1,958 research outputs found
Ultralight amorphous silicon alloy photovoltaic modules for space applications
Ultralight and ultrathin, flexible, rollup monolithic PV modules have been developed consisting of multijunction, amorphous silicon alloys for either terrestrial or aerospace applications. The rate of progress in increasing conversion efficiency of stable multijunction and multigap PV cells indicates that arrays of these modules can be available for NASA's high power systems in the 1990's. Because of the extremely light module weight and the highly automated process of manufacture, the monolithic a-Si alloy arrays are expected to be strongly competitive with other systems for use in NASA's space station or in other large aerospace applications
Geometric phase in dephasing systems
Beyond the quantum Markov approximation, we calculate the geometric phase of
a two-level system driven by a quantized magnetic field subject to phase
dephasing. The phase reduces to the standard geometric phase in the weak
coupling limit and it involves the phase information of the environment in
general. In contrast with the geometric phase in dissipative systems, the
geometric phase acquired by the system can be observed on a long time scale. We
also show that with the system decohering to its pointer states, the geometric
phase factor tends to a sum over the phase factors pertaining to the pointer
states.Comment: 4 page
Entropy and specific heat for open systems in steady states
The fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics is that the system is
equally likely in any of the accessible microstates. Based on this assumption,
the Boltzmann distribution is derived and the full theory of statistical
thermodynamics can be built. In this paper, we show that the Boltzmann
distribution in general can not describe the steady state of open system. Based
on the effective Hamiltonian approach, we calculate the specific heat, the free
energy and the entropy for an open system in steady states. Examples are
illustrated and discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure
Two-species magneto-optical trap with 40K and 87Rb
We trap and cool a gas composed of 40K and 87Rb, using a two-species
magneto-optical trap (MOT). This trap represents the first step towards cooling
the Bose-Fermi mixture to quantum degeneracy. Laser light for the MOT is
derived from laser diodes and amplified with a single high power semiconductor
amplifier chip. The four-color laser system is described, and the
single-species and two-species MOTs are characterized. Atom numbers of 1x10^7
40K and 2x10^9 87Rb are trapped in the two-species MOT. Observation of trap
loss due to collisions between species is presented and future prospects for
the experiment are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review
Cooling the Collective Motion of Trapped Ions to Initialize a Quantum Register
We report preparation in the ground state of collective modes of motion of
two trapped 9Be+ ions. This is a crucial step towards realizing quantum logic
gates which can entangle the ions' internal electronic states. We find that
heating of the modes of relative ion motion is substantially suppressed
relative to that of the center-of-mass modes, suggesting the importance of
these modes in future experiments.Comment: 5 pages, including 3 figures. RevTeX. PDF and PostScript available at
http://www.bldrdoc.gov/timefreq/ion/qucomp/papers.htm . final (published)
version. Eq. 1 and Table 1 slightly different from original submissio
Heating of trapped ions from the quantum ground state
We have investigated motional heating of laser-cooled 9Be+ ions held in
radio-frequency (Paul) traps. We have measured heating rates in a variety of
traps with different geometries, electrode materials, and characteristic sizes.
The results show that heating is due to electric-field noise from the trap
electrodes which exerts a stochastic fluctuating force on the ion. The scaling
of the heating rate with trap size is much stronger than that expected from a
spatially uniform noise source on the electrodes (such as Johnson noise from
external circuits), indicating that a microscopic uncorrelated noise source on
the electrodes (such as fluctuating patch-potential fields) is a more likely
candidate for the source of heating.Comment: With minor changes. 24 pages, including 7 figures. Submitted by Phys.
Rev.
Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Surface Micro Trap
Bose-Einstein condensation has been achieved in a magnetic surface micro trap
with 4x10^5 87Rb atoms. The strongly anisotropic trapping potential is
generated by a microstructure which consists of microfabricated linear copper
conductors at a width ranging from 3 to 30 micrometer. After loading a high
number of atoms from a pulsed thermal source directly into a magneto-optical
trap (MOT) the magnetically stored atoms are transferred into the micro trap by
adiabatic transformation of the trapping potential. The complete in vacuo trap
design is compatible with ultrahigh vacuum below 2x10^(-11) mbar.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Decoherence in a single trapped ion due to engineered reservoir
The decoherence in trapped ion induced by coupling the ion to the engineered
reservoir is studied in this paper. The engineered reservoir is simulated by
random variations in the trap frequency, and the trapped ion is treated as a
two-level system driven by a far off-resonant plane wave laser field. The
dependence of the decoherence rate on the amplitude of the superposition state
is given.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Observation of p-wave Threshold Law Using Evaporatively Cooled Fermionic Atoms
We have measured independently both s-wave and p-wave cross-dimensional
thermalization rates for ultracold potassium-40 atoms held in a magnetic trap.
These measurements reveal that this fermionic isotope has a large positive
s-wave triplet scattering length in addition to a low temperature p-wave shape
resonance. We have observed directly the p-wave threshold law which, combined
with the Fermi statistics, dramatically suppresses elastic collision rates at
low temperatures. In addition, we present initial evaporative cooling results
that make possible these collision measurements and are a precursor to
achieving quantum degeneracy in this neutral, low-density Fermi system.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
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