Ground-State Properties of a Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensate with Attractive Interaction

The ground state of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interaction in a quasi-one-dimensional torus is studied in terms of the ratio $\gamma$ of the mean-field interaction energy per particle to the single-particle energy-level spacing. The plateaus of quantized circulation are found to appear if and only if $\gamma<1$ with the lengths of the plateaus reduced due to hybridization of the condensate over different angular-momentum states.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Reveiw Letter

Automated glycan assembly of galactosylated xyloglucan oligosaccharides and their recognition by plant cell wall glycan-directed antibodies

We report the automated glycan assembly of oligosaccharides related to the plant cell wall hemicellulosic polysaccharide xyloglucan. The synthesis of galactosylated xyloglucan oligosaccharides was enabled by introducing p-methoxybenzyl (PMB) as a temporary protecting group for automated glycan assembly. The generated oligosaccharides were printed as microarrays, and the binding of a collection of xyloglucan-directed monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to the oligosaccharides was assessed. We also demonstrated that the printed glycans can be further enzymatically modified while appended to the microarray surface by Arabidopsis thaliana xyloglucan xylosyltransferase 2 (AtXXT2)

Moment of Inertia and Superfluidity of a Trapped Bose Gas

The temperature dependence of the moment of inertia of a dilute Bose gas confined in a harmonic trap is determined. Deviations from the rigid value, due to the occurrence of Bose-Einstein condensation, reveal the superfluid behaviour of the system. In the noninteracting gas these deviations become important at temperatures of the order of $T_c N^{-1/12}$. The role of interactions is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, REVTEX, 1 figure attached as postscript fil

Vortex Waves in a Cloud of Bose Einstein - Condensed, Trapped Alkali - Metal Atoms

We consider the vortex state solution for a rotating cloud of trapped, Bose Einstein - condensed alkali atoms and study finite temperature effects. We find that thermally excited vortex waves can distort the vortex state significantly, even at the very low temperatures relevant to the experiments.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.

Influence of nearly resonant light on the scattering length in low-temperature atomic gases

We develop the idea of manipulating the scattering length $a$ in low-temperature atomic gases by using nearly resonant light. As found, if the incident light is close to resonance with one of the bound $p$ levels of electronically excited molecule, then virtual radiative transitions of a pair of interacting atoms to this level can significantly change the value and even reverse the sign of $a$. The decay of the gas due to photon recoil, resulting from the scattering of light by single atoms, and due to photoassociation can be minimized by selecting the frequency detuning and the Rabi frequency. Our calculations show the feasibility of optical manipulations of trapped Bose condensates through a light-induced change in the mean field interaction between atoms, which is illustrated for $^7$Li.Comment: 12 pages, 1 Postscript figur

Beyond the Thomas-Fermi approximation for a trapped condensed Bose-Einstein gas

Corrections to the zero-temperature Thomas-Fermi description of a dilute interacting condensed Bose-Einstein gas confined in an isotropic harmonic trap arise due to the presence of a boundary layer near the condensate surface. Within the Bogoliubov approximation, the various contributions to the ground-state condensate energy all have terms of order R^{-4}ln R and R^{-4}, where R is the number-dependent dimensionless condensate radius in units of the oscillator length. The zero-order hydrodynamic density-fluctuation amplitudes are extended beyond the Thomas-Fermi radius through the boundary layer to provide a uniform description throughout all space. The first-order correction to the excitation frequencies is shown to be of order R^{-4}.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, revtex. Completely revised discussion of the boundary-layer corrections to collective excitations, and two new figures added. To appear in Phys. Rev. A (October, 1998

Critical number of atoms in an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate on an optical plus harmonic traps

The stability of an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate on a joint one-dimensional optical lattice and an axially-symmetric harmonic trap is studied using the numerical solution of the time-dependent mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the critical number of atoms for a stable condensate is calculated. We also calculate this critical number of atoms in a double-well potential which is always greater than that in an axially-symmetric harmonic trap. The critical number of atoms in an optical trap can be made smaller or larger than the corresponding number in the absence of the optical trap by moving a node of the optical lattice potential along the axial direction of the harmonic trap. This variation of the critical number of atoms can be observed experimentally and compared with the present calculation.Comment: Latex with 7 eps figures, Accepted in Journal of Physics

Variational study of a dilute Bose condensate in a harmonic trap

A two-parameter trial condensate wave function is used to find an approximate variational solution to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for $N_0$ condensed bosons in an isotropic harmonic trap with oscillator length $d_0$ and interacting through a repulsive two-body scattering length $a>0$. The dimensionless parameter ${\cal N}_0 \equiv N_0a/d_0$ characterizes the effect of the interparticle interactions, with ${\cal N}_0 \ll 1$ for an ideal gas and ${\cal N}_0 \gg 1$ for a strongly interacting system (the Thomas-Fermi limit). The trial function interpolates smoothly between these two limits, and the three separate contributions (kinetic energy, trap potential energy, and two-body interaction energy) to the variational condensate energy and the condensate chemical potential are determined parametrically for any value of ${\cal N}_0$, along with illustrative numerical values. The straightforward generalization to an anisotropic harmonic trap is considered briefly.Comment: 14 pages, RevTeX, submitted to Journal of Low Temperature Physic

Stabilizing an Attractive Bose-Einstein Condensate by Driving a Surface Collective Mode

Bose-Einstein condensates of $^7$Li have been limited in number due to attractive interatomic interactions. Beyond this number, the condensate undergoes collective collapse. We study theoretically the effect of driving low-lying collective modes of the condensate by a weak asymmetric sinusoidally time-dependent field. We find that driving the radial breathing mode further destabilizes the condensate, while excitation of the quadrupolar surface mode causes the condensate to become more stable by imparting quasi-angular momentum to it. We show that a significantly larger number of atoms may occupy the condensate, which can then be sustained almost indefinitely. All effects are predicted to be clearly visible in experiments and efforts are under way for their experimental realization.Comment: 4 ReVTeX pages + 2 postscript figure