How to identify a Strange Star

Contrary to young neutron stars, young strange stars are not subject to the r-mode instability which slows rapidly rotating, hot neutron stars to rotation periods near 10 ms via gravitational wave emission. Young millisecond pulsars are therefore likely to be strange stars rather than neutron stars, or at least to contain significant quantities of quark matter in the interior.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Strong Orientation Effects in Ionization of H2+_2^+ by Short, Intense, High-Frequency Light Sources

We present three dimensional time-dependent calculations of ionization of arbitrarily spatially oriented H$_2^+$ by attosecond, intense, high-frequency laser fields. The ionization probability shows a strong dependence on both the internuclear distance and the relative orientation between the laser field and the internuclear axis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Ionization of oriented targets by intense circularly polarized laser pulses: Imprints of orbital angular nodes in the 2D momentum distribution

We solve the three-dimensional time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a few-cycle circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulse interacting with an oriented target exemplified by an Argon atom, initially in a $3\text{p}_{x}$ or $3\text{p}_{y}$ state. The photoelectron momentum distributions show distinct signatures of the orbital structure of the initial state as well as the carrier-envelope phase of the applied pulse. Our \textit{ab initio} results are compared with results obtained using the length-gauge strong-field approximation, which allows for a clear interpretation of the results in terms of classical physics. Furthermore, we show that ionization by a circularly polarized pulse completely maps out the angular nodal structure of the initial state, thus providing a potential tool for studying orbital symmetry in individual systems or during chemical reactions

Control and femtosecond time-resolved imaging of torsion in a chiral molecule

We study how the combination of long and short laser pulses, can be used to induce torsion in an axially chiral biphenyl derivative (3,5-difluoro-3',5'-dibromo-4'-cyanobiphenyl). A long, with respect to the molecular rotational periods, elliptically polarized laser pulse produces 3D alignment of the molecules, and a linearly polarized short pulse initiates torsion about the stereogenic axis. The torsional motion is monitored in real-time by measuring the dihedral angle using femtosecond time-resolved Coulomb explosion imaging. Within the first 4 picoseconds, torsion occurs with a period of 1.25 picoseconds and an amplitude of 3 degrees in excellent agreement with theoretical calculations. At larger times the quantum states of the molecules describing the torsional motion dephase and an almost isotropic distribution of the dihedral angle is measured. We demonstrate an original application of covariance analysis of two-dimensional ion images to reveal strong correlations between specific ejected ionic fragments from Coulomb explosion. This technique strengthens our interpretation of the experimental data.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Second-order rotational effects on the r-modes of neutron stars

Techniques are developed here for evaluating the r-modes of rotating neutron stars through second order in the angular velocity of the star. Second-order corrections to the frequencies and eigenfunctions for these modes are evaluated for neutron star models. The second-order eigenfunctions for these modes are determined here by solving an unusual inhomogeneous hyperbolic boundary-value problem. The numerical techniques developed to solve this unusual problem are somewhat non-standard and may well be of interest beyond the particular application here. The bulk-viscosity coupling to the r-modes, which appears first at second order, is evaluated. The bulk-viscosity timescales are found here to be longer than previous estimates for normal neutron stars, but shorter than previous estimates for strange stars. These new timescales do not substantially affect the current picture of the gravitational radiation driven instability of the r-modes either for neutron stars or for strange stars.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, revte

WHAM Observations of H-alpha from High-Velocity Clouds: Are They Galactic or Extragalactic?

It has been suggested that high velocity clouds may be distributed throughout the Local Group and are therefore not in general associated with the Milky Way galaxy. With the aim of testing this hypothesis, we have made observations in the H-alpha line of high velocity clouds selected as the most likely candidates for being at larger than average distances. We have found H-alpha emission from 4 out of 5 of the observed clouds, suggesting that the clouds under study are being illuminated by a Lyman continuum flux greater than that of the metagalactic ionizing radiation. Therefore, it appears likely that these clouds are in the Galactic halo and not distributed throughout the Local Group.Comment: 12 pages, 5 eps figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Physics and Astrophysics of Strange Quark Matter

3-flavor quark matter (strange quark matter; SQM) can be stable or metastable for a wide range of strong interaction parameters. If so, SQM can play an important role in cosmology, neutron stars, cosmic ray physics, and relativistic heavy-ion collisions. As an example of the intimate connections between astrophysics and heavy-ion collision physics, this Chapter gives an overview of the physical properties of SQM in bulk and of small-baryon number strangelets; discusses the possible formation, destruction, and implications of lumps of SQM (quark nuggets) in the early Universe; and describes the structure and signature of strange stars, as well as formation and detection of strangelets in cosmic rays. It is concluded, that astrophysical and laboratory searches are complementary in many respects, and that both should be pursued to test the intriguing possibility of a strange ground state for hadronic matter, and (more generally) to improve our knowledge of the strong interactions.Comment: 45 pages incl. figures. To appear in "Hadrons in Dense Matter and Hadrosynthesis", Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer Verlag (ed. J.Cleymans

Probabilistic state preparation of a single molecular ion by projection measurement

We show how to prepare a single molecular ion in a specific internal quantum state in a situation where the molecule is trapped and sympathetically cooled by an atomic ion and where its internal degrees of freedom are initially in thermal equilibrium with the surroundings. The scheme is based on conditional creation of correlation between the internal state of the molecule and the translational state of the collective motion of the two ions, followed by a projection measurement of this collective mode by atomic ion shelving techniques. State preparation in a large number of internal states is possible.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 2 table

Colour-singlet strangelets at finite temperature

Considering massless $u$ and $d$ quarks, and massive (150 MeV) $s$ quarks in a bag with the bag pressure constant $B^{1/4} = 145$ MeV, a colour-singlet grand canonical partition function is constructed for temperatures $T = 1-30$ MeV. Then the stability of finite size strangelets is studied minimizing the free energy as a function of the radius of the bag. The colour-singlet restriction has several profound effects when compared to colour unprojected case: (1) Now bulk energy per baryon is increased by about $250$ MeV making the strange quark matter unbound. (2) The shell structures are more pronounced (deeper). (3) Positions of the shell closure are shifted to lower $A$-values, the first deepest one occuring at $A=2$, famous $H$-particle ! (4) The shell structure at $A=2$ vanishes only at $T\sim 30$ MeV, though for higher $A$-values it happens so at $T\sim 20$ MeV.Comment: Revtex file(8 pages)+6 figures(ps files) available on request from first Autho