Quantum Bose Josephson Junction with binary mixtures of BECs

We study the quantum behaviour of a binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a double-well potential starting from a two-mode Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. We focus on the small tunneling amplitude regime and apply perturbation theory up to second order. Analytical expressions for the energy eigenvalues and eigenstates are obtained. Then the quantum evolution of the number difference of bosons between the two potential wells is fully investigated for two different initial conditions: completely localized states and coherent spin states. In the first case both the short and the long time dynamics is studied and a rich behaviour is found, ranging from small amplitude oscillations and collapses and revivals to coherent tunneling. In the second case the short-time scale evolution of number difference is determined and a more irregular dynamics is evidenced. Finally, the formation of Schroedinger cat states is considered and shown to affect the momentum distribution.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Resolved CO(1-0) Nuclei in IRAS 14348-1447: Evidence for Massive Bulge Progenitors to Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies

High-resolution, CO(1-0) interferometry of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy IRAS 14348-1447 is presented. The merger system has a molecular gas mass of \~3x10^10 solar masses and a projected nuclear separation of 4.8 kpc (3.5"), making it one of the most molecular gas-rich galaxies known and an ideal candidate for studying the intermediate stages of an ultraluminous merger event. The CO morphology shows two molecular gas components associated with the stellar nuclei of the progenitors, consistent with the idea that the molecular disks are gravitationally bound by the dense bulges of the progenitor galaxies as the interaction proceeds. In contrast, less luminous infrared galaxies observed to date with projected nuclear separations of ~<5 kpc show a dominant CO component between the stellar nuclei. This discrepancy may be an indication that the progenitors of mergers with lower infrared luminosity do not possess massive bulges, and that the gas is stripped during the initial encounter of their progenitors. A comparison of the CO and radio luminosities of the NE and SW component show them to have comparable radio and CO flux ratios of f(NE)/f(SW) ~0.6, possibly indicating that the amount of star-forming molecular gas in the progenitors is correlated with the supernovae rate. The estimate of molecular gas masses of the nuclei and the extent of the radio emission are used to infer that the nuclei of IR 14348-1447 have gas densities comparable to the cores of elliptical galaxies.Comment: LaTex, 5 pages with 1 postscript and 1 jpg figure, ApJ Letters, in pres

Evidences for a quasi 60-year North Atlantic Oscillation since 1700 and its meaning for global climate change

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) obtained using instrumental and documentary proxy predictors from Eurasia is found to be characterized by a quasi 60-year dominant oscillation since 1650. This pattern emerges clearly once the NAO record is time integrated to stress its comparison with the temperature record. The integrated NAO (INAO) is found to well correlate with the length of the day (since 1650) and the global surface sea temperature record HadSST2 and HadSST3 (since 1850). These findings suggest that INAO can be used as a good proxy for global climate change, and that a 60-year cycle exists in the global climate since at least 1700. Finally, the INAO ~60-year oscillation well correlates with the ~60- year oscillations found in the historical European aurora record since 1700, which suggests that this 60-year dominant climatic cycle has a solar-astronomical origin

Tuning Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings: Effects on singlet and triplet condensation with Fermi atoms

We investigate the pair condensation of a two-spin-component Fermi gas in the presence of both Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. We calculate the condensate fraction in the BCS-BEC crossover both in two and in three dimensions by taking into account singlet and triplet pairings. These quantities are studied by varying the spin-orbit interaction from the case with the only Rashba to the equal-Rashba-Dresselhaus one. We find that, by mixing the two couplings, the singlet pairing decreases while the triplet pairing is suppressed in the BCS regime and increased in the BEC regime, both in two and three dimensions. At fixed spin-orbital strength, the greatest total condensate fraction is obtained when only one coupling (only Rashba or only Dresselhaus) is present.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, final versio

COVID-19 relief programs and compliance with confinement measures

We study the impact of a COVID-19 relief program on compliance with confinement measures in Italy, the early epicenter of the pandemic. We match information on the allocation of funds across Italian municipalities with data tracking citizens’ movements drawn from mobile devices and vehicles’ navigation systems, anonymized and aggregated at the municipality level. To assess the role of the program, we exploit a sharp kink schedule in the allocation of funds as a function of past income differentials that generated random treatment assignment in a neighborhood of the threshold point. We find robust evidence that, after the introduction of the program, mobility decreased with the amount of transfers. The impact is economically sizeable and resists bandwidth changes, with stronger effects holding in the proximity of the cut-off and the coefficient stabilizing with distance from the threshold. A battery of placebo tests supports the interpretation of results. Our evidence suggests that authorities could leverage targeted relief programs to nudge compliance with emergency measures at a relatively modest cost

