33 research outputs found
Bright matter wave solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates
We review recent experimental and theoretical work on the creation
of bright matter wave solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates. In two recent experiments,
solitons are formed from Bose–Einstein condensates of 7Li by utilizing
a Feshbach resonance to switch from repulsive to attractive interactions.
The solitons are made to propagate in a one-dimensional potential formed by a
focused laser beam. For repulsive interactions, the wavepacket undergoes dispersivewavepacket
spreading, while for attractive interactions, localized solitons are
formed. In our experiment, a multi-soliton train containing up to ten solitons is
observed to propagate without spreading for a duration of 2 s. Adjacent solitons
are found to interact repulsively, in agreement with a calculation based on the
nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation assuming that the soliton train is formed with an
alternating phase structure. The origin of this phase structure is not entirely clear
Fabrication of high-quality PMMA/SiO spaced planar microcavities for strong coupling of light with monolayer WS excitons
Exciton polaritons in atomically-thin transition metal dichalcogenide
crystals (monolayer TMDCs) have emerged as highly promising to enable
topological transport, ultra-efficient laser technologies, and collective
quantum phenomena such as polariton condensation and superfluidity at room
temperature. However, integrating monolayer TMDCs into high-quality planar
microcavities to achieve the required strong coupling between the cavity
photons and the TMDC excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) has proven
challenging. Previous approaches had to compromise between the adverse effects
on the strength of light-matter interactions in the monolayer, the cavity
photon lifetime, and the lateral size of the microcavity. Here, we demonstrate
a scalable approach to fabricating high-quality planar microcavities with
integrated monolayer WS layer-by-layer by using polymethyl
methacrylate/silicon oxide (PMMA/SiO) as cavity spacer. Because the exciton
oscillator strength is well protected by the PMMA layer against the required
processing steps, the microcavities investigated in this work, which have
quality factors of above , can operate in the strong light-matter
coupling regime at room temperature. This is an important step towards
fabricating patterned microcavities for engineering the exciton-polariton
potential landscape, which is essential for enabling many proposed
technologies
Approaching the adiabatic timescale with machine-learning
The control and manipulation of quantum systems without excitation is
challenging, due to the complexities in fully modeling such systems accurately
and the difficulties in controlling these inherently fragile systems
experimentally. For example, while protocols to decompress Bose-Einstein
condensates (BEC) faster than the adiabatic timescale (without excitation or
loss) have been well developed theoretically, experimental implementations of
these protocols have yet to reach speeds faster than the adiabatic timescale.
In this work, we experimentally demonstrate an alternative approach based on a
machine learning algorithm which makes progress towards this goal. The
algorithm is given control of the coupled decompression and transport of a
metastable helium condensate, with its performance determined after each
experimental iteration by measuring the excitations of the resultant BEC. After
each iteration the algorithm adjusts its internal model of the system to create
an improved control output for the next iteration. Given sufficient control
over the decompression, the algorithm converges to a novel solution that sets
the current speed record in relation to the adiabatic timescale, beating out
other experimental realizations based on theoretical approaches. This method
presents a feasible approach for implementing fast state preparations or
transformations in other quantum systems, without requiring a solution to a
theoretical model of the system. Implications for fundamental physics and
cooling are discussed.Comment: 7 pages main text, 2 pages supporting informatio
Understanding the α-crystallin cell membrane conjunction
PURPOSE. It is well established that levels of soluble α-crystallin in the lens cytoplasm fall steadily with age, accompanied by a corresponding increase in the amount of membrane-bound α-crystallin. Less well understood, is the mechanism driving this age-dependent membrane association. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the membrane and its associated proteins and peptides in the binding of α-crystallin.
METHODS. Fibre cell membranes from human and bovine lenses were separated from soluble proteins by centrifugation. Membranes were stripped of associated proteins with successive aqueous, urea and alkaline solutions. Protein constituents of the respective membrane isolates were examined by SDS-PAGE and Western immunoblotting. Recombinant αA- and αB-crystallins were fluorescently-labeled with Alexa350® dye and incubated with the membrane isolates and the binding capacity of membrane for α-crystallin was determined.
