Imagines hominum o simulacra deororum? Le impressioni 'naturalistiche' sui pesi da telaio della bassa Pianura Padana

Among the image-printed loom weights from northern Italy we can identify a very small category featuring images drawn with a 'naturalistic' intention, and not as a result of 'combining' of recurrent geometrical symbols (which we usually call 'fishbone/ear', 'X', 'wheel/flower', even if their real meaning is unknown). The ânaturalisticâ images here taken into account seem to recall something involved with popular devotion. The first one (pc.1), appears to represent a sort of 'temple', as another one (pc.2), very similar to the former, found on a loom weight from the same area, does; a temple whose tympanum in both cases contains an unclear symbol (respectively, a circular draw and a 'X'), and whose walls enclose a big vanished figure, in the first case, or a bewildering rhombus-shaped drawing, in the second case; the contact point of both printed reliefs is the small figure at the bottom of the square, which has to be interpreted as a phallic figure as it seems. The second image we examined (pc.3) clearly represents a man, with no other characterizations than his strange pose, which means that heâs decidedly directing himself towards his right side. The hypothesis by D. Rigato of identifying him as Hercules, seems to be sustained on the one hand by the nudity of the body and because of the popularity of the Hercules cult in the area where the loom weight was found; on the other hand, the image doesnât show any other element, or any typical action which the Hero was known by in the antiquity. The characterization of the examined 'naturalistic' printed-images lets us think about an extremely popular version of sacred or devotional, also 'apotropaic', subjects. The comparison with the large number of other printed-images on Cisalpine loom weights, whose abstract-geometrical compound drawings appear often to be followed by letters, or entire words (personal names and surnames), seems to warn about what could have been the real function of printed images: therefore, also images of sacred origin could have been used to mark - as a âsignatureâ of a single man, but also of a group of people, who recognizes himself in that subject - a certain category of production, was it clay or textile

Plasma harmonics Lissajous measurements

June 17-21 200

Analysis of the entanglement between two individual atoms using global Raman rotations

Making use of the Rydberg blockade, we generate entanglement between two atoms individually trapped in two optical tweezers. In this paper we detail the analysis of the data and show that we can determine the amount of entanglement between the atoms in the presence of atom losses during the entangling sequence. Our model takes into account states outside the qubit basis and allows us to perform a partial reconstruction of the density matrix describing the two atom state. With this method we extract the amount of entanglement between pairs of atoms still trapped after the entangling sequence and measure the fidelity with respect to the expected Bell state. We find a fidelity $F_{\rm pairs} =0.74(7)$ for the 62% of atom pairs remaining in the traps at the end of the entangling sequence

Nano Positioning of Single Atoms in a Micro Cavity

The coupling of individual atoms to a high-finesse optical cavity is precisely controlled and adjusted using a standing-wave dipole-force trap, a challenge for strong atom-cavity coupling. Ultracold Rubidium atoms are first loaded into potential minima of the dipole trap in the center of the cavity. Then we use the trap as a conveyor belt that we set into motion perpendicular to the cavity axis. This allows us to repetitively move atoms out of and back into the cavity mode with a repositioning precision of 135 nm. This makes possible to either selectively address one atom of a string of atoms by the cavity, or to simultaneously couple two precisely separated atoms to a higher mode of the cavity.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure

Sublattice addressing and spin-dependent motion of atoms in a double-well lattice

We load atoms into every site of an optical lattice and selectively spin flip atoms in a sublattice consisting of every other site. These selected atoms are separated from their unselected neighbors by less than an optical wavelength. We also show spin-dependent transport, where atomic wave packets are coherently separated into adjacent sites according to their internal state. These tools should be useful for quantum information processing and quantum simulation of lattice models with neutral atoms

Cold atom confinement in an all-optical dark ring trap

We demonstrate confinement of $^{85}$Rb atoms in a dark, toroidal optical trap. We use a spatial light modulator to convert a single blue-detuned Gaussian laser beam to a superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian modes that forms a ring-shaped intensity null bounded harmonically in all directions. We measure a 1/e spin-relaxation lifetime of ~1.5 seconds for a trap detuning of 4.0 nm. For smaller detunings, a time-dependent relaxation rate is observed. We use these relaxation rate measurements and imaging diagnostics to optimize trap alignment in a programmable manner with the modulator. The results are compared with numerical simulations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure