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This study explores the representation of cities in Little Russia as depicted in I. M. Dolgorukov’s travelogue “Famous Drums Beyond the Mountains, or My Journey Somewhere in 1810” through a semiotic and imagological lens. The relevance of this research is underscored by the growing interest in Ukrainian identity within contemporary literary studies, particularly concerning its spatial dimensions, which remain underexplored. Consequently, this study offers a novel analysis of the urban imagery of Little Russia, focusing on descriptions of Kharkiv, Poltava, and Kyiv. Notable trends of estrangement and travesty emerge in the portrayal of these cities, alongside recurring motifs of alienation within the Little Russian landscape and a nostalgic yearning for belonging. A significant aspect of the narrative is the history of the Dolgorukov family, intricately linked to the topos of Little Russia, particularly Kyiv, where the author’s grandmother and uncle passed away. The city’s depiction is marked by themes of allure, orderliness, grandeur, wealth, antiquity, glory, and sacredness, some of which are subject to travesty. The spaces of Kharkiv and Poltava are presented as ambivalent provincial toposes characterized by both ordered and entropic qualities. The orderliness of Kharkiv is associated with descriptions of educational loci, while the positive motifs of Poltava relate to the realm of historical memory.

This study explores the representation of Novorossiya’s space in Pavel Sumarokov’s travelogue “Journey Across Crimea and Bessarabia in 1799” within the framework of semiotic-imagological analysis. The research’s relevance stems from the growing interest of domestic humanities in Novorossiysk issues, which exhibit certain lacunae. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of spatial imagery elements of Novorossiya, primarily limited to descriptions of the surroundings of Nikolaev, Kherson, and Odessa, areas relatively understudied in literary studies. Loci types are identified based on the opposition of “naturalness — anthropogenicity.” The natural space is predominantly portrayed as untamed, dangerous, and inhospitable steppe, contrasted with spatial images of three major Novorossiysk cities mentioned above. Common motifs of sudden (miraculous) appearance, rapid growth, and high degree of orderliness are attributed to the latter. The motif of frontierness is identified as a fundamental element characteristic of the entire Novorossiya space. It is also actualized in the analysis of Sumarokov’s representation of Novorossiya’s historical space, whose core meaning is formed by plots and personae associated with the era of Catherine II and, specifically, the Russo-Turkish wars.

In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze the semantic and pragmatic potential of emoji signs that explicate the “covid” meaning. The Internet thesaurus emoji with a common semantic component “medicine / coronavirus pandemic ”, circulating in the space of the Russian-speaking and English-speaking segments of the Internet serve as the material to be investigated. The authors of the article pose and analyze a number of significant issues to understand the role of emoji within the framework of pandemic discourse: the terminological variability of the terms smile, emoticon and emoji in the context of the described problems is clarified and specified; the structural and content potential of the emoji sign is characterized; the possibilities of the sign in the process of its use by of mass Internet culture carriers are determined; groups of emoji signs in the English-speaking and Russian-speaking segments of the Internet are distinguished and characterized. The authors use a field approach with the allocation of the core and periphery in the context of the description of the thematic thesaurus of emoji signs. In addition, attention is paid to the structural and semantic features of the emoji sign, which, ultimately, cause the appearance of a simple or complex pictogram. It is concluded that emoji signs are included in many social spheres of the Internet space within the general information context of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The paper deals with the image ofGermanyin I. P. Miatlev’s poem "Sensacii i zamechaniya gospozhi Kurdyukovoy za graniceyu, dans l’etranger" ("Madam Kurdukova’s Sensations and Remarks Abroad, dans l’etranger") that is an example of macaronic poetry. The poem marks an important milestone in the transformation of the image ofGermanyin the Russian literature of the 1840s; however, it has not received proper scientific attention. The current research examines the historic and the mundane aspects of the image in question. The historic aspect combines different loci connected with the German history of the Middle Ages and the Modern Times: urban images and urban unions, like theHanseatic League, or certain urban spaces, e. g. churches, etc. Such loci are often connected with historical characters like Charlemagne or Napoleon. The mundane aspect is represented with things, money and goods as a typical attribute of the German (Western) civilization, which leads to the metonymic unity of cities and goods produces there, the way it happens toHamburg. Besides, the mundane element is actualized via the philistine personages, which make the core of German characters in the poem.

The article deals with the features of the image of the artistic space of Berlin in travel notes of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “Abroad.” The relevance of the study is determined by the need for imagological analysis of topos texts, which reflect the images of “foreign,” in particular, the German element in the framework of Russian culture. The German-marked locus of Berlin in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work is realized through a number of motives related to the changed image of the united Germany as a new European empire in the perception of the Russians of the late 19th century, which, in turn, gives the author an opportunity to express his social and critical views on the prospects and trends of Europe. The author considers the motives of the German hidden threat as an aggressive expansion into the outer space, the militarization of Germany with distinguishing the image of a Prussian officer-“a hero” as the central one, spiritual and political unfreedom, order, boredom and at the same time the theatrical appearance of the German existence as the main motives related to the locus of Berlin identified in travel notes by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. It is shown that the basis of the description of the city is the observation of the street life of the German capital. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that in the work by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Berlin is portrayed as non-chronical locus with the characteristics of mortality, which functions similarly to the mechanism on the principle of continuous cyclical movement.

The paper deals with specific features of representing German cities and towns in Russian travelogues at the turn of the XIX century written by V. N. Zinov'ev, D. I. Fonvizin, N. M. Karamzin and F. P. Lubyanovskiy. These texts reflect pursuance of Russian self-identity on the basis of comparison with Western Europe, in particular, with Germany. The Russian authors focus on culturespecific elements of the represented locuses. Cleanness, comfort, space limitation and closeness should also be mentioned as characteristics of the German urban chronotopos. The urban locus is represented from two points of view: as a space of cultural artifacts and as an anthropic space of citizens. The second aspect is important for N. M. Karamzin and F. P. Lubyanovskiy’s sentimentalistic texts but can hardly be found in works by V. N. Zinov'ev and D. I. Fonvizin. The urban descriptions in sentimentalists’ travelogues are more voluminous, filled with figures of speech, different historic and contemporaneous realia.

The paper deals with a German-marked mountain text in Sasha Chorny’s poetry. The confines of this chronotope are marked with a Philistine “dale” (spatial bottom) and a mountain “peak” passing into the sky (spatial top). Mountains are here a mediative locus with characteristics of idyll or pseudo-idyll. Besides, the paper demonstrates a connection between S. Chorny’s mountain text and the tradition of orography in Russian literature.

The paper presents word pictures of statues as special spatial objects within a “German” chronotope described in Sasha Chorny’s poetry. Besides, they act as a satirical reimagining of genii loci and embody distinctive features of this locus. Inanimate and animate natures in Sasha Chorny’s poetry interact with each other. As a consequence, the motive of a dangerous coming-to-life statue becomes actual within the German locus. Human characters get statuesque features for their part. The statue as idol could be also desacralized in the philistine locus. In this case the mysterial story of epiphany is inverted turning to burlesque.

The full melting of a two-dimensional plasma crystal was induced in a principally stable monolayer by localized laser stimulation. Two distinct behaviors of the crystal after laser stimulation were observed depending on the amount of injected energy: (i) below a well-defined threshold, the laser melted area recrystallized; (ii) above the threshold, it expanded outwards in a similar fashion to mode-coupling instability-induced melting, rapidly destroying the crystalline order of the whole complex plasma monolayer. The reported experimental observations are due to the fluid mode-coupling instability, which can pump energy into the particle monolayer at a rate surpassing the heat transport and damping rates in the energetic localized melted spot, resulting in its further growth. This behavior exhibits remarkable similarities with impulsive spot heating in ordinary reactive matter.

We study a complex plasma under microgravity conditions that is first stabilized with an oscillating electric field. Once the stabilization is stopped, the so-called heartbeat instability develops. We study how the kinetic energy spectrum changes during and after the onset of the instability and compare with the double cascade predicted by Kraichnan and Leith for two-dimensional turbulence. The onset of the instability manifests clearly in the ratio of the reduced rates of cascade of energy and enstrophy and in the power-law exponents of the energy spectra.

The kinematics of dust particles during the early stage of mode-coupling induced melting of a two-dimensional plasma crystal is explored. It is found that the formation of the hybrid mode causes the particle vibrations to partially synchronize at the hybrid frequency. Phase- and frequency-locked hybrid particle motion in both vertical and horizontal directions (hybrid mode) is observed. The system self-organizes in a rhythmic pattern of alternating in-phase and antiphase oscillating chains of particles. The spatial orientation of the synchronization pattern correlates well with the directions of the maximal increment of the shear-free hybrid mode.

