20,116 research outputs found

    Interaction induced decay of a heteronuclear two-atom system

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    Two-atom systems in small traps are of fundamental interest, first of all for understanding the role of interactions in degenerate cold gases and for the creation of quantum gates in quantum information processing with single-atom traps. One of the key quantities is the inelastic relaxation (decay) time when one of the atoms or both are in a higher hyperfine state. Here we measure this quantity in a heteronuclear system of 87^{87}Rb and 85^{85}Rb in a micro optical trap and demonstrate experimentally and theoretically the presence of both fast and slow relaxation processes, depending on the choice of the initial hyperfine states. The developed experimental method allows us to single out a particular relaxation process and, in this sense, our experiment is a "superclean platform" for collisional physics studies. Our results have also implications for engineering of quantum states via controlled collisions and creation of two-qubit quantum gates.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

    Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder comorbid oppositional defiant disorder and its predominately inattentive type: evidence for an association with COMT but not MAOA in a Chinese sample

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There are three childhood disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD). The most common comorbid disorder in ADHD is ODD. DSM-IV describes three ADHD subtypes: predominantly inattentive type (ADHD-IA), predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type (ADHD-HI), and combined type (ADHD-C). Prior work suggests that specific candidate genes are associated with specific subtypes of ADHD in China. Our previous association studies between ADHD and functional polymorphisms of COMT and MAOA, consistently showed the low transcriptional activity alleles were preferentially transmitted to ADHD-IA boys. Thus, the goal of the present study is to test the hypothesis that COMT Val158Met and MAOA-uVNTR jointly contribute to the ODD phenotype among Chinese ADHD boys.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>171 Chinese boys between 6 and 17.5 years old (mean = 10.3, SD = 2.6) with complete COMT val158met and MAOA-uVNTR genotyping information were studied. We used logistic regression with genotypes as independent variables and the binary phenotype as the dependent variable. We used p < 0.05 as the level of nominal statistical significance. Bonferroni correction procedures were used to adjust for multiple comparisons.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results highlight the potential etiologic role of COMT in the ADHD with comorbid ODD and its predominately inattentive type in male Chinese subjects. ADHD with comorbid ODD was associated with homozygosity of the high-activity Val allele, while the predominantly inattentive ADHD subtype was associated with the low-activity Met allele. We found no evidence of association between the MAOA-uVNTR variant and ADHD with comorbid ODD or the ADHD-IA subtype.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder comorbid oppositional defiant disorder and its predominately inattentive type highlights the potential etiologic role of COMT for ADHD children in China. But we failed to observe an interaction between COMT and MAOA, which suggests that epistasis between COMT and MAOA genes does not influence the phenotype of ADHD-IA with comorbid ODD in a clinical sample of Chinese male subjects. To confirm our findings further studies with a larger number of subjects and healthy controls are needed.</p

    Dynamics of threads and polymers in turbulence: power-law distributions and synchronization

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    We study the behavior of threads and polymers in a turbulent flow. These objects have finite spatial extension, so the flow along them differs slightly. The corresponding drag forces produce a finite average stretching and the thread is stretched most of the time. Nevertheless, the probability of shrinking fluctuations is significant and is known to decay only as a power-law. We show that the exponent of the power law is a universal number independent of the statistics of the flow. For polymers the coil-stretch transition exists: the flow must have a sufficiently large Lyapunov exponent to overcome the elastic resistance and stretch the polymer from the coiled state it takes otherwise. The probability of shrinking from the stretched state above the transition again obeys a power law but with a non-universal exponent. We show that well above the transition the exponent becomes universal and derive the corresponding expression. Furthermore, we demonstrate synchronization: the end-to-end distances of threads or polymers above the transition are synchronized by the flow and become identical. Thus, the transition from Newtonian to non-Newtonian behavior in dilute polymer solutions can be seen as an ordering transition.Comment: 13 pages, version accepted to Journal of Statistical Mechanic

    Probing Topcolor-Assisted Technicolor from Like-sign Top Pair Production at LHC

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    The topcolor-assisted technicolor (TC2) theory predicts tree-level flavor-changing neutral-current (FCNC) top quark Yukawa couplings with top-pions. Such FCNC interactions will induce like-sign top quark pair productions at CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While these rare productions are far below the observable level in the Standard Model and other popular new physics models such as the Minimal Supersymmetric Model, we find that in a sound part of parameter space the TC2 model can enhance the production cross sections to several tens of fb and thus may be observable at the LHC due to rather low backgrounds. Searching for these productions at the LHC will serve as an excellent probe for the TC2 model.Comment: 10 pages, 6 fig

    Topological Force and Torque in Spin-Orbit Coupling System

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    The topological force and torque are investigated in the systems with spin-orbit coupling. Our results show that the topological force and torque appears as a pure relativistic quantum effect in an electromagnetic field. The origin of both topological force and torque is the Zitterbewegung effect. Considering nonlinear behaviors of spin-orbit coupling, we address possible phenomena driven by the topological forces.Comment: 4 page
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