1,532 research outputs found
Decoherence due to three-body loss and its effect on the state of a Bose-Einstein condensate
A Born-Markov master equation is used to investigate the decoherence of the
state of a macroscopically occupied mode of a cold atom trap due to three-body
loss. In the large number limit only coherent states remain pure for times
longer than the decoherence time: the time it takes for just three atoms to be
lost from the trap. For large numbers of atoms (N>10^4) the decoherence time is
found to be much faster than the phase collapse time caused by intra-trap
atomic collisions
Sediment Quality in Puget Sound Year 3 - Southern Puget Sound
As a component of a three-year cooperative effort of the Washington State Department of Ecology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, surficial sediment samples from 100 locations in southern Puget Sound were collected in 1999 to determine their relative quality based on measures of toxicity, chemical contamination, and benthic infaunal assemblage structure. The survey
encompassed an area of approximately 858 km2, ranging from East and Colvos Passages south to Oakland Bay, and including Hood Canal. Toxic responses were most severe in some of the industrialized waterways of Tacoma’s Commencement Bay. Other industrialized harbors in which
sediments induced toxic responses on smaller scales included the Port of Olympia, Oakland Bay at Shelton, Gig Harbor, Port Ludlow, and Port Gamble. Based on the methods selected for this survey, the spatial extent of toxicity for the southern Puget Sound survey area was 0% of the total survey area for amphipod survival, 5.7% for urchin fertilization, 0.2% for microbial bioluminescence, and 5-
38% with the cytochrome P450 HRGS assay. Measurements of trace metals, PAHs, PCBs, chlorinated pesticides, other organic chemicals, and other characteristics of the sediments, indicated that 20 of the 100 samples collected had one or more chemical concentrations that exceeded
applicable, effects-based sediment guidelines and/or Washington State standards. Chemical contamination was highest in eight samples collected in or near the industrialized waterways of Commencement Bay. Samples from the Thea Foss and Middle Waterways were primarily
contaminated with a mixture of PAHs and trace metals, whereas those from Hylebos Waterway were contaminated with chlorinated organic hydrocarbons. The remaining 12 samples with elevated chemical concentrations primarily had high levels of other chemicals, including bis(2-ethylhexyl)
phthalate, benzoic acid, benzyl alcohol, and phenol. The characteristics of benthic infaunal assemblages in south Puget Sound differed considerably among locations and habitat types throughout the study area. In general, many of the small embayments and inlets throughout the study
area had infaunal assemblages with relatively low total abundance, taxa richness, evenness, and dominance values, although total abundance values were very high in some cases, typically due to high abundance of one organism such as the polychaete Aphelochaeta sp. N1. The majority of the
samples collected from passages, outer embayments, and larger bodies of water tended to have infaunal assemblages with higher total abundance, taxa richness, evenness, and dominance values. Two samples collected in the Port of Olympia near a superfund cleanup site had no living organisms in them. A weight-of-evidence approach used to simultaneously examine all three “sediment quality
triad” parameters, identified 11 stations (representing 4.4 km2, 0.5% of the total study area) with sediment toxicity, chemical contamination, and altered benthos (i.e., degraded sediment quality), 36 stations (493.5 km2, 57.5% total study area) with no toxicity or chemical contamination (i.e., high sediment quality), 35 stations (274.1 km2, 32.0% total study area) with one impaired sediment triad
parameter (i.e., intermediate/high sediment quality), and 18 stations (85.7km2, 10.0% total study area) with two impaired sediment parameters (i.e., intermediate/degraded quality sediments). Generally, upon comparison, the number of stations with degraded sediments based upon the sediment quality triad of data was slightly greater in the central Puget Sound than in the northern and southern Puget Sound study areas, with the percent of the total study area degraded in each region decreasing from central to north to south (2.8, 1.3 and 0.5%, respectively). Overall, the sediments collected in Puget Sound during the combined 1997-1999 surveys were among the least contaminated relative to other marine bays and estuaries studied by NOAA using equivalent methods. (PDF contains 351 pages
The validity of the Landau-Zener model for output coupling of Bose condensates
We investigate the validity of the Landau-Zener model in describing the
output coupling of Bose condensates from magnetic traps by a chirped
radiofrequency field. The predictions of the model are compared with the
numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find a dependence on
the chirp direction, and also quantify the role of gravitation.Comment: 4 pages, Late
In situ measurements of tropospheric volcanic plumes in Ecuador and Colombia during TC
A NASA DC‐8 research aircraft penetrated tropospheric gas and aerosol plumes sourced from active volcanoes in Ecuador and Colombia during the Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4 ) mission in July–August 2007. The likely source volcanoes were Tungurahua (Ecuador) and Nevado del Huila (Colombia). The TC4 data provide rare insight into the chemistry of volcanic plumes in the tropical troposphere and permit a comparison of SO2 column amounts measured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite with in situ SO2 measurements. Elevated concentrations of SO2, sulfate aerosol, and particles were measured by DC‐8 instrumentation in volcanic outflow at altitudes of 3–6 km. Estimated plume ages range from ∼2 h at Huila to ∼22–48 h downwind of Ecuador. The plumes contained sulfate‐rich accumulation mode particles that were variably neutralized and often highly acidic. A significant fraction of supermicron volcanic ash was evident in one plume. In‐plume O3 concentrations were ∼70%–80% of ambient levels downwind of Ecuador, but data are insufficient to ascribe this to O3 depletion via reactive halogen chemistry. The TC4 data record rapid cloud processing of the Huila volcanic plume involving aqueous‐phase oxidation of SO2 by H2O2, but overall the data suggest average in‐plume SO2 to sulfate conversion rates of ∼1%–2% h−1 . SO2 column amounts measured in the Tungurahua plume (∼0.1–0.2 Dobson units) are commensurate with average SO2 columns retrieved from OMI measurements in the volcanic outflow region in July 2007. The TC4 data set provides further evidence of the impact of volcanic emissions on tropospheric acidity and oxidizing capacit
Bilateral symmetry breaking in a nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavity exhibiting optical tristability
We show the existence of a region in the parameter space that defines the
field dynamics in a Fabry-Perot cylindrical cavity, where three output stable
stationary states of the light are possible for a given localized incident
field. Two of these states do not preserve the bilateral (i.e. left-right)
symmetry of the entire system. These broken-symmetry states are the
high-transmission nonlinear modes of the system. We also discuss how to excite
these states.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Quasi-continuous atom laser in the presence of gravity
We analyse the extraction of a coherent atomic beam from a trapped
Bose-Einstein condensate using a rf transition to a non-trapping state at T=0
K. Our quantum treatment fully takes gravity into account but neglects all
interactions in the free falling beam. We obtain an analytical expression of
the output rate and of the wave function of the extracted beam, i.e. the output
mode of the ``atom laser''. Our model reproduces satisfactorily experimental
data without any adjustable parameter.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Phase preparation by atom counting of Bose-Einstein condensates in mixed states
We study the build up of quantum coherence between two Bose-Einstein
condensates which are initially in mixed states. We consider in detail the two
cases where each condensate is initially in a thermal or a Poisson distribution
of atom number. Although initially there is no relative phase between the
condensates, a sequence of spatial atom detections produces an interference
pattern with arbitrary but fixed relative phase. The visibility of this
interference pattern is close to one for the Poisson distribution of two
condensates with equal counting rates but it becomes a stochastic variable in
the thermal case, where the visibility will vary from run to run around an
average visibility of In both cases, the variance of the phase
distribution is inversely proportional to the number of atom detections in the
regime where this number is large compared to one but small compared with the
total number of atoms in the condensates.Comment: 9 pages, 6 PostScript figure, submitted to PR
The Josephson plasmon as a Bogoliubov quasiparticle
We study the Josephson effect in alkali atomic gases within the two-mode
approximation and show that there is a correspondence between the Bogoliubov
description and the harmonic limit of the phase representation. We demonstrate
that the quanta of the Josephson plasmon can be identified with the Bogoliubov
excitations of the two-site Bose fluid. We thus establish a mapping between the
Bogoliubov approximation for the many-body theory and the linearized pendulum
Hamiltonian.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, submitted to J. Phys.
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