1,646 research outputs found
Effect of variations in depth of neuromuscular blockade on rating of surgical conditions by surgeon and anesthesiologist in patients undergoing laparoscopic renal or prostatic surgery (BLISS trial): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
Perioperative Medicine: Efficacy, Safety and Outcom
A mapping approach to synchronization in the "Zajfman trap": stability conditions and the synchronization mechanism
We present a two particle model to explain the mechanism that stabilizes a
bunch of positively charged ions in an "ion trap resonator" [Pedersen etal,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 (2001) 055001]. The model decomposes the motion of the two
ions into two mappings for the free motion in different parts of the trap and
one for a compressing momentum kick. The ions' interaction is modelled by a
time delay, which then changes the balance between adjacent momentum kicks.
Through these mappings we identify the microscopic process that is responsible
for synchronization and give the conditions for that regime.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures; submitted to Phys Rev
Theoretical analysis of quantum dynamics in 1D lattices: Wannier-Stark description
This papers presents a formalism describing the dynamics of a quantum
particle in a one-dimensional tilted time-dependent lattice. The description
uses the Wannier-Stark states, which are localized in each site of the lattice
and provides a simple framework leading to fully-analytical developments.
Particular attention is devoted to the case of a time-dependent potential,
which results in a rich variety of quantum coherent dynamics is found.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR
Theoretical Analysis of a Large Momentum Beamsplitter using Bloch Oscillations
In this paper, we present the implementation of Bloch oscillations in an
atomic interferometer to increase the separation of the two interfering paths.
A numerical model, in very good agreement with the experiment, is developed.
The contrast of the interferometer and its sensitivity to phase fluctuations
and to intensity fluctuations are also calculated. We demonstrate that the
sensitivity to phase fluctuations can be significantly reduced by using a
suitable arrangement of Bloch oscillations pulses
Forecasting in the light of Big Data
Predicting the future state of a system has always been a natural motivation
for science and practical applications. Such a topic, beyond its obvious
technical and societal relevance, is also interesting from a conceptual point
of view. This owes to the fact that forecasting lends itself to two equally
radical, yet opposite methodologies. A reductionist one, based on the first
principles, and the naive inductivist one, based only on data. This latter view
has recently gained some attention in response to the availability of
unprecedented amounts of data and increasingly sophisticated algorithmic
analytic techniques. The purpose of this note is to assess critically the role
of big data in reshaping the key aspects of forecasting and in particular the
claim that bigger data leads to better predictions. Drawing on the
representative example of weather forecasts we argue that this is not generally
the case. We conclude by suggesting that a clever and context-dependent
compromise between modelling and quantitative analysis stands out as the best
forecasting strategy, as anticipated nearly a century ago by Richardson and von
Neumann
Loop structure of the lowest Bloch band for a Bose-Einstein condensate
We investigate analytically and numerically Bloch waves for a Bose--Einstein
condensate in a sinusoidal external potential. At low densities the dependence
of the energy on the quasimomentum is similar to that for a single particle,
but at densities greater than a critical one the lowest band becomes
triple-valued near the boundary of the first Brillouin zone and develops the
structure characteristic of the swallow-tail catastrophe. We comment on the
experimental consequences of this behavior.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure
Mapping adaptation of barley to droughted environments
Identifying barley genomic regions influencing the response of yield and its components to water deficits will aid in our understanding of the genetics of drought tolerance and the development of more drought tolerant cultivars. We assembled a population of 192 genotypes that represented landraces, old, and contemporary cultivars sampling key regions around the Mediterranean basin and the rest of Europe. The population was genotyped with a stratified set of 50 genomic and EST derived molecular markers, 49 of which were Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), which revealed an underlying population sub-structure that corresponded closely to the geographic regions in which the genotypes were grown. A more dense whole genome scan was generated by using Diversity Array Technology (DArT®) to generate 1130 biallelic markers for the population. The population was grown at two contrasting sites in each of seven Mediterranean countries for harvest 2004 and 2005 and grain yield data collected. Mean yield levels ranged from 0.3 to 6.2 t/ha, with highly significant genetic variation in low-yielding environments. Associations of yield with barley genomic regions were then detected by combining the DArT marker data with the yield data in mixed model analyses for the individual trials, followed by multiple regression of yield on markers to identify a multi-locus subset of significant markers/QTLs. QTLs exhibiting a pre-defined consistency across environments were detected in bins 4, 6, 6 and 7 on barley chromosomes 3H, 4H, 5H and 7H respectivel
Bloch oscillations and mean-field effects of Bose-Einstein condensates in 1-D optical lattices
We have loaded Bose-Einstein condensates into one-dimensional, off-resonant
optical lattices and accelerated them by chirping the frequency difference
between the two lattice beams. For small values of the lattice well-depth,
Bloch oscillations were observed. Reducing the potential depth further,
Landau-Zener tunneling out of the lowest lattice band, leading to a breakdown
of the oscillations, was also studied and used as a probe for the effective
potential resulting from mean-field interactions as predicted by Choi and Niu
[Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 2022 (1999)]. The effective potential was measured
for various condensate densities and trap geometries, yielding good qualitative
agreement with theoretical calculations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review
Letter
Bloch oscillations of magnetic solitons in anisotropic spin-1/2 chains
We study the quantum dynamics of soliton-like domain walls in anisotropic
spin-1/2 chains in the presence of magnetic fields. In the absence of fields,
domain walls form a Bloch band of delocalized quantum states while a static
field applied along the easy axis localizes them into Wannier wave packets and
causes them to execute Bloch oscillations, i.e. the domain walls oscillate
along the chain with a finite Bloch frequency and amplitude. In the presence of
the field, the Bloch band, with a continuum of extended states, breaks up into
the Wannier-Zeeman ladder -- a discrete set of equally spaced energy levels. We
calculate the dynamical structure factor in the one-soliton sector at finite
frequency, wave vector, and temperature, and find sharp peaks at frequencies
which are integer multiples of the Bloch frequency. We further calculate the
uniform magnetic susceptibility and find that it too exhibits peaks at the
Bloch frequency. We identify several candidate materials where these Bloch
oscillations should be observable, for example, via neutron scattering
measurements. For the particular compound CoCl_2.2H_2O we estimate the Bloch
amplitude to be on the order of a few lattice constants, and the Bloch
frequency on the order of 100 GHz for magnetic fields in the Tesla range and at
temperatures of about 18 Kelvin.Comment: 31 single-spaced REVTeX pages, including 7 figures embedded with eps
- …