Evaluation of heating effects on atoms trapped in an optical trap

We solve a stochastic master equation based on the theory of Savard et al. [T. A. Savard. K. M. O'Hara, and J. E. Thomas, Phys, Rev. A 56, R1095 (1997)] for heating arising from fluctuations in the trapping laser intensity. We compare with recent experiments of Ye et al. [J. Ye, D. W. Vernooy, and H. J. Kimble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4987 (1999)], and find good agreement with the experimental measurements of the distribution of trap occupancy times. The major cause of trap loss arises from the broadening of the energy distribution of the trapped atom, rather than the mean heating rate, which is a very much smaller effect

Hydrogen adsorption and phase transitions in fullerite

Hydrogen desorption and adsorption properties of the fullerene materials C60, C70, and fullerite (a mixture of C60 and C70) were measured volumetrically using a Sievert's apparatus. Over several cycles of isotherm measurements at 77 K, the hydrogen storage capacities of one of the fullerite samples increased from an initial value of 0.4 wt % for the first cycle to a capacity of 4.4 wt % for the fourth cycle. Correspondingly, the surface area of this sample increased from 0.9 to 11 m^2/g, and there were changes in its x-ray powder diffraction pattern. In comparison, two other fullerite samples, prepared by a different procedure showed no such behavior. Pure C60 and pure C70 were also cycled and exhibited small and constant capacities of 0.7 and 0.33 wt %, respectively, as a function of number of cycles. The enhanced storage capacity of fullerite material is tentatively attributed to the presence of C60 oxide

Nature vs. Nurture: Predictability in Low-Temperature Ising Dynamics

Consider a dynamical many-body system with a random initial state subsequently evolving through stochastic dynamics. What is the relative importance of the initial state ("nature") vs. the realization of the stochastic dynamics ("nurture") in predicting the final state? We examined this question for the two-dimensional Ising ferromagnet following an initial deep quench from $T=\infty$ to $T=0$. We performed Monte Carlo studies on the overlap between "identical twins" raised in independent dynamical environments, up to size $L=500$. Our results suggest an overlap decaying with time as $t^{-\theta_h}$ with $\theta_h = 0.22 \pm 0.02$; the same exponent holds for a quench to low but nonzero temperature. This "heritability exponent" may equal the persistence exponent for the 2D Ising ferromagnet, but the two differ more generally.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; new version includes results for nonzero temperatur

Topological Quantum Phase Transition in Synthetic Non-Abelian Gauge Potential

The method of synthetic gauge potentials opens up a new avenue for our understanding and discovering novel quantum states of matter. We investigate the topological quantum phase transition of Fermi gases trapped in a honeycomb lattice in the presence of a synthetic non- Abelian gauge potential. We develop a systematic fermionic effective field theory to describe a topological quantum phase transition tuned by the non-Abelian gauge potential and ex- plore its various important experimental consequences. Numerical calculations on lattice scales are performed to compare with the results achieved by the fermionic effective field theory. Several possible experimental detection methods of topological quantum phase tran- sition are proposed. In contrast to condensed matter experiments where only gauge invariant quantities can be measured, both gauge invariant and non-gauge invariant quantities can be measured by experimentally generating various non-Abelian gauges corresponding to the same set of Wilson loops

OH(A-X) fluorescence from photodissociative excitation of HO2 at 157.5 nm

The OH(A-X) fluorescence from photodissociative excitation of HO2 by F2 laser photons (157.5 nm) was observed and compared with the OH fluorescence spectra of H2O2 and the O2+CH3OH mixture. The rotational population distributions of OH(A) were obtained from the fluorescence spectra. The most populated levels are J = 4 for photodissociative excitation of HO2, J = 20 for H2O2, and J = 21 for the O2+CH3OH mixture. The fluorescence from the gas mixture is attributed to the O + H recombination for which the atoms are produced from photodissociation of parent molecules

Real-time cavity QED with single atoms

We report the first measurement of the real-time evolution of the complex field amplitude brought on by single atom transits. We show the variation in time of both quadrature amplitudes (simultaneously recorded) of the light transmitted through the cavity, as well the resultant optical phase for a single atom transit event. In this particular measurement, the cavity and laser were both detuned by 10 MHz from the Cs resonance