We present a high resolution study of the specularity of the atomic reflection from an evanescent wave mirror using velocity selective Raman transitions. We observed a double structure in the velocity distribution after reflection: a peak consistent with specular reflection and a diffuse reflection pedestal whose contribution decreases rapidly with increasing detuning. The diffuse reflection is due to two distinct effects: spontaneous emission in the evanescent wave and roughness in the evanescent wave potential whose amplitude is smaller than the de Broglie wavelength of the reflected atoms.

We study experimentally and theoretically a cold trapped Bose gas under critical rotation, i.e., with a rotation frequency close to the frequency of the radial confinement. We identify two regimes: the regime of explosion where the cloud expands to infinity in one direction, and the regime where the condensate spirals out of the trap as a rigid body. The former is realized for a dilute cloud, and the latter for a condensate with the interparticle interaction exceeding a critical value. This constitutes a novel system in which repulsive interactions help in maintaining particles together.

We study experimentally the transverse monopole mode of an elongated rubidium condensate. Because of the scaling invariance of the nonlinear Schrödinger (Gross-Pitaevskii) equation, the oscillation is monochromatic and sinusoidal at short times, even under strong excitation. For ultralow temperatures, the quality factor $Q={\omega }_0/{\gamma }_0$ can exceed 2000, where ${\omega }_0$ and ${\gamma }_0$ are the mode angular frequency and damping rate. This value is much larger than any previously reported for other eigenmodes of a condensate. We also present the temperature variation of ${\omega }_0$ and ${\gamma }_0$.

We report preparation and characterization of coherent superposition states $t|0〉+\alpha |1〉$ of the electromagnetic field by conditional measurements on a beam splitter. This state is generated in one of the beam splitter output channels if a coherent state $|\alpha 〉$ and a single-photon Fock state $|1〉$ are present in the two input ports and a single photon is registered in the other beam splitter output. The single photon thus plays a role of a “catalyst:” it is explicitly present in both the input and the output channels of the interaction yet facilitates generation of a nonclassical state of light.

A study of the linear response susceptibility of a noisy bistable oscillator as a function of damping is carried out using the method of moments. It is found that this dependence, counterintuitively, has a nonmonotonic character and shows a maximum when the driving frequency is comparable to the thermal interwell hopping rate. The possible mechanism responsible for the occurrence of such dissipative sensitivity enhancement is proposed.

The zero-point quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in vacuum are known to give rise to a long-range attractive force between metal plates (Casimir effect). For ferromagnetic layers separated by vacuum, it is shown that the interplay of the Casimir effect and of the magneto-optical Kerr effect gives rise to a long-range magnetic interaction. The Casimir magnetic force is found to decay as $D^{-1\mathrm{}}$ in the limit of short distances, and as $D^{-5\mathrm{}}$ in the limit of long distances. Explicit expressions for realistic systems are given in the large- and small-distance limits. An experimental test of the Casimir magnetic interaction is proposed.

Unsharp spin-one observables arise from the fact that a residual uncertainty about the actual orientation of the measurement device remains. If the uncertainty is below a certain level, and if the distribution of measurement errors is covariant under rotations, a Kochen-Specker theorem for the unsharp spin observables follows: There are finite sets of directions such that not all the unsharp spin observables in these directions can consistently be assigned approximate truth values in a noncontextual way.

Whether common noise can induce complete synchronization in chaotic systems has been a topic of great relevance and long-standing controversy. We first clarify the mechanism of this phenomenon and show that the existence of a significant contraction region, where nearby trajectories converge, plays a decisive role. Second, we demonstrate that, more generally, common noise can induce phase synchronization in nonidentical chaotic systems. Such a noise-induced synchronization and synchronization transitions are of special significance for understanding neuron encoding in neurobiology.

We introduce a novel dynamical description for a wide class of nonlinear physical sensors operating in a noisy environment. The presence of unknown physical signals is assessed via the monitoring of the residence times in the metastable attractors of the system. We show that the presence of ambient noise, far from degrading the sensor operation, can actually improve its sensitivity and provide a greatly simplified readout scheme, as well as significantly reduce processing procedures for this new class of devices that we propose to call noise activated nonlinear dynamic sensors. Such devices can also show interesting dynamical features such as the resonant trapping effect.

Exchange in a Boltzmann gas of bosons with several internal states leads to collective transport of internal polarization. The internal dynamics can be understood as Larmor precession in the presence of a torque induced by atoms on each other via exchange coupling. A generalized Bloch equation that includes interatomic exchange effects as well as orbital motion in the gas is derived and used to interpret a recent experiment by Lewandowski et al. as an excitation of a collective wave of internal state polarization. It is shown that exchange leads to formation of domains in which precession frequencies are synchronized.

We consider an ultracold gas of (noncondensed) bosons or fermions with two internal states, and we study the effect of a gradient of the transition frequency between these states. When a $\pi /2\mathrm{}$ rf pulse is applied to the sample, exchange effects during collisions transfer the atoms into internal states which depend on the direction of their velocity. This results, after a short time, in a spatial separation between the two states. A kinetic equation is solved analytically and numerically; the results agree well with the recent observations of Lewandowski et al.

We present a kinetic theory for a dilute noncondensed Bose gas of two-level atoms that predicts the transient spin segregation observed in a recent experiment. The underlying mechanism driving spin currents in the gas is due to a mean-field effect arising from the quantum interference between the direct and exchange scattering of atoms in different spin states. We numerically solve the spin Boltzmann equation, using a one-dimensional model, and find excellent agreement with experimental data.

This Letter presents quantum mechanical inequalities which distinguish, for systems of $n$ spin- $\frac{1}{2}$ particles ( $n>\mathrm{}2\mathrm{}$), between fully entangled states and states in which at most $n-1\mathrm{}$ particles are entangled. These inequalities are stronger than those obtained by Gisin and Bechmann-Pasquinucci [Phys. Lett. A 246, 1 (1998)] and by Seevinck and Svetlichny [quant-ph/0201046].

We examine basic properties of complementarity by using the most general description of quantum observables as positive-operator measures. We show that, in general, two observables can be complementary or not depending on the measure of fluctuations adopted and that complementarity is not a symmetric relation. This occurs because the states that determine the measured statistics do not necessarily coincide with the minimum uncertainty states for the same observable. We also show that there are observables without a complementary observable and that complementarity is not preserved by the Neumark extensions.

We consider a single free spin- $\frac{1}{2}$ particle. The reduced density matrix for its spin is not covariant under Lorentz transformations. The spin entropy is not a relativistic scalar and has no invariant meaning.

The momentum and energy of phonons in a Bose-Einstein condensate are measured directly from a time-of-flight image by computerized tomography. We find that the same atoms that carry the momentum of the excitation also carry the excitation energy. The measured energy is in agreement with the Bogoliubov spectrum. Hydrodynamic simulations are performed which confirm our observation.

We show that Bose condensation in real time occurs in a finite system not only as an accumulation of the bosons in the ground state below a critical temperature, but also as a rapid enhancement of an arbitrary small symmetry breaking, followed by a very slow decay