It has been shown that a vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate with spin degrees of freedom can be created by manipulating with external magnetic fields. In the previous work [Phys. Rev. A 61, 063610 (2000)] an optical plug along the vortex axis has been introduced to avoid Majorana flips, which take place when the external magnetic field vanishes along the vortex axis while it is created. In the present work, in contrast, we study the same scenario without introducing the optical plug. The magnetic field vanishes only in the center of the vortex at a certain moment of the evolution and hence we expect that the system will lose only a fraction of the atoms by Majorana flips even in the absence of an optical plug. Our conjecture is justified by numerically solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, where the full spinor degrees of freedom of the order parameter are properly taken into account. A significant simplification of the experimental realization of the scenario is attained by the omission of the optical plug.

We perform a random-phase approximation study of collective excitations in a Bose-Fermi mixed degenerate gas of alkali-metal atoms at $T=0.\mathrm{}$ The calculation is done by diagonalization in a model space composed of particle-hole type excitations from the ground state, the latter being obtained from the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii and Thomas-Fermi equations. We investigate strength distributions for different combinations of Bose and Fermi multipole (L) operators with $L=0,1,2,3.\mathrm{}$ Transition densities and dynamical structure factors are calculated for collective excitations. A comparison with the sum rule prediction for the collective frequency is given. The time dependent behavior of the system after an external impulse is studied.

$\zeta$-function methods are used to study the properties of the nonrelativistic interacting Bose gas at finite temperature and density. Results for the ground-state energy and pressure are obtained at both zero and finite temperatures. The method used does not restrict the form of the interaction, which can be completely general. A similar procedure is then applied to evaluate the ground-state energy of a binary mixture consisting of different bosons. Analytical results are obtained in the case where the two species have the same mass.

We use a semiclassical three-fluid model to evaluate the phenomena of spatial demixing in mesoscopic clouds of fermionic and bosonic atoms at high dilution under harmonic confinement. We assume repulsive boson-boson and boson-fermion interactions and include a bosonic thermal cloud at finite temperature $T.\mathrm{}$ The finite system size allows three different regimes for the equilibrium density profiles at $T=0:$ a fully mixed state, a partially mixed state in which the overlap between bosons and fermions is decreasing, and a fully demixed state where the two clouds have zero overlap. We propose simple analytical rules for the two crossovers between the three regimes as functions of the system parameters and support these rules by extensive numerical calculations. A universal “phase diagram” is shown to be valid for the transition to the regime of full demixing, where we identify several exotic configurations in addition to simple ones consisting of a core of bosons enveloped by fermions and vice versa. With increasing temperature some exotic configurations are transformed into more symmetric ones, until demixing is ultimately lost. For very high values of the boson-fermion repulsion we also report demixing between the fermions and the thermally excited bosons.

The multimode quantum fluctuations of colliding solitons are investigated. Strong mutual quantum correlations appear in their intensity spectrum as the solitons approach each other in the collision. The leaving solitons erase the interpulse correlations. These transient correlations are induced by cross phase modulation, whereas the intrapulse correlations are due to self phase modulation. As a possible application a direct detection quantum-nondemolition (QND) measurement of the photon number is proposed. It shows a performance better than a collision induced phase-shift QND measurement.

We present a scheme for the generation of entanglement between different modes of radiation field inside high-$Q$ superconducting cavities. Our scheme is based on the interaction of a three-level atom with the cavity field for precalculated interaction times with each mode. This work enables us to generate a complete set of Bell basis states and a quantum entangled Greenberger-Horn-Zeilinger state.

Absolute total cross sections for electron scattering by ${\mathrm{C}}_3{\mathrm{F}}_6$ molecules in the energy range from 0.5 to 30 eV have been measured using a beam transmission method. Two resonant-like maxima in the total cross sections function are clearly visible: the first, small maximum is centered near 3.2 eV, the second one, much pronounced, is located at 9.5 eV. No previous experimental data have been found in the literature for comparison. The effect of fluorination is indicated.

We investigate the role of the interparticle-interaction strength in the distribution of two species of atoms inside a condensate. We focus upon the study of systems for which the minima of the trapping potentials for the species are displaced from each other by a distance that is small compared to the size of the total condensate. We show that in a small range of the interparticle-interaction strength the distribution of species undergoes dramatic changes, and exhibits a variety of different features. We demonstrate that this behavior can be easily understood in terms of the Thomas-Fermi approximation. This effect may be useful in experimentally determining the values of the scattering lengths.

