Soft Magnetorotons and Broken-Symmetry States in Bilayer Quantum Hall Ferromagnets

The recent report on the observation of soft magnetorotons in the dispersion of charge-density excitations across the tunneling gap in coupled bilayers at total Landau level filling factor $\nu_T=1$ is reviewed. The inelastic light scattering experiments take advantage of the breakdown of wave-vector conservation that occurs under resonant excitation. The results offer evidence that in the quantum Hall state there is a roton that softens and sharpens markedly when the phase boundary for transitions to highly-correlated compressible states is approached. These findings are interpreted with Hartree-Fock evaluations of the dynamic structure factor. The model includes the effect of disorder in the breakdown of wave-vector conservation and resonance enhancement profiles within a phenomenological approach. These results link the softening of magnetorotons to enhanced excitonic Coulomb interactions in the ferromagnetic bilayers.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; conference: EP2DS-1

Feshbach resonances in ultracold ^{6,7}Li + ^{23}Na atomic mixtures

We report a theoretical study of Feshbach resonances in $^{6}$Li + $^{23}$Na and $^{7}$Li + $^{23}$Na mixtures at ultracold temperatures using new accurate interaction potentials in a full quantum coupled-channel calculation. Feshbach resonances for $l=0$ in the initial collisional open channel $^6$Li$(f=1/2, m_f=1/2) + ^{23}$Na$(f=1, m_f=1)$ are found to agree with previous measurements, leading to precise values of the singlet and triplet scattering lengths for the $^{6,7}$Li$+^{23}$Na pairs. We also predict additional Feshbach resonances within experimentally attainable magnetic fields for other collision channels.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Properties of Very Luminous Galaxies

Recent analysis of the SSRS2 data based on cell-counts and two-point correlation function has shown that very luminous galaxies are much more strongly clustered than fainter galaxies. In fact, the amplitude of the correlation function of very luminous galaxies ($L > L^*$) asymptotically approaches that of $R \ge 0$ clusters. In this paper we investigate the properties of the most luminous galaxies, with blue absolute magnitude $M_B \le -21$. We find that: 1) the population mix is comparable to that in other ranges of absolute magnitudes; 2) only a small fraction are located in bona fide clusters; 3) the bright galaxy-cluster cross-correlation function is significantly higher on large scales than that measured for fainter galaxies; 4) the correlation length of galaxies brighter than \MB $\sim -20.0$, expressed as a function of the mean interparticle distance, appears to follow the universal dimensionless correlation function found for clusters and radio galaxies; 5) a large fraction of the bright galaxies are in interacting pairs, others show evidence for tidal distortions, while some appear to be surrounded by faint satellite galaxies. We conclude that very luminous optical galaxies differ from the normal population of galaxies both in the clustering and other respects. We speculate that this population is highly biased tracers of mass, being associated to dark halos with masses more comparable to clusters than typical loose groups.Comment: 29 pages (6 figures) + 2 tables; paper with all figures and images available at http://boas5.bo.astro.it/~cappi/papers.html; The Astronomical Journal, in pres

Cooling flows and quasars: II. Detailed models of feedback modulated accretion flows

Most elliptical galaxies contain central black holes (BHs), and most also contain significant amounts of hot gas capable of accreting on to the central BH due to cooling times short compared to the Hubble time. Why therefore do we not see AGNs at the center of most elliptical galaxies rather than in only (at most) a few per cent of them? We propose here the simple idea that feedback from accretion events heats the ambient gas retarding subsequent infall. In this context, we present a class of 1D hydrodynamical evolutionary sequences for the gas flows in elliptical galaxies with a massive central BH. The resulting evolution is characterized by strong oscillations, in which very fast and energetic bursts of the BH are followed by longer periods in which the X-ray galaxy emission comes from the coronal gas. We also allow for departures from spherical symmetry by examining scenarios in which the central engine is either an ADAF or a more conventional accretion disk that is optically thick except for a polar region. In all cases the duty cycle (fraction of the time that the system will be seen as an AGN) is quite small and in the range 10^{-4} - 10^{-3}. Thus, for any reasonable value of the efficiency, the presence of a massive BH at the center of a galaxy seems to be incompatible with the presence of a long-lived cooling flow.Comment: 43 pages, 10 figures. Main additions concern observed Compton temperatures and few extra numerical models. Conclusions unchanged. 1 new table and 3 new figures. Accepted for publication on ApJ (main journal

The Hot Interstellar Medium in Normal Elliptical Galaxies III: The Thermal Structure of the Gas

This is the third paper in a series analyzing X-ray emission from the hot interstellar medium in a sample of 54 normal elliptical galaxies observed by Chandra, focusing on 36 galaxies with sufficient signal to compute radial temperature profiles. We distinguish four qualitatively different types of profile: positive gradient (outwardly rising), negative gradients (falling), quasi-isothermal (flat) and hybrid (falling at small radii, then rising). We measure the mean logarithmic temperature gradients in two radial regions: from 0--2 $J$-band effective radii $R_J$ (excluding the central point source), and from 2--$4R_J$. We find the outer gradient to be uncorrelated with intrinsic host galaxy properties, but strongly influenced by the environment: galaxies in low-density environments tend to show negative outer gradients, while those in high-density environments show positive outer gradients, suggesting influence of circumgalactic hot gas. The inner temperature gradient is unaffected by the environment but strongly correlated with intrinsic host galaxy characteristics: negative inner gradients are more common for smaller, optically faint, low radio-luminosity galaxies, whereas positive gradients are found in bright galaxies with stronger radio sources. There is no evidence for bimodality in the distribution of inner or outer gradients. We propose three scenarios to explain the inner temperature gradients: (1) Weak AGN heat the ISM locally, higher-luminosity AGN heat the system globally through jets inflating cavities at larger radii; (2) The onset of negative inner gradients indicates a declining importance of AGN heating relative to other sources, such as compressional heating or supernovae; (3) The variety of temperature profiles are snapshots of different stages of a time-dependent flow.Comment: 18 pages, emulateapj, 55 figures (36 online-only figures included in astro-ph version), submitted to Ap

Particle-hole symmetric Luttinger liquids in a quantum Hall circuit

We report current transmission data through a split-gate constriction fabricated onto a two-dimensional electron system in the integer quantum Hall (QH) regime. Split-gate biasing drives inter-edge backscattering and is shown to lead to suppressed or enhanced transmission, in marked contrast with the expected linear Fermi-liquid behavior. This evolution is described in terms of particle-hole symmetry and allows us to conclude that an unexpected class of gate-controlled particle-hole-symmetric chiral Luttinger Liquids (CLLs) can exist at the edges of our QH circuit. These results highlight the role of particle-hole symmetry on the properties of CLL edge states.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Observation of collapse of pseudospin order in bilayer quantum Hall ferromagnets

The Hartree-Fock paradigm of bilayer quantum Hall states with finite tunneling at filling factor $\nu$=1 has full pseudospin ferromagnetic order with all the electrons in the lowest symmetric Landau level. Inelastic light scattering measurements of low energy spin excitations reveal major departures from the paradigm at relatively large tunneling gaps. The results indicate the emergence of a novel correlated quantum Hall state at $\nu$=1 characterized by reduced pseudospin order. Marked anomalies occur in spin excitations when pseudospin polarization collapses by application of in-plane magnetic fields.Comment: ReVTeX4, 4 pages, 3 EPS figure