Searches for long-lived charged particles with the ATLAS experiment

These conference proceedings for PLHC 2011 in Perugia, Italy summarize the results from two searches for long-lived charged particles using 34-37 pb-1. The searches are based on direct detection and exploits ionization energy loss and time-of-flight measurements to separate slow-moving signal particles from the Standard Model backgrounds. The observations are in all cases consistent with the background-only hypotheses and limits are presented for long-lived squarks, gluinos and sleptons.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, proceedings for Physics at the LHC in Perugia, Italy, June 6-11, 201

\gamma-rays from starburst galaxies

In this paper the current status of \gamma-ray observations of starburst galaxies from hundreds of MeV up to TeV energies with space-based instruments and ground-based Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) is summarised. The properties of the high-energy (HE; 100 MeV < E < 100 GeV) and very-high-energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) emission of the archetypical starburst galaxies M 82 and NGC 253 are discussed and put into context with the HE \gamma-ray emission detected from other galaxies that show enhanced star-formation activity such as NGC 4945 and NGC 1068. Finally, prospects to study the star-formation - \gamma-ray emission connection from Galactic systems to entire galaxies with the forthcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) are outlined.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, solicited talk, to be published in High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy (eds. F. Aharonian, W. Hofmann, F. Rieger) the proceedings of the 5th Heidelberg international symposium on high energy gamma-ray astronom

Majorana fermions coupled to electromagnetic radiation

We consider a voltage-biased Josephson junction between two nanowires hosting Majorana zero modes which occur as topological protected zero-energy excitations at the junction. We show that two Majorana fermions localized at the junction, even though being neutral particles, interact with the electromagnetic field and generate coherent radiation similar to the conventional Josephson radiation. Within a semiclassical analysis of the radiation field, we find that the optical phase gets locked to the superconducting phase difference and that the radiation is emitted at half the Josephson frequency. In order to confirm the coherence of the radiation, we study correlations of the radiation emitted by two spatially-separated junctions in a d.c.-SQUID geometry taking into account decoherence due to spontaneous state-switches as well as due to quasi-particle poisoning.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Quantum Hole Digging in Magnetic Molecular Clusters

Below 360 mK, Fe8 magnetic molecular clusters are in the pure quantum relaxation regime. We showed recently that the predicted ``square-root time'' relaxation is obeyed, allowing us to develop a new method for watching the evolution of the distribution of molecular spin states in the sample. We measured the distribution P(H) of molecules which are in resonance at the applied field H. Tunnelling initially causes rapid transitions of molecules, thereby ``digging a hole'' in P(H). For small initial magnetisation values, the hole width shows an intrinsic broadening which may be due to nuclear spins. We present here hole digging measurements in the thermal activated regime which may allow to study the effect of spin-phonon coupling.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, conference proceedings of LT22 (Helsinki, Finland, August 4-11, 1999

On the expected γ\gamma-ray emission from nearby flaring stars

Stellar flares have been extensively studied in soft X-rays (SXR) by basically every X-ray mission. Hard X-ray (HXR) emission from stellar superflares, however, have only been detected from a handful of objects over the past years. One very extreme event was the superflare from the young M-dwarf DG CVn binary star system, which triggered Swift/BAT as if it was a $\gamma$-ray burst (GRB). In this work, we estimate the expected $\gamma$-ray emission from DG CVn and the most extreme stellar flares by extrapolating from solar flares based on measured solar energetic particles (SEPs), as well as thermal and non-thermal emission properties. We find that ions are plausibly accelerated in stellar superflares to 100 GeV energies, and possibly up to TeV energies in the associated coronal mass ejections. The corresponding $\pi^0$-decay $\gamma$-ray emission could be detectable from stellar superflares with ground-based $\gamma$-ray telescopes. On the other hand, the detection of $\gamma$-ray emission implies particle densities high enough that ions suffer significant losses due to inelastic proton-proton scattering. The next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) should be able to probe superflares from M-dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood and constrain the energy in interacting cosmic rays and/or their maximum energy. The detection of $\gamma$-ray emission from stellar flares would open a new window for the study of stellar physics, the underlying physical processes in flares and their impact on habitability of planetary systems.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Measurement-induced entanglement of two transmon qubits by a single photon

On-demand creation of entanglement between distant qubits is a necessary ingredient for distributed quantum computation. We propose an entanglement scheme that allows for single-shot deterministic entanglement creation by detecting a single photon passing through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with one transmon qubit in each arm. The entanglement production essentially relies on the fact that superconducting microwave structures allow to achieve strong coupling between the qubit and the photon. By detecting the photon via a photon counter, a parity measurement is implemented and the wave function of the two qubits is projected onto a maximally entangled state. Most importantly, the entanglement generation is heralded such that our protocol is not susceptible to photon loss due to the indivisible nature of single photons.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures; to be published in NJ