Coherence and Josephson oscillations between two tunnel-coupled one-dimensional atomic quasicondensates at finite temperature

We revisit the theory of tunnel-coupled atomic quasicondensates in double-well elongated traps at finite temperatures. Using the functional-integral approach, we calculate the relative-phase correlation function beyond the harmonic limit of small fluctuations of the relative phase and its conjugate relative-density variable. We show that the thermal fluctuations of the relative phase between the two quasicondensates decrease the frequency of Josephson oscillations and even wash out these oscillations for small values of the tunnel coupling.Comment: revtex4, 4 figures (.eps

Non trivial generalizations of the Schwinger pair production result II

It is suggested that Schwinger's (1951) vacuum persistence probability against pair production by an intense but constant electric field is a very good approximation to the corresponding quantity if the field does not vary appreciably over distances less than m/e/E/5 pagesComment: 5 page

Soft gamma repeaters outside the Local group

We propose that the best sites to search for SGRs outside the Local group are galaxies with active massive star formation. Different possibilities to observe SGR activity from these sites are discussed. In particular we searched for giant flares from nearby galaxies ($\sim 2$ -- 4 Mpc) M82, M83, NGC 253, and NGC 4945 in the BATSE data. No candidates alike giant SGR flares were found. The absence of such detections implies that the rate of giant flares with energy release in the initial spike above $0.5 \cdot 10^{44}$ erg is less then 1/25 yr$^{-1}$ in our Galaxy. However, hyperflares similar to the one of 27 December 2004 can be observed from larger distances. Nevertheless, we do not see any significant excess of short GRBs from the Virgo galaxy cluster and from galaxies Arp 299 and NGC 3256 with extremely high star formation rate. This implies that the galactic rate of hyperflares with energy release $\sim 10^{46}$ erg is less than $\sim 10^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$. With this constraint the fraction of possible extragalactic SGR hyperflares among BATSE short GRBs should not exceed few percents. We present a list of short GRBs coincident with galaxies mentioned above, and discuss the possibility that some of them are SGR giant flares. We propose that the best target for observations of extragalactic SGR flares by {\it Swift} is the Virgo cluster.Comment: 14 pages with 3 figures; accepted to MNRAS (final version

Single-atom quantum memory with degenerate atomic levels

The storage and retrieval of a single-photon polarization q-bit by means of STIRAP through the atoms with degenerate levels is studied theoretically for arbitrary polarization of the driving laser field and arbitrary values of the angular momenta of resonant atomic levels. The dependence of the probability of long-term photon storage on the polarization of the driving field and on the initial atomic state is examined.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1203.439

Fermion Pair Production From an Electric Field Varying in Two Dimensions

The Hamiltonian describing fermion pair production from an arbitrarily time-varying electric field in two dimensions is studied using a group-theoretic approach. We show that this Hamiltonian can be encompassed by two, commuting SU(2) algebras, and that the two-dimensional problem can therefore be reduced to two one-dimensional problems. We compare the group structure for the two-dimensional problem with that previously derived for the one-dimensional problem, and verify that the Schwinger result is obtained under the appropriate conditions.Comment: Latex, 14 pages of text. Full postscript version available via the worldwide web at http://nucth.physics.wisc.edu/ or by anonymous ftp from ftp://nucth.physics.wisc.edu:/pub/preprints