HEP/Astro Journal Club -- Friday, 26 September 2003

Symmetries of Fluid Dynamics and the Self-Duality of the Rankine-Hugoniot Shock

V. Sreedhar (IIT, Kanpur)

Abstract

Striking similarities between the density profiles of a supernova explosion and an imploding target in an inertial confinement plasma have recently been observed.Since the length and time scales involved in the two systems are drastically different, a simple time--reversal fails to furnish an explanation. A theoretical explanation is given by showing that the maximal kinematical invariance group of fluid dynamics is larger than the Galilei group.

12:30, Smith Lab 4079