An SU(N) Mott insulator of an atomic Fermi gas realized by large-spin Pomeranchuk cooling

The Hubbard model, containing only the minimum ingredients of nearest neighbor hopping and on-site interaction for correlated electrons, has succeeded in accounting for diverse phenomena observed in solid-state materials. One of the interesting extensions is to enlarge its spin symmetry to SU(N>2), which is closely related to systems with orbital degeneracy. Here we report a successful formation of the SU(6) symmetric Mott insulator state with an atomic Fermi gas of ytterbium (173Yb) in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Besides the suppression of compressibility and the existence of charge excitation gap which characterize a Mott insulating phase, we reveal an important difference between the cases of SU(6) and SU(2) in the achievable temperature as the consequence of different entropy carried by an isolated spin. This is analogous to Pomeranchuk cooling in solid 3He and will be helpful for investigating exotic quantum phases of SU(N) Hubbard system at extremely low temperatures.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Nature Physic

Dynamics of a Quantum Phase Transition and Relaxation to a Steady State

We review recent theoretical work on two closely related issues: excitation of an isolated quantum condensed matter system driven adiabatically across a continuous quantum phase transition or a gapless phase, and apparent relaxation of an excited system after a sudden quench of a parameter in its Hamiltonian. Accordingly the review is divided into two parts. The first part revolves around a quantum version of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism including also phenomena that go beyond this simple paradigm. What they have in common is that excitation of a gapless many-body system scales with a power of the driving rate. The second part attempts a systematic presentation of recent results and conjectures on apparent relaxation of a pure state of an isolated quantum many-body system after its excitation by a sudden quench. This research is motivated in part by recent experimental developments in the physics of ultracold atoms with potential applications in the adiabatic quantum state preparation and quantum computation.Comment: 117 pages; review accepted in Advances in Physic

Controlled release from triple layer, donut-shaped tablets with enteric polymers

The purpose of this research was to evaluate triple layer, donut-shaped tablets (TLDSTs) for extended release dosage forms. TLDSTs were prepared by layering 3 powders sequentially after pressing them with a punch. The core tablet consisted of enteric polymers, mainly hydroxypropyl methylcellulose acetate succinate, and the bottom and top layers were made of a water-insoluble polymer, ethyl cellulose. Drug release kinetics were dependent on the pH of the dissolution medium and the drug properties, such as solubility, salt forms of weak acid and weak base drugs, and drug loading. At a 10% drug loading level, all drugs, regardless of their type or solubility, yielded the same release profiles within an acceptable level of experimental error. As drug loading increased from 10% to 30%, the drug release rate of neutral drugs increased for all except sulfathiazole, which retained the same kinetics as at 10% loading. HCl salts of weak base drugs had much slower release rates than did those of neutral drugs (eg, theophylline) as drug loading increased. The release of labetalol HCl retarded as drug loading increased from 10% to 30%. On the other hand, Na salts of weak acid drugs had much higher release rates than did those of neutral drugs (eg, theophylline). Drug release kinetics were governed by the ionization/erosion process with slight drug diffusion, observing no perfect straight line. A mathematical expression for drug release kinetics (erosion-controlled system) of TLDSTs is presented. In summary, a TLDST is a good design to obtain zero-order or nearly zero-order release kinetics for a wide range of drug solubilities