Dispersionless motion in a driven periodic potential

Recently, dispersionless (coherent) motion of (noninteracting) massive Brownian particles, at intermediate time scales, was reported in a sinusoidal potential with a constant tilt. The coherent motion persists for a finite length of time before the motion becomes diffusive. We show that such coherent motion can be obtained repeatedly by applying an external zero-mean square-wave drive of appropriate period and amplitude, instead of a constant tilt. Thus, the cumulative duration of coherent motion of particles is prolonged. Moreover, by taking an appropriate combination of periods of the external field, one can postpone the beginning of the coherent motion and can even have coherent motion at a lower value of position dispersion than in the constant tilt case.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Are violations to temporal Bell inequalities there when somebody looks?

The possibility of observing violations of temporal Bell inequalities, originally proposed by Leggett as a mean of testing the quantum mechanical delocalization of suitably chosen macroscopic bodies, is discussed by taking into account the effect of the measurement process. A general criterion quantifying this possibility is defined and shown not to be fulfilled by the various experimental configurations proposed so far to test inequalities of different forms.Comment: 7 pages, 1 eps figure, needs europhys.sty and euromacr.tex, enclosed in the .tar.gz file; accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter

DMRG analysis of the SDW-CDW crossover region in the 1D half-filled Hubbard-Holstein model

In order to clarify the physics of the crossover from a spin-density-wave (SDW) Mott insulator to a charge-density-wave (CDW) Peierls insulator in one-dimensional (1D) systems, we investigate the Hubbard-Holstein Hamiltonian at half filling within a density matrix renormalisation group (DMRG) approach. Determining the spin and charge correlation exponents, the momentum distribution function, and various excitation gaps, we confirm that an intervening metallic phase expands the SDW-CDW transition in the weak-coupling regime.Comment: revised versio

The Impact of Strong Gravitational Lensing on Observed Lyman-Break Galaxy Numbers at 4<z<8 in the GOODS and the XDF Blank Fields

Detection of Lyman-Break Galaxies (LBGs) at high-redshift can be affected by gravitational lensing induced by foreground deflectors not only in galaxy clusters, but also in blank fields. We quantify the impact of strong magnification in the samples of $B$, $V$, $i$, $z$ $\&$ $Y$ LBGs ($4\lesssim z \lesssim8$) observed in the XDF and GOODS/CANDELS fields, by investigating the proximity of dropouts to foreground objects. We find that $\sim6\%$ of bright LBGs ($m_{H_{160}}2$) by foreground objects. This fraction decreases from $\sim 3.5\%$ at $z\sim6$ to $\sim1.5\%$ at $z\sim4$. Since the observed fraction of strongly lensed galaxies is a function of the shape of the luminosity function (LF), it can be used to derive Schechter parameters, $\alpha$ and $M_{\star}$, independently from galaxy number counts. Our magnification bias analysis yields Schechter-function parameters in close agreement with those determined from galaxy counts albeit with larger uncertainties. Extrapolation of our analysis to $z\gtrsim 8$ suggests that future surveys with JSWT, WFIRST and EUCLID should find excess LBGs at the bright-end, even if there is an intrinsic exponential cutoff of number counts. Finally, we highlight how the magnification bias measurement near the detection limit can be used as probe of the population of galaxies too faint to be detected. Preliminary results using this novel idea suggest that the magnification bias at $M_{UV}\sim -18$ is not as strong as expected if $\alpha\lesssim -1.7$ extends well below the current detection limits in the XDF. At face value this implies a flattening of the LF at $M_{UV}\gtrsim-16.5$. However, selection effects and completeness estimates are difficult to quantify precisely. Thus, we do not rule out a steep LF extending to $M_{UV}\gtrsim -15$.Comment: Submitted to ApJ on 18/12/201

Noise Thermometry with Two Weakly Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensates

Here we report on the experimental investigation of thermally induced fluctuations of the relative phase between two Bose-Einstein condensates which are coupled via tunneling. The experimental control over the coupling strength and the temperature of the thermal background allows for the quantitative analysis of the phase fluctuations. Furthermore, we demonstrate the application of these measurements for thermometry in a regime where standard methods fail. With this we confirm that the heat capacity of an ideal Bose gas deviates from that of a classical gas as predicted by the third law of thermodynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Monte-Carlo simulation of events with Drell-Yan lepton pairs from antiproton-proton collisions

The complete knowledge of the nucleon spin structure at leading twist requires also addressing the transverse spin distribution of quarks, or transversity, which is yet unexplored because of its chiral-odd nature. Transversity can be best extracted from single-spin asymmetries in fully polarized Drell-Yan processes with antiprotons, where valence contributions are involved anyway. Alternatively, in single-polarized Drell-Yan the transversity happens convoluted with another chiral-odd function, which is likely to be responsible for the well known (and yet unexplained) violation of the Lam-Tung sum rule in the corresponding unpolarized cross section. We present Monte-Carlo simulations for the unpolarized and single-polarized Drell-Yan $\bar{p} p^{(\uparrow)} \to \mu^+ \mu^- X$ at different center-of-mass energies in both configurations where the antiproton beam hits a fixed proton target or it collides on another proton beam. The goal is to estimate the minimum number of events needed to extract the above chiral-odd distributions from future measurements at the HESR ring at GSI. It is important to study the feasibility of such experiments at HESR in order to demonstrate that interesting spin physics can be explored already using unpolarized antiprotons.Comment: Deeply revised text with improved discussion of kinematics and results; added one table; 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

