A New Atom Trap: The Annular Shell Atom Trap (ASAT)

In the course of exploring some aspects of atom guiding in a hollow, optical fiber, a small negative potential energy well was found just in front of the repulsive or guiding barrier. This results from the optical dipole and the van der Waals potentials. The ground state for atoms bound in this negative potential well was determined by numerically solving the Schrodinger eq. and it was found that this negative well could serve as an atom trap. This trap is referred to as the Annular Shell Atom Trap or ASAT because of the geometry of the trapped atoms which are located in the locus of points defining a very thin annular shell just in front of the guiding barrier. A unique feature of the ASAT is the compression of the atoms from the entire volume to the volume of the annular shell resulting in a very high density of atoms in this trap. This trap may have applications to very low temperatures using evaporative cooling and possibly the formation of BEC. Finally, a scheme is discussed for taking advantage of the de Broglie wavelength to store atoms in a bottle trap based on the inability of long de Broglie wavelengths to escape through a selective de Broglie wavelength filter in the atom bottle trap.Comment: 13 pages total, 5 figure

Interacting Bosons at Finite Temperature: How Bogolubov Visited a Black Hole and Came Home Again

The structure of the thermal equilibrium state of a weakly interacting Bose gas is of current interest. We calculate the density matrix of that state in two ways. The most effective method, in terms of yielding a simple, explicit answer, is to construct a generating function within the traditional framework of quantum statistical mechanics. The alternative method, arguably more interesting, is to construct the thermal state as a vector state in an artificial system with twice as many degrees of freedom. It is well known that this construction has an actual physical realization in the quantum thermodynamics of black holes, where the added degrees of freedom correspond to the second sheet of the Kruskal manifold and the thermal vector state is a state of the Unruh or the Hartle-Hawking type. What is unusual about the present work is that the Bogolubov transformation used to construct the thermal state combines in a rather symmetrical way with Bogolubov's original transformation of the same form, used to implement the interaction of the nonideal gas in linear approximation. In addition to providing a density matrix, the method makes it possible to calculate efficiently certain expectation values directly in terms of the thermal vector state of the doubled system.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX. To appear in a special issue of Foundations of Physics in honor of Jacob Bekenstei

FAST CARS: Engineering a Laser Spectroscopic Technique for Rapid Identification of Bacterial Spores

Airborne contaminants, e.g., bacterial spores, are usually analyzed by time consuming microscopic, chemical and biological assays. Current research into real time laser spectroscopic detectors of such contaminants is based on e.g. resonant Raman spectroscopy. The present approach derives from recent experiments in which atoms and molecules are prepared by one (or more) coherent laser(s) and probed by another set of lasers. The connection with previous studies based on "Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy" (CARS) is to be noted. However generating and utilizing maximally coherent oscillation in macromolecules having an enormous number of degrees of freedom is much more challenging. This extension of the CARS technique is called FAST CARS (Femtosecond Adaptive Spectroscopic Techniques for Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy), and the present paper proposes and analyses ways in which it could be used to rapidly identify pre-selected molecules in real time.Comment: 43 pages, 21 figures; replacement with references added. Submitted to the Proceedings of National Academy of Science

Expression and Purification of Z Protein from Junín Virus

Arenaviridae comprises 23 recognized virus species with a bipartite ssRNA genome and an ambisense coding strategy. The virions are enveloped and include nonequimolar amounts of each genomic RNA species, designated L and S, coding for four ORFs (N, GPC, L, and Z). The arenavirus Junín (JUNV) is the etiological agent of Argentine Hemorrhagic Fever, an acute disease with high mortality rate. It has been proposed that Z is the functional counterpart of the matrix proteins found in other negative-stranded enveloped RNA viruses. Here we report the optimized expression of a synthetic gene of Z protein, using three expression systems (two bacterial and a baculoviral one). One of these recombinant proteins was used to generate antibodies. A bioinformatic analysis was made where Z was subdivided into three domains. The data presented contributes methodologies for Z recombinant production and provides the basis for the development of new experiments to test its function

Post-Merger Performance of Bank Holding Companies, 1987-1998

This paper examines the results of material mergers between bank holding companies (BHCs). Merged BHCs experience post-merger profitability below the industry average. The market reaction to the merger announcements is significantly negative. The most important causes of the poor post-merger performance are credit quality and the inadequate generation of fee income. Asset mix and capitalization also play a major part. The controllability of these items demonstrates the management challenge associated with a material merger. Copyright 2005 by the Eastern Finance Association.