Open charm tomography of cold nuclear matter

We study the relative contribution of partonic sub-processes to D meson production and D meson-triggered inclusive di-hadrons to lowest order in perturbative QCD. While gluon fusion dominates the creation of large angle DD-bar pairs, charm on light parton scattering determines the yield of single inclusive D mesons. The distinctly different non-perturbative fragmentation of c quarks into D mesons versus the fragmentation of quarks and gluons into light hadrons results in a strong transverse momentum dependence of anticharm content of the away-side charm-triggered jet. In p+A reactions, we calculate and resum the coherent nuclear-enhanced power corrections from the final state partonic scattering in the medium. We find that single and double inclusive open charm production can be suppressed as much as the yield of neutral pions from dynamical high-twist shadowing. Effects of energy loss in p+A collisions are also investigated phenomenologically and may lead to significantly weaker transverse momentum dependence of the nuclear attenuation.Comment: 24 pages, 21 figure

Engineering Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Ultra-Cold Atoms

Topological insulators are a broad class of unconventional materials that are insulating in the interior but conduct along the edges. This edge transport is topologically protected and dissipationless. Until recently, all existing topological insulators, known as quantum Hall states, violated time-reversal symmetry. However, the discovery of the quantum spin Hall effect demonstrated the existence of novel topological states not rooted in time-reversal violations. Here, we lay out an experiment to realize time-reversal topological insulators in ultra-cold atomic gases subjected to synthetic gauge fields in the near-field of an atom-chip. In particular, we introduce a feasible scheme to engineer sharp boundaries where the "edge states" are localized. Besides, this multi-band system has a large parameter space exhibiting a variety of quantum phase transitions between topological and normal insulating phases. Due to their unprecedented controllability, cold-atom systems are ideally suited to realize topological states of matter and drive the development of topological quantum computing.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Bottom-loading dilution refrigerator with ultra-high vacuum deposition capability

A Kelvinox 400 dilution refrigerator with the ability to load samples onto the mixing chamber from the bottom of the cryostat has been combined with an ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) deposition chamber equipped with molecular beam sources. The liquid helium cooled sample transfer mechanism is used in a manner that allows films to be grown on substrates which are kept at temperatures of order 8K with chamber pressures in the 10^-9 to 10^-10 Torr range. This system facilitates the growth of quench-condensed ultrathin films which must always be kept below ~ 12K in a UHV environment during and after growth. Measurements can be made on the films down to millikelvin temperatures and in magnetic fields up to 15 T.Comment: 10 pages text, 1figur

Characterizing the Hofstadter butterfly's outline with Chern numbers

In this work, we report original properties inherent to independent particles subjected to a magnetic field by emphasizing the existence of regular structures in the energy spectrum's outline. We show that this fractal curve, the well-known Hofstadter butterfly's outline, is associated to a specific sequence of Chern numbers that correspond to the quantized transverse conductivity. Indeed the topological invariant that characterizes the fundamental energy band depicts successive stairways as the magnetic flux varies. Moreover each stairway is shown to be labeled by another Chern number which measures the charge transported under displacement of the periodic potential. We put forward the universal character of these properties by comparing the results obtained for the square and the honeycomb geometries.Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Phys. B (Jan 2009

Synthetic gauge fields in synthetic dimensions

We describe a simple technique for generating a cold-atom lattice pierced by a uniform magnetic field. Our method is to extend a one-dimensional optical lattice into the "dimension" provided by the internal atomic degrees of freedom, yielding a synthetic 2D lattice. Suitable laser-coupling between these internal states leads to a uniform magnetic flux within the 2D lattice. We show that this setup reproduces the main features of magnetic lattice systems, such as the fractal Hofstadter butterfly spectrum and the chiral edge states of the associated Chern insulating phases.Comment: 5+4 pages, 5+3 figures, two-column revtex; v2: discussion of role of interactions added, Fig. 1 reshaped, minor changes, references adde