Limits on the Halo White Dwarf Component of Baryonic Dark Matter from the {\em Hubble Deep Field}

The MACHO collaboration lensing event statistics suggest that a significant fraction of the dark galactic halo can be comprised of baryonic matter in the form of white dwarf stars with masses between 0.1 and 1.0 \Msun . Such a halo white dwarf population, in order to have escaped detection by those who observe the white dwarf luminosity function of the disk, must have formed from an old population. The observations indicate that the number of halo white dwarfs per cubic parsec per unit bolometric magnitude is less than $10^{-5}$ at $10^{-4.5}$\Lsun; the number must rise significantly at lower luminosities to provide the needed baryonic halo mass. Such white dwarfs may easily escape detection in most current and earlier surveys. Though it is limited in angular extent, the {\em Hubble Deep Field} (HDF) probes a sufficient volume of the galactic halo to provide interesting limits on the number of halo white dwarf stars, and on the fraction of the halo mass that they can make up. If the HDF field can be probed for stars down to $V=29.8$ then the MACHO result suggests that there could be up to 12 faint halo white dwarfs visible in the HDF. Finding (or not finding) these stars in turn places interesting constraints on star formation immediately following the formation of the galaxy.Comment: 10 pages, AASTEX, 1 table, no figures, accepted for publication in Ap.J. Letter

A Study of the Relative Effectivness of Four Insolubilizing Agents in Starch-Latex and Protein-Latex Coatings

The process of offset lithography requires several unique characteristics in paper. One of these is an ability in the sheet surface to accept water without deteriorating. Offset coatings commonly use starch and protein in their binder systems. These adhesives are inherently water sensitive. The characteristic of water resistance in coated grades can be obtained through the use of crosslinking agents. Among the more commonly used are unreaformaldehyde, melamine-formaldehyde, and glyoxal. A more recent development involves the use of ammonium zirconium carbonate. Through the years many studies have examined the effects of various insolubilizing agents in starch coatings. Most of these have analyzed only one agent and have all but excluded protein coatings. A need seemed to exist for a comparative analysis of the commonly used insolubilizing agents in both starch and protein coatings. The lack of literature concerning ammonium zirconium carbonate suggested that its analysis should be included. A series of starch and protein based coatings were prepared using 16 parts adhesive and 100 parts clay. Styrene-butadiene latex was included in both coatings. Urea-formaldehyde, melamine-formaldehyde, and glyoxal were added at levels of 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 percent based on dry starch or protein. Ammonium zirconium carbonate, due to its purported superior insolubilizing efficiency was added at levels of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 percent. A four pound coat weight was applied by a hand-held blade drawdown technique to a 45 pound base sheet. Testing of water resistance was carried out via an on-press technique. The samples were allowed to cure two months before testing. The samples were allowed to cure two months before testing. Results showed that urea-formaldehyde produced the highest degree of water resistance. Ammonium zirconium carbonate was competitive with UF and MF resins when added at levels greater than 5%, even when those agents were added at higher levels. Glyoxal harmed starch-latex coating water resistance. Analysis of the protein-latex coatings proved inconclusive

Damping of a nanomechanical oscillator strongly coupled to a quantum dot

We present theoretical and experimental results on the mechanical damping of an atomic force microscope cantilever strongly coupled to a self-assembled InAs quantum dot. When the cantilever oscillation amplitude is large, its motion dominates the charge dynamics of the dot which in turn leads to nonlinear, amplitude-dependent damping of the cantilever. We observe highly asymmetric lineshapes of Coulomb blockade peaks in the damping that reflect the degeneracy of energy levels on the dot, in excellent agreement with our strong coupling theory. Furthermore, we predict that excited state spectroscopy is possible by studying the damping versus oscillation amplitude, in analogy to varying the amplitude of an ac gate voltage.Comment: 4+ pages, 4 figure

Sensing distant nuclear spins with a single electron spin

We experimentally demonstrate the use of a single electronic spin to measure the quantum dynamics of distant individual nuclear spins from within a surrounding spin bath. Our technique exploits coherent control of the electron spin, allowing us to isolate and monitor nuclear spins weakly coupled to the electron spin. Specifically, we detect the evolution of distant individual carbon-13 nuclear spins coupled to single nitrogen vacancy centers in a diamond lattice with hyperfine couplings down to a factor of 8 below the electronic spin bare dephasing rate. Potential applications to nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging and quantum information processing are discussed.Comment: Corrected typos, updated references. 5 pages, 4 figures, and supplemental materia

Topological Flat Bands from Dipolar Spin Systems

We propose and analyze a physical system that naturally admits two-dimensional topological nearly flat bands. Our approach utilizes an array of three-level dipoles (effective S = 1 spins) driven by inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields. The dipolar interactions produce arbitrary uniform background gauge fields for an effective collection of conserved hardcore bosons, namely, the dressed spin-flips. These gauge fields result in topological band structures, whose bandgap can be larger than the corresponding bandwidth. Exact diagonalization of the full interacting Hamiltonian at half-filling reveals the existence of superfluid, crystalline, and supersolid phases. An experimental realization using either ultra-cold polar molecules or spins in the solid state is considered.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. V2: Added discussion of optical dressing - final version as published in Phys. Rev. Let

Quantum Logic between Remote Quantum Registers

We analyze two approaches to quantum state transfer in solid-state spin systems. First, we consider unpolarized spin-chains and extend previous analysis to various experimentally relevant imperfections, including quenched disorder, dynamical decoherence, and uncompensated long range coupling. In finite-length chains, the interplay between disorder-induced localization and decoherence yields a natural optimal channel fidelity, which we calculate. Long-range dipolar couplings induce a finite intrinsic lifetime for the mediating eigenmode; extensive numerical simulations of dipolar chains of lengths up to L=12 show remarkably high fidelity despite these decay processes. We further consider the extension of the protocol to bosonic systems of coupled oscillators. Second, we introduce a quantum mirror based architecture for universal quantum computing which exploits all of the spins in the system as potential qubits. While this dramatically increases the number of qubits available, the composite operations required to manipulate "dark" spin qubits significantly raise the error threshold for robust operation. Finally, as an example, we demonstrate that eigenmode-mediated state transfer can enable robust long-range logic between spatially separated Nitrogen-Vacancy registers in diamond; numerical simulations confirm that high fidelity gates are achievable even in the presence of moderate disorder.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure

Sensing Distant Nuclear Spins with a Single Electron Spin

We experimentally demonstrate the use of a single electronic spin to measure the quantum dynamics of distant individual nuclear spins from within a surrounding spin bath. Our technique exploits coherent control of the electron spin, allowing us to isolate and monitor nuclear spins weakly coupled to the electron spin. Specifically, we detect the evolution of distant individual C13 nuclear spins coupled to single nitrogen vacancy centers in a diamond lattice with hyperfine couplings down to a factor of 8 below the electronic spin bare dephasing rate. Potential applications to nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging and quantum information processing are discussed.Physic

Phonon cooling and lasing with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

We investigate the strain-induced coupling between a nitrogen-vacancy impurity and a resonant vibrational mode of a diamond nanoresonator. We show that under near-resonant laser excitation of the electronic states of the impurity, this coupling can modify the state of the resonator and either cool the resonator close to the vibrational ground state or drive it into a large-amplitude coherent state. We derive a semiclassical model to describe both effects and evaluate the stationary state of the resonator mode under various driving conditions. In particular, we find that by exploiting resonant single- and multiphonon transitions between near-degenerate electronic states, the coupling to high-frequency vibrational modes can be significantly enhanced and dominate over the intrinsic mechanical dissipation. Our results show that a single nitrogen-vacancy impurity can provide a versatile tool to manipulate and probe individual phonon modes in nanoscale diamond structures.Physic

Phonon-Induced Spin-Spin Interactions in Diamond Nanostructures: Application to Spin Squeezing

We propose and analyze a novel mechanism for long-range spin-spin interactions in diamond nanostructures. The interactions between electronic spins, associated with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, are mediated by their coupling via strain to the vibrational mode of a diamond mechanical nanoresonator. This coupling results in phonon-mediated effective spin-spin interactions that can be used to generate squeezed states of a spin ensemble. We show that spin dephasing and relaxation can be largely suppressed, allowing for substantial spin squeezing under realistic experimental conditions. Our approach has implications for spin-ensemble magnetometry, as well as phonon-mediated quantum information processing with spin qubits.Physic