RESULTS. The binding capacity of human membranes was consistently higher than that of bovine membranes. Urea- and alkali-treated membranes from the nucleus had similar binding capacities for αA-crystallin, which were significantly higher than both cortical membrane extracts. αB-Crystallin also had a higher affinity for nuclear membrane. However, urea-treated nuclear membrane had three times the binding capacity for αB-crystallin as compared to the alkali-treated nuclear membrane. Modulation of the membrane-crystallin interaction was achieved by the inclusion of an N-terminal peptide of αB-crystallin in the assays, which significantly increased the binding. Remarkably, following extraction with alkali, full length αA- and αB-crystallins were found to remain associated with both bovine and human lens membranes.
CONCLUSIONS. Fiber cell membrane isolated from the lens has an inherent capacity to bind α-crystallin. For αB-crystallin, this binding was found to be proportional to the level of extrinsic membrane proteins in cells isolated from the lens nucleus, indicating these proteins may play a role in the recruitment of αB-crystallin. No such relationship was evident for αA-crystallin in the nucleus, or for cortical membrane binding. Intrinsic lens peptides, which increase in abundance with age, may also function to modulate the interaction between soluble α-crystallin and the membrane. In addition, the tight association between α-crystallin and the lens membrane suggests that the protein may be an intrinsic component of the membrane structure
Production of a highly degenerate Fermi gas of metastable helium-3 atoms
We report on the achievement of quantum degeneracy in both components of a
Bose-Fermi mixture of metastable helium atoms, He* and He*. Degeneracy
is achieved via Doppler cooling and forced evaporation for He*, and
sympathetically cooling He* with He*. We discuss our simplified
implementation, along with the high versatility of our system. This technique
is able to produce a degenerate Fermi gas with a minimum reduced temperature of
, consisting of He* atoms. Due to the high
internal energy of both isotopes single atom detection is possible, opening the
possibility of a large number of experiments into Bose-Fermi mixtures.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
Observation of quantum depletion in a nonequilibrium exciton-polariton condensate
The property of superfluidity, first discovered in liquid 4He, is closely
related to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of interacting bosons. However,
even at zero temperature, when one would expect the whole bosonic quantum
liquid to become condensed, a fraction of it is excited into higher momentum
states via interparticle interactions and quantum fluctuations -- the
phenomenon of quantum depletion. Quantum depletion of weakly interacting atomic
BECs in thermal equilibrium is well understood theoretically but is difficult
to measure. This is even more challenging in driven-dissipative systems such as
exciton-polariton condensates(photons coupled to electron-hole pairs in a
semiconductor), since their nonequilibrium nature is predicted to suppress
quantum depletion. Here, we observe quantum depletion of an optically trapped
high-density exciton-polariton condensate by directly detecting the spectral
branch of elementary excitations populated by this process. Analysis of the
population of this branch in momentum space shows that quantum depletion of an
exciton-polariton condensate can closely follow or strongly deviate from the
equilibrium Bogoliubov theory, depending on the fraction of matter (exciton) in
an exciton-polariton. Our results reveal the effects of exciton-polariton
interactions beyond the mean-field description and call for a deeper
understanding of the relationship between equilibrium and nonequilibrium BECs.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, with supplementary informatio
Frequency Locking by Analysis of Orthogonal Modes
We describe a method for frequency locking a laser and a cavity. Orthogonal modes from the laser are incident on a cavity such that only one mode is resonant at the desired frequency. The polarisation or spatial phase distribution of the light reflected from the cavity is analysed, yielding the phase between the modes - this is the locking signal. We compare this method with other locking techniques, and show this to be a natural progression from these. Simulations are presented for applications of interest, e.g., gravity wave interferometry (an empty cavity) and optical frequency conversion (a polarisation dependent cavity)
Formation and Propagation of Matter Wave Soliton Trains
Attraction between atoms in a Bose-Einstein-Condensate renders the condensate
unstable to collapse. Confinement in an atom trap, however, can stabilize the
condensate for a limited number of atoms, as was observed with 7Li, but beyond
this number, the condensate collapses. Attractive condensates constrained to
one-dimensional motion are predicted to form stable solitons for which the
attractive interactions exactly compensate for the wave packet dispersion. Here
we report the formation or bright solitons of 7Li atoms created in a quasi-1D
optical trap. The solitons are created from a stable Bose-Einstein condensate
by magnetically tuning the interactions from repulsive to attractive. We
observe a soliton train, containing many solitons. The solitons are set in
motion by offsetting the optical potential and are observed to propagate in the
potential for many oscillatory cycles without spreading. Repulsive interactions
between neighboring solitons are inferred from their motion