Discriminating the effects of collapse models from environmental diffusion with levitated nanospheres

Collapse models postulate the existence of intrinsic noise which modifies quantum mechanics and is responsible for the emergence of macroscopic classicality. Assessing the validity of these models is extremely challenging because it is nontrivial to discriminate unambiguously their presence in experiments where other hardly controllable sources of noise compete to the overall decoherence. Here we provide a simple procedure able to probe the hypothetical presence of the collapse noise with a levitated nanosphere in a Fabry-Perot cavity. We show that the stationary state of the system is particularly sensitive, under specific experimental conditions, to the interplay between the trapping frequency, the cavity size, and the momentum diffusion induced by the collapse models, allowing to detect them even in the presence of standard environmental noises.Comment: close to the published versio

Detection of the large scale alignment of massive galaxies at z~0.6

We report on the detection of the alignment between galaxies and large-scale structure at z~0.6 based on the CMASS galaxy sample from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopy Survey data release 9. We use two statistics to quantify the alignment signal: 1) the alignment two-point correlation function which probes the dependence of galaxy clustering at a given separation in redshift space on the projected angle (theta_p) between the orientation of galaxies and the line connecting to other galaxies, and 2) the cos(2theta)-statistic which estimates the average of cos(2theta_p) for all correlated pairs at given separation. We find significant alignment signal out to about 70 Mpc/h in both statistics. Applications of the same statistics to dark matter halos of mass above 10^12 M_sun/h in a large cosmological simulation show similar scale-dependent alignment signals to the observation, but with higher amplitudes at all scales probed. We show that this discrepancy may be partially explained by a misalignment angle between central galaxies and their host halos, though detailed modeling is needed in order to better understand the link between the orientations of galaxies and host halos. In addition, we find systematic trends of the alignment statistics with the stellar mass of the CMASS galaxies, in the sense that more massive galaxies are more strongly aligned with the large-scale structure.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Topological superfluid in a fermionic bilayer optical lattice

In this paper, a topological superfluid phase with Chern number C=1 possessing gapless edge states and non-Abelian anyons is designed in a C=1 topological insulator proximity to an s-wave superfluid on an optical lattice with the effective gauge field and layer-dependent Zeeman field coupled to ultracold fermionic atoms pseudo spin. We also study its topological properties and calculate the phase stiffness by using the random-phase-approximation approach. Finally we derive the temperature of the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition by means of renormalized group theory. Owning to the existence of non-Abelian anyons, this C=1 topological superfluid may be a possible candidate for topological quantum computation.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

Apigenin exerts anticancer effects on human cervical cancer cells via induction of apoptosis and regulation of Raf/MEK/ERK signalling pathway

Purpose: To investigate the anticancer activity of apigenin on human cervical cancer cells.Methods: The anti-proliferative effects of apigenin on HeLa cervical cancer cells were determined by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)- )-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and clonogenic assays, while its effect on apoptosis was assayed by DAPI and annexin V/PI double staining. Expression of proteins was assessed by immunoblotting.Results: Apigenin exerted anticancer effects on HeLa cervical cancer cells with an IC50 of 15 μM, and also reduced the colony formation of HeLa cells. These antiproliferative effects were due to induction of apoptosis as indicated by DAPI and annexin V/PI staining. Apigenin altered Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, thereby triggering apoptosis, and also inhibited the Raf/MEK/ERK signalling pathway.Conclusion: These results indicate that apigenin suppresses the growth of cervical cancer cells and may prove to be an important molecule for the treatment of cervical cancer.Keywords: Cervical cancer, Apigenin, Apoptosis, Ba