Three-dimensional light-matter interface for collective spin squeezing in atomic ensembles

We study the three-dimensional nature of the quantum interface between an ensemble of cold, trapped atomic spins and a paraxial laser beam, coupled through a dispersive interaction. To achieve strong entanglement between the collective atomic spin and the photons, one must match the spatial mode of the collective radiation of the ensemble with the mode of the laser beam while minimizing the effects of decoherence due to optical pumping. For ensembles coupling to a probe field that varies over the extent of the cloud, the set of atoms that indistinguishably radiates into a desired mode of the field defines an inhomogeneous spin wave. Strong coupling of a spin wave to the probe mode is not characterized by a single parameter, the optical density, but by a collection of different effective atom numbers that characterize the coherence and decoherence of the system. To model the dynamics of the system, we develop a full stochastic master equation, including coherent collective scattering into paraxial modes, decoherence by local inhomogeneous diffuse scattering, and backaction due to continuous measurement of the light entangled with the spin waves. This formalism is used to study the squeezing of a spin wave via continuous quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement. We find that the greatest squeezing occurs in parameter regimes where spatial inhomogeneities are significant, far from the limit in which the interface is well approximated by a one-dimensional, homogeneous model.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure

Cooperative spontaneous emission from indistinguishable atoms in arbitrary motional quantum states

We investigate superradiance and subradiance of indistinguishable atoms with quantized motional states, starting with an initial total state that factorizes over the internal and external degrees of freedom of the atoms. Due to the permutational symmetry of the motional state, the cooperative spontaneous emission, governed by a recently derived master equation [F. Damanet et al., Phys. Rev. A 93, 022124 (2016)], depends only on two decay rates $\gamma$ and $\gamma_0$ and a single parameter $\Delta_{\mathrm{dd}}$ describing the dipole-dipole shifts. We solve the dynamics exactly for $N=2$ atoms, numerically for up to 30 atoms, and obtain the large-$N$-limit by amean-field approach. We find that there is a critical difference $\gamma_0-\gamma$ that depends on $N$ beyond which superradiance is lost. We show that exact non-trivial dark states (i.e. states other than the ground state with vanishing spontaneous emission) only exist for $\gamma=\gamma_0$, and that those states (dark when $\gamma=\gamma_0$) are subradiant when $\gamma<\gamma_0$.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

High-resolution imaging of kidney vascular corrosion casts with nano-CT

A vascular corrosion cast of an entire mouse kidney was scanned with a modular multiresolution X-ray nanotomography system. Using an isotropic voxel pitch of 0.5 mu m, capillary systems such as the vasa recta, peritubular capillaries and glomeruli were clearly resolved. This represents a considerable improvement over corrosion casts scanned with microcomputed tomography systems. The resolving power of this system was clearly demonstrated by the unique observation of a dense, subcapsular mat of capillaries enveloping the entire outer surface of the cortical region. Resolution of glomerular capillaries was comparable to similar models derived from laser scanning confocal microscopy. The high-resolution, large field of view and the three-dimensional nature of the resulting data opens new possibilities for the use of corrosion casting in research

Stored energies in electric and magnetic current densities for small antennas

Electric and magnetic currents are essential to describe electromagnetic stored energy, as well as the associated quantities of antenna Q and the partial directivity to antenna Q-ratio, D/Q, for general structures. The upper bound of previous D/Q-results for antennas modeled by electric currents is accurate enough to be predictive, this motivates us here to extend the analysis to include magnetic currents. In the present paper we investigate antenna Q bounds and D/Q-bounds for the combination of electric- and magnetic-currents, in the limit of electrically small antennas. This investigation is both analytical and numerical, and we illustrate how the bounds depend on the shape of the antenna. We show that the antenna Q can be associated with the largest eigenvalue of certain combinations of the electric and magnetic polarizability tensors. The results are a fully compatible extension of the electric only currents, which come as a special case. The here proposed method for antenna Q provides the minimum Q-value, and it also yields families of minimizers for optimal electric and magnetic currents that can lend insight into the antenna design.Comment: 27 pages 7 figure

Black Hole Evaporation along Macroscopic Strings

We develop the quantization of a macroscopic string which extends radially from a Schwarzschild black hole. The Hawking process excites a thermal bath of string modes that causes the black hole to lose mass. The resulting typical string configuration is a random walk in the angular coordinates. We show that the energy flux in string excitations is approximately that of spacetime field modes.Comment: 26pp, EFI 93-73. (Original claim that string Hawking flux exceeds spacetime flux is WRONG. It is the same; revised version provides correct argument and additional comments.

Wilson loops in heavy ion collisions and their calculation in AdS/CFT

Expectation values of Wilson loops define the nonperturbative properties of the hot medium produced in heavy ion collisions that arise in the analysis of both radiative parton energy loss and quarkonium suppression. We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to calculate the expectation values of such Wilson loops in the strongly coupled plasma of N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory, allowing for the possibility that the plasma may be moving with some collective flow velocity as is the case in heavy ion collisions. We obtain the N=4 SYM values of the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$, which describes the energy loss of a hard parton in QCD, and of the velocity-dependence of the quark-antiquark screening length for a moving dipole as a function of the angle between its velocity and its orientation. We show that if the quark-gluon plasma is flowing with velocity v_f at an angle theta with respect to the trajectory of a hard parton, the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$ is modified by a factor gamma_f(1-v_f cos theta), and show that this result applies in QCD as in N=4 SYM. We discuss the relevance of the lessons we are learning from all these calculations to heavy ion collisions at RHIC and at the LHC. Furthermore, we discuss the relation between our results and those obtained in other theories with gravity duals, showing in particular that the ratio between $\hat q$ in any two conformal theories with gravity duals is the square root of the ratio of their central charges. This leads us to conjecture that in nonconformal theories $\hat q$ defines a quantity that always decreases along renormalization group trajectories and allows us to use our calculation of $\hat q$ in N=4 SYM to make a conjecture for its value in QCD.Comment: 61 pages, 8 figures. Note added discussing relation between our work and that in several papers that have appeared recently. References adde