In order to demonstrate that the players who adapt themselves in the course of the game, by modifying their strategies using the hybridized one-point genetic crossover, we have tested the players in two different situations. The first situation is where all the players play the basic minority game but later we select the worst player and allow it to adapt itself and thus modify its strategies. We find that the player starts winning immediately and eventually comes out to be a winner as shown in Figure 4 (a). Further, we choose two other worst players at two different times and allow them to modify their strategies also. These two players too begin to perform very well. We find that the performances of these chosen “intelligent” players are much better compared to the “normal” players of the basic minority game. The second situation consists of ten “intelligent” players who are capable of modifying their strategies and the rest are “normal” players who simply play the basic minority game. We find that the intelligent players perform extremely well in comparison to the other normal players, and form a separate group, as shown in Figure 4 (b). The competition amongst themselves is very stiff as can be seen from the inset of Figure 4 (b).

These two situations and the results clearly show how effective the adaptation of agents can be in a complex adaptive system. The mechanism of modifying the strategies is also very successful as it allows a player to find new strategies which maximizes the players’ individual utility. However, the total utility of the system does not change much as the fraction of adaptive players is very small in both cases. It would be interesting to study the variation of the total utility of the system with the fraction of adaptive players.

In summary, we have proposed a game where the players adapt themselves to continuously changing environment, thus reproducing interesting temporal patterns that are usually created by complex adaptive systems in nature. The mechanism of adaptation we have introduced here seems to be very effective in all the cases we have studied, as can be seen from the individual performances of the players or from the measure of the total utility of the system. The performances of the players in different conditions always seemed to be better when they adapted themselves compared to the players who did not. We conclude that using this mechanism one could increase remarkably the individual utility and the total utility of the system as well, if the fraction of adaptive players is significant.

###### Acknowledgements.

This research was partially supported by the Academy of Finland, Research Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, project no. 44897 (Finnish Centre of Excellence Programme 2000-2005).


text:
# Evolution of zero-metallicity massive stars

## 1. Introduction

Over the years the existence of a primeval generation of (very) massive stars has been invoked in relation to various astrophysical issues (see Carr et al. 1984; Weiss et al. 2000 for extended reviews), such as:

* fill the gap between the chemical abundances predicted by the Big Bang nucleosynthesis and those measured in Population-II stars;
* offer a viable solution to the G-dwarf problem in the solar neighbourhood;
* explain the observed enhancement in $`\alpha `$-elements observed in metal-poor stars, as well as the chemical abundances in the inter-galactic medium as inferred from the spectra of high-$`z`$ damped Ly-$`\alpha `$ systems;
* contribute to the cosmological helium abundance;
* cause the re-ionization of the early Universe;
* provide a source of dark matter, in form of stellar remnants, as required for galactic haloes and galaxy clusters.

Several models of Population-III stars were constructed in the ’80 (e.g. El Eid et al. 1983, Ober et al. 1983). In recent years, the renewed interest from the cosmologic field has again spurred several studies on primordial stellar evolution (e.g. Marigo et al. 2001; Heger & Woosley 2002).

## 2. Evolutionary stellar models

In this context we have carried out extensive evolutionary calculations, over a large range of stellar masses ($`0.7M_{}<M_\mathrm{i}<1000M_{}`$), covering the H- and He-burning phases, and allowing for a moderate overshooting from convective cores ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }=l/H_p=0.5`$). Rotation has not been included. Stellar tracks are computed under the assumption of constant-mass evolution. Additionally, for very massive models, with $`M_\mathrm{i}120M_{}`$, we apply recent mass-loss rate ($`\dot{M}`$) prescriptions to account for i) the radiation-driven winds at very low metallicities (Kudritzki 2002), and ii) the intensification effect on $`\dot{M}`$ caused by stellar rotation (Maeder & Meynet 2000).

## 3. The critical mass $`M_{\mathrm{up}}`$

Let us first consider the critical mass $`M_{\mathrm{up}}`$, that is the usually defined as the maximum initial mass for a star to develop an electron-degenerate C-O core, hence marking the boundary the limit between the class of low-intermediate-mass stars and that of massive stars. We find that it is around $`78M_{}`$ for $`Z=0`$.

Figure 1 displays the expected trend of $`M_{\mathrm{up}}`$ as a function of metallicity. It is essentially controlled by the mass of the He-core left at the end of the main sequence phase. At decreasing $`Z`$ and for CNO-dominated H-burning, the initial slight decline is due to the development of larger convective cores, because of larger luminosities and more concentrated energy sources. Then, the steeper rise at $`Z=0`$ reflects a reversed situation, i.e smaller convective cores because of more extended burning regions. This is caused by the weaker temperature dependence energy generation rate when the p-p chain becomes competitive with the CNO-cycle, and this latter operates at higher temperatures as in the case of $`Z=0`$ (or extremely low $`Z`$).

## 4. The onset of the triple-$`\alpha `$ reaction

A peculiarity of $`Z=0`$ stars is that, differently from those with “normal” chemical composition, the onset of the triple$`\alpha `$ reaction can already happen during the H-burning phase (see Marigo et al. 2001 for a detailed discussion). In few words, due to the lack of metals, initially the CNO-cycle cannot operate. The only available energy sources are the gravitational contraction and the p-p chain. Due to the rather weak temperature-dependence of the latter, the central regions can contract until quite high temperatures are reached ($`12\times 10^8`$ K), which lead to the onset of the $`\alpha (2\alpha ,\gamma )^{12}`$C reaction. As soon as a tiny abundance of 12C is synthesised, then the CNO-cycle can be activated for the first time. As shown in Fig. 2, such occurrence depends on the stellar mass, namely it takes place earlier and earlier at increasing $`M_\mathrm{i}`$. Specifically, in the high-mass domain the triple$`\alpha `$ reaction ignites as soon as the star settles on the zero-age main sequence, before burning any significant amount of hydrogen.

## 5. The location in the H-R diagram

Figure 3 illustrates evolutionary tracks in the H-R diagram for selected values of the initial mass, under the assumption of constant-mass evolution. Basing on these stellar tracks, a set of isochrones has been constructed (see Fig. 4). It is available in electronic fromat at the web-address http://pleiadi.astro.it/.

With respect to massive models ($`M_\mathrm{i}>8M_{}`$) we can make the following remarks: i) the H-burning phase is located at quite high effective temperatures such that, in combination with high luminosities, we expect these stars to emit large fluxes of UV photons (see Schaerer 2002); ii) the He-burning phase takes place at decreasing effective temperatures at increasing stellar mass; iii) stars with $`8M_{}<M_\mathrm{i}<70M_{}`$ remain always confined in the blue, and are not able to perform any redward excursion onto the Hayashi line before the ignition of central carbon. This will have important consequences for the expected surface chemical changes (see Sect. 6.).

## 6. Surface chemical changes

As we do not account for any rotationally-induced mixing, changes in the surface chemical composition are conditioned to the redward evolution of the star onto its Hayashi line (see Fig. 3). Correspondingly, a deep convective envelope develops and extends into a chemically-variable profile (left by the receding convective core during the H-burning phase), so that newly-synthesised elements are dredge-up to the surface. Predictions for constant-mass evolution are shown in Fig. 5

In summary, we find that the $`1^{\mathrm{st}}`$ dredge-up is experienced by stars with $`0.7M_{}<M_\mathrm{i}<1.1M_{}`$, whereas the $`2^{\mathrm{nd}}`$ dredge-up takes place in stars with $`2.2M_{}<M_\mathrm{i}<8.0M_{}`$, and $`M_\mathrm{i}>70M_{}`$. It should be noticed that further chemical changes may occur in the case of mass loss (see Sect. 7.).

## 7. Mass loss and other evolutionary properties

Mass loss is a crucial, but still uncertain, issue for primordial stellar evolution. In this work, we consider two possible driving-processes, namely: radiative line acceleration and stellar rotation. To this aim, we adopt analytic formalisms recently presented by Kudritzki (2002), and Maeder & Meynet (2000), respectively.

In summary we find that, for a metallicity as low as $`Z=10^4\times Z_{}`$, radiation is not an efficient mass-loss mechanism, except for very massive stars with $`M\mathrm{i}>500M_{}`$.

Let us consider Fig. 6, referring to a $`250M_{}`$ model to which we apply Kudritzki’s (2002) prescription. In this particular case, the amount of mass ejected during the evolution from the ZAMS to the onset of carbon-burning is negligible, i.e. $`0.7M_{}`$. Note the large extension (in mass coordinate) of the convective cores during nuclear burnings, and the continuous transition from the end of core H-burning to the onset of core He-burning. In practice, we do not expect any intermediate H-shell burning phase in zero-metallicity (very) massive models, due to the already high temperatures reached in the central regions at the stage of exhaustion od central hydrogen.

Close to the end of the main sequence, the $`250M_{}`$ model evolves towards lower effective temperatures until it approaches its Hayashi line. Consequently, an extended convective envelope develops so that the surface chemical composition is polluted with nuclear products of H-burning (mainly 4He and 14N).

Stellar rotation is expected to increase the purely-radiative mass-loss rates. As already discussed by Meynet & Maeder (2001), the almost total preservation of the initial angular momentum may favour the attainment of the break-up velocity ($`\mathrm{\Omega }`$-limit). In combination with the very large luminosities of very massive stars, the $`\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-limit might also be approached. However, it should be noticed that (see Heger & Langer (1998) for an extensive discussion), since a large fraction of the total angular momentum is deposited in the outermost layers, the ejection of a relatively small amount of mass from the surface should make the star to get rid of a significant part of its angular momentum, with consequent spinning down of the rotational velocity. As a consequence, the rotational effect on the mass-loss rate should also weaken.

The effectiveness of stellar rotation in driving mass loss from zero-metallicity stars will be examined in more detail in a forthcoming paper (Marigo et al., in preparation). This is an important issue for very massive stars, in relation to the possible occurrence of pair-instability supernovae (Heger A. & Woosley 2002).

### Acknowledgments.

P.M. is grateful to N. Langer for providing his expertise on stellar rotation and helpful remarks on this work.

