Relativistic Tunneling Through Two Successive Barriers

We study the relativistic quantum mechanical problem of a Dirac particle tunneling through two successive electrostatic barriers. Our aim is to study the emergence of the so-called \emph{Generalized Hartman Effect}, an effect observed in the context of nonrelativistic tunneling as well as in its electromagnetic counterparts, and which is often associated with the possibility of superluminal velocities in the tunneling process. We discuss the behavior of both the phase (or group) tunneling time and the dwell time, and show that in the limit of opaque barriers the relativistic theory also allows the emergence of the Generalized Hartman Effect. We compare our results with the nonrelativistic ones and discuss their interpretation.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Revised version, with a new appendix added. Slightly changes in the styles and captions of Figures 1 and 2. To appear in Physical Review

The Fermionic Density-functional at Feshbach Resonance

We consider a dilute gas of neutral unpolarized fermionic atoms at zero temperature.The atoms interact via a short range (tunable) attractive interaction. We demonstrate analytically a curious property of the gas at unitarity. Namely, the correlation energy of the gas, evaluated by second order perturbation theory, has the same density dependence as the first order exchange energy, and the two almost exactly cancel each other at Feshbach resonance irrespective of the shape of the potential, provided $(\mu r_s) >> 1$. Here $(\mu)^{-1}$ is the range of the two-body potential, and $r_s$ is defined through the number density $n=3/(4\pi r_s^3)$. The implications of this result for universality is discussed.Comment: Five pages, one table. accepted for publication in PR

Proton recoil polarization in exclusive (e,e'pp) reactions

The general formalism of nucleon recoil polarization in the (${\vec e},e'{\vec N}N$) reaction is given. Numerical predictions are presented for the components of the outgoing proton polarization and of the polarization transfer coefficient in the specific case of the exclusive $^{16}$O(${\vec e},e'{\vec p}p$)$^{14}$C knockout reaction leading to discrete states in the residual nucleus. Reaction calculations are performed in a direct knockout framework where final-state interactions and one-body and two-body currents are included. The two-nucleon overlap integrals are obtained from a calculation of the two-proton spectral function of $^{16}$O where long-range and short-range correlations are consistently included. The comparison of results obtained in different kinematics confirms that resolution of different final states in the $^{16}$O(${\vec e},e'{\vec p}p$)$^{14}$C reaction may act as a filter to disentangle and separately investigate the reaction processes due to short-range correlations and two-body currents and indicates that measurements of the components of the outgoing proton polarization may offer good opportunities to study short-range correlations.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Aharonov-Casher oscillations of spin current through a multichannel mesoscopic ring

The Aharonov-Casher (AC) oscillations of spin current through a 2D ballistic ring in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction and external magnetic field has been calculated using the semiclassical path integral method. For classically chaotic trajectories the Fokker-Planck equation determining dynamics of the particle spin polarization has been derived. On the basis of this equation an analytic expression for the spin conductance has been obtained taking into account a finite width of the ring arms carrying large number of conducting channels. It was shown that the finite width results in a broadening and damping of spin current AC oscillations. We found that an external magnetic field leads to appearance of new nondiagonal components of the spin conductance, allowing thus by applying a rather weak magnetic field to change a direction of the transmitted spin current polarization.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Spin Information from Vector-Meson Decay in Photoproduction

For the photoproduction of vector mesons, all single and double spin observables involving vector meson two-body decays are defined consistently in the $\gamma N$ center of mass. These definitions yield a procedure for extracting physically meaningful single and double spin observables that are subject to known rules concerning their angle and energy evolution. As part of this analysis, we show that measuring the two-meson decay of a photoproduced $\rho$ or $\phi$ does not determine the vector meson's vector polarization, but only its tensor polarization. The vector meson decay into lepton pairs is also insensitive to the vector meson's vector polarization, unless one measures the spin of one of the leptons. Similar results are found for all double spin observables which involve observation of vector meson decay. To access the vector meson's vector polarization, one therefore needs to either measure the spin of the decay leptons, make an analysis of the background interference effects or relate the vector meson's vector polarization to other accessible spin observables.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figure

