6,123 research outputs found
Scaling-up quantum heat engines efficiently via shortcuts to adiabaticity
The finite-time operation of a quantum heat engine that uses a single
particle as a working medium generally increases the output power at the
expense of inducing friction that lowers the cycle efficiency. We propose to
scale up a quantum heat engine utilizing a many-particle working medium in
combination with the use of shortcuts to adiabaticity to boost the nonadiabatic
performance by eliminating quantum friction and reducing the cycle time. To
this end, we first analyze the finite-time thermodynamics of a quantum Otto
cycle implemented with a quantum fluid confined in a time-dependent harmonic
trap. We show that nonadiabatic effects can be controlled and tailored to match
the adiabatic performance using a variety of shortcuts to adiabaticity. As a
result, the nonadiabatic dynamics of the scaled-up many-particle quantum heat
engine exhibits no friction and the cycle can be run at maximum efficiency with
a tunable output power. We demonstrate our results with a working medium
consisting of particles with inverse-square pairwise interactions, that
includes noninteracting and hard-core bosons as limiting cases.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; typo in Eq. (51) fixed. Feature paper in the
Special Issue "Quantum Thermodynamics" edited by Prof. Dr. Ronnie Koslof
Atom laser dynamics in a tight-waveguide
We study the transient dynamics that arise during the formation of an atom
laser beam in a tight waveguide. During the time evolution the density profile
develops a series of wiggles which are related to the diffraction in time
phenomenon. The apodization of matter waves, which relies on the use of smooth
aperture functions, allows to suppress such oscillations in a time interval,
after which there is a revival of the diffraction in time. The revival time
scale is directly related to the inverse of the harmonic trap frequency for the
atom reservoir.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to be published in the Proceedings of the 395th
WE-Heraeus Seminar on "Time Dependent Phenomena in Quantum Mechanics ",
organized by T. Kramer and M. Kleber (Blaubeuren, Germany, September 2007
Residual effects of successive exposure of soybean Bradyrhizobium strains to aluminium on solid defined medium.
The aim of these studies was to investigate whether residual toxic effects of exposing soybean root nodule bacteria to Al in a solid defined media (SDM) alter tolerance to Al, survival, sensitivity to antibiotics, N2 fixation effectiveness and genetic diversity of Bradyrhizobium strains. After being exposed four times to Al, strains showed variation in Al tolerance but there was no evidence of change in their original Al tolerance, sensitivity to the antibiotics or genetic diversity. Exposure of Bradyrhizobium strains to SDM plus Al did not alter biological N2 fixation effectiveness of five strains. Strain SEMIA 587 showed a reduction in its N2 fixation effectiveness but it seems that it was just a superficial toxic effect because one single passage through the plant eliminated this effect. Residual Al did not cause increases in Al tolerance and reductions in the survival and N2 fixation effectiveness of Bradyrhizobium strains USDA 143, SEMIA 586, SEMIA 5019, SEMIA 5039 and SEMIA 5073. It also did not alter the resistance to antibiotics of strains USDA 143, SEMIA 5039 and SEMIA 5073, and the genetic diversity of the strains SEMIA 587 and SEMIA 5019
Stability of spinor Fermi gases in tight waveguides
The two and three-body correlation functions of the ground state of an
optically trapped ultracold spin-1/2 Fermi gas (SFG) in a tight waveguide (1D
regime) are calculated in the plane of even and odd-wave coupling constants,
assuming a 1D attractive zero-range odd-wave interaction induced by a 3D p-wave
Feshbach resonance, as well as the usual repulsive zero-range even-wave
interaction stemming from 3D s-wave scattering. The calculations are based on
the exact mapping from the SFG to a ``Lieb-Liniger-Heisenberg'' model with
delta-function repulsions depending on isotropic Heisenberg spin-spin
interactions, and indicate that the SFG should be stable against three-body
recombination in a large region of the coupling constant plane encompassing
parts of both the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases. However, the
limiting case of the fermionic Tonks-Girardeau gas (FTG), a spin-aligned 1D
Fermi gas with infinitely attractive p-wave interactions, is unstable in this
sense. Effects due to the dipolar interaction and a Zeeman term due to a
resonance-generating magnetic field do not lead to shrinkage of the region of
stability of the SFG.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
Long-range ferromagnetism of Mn12 acetate single-molecule magnets under a transverse magnetic field
We use neutron diffraction to probe the magnetization components of a crystal
of Mn12 single-molecule magnets. Each of these molecules behaves, at low
temperatures, as a nanomagnet with spin S = 10 and strong anisotropy along the
crystallographic c axis. Application of a magnetic field perpendicular to c
induces quantum tunneling between opposite spin orientations, enabling the
spins to attain thermal equilibrium. Below approximately 0.9 K, intermolecular
interactions turn this equilibrium state into a ferromagnetically ordered
phase. However, long range ferromagnetic correlations nearly disappear for
fields larger 5.5 T, possibly suggesting the existence of a quantum critical
point.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
- …