## References

Carr B.J., Bond J.R., Arnett W.D. 1984, ApJ 277, 445

El Eid M.F., Fricke K.J., Ober W.W. 1983, A&A 119, 54

Girardi L., Bressan A., Bertelli G., Chiosi C. 2000, A&A 361, 1023

Heger A., Langer N. 2002, A&A 334, 210

Heger A., Woosley S.E. 2002, ApJ 567, 532

Kudritzki R.-P. 2002, ApJ, in press

Maeder A., Meynet G. 2000, A&A 361, 159

Marigo P., Girardi L, Chiosi C., Wood P.R. 2001, A&A 371, 152

Ober W.W., El Eid M.F., Fricke K.J. 1983, A&A 119, 61

Weiss A., Abel T., Hill V. (eds.), 2000, The First Stars, Proc. of the MPA/ESO Workshop held at Garching, 4-6 august 1999, ESO Astrophysics Symposia, Springer


text:
# Stress transmission in planar disordered solid foams

## Abstract

Stress transmission in planar open-cell cellular solids is analysed using a recent theory developed for marginally rigid granular assemblies. This is made possible by constructing a one-to-one mapping between the two systems. General trivalent networks are mapped onto assemblies of rough grains, while networks where Plateau rules are observed, are mapped onto assemblies of smooth grains. The constitutive part of the stress transmission equations couples the stress directly to the local rotational disorder of the cellular structure via a new fabric tensor. An intriguing consequence of the analysis is that the stress field can be determined in terms of the microstructure alone independent of stress-strain information. This redefines the problem of structure-property relationship in these materials and poses questions on the relations between this formalism and elasticity theory. The deviation of the stress transmission equations from those of conventional solids has been interpreted in the context of granular assemblies as a new state of solid matter and the relevance of this interpretation to the state of matter of cellular solids is discussed.

I. Introduction

Planar foams consist of partitions of space by irregular cells and are observed in many natural and man made systems. Their ubiquity in nature is often due to evolutional processes that have led to an optimization of mechanical or transport properties against weight constraints. Much effort has been invested in attempts to follow the wisdom of Mother Nature and develop materials with biologically inspired structures. This effort has resulted in a growing body of knowledge on the characterization of the structure as well as on understanding of the geometry of the cells in terms of the nonequilibrium dynamical processes that generate them. Essential to this entire field is a basic understanding of the relations between the internal structural characteristics of such media and their macroscopic properties . Such an understanding would be of use to a wide range of applications, such as design of high-perfrmance and smart materials, bio-artificial technology, and the food insustry, to name only a few. A corner stone in the study of cellular materials is the work of Gibson and Ashby  who employed various approximations on ordered cellular structures to estimate the mechanical properties of cellular networks in general. While that work has significantly improved the theoretical basis for stress calculations, it has failed to provide a rigorous relation between the local microstructure in general disordered systems and the local stress field. It has become increasingly evident in recent years that the lack of such a first principle relation stands in the way of progress both on the theoretical and the technological fronts.

It is conventional to relate constitutive structural data in solids to macroscopic properties by integration over microscopic variables . In this approach one starts from a given constitutive stress-strain relation on a judiciously chosen microscopic lengthscale and coarse-grains this relation until it applies to a suitable macroscopic lengthscale. This paradigmatic approach has been automatically adopted in recent era for cellular solids but the main problem has always been the translation of the local cellular structure, which can be arbitrary in general systems, into local elastic properties. The question whether it is really necessary to go down this route at all has not been seriously addressed. The results in this paper suggest an alternative approach that obviates the problem of finding the elastic constants altogether.

On the conceptual level, the problem is the following: Suppose a cellular system, whose structure is known in every detail, is in mechanical equilibrium under a set of forces $`\stackrel{}{g}`$ acting on its boundaries. Suppose also that the properties of the material constituting the network are well characterized. The questions are: (i) how to describe the discrete field of forces transmitted by the cell walls as a continuous stress field? (ii) what are the equations that govern this field (the stress transmission equations)? and (iii) how do different microstructures affect the local stress? In $`d`$ dimensions it takes $`d^2`$ conditions to determine the $`d\times d`$ stress tensor $`\sigma `$. Force balance gives $`d`$ conditions,

$$\stackrel{}{}\widehat{\sigma }=\stackrel{}{g}$$
(1)
and blanace of torque provides further $`d(d1)/2`$ conditions - one for each axis of rotation,

$$\sigma _{ij}=\sigma _{ji}$$
(2)
Equations (1) and (2) give altogether $`d(d+1)/2`$ relations and therefore additional $`d(d1)/2`$ equations (one in $`d=2`$ and three in $`d=3`$) are required to solve for the stress components. These ’missing’ equations must consist of information about the constitution of the material - the constitutive equations. In conventional elasticity theory, this second set of equations is obtained by imposing compatibility conditions on the strain field and relating the stress to the strain through constitutive relations that are independent of the balance conditions. While equations (1) and (2) couple the stress to the external loading, the constitutive equations relate it to the properties of the medium and determine how the stress fluctuates due to spatial variations of these properties. In cellular systems, these variations are governed by the microstructure and so it seems that there is no escape from the problem of structure-property relations. Yet, what is the property that the structure needs relating to? The basic issue is not how to relate the structure to elastic constants, which we can then plug into the comaptibility relations. Rather, it would suffice to find $`d(d1)/2`$ relations that couple the structural information directly to the stress field.

