Resonance phenomena in ultracold dipole-dipole scattering

Elastic scattering resonances occurring in ultracold collisions of either bosonic or fermionic polar molecules are investigated. The Born-Oppenheimer adiabatic representation of the two-bodydynamics provides both a qualitative classification scheme and a quantitative WKB quantization condition that predicts several sequences of resonant states. It is found that the near-threshold energy dependence of ultracold collision cross sections varies significantly with the particle exchange symmetry, with bosonic systems showing much smoother energy variations than their fermionic counterparts. Resonant variations of the angular distributions in ultracold collisions are also described.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, revtex4, submitted to J. Phys.

Radionuclide Migration Experiments in Tuff Blocks/Underunsaturated and Saturated Conditions at a Scale of Up to 1 Metre

To complement migration experiments with non-radioactive tracers in the Busted Butte experimental facility (BBTF) at the Nevada Test Site, an exploratory migration experiment has been performed under unsaturated conditions in a {approx}0.3m x {approx}0.3m x {approx}0.3m block of tuff. Longer term migration experiments, up to 600 days, under unsaturated and saturated conditions in {approx}1 m3 blocks of tuff have recently been completed. Na-fluorescein, 3H (as tritiated water), 22Na, 60Co, 95mTc and/or 99Tc (as the pertechnetate anion), 137Cs, and 237Np were used as tracers in all three experiments. Under unsaturated conditions, Tc is transported slightly faster than 3H, while under saturated conditions, the chemical conditions became highly reducing, leading to significant retardation of Tc along the flow field. If chemically reducing conditions can be demonstrated to exist in the saturated zone downstream from the proposed repository, the geological formations underlying the proposed repository horizon can potentially act as a geological barrier to the transport of some multivalent radionuclides

Dimers, Effective Interactions, and Pauli Blocking Effects in a Bilayer of Cold Fermionic Polar Molecules

We consider a bilayer setup with two parallel planes of cold fermionic polar molecules when the dipole moments are oriented perpendicular to the planes. The binding energy of two-body states with one polar molecule in each layer is determined and compared to various analytic approximation schemes in both coordinate- and momentum-space. The effective interaction of two bound dimers is obtained by integrating out the internal dimer bound state wave function and its robustness under analytical approximations is studied. Furthermore, we consider the effect of the background of other fermions on the dimer state through Pauli blocking, and discuss implications for the zero-temperature many-body phase diagram of this experimentally realizable system.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, accepted versio

Bosons and Fermions near Feshbach resonances

Near Feshbach resonances, $n|a|^3\gg 1$, systems of Bose and Fermi particles become strongly interacting/dense. In this unitary limit both bosons and fermions have very different properties than in a dilute gas, e.g., the energy per particle approach a value $\hbar^2n^{2/3}/m$ times an universal many-body constant. Calculations based upon an approximate Jastrow wave function can quantitatively describe recent measurements of trapped Bose and Fermi atoms near Feshbach resonances. The pairing gap between attractive fermions also scales as $\Delta\sim\hbar^2n^{2/3}/m$ near Feshbach resonances and is a large fraction of the Fermi energy - promising for observing BCS superfluidity in traps. Pairing undergoes several transitions depending on interaction strength and the number of particles in the trap and can also be compared to pairing in nuclei.Comment: Revised version extended to include recent molecular BEC-BCS result

Bound Chains of Tilted Dipoles in Layered Systems

Ultracold polar molecules in multilayered systems have been experimentally realized very recently. While experiments study these systems almost exclusively through their chemical reactivity, the outlook for creating and manipulating exotic few- and many-body physics in dipolar systems is fascinating. Here we concentrate on few-body states in a multilayered setup. We exploit the geometry of the interlayer potential to calculate the two- and three-body chains with one molecule in each layer. The focus is on dipoles that are aligned at some angle with respect to the layer planes by means of an external eletric field. The binding energy and the spatial structure of the bound states are studied in several different ways using analytical approaches. The results are compared to stochastic variational calculations and very good agreement is found. We conclude that approximations based on harmonic oscillator potentials are accurate even for tilted dipoles when the geometry of the potential landscape is taken into account.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Few-body Systems special issue on Critical Stability, revised versio

Resonant control of elastic collisions in an optically trapped Fermi gas of atoms

