The aim of this paper is to develop a mathematical framework for opto-elastography. In opto-elastography, a mechanical perturbation of the medium produces a decorrelation of optical speckle patterns due to the displacements of optical scatterers. To model this, we consider two optically random media, with the second medium obtained by shifting the first medium in some local region. We derive the radiative transfer equation for the cross-correlation of the wave fields in the media. Then we derive its diffusion approximation. In both the radiative transfer and the diffusion regimes, we relate the correlation of speckle patterns to the solutions of the radiative transfer and the diffusion equations. We present numerical simulations based on our model which are in agreement with recent experimental measurements.

Wave dynamics in topological materials has been widely studied recently. A striking feature is the existence of robust and chiral wave propagations that have potential applications in many fields. A common way to realize such wave patterns is to utilize Dirac points which carry topological indices and is supported by the symmetries of the media. In this work, we investigate these phenomena in photonic media. Starting with Maxwell's equations with a honeycomb material weight as well as the nonlinear Kerr effect, we first prove the existence of Dirac points in the dispersion surfaces of transverse electric and magnetic Maxwell operators under very general assumptions of the material weight. Our assumptions on the material weight are almost the minimal requirements to ensure the existence of Dirac points in a general hexagonal photonic crystal. We then derive the associated wave packet dynamics in the scenario where the honeycomb structure is weakly modulated. It turns out the reduced envelope equation is generally a two-dimensional nonlinear Dirac equation with a spatially varying mass. By studying the reduced envelope equation with a domain-wall-like mass term, we realize the subtle wave motions which are chiral and immune to local defects. The underlying mechanism is the existence of topologically protected linear line modes, also referred to as edge states. However, we show that these robust linear modes do not survive with nonlinearity. We demonstrate the existence of nonlinear line modes, which can propagate in the nonlinear media based on high-accuracy numerical computations. Moreover, we also report a new type of nonlinear modes which are localized in both directions.

We compute the string production rate at the end of inflation, using the string spectrum obtained in [M. Li, W. Song, Y. Song, Quantizing strings in de Sitter space, JHEP 0704 (2007) 042, hep-th/0701258] in a near-de Sitter space. Our result shows that highly excited strings are hardly produced, thus the simple slow-roll inflation alone does not offer a cosmic string production mechanism.

Gravitational waves are predicted by the general theory of relativity. It has been shown that gravitational waves have a nonlinear memory, displacing test masses permanently. This is called the Christodoulou memory. We proved that the electromagnetic field contributes at highest order to the nonlinear memory effect of gravitational waves, enlarging the permanent displacement of test masses. In experiments like LISA or LIGO which measure distances of test masses, the Christodoulou memory will manifest itself as a permanent displacement of these objects. It has been suggested to detect the Christodoulou memory effect using radio telescopes investigating small changes in pulsar's pulse arrival times. The latter experiments are based on present-day technology and measure changes in frequency. In the present paper, we study the electromagnetic Christodoulou memory effect and compute it for binary neutron

We prove the following stronger version of the positivity of quasi-local energy (mass) stated by Liu and Yau: the quasi-local energy of each connected component of the boundary of a compact spacelike hypersurface which satisfies the local energy condition is strictly positive unless the spacetime is flat along the spacelike hypersurface and the boundary of the spacelike hypersurface is connected.