A development in the study of granular systems has provided an unexpected key for progress on this problem. In a recent paper, Ball and Blumenfeld (BB)  have formulated a new theory for stress transmission in two dimensional marginally rigid granular assemblies . In particular, they have derived a constitutive equation that couples the local stress to the local geometry. Marginal rigidity is a new state of solid matter, whose existence has been verified experimentally . In this state the number of intergranular contacts in the system allows to determine the microscopic force field from statics alone and therefore the macroscopic stress is independent of the stress-strain data. BB have further shown that the new theory predicts that the symmetric divergence-free stress field is the Airy stress function , recovering a result of conventional elasticity theory and so confirming the redundancy of the stress-strain relations in marginally rigid systems.

The aim of this paper is to to adapt the BB formalism to planar trivalent cellular structures and derive a constitutive relation between the microstructure of a model of such systems and the stress field that develops in them under external loading. To this end, an exact mapping is formulated between cellular networks and granular assemblies at the marginal rigidity state. By decoupling the stress from the strain, the new theory obviates the problem of structure-property relationship in the traditional sense and provides a direct structure-field relationship. In the context of granular systems, marginal rigidity is a new state of solid matter and this begs the question whether cellular solids and solid foams are also in this state.

The paper is structured as follows: Section II presents an argument that leads to the conclusion that the stress field in cellular networks at equilibrium can be determined from the loading and the microstructure alone, independent of any strain-stress information. Section III formulates a one-to-one mapping between planar trivalent cellular networks and marginally rigid assemblies of grains. Section IV describes the derivation of the constitutive equation and section V concludes with a brief discussion of the results and some of their implications.

II. The stress field can be determined independently of stress-strain relations

In this section it is shown from first principles that the stress field can be determined from statics alone. The argument is slightly different for general trivalent networks, where the cell walls meet at arbitrary angles, and for Plateau networks. Therefore these two cases will be treated separately throughout the paper. In the following we model a cellular solid by a collection of vertices at given positions in the plane, which are connected by cell walls whose thickness is much smaller than the size of a cell (a dry foam). These cell walls may be straight lines or curved as a consequence of the process that has given rise to the microstructure and with which we are not concerned in the present discussion.

(a) General networks

Consider a planar open-cell trivalent cellular network that is at mechanical equilibrium under a set of external forces, $`\stackrel{}{g}`$, acting on its boundaries and which consists of $`N`$ cells. The loading gives rise to tension (or compression, which will be regarded in the following simply as negative tension) in the cell walls and to torques on the vertices of the network. The former are balanced by forces along the cell walls, while the latter must be balanced by forces that are normal to the walls. By Euler’s theorem  for $`N1`$ a cell has on average six neighbors and, since each cell wall is shared by two cells, there are altogether $`3N`$ cell walls. Each vertex in the network is the meeting point of three walls and each wall connects two vertices and so there are exactly $`2N`$ vertices. This enumeration neglects boundary effects, which introduce corrections of order $`O(1/N)`$, but which can be readily included into the argument that follows and therefore do not affect its generality.

Let us draw around each vertex a triangle whose corners are located at the midpoints of the walls that branch from it (e.g. triangle ABC in figure 1) and let us imagine that the edges of these triangles are made of rigid struts. Each of the 2N triangles is in contact with three neighbors and the contact points are considered rigid so that the triangles cannot rotate relative to each other around them. Two triangles in contact exert a force on each other whose two components are defined to be the tension along the wall and the force normal to the wall that contributes to balancing the torques on the vertices due to the external loading. Within this description there are no torques on the contact points (which may result, for example, from a finite thickness of the cell walls). Thus defined, the triangles form a rigid frame that transmits the same forces and moments as the original cellular structure. There are $`3N`$ contact forces and therefore, to determine the intercellular forces, one needs to solve for $`6N`$ unknowns altogether.

How many equations are available to determine these? The triangles are at mechanical equilibrium and so each must obey two equations of force balance and one equation of torque balance. Multiplied by the $`2N`$ vertices, this gives $`6N`$ equations, exactly enough to determine all the forces. The balance equations depend only on the details of the microstructure and on the external loading. It follows that the intercellular forces can be uniquely determined from statics alone.

(b) Plateau networks

In Plateau trivalent networks the cell walls meet at each vertex at angles of $`2\pi /3`$, a structure that abounds in nature and man-made materials. In contrast to the general case, force balance at every vertex dictates here that all the cell walls are under the same tension. This leaves the normal force on each cell wall as the only unknown and the number of degrees of freedom is reduced from $`6N`$ to $`3N`$. We use the same construction as in figure 1, but instead of considering the frame of triangles, let us regard it as consisting of a set of connected rigid polygons, each enclosed inside a cell. These polygons connect to each other at the same points that the triangles do, namely, at the midpoints of the cell walls. If we define the forces transmitted between every two neighboring polygons as the forces normal to the cell walls at the midpoints, then this rigid frame supports the same stresses as the original system. Each of the $`N`$ polygons has to obey three balance equations, two of force and one of torque, which gives altogether $`3N`$ equations, exactly enouch to determine all the forces.

