Collisional decay of 87Rb Feshbach molecules at 1005.8 G

We present measurements of the loss-rate coefficients K_am and K_mm caused by inelastic atom-molecule and molecule-molecule collisions. A thermal cloud of atomic 87Rb is prepared in an optical dipole trap. A magnetic field is ramped across the Feshbach resonance at 1007.4 G. This associates atom pairs to molecules. A measurement of the molecule loss at 1005.8 G yields K_am=2 10^-10 cm^3/s. Additionally, the atoms can be removed with blast light. In this case, the measured molecule loss yields K_mm=3 10^-10 cm^3/s

Network growth models and genetic regulatory networks

We study a class of growth algorithms for directed graphs that are candidate models for the evolution of genetic regulatory networks. The algorithms involve partial duplication of nodes and their links, together with innovation of new links, allowing for the possibility that input and output links from a newly created node may have different probabilities of survival. We find some counterintuitive trends as parameters are varied, including the broadening of indegree distribution when the probability for retaining input links is decreased. We also find that both the scaling of transcription factors with genome size and the measured degree distributions for genes in yeast can be reproduced by the growth algorithm if and only if a special seed is used to initiate the process.Comment: 8 pages with 7 eps figures; uses revtex4. Added references, cleaner figure

Coherently controlled entanglement generation in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate

Considering a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential, a method to generate a Bell state consisting of two spatially separated condensates is suggested. For repulsive interactions, the required tunnelling control is achieved numerically by varying the amplitude of a sinusoidal potential difference between the wells. Both numerical and analytical calculations reveal the emergence of a highly entangled mesoscopic state.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, epl2.cl

Scaling property of the critical hopping parameters for the Bose-Hubbard model

Recently precise results for the boundary between the Mott insulator phase and the superfluid phase of the homogeneous Bose-Hubbard model have become available for arbitrary integer filling factor g and any lattice dimension d > 1. We use these data for demonstrating that the critical hopping parameters obey a scaling relationship which allows one to map results for different g onto each other. Unexpectedly, the mean-field result captures the dependence of the exact critical parameters on the filling factor almost fully. We also present an approximation formula which describes the critical parameters for d > 1 and any g with high accuracy.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. to appear in EPJ

Collective Oscillations of an Imbalanced Fermi Gas: Axial Compression Modes and Polaron Effective Mass

We investigate the low-lying compression modes of a unitary Fermi gas with imbalanced spin populations. For low polarization, the strong coupling between the two spin components leads to a hydrodynamic behavior of the cloud. For large population imbalance we observe a decoupling of the oscillations of the two spin components, giving access to the effective mass of the Fermi polaron, a quasi-particle composed of an impurity dressed by particle-hole pair excitations in a surrounding Fermi sea. We find $m^*/m=1.17(10)$, in agreement with the most recent theoretical predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR

Fractional photon-assisted tunneling in an optical superlattice: large contribution to particle transfer

Fractional photon-assisted tunneling is investigated both analytically and numerically for few interacting ultra-cold atoms in the double-wells of an optical superlattice. This can be realized experimentally by adding periodic shaking to an existing experimental setup [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 090404 (2008)]. Photon-assisted tunneling is visible in the particle transfer between the wells of the individual double wells. In order to understand the physics of the photon-assisted tunneling, an effective model based on the rotating wave approximation is introduced. The validity of this effective approach is tested for wide parameter ranges which are accessible to experiments in double-well lattices. The effective model goes well beyond previous perturbation theory approaches and is useful to investigate in particular the fractional photon-assisted tunneling resonances. Analytic results on the level of the experimentally realizable two-particle quantum dynamics show very good agreement with the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. Far from being a small effect, both the one-half-photon and the one-third-photon resonance are shown to have large effects on the particle transfer.Comment: 9 pages, 11 png-figure

Strong coupling expansion for the Bose-Hubbard and the Jaynes-Cummings lattice model

A strong coupling expansion, based on the Kato-Bloch perturbation theory, which has recently been proposed by Eckardt et al. [Phys. Rev. B 79, 195131] and Teichmann et al. [Phys. Rev. B 79, 224515] is implemented in order to study various aspects of the Bose-Hubbard and the Jaynes-Cummings lattice model. The approach, which allows to generate numerically all diagrams up to a desired order in the interaction strength is generalized for disordered systems and for the Jaynes-Cummings lattice model. Results for the Bose-Hubbard and the Jaynes-Cummings lattice model will be presented and compared with results from VCA and DMRG. Our focus will be on the Mott insulator to superfluid transition.Comment: 29 pages, 21 figure

Bose-Einstein condensates in a double well: mean-field chaos and multi-particle entanglement

A recent publication [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 140408 (2008)] shows that there is a relation between mean-field chaos and multi-particle entanglement for BECs in a periodically shaken double well. 'Schrodinger-cat' like mesoscopic superpositions in phase-space occur for conditions for which the system displays mean-field chaos. In the present manuscript, more general highly-entangled states are investigated. Mean-field chaos accelerates the emergence of multi-particle entanglement; the boundaries of stable regions are particularly suited for entanglement generation.Comment: 5 Pages, 5 jpg-figures, to be published in the proceedings of the LPHYS0

Transcriptional Autoregulatory Loops Are Highly Conserved in Vertebrate Evolution

BACKGROUND: Feedback loops are the simplest building blocks of transcriptional regulatory networks and therefore their behavior in the course of evolution is of prime interest. METHODOLOGY: We address the question of enrichment of the number of autoregulatory feedback loops in higher organisms. First, based on predicted autoregulatory binding sites we count the number of autoregulatory loops. We compare it to estimates obtained either by assuming that each (conserved) gene has the same chance to be a target of a given factor or by assuming that each conserved sequence position has an equal chance to be a binding site of the factor. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate that the numbers of putative autoregulatory loops conserved between human and fugu, danio or chicken are significantly higher than expected. Moreover we show, that conserved autoregulatory binding sites cluster close to the factors' starts of transcription. We conclude, that transcriptional autoregulatory feedback loops constitute a core transcriptional network motif and their conservation has been maintained in higher vertebrate organism evolution