High--Energy Photon--Hadron Scattering in Holographic QCD

This article provides an in-depth look at hadron high energy scattering by using gravity dual descriptions of strongly coupled gauge theories. Just like deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) and deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) serve as clean experimental probes into non-perturbative internal structure of hadrons, elastic scattering amplitude of a hadron and a (virtual) "photon" in gravity dual can be exploited as a theoretical probe. Since the scattering amplitude at sufficiently high energy (small Bjorken x) is dominated by parton contributions (= Pomeron contributions) even in strong coupling regime, there is a chance to learn a lesson for generalized parton distribution (GPD) by using gravity dual models. We begin with refining derivation of Brower-Polchinski-Strassler-Tan (BPST) Pomeron kernel in gravity dual, paying particular attention to the role played by complex spin variable j. The BPST Pomeron on warped spacetime consists of a Kaluza-Klein tower of 4D Pomerons with non-linear trajectories, and we clarify the relation between Pomeron couplings and Pomeron form factor. We emphasize that the saddle point value j^* of the scattering amplitude in the complex j-plane representation is a very important concept in understanding qualitative behavior of the scattering amplitude. The total Pomeron contribution to the scattering is decomposed into the saddle point contribution and at most a finite number of pole contributions, and when the pole contributions are absent (which we call saddle point phase), kinematical variable (q,x,t) dependence of ln (1/q) evolution and ln(1/x) evolution parameters gamma_eff. and lambda_eff. in DIS and t-slope parameter B of DVCS in HERA experiment are all reproduced qualitatively in gravity dual

Phenomenological study of the atypical heavy flavor production observed at the Fermilab Tevatron

We address known discrepancies between the heavy flavor properties of jets produced at the Tevatron collider and the prediction of conventional-QCD simulations. In this study, we entertain the possibility that these effects are real and due to new physics. We show that all anomalies can be simultaneously fitted by postulating the additional pair production of light bottom squarks with a 100% semileptonic branching fraction.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Josephson Vortex Bloch Oscillations: Single Pair Tunneling Effect

We consider the Josephson vortex motion in a long one--dimensional Josephson junction in a thin film. We show that this Josephson vortex is similar to a mesoscopic capacitor. We demonstrate that a single Cooper pair tunneling results in nonlinear Bloch--type oscillations of a Josephson vortex in a current-biased Josephson junction. We find the frequency and the amplitude of this motion.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures included as postscript files, LaTe

A spectroscopically confirmed z=1.327 galaxy-scale deflector magnifying a z~8 Lyman-Break galaxy in the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies survey

We present a detailed analysis of an individual case of gravitational lensing of a $z\sim8$ Lyman-Break galaxy (LBG) in a blank field, identified in Hubble Space Telescope imaging obtained as part of the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies survey. To investigate the close proximity of the bright ($m_{AB}=25.8$) $Y_{098}$-dropout to a small group of foreground galaxies, we obtained deep spectroscopy of the dropout and two foreground galaxies using VLT/X-Shooter. We detect H-$\alpha$, H-$\beta$, [OIII] and [OII] emission in the brightest two foreground galaxies (unresolved at the natural seeing of $0.8$ arcsec), placing the pair at $z=1.327$. We can rule out emission lines contributing all of the observed broadband flux in $H_{160}$ band at $70\sigma$, allowing us to exclude the $z\sim8$ candidate as a low redshift interloper with broadband photometry dominated by strong emission lines. The foreground galaxy pair lies at the peak of the luminosity, redshift and separation distributions for deflectors of strongly lensed $z\sim8$ objects, and we make a marginal detection of a demagnified secondary image in the deepest ($J_{125}$) filter. We show that the configuration can be accurately modelled by a singular isothermal ellipsoidal deflector and a S\'{e}rsic source magnified by a factor of $\mu=4.3\pm0.2$. The reconstructed source in the best-fitting model is consistent with luminosities and morphologies of $z\sim8$ LBGs in the literature. The lens model yields a group mass of $9.62\pm0.31\times10^{11} M_{\odot}$ and a stellar mass-to-light ratio for the brightest deflector galaxy of $M_{\star}/L_{B}=2.3^{+0.8}_{-0.6} M_{\odot}/L_{\odot}$ within its effective radius. The foreground galaxies' redshifts would make this one of the few strong lensing deflectors discovered at $z>1$.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 16 pages, 11 figures, 3 table