So, the intercellular forces in both general and Plateau networks can be derived from statics alone and therefore these are isostatic systems. Now, the macroscopic stress is just a coarse-grained continuous description of the discrete field of forces on the cellular scale. It follows that since the latter can be determined without reference to compliance then so can the continuous stress field. It is evident then that the second set of equations that complements the balance conditions must arise from the structural characteristics alone. This observation has a significant ramification: regardless of the precise form that the consitutive equations take, the fact that the stress field equations involve no information on the stress-strain response means that the stress transmission in cellular solids is governed by physical laws that are different than in conventional elastic solids . This basic realization appears to have been neglected in the large body of literature on solid foams. Most of the work in the field employs stress-strain relations, thus linking the stress to the displacement that occurs as the system approaches mechanical equilibrium. The fundamental issue underlying the present analysis is that in planar cellular solids the stress can be decoupled from any deformation. Thus, after all displacement has stopped, the stress can be calculated from the microstructure and the boundary conditions alone.

III. Mapping cellular networks onto granular assemblies

A planar trivalent foam can be characterized by the positions of all its vertices, $`v_i`$, a connectivity matrix that specifies which vertices are connected and the curvatures of the connecting walls. The cell walls tesselate the system into a set of cells, $`c_i`$. It is useful again to discuss separately the mappings of general and Plateau networks.

(a) General networks

Let us consider again the construction shown in figure 1 and note that, although the cell walls may be curved, the edges of the constructed triangles are always straight. The above enumeration of equations versus degrees of freedom implies that one needs $`2N`$ rigid bodies and therefore suggests to center the equivalent grains on the vertices. The contacts between neighbor grains are at the midpoints on the cell walls between them where the respective triangles touch. The force $`\stackrel{}{f}_{vv^{}}`$ that is transmitted at the contact between the grains on vertices $`v`$ and $`v^{}`$ is defined to be identical to the cell wall at this point. Namely, it consists of the tension along the wall, $`T_{vv^{}}`$, and the orthogonal component $`F_{vv^{}}`$ that assists in balancing the torques on vertices $`v`$ and $`v^{}`$ . The grains are considered to be static under the local forces applied on them (i.e., of sufficient rigidity to support the forces without deformation), and of sufficient roughness to prevent slip at any of the contacts under the intergranular forces. Note that the sides of triangle $`v`$ connect the contact points of the virtual grain centered on vertex $`v`$.

(b) Plateau networks

Using again the construction of figure 1, let us now place a virtual grain inside every cell rather than around the vertices. The reason is that this system should provide $`3N`$ balance equations, which can only come from $`N`$ rigid bodies and $`N`$ is exactly the number of cells. The grains are again chosen to be sufficienly rigid to support the forces and the contacts between neighboring grains are at the midpoints of the cell walls. At the contact points the surfaces of the grains are presumed to be normal to the $`3N`$ unknown forces, and tangent to the wall directions. In contrast to the general case, the grains are supposed to be perfectly smooth and so incapable of supporting tangential forces at the contacts. Thus defined, the cell wall forces are mapped onto the normal forces that neighboring smooth grains exert on each other. The mean coordination number is six per grain, each of which is then associated with one unknown - the force normal to the surface.

Before we continue it is worthwhile to comment that there is a marked difference between real cohesionless granular assemblies and those described above. Real grains can only support compressive forces and tensile forces take them out of mechanical equilibrium. In contrast, cell walls can sustain either direction of forces. Correspondingly, the virtual assemblies described here which cellular networks map onto, can also have either type of forces between the virtual grains . Although the original BB formalism has been developed for real systems under compressive forces, it can readily accommodate an overall change of sign into tensile forces.

IV. The missing constitutive equation

This section derives the constitutive equation by adapting the BB theory to the context of cellular solids. The derivation follows three main steps: First, the intercellular forces are described in terms of a new reduced set of forces that satisfies the force balance conditions. Second, the new forces are represented in terms of a continuous force field. The third and final step is to describe the stress as a function of the continuous field and apply the requirement of torque balance to obtain the missing constitutive equation.

(a) General networks

Starting from the construction shown in figure 1, let us introduce several definitions. First, we assign directions to the sides of the triangles around the vertices so that every triangle circulates its vertex anticlockwise. Each side is now a vector, $`\stackrel{}{r}`$, that lies between a particular vertex $`v`$ and a particular cell $`c`$ and can be uniquely indexed $`\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}`$ (see figure 2). We further define the centroids of the cells as the mean positions of the wall midpoints. Finally, let us define vectors $`\stackrel{}{R}_{cv}`$ that extend from the centroid of triangle $`v`$ to the centroid of a neighbor cell $`c`$. The vectors $`\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{R}_{cv}`$ form two self-dual networks, each edge of which intersects an edge of the other.

