We consider the vortex structure of a rapidly rotating trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a corotating periodic optical lattice potential. We observe a rich variety of structural phases which reflect the interplay of the vortex-vortex and vortex-lattice interactions. The lattice structure is very sensitive to the ratio of vortices to pinning sites and we observe structural phase transitions and domain formation as this ratio is varied.

We present a new analytical method that systematically improves the convergence of path integrals of a generic $N$-fold discretized theory. Using it we calculate the effective actions $S^{(p)}$ for $p\le 9$, which lead to the same continuum amplitudes as the starting action, but that converge to that continuum limit as $1/N^p$. We checked this derived speedup in convergence by performing Monte Carlo simulations on several different models.

A single defect center in diamond periodically excited by a laser is shown to provide a simple realization for a system obeying a fluctuation theorem for nonthermal noise. The distribution of these fluctuations is distinctly non-Gaussian, which has also been verified by numerical calculation. For driving protocols symmetric under time reversal a more restricted form of the theorem holds, which is also known from entropy fluctuations caused by thermal noise.

We study the phenomenon of real space condensation in the steady state of a class of one-dimensional mass transport models. We derive the criterion for the occurrence of a condensation transition and analyze the precise nature of the shape and the size of the condensate in the condensed phase. We find two distinct condensate regimes: one where the condensate is Gaussian distributed and the particle number fluctuations scale normally as $L^{1/2}$ where $L$ is the system size, and the second regime where the particle number fluctuations become anomalously large and the condensate peak is non-Gaussian. We interpret these results within the framework of sums of random variables.

The dynamics of pair condensate formation in a strongly interacting Fermi gas close to a Feshbach resonance was studied. We employed a phase-shift method in which the delayed response of the many-body system to a modulation of the interaction strength was recorded. The observable was the fraction of condensed molecules in the cloud after a rapid magnetic field ramp across the Feshbach resonance. The measured response time was slow compared to the rapid ramp, which provides final proof that the molecular condensates reflect the presence of fermion pair condensates before the ramp.

We consider a Casimir cavity, one plate of which is a thin superconducting film. We show that when the cavity is cooled below the critical temperature for the onset of superconductivity, the sharp variation (in the far infrared) of the reflection coefficient of the film engenders a variation in the value of the Casimir energy. Even though the relative variation in the Casimir energy is very small, its magnitude can be comparable to the condensation energy of the superconducting film, and this gives rise to a number of testable effects, including a significant increase in the value of the critical magnetic field, required to destroy the superconductivity of the film. The theoretical ground is therefore prepared for the first experiment ever aimed at measuring variations of the Casimir energy itself.

We present a unified approach to quantum error correction, called operator quantum error correction. Our scheme relies on a generalized notion of a noiseless subsystem that is investigated here. By combining the active error correction with this generalized noiseless subsystems method, we arrive at a unified approach which incorporates the known techniques—i.e., the standard error correction model, the method of decoherence-free subspaces, and the noiseless subsystem method—as special cases. Moreover, we demonstrate that the quantum error correction condition from the standard model is a necessary condition for all known methods of quantum error correction.

We measure the temperature dependence of the radial breathing mode in an optically trapped, unitary Fermi gas of ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$, just above the center of a broad Feshbach resonance. The damping rate reveals a clear change in behavior which we interpret as arising from a superfluid transition. We suggest pair breaking as a mechanism for an increase in the damping rate which occurs at temperatures well above the transition. In contrast to the damping, the frequency varies smoothly and remains close to the unitary hydrodynamic value. At low temperature $T$, the damping depends on the atom number only through the reduced temperature, and extrapolates to 0 at $T=0$.

We propose a method to measure the subdiffusion parameter $\alpha$ and subdiffusion coefficient $D_{\alpha }$ which are defined by means of the relation $⟨x^2⟩=\frac{2D_{\alpha }}{\Gamma (1+\alpha )}{t}^{\alpha }$, where $⟨x^2⟩$ denotes a mean square displacement of a random walker starting from $x=0$ at the initial time $t=0$. The method exploits a membrane system where a substance of interest is transported in a solvent from one vessel to another across a thin membrane which plays here only an auxiliary role. We experimentally study a diffusion of glucose and sucrose in a gel solvent, and we precisely determine the parameters $\alpha$ and $D_{\alpha }$, using a fully analytic solution of the fractional subdiffusion equation.

Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, while being efficient for bosons, suffer from the “negative sign problem” when applied to fermions—causing an exponential increase of the computing time with the number of particles. A polynomial time solution to the sign problem is highly desired since it would provide an unbiased and numerically exact method to simulate correlated quantum systems. Here we show that such a solution is almost certainly unattainable by proving that the sign problem is nondeterministic polynomial (NP) hard, implying that a generic solution of the sign problem would also solve all problems in the complexity class NP in polynomial time.

A systematic shift of the photon recoil momentum due to the index of refraction of a dilute gas of atoms has been observed. The recoil frequency was determined with a two-pulse light grating interferometer using near-resonant laser light. The results show that the recoil momentum of atoms caused by the absorption of a photon is $n\hslash k$, where $n$ is the index of refraction of the gas and $k$ is the vacuum wave vector of the photon. This systematic effect must be accounted for in high-precision atom interferometry with light gratings.

We study the short-time dynamics of a degenerate Fermi gas positioned near a Feshbach resonance following an abrupt jump in the atomic interaction resulting from a change of magnetic field. We investigate the dynamics of the condensate order parameter and pair wave function for a range of field strengths. When the jump is sufficient to span the BCS to Bose-Einstein condensation crossover, we show that the rigidity of the momentum distribution precludes any atom-molecule oscillations in the entrance channel dominated resonances observed in ${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ and ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$. Focusing on material parameters tailored to the ${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ Feshbach resonance at 202.1 G, we comment on the integrity of the fast sweep projection technique as a vehicle to explore the condensed phase in the crossover region.

The phase diagram of a dissipative particle in a periodic potential and a magnetic field is studied in the weak barrier limit and in the tight binding regime. For the case of half flux per plaquette, and for a wide range of values of the dissipation, the physics of the model is determined by a nontrivial fixed point. A combination of exact and variational results is used to characterize this fixed point. Finally, it is also argued that there is an intermediate energy scale that separates the weak coupling physics from the tight binding solution.

The concept of natural time turned out to be useful in revealing dynamical features behind complex time series including electrocardiograms, ionic current fluctuations of membrane channels, seismic electric signals, and seismic event correlation. However, the origin of this empirical usefulness is yet to be clarified. Here, it is shown that this time domain is in fact optimal for enhancing the signals in time-frequency space by employing the Wigner function and measuring its localization property.

The notion of $k$-clique percolation in random graphs is introduced, where $k$ is the size of the complete subgraphs whose large scale organizations are analytically and numerically investigated. For the Erdős-Rényi graph of $N$ vertices we obtain that the percolation transition of $k$-cliques takes place when the probability of two vertices being connected by an edge reaches the threshold $p_{\mathrm{c}}(k)=[(k-1)N{]}^{-1/(k-1)}$. At the transition point the scaling of the giant component with $N$ is highly nontrivial and depends on $k$. We discuss why clique percolation is a novel and efficient approach to the identification of overlapping communities in large real networks.

We report on the generation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a gas of chromium atoms, which have an exceptionally large magnetic dipole moment and therefore underlie anisotropic long-range interactions. The preparation of the chromium condensate requires novel cooling strategies that are adapted to its special electronic and magnetic properties. The final step to reach quantum degeneracy is forced evaporative cooling of ${}^{52}\mathrm{Cr}$ atoms within a crossed optical dipole trap. At a critical temperature of $T_c\approx 700\mathrm{nK}$, we observe Bose-Einstein condensation by the appearance of a two-component velocity distribution. We are able to produce almost pure condensates with more than 50 000 condensed ${}^{52}\mathrm{Cr}$ atoms.

We study collisions mediated by finite-range potentials as a tool for generating translational entanglement between unbound particles or multipartite systems. The general analysis is applied to one-dimensional scattering, where resonances and the initial phase-space distribution are shown to determine the degree of postcollisional entanglement.

It is shown that a good estimate of the fidelity of an experimentally realized quantum process can be obtained by measuring the outputs for only two complementary sets of input states. The number of measurements required to test a quantum network operation is therefore only twice as high as the number of measurements required to test a corresponding classical system.

Particles moving on crystalline surfaces and driven by external forces or flow fields can acquire velocities along directions that deviate from that of the external force. This effect depends upon the characteristics of the particles, most notably particle size or particle index of refraction, and can therefore be (and has been) used to sort different particles. We introduce a simple model for particles subject to thermal fluctuations and moving in appropriate potential landscapes. Numerical results are compared to recent experiments on landscapes produced with holographic optical tweezers and microfabricated technology. Our approach clarifies the relevance of different parameters, the direction and magnitude of the external force, particle size, and temperature.

We present a definition for metastable states applicable to arbitrary finite state Markov processes satisfying detailed balance. In particular, we identify a crucial condition that distinguishes metastable states from other slow decaying modes and which allows us to show that our definition has several desirable properties similar to those postulated in the restricted ensemble approach. The intuitive physical meaning of this condition is simply that the total equilibrium probability of finding the system in the metastable state is negligible.