Threshold behavior of bosonic two-dimensional few-body systems

Bosonic two-dimensional self-bound clusters consisting of $N$ atoms interacting through additive van der Waals potentials become unbound at a critical mass m*(N); m*(N) has been predicted to be independent of the size of the system. Furthermore, it has been predicted that the ground state energy E(N) of the N-atom system varies exponentially as the atomic mass approaches m*. This paper reports accurate numerical many-body calculations that allow these predictions to be tested. We confirm the existence of a universal critical mass m*, and show that the near-threshold behavior can only be described properly if a previously neglected term is included. We comment on the universality of the energy ratio E(N+1)/E(N) near threshold.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Peripheral vision horizon display testing in RF-4C aircraft

A test program to assess the capability of the peripheral vision horizon display (PVHD) to provide peripheral attitude cues to the pilot is described. The system was installed in the rear cockpit of a RF-4C aircraft, selected because its poor instrument crosscheck conditions. The PVHD test plan was designed to assess three primary areas: (1) ability of the system to reduce spatial disorientation; (2) ability of the system to aid the pilot in recovering from unusual attitudes; and (3) improvement in pilot performance during instrument landing system (ILS) approaches. Results of preliminary test flights are summarized. The major problem areas concern the distinction of the display itself and the capability of the display to provide pitch motion cues

The Trapped Polarized Fermi Gas at Unitarity

We consider population-imbalanced two-component Fermi gases under external harmonic confinement interacting through short-range two-body potentials with diverging s-wave scattering length. Using the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method, the energies of the "normal state" are determined as functions of the population-imbalance and the number of particles. The energies of the trapped system follow, to a good approximation, a universal curve even for fairly small systems. A simple parameterization of the universal curve is presented and related to the equation of state of the bulk system.Comment: 4 pages, 2 tables, 2 figure

Dipolar Bose gases: Many-body versus mean-field description

We characterize zero-temperature dipolar Bose gases under external spherical confinement as a function of the dipole strength using the essentially exact many-body diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) technique. We show that the DMC energies are reproduced accurately within a mean-field framework if the variation of the s-wave scattering length with the dipole strength is accounted for properly. Our calculations suggest stability diagrams and collapse mechanisms of dipolar Bose gases that differ significantly from those previously proposed in the literature

The maximum density droplet to lower density droplet transition in quantum dots

We show that, Landau level mixing in two-dimensional quantum dot wave functions can be taken into account very effectively by multiplying the exact lowest Landau level wave functions by a Jastrow factor which is optimized by variance minimization. The comparison between exact diagonalization and fixed phase diffusion Monte Carlo results suggests that the phase of the many-body wave functions are not affected much by Landau level mixing. We apply these wave functions to study the transition from the maximum density droplet state (incipient integer quantum Hall state with angular momentum L=N(N-1)/2) to lower density droplet states (L>N(N-1)/2).Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Covariance analysis of the airborne laser ranging system

The requirements and limitations of employing an airborne laser ranging system for detecting crustal shifts of the Earth within centimeters over a region of approximately 200 by 400 km are presented. The system consists of an aircraft which flies over a grid of ground deployed retroreflectors, making six passes over the grid at two different altitudes. The retroreflector baseline errors are assumed to result from measurement noise, a priori errors on the aircraft and retroreflector positions, tropospheric refraction, and sensor biases

Dilute Bose gases interacting via power-law potentials

Neutral atoms interact through a van der Waals potential which asymptotically falls off as r^{-6}. In ultracold gases, this interaction can be described to a good approximation by the atom-atom scattering length. However, corrections arise that depend on the characteristic length of the van der Waals potential. We parameterize these corrections by analyzing the energies of two- and few-atom systems under external harmonic confinement, obtained by numerically and analytically solving the Schrodinger equation. We generalize our results to particles interacting through a longer-ranged potential which asymptotically falls off as r^{-4}.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Systematic reduction of sign errors in many-body problems: generalization of self-healing diffusion Monte Carlo to excited states

A recently developed self-healing diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm [PRB 79, 195117] is extended to the calculation of excited states. The formalism is based on an excited-state fixed-node approximation and the mixed estimator of the excited-state probability density. The fixed-node ground state wave-functions of inequivalent nodal pockets are found simultaneously using a recursive approach. The decay of the wave-function into lower energy states is prevented using two methods: i) The projection of the improved trial-wave function into previously calculated eigenstates is removed. ii) The reference energy for each nodal pocket is adjusted in order to create a kink in the global fixed-node wave-function which, when locally smoothed out, increases the volume of the higher energy pockets at the expense of the lower energy ones until the energies of every pocket become equal. This reference energy method is designed to find nodal structures that are local minima for arbitrary fluctuations of the nodes within a given nodal topology. We demonstrate in a model system that the algorithm converges to many-body eigenstates in bosonic-like and fermionic cases.Comment: New version with two new figures. Several formulas of intermediate steps in the analytical derivations have been added. The review reports and replies with a summary of changes are included in the source pdf files with nicer figures are also included in the sourc

The few-body problem in terms of correlated gaussians

In their textbook, Suzuki and Varga [Y. Suzuki and K. Varga, {\em Stochastic Variational Approach to Quantum-Mechanical Few-Body Problems} (Springer, Berlin, 1998)] present the stochastic variational method in a very exhaustive way. In this framework, the so-called correlated gaussian bases are often employed. General formulae for the matrix elements of various operators can be found in the textbook. However the Fourier transform of correlated gaussians and their application to the management of a relativistic kinetic energy operator are missing and cannot be found in the literature. In this paper we present these interesting formulae. We give also a derivation for new formulations concerning central potentials; the corresponding formulae are more efficient numerically than those presented in the textbook.Comment: 10 page

Dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates with dipole-dependent scattering length

We consider a Bose-Einstein condensate of polar molecules in a harmonic trap, where the effective dipole may be tuned by an external field. We demonstrate that taking into account the dependence of the scattering length on the dipole moment is essential to reproducing the correct energies and for predicting the stability of the condensate. We do this by comparing Gross-Pitaevskii calculations with diffusion Monte Carlo calculations. We find very good agreement between the results obtained by these two approaches once the dipole dependence of the scattering length is taken into account. We also examine the behavior of the condensate in non-isotropic traps