Deformation and failure of the ice bridge on the Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica

A narrow bridge of floating ice that connected the Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica, to two confining islands eventually collapsed in early April 2009. In the month preceding the collapse, we observed deformation of the ice bridge by means of satellite imagery and from an in situ GPS station. TerraSAR-X images (acquired in stripmap mode) were used to compile a time series. The ice bridge bent most strongly in its narrowest part (westerly), while the northern end (near Charcot Island) shifted in a northeasterly direction. In the south, the ice bridge experienced compressive strain parallel to its long axis. GPS position data were acquired a little south of the narrowest part of the ice bridge from 19 January 2009. Analysis of these data showed both cyclic and monotonic components of motion. Meteorological data and re-analysis of the output of weather-prediction models indicated that easterly winds were responsible for the cyclic motion component. In particular, wind stress on the rough ice melange that occupied the area to the east exerted significant pressure on the ice bridge. The collapse of the ice bridge began with crack formation in the southern section parallel to the long axis of the ice bridge and led to shattering of the southern part. Ultimately, the narrowest part, only 900 m wide, ruptured. The formation of many small icebergs released energy of >125 × 106 J

Bose-Einstein condensation with magnetic dipole-dipole forces

Ground-state solutions in a dilute gas interacting via contact and magnetic dipole-dipole forces are investigated. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first example of studies of the Bose-Einstein condensation in a system with realistic long-range interactions. We find that for the magnetic moment of e.g. chromium and a typical value of the scattering length all solutions are stable and only differ in size from condensates without long-range interactions. By lowering the value of the scattering length we find a region of unstable solutions. In the neighborhood of this region the ground state wavefunctions show internal structures not seen before in condensates. Finally, we find an analytic estimate for the characteristic length appearing in these solutions.Comment: final version, 4 pages, 4 figure

Effect of Hund coupling in the one-dimensional SU(4) Hubbard model

The one-dimensional SU(4) Hubbard model perturbed by Hund coupling is studied, away from half-filling, by means of renormalization group and bosonization methods. A spectral gap is always present in the spin-orbital sector irrespective of the magnitude of the Coulomb repulsion. We further distinguish between two qualitatively different regimes. At small Hund coupling, we find that the symmetry of the system is dynamically enlarged to SU(4) at low energy with the result of {\it coherent} spin-orbital excitations. When the charge sector is not gapped, a superconducting instability is shown to exist. At large Hund coupling, the symmetry is no longer enlarged to SU(4) and the excitations in the spin sector become {\it incoherent}. Furthermore, the superconductivity can be suppressed in favor of the conventional charge density wave state.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Faddeev-Niemi Conjecture and Effective Action of QCD

We calculate a one loop effective action of SU(2) QCD in the presence of the monopole background, and find a possible connection between the resulting QCD effective action and a generalized Skyrme-Faddeev action of the non-linear sigma model. The result is obtained using the gauge-independent decomposotion of the gauge potential into the topological degrees which describes the non-Abelian monopoles and the local dynamical degrees of the potential, and integrating out all the dynamical degrees of QCD.Comment: 6 page

Mean-field analysis of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates

The dynamics of collapsing and exploding trapped Bose-Einstein condensat es caused by a sudden switch of interactions from repulsive to attractive a re studied by numerically integrating the Gross-Pitaevskii equation with atomic loss for an axially symmetric trap. We investigate the decay rate of condensates and the phenomena of bursts and jets of atoms, and compare our results with those of the experiments performed by E. A. Donley {\it et al.} [Nature {\bf 412}, 295 (2001)]. Our study suggests that the condensate decay and the burst production is due to local intermittent implosions in the condensate, and that atomic clouds of bursts and jets are coherent. We also predict nonlinear pattern formation caused by the density instability of attractive condensates.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, axi-symmetric results are adde

Dynamical Chiral Symmetry Breaking on the Light Front.II. The Nambu--Jona-Lasinio Model