Step 1: Each cell is assigned a force $`\stackrel{}{f}_c`$ that acts at the centroid of the cell. It is in terms of the cell forces that we wish to parameterize the contact forces. Every contact sits between two cells, e.g. the contact point between vertices $`v`$ and $`v^{}`$ that is party to cells $`l`$ and $`m`$ in figure 3. The force that triangle $`v`$ exerts on triangle $`v^{}`$ is parameterized as

$$\stackrel{}{f}_{vv^{}}=\stackrel{}{f}_l\stackrel{}{f}_m$$
(3)
The sign convention in eq. (3) is such that $`\stackrel{}{f}_c`$ is positive when the directed loop formed by the vectors $`\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}`$ around cell $`c`$ is toward vertex $`v^{}`$ at the $`vv^{}`$-contact and vice versa for vertex $`v`$. This parameterization achieves several aims: (i) By construction, $`\stackrel{}{f}_{v^{}v}=\stackrel{}{f}_m\stackrel{}{f}_l=\stackrel{}{f}_{vv^{}}`$ and therefore Newton’s third law is satisfied at every contact. (ii) The forces on each triangle balance automatically. This can be verified by summing all the forces on triangle $`v^{}`$, $`_v\stackrel{}{f}_{vv^{}}`$. Each of the cell forces $`\stackrel{}{f}_l`$, $`\stackrel{}{f}_m`$, and $`\stackrel{}{f}_n`$ contributes to this sum exactly twice, once with a positive and once with a negative sign and therefore this sum vanishes identically. (iii) The number of degrees of freedom has been reduced from $`6N`$ to $`2N`$, namely, to one force per cell. This coarse-graining corresponds to a reduction in the number of equations since the force balance constraints have been now satisfied. Only one torque balance condition per triangle remains, giving $`2N`$ equation to determine the unknowns.

Step 2: We now wish to continue the discrete cell forces into a continuous field, $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$. Regarding every cell force as located at the centroid of its cell, let us interpolate the three forces around every triangle piecewise linearly. The interpolation consists of a planar triangular surface whose corners are located above the centroids of cells $`l`$, $`m`$, and $`n`$, and whose heights are, respectively, $`\stackrel{}{f}_l`$, $`\stackrel{}{f}_m`$, and $`\stackrel{}{f}_n`$. The value of the continuous force field at the vertex $`v`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_v`$, is the weighted mean of the cell forces around it, as illustrated in figure 4 for the $`x`$-component. In terms of $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$, the cell forces around vertex $`v`$ can be presented as

$$\stackrel{}{f}_c=\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_v+\stackrel{}{R}_{cv}\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}$$
(4)
Step 3: In terms of the vectors $`\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}`$ and forces $`\stackrel{}{f}_c`$, the force moment on triangle $`v`$ can be written as

$$S_v^{ij}=\underset{c}{}r_{cv}^if_c^j$$
(5)
where the sum runs over all the $`c`$-cells surrounding grain $`v`$. Substituting (4) into (5) and observing that $`_c\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}=0`$ gives

$$S_v^{ij}=\underset{c,k}{}r_{cv}^iR_{cv}^k_k\mathrm{\Phi }^j=\left(\widehat{C}_v\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right)^{ij}$$
(6)
where

$$\widehat{C}_v=\underset{c}{}\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}\stackrel{}{R}_{cv}$$
(7)
and the component notation has been suppressed. $`\widehat{C}_v`$ is a fabric tensor that characterizes the local geometry around vertex $`v`$ and plays a crucial role in the following analysis. It is convenient to separate $`\widehat{C}_v`$ into its antisymmetric part $`A_v\widehat{ϵ}=(\widehat{C}_v\widehat{C}_v^T)/2`$ and symmetric part $`\widehat{P}_v=(\widehat{C}_v+\widehat{C}_v^T)/2`$, where $`A_v`$ is a prefactor and $`\begin{array}{c}\widehat{ϵ}\end{array}=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{0\hspace{0.17em}1}}{\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}0}}\right)`$ is the $`\pi /2`$ rotation tensor. Both these parts have direct geometrical interpretations: $`A_v=|\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}\times \stackrel{}{R}_{cv}|/2`$ is the area associated with vertex $`v`$ that is shown shaded in figure 2. The entire system can be conveniently tesselated and covered by these areas, namely, $`A_{sys}=_vA_v`$. This feature is useful for calculations of effective volumes . To identify the geometrical interpretation of the symmetric part, let us rewrite the vectors $`\stackrel{}{r}_{cv}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{R}_{cv}`$ in expression (7) in terms of the vectors $`\stackrel{}{s}_{cv}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{t}_{cv}`$ shown in figure 2. It is straightforward to show that $`\widehat{P}_v`$ can be represented in the form

$$\widehat{P}_v=\frac{1}{2}\underset{c}{}\left(\stackrel{}{s}_{cv}\stackrel{}{s}_{cv}\stackrel{}{t}_{cv}\stackrel{}{t}_{cv}\right)$$
(8)
The departure of $`\widehat{P}_v`$ from zero around vertex $`v`$ is a direct measure of how much the $`v`$ triangle is rotated relative to its immediate environment. For example, if for a particular self-dual pair the vectors $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{R}`$ are perpendicular then the symmetric part is exactly zero. Thus, this tensor characterizes the rotational disorder around vertex $`v`$. Expression (8) makes it straightforward to see that summing $`\widehat{P}_v`$ over any patch of the system the contribution from cells fully enclosed inside the patch cancel out and the only non-vanishing contribution comes from boundary terms. Thus, the average of the symmetric part over the entire system vanishes at least as fast as $`1/\sqrt{N}`$.

Consider now a small patch $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ with boundary $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ that consists of several cells. The mean stress inside this region is

$$\sigma _\mathrm{\Gamma }=\widehat{S}_v_\mathrm{\Gamma }/A_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\widehat{C}_v\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\mathrm{\Gamma }/A_\mathrm{\Gamma }$$
(9)
where $`\mathrm{}_\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ stands for an area average over the patch $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`A_\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is its area. It has been shown in  that

$$\widehat{C}_v\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\widehat{C}_v_\mathrm{\Gamma }\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\mathrm{\Gamma }$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{}_\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ stands for an average over the boundary of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. Combining (9) and (10) we have

$$\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\widehat{C}_v_\mathrm{\Gamma }^1A_\mathrm{\Gamma }\widehat{\sigma }_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\widehat{ϵ}^1\widehat{\sigma }_\mathrm{\Gamma }$$
(11)
where the last equality uses the fact that the average of $`\widehat{C}_v_\mathrm{\Gamma }=A_\mathrm{\Gamma }[\widehat{ϵ}+P_\mathrm{\Gamma }]`$ and that the average $`P`$ vanishes faster than $`1/\sqrt{N}`$. We can now apply the yet unused condition of torque balance to a small region in the system:

$$𝒜\left\{\widehat{C}_v\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right\}=𝒜\left\{\widehat{C}_v\widehat{ϵ}^1\widehat{\sigma }\right\}=0$$
(12)
where $`𝒜\{\mathrm{}\}`$ stands for the antisymmetric part of $`\{\mathrm{}\}`$. Separating $`\widehat{C}_v`$ into its symmetric and antisymmetric parts we obtain two equations: The first,

$$𝒜\left\{\widehat{\sigma }\right\}=0$$

reassuringly yields the expected condition that the mean stress field is symmetric. The second,

$$𝒜\left\{\widehat{P}\widehat{ϵ}^1\widehat{\sigma }\right\}=p^{xx}\sigma _{yy}+p^{yy}\sigma _{xx}2p^{xy}\sigma _{xy}=0$$
(13)
is new and gives the missing constitutive equation. By defining a rotated version of $`\widehat{P}`$, $`\widehat{Q}=\widehat{ϵ}\widehat{P}\widehat{ϵ}^1`$, this equation can be rewritten more compactly

$$\widehat{Q}:\widehat{\sigma }=0$$
(14)
This new constitutive equation couples the stress to local fluctuations in the geometry of the cellular structure and completes the set of equations for the stress field in planar systems. Just like the tensor $`\widehat{P}`$, $`\widehat{Q}`$ characterizes the local rotational disorder and it is this particular aspect of the local geometry that the stress field couples to.

Application to Plateau networks

As formulated above, the theory applies only to general networks whose cell walls meet at arbitrary angles. This is because in general networks there are $`6N`$ degrees of freedom to determine on the cellular level. This necessitates $`2N`$ rigid bodies for obtaining equations for the balance of forces and torques, which are conveniently provided by the triangles around the vertices. In contrast, loading a Plateau network gives rise only to $`3N`$ degrees of freedom on the cellular level: the mean normal force on every cell wall. This then implies that we have to use a mapping to assemblies of smooth grains that are located within the cells and which transmit at each contact only force that is normal to the contact surface. The adaptation to Plateau networks goes through the observation  that it is possible to extend the theory to assemblies of smooth grains. This is done via a further mapping from assmeblies of $`N`$ smooth rigid grains into assemblies of $`4N`$ rough rigid grains as follows: First, the original smooth grains are assigned an infinite friction coefficient, making them rough and thus, in principle, able to support tangential contact forces. Second, an infinitesimally small circular grain is inserted at each contact point, as shown in figure 5. The function of these additional grains is to act as ball bearings and so transmit only the normal forces between the original grains. This preserves the directions and magnitudes of the forces in the original assmebly (see figure 5). The mean coordination number in the original system is six per grain giving $`3N`$ contacts altogether. This means that there are $`3N`$ extra grains and the new assembly consists of $`4N`$ grains all in all. The new system reproduces the original field of intercellular forces in the smooth system in the limit when the radii of the ball bearings tend to zero. Let us make sure that the number of equations still matches the number of unknowns: In the original system there were $`3N`$ contacts, each of which corresponding to one unknown. In the ’decorated’ system each contact point split into two and so we have $`6N`$ contacts. Since each ball bearing has two contacts then the force balance equations on them reduce to the condition that the force at one contact point is the same magnitude as the force at the opposite contact, but opposite in direction. This immediately satisfies torque balance on the ball bearing. There remain therefore the $`3N`$ equations of force and torque balance on the original grains, which exactly take care of the $`3N`$ unknowns.

Now we have an assembly of rough grains for which the theory is valid and to which equation (13) applies. Choosing the radii of all ball bearings to be the same, BB have shown that the equation remains non-trivial when this radius tends to zero. This extends the theory to assemblies of smooth grains and therefore to Plateau networks.