Flavor Asymmetry of the Nucleon Sea: Consequences for Dilepton Production

Parton distributions derived from a chiral quark model that generates an excess of down quarks and antiquarks in the proton's sea satisfactorily describe the measured yields of muon pairs produced in proton-nucleus collisions. Comparison of dilepton yields from hydrogen and deuterium targets promises greater sensitivity to the predicted flavor asymmetry.Comment: 11 pages, REVTEX, (Three PostScript figures available by anonymous ftp from fnth06.fnal.gov in directory /pub/Fermilab-Pub/92.264.) FERMILAB-PUB-92/264--T LBL-3298

Time Reversal and n-qubit Canonical Decompositions

For n an even number of qubits and v a unitary evolution, a matrix decomposition v=k1 a k2 of the unitary group is explicitly computable and allows for study of the dynamics of the concurrence entanglement monotone. The side factors k1 and k2 of this Concurrence Canonical Decomposition (CCD) are concurrence symmetries, so the dynamics reduce to consideration of the a factor. In this work, we provide an explicit numerical algorithm computing v=k1 a k2 for n odd. Further, in the odd case we lift the monotone to a two-argument function, allowing for a theory of concurrence dynamics in odd qubits. The generalization may also be studied using the CCD, leading again to maximal concurrence capacity for most unitaries. The key technique is to consider the spin-flip as a time reversal symmetry operator in Wigner's axiomatization; the original CCD derivation may be restated entirely in terms of this time reversal. En route, we observe a Kramers' nondegeneracy: the existence of a nondegenerate eigenstate of any time reversal symmetric n-qubit Hamiltonian demands (i) n even and (ii) maximal concurrence of said eigenstate. We provide examples of how to apply this work to study the kinematics and dynamics of entanglement in spin chain Hamiltonians.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; v2 (17pp.): major revision, new abstract, introduction, expanded bibliograph

Dissipative dynamics of topological defects in frustrated Heisenberg spin systems

We study the dynamics of topological defects of a frustrated spin system displaying spiral order. As a starting point we consider the SO(3) nonlinear sigma model to describe long-wavelength fluctuations around the noncollinear spiral state. Besides the usual spin-wave magnetic excitations, the model allows for topologically non-trivial static solutions of the equations of motion, associated with the change of chirality (clockwise or counterclockwise) of the spiral. We consider two types of these topological defects, single vortices and vortex-antivortex pairs, and quantize the corresponding solutions by generalizing the semiclassical approach to a non-Abelian field theory. The use of the collective coordinates allows us to represent the defect as a particle coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators, which can be integrated out employing the Feynman-Vernon path-integral formalism. The resulting effective action for the defect indicates that its motion is damped due to the scattering by the magnons. We derive a general expression for the damping coefficient of the defect, and evaluate its temperature dependence in both cases, for a single vortex and for a vortex-antivortex pair. Finally, we consider an application of the model for cuprates, where a spiral state has been argued to be realized in the spin-glass regime. By assuming that the defect motion contributes to the dissipative dynamics of the charges, we can compare our results with the measured inverse mobility in a wide range of temperature. The relatively good agreement between our calculations and the experiments confirms the possible relevance of an incommensurate spiral order for lightly doped cuprates.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, final published versio

Nucleon-Quarkonium Elastic Scattering and the Gluon Contribution to Nucleon Spin

It is shown that the amplitude for the scattering of a heavy quarkonium system from a nucleon near threshold is completely determined by the fraction of angular momentum, as well as linear momentum, carried by gluons in the nucleon. A form for the quarkonium-nucleon non-relativistic potential is derived.Comment: 4 pages, no figures. Author's e-mail: [email protected]

Remembrance of Odors Past Human Olfactory Cortex in Cross-Modal Recognition Memory

AbstractEpisodic memory is often imbued with multisensory richness, such that the recall of an event can be endowed with the sights, sounds, and smells of its prior occurrence. While hippocampus and related medial temporal structures are implicated in episodic memory retrieval, the participation of sensory-specific cortex in representing the qualities of an episode is less well established. We combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a cross-modal paradigm, where objects were presented with odors during memory encoding. We then examined the effect of odor context on neural responses at retrieval when these same objects were presented alone. Primary olfactory (piriform) cortex, as well as anterior hippocampus, was activated during the successful retrieval of old (compared to new) objects. Our findings indicate that sensory features of the original engram are preserved in unimodal olfactory cortex. We suggest that reactivation of memory traces distributed across modality-specific brain areas underpins the sensory qualities of episodic memories