Do stochastic Schrödinger equations, also known as unravelings, have a physical interpretation? In the Markovian limit, where the system on average obeys a master equation, the answer is yes. Markovian stochastic Schrödinger equations generate quantum trajectories for the system state conditioned on continuously monitoring the bath. For a given master equation, there are many different unravelings, corresponding to different sorts of measurement on the bath. In this paper we address the non-Markovian case, and in particular the sort of stochastic Schrödinger equation introduced by Strunz, Diósi, and Gisin [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1801 (1999)]. Using a quantum-measurement theory approach, we rederive their unraveling that involves complex-valued Gaussian noise. We also derive an unraveling involving real-valued Gaussian noise. We show that in the Markovian limit, these two unravelings correspond to heterodyne and homodyne detection, respectively. Although we use quantum-measurement theory to define these unravelings, we conclude that the stochastic evolution of the system state is not a true quantum trajectory, as the identity of the state through time is a fiction.

We study single- and double-electron loss from heavy heliumlike projectiles in ultrarelativistic collisions with neutral many-electron target atoms. The simultaneous interaction of the target with two projectile electrons is found to be the dominant process in the double-electron loss provided the atomic number of the projectile, $Z_p,$ that of the target, $Z_t,$ and the collision velocity, $v,$ satisfy the condition $Z_p{Z}_t/v>\mathrm{}\mathrm{0.4.}\mathrm{}$ It is shown that for a wide range of projectile and target atomic numbers the asymptotic double-to-single loss ratio strongly depends on the target atomic number but is nearly independent of the nuclear charge of the projectile. It is also demonstrated that many-photon exchange between the target and each of the projectile electrons considerably influences the double loss in collisions with very heavy targets.

We present a formalism for the description of multiphoton plasmon excitation processes in jellium clusters. By using our method, we demonstrate that, in addition to dipole plasmon excitations, the multipole plasmons (quadrupole, octupole, etc.) can be excited in a cluster by multiphoton absorption processes, which results in a significant difference between plasmon resonance profiles in the cross sections for multiphoton as compared to single-photon absorption. We calculate the cross sections for multiphoton absorption and analyze the balance between the surface and volume plasmon contributions to multipole plasmons.

Empirical relations are established between the cohesive energy, surface tension, and melting temperature of different bulk solids. An expression for the size-dependent melting for low-dimensional systems is derived on the basis of an analogy with the liquid-drop model and these empirical relations, and compared with other theoretical models as well as the available experimental data in the literature. The model is then extended to understand (i) the effect of substrate temperature on the size of the deposited cluster and (ii) the superheating of nanoparticles embedded in a matrix. It is argued that the exponential increase in particle size with the increase in deposition temperature can be understood by using the expression for the size-dependent melting of nanoparticles. Superheating is possible when nanoparticles with a lower surface energy are embedded in a matrix with a material of higher surface energy in which case the melting temperature depends on the amount of epitaxy between the nanoparticles and the embedding matrix. The predictions of the model show good agreement with the experimental results. A scaling for the size-dependent melting point suppression is also proposed.

Atomic ytterbium (Yb), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), and strontium (Sr) possess a simple yet versatile internal level structure and a diversity of naturally abundant fermionic and bosonic isotopes, making these systems ideal for studies of cold collisions and weakly interacting quantum degenerate gases. Unlike alkali-metal atoms, however, Yb, Mg, Ca, and Sr cannot be magnetically trapped in the ground state. We analyze a solution to this problem involving magnetic trapping in a low-lying metastable excited state and predict that significant magnetic trap populations can be obtained via continuous, in situ loading from Yb and Sr ${}^1{S}_0{-}^1{P}_1$ magneto-optical traps.

We report on the results on various aspects of the formation of ion Coulomb crystals in linear Paul traps, for plasmas containing from a few hundred to several thousand laser-cooled ${}^{24}{\mathrm{Mg}}^{+}$ ions. The presented studies include observations of changes in emitted fluorescence, changes in plasma aspect ratio, and the formation of shell structure, during the transition from the cloudlike to the crystalline state. The competition between rf heating and laser cooling is observed to result in a very dramatic transition from the cloudlike disordered state to a liquidlike state. After the liquid state is reached ordering into shell structure takes place as a continuous process at even higher plasma coupling parameters. This is in contrast to earlier observations of few-ion plasmas in hyperbolic rf traps.

The structure of trapped binary mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms at zero temperature is studied using a modified Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the bosons which self-consistently includes the mean-field interaction generated by the fermionic cloud. The density of the fermionic component is described within the Thomas-Fermi approximation. The influence of the boson-boson and the boson-fermion s-wave interaction on the density profiles and the stability of the mixture is investigated systematically. Critical particle numbers for the mean-field collapse caused either by attractive boson-boson or by attractive boson-fermion interactions and for the onset of spatial component separation are discussed. It is shown that the interplay between the boson-boson and the boson-fermion interaction generates a rich and complex phase diagram. Finally, the specific properties and prospects of the boson-fermion mixtures available in present experiments are addressed.

Resonances of electron-positron complexes are studied by the stochastic variational method combined with the complex scaling method. Several low-lying resonances in the positronium negative ion are obtained. One P-state and nine S-state resonances of the positronium molecule are predicted below the $\mathrm{Ps}\mathrm{}(n=1\mathrm{})+\mathrm{Ps}\mathrm{}(n=4\mathrm{})\mathrm{}$ threshold. The structure of some of these resonances is analyzed.

The Fourier transform is often used to connect the Lorentzian energy distribution for resonance scattering to the exponential time dependence for decaying states. However, to apply the Fourier transform, one has to bend the rules of standard quantum mechanics; the Lorentzian energy distribution must be extended to the full real axis $-\infty <E<\mathrm{}\infty$ instead of being bounded from below $0<~E<\mathrm{}\infty$ (Fermi’s approximation). Then the Fourier transform of the extended Lorentzian becomes the exponential, but only for times $t>~0,$ a time asymmetry which is in conflict with the unitary group time evolution of standard quantum mechanics. Extending the Fourier transform from distributions to generalized vectors, we are led to Gamow kets, which possess a Lorentzian energy distribution with $-\infty <E<\mathrm{}\infty$ and have exponential time evolution for $t>~t_0=0\mathrm{}$ only. This leads to probability predictions that do not violate causality.

Quantum information is defined by applying the concepts of ordinary (Shannon) information theory to a quantum sample space consisting of a single framework or consistent family. A classical analogy for a spin-half particle and other arguments show that the infinite amount of information needed to specify a precise vector in its Hilbert space is not a measure of the information carried by a quantum entity with a d-dimensional Hilbert space; the latter is, instead, bounded by ${\log }_{2}d$ bits (one bit per qubit). The two bits of information transmitted in dense coding are located not in one but in the correlation between two qubits, consistent with this bound. A quantum channel can be thought of as a structure or collection of frameworks, and the physical location of the information in the individual frameworks can be used to identify the location of the channel. Analysis of a quantum circuit used as a model of teleportation shows that the location of the channel depends upon which structure is employed; for ordinary teleportation it is not (contrary to Deutsch and Hayden) present in the two bits resulting from the Bell-basis measurement, but in correlations of these with a distant qubit. In neither teleportation nor dense coding does information travel backwards in time, nor is it transmitted by nonlocal (superluminal) influences. It is (tentatively) proposed that all aspects of quantum information can in principle be understood in terms of the (basically classical) behavior of information in a particular framework, along with the framework dependence of this information.

We theoretically consider possible errors in solid-state quantum computation due to the interplay of the complex solid-state environment and gate imperfections. In particular, we study two examples of gate operations in the opposite ends of the gate speed spectrum, an adiabatic gate operation in electron-spin-based quantum dot quantum computation and a sudden gate operation in Cooper-pair-box superconducting quantum computation. We evaluate quantitatively the nonadiabatic operation of a two-qubit gate in a two-electron double quantum dot. We also analyze the nonsudden pulse gate in a Cooper-pair-box-based quantum-computer model. In both cases our numerical results show strong influences of the higher excited states of the system on the gate operation, clearly demonstrating the importance of a detailed understanding of the relevant Hilbert-space structure on the quantum-computer operations.

We propose a feedback scheme for the production of two-mode spin squeezing. We determine a general expression for the optimal feedback, which is also applicable to the case of single-mode spin squeezing. The two-mode spin squeezed states obtained via this feedback are optimal for $j=1/2\mathrm{}$ and are very close to optimal for $j>\mathrm{}1/2.\mathrm{}$ In addition, the master equation suggests a Hamiltonian that would produce two-mode spin squeezing without feedback, and is analogous to the two-axis countertwisting Hamiltonian in the single-mode case.