Coherent manipulation of cold Rydberg atoms near the surface of an atom chip

Coherent superpositions of the 49s and 48s Rydberg states of cold Rb atoms were studied near the surface of an atom chip. The superpositions were created and manipulated using microwaves resonant with the two-photon 49s-48s transition. Coherent behavior was observed using Rabi flopping, Ramsey sequences, spin-echo and spin-locking. These results are discussed in the context of Rydberg atoms as electric field noise sensors. We consider the coherence of systems quadratically coupled to noise fields with 1/f^k power spectral densities (k \approx 1).Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Anticoherence measures for pure spin states

The set of pure spin states with vanishing spin expectation value can be regarded as the set of the less coherent pure spin states. This set can be divided into a finite number of nested subsets on the basis of higher order moments of the spin operators. This subdivision relies on the notion of anticoherent spin state to order $t$: A spin state is said to be anticoherent to order $t$ if the moment of order $k$ of the spin components along any directions are equal for $k= 1, 2,\ldots, t$. Most spin states are neither coherent nor anticoherent, but can be arbitrary close to one or the other. In order to quantify the degree of anticoherence of pure spin states, we introduce the notion of anticoherence measures. By relying on the mapping between spin-$j$ states and symmetric states of $2j$ spin-$1/2$ (Majorana representation), we present a systematic way of constructing anticoherence measures to any order. We briefly discuss their connection with measures of quantum coherence. Finally, we illustrate our measures on various spin states and use them to investigate the problem of the existence of anticoherent spin states with degenerated Majorana points

Using large galaxy surveys to distinguish z~0.5 quiescent galaxy models

One of the most striking properties of galaxies is the bimodality in their star-formation rates. A major puzzle is why any given galaxy is star-forming or quiescent, and a wide range of physical mechanisms have been proposed as solutions. We consider how observations, such as might be available in upcoming large galaxy surveys, might distinguish different galaxy quenching scenarios. To do this, we combine an N-body simulation and multiple prescriptions from the literature to create several quiescent galaxy mock catalogues. Each prescription uses a different set of galaxy properties (such as history, environment, centrality) to assign individual simulation galaxies as quiescent. We find how and how much the resulting quiescent galaxy distributions differ from each other, both intrinsically and observationally. In addition to tracing observational consequences of different quenching mechanisms, our results indicate which sorts of quenching models might be most readily disentangled by upcoming observations and which combinations of observational quantities might provide the most discriminatory power. Our observational measures are auto, cross, and marked correlation functions, pro- jected density distributions, and group multiplicity functions, which rely upon galaxy positions, stellar masses and of course quiescence. Although degeneracies between models are present for individual observations, using multiple observations in concert allows us to distinguish between all ten models we consider. In addition to identifying intrinsic and observational consequences of quiescence prescriptions and testing these quiescence models against each other and observations, these methods can also be used to validate colors (or other history and environment dependent properties) in simulated mock catalogues.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Version to appear in MNRAS, incorporating helpful suggestions from referee and other

Singular lagrangian systems and variational constrained mechanics on Lie algebroids

The purpose of this paper is describe Lagrangian Mechanics for constrained systems on Lie algebroids, a natural framework which covers a wide range of situations (systems on Lie groups, quotients by the action of a Lie group, standard tangent bundles...). In particular, we are interested in two cases: singular Lagrangian systems and vakonomic mechanics (variational constrained mechanics). Several examples illustrate the interest of these developments.Comment: 42 pages, Section with examples improve

Resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between cold Rydberg atoms in a magnetic field

Laser cooled Rb atoms were optically excited to 46d Rydberg states. A microwave pulse transferred a fraction of the atoms to the 47p Rydberg state. The resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between atoms in these two states were probed using the linewidth of the two-photon microwave transition 46d-47d. The presence of a weak magnetic field (approximately 0.5 G) reduced the observed line broadening, indicating that the interaction is suppressed by the field. The field removes some of the energy degeneracies responsible for the resonant interaction, and this is the basis for a quantitative model of the resulting suppression. A technique for the calibration of magnetic field strengths using the 34s-34p one-photon transition is also presented.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review