The IRAS Revised Bright Galaxy Sample (RBGS)

IRAS flux densities, redshifts, and infrared luminosities are reported for all sources identified in the IRAS Revised Bright Galaxy Sample (RBGS), a complete flux-limited survey of all extragalactic objects with total 60 micron flux density greater than 5.24 Jy, covering the entire sky surveyed by IRAS at Galactic latitude |b| > 5 degrees. The RBGS includes 629 objects, with a median (mean) sample redshift of 0.0082 (0.0126) and a maximum redshift of 0.0876. The RBGS supersedes the previous two-part IRAS Bright Galaxy Samples, which were compiled before the final ("Pass 3") calibration of the IRAS Level 1 Archive in May 1990. The RBGS also makes use of more accurate and consistent automated methods to measure the flux of objects with extended emission. Basic properties of the RBGS sources are summarized, including estimated total infrared luminosities, as well as updates to cross-identifications with sources from optical galaxy catalogs established using the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). In addition, an atlas of images from the Digitized Sky Survey with overlays of the IRAS position uncertainty ellipse and annotated scale bars is provided for ease in visualizing the optical morphology in context with the angular and metric size of each object. The revised bolometric infrared luminosity function, phi(L_ir), for infrared bright galaxies in the local Universe remains best fit by a double power law, phi(L_ir) ~ L_ir^alpha, with alpha = -0.6 (+/- 0.1), and alpha = -2.2 (+/- 0.1) below and above the "characteristic" infrared luminosity L_ir ~ 10^{10.5} L_solar, respectively. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Contains 50 pages, 7 tables, 16 figures. Due to astro-ph space limits, only 1 of 26 pages of Figure 1, and 1 of 11 pages of Table 7, are included; full resolution Postscript files are available at http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/IRAS_RBGS/Figures/ . Replacement: Corrected insertion of Fig. 15 (MethodCodes.ps) in LaTe

Computational Detection of CpG Islands in DNA

Regions of DNA rich in CpG dinucleotides, also known as CpG islands, are often located upstream of the transcription start side in both tissue specific and housekeeping genes. Overall, CPG dinucleotides are observed at a density of 25% the expected level from base composition alone, partially due to 5-methylcytosine decay (Bird, 1993). Since CpG dinucleotides typically occur with low frequency, CpG islands can be distinguished statistically in the genome. Our method of detecting CpG islands involves a heuristic algorithm employing classic changepoint methods and log-likelihood statistics. A Java applet has been created to allow for user interaction and visualization of the segmentation resulting from the changepoint analysis. The model is tested using several sequences obtainable from GenBank (NCBI, 1997), including a 220 Kb fragment of human X chromosome from the filanin (FLM) gene to the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) gene which has been experimentally studied (Rivella, et. al., 1995; E.Y. Chen, et. all., 1996). Preliminary results suggest a breakpoint segmentation that is consistent with observable manual analysis. About 56% of human genes have associated CpG rich islands (Antequera and Bird, 1993). By identifying the CpG islands, it is thought that regions of DNA coding for housekeeping or tissue-specific genes can be located (Antequera and Bird, 1993) even in the absence of transcriptional activity. Biological experiments searching for such genes can then be narrowed given the locations of the CpG islands

Quantifying the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) coupling to CO2 concentration and to the length of day variations

The El Ni\~no Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the Earth's strongest climate fluctuation on inter-annual time-scales and has global impacts although originating in the tropical Pacific. Many point indices have been developed to describe ENSO but the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) is considered the most representative since it links six different meteorological parameters measured over the tropical Pacific. Extreme values of MEI are correlated to the extreme values of atmospheric CO2 concentration rate variations and negatively correlated to equivalent scale extreme values of the length of day (LOD) rate variation. We evaluate a first order conversion function between MEI and the other two indexes using their annual rate of variation. The quantification of the strength of the coupling herein evaluated provides a quantitative measure to test the accuracy of theoretical model predictions. Our results further confirm the idea that the major local and global Earth-atmosphere system mechanisms are significantly coupled and synchronized to each other at multiple scales.Comment: Theoretical Applied Climatology (2012