Optomechanics with molecules in a strongly pumped ring cavity

Cavity cooling of an atom works best on a cyclic optical transition in the strong coupling regime near resonance, where small cavity photon numbers suffice for trapping and cooling. Due to the absence of closed transitions a straightforward application to molecules fails: optical pumping can lead the particle into uncoupled states. An alternative operation in the far off-resonant regime generates only very slow cooling due to the reduced field-molecule coupling. We predict to overcome this by using a strongly driven ring-cavity operated in the sideband cooling regime. As in the optomechanical setups one takes advantage of a collectively enhanced field-molecule coupling strength using a large photon number. A linearized analytical treatment confirmed by full numerical quantum simulations predicts fast cooling despite the off-resonant small single molecule - single photon coupling. Even ground state cooling can be obtained by tuning the cavity field close to the Anti-stokes sideband for sufficiently high trapping frequency. Numerical simulations show quantum jumps of the molecules between the lowest two trapping levels, which can be be directly and continuously monitored via scattered light intensity detection

Strange hadronic stellar matter within the Brueckner-Bethe-Goldstone theory

In the framework of the non-relativistic Brueckner-Bethe-Goldstone theory, we derive a microscopic equation of state for asymmetric and $\beta$-stable matter containing $\Sigma^-$ and $\Lambda$ hyperons. We mainly study the effects of three-body forces (TBFs) among nucleons on the hyperon formation and the equation of state (EoS). We find that, when TBFs are included, the stellar core is almost equally populated by nucleons and hyperons. The resulting EoS, which turns out to be extremely soft, has been used in order to calculate the static structure of neutron stars. We obtain a value of the maximum mass of 1.26 solar masses (1 solar mass $M_o \simeq 1.99 \cdot 10^{33} g$). Stellar rotations increase this value by about 12%.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, 2 figures included. To appear in the Proceedings of '' Bologna 2000 - Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the Century'', May 29- June 3, 2000, Bologna, Ital

Structure of the hadron-quark mixed phase in protoneutron stars

We study the hadron-quark phase transition in the interior of hot protoneutron stars, combining the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach for hadronic matter with the MIT bag model or the Dyson-Schwinger model for quark matter. We examine the structure of the mixed phase constructed according to different prescriptions for the phase transition, and the resulting consequences for stellar properties. We find important effects for the internal composition, but only very small influence on the global stellar properties.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure