Macroscopic tunneling of a membrane in an optomechanical double-well potential

The macroscopic tunneling of an optomechanical membrane is considered. A cavity mode which couples quadratically to the membranes position can create highly tunable adiabatic double-well potentials, which together with the high Q-factors of such membranes render the observation of macroscopic tunneling possible. A suitable, pulsed measurement scheme using a linearly coupled mode of the cavity for the verification of the effect is studied.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Role of the relative phase in the merging of two independent Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the merging of two independent Bose-Einstein condensates with arbitrary initial phase difference, in the framework of a one-dimensional time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii model. The role of the initial phase difference in the process is discussed, and various types of phase-sensitive excitations are identified.Comment: 19 Pages, 7 figure

Correlated directional atomic clouds via four-heterowave mixing

We investigate the coherence properties of pairs of counter-propagating atomic clouds, produced in superradiant Rayleigh scattering off atomic condensates. It is shown that these clouds exhibit long-range spatial coherence and strong nonclassical density cross-correlations, which make this scheme a promising candidate for the production of highly directional nonclassically correlated atomic pulses.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Design Considerations for an Orbital NonPropulsive Vent System

Minimizing of attitude disturbances during critical maneuvers in space is extremely important to the success of present and future aerospace missions. Thus, a means is needed to ensure that definite attitude positions can be maintained during specific phases of a mission and in some cases indefinitely. To fulfill this requirement, excess or residual propellant vapors and waste gases must be removed with minimum impulse unbalances imparted to the vehicle. The obvious method of accomplishing this is to employ a vent system that dissipates the impulse generated by the various effluents in a nonpropulsive manner. Such nonpropulsive vent (NPV) systems have been designed, installed and flown on several S-IV and S-IVB stages of the Saturn Launch Vehicles. This system was the first of its kind to be tested in orbit, and the data from these flights clearly substantiates the design adequacy of the system. Design considerations and the overall approach in resolving the requirements of this system are discussed in detail

Optically mediated nonlinear quantum optomechanics

We consider theoretically the optomechanical interaction of several mechanical modes with a single quantized cavity field mode for linear and quadratic coupling. We focus specifically on situations where the optical dissipation is the dominant source of damping, in which case the optical field can be adiabatically eliminated, resulting in effective multimode interactions between the mechanical modes. In the case of linear coupling, the coherent contribution to the interaction can be exploited e.g. in quantum state swapping protocols, while the incoherent part leads to significant modifications of cold damping or amplification from the single-mode situation. Quadratic coupling can result in a wealth of possible effective interactions including the analogs of second-harmonic generation and four-wave mixing in nonlinear optics, with specific forms depending sensitively on the sign of the coupling. The cavity-mediated mechanical interaction of two modes is investigated in two limiting cases, the resolved sideband and the Doppler regime. As an illustrative application of the formal analysis we discuss in some detail a two-mode system where a Bose-Einstein condensate is optomechanically linearly coupled to the moving end mirror of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure