Evidence of microscopic effects in fragment mass distribution in heavy ion induced fusion-fission reactions

Our measurements of variances ($\sigma_{m}^2$) in mass distributions of fission fragments from fusion-fission reactions of light projectiles (C, O and F) on deformed thorium targets exhibit a sharp anomalous increase with energy near the Coulomb barrier, in contrast to the smooth variation of $\sigma_{m}^2$ for the spherical bismuth target. This departure from expectation based on a statistical description is explained in terms of microscopic effects arising from the orientational dependence in the case of deformed thorium targets.Comment: Replaced with revised version, to appear in Phys. Lett.

A note on the entropy of charged multi - black - holes

Majumdar--Papapetrou multi--black-hole solutions of the Einstein--Maxwell equations are considered in four and higher dimensions. The Euclidean action with boundary conditions appropriate to the canonical ensemble is shown to lead to zero entropy.Comment: LaTeX, 8 page

Environment assisted entanglement enhancement

We consider dissipative atom-cavity systems and show that their collective dynamics leads to the maximization of entanglement for intermediate values of the cavity leakage parameter $\kappa$. We discuss possible ways the reservoir influences entanglement. We first consider the entanglement of a single two-level atom with a microwave cavity that is coupled to another cavity. We show that the atom-cavity entanglement can be made to increase with cavity leakage. We next show that the entanglement between two atoms passing successively through a cavity can be maximised for intermediate values of $\kappa$. We finally consider the micromaser where the increase of two-atom entanglement for stronger cavity-environment coupling is demonstrated for experimentally attainable values of the micromaser parameters.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex, 1 eps figure; minor changes to match with published versio