Temperature of a Decoherent Oscillator with Strong Coupling

The temperature of an oscillator coupled to the vacuum state of a heat bath via ohmic coupling is non-zero, as measured by the reduced density matrix of the oscillator. This paper shows that the actual temperature, as measured by a thermometer is still zero (or in the thermal state of the bath, the temperature of the bath). The decoherence temperature is due to "false-decoherence", with the heat bath state being dragged along with the oscillator.Comment: 6 page

Transition from Band insulator to Bose-Einstein Condensate superfluid and Mott State of Cold Fermi Gases with Multiband Effects in Optical Lattices

We study two models realized by two-component Fermi gases loaded in optical lattices. We clarify that multi-band effects inevitably caused by the optical lattices generate a rich structure, when the systems crossover from the region of weakly bound molecular bosons to the region of strongly bound atomic bosons. Here the crossover can be controlled by attractive fermion interaction. One of the present models is a case with attractive fermion interaction, where an insulator-superfluid transition takes place. The transition is characterized as the transition between a band insulator and a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) superfluid state. Differing from the conventional BCS superfluid transition, this transition shows unconventional properties. In contrast to the one particle excitation gap scaled by the superfluid order parameter in the conventional BCS transition, because of the multi-band effects, a large gap of one-particle density of states is retained all through the transition although the superfluid order grows continuously from zero. A reentrant transition with lowering temperature is another unconventionality. The other model is the case with coexisting attractive and repulsive interactions. Within a mean field treatment, we find a new insulating state, an orbital ordered insulator. This insulator is one candidate for the Mott insulator of molecular bosons and is the first example that the orbital internal degrees of freedom of molecular bosons appears explicitly. Besides the emergence of a new phase, a coexisting phase also appears where superfluidity and an orbital order coexist just by doping holes or particles. The insulating and superfluid particles show differentiation in momentum space as in the high-Tc cuprate superconductors.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Universal Properties of the Ultra-Cold Fermi Gas

We present some general considerations on the properties of a two-component ultra-cold Fermi gas along the BEC-BCS crossover. It is shown that the interaction energy and the ground state energy can be written in terms of a single dimensionless function $h({\xi,\tau})$, where $\xi=-(k_Fa_s)^{-1}$ and $\tau=T/T_F$. The function $h(\xi,\tau)$ incorporates all the many-body physics and naturally occurs in other physical quantities as well. In particular, we show that the RF-spectroscopy shift \bar{\d\o}(\xi,\tau) and the molecular fraction $f_c(\xi,\tau)$ in the closed channel can be expressed in terms of $h(\xi,\tau)$ and thus have identical temperature dependence. The conclusions should have testable consequences in future experiments

BEC-BCS Crossover with Feshbach Resonance for a Three-Hyperfine-Species Model

We consider the behavior of an ultracold Fermi gas across a narrow Feshbach resonance, where the occupation of the closed channel may not be negligible. While the corrections to the single-channel formulae associated with the nonzero chemical potential and with particle conservation have been considered in the existing literature, there is a further effect, namely the "inter-channel Pauli exclusion principle" associated with the fact that a single hyperfine species may be common to the two channels. We focus on this effect and show that, as intuitively expected, the resulting corrections are of order $E_F/\eta$, where $E_F$ is the Fermi energy of the gas in the absence of interactions and $\eta$ is the Zeeman energy difference between the two channels. We also consider the related corrections to the fermionic excitation spectrum, and briefly discuss the collective modes of the system

Laser cooling all the way down to molecular condensate

Numerical simulations show that laser cooling of fermions on the repulsive side of the Feshbach resonance can sympathetically cool molecules well below their condensation temperature.Comment: 7 pages, 2 .eps figure

Tunneling out of metastable vacuum in a system consisting of two capacitively coupled phase qubits

Using a powerful combination of Coleman's instanton technique and the method of Banks and Bender, the exponential factor for the zero temperature rate of tunneling out of metastable vacuum in a system of two identical capacitively coupled phase qubits is calculated in closed form to second order in asymmetry parameter for a special case of intermediate coupling C=C_J/2.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures (select PostScript to download Fig. 1). Corrected version, to appear in PR

Mott states under the influence of fermion-boson conversion: invasion of superfluidity

I study the influence of fermion-boson conversion near Feshbach resonances on Mott states of Cooper pairs and demonstrate possible invasion of superfluidity. The quantum dynamics of Fermi-Bose gases is studied using both an effective coupled $U(1)\otimes U(1)$ quantum rotor Hamiltonian and a coupled XXZ $\otimes$ XXZ spin Hamiltonian. I also point out two distinct branches of collective modes in superfluid states, one of which involves anti-symmetric phase oscillations in fermionic and bosonic channels and is {\em always} gapped because of fermion-boson conversion.Comment: 5 pages; typos correcte

Hartree shift in unitary Fermi gases

The Hartree energy shift is calculated for a unitary Fermi gas. By including the momentum dependence of the scattering amplitude explicitly, the Hartree energy shift remains finite even at unitarity. Extending the theory also for spin-imbalanced systems allows calculation of polaron properties. The results are in good agreement with more involved theories and experiments.Comment: 31 pages, many figure

Surface-enhanced pair transfer in quadrupole states of neutron-rich Sn isotopes

We investigate the neutron pair transfer modes associated with the low-lying quadrupole states in neutron-rich Sn isotopes by means of the quasiparticle random phase approximation based on the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mean field model. The transition strength of the quadrupole pair-addition mode feeding the $2_1^+$ state is enhanced in the Sn isotopes with $A \geq 132$. The transition density of the pair-addition mode has a large spatial extension in the exterior of nucleus, reaching far to $r\sim 12-13$ fm. The quadrupole pair-addition mode reflects sensitively a possible increase of the effective pairing interaction strength in the surface and exterior regions of neutron-rich nuclei.Comment: 14 page

Comment on ``Phase and Phase Diffusion of a Split Bose-Einstein Condensate''

Recently Javanainen and Wilkens [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 4675 (1997)] have analysed an experiment in which an interacting Bose condensate, after being allowed to form in a single potential well, is "cut" by splitting the well adiabatically with a very high potential barrier, and estimate the rate at which, following the cut, the two halves of the condensate lose the "memory" of their relative phase. We argue that, by neglecting the effect of interactions in the initial state before the separation, they have overestimated the rate of phase randomization by a numerical factor which grows with the interaction strength and with the slowness of the separation process.Comment: 2 pages, no figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let