Experimental demonstration of painting arbitrary and dynamic potentials for Bose-Einstein condensates

There is a pressing need for robust and straightforward methods to create potentials for trapping Bose-Einstein condensates which are simultaneously dynamic, fully arbitrary, and sufficiently stable to not heat the ultracold gas. We show here how to accomplish these goals, using a rapidly-moving laser beam that "paints" a time-averaged optical dipole potential in which we create BECs in a variety of geometries, including toroids, ring lattices, and square lattices. Matter wave interference patterns confirm that the trapped gas is a condensate. As a simple illustration of dynamics, we show that the technique can transform a toroidal condensate into a ring lattice and back into a toroid. The technique is general and should work with any sufficiently polarizable low-energy particles.Comment: Minor text changes and three references added. This is the final version published in New Journal of Physic

Interface alloying and magnetic properties of Fe/Rh multilayers

Rh(20 Å)/57Fe(tFe) multilayers with Fe thicknesses tFe of 2, 5, 10, and 15 Å prepared by alternate evaporation in UHV have been investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD), Mössbauer spectroscopy, and SQUID magnetometry. First- and second-order superstructure Bragg peaks (but no higher-order peaks) in small-angle XRD patterns suggest some compositional modulation. Mössbauer spectra taken at 4.2 K are characterized by a distribution P(Bhf) of hyperfine fields Bhf. Peaks observed in the P(Bhf) curves near 17 and 35 T are assigned to an fcc-RhFe interface alloy (~7–24 at. % Fe) with spin-glasslike properties and to a disordered ferromagnetic bcc-FeRh alloy (~96 at. % Fe), respectively. The magnetic transition temperature of the fcc alloy was found to be 23 and 45 K for tFe=2 and 5 Å, respectively, and Bhf follows a T3/2 law. For tFe=2 Å, spin-glasslike behavior was observed by magnetometry. Journal of Applied Physics is copyrighted by The American Institute of Physics

Generating ring currents, solitons, and svortices by stirring a Bose-Einstein condensate in a toroidal trap

We propose a simple stirring experiment to generate quantized ring currents and solitary excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates in a toroidal trap geometry. Simulations of the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation show that pure ring current states can be generated efficiently by adiabatic manipulation of the condensate, which can be realized on experimental time scales. This is illustrated by simulated generation of a ring current with winding number two. While solitons can be generated in quasi-1D tori, we show the even more robust generation of hybrid, solitonic vortices (svortices) in a regime of wider confinement. Svortices are vortices confined to essentially one-dimensional dynamics, which obey a similar phase-offset--velocity relationship as solitons. Marking the transition between solitons and vortices, svortices are a distinct class of symmetry-breaking stationary and uniformly rotating excited solutions of the 2D and 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation in a toroidal trapping potential. Svortices should be observable in dilute-gas experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in J. Phys. B (Letters

The Pyrococcus furiosus ironome is dominated by [Fe4_{4}S4_{4}]2+^{2+} clusters or thioferrate-like iron depending on the availability of elemental sulfur

Pyrococcus furiosus is a hyperthermophilic anaerobic archaeon whose metabolism depends on whether elemental sulfur is (+S$^{0}$) or is not (-S$^{0}$) included in growth medium. Under +S$^{0}$ conditions, expression of respiratory hydrogenase declines while respiratory membrane-bound sulfane reductase and the putative iron-storage protein IssA increase. Our objective was to investigate the iron content of WT and ΔIssA cells under these growth conditions using Mössbauer spectroscopy. WT-S$^{0}$ cells contained ∼1 mM Fe, with ∼85% present as two spectroscopically distinct forms of S = 0 [Fe$_{4}$S$_{4}$]$^{2+}$ clusters; the remainder was mainly high-spin Fe$^{II}$. WT+S$^{0}$ cells contained 5 to 9 mM Fe, with 75 to 90% present as magnetically ordered thioferrate-like (TFL) iron nanoparticles. TFL iron was similar to chemically defined thioferrates; both consisted of Fe$^{III}$ ions coordinated by an S$_{4}$ environment, and both exhibited strong coupling between particles causing high applied fields to have little spectral effect. At high temperatures with magnetic hyperfine interactions abolished, TFL iron exhibited two doublets overlapping those of [Fe$_{4}$S$_{4}$]$^{2+}$ clusters in -S$^{0}$ cells. This coincidence arose because of similar coordination environments of TFL iron and cluster iron. The TFL structure was more heterogeneous in the presence of IssA. Presented data suggest that IssA may coordinate insoluble iron sulfides as TFL iron, formed as a byproduct of anaerobic sulfur respiration under high iron conditions, which thereby reduces its toxicity to the cell. This was the first Mössbauer characterization of the ironome of an archaeon, and it illustrates differences relative to the iron content of better-studied bacteria such as Escherichia coli

Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star-Forming Regions. IX. The Outer Arm in the First Quadrant

We report a trigonometric parallax measurement with the Very Long Baseline Array for the water maser in the distant high-mass star-forming region G75.30+1.32. This source has a heliocentric distance of 9.25+-0.45 kpc, which places it in the Outer arm in the first Galactic quadrant. It lies 200 pc above the Galactic plane and is associated with a substantial HI enhancement at the border of a large molecular cloud. At a Galactocentric radius of 10.7 kpc, G75.30+1.32 is in a region of the Galaxy where the disk is significantly warped toward the North Galactic Pole. While the star-forming region has an instantaneous Galactic orbit that is nearly circular, it displays a significant motion of 18 km/s toward the Galactic plane. The present results, when combined with two previous maser studies in the Outer arm, yield a pitch angle of about 12 degrees for a large section of the arm extending from the first quadrant to the third.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, accepted by The Astrophysical Journa

Faraday waves on a viscoelastic liquid

We investigate Faraday waves on a viscoelastic liquid. Onset measurements and a nonlinear phase diagram for the selected patterns are presented. By virtue of the elasticity of the material a surface resonance synchronous to the external drive competes with the usual subharmonic Faraday instability. Close to the bicriticality the nonlinear wave interaction gives rise to a variety of novel surface states: Localised patches of hexagons, hexagonal superlattices, coexistence of hexagons and lines. Theoretical stability calculations and qualitative resonance arguments support the experimental observations.Comment: 4 pages, 4figure

Is there something of the MCT in orientationally disordered crystals ?

Molecular Dynamics simulations have been performed on the orientationally disordered crystal chloroadamantane: a model system where dynamics are almost completely controlled by rotations. A critical temperature T_c = 225 K as predicted by the Mode Coupling Theory can be clearly determined both in the alpha and beta dynamical regimes. This investigation also shows the existence of a second remarkable dynamical crossover at the temperature T_x > T_c consistent with a previous NMR and MD study [1]. This allows us to confirm clearly the existence of a 'landscape-influenced' regime occurring in the temperature range [T_c-T_x] as recently proposed [2,3].Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, REVTEX