Experimental measurement of efficiency and transport coherence of a cold atom Brownian motor in optical lattices

The rectification of noise into directed movement or useful energy is utilized by many different systems. The peculiar nature of the energy source and conceptual differences between such Brownian motor systems makes a characterization of the performance far from straightforward. In this work, where the Brownian motor consists of atoms interacting with dissipative optical lattices, we adopt existing theory and present experimental measurements for both the efficiency and the transport coherence. We achieve up to 0.3% for the efficiency and 0.01 for the P\'eclet number

Modelling the evolution and nucleosynthesis of carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars

We present the results of binary population simulations of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars. We show that nitrogen and fluorine are useful tracers of the origin of CEMP stars, and conclude that the observed paucity of very nitrogen-rich stars puts strong constraints on possible modifications of the initial mass function at low metallicity. The large number fraction of CEMP stars may instead require much more efficient dredge-up from low-metallicity asymptotic giant branch stars.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 252 "The Art of Modelling Stars in the 21st Century", April 6-11, 2008, Sanya, Chin

Resonant Phenomena in Antihydrogen-Hydrogen Scattering

We present a treatment of cold hydrogen-antihydrogen collisions based on the asymptotic properties of atom-antiatom interactions. We derive general formulas for the elastic and inelastic cross sections and for the scattering lengths and analyze their sensitivity to the parameters characterizing the inelasticity of the collision process. Given the inelasticity, we obtain bounds for the complex scattering length. We investigate the influence of strong nuclear forces and the isotope effects in $\bar{\rm H}{\rm H}$ and $\bar{\rm H}{\rm D}$ collisions and demonstrate enhancement of these effects due to the presence of the near-threshold narrow ${\rm H}\bar{\rm H}$ ($\bar{\rm H}{\rm D}$) states. The values of the elastic and inelastic cross-sections with simultaneous account of rearrangement and strong forces are presented. General expressions for the (complex) energies of the near-threshold $\rm{H}\bar{\rm H}$ states are obtained.Comment: 26 pages 7 figure

Specialists in ancient trees are more affected by climate than generalists

Ancient trees are considered one of the most important habitats for biodiversity in Europe and North America. They support exceptional numbers of specialized species, including a range of rare and endangered wood-living insects. In this study, we use a dataset of 105 sites spanning a climatic gradient along the oak range of Norway and Sweden to investigate the importance of temperature and precipitation on beetle species richness in ancient, hollow oak trees. We expected that increased summer temperature would positively influence all wood-living beetle species whereas precipitation would be less important with a negligible or negative impact. Surprisingly, only oak-specialist beetles with a northern distribu- tion increased in species richness with temperature. Few specialist beetles and no generalist beetles responded to the rise of 4°C in summer as covered by our cli- matic gradient. The negative effect of precipitation affected more specialist species than did temperature, whereas the generalists remained unaffected. In summary, we suggest that increased summer temperature is likely to benefit a few specialist beetles within this dead wood community, but a larger number of specialists are likely to decline due to increased precipitation. In addition, generalist species will remain unaffected. To minimize adverse impacts of climate change on this impor- tant community, long-term management plans for ancient trees are important

Synergistic and antagonistic effects of land use and non‐native species on community responses to climate change

Climate change, land‐use change and introductions of non‐native species are key determinants of biodiversity change worldwide. However, the extent to which anthropogenic drivers of environmental change interact to affect biological communities is largely unknown, especially over longer time periods. Here, we show that plant community composition in 996 Swedish landscapes has consistently shifted to reflect the warmer and wetter climate that the region has experienced during the second half of the 20th century. Using community climatic indices, which reflect the average climatic associations of the species within each landscape at each time period, we found that species compositions in 74% of landscapes now have a higher representation of warm‐associated species than they did previously, while 84% of landscapes now host more species associated with higher levels of precipitation. In addition to a warmer and wetter climate, there have also been large shifts in land use across the region, while the fraction of non‐native species has increased in the majority of landscapes. Climatic warming at the landscape level appeared to favour the colonization of warm‐associated species, while also potentially driving losses in cool‐associated species. However, the resulting increases in community thermal means were apparently buffered by landscape simplification (reduction in habitat heterogeneity within landscapes) in the form of increased forest cover. Increases in non‐native species, which generally originate from warmer climates than Sweden, were a strong driver of community‐level warming. In terms of precipitation, both landscape simplification and increases in non‐natives appeared to favour species associated with drier climatic conditions, to some extent counteracting the climate‐driven shift towards wetter communities. Anthropogenic drivers can act both synergistically and antagonistically to determine trajectories of change in biological communities over time. Therefore, it is important to consider multiple drivers of global change when trying to understand, manage and predict biodiversity in the future

Variational calculations for the hydrogen-antihydrogen system with a mass-scaled Born-Oppenheimer potential

The problem of proton-antiproton motion in the ${\rm H}$--${\rm \bar{H}}$ system is investigated by means of the variational method. We introduce a modified nuclear interaction through mass-scaling of the Born-Oppenheimer potential. This improved treatment of the interaction includes the nondivergent part of the otherwise divergent adiabatic correction and shows the correct threshold behavior. Using this potential we calculate the vibrational energy levels with angular momentum 0 and 1 and the corresponding nuclear wave functions, as well as the S-wave scattering length. We obtain a full set of all bound states together with a large number of discretized continuum states that might be utilized in variational four-body calculations. The results of our calculations gives an indication of resonance states in the hydrogen-antihydrogen system

Efimov Trimers near the Zero-crossing of a Feshbach Resonance

Near a Feshbach resonance, the two-body scattering length can assume any value. When it approaches zero, the next-order term given by the effective range is known to diverge. We consider the question of whether this divergence (and the vanishing of the scattering length) is accompanied by an anomalous solution of the three-boson Schr\"odinger equation similar to the one found at infinite scattering length by Efimov. Within a simple zero-range model, we find no such solutions, and conclude that higher-order terms do not support Efimov physics.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, final versio

Beryllium abundances in metal-poor stars

We have determined beryllium abundances for 25 metal-poor stars based on the high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio spectra from the VLT/UVES database. Our results confirm that Be abundances increase with Fe, supporting the global enrichment of Be in the Galaxy. Oxygen abundances based on [O I] forbidden line implies a linear relation with a slope close to one for the Be vs. O trend, which indicates that Be is probably produced in a primary process. Some strong evidences are found for the intrinsic dispersion of Be abundances at a given metallicity. The deviation of HD132475 and HD126681 from the general Be vs. Fe and Be vs. O trend favours the predictions of the superbubble model, though the possibility that such dispersion originates from the inhomogeneous enrichment in Fe and O of the protogalactic gas cannot be excluded.Comment: 12 pages with 9 figures, to be published in MNRA

The Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star survey (HERES) VI. The Galactic Chemical Evolution of Silicon

We determined the silicon abundances of 253 metal-poor stars in the metallicity range $-4<\mathrm{[Fe/H]} <-1.5$, based on non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) line formation calculations of neutral silicon and high-resolution spectra obtained with VLT-UT2/UVES. The $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$ dependence of [Si/Fe] noticed in previous investigation is diminished in our abundance analysis due to the inclusion of NLTE effects. An increasing slope of [Si/Fe] towards decreasing metallicity is present in our results, in agreement with Galactic chemical evolution models. The small intrinsic scatter of [Si/Fe] in our sample may imply that these stars formed in a region where the yields of type II supernovae were mixed into a large volume, or that the formation of these stars was strongly clustered, even if the ISM was enriched by single SNa II in a small mixing volume. We identified two dwarfs with $\mathrm{[Si/Fe]}\sim +1.0$: HE 0131$-$3953, and HE 1430$-$1123. These main-sequence turnoff stars are also carbon-enhanced. They might have been pre-enriched by sub-luminous supernovae.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 1 electronical table. Accepted by A &

Correlated N-boson systems for arbitrary scattering length

We investigate systems of identical bosons with the focus on two-body correlations and attractive finite-range potentials. We use a hyperspherical adiabatic method and apply a Faddeev type of decomposition of the wave function. We discuss the structure of a condensate as function of particle number and scattering length. We establish universal scaling relations for the critical effective radial potentials for distances where the average distance between particle pairs is larger than the interaction range. The correlations in the wave function restore the large distance mean-field behaviour with the correct two-body interaction. We discuss various processes limiting the stability of condensates. With correlations we confirm that macroscopic tunneling dominates when the trap length is about half of the particle number times the scattering length.Comment: 15 pages (RevTeX4), 11 figures (LaTeX), submitted to Phys. Rev. A. Second version includes an explicit comparison to N=3, a restructured manuscript, and updated figure