V. Conclusion, discussion and future directions

This paper has addressed the problem of determining the stress field in planar trivalent cellular solids that are in mechanical equilibrium under an external loading. By comparing the number of degrees of freedom to the number of available equations on the cellular level it has been shown that the intercellular forces can be determined from statics alone, namely, in terms of only the external loading and knowledge of the microstructure of the system. It has been argued then that since the continuous stress field is only a coarse-grained description of the discrete field of intercellular forces and since those can be determined independently of material compliance, then the stress field must be independent of any stress-strain relations. This led to the question what replaces the conventional constitutive equation of elasticity theory in the determination of the stress field. To find the missing equation, a mapping has been constructed between planar trivalent cellular networks and granular assemblies of infinitely rigid grains at the so-called marginal rigidity state. General structures, where cell walls meet at arbitrary angles, map onto assemblies of rough grains that are centered on the vertices of the original cellular network, while Plateau structures, where cell walls meet at angles of $`2\pi /3`$ everywhere, map onto assemblies of perfectly smooth grains that are enclosed inside the original cells. The mapping enables the application of the Ball-Blumenfeld theory for stress transmission in assemblies of rigid grains to solid foams. In particular, a constitutive equation has been derived using this approach, which couples the stress to the local rotational disorder of the cellular microstructure. This relation replaces the conventional stress-strain relations and redefines the problem of structure-property relationship in these systems. The analysis presented in this paper has several fundamental and practical implications, some of which are listed below.

Fundamental issues:

(i) Although the discussion here focused on comparison with elasticity, it should be remembered that all conventional theories of stress transmission are based on constitutive relations that link the stress to deformation. Elasticity employs strain while elastoplastic and viscoelastic theories are based on relations to strain rate. By resorting to statics alone, the theory developed here is therefore outside the existing paradigm altogether. It has been shown by BB that the new formalism recovers the Airy stress function as the solution for the symmetric divergence-free stress field. The fact that this solution, which is usually obtained within conventional elasticity theory, can be derived without the use of any stress-strain relation clearly demonstrates that these are redundant for determining the stresses that develop in trivalent solid foams. This also means that there is a connection between the two approaches. To see why such a relation must exist suppose we apply an infinitesimally small strain to a solid foam, of the type discussed here, at the end of which the medium settles into the aforementioned isostatic state. Elasticity theory should be able to calculate the stress field just before this state is reached, while the new theory should be able to do so after all deformation has ceased. The stress field cannot change discontinuously at the end of the infinitesimal straining process and therefore both theories must yield the same answer in the limit when the strain goes to zero. This issue is currently under investigation by this author and preliminary results suggest that indeed there is a relation between the two theories.

(ii) As mentioned already, in the context of granular assemblies, when all the intergranular forces can be determined from statics alone the system is in a marginal rigidity state  , which is interpreted as a new state of solid matter. In granular assemblies, the basic condition for being in this state is that the average coordination number per grain is three for rough grains and six for smooth. The state of matter of any system can be determined by its response to external mechanical loading: Gases need to be held together by an external pressure, liquids flow under stress and solids first deform and then transmit the stress statically. The difference between the equations of stress transmission in marginally rigid assemblies and in conventional solids implies different responses to external loading and hence, by definition, that these are in different states of solid matter. In granular systems this new state lies between the fluid and the traditional solid states. Adding more contacts between grains necessitates additional constitutive information beyond the knowledge of the structure alone, while a reduction in the number of contacts takes the assembly outside mechanical equilibrium and renders it fluid. This feature of existence between two conventional states appears to have no immediate analog in solid foams. It is possible that such an analog can be found in the context of the rheology of foams close to the so-called jamming transition point. It is interesting to note that in granular systems there is a direct relation between the constitutive equation (14) and the dynamics of yield . It would be interesting to try to extend this connection to the flow of foams.

(iii) The basic principle of force determination on the cellular level without resorting to the compliance of the cell walls does not appear to rely heavily on the two-dimensional nature of the system. In fact, it is possible to extend this argument to open-cell foams where each vertex is the meeting point of four edges and six walls, a rather ubiquitous class of structures in nature. This suggests that the stress field in such three-dimensional systems should also be independent of stress-strain relations and therefore that there is a larger class of solid foams that are at a state of marginal rigidity.

Practical issues:

(i) First and foremost, this theory will clearly make it possible to model disordered planar cellular materials to predict stress transmission, extending the current capabilities. In particular, the theory should make it straightforward to predict ’hot spots’ of stress concentration in such systems and make useful connections between the occurrence of hot spots and the microstructure. This knowledge is expected to both improve prediction of failure in advanced materials and set new goals for the design of microstructural characteristics that prevent such vulnerability.

(ii) The formal mapping between granular assemblies and cellular systems can be used to transfer results between the two fields. Granular assemblies can only approach the marginal rigidity state under careful consolidation processes . In contrast, it is quite common for the dynamics of formation of foams to give rise to triple junctions and so drive the structure naturally to this state. Morever, once a foam has solidified its structure is set, while granular assemblies are fragile by the very nature of this state. This difference means that most measurements in granular assemblies are plagued by large fluctuations, while foams are amenable to more conclusive experimental observations. Therefore, this mapping creates a formal gateway between the two systems and makes it possible to carry out experiment on one type of systems in order to learn about the other.

Acknowledgements:

It is a pleasure to acknowledge discussions with Prof R. C. Ball, Prof Sir S. F. Edwards and Dr D. V. Grinev. I am grateful to Prof M. E. Cates who stressed to me the importance of assuming the limit of infinitely thin cell walls to this analysis.