The internal structures of most periodic crystalline solids contain defects. This affects various important mechanical and thermal properties of crystals. Since it is very difficult and expensive to track the motion of individual atoms in real solids, macroscopic model systems, such as complex plasmas, are often used. Complex plasmas consist of micrometer-sized grains immersed into an ion-electron plasma. They exist in solidlike, liquidlike, and gaseouslike states and exhibit a range of nonlinear and dynamic effects, most of which have direct analogies in solids and liquids. Slabs of a monolayer hexagonal complex plasma were subjected to a cycle of uniaxial compression and decompression of large amplitudes to achieve plastic deformations, both in experiments and simulations. During the cycle, the internal structure of the lattice exhibited significant rearrangements. Dislocations (point defects) were generated and displaced in the stressed lattice. They tended to glide parallel to their Burgers vectors under load. It was found that the deformation cycle was macroscopically reversible but irreversible at the particle scale.

The structure of Mach cones in a crystalline complex plasma has been studied experimentally using an intensity sensitive imaging, which resolved particle motion in three dimensions. This revealed a previously unknown out-of-plane cone structure, which appeared due to excitation of the vertical wave mode. The complex plasma consisted of micron sized particles forming a monolayer in a plasma sheath of a gas discharge. Fast particles, spontaneously moving under the monolayer, created Mach cones with multiple structures. The in-plane cone structure was due to compressional and shear lattice waves.

Using experiments and combining theory and computer simulations, we show that binary complex plasmas are particularly good model systems to study the kinetics of fluid-fluid demixing at the "atomistic" (individual particle) level. The essential parameters of interparticle interactions in complex plasmas, such as the interaction range(s) and degree of nonadditivity, can be varied significantly, which allows systematic investigations of different demixing regimes. The critical role of competition between long-range and short-range interactions at the initial stage of the spinodal decomposition is discussed.

Investigations of the dynamical evolution of a complex plasma, in which a vertical temperature gradient compensates gravity, were carried out. At low power the formation of microparticle bubbles, blobs, and spraying cusps was observed. This activity can be turned on and off by changing control parameters, such as the rf power and the gas pressure. Several observational effects indicate the presence of surface tension, even at small "nanoscales" of a few 100's of particles. By tracing the individual microparticle motion the detailed (atomistic) dynamics can be studied as well as the pressure dependence of the forces. A possible mechanism that could drive the observed phenomena is analogous to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

The observation of a dark soliton in a three-dimensional complex plasma containing monodisperse microparticles is presented. We perform our experiments using neon gas in the bulk plasma of an rf discharge. A gas temperature gradient of 500K/m is applied to balance gravity and to levitate the particles in the bulk plasma. The wave is excited by a short voltage pulse on the electrodes of the radio frequency discharge chamber. It is found that the wave propagates with constant speed. The propagation time of the dark soliton is approximately 20 times longer than the damping time.

Steady-state clouds of microparticles were observed, levitating in a low-frequency glow discharge generated in an elongated vertical glass tube. A heated ring was attached to the tube wall outside, so that the particles, exhibiting a global convective motion, were confined vertically in the region above the location of the heater. It is shown that the particle vortices were induced by the convection of neutral gas, and the mechanism responsible for the gas convection was the thermal creep along the inhomogeneously heated tube walls. The phenomenon of thermal creep, which commonly occurs in rarefied gases under the presence of thermal gradients, should generally play a substantial role in experiments with complex plasmas.

The heat transport in a two-dimensional complex (dusty) plasma undergoing a phase transition was studied experimentally. A single layer of highly charged polymer microspheres was suspended in a plasma sheath. A part of this lattice was heated by two counterpropagating focused laser beams that moved rapidly around in the lattice and provided short intense random kicks to the particles. Above a threshold, the lattice locally melted. The spatial profiles of the particle kinetic temperature were analyzed to find a thermal conductivity, which did not depend on temperature.

Experimental results on self-excited density waves in a complex plasma are presented. An argon plasma is produced in a capacitively coupled rf discharge at a low power and gas pressure. A cloud of microparticles is subjected to effective gravity in the range of 1-4 g by thermophoresis. The cloud is stretched horizontally (width/height approximately 45 mm/8 mm). The critical pressure for the onset of the waves increases with the temperature gradient. The waves are propagating in the direction of the ion drift. The wave frequency, phase velocity, and wavelength are measured, and particle migrations affected by the waves are analyzed at a time scale of 1 ms/frame and a subpixel space resolution.

Experimental results on the dislocation dynamics in a two-dimensional plasma crystal are presented. Edge dislocations were created in pairs in lattice locations where the internal shear stress exceeded a threshold and then moved apart in the glide plane at a speed higher than the sound speed of shear waves, C(T). The experimental system, a plasma crystal, allowed observation of this process at an atomistic (kinetic) level. The early stage of this process is identified as a stacking fault. At a later stage, supersonically moving dislocations generated shear-wave Mach cones.

A monolayer plasma crystal consisting of micron-sized particles levitated in the sheath of a rf discharge was melted by applying a short electric pulse to two parallel wires located at the height of the particles. Structural properties and the particle temperature were examined during the stage of recrystallization. A liquidlike phase was followed by a transient state characterized by energy release and the restoring of long range translational order while the defect fraction was low. No long range orientational order was found, though highly ordered domains formed locally. Numerical simulations revealed the same regimes of recrystallization as those observed in the experiment.

Self-diffusion has been experimentally studied in a two-dimensional underdamped liquid complex (dusty) plasma. It was found that the self-diffusion coefficient D increases linearly with the temperature T: D/omega(E)a2 = (0.019 +/- 0.007)(T/T(m) - 1), where T(m), omega(E), and a are the melting temperature, the Einstein frequency, and the mean particle separation, respectively. No superdiffusion was observed, whereas a subdiffusion occurred at temperatures close to melting.

Heating and heat transfer were studied in a two-dimensional crystalline complex plasma at the kinetic level. The lattice was formed of microspheres levitated in a plasma sheath. One half of the crystal was heated anisotropically to obtain higher kinetic temperatures in one direction and heat conduction was observed in real time. It was found that the longitudinal phonons conduct heat better than the transverse. The thermometric conductivity coefficient was measured to be 53 mm2/s for longitudinal heating and 30 mm2/s for transverse heating. Heat decay lengths and energy exchange times between the temperature components were determined.

Spectra of longitudinal and transverse waves were obtained experimentally in liquid and solid two-dimensional complex (dusty) plasmas at different kinetic temperatures. As the temperature increased and the phase state of the plasma changed from solid to liquid, the phonon spectra of both longitudinal and transverse modes broadened (especially at high wave numbers), indicating increased damping. The transverse mode disappeared and a thermal (compressional) mode appeared.

Propagation of vertical wave packets was observed experimentally in a crystallized hexagonal monolayer complex plasma. It was found that the phase velocity exceeded the group velocity by a factor 65 and was directed into the opposite direction as expected for an inverse optical-like dispersion relation. The wave packets propagated keeping their width constant. The explanation of this behavior is based on three-dimensional equations of motion and uses a long-wavelength weak dispersion weak inhomogeneity approximation. While the wave dispersion causes the wave packet to spread, lattice inhomogeneity and neutral gas drag counteract spreading. A plasma diagnostic method was developed that is based on the ratio between vertical and dust-lattice wave speeds. This ratio is very sensitive to the lattice parameter kappa (ratio of the particle separation to the screening length) in a very useful range of kappa < or = 2 . It was found that only a two-dimensional lattice model can provide a quantitative description of the vertical waves, while a linear chain model gives only a qualitative agreement.

Wave spectra corresponding to the random particle motion in a monolayer Yukawa crystal were studied for various directions of propagation. It was found that there are two wave modes with a polarization alternating between the longitudinal and transverse. In the long-wavelength regime, the modes became purely longitudinal and transverse as was known before. In the short-wavelength regime the spectra strongly depended on the wavelength and the direction of propagation. The results obtained from the experiment, theory, and simulation agreed well with each other.

Nonlinear interactions of longitudinal waves were observed in a two-dimensional plasma crystal, i.e., a lattice composed of highly charged microspheres immersed in a plasma. The waves were launched by radiation pressure of a laser, and wave spectra in omega-k space were analyzed at various amplitudes of waves. At a sufficiently large amplitude of wave, the second and third wave harmonics satisfying a dispersion relation were observed. As the second harmonic propagates from the excitation region, it was amplified for a small distance, and then damped. The experimental results were compared to a nonlinear wave theory and to a molecular dynamic simulation.

Solitary waves are experimentally studied in a monolayer hexagonal dust lattice which is formed from monodisperse plastic microspheres and levitated in the sheath of an rf discharge. It is found that the product of the soliton amplitude and the square of the soliton width is constant as the soliton propagates. The analytical theory describing the experiment is based on the equations of motion written for a linear chain. It takes into account damping, dispersion, and nonlinearity. The numerical simulation of a linear chain produces double solitons like those observed in the experiment.