Probing quantum and thermal noise in an interacting many-body system

The probabilistic character of the measurement process is one of the most puzzling and fascinating aspects of quantum mechanics. In many-body systems quantum mechanical noise reveals non-local correlations of the underlying many-body states. Here, we provide a complete experimental analysis of the shot-to-shot variations of interference fringe contrast for pairs of independently created one-dimensional Bose condensates. Analyzing different system sizes we observe the crossover from thermal to quantum noise, reflected in a characteristic change in the distribution functions from Poissonian to Gumbel-type, in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions based on the Luttinger liquid formalism. We present the first experimental observation of quasi long-range order in one-dimensional atomic condensates, which is a hallmark of quantum fluctuations in one-dimensional systems. Furthermore, our experiments constitute the first analysis of the full distribution of quantum noise in an interacting many-body system

Instrumental Food Analysis

The instrumental analysis of foods is an important step in food processing and manufacturing companies because of the presence and interactions of various compounds in foods during storage and processing. While traditional methods are still used, most analysis involves the use of different instruments. This chapter is structured to provide a description of the information each technique can provide, a simple explanation of how it works and examples of its application, and facilitates comparison of techniques. The focus of this chapter is on spectroscopic, chromatographic and electrophoretic methods, including specific examples of instruments such as capillary electrophoresis, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), atomic absorption, emission and inductively coupled plasma, fluorescence spectroscopies, gel electrophoresis, etc., among many others. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015