Influence of Phase Matching on the Cooper Minimum in Ar High Harmonic Spectra

We study the influence of phase matching on interference minima in high harmonic spectra. We concentrate on structures in atoms due to interference of different angular momentum channels during recombination. We use the Cooper minimum (CM) in argon at 47 eV as a marker in the harmonic spectrum. We measure 2d harmonic spectra in argon as a function of wavelength and angular divergence. While we identify a clear CM in the spectrum when the target gas jet is placed after the laser focus, we find that the appearance of the CM varies with angular divergence and can even be completely washed out when the gas jet is placed closer to the focus. We also show that the argon CM appears at different wavelengths in harmonic and photo-absorption spectra measured under conditions independent of any wavelength calibration. We model the experiment with a simulation based on coupled solutions of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation and the Maxwell wave equation, including both the single atom response and macroscopic effects of propagation. The single atom calculations confirm that the ground state of argon can be represented by its field free $p$ symmetry, despite the strong laser field used in high harmonic generation. Because of this, the CM structure in the harmonic spectrum can be described as the interference of continuum $s$ and $d$ channels, whose relative phase jumps by $\pi$ at the CM energy, resulting in a minimum shifted from the photoionization result. We also show that the full calculations reproduce the dependence of the CM on the macroscopic conditions. We calculate simple phase matching factors as a function of harmonic order and explain our experimental and theoretical observation in terms of the effect of phase matching on the shape of the harmonic spectrum. Phase matching must be taken into account to fully understand spectral features related to HHG spectroscopy

Effective Gap Equation for the Inhomogeneous LOFF Superconductive Phase

We present an approximate gap equation for different crystalline structures of the LOFF phase of high density QCD at T=0. This equation is derived by using an effective condensate term obtained by averaging the inhomogeneous condensate over distances of the order of the crystal lattice size. The approximation is expected to work better far off any second order phase transition. As a function of the difference of the chemical potentials of the up and down quarks, $\delta\mu$, we get that the octahedron is energetically favored from $\delta\mu=\Delta_0/\sqrt 2$ to $0.95\Delta_0$, where $\Delta_0$ is the gap for the homogeneous phase, while in the range $0.95\Delta_0-1.32\Delta_0$ the face centered cube prevails. At $\delta\mu=1.32\Delta_0$ a first order phase transition to the normal phase occurs.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Attosecond Control of Ionization Dynamics

Attosecond pulses can be used to initiate and control electron dynamics on a sub-femtosecond time scale. The first step in this process occurs when an atom absorbs an ultraviolet photon leading to the formation of an attosecond electron wave packet (EWP). Until now, attosecond pulses have been used to create free EWPs in the continuum, where they quickly disperse. In this paper we use a train of attosecond pulses, synchronized to an infrared (IR) laser field, to create a series of EWPs that are below the ionization threshold in helium. We show that the ionization probability then becomes a function of the delay between the IR and attosecond fields. Calculations that reproduce the experimental results demonstrate that this ionization control results from interference between transiently bound EWPs created by different pulses in the train. In this way, we are able to observe, for the first time, wave packet interference in a strongly driven atomic system.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Constituent quark model for baryons with strong quark-pair correlations and non-leptonic weak transitions of hyperon

We study the roles of quark-pair correlations for baryon properties, in particular on non-leptonic weak decay of hyperons. We construct the quark wave function of baryons by solving the three body problem explicitly with confinement force and the short range attraction for a pair of quarks with their total spin being 0. We show that the existence of the strong quark-quark correlations enhances the non-leptonic transition amplitudes which is consistent with the data, while the baryon masses and radii are kept to the experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, talk presented at KEK-Tanashi International Symposium on Physics of Hadrons and Nuclei, Tokyo, Japan, 14-17 Dec. 199

Thermodynamic properties of QCD in external magnetic fields

We consider the effect of strong external electromagnetic fields on thermodynamic observables in QCD, through lattice simulations with 1+1+1 flavors of staggered quarks at physical quark masses. Continuum extrapolated results are presented for the light quark condensates and for their tensor polarizations, as functions of the temperature and the magnetic field. We find the light condensates to undergo inverse magnetic catalysis in the transition region, in a manner that the transition temperature decreases with growing magnetic field. We also compare the results to other approaches and lattice simulations. Furthermore, we relate the tensor polarization to the spin part of the magnetic susceptibility of the QCD vacuum, and show that this contribution is diamagnetic.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, talks presented by FB and GE at Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 8-12 October 2012, TUM Campus Garching, Munich, German

Note on Moufang-Noether currents

The derivative Noether currents generated by continuous Moufang tranformations are constructed and their equal-time commutators are found. The corresponding charge algebra turns out to be a birepresentation of the tangent Mal'ltsev algebra of an analytic Moufang loop.Comment: LaTeX2e, 6 pages, no figures, presented on "The XVth International Colloquium on Integrable Systems and Quantum Symmetries, Prague, 15-17 June, 2006

Electron angular distributions in near-threshold atomic ionization

International audienceWe present angle- and energy-resolved measurements of photoelectrons produced in strongfield ionisation of Xe using a tunable femtosecond laser. An occurrence of highly oscillatory patterns in the angular distribution at low photoelectron kinetic energy is observed that correlates with channel closing/opening over a wide range of laser parameters. The correlation is investigated both experimentally and by means of systematic analysis of numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE). Our experimental and numerical results are in quantitative agreement with the semi-classical model introduced by Arbó et al. (Phys. Rev. A 78, 013406 (2008)), which relates the oscillatory patterns to interference between photoelectrons produced during different cycles of the laser pulse in the course of non-resonant ionisation of the atom. We observe that an increase of the laser intensity eventually leads to qualitative invariance of the pattern, defining a limit on the applicability of the semi-classical model

Instanton dominance of topological charge fluctuations in QCD?

We consider the local chirality of near-zero eigenvectors from Wilson-Dirac and clover improved Wilson-Dirac lattice operators as proposed recently by Horv\'ath et al. We studied finer lattices and repaired for the loss of orthogonality due to the non-normality of the Wilson-Dirac matrix. As a result we do see a clear double peak structure on lattices with resolutions higher than 0.1 fm. We found that the lattice artifacts can be considerably reduced by exploiting the biorthogonal system of left and right eigenvectors. We conclude that the dominance of instantons on topological charge fluctuations is not ruled out by local chirality measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure