614 research outputs found
Critical velocity for superfluid flow across the BEC-BCS crossover
Critical velocities have been observed in an ultracold superfluid Fermi gas
throughout the BEC-BCS crossover. A pronounced peak of the critical velocity at
unitarity demonstrates that superfluidity is most robust for resonant atomic
interactions. Critical velocities were determined from the abrupt onset of
dissipation when the velocity of a moving one dimensional optical lattice was
varied. The dependence of the critical velocity on lattice depth and on the
inhomogeneous density profile was studied
Quantum reflection of atoms from a solid surface at normal incidence
We observed quantum reflection of ultracold atoms from the attractive
potential of a solid surface. Extremely dilute Bose-Einstein condensates of
^{23}Na, with peak density 10^{11}-10^{12}atoms/cm^3, confined in a weak
gravito-magnetic trap were normally incident on a silicon surface. Reflection
probabilities of up to 20 % were observed for incident velocities of 1-8 mm/s.
The velocity dependence agrees qualitatively with the prediction for quantum
reflection from the attractive Casimir-Polder potential. Atoms confined in a
harmonic trap divided in half by a solid surface exhibited extended lifetime
due to quantum reflection from the surface, implying a reflection probability
above 50 %.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (December 2004)5 pages, 4 figure
Speckle Imaging of Spin Fluctuations in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
Spin fluctuations and density fluctuations are studied for a two-component
gas of strongly interacting fermions along the BEC-BCS crossover. This is done
by in-situ imaging of dispersive speckle patterns. Compressibility and magnetic
susceptibility are determined from the measured fluctuations. This new
sensitive method easily resolves a tenfold suppression of spin fluctuations
below shot noise due to pairing, and can be applied to novel magnetic phases in
optical lattices
Dynamical Instability of a Doubly Quantized Vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate
Doubly quantized vortices were topologically imprinted in Na
condensates, and their time evolution was observed using a tomographic imaging
technique. The decay into two singly quantized vortices was characterized and
attributed to dynamical instability. The time scale of the splitting process
was found to be longer at higher atom density.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Recommended from our members
The Observations Of The X-Ray Source Hz Herculis-Hercules X-1
NASAESASRCAstronom
Psychological Safety and Norm Clarity in Software Engineering Teams
In the software engineering industry today, companies primarily conduct their
work in teams. To increase organizational productivity, it is thus crucial to
know the factors that affect team effectiveness. Two team-related concepts that
have gained prominence lately are psychological safety and team norms. Still,
few studies exist that explore these in a software engineering context.
Therefore, with the aim of extending the knowledge of these concepts, we
examined if psychological safety and team norm clarity associate positively
with software developers' self-assessed team performance and job satisfaction,
two important elements of effectiveness.
We collected industry survey data from practitioners (N = 217) in 38
development teams working for five different organizations. The result of
multiple linear regression analyses indicates that both psychological safety
and team norm clarity predict team members' self-assessed performance and job
satisfaction. The findings also suggest that clarity of norms is a stronger
(30\% and 71\% stronger, respectively) predictor than psychological safety.
This research highlights the need to examine, in more detail, the
relationship between social norms and software development. The findings of
this study could serve as an empirical baseline for such, future work.Comment: Submitted to CHASE'201
Fifty Years of IMF Variation: The Intermediate-Mass Stars
I track the history of star count estimates of the Milky Way field star and
open cluster IMFs, concentrating on the neglected mass range from 1 to 15
M. The prevalent belief in a universal IMF appears to be without
basis for this mass range. Two recent estimates of the field star IMF using
different methods and samples give values of the average logarithmic slope
between -1.7 and -2.1 in the mass range 1.1 to 4 M. Two
older estimates between 2 and 15 M disagree severely; the field IMF
in this range is essentially unknown from star counts. Variations in
among open cluster IMFs in this mass range have not decreased despite numerous
detailed studies, even for studies using homogeneous data and reduction
procedures and including only clusters with a significant mass range. These
cluster variations \textit{might} be due to the combined effects of sampling,
systematic errors, stellar evolution uncertainties, dynamical evolution, and
unresolved binaries. If so, then the cluster data are consistent with a
universal IMF, but are also consistent with sizeable variations. The cluster
data do not allow an estimate of an average IMF or because the average
depends on the choice of weighting procedure and other effects. If the spread
in cluster IMFs is in excess of the effects listed above, real IMF variations
must occur that do not depend much on physical conditions explored so far. The
complexity of the star formation process seen in observations and simulations
suggests that large realization-to-realization differences might be expected,
in which case an individual cluster IMF would be in part the product of
evolutionary contingency in star formation, and the function of interest is the
probability distribution of IMF parameters.Comment: 18 pages, including 4 figures: invited talk presented at the
conference on "IMF@50: The Stellar Initial Mass Function Fifty Years Later"
held at Abbazia di Spineto, Siena, Italy, May 2004; to be published by Kluwer
Academic Publishers, edited by E. Corbelli, F. Palla, and H. Zinnecke
Optical clock intercomparison with precision in one hour
Improvements in atom-light coherence are foundational to progress in quantum
information science, quantum optics, and precision metrology. Optical atomic
clocks require local oscillators with exceptional optical coherence due to the
challenge of performing spectroscopy on their ultra-narrow linewidth clock
transitions. Advances in laser stabilization have thus enabled rapid progress
in clock precision. A new class of ultrastable lasers based on cryogenic
silicon reference cavities has recently demonstrated the longest optical
coherence times to date. In this work we utilize such a local oscillator, along
with a state-of-the-art frequency comb for coherence transfer, with two Sr
optical lattice clocks to achieve an unprecedented level of clock stability.
Through an anti-synchronous comparison, the fractional instability of both
clocks is assessed to be for an averaging time
in seconds. Synchronous interrogation reveals a quantum projection noise
dominated instability of , resulting in a
precision of after a single hour of averaging. The
ability to measure sub- level frequency shifts in such short
timescales will impact a wide range of applications for clocks in quantum
sensing and fundamental physics. For example, this precision allows one to
resolve the gravitational red shift from a 1 cm elevation change in only 20
minutes
MEME Suite: tools for motif discovery and searching
The MEME Suite web server provides a unified portal for online discovery and analysis of sequence motifs representing features such as DNA binding sites and protein interaction domains. The popular MEME motif discovery algorithm is now complemented by the GLAM2 algorithm which allows discovery of motifs containing gaps. Three sequence scanning algorithms—MAST, FIMO and GLAM2SCAN—allow scanning numerous DNA and protein sequence databases for motifs discovered by MEME and GLAM2. Transcription factor motifs (including those discovered using MEME) can be compared with motifs in many popular motif databases using the motif database scanning algorithm Tomtom. Transcription factor motifs can be further analyzed for putative function by association with Gene Ontology (GO) terms using the motif-GO term association tool GOMO. MEME output now contains sequence LOGOS for each discovered motif, as well as buttons to allow motifs to be conveniently submitted to the sequence and motif database scanning algorithms (MAST, FIMO and Tomtom), or to GOMO, for further analysis. GLAM2 output similarly contains buttons for further analysis using GLAM2SCAN and for rerunning GLAM2 with different parameters. All of the motif-based tools are now implemented as web services via Opal. Source code, binaries and a web server are freely available for noncommercial use at http://meme.nbcr.net
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