Antiferromagnetism in NiO Observed by Transmission Electron Diffraction

Neutron diffraction has been used to investigate antiferromagnetism since 1949. Here we show that antiferromagnetic reflections can also be seen in transmission electron diffraction patterns from NiO. The diffraction patterns taken here came from regions as small as 10.5 nm and such patterns could be used to form an image of the antiferromagnetic structure with a nanometre resolution.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Typos corrected. To appear in Physical Review Letter

Theory and it ab initio calculation of radiative lifetime of excitons in semiconducting carbon nanotubes

We present theoretical analysis and first-principles calculation of the radiative lifetime of excitons in semiconducting carbon nanotubes. An intrinsic lifetime of the order of 10 ps is computed for the lowest optically active bright excitons. The intrinsic lifetime is however a rapid increasing function of the exciton momentum. Moreover, the electronic structure of the nanotubes dictates the existence of dark excitons nearby in energy to each bright exciton. Both effects strongly influence measured lifetime. Assuming a thermal occupation of bright and dark exciton bands, we find an effective lifetime of the order of 10 ns at room temperature, in good accord with recent experiments.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Canonical, squeezed and fermionic coherent states in a right quaternionic Hilbert space with a left multiplication on it

Using a left multiplication defined on a right quaternionic Hilbert space, we shall demonstrate that various classes of coherent states such as the canonical coherent states, pure squeezed states, fermionic coherent states can be defined with all the desired properties on a right quaternionic Hilbert space. Further, we shall also demonstrate squeezed states can be defined on the same Hilbert space, but the noncommutativity of quaternions prevents us in getting the desired results.Comment: Conference paper. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1704.02946; substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0068

Non-classical photon pair generation in atomic vapours

A scheme for the generation of non-classical pairs of photons in atomic vapours is proposed. The scheme exploits the fact that the cross correlation of the emission of photons from the extreme transitions of a four-level cascade system shows anti-bunching which has not been reported earlier and which is unlike the case of the three level cascade emission which shows bunching. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality which is the ratio of cross-correlation to the auto correlation function in this case is estimated to be $10^3-10^6$ for controllable time delay, and is one to four orders of magnitude larger compared to previous experiments. The choice of Doppler free geometry in addition to the fact that at three photon resonance the excitation/deexcitation processes occur in a very narrow frequency band, ensures cleaner signals.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

Nonlinear Interferometry via Fock State Projection

We use a photon-number resolving detector to monitor the photon number distribution of the output of an interferometer, as a function of phase delay. As inputs we use coherent states with mean photon number up to seven. The postselection of a specific Fock (photon-number) state effectively induces high-order optical non-linearities. Following a scheme by Bentley and Boyd [S.J. Bentley and R.W. Boyd, Optics Express 12, 5735 (2004)] we explore this effect to demonstrate interference patterns a factor of five smaller than the Rayleigh limit.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Permutation asymmetry inducing entanglement between degrees of freedom in multiphoton states

We describe and examine entanglement between different degrees of freedom in multiphoton states based on the permutation properties. From the state description, the entanglement comes from the permutation asymmetry. According to the different permutation properties, the multiphoton states can be divided into several parts. It will help to deal with the multiphoton interference, which can be used as the measurement of the entanglement.Comment: Final versio

Measurement of the ac Stark shift with a guided matter-wave interferometer

We demonstrate the effectiveness of a guided-wave Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer for practical measurements. Taking advantage of the large arm separations obtainable in our interferometer, the energy levels of the 87Rb atoms in one arm of the interferometer are shifted by a calibrated laser beam. The resulting phase shifts are used to determine the ac polarizability at a range of frequencies near and at the atomic resonance. The measured values are in good agreement with theoretical expectations. However, we observe a broadening of the transition near the resonance, an indication of collective light scattering effects. This nonlinearity may prove useful for the production and control of squeezed quantum states.Comment: 5 pages, three figure

Electron and Phonon Confinement and New Surface Phonon Modes in CdSe-CdS Core-Shell Nanocrystals

Optical and vibrational properties of bare and CdS shelled CdSe nanocrystalline particles are investigated. To confirm the formation of such nanocrystals in our samples we estimate their average particle sizes and size distributions using TEM measurements. From the line profile analysis of the images the core-shell structure in the particles has been confirmed. The blue shift in optical absorption spectra, analyzed using theoretical estimates based on the effective bond order model, establishes the electron confinement in the nanoparticles. Unique characteristics of the nanocrystals (which are absent in the corresponding bulk material), such as confinement of optical phonons and the appearance of surface phonons, are then discussed. Making use of the dielectric response function model we are able to match the experimental and theoretical values of the frequencies of the surface phonons. We believe that our studies using optical probes provide further evidence on the existence of core-shell structures in CdSe-CdS type materials.Comment: 19 pages 8 figure

Multiple scattering of photons by atomic hyperfine multiplets

Mesoscopic interference effects in multiple scattering of photons depend crucially on the internal structure of the scatterers. In the present article, we develop the analytical theory of multiple photon scattering by cold atoms with arbitrary internal hyperfine multiplets. For a specific application, we calculate the enhancement factor of elastic coherent backscattering as a function of detuning from an entire hyperfine multiplet of neighboring resonances that cannot be considered isolated. Our theory permits to understand why atoms behave differently from classical Rayleigh point-dipole scatterers, and how the classical description is recovered for larger but still microscopic objects like molecules or clusters.Comment: minor changes, published versio

An atom interferometer enabled by spontaneous decay

We investigate the question whether Michelson type interferometry is possible if the role of the beam splitter is played by a spontaneous process. This question arises from an inspection of trajectories of atoms bouncing inelastically from an evanescent-wave (EW) mirror. Each final velocity can be reached via two possible paths, with a {\it spontaneous} Raman transition occurring either during the ingoing or the outgoing part of the trajectory. At first sight, one might expect that the spontaneous character of the Raman transfer would destroy the coherence and thus the interference. We investigated this problem by numerically solving the Schr\"odinger equation and applying a Monte-Carlo wave-function approach. We find interference fringes in velocity space, even when random photon recoils are taken into account.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, we clarified the semiclassical interpretation of Fig.