An investigation of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking on the light front is made in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with one flavor and N colors. Analysis of the model suffers from extraordinary complexity due to the existence of a "fermionic constraint," i.e., a constraint equation for the bad spinor component. However, to solve this constraint is of special importance. In classical theory, we can exactly solve it and then explicitly check the property of ``light-front chiral transformation.'' In quantum theory, we introduce a bilocal formulation to solve the fermionic constraint by the 1/N expansion. Systematic 1/N expansion of the fermion bilocal operator is realized by the boson expansion method. The leading (bilocal) fermionic constraint becomes a gap equation for a chiral condensate and thus if we choose a nontrivial solution of the gap equation, we are in the broken phase. As a result of the nonzero chiral condensate, we find unusual chiral transformation of fields and nonvanishing of the light-front chiral charge. A leading order eigenvalue equation for a single bosonic state is equivalent to a leading order fermion-antifermion bound-state equation. We analytically solve it for scalar and pseudoscalar mesons and obtain their light-cone wavefunctions and masses. All of the results are entirely consistent with those of our previous analysis on the chiral Yukawa model.Comment: 23 pages, REVTEX, the version to be published in Phys.Rev.D; Some clarifications in discussion of the LC wavefunctions adde

Macroscopic Quantum Fluctuations in the Josephson Dynamics of Two Weakly Linked Bose-Einstein Condensates

We study the quantum corrections to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for two weakly linked Bose-Einstein condensates. The goals are: 1) to investigate dynamical regimes at the borderline between the classical and quantum behaviour of the bosonic field; 2) to search for new macroscopic quantum coherence phenomena not observable with other superfluid/superconducting systems. Quantum fluctuations renormalize the classical Josephson oscillation frequencies. Large amplitude phase oscillations are modulated, exhibiting collapses and revivals. We describe a new inter-well oscillation mode, with a vanishing (ensemble averaged) mean value of the observables, but with oscillating mean square fluctuations. Increasing the number of condensate atoms, we recover the classical Gross-Pitaevskii (Josephson) dynamics, without invoking the symmetry-breaking of the Gauge invariance.Comment: Submitte

Coupled Bose-Einstein condensate: Collapse for attractive interaction

We study the collapse in a coupled Bose-Einstein condensate of two types of bosons 1 and 2 under the action of a trap using the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The system may undergo collapse when one, two or three of the scattering lengths $a_{ij}$ for scattering of boson $i$ with $j$, $i,j = 1, 2$, are negative representing an attractive interaction. Depending on the parameters of the problem a single or both components of the condensate may experience collapse.Comment: 5 pages and 9 figures, small changes mad

Gravitation with superposed Gauss--Bonnet terms in higher dimensions: Black hole metrics and maximal extensions

Our starting point is an iterative construction suited to combinatorics in arbitarary dimensions d, of totally anisymmetrised p-Riemann 2p-forms (2p\le d) generalising the (1-)Riemann curvature 2-forms. Superposition of p-Ricci scalars obtained from the p-Riemann forms defines the maximally Gauss--Bonnet extended gravitational Lagrangian. Metrics, spherically symmetric in the (d-1) space dimensions are constructed for the general case. The problem is directly reduced to solving polynomial equations. For some black hole type metrics the horizons are obtained by solving polynomial equations. Corresponding Kruskal type maximal extensions are obtained explicitly in complete generality, as is also the periodicity of time for Euclidean signature. We show how to include a cosmological constant and a point charge. Possible further developments and applications are indicated.Comment: 13 pages, REVTEX. References and Note Adde

The fate of spinons in spontaneously dimerised spin-1/2 ladders

We study a weakly coupled, frustrated two-leg spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladder. For vanishing coupling between the chains, elementary excitations are deconfined, gapless spin-1/2 objects called spinons. We investigate the fate of spinons for the case of a weak interchain interaction. We show that despite a drastic change in ground state, which becomes spontaneously dimerised, spinons survive as elementary excitations but acquire a spectral gap. We furthermore determine the exact dynamical structure factor for several values of momentum transfer.Comment: 8 pages of revtex, 7 figures; discussion of physical picture for ground state and excitations in the "twistless" ladder expanded, version to appear in Phys Rev