Self-Aligned Ballistic Molecular Transistors and Electrically Parallel Nanotube Arrays

Carbon nanotube field-effect transistors with structures and properties near the scaling limit with short (down to 50 nm) channels, self aligned geometries, palladium electrodes with low contact resistance and high-k dielectric gate insulators are realized. Electrical transport in these miniature transistors is near ballistic up to high biases at both room and low temperatures. Atomic layer deposited (ALD) high-k films interact with nanotube sidewalls via van der Waals interactions without causing weak localization at 4 K. New fundamental understanding of ballistic transport, optical phonon scattering and potential interfacial scattering mechanisms in nanotubes are obtained.Comment: Nano Letters, in pres

A Quantum Tweezer for Atoms

We propose a quantum tweezer for extracting a desired number of neutral atoms from a reservoir. A trapped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is used as the reservoir, taking advantage of its coherent nature, which can guarantee a constant outcome. The tweezer is an attractive quantum dot, which may be generated by red-detuned laser light. By moving with certain speeds, the dot can extract a desired number of atoms from the BEC through Landau-Zener tunneling. The feasibility of our quantum tweezer is demonstrated through realistic and extensive model calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures Revised versio

Transition to Instability in a Kicked Bose-Einstein Condensate

A periodically kicked ring of a Bose-Einstein condensate is considered as a nonlinear generalization of the quantum kicked rotor. For weak interactions between atoms, periodic motion (anti-resonance) becomes quasiperiodic (quantum beating) but remains stable. There exists a critical strength of interactions beyond which quasiperiodic motion becomes chaotic, resulting in an instability of the condensate manifested by exponential growth in the number of noncondensed atoms. Similar behavior is observed for dynamically localized states (essentially quasiperiodic motions), where stability remains for weak interactions but is destroyed by strong interactions.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figs. A new affiliation is added. Accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Quantum Chaos of Bogoliubov Waves for a Bose-Einstein Condensate in Stadium Billiards

We investigate the possibility of quantum (or wave) chaos for the Bogoliubov excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate in billiards. Because of the mean field interaction in the condensate, the Bogoliubov excitations are very different from the single particle excitations in a non-interacting system. Nevertheless, we predict that the statistical distribution of level spacings is unchanged by mapping the non-Hermitian Bogoliubov operator to a real symmetric matrix. We numerically test our prediction by using a phase shift method for calculating the excitation energies.Comment: minor change, 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Ultra-high fidelity qubits for quantum computing

We analyze a system of fermionic $^{6}$Li atoms in an optical trap, and show that an atom "on demand" can be prepared with ultra-high fidelity, exceeding 0.99998. This process can be scaled to many sites in parallel, providing a realistic method to initialize N qubits at ultra-high fidelity for quantum computing. We also show how efficient quantum gate operation can be implemented in this system, and how spatially resolved single-atom detection can be performed

Calculation of Atomic Number States: a Bethe Ansatz Approach

We analyze the conditions for producing atomic number states in a one-dimensional optical box using the Bethe ansatz method. This approach provides a general framework, enabling the study of number state production over a wide range of realistic experimental parameters

Circular Permutation in the Ω-Loop of TEM-1 β-Lactamase Results in Improved Activity and Altered Substrate Specificity

Generating diverse protein libraries that contain improved variants at a sufficiently high frequency is critical for improving the properties of proteins using directed evolution. Many studies have illustrated how random mutagenesis, cassette mutagenesis, DNA shuffling and similar approaches are effective diversity generating methods for directed evolution. Very few studies have explored random circular permutation, the intramolecular relocation of the N- and C-termini of a protein, as a diversity-generating step for directed evolution. We subjected a library of random circular permutations of TEM-1 β-lactamase to selections on increasing concentrations of a variety of β-lactam antibiotics including cefotaxime. We identified two circularly permuted variants that conferred elevated resistance to cefotaxime but decreased resistance to other antibiotics. These variants were circularly permuted in the Ω-loop proximal to the active site. Remarkably, one variant was circularly permuted such that the key catalytic residue Glu166 was located at the N-terminus of the mature protein