1,116 research outputs found
Structure and consequences of vortex-core states in p-wave superfluids
It is now well established that in two-dimensional chiral p-wave paired
superfluids, the vortices carry zero-energy modes which obey non-abelian
exchange statistics and can potentially be used for topological quantum
computation. In such superfluids there may also exist other excitations below
the bulk gap inside the cores of vortices. We study the properties of these
subgap states, and argue that their presence affects the topological protection
of the zero modes. In conventional superconductors where the chemical potential
is of the order of the Fermi energy of a non-interacting Fermi gas, there is a
large number of subgap states and the mini-gap towards the lowest of these
states is a small fraction of the Fermi energy. It is therefore difficult to
cool the system to below the mini-gap and at experimentally available
temperatures, transitions between the subgap states, including the zero modes,
will occur and can alter the quantum states of the zero-modes. We show that
compound qubits involving the zero-modes and the parity of the occupation
number of the subgap states on each vortex are still well defined. However,
practical schemes taking into account all subgap states would nonetheless be
difficult to achieve. We propose to avoid this difficulty by working in the
regime of small chemical potential mu, near the transition to a strongly paired
phase, where the number of subgap states is reduced. We develop the theory to
describe this regime of strong pairing interactions and we show how the subgap
states are ultimately absorbed into the bulk gap. Since the bulk gap vanishes
as mu -> 0 there is an optimum value mu_c which maximises the combined gap. We
propose cold atomic gases as candidate systems where the regime of strong
interactions can be explored, and explicitly evaluate mu_c in a Feshbach
resonant K-40 gas.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures; v2: main text as published version, additional
detail included as appendice
Strongly-resonant p-wave superfluids
We study theoretically a dilute gas of identical fermions interacting via a
p-wave resonance. We show that, depending on the microscopic physics, there are
two distinct regimes of p-wave resonant superfluids, which we term "weak" and
"strong". Although expected naively to form a BCS-BEC superfluid, a
strongly-resonant p-wave superfluid is in fact unstable towards the formation
of a gas of fermionic triplets. We examine this instability and estimate the
lifetime of the p-wave molecules due to the collisional relaxation into
triplets. We discuss consequences for the experimental achievement of p-wave
superfluids in both weakly- and strongly-resonant regimes
Knots in a Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate
We show that knots of spin textures can be created in the polar phase of a
spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate, and discuss experimental schemes for their
generation and probe, together with their lifetime.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Lorentz-noninvariant neutrino oscillations: model and predictions
We present a three-parameter neutrino-oscillation model for three flavors of
massless neutrinos with Fermi-point splitting and tri-maximal mixing angles.
One of these parameters is the T-violating phase \epsilon, for which the
experimental results from K2K and KamLAND appear to favor a nonzero value. In
this article, we give further model predictions for neutrino oscillations.
Upcoming experiments will be able to test this simple model and the general
idea of Fermi-point splitting. Possible implications for proposed experiments
and neutrino factories are also discussed.Comment: 22 pages, v5: final version to appear in IJMP
Birman-Schwinger and the number of Andreev states in BCS superconductors
The number of bound states due to inhomogeneities in a BCS superconductor is
usually established either by variational means or via exact solutions of
particularly simple, symmetric perturbations. Here we propose estimating the
number of sub-gap states using the Birman-Schwinger principle. We show how to
obtain upper bounds on the number of sub-gap states for small normal regions
and derive a suitable Cwikel-Lieb-Rozenblum inequality. We also estimate the
number of such states for large normal regions using high dimensional
generalizations of the Szego theorem. The method works equally well for local
inhomogeneities of the order parameter and for external potentials.Comment: Final version to appear in Phys Rev
as parameter of Minkowski metric in effective theory
With the proper choice of the dimensionality of the metric components, the
action for all fields becomes dimensionless. Such quantities as the vacuum
speed of light c, the Planck constant \hbar, the electric charge e, the
particle mass m, the Newton constant G never enter equations written in the
covariant form, i.e., via the metric g^{\mu\nu}. The speed of light c and the
Planck constant are parameters of a particular two-parametric family of
solutions of general relativity equations describing the flat isotropic
Minkowski vacuum in effective theory emerging at low energy:
g^{\mu\nu}=diag(-\hbar^2, (\hbar c)^2, (\hbar c)^2, (\hbar c)^2). They
parametrize the equilibrium quantum vacuum state. The physical quantities which
enter the covariant equations are dimensionless quantities and dimensionful
quantities of dimension of rest energy M or its power. Dimensionless quantities
include the running coupling `constants' \alpha_i; topological and geometric
quantum numbers (angular momentum quantum number j, weak charge, electric
charge q, hypercharge, baryonic and leptonic charges, number of atoms N, etc).
Dimensionful parameters include the rest energies of particles M_n (or/and mass
matrices); the gravitational coupling K with dimension of M^2; cosmological
constant with dimension M^4; etc. In effective theory, the interval s has the
dimension of 1/M; it characterizes the dynamics of particles in the quantum
vacuum rather than geometry of space-time. We discuss the effective action, and
the measured physical quantities resulting from the action, including
parameters which enter the Josepson effect, quantum Hall effect, etc.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, extended version of the paper accepted in JETP
Letter
Quantum phase transition for the BEC--BCS crossover in condensed matter physics and CPT violation in elementary particle physics
We discuss the quantum phase transition that separates a vacuum state with
fully-gapped fermion spectrum from a vacuum state with topologically-protected
Fermi points (gap nodes). In the context of condensed-matter physics, such a
quantum phase transition with Fermi point splitting may occur for a system of
ultracold fermionic atoms in the region of the BEC-BCS crossover, provided
Cooper pairing occurs in the non-s-wave channel. For elementary particle
physics, the splitting of Fermi points may lead to CPT violation, neutrino
oscillations, and other phenomena.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, v3: published versio
Self-tuning vacuum variable and cosmological constant
A spacetime-independent variable is introduced which characterizes a
Lorentz-invariant self-sustained quantum vacuum. For a perfect
(Lorentz-invariant) quantum vacuum, the self-tuning of this variable nullifies
the effective energy density which enters the low-energy gravitational field
equations. The observed small but nonzero value of the cosmological constant
may then be explained as corresponding to the effective energy density of an
imperfect quantum vacuum (perturbed by, e.g., the presence of thermal matter).Comment: 28 pages with revtex4; v6: preprint version of published paper with
detailed reference
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