Traveling Dark Solitons in Superfluid Fermi Gases

Families of dark solitons exist in superfluid Fermi gases. The energy-velocity dispersion and number of depleted particles completely determines the dynamics of dark solitons on a slowly-varying background density. For the unitary Fermi gas we determine these relations from general scaling arguments and conservation of local particle number. We find solitons to oscillate sinusoidally at the trap frequency reduced by a factor of $1/\sqrt{3}$. Numerical integration of the time-dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation determines spatial profiles and soliton dispersion relations across the BEC-BCS crossover and proves consistent with the scaling relations at unitarity.Comment: Small changes in response to referee's comments; fig 1 revised and refs updated. Cross listed to nucl-th due to interest in the unitary Fermi ga

Anomaly inflow mechanism using Wilson line

It is shown that the anomaly inflow mechanism can be implemented using Wilson line in odd dimensional gauge theories. An action of Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) type can be constructed using Wilson line. The action is understood in the odd dimensional bulk space-time rather than in the even dimensional boundary. This action is not gauge invariant. It gives anomalous gauge variations of the consistent form on boundary space-times. So it can be used to cancel the quantum anomalies localized on boundary space-times. This offers a new way to cancel the gauge anomaly and construct anomaly-free gauge theory in odd dimensional space-time.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; title changed; text and figure improved; references adde

WZW action in odd dimensional gauge theories

It is shown that Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) type actions can be constructed in odd dimensional space-times using Wilson line or Wilson loop. WZW action constructed using Wilson line gives anomalous gauge variations and the WZW action constructed using Wilson loop gives anomalous chiral transformation. We show that pure gauge theory including Yang-Mills action, Chern-Simons action and the WZW action can be defined in odd dimensional space-times with even dimensional boundaries. Examples in 3D and 5D are given. We emphasize that this offers a way to generalize gauge theory in odd dimensions. The WZW action constructed using Wilson line can not be considered as action localized on boundary space-times since it can give anomalous gauge transformations on separated boundaries. We try to show that such WZW action can be obtained in the effective theory when making localized chiral fermions decouple.Comment: 19 pages, text shortened, reference added. Version to appear in PR

Mass spectrometry protein expression profiles in colorectal cancer tissue associated with clinico-pathological features of disease.

Background: Studies of several tumour types have shown that expression profiling of cellular protein extracted from surgical tissue specimens by direct mass spectrometry analysis can accurately discriminate tumour from normal tissue and in some cases can sub-classify disease. We have evaluated the potential value of this approach to classify various clinico-pathological features in colorectal cancer by employing matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time of-flight-mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Methods: Protein extracts from 31 tumour and 33 normal mucosa specimens were purified, subjected to MALDI-Tof MS and then analysed using the `GenePattern' suite of computational tools (Broad Institute, MIT, USA). Comparative Gene Marker Selection with either a t-test or a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) test statistic was used to identify and rank differentially expressed marker peaks. The k-nearest neighbours algorithm was used to build classification models either using separate training and test datasets or else by using an iterative, `leave-one-out' cross-validation method. Results: 73 protein peaks in the mass range 1800-16000Da were differentially expressed in tumour verses adjacent normal mucosa tissue (P <= 0.01, false discovery rate <= 0.05). Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis classified most tumour and normal mucosa into distinct cluster groups. Supervised prediction correctly classified the tumour/normal mucosa status of specimens in an independent test spectra dataset with 100\% sensitivity and specificity (95\% confidence interval: 67.9-99.2\%). Supervised prediction using `leave-one-out' cross validation algorithms for tumour spectra correctly classified 10/13 poorly differentiated and 16/18 well/moderately differentiated tumours (P = < 0.001; receiver-operator characteristics - ROC - error, 0.171); disease recurrence was correctly predicted in 5/6 cases and disease-free survival (median follow-up time, 25 months) was correctly predicted in 22/23 cases (P = < 0.001; ROC error, 0.105). A similar analysis of normal mucosa spectra correctly predicted 11/14 patients with, and 15/19 patients without lymph node involvement (P = 0.001; ROC error, 0.212). Conclusions: Protein expression profiling of surgically resected CRC tissue extracts by MALDI-TOF MS has potential value in studies aimed at improved molecular classification of this disease. Further studies, with longer follow-up times and larger patient cohorts, that would permit independent validation of supervised classification models, would be required to confirm the predictive value of tumour spectra for disease recurrence/patient survival

Spectroscopic probes of isolated nonequilibrium quantum matter: Quantum quenches, Floquet states, and distribution functions

We investigate radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy, metal-to-superconductor tunneling, and ARPES as probes of isolated out-of-equilibrium quantum systems, and examine the crucial role played by the nonequilibrium distribution function. As an example, we focus on the induced topological time-periodic (Floquet) phase in a 2D $p+ip$ superfluid, following an instantaneous quench of the coupling strength. The post-quench Cooper pairs occupy a linear combination of "ground" and "excited" Floquet states, with coefficients determined by the distribution function. While the Floquet bandstructure exhibits a single avoided crossing relative to the equilibrium case, the distribution function shows a population inversion of the Floquet bands at low energies. For a realization in ultracold atoms, these two features compensate, producing a bulk average rf signal that is well-captured by a quasi-equilibrium approximation. In particular, the rf spectrum shows a robust gap. The single crossing occurs because the quench-induced Floquet phase belongs to a particular class of soliton dynamics for the BCS equation. The population inversion is a consequence of this, and ensures the conservation of the pseudospin winding number. As a comparison, we compute the rf signal when only the lower Floquet band is occupied; in this case, the gap disappears for strong quenches. The tunneling signal in a solid state realization is ignorant of the distribution function, and can show wildly different behaviors. We also examine rf, tunneling, and ARPES for weak quenches, such that the resulting topological steady-state is characterized by a constant nonequilibrium order parameter. In a system with a boundary, tunneling reveals the Majorana edge states. However, the local rf signal due to the edge states is suppressed by a factor of the inverse system size, and is spatially deconfined throughout the bulk of the sample.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures. v2: Added calculated ARPES spectr

Gravitational Thermodynamics of Space-time Foam in One-loop Approximation

We show from one-loop quantum gravity and statistical thermodynamics that the thermodynamics of quantum foam in flat space-time and Schwarzschild space-time is exactly the same as that of Hawking-Unruh radiation in thermal equilibrium. This means we show unambiguously that Hawking-Unruh thermal radiation should contain thermal gravitons or the contribution of quantum space-time foam. As a by-product, we give also the quantum gravity correction in one-loop approximation to the classical black hole thermodynamics.Comment: 7 pages, revte