Direct CP Violation in Charmless B Decays at LHCb

Using data collected by LHCb experiment in 2011 we report the measurements of charge asymmetries in charmless decays of B mesons in two or three charged kaons or pions. We find positive charge asymmetries in the channels Bs->K-pi+(3.3 sigmas), B+->K+pi+pi- (2.8 sigmas), and B+->pi+pi+pi- (4.2 sigmas) and negative in B0->K+pi-(6 sigmas),B+->K+K+K- (3.7 sigma), B+->K+K-pi+ (3.0 sigma).Comment: Proceedings of CKM 2012, the 7th International Workshop on the CKM Unitarity Triangle, University of Cincinnati, USA, 28 September - 2 October 201

All-optical transport and compression of ytterbium atoms into the surface of a solid immersion lens

We present an all-optical method to load 174Yb atoms into a single layer of an optical trap near the surface of a solid immersion lens which improves the numerical aperture of a microscope system. Atoms are transported to a region 20 um below the surface using a system comprised by three optical dipole traps. The "optical accordion" technique is used to create a condensate and compress the atoms to a width of 120 nm and a distance of 1.8 um away from the surface. Moreover, we are able to verify that after compression the condensate behaves as a two-dimensional quantum gas.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The effect of low mass substructures on the Cusp lensing relation

It has been argued that the flux anomalies detected in gravitationally lensed QSOs are evidence for substructures in the foreground lensing haloes. In this paper we investigate this issue in greater detail focusing on the Cusp relation which corresponds to images of a source located to the cusp of the inner caustic curve. We use numerical simulations combined with a Monte Carlo approach to study the effects of the expected power law distribution of substructures within LCDM haloes on the multiple images. Generally, the high number of anomalous flux ratios in the cusp configurations is unlikely explained by 'simple' perturbers (subhaloes) inside the lensing galaxy, either modeled by point masses or extended NFW subhaloes. We considered in our analysis a mass range of 10^5-10^7 Msun for the subhaloes. We also demonstrate that including the effects of the surrounding mass distribution, such as other galaxies close to the primary lens, does not change the results. We conclude that triple images of lensed QSOs do not show any direct evidence for dark dwarf galaxies such as cold dark matter substructure.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figures, Effects of different subhalos concentrations discussed, analysis improved, accepted by MNRA

Sub-arcsecond Morphology of Planetary Nebulae

Planetary nebulae (PNe) can be roughly categorized into several broad morphological classes. The high quality images of PNe acquired in recent years, however, have revealed a wealth of fine structures that preclude simplistic models for their formation. Here we present narrow-band, sub-arcsecond images of a sample of relatively large PNe that illustrate the complexity and variety of small-scale structures. This is especially true for bipolar PNe, for which the images reveal multi-polar ejections and, in some cases, suggest turbulent gas motions. Our images also reveal the presence or signs of jet-like outflows in several objects in which this kind of component has not been previously reported.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in PAS