We have loaded an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms into a far off resonance optical dipole trap and precisely controlled the spin composition of the trapped gas. We have measured a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance between atoms in the two lowest energy spin-states, |9/2, -9/2> and |9/2, -7/2>. The resonance peaks at a magnetic field of 201.5 plus or minus 1.4 G and has a width of 8.0 plus or minus 1.1 G. Using this resonance we have changed the elastic collision cross section in the gas by nearly 3 orders of magnitude.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Condensed Matter Theory of Dipolar Quantum Gases

Recent experimental breakthroughs in trapping, cooling and controlling ultracold gases of polar molecules, magnetic and Rydberg atoms have paved the way toward the investigation of highly tunable quantum systems, where anisotropic, long-range dipolar interactions play a prominent role at the many-body level. In this article we review recent theoretical studies concerning the physics of such systems. Starting from a general discussion on interaction design techniques and microscopic Hamiltonians, we provide a summary of recent work focused on many-body properties of dipolar systems, including: weakly interacting Bose gases, weakly interacting Fermi gases, multilayer systems, strongly interacting dipolar gases and dipolar gases in 1D and quasi-1D geometries. Within each of these topics, purely dipolar effects and connections with experimental realizations are emphasized.Comment: Review article; submitted 09/06/2011. 158 pages, 52 figures. This document is the unedited author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Chemical Reviews, copyright American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work, a link will be provided soo

Vortices in p-Wave Superfluids of Trapped Fermionic Atom Gases

In order to help detecting superfluidity, we theoretically investigate p-wave pairing superfluids in neutral Fermion atom gases confined by a three dimensimentional (3D) harmonic potential. The Ginzburg-Landau framework, which is generic for p-wave superfluids, is used to describe the order parameter spatial structure, or texture characterized by the l-vector both at rest and under rotation. The l-vector configuration is strongly contrained by the boundary condition due to a trap. It is found that the ground state textures exhibit spontaneous supercurrent at rest both cigar and pancake shape traps. The current direction depends on the trapping shape. Under rotation a pair of half-quantum vortex with half-winding number enters a system and is stabilized for both trap geometries. We give detailed explanation for their 3D structure. The deformations of the condensate shape are seen with increasing the rotation speed, which is tightly connected with the underlying vortex formation where the condensates are depressed in the vortex core.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., added a reference for section

Nonlinearity and Topology

The interplay of nonlinearity and topology results in many novel and emergent properties across a number of physical systems such as chiral magnets, nematic liquid crystals, Bose-Einstein condensates, photonics, high energy physics, etc. It also results in a wide variety of topological defects such as solitons, vortices, skyrmions, merons, hopfions, monopoles to name just a few. Interaction among and collision of these nontrivial defects itself is a topic of great interest. Curvature and underlying geometry also affect the shape, interaction and behavior of these defects. Such properties can be studied using techniques such as, e.g. the Bogomolnyi decomposition. Some applications of this interplay, e.g. in nonreciprocal photonics as well as topological materials such as Dirac and Weyl semimetals, are also elucidated

Phylogeny in Aid of the Present and Novel Microbial Lineages: Diversity in Bacillus

Bacillus represents microbes of high economic, medical and biodefense importance. Bacillus strain identification based on 16S rRNA sequence analyses is invariably limited to species level. Secondly, certain discrepancies exist in the segregation of Bacillus subtilis strains. In the RDP/NCBI databases, out of a total of 2611 individual 16S rDNA sequences belonging to the 175 different species of the genus Bacillus, only 1586 have been identified up to species level. 16S rRNA sequences of Bacillus anthracis (153 strains), B. cereus (211 strains), B. thuringiensis (108 strains), B. subtilis (271 strains), B. licheniformis (131 strains), B. pumilus (83 strains), B. megaterium (47 strains), B. sphaericus (42 strains), B. clausii (39 strains) and B. halodurans (36 strains) were considered for generating species-specific framework and probes as tools for their rapid identification. Phylogenetic segregation of 1121, 16S rDNA sequences of 10 different Bacillus species in to 89 clusters enabled us to develop a phylogenetic frame work of 34 representative sequences. Using this phylogenetic framework, 305 out of 1025, 16S rDNA sequences presently classified as Bacillus sp. could be identified up to species level. This identification was supported by 20 to 30 nucleotides long signature sequences and in silico restriction enzyme analysis specific to the 10 Bacillus species. This integrated approach resulted in identifying around 30% of Bacillus sp. up to species level and revealed that B. subtilis strains can be segregated into two phylogenetically distinct groups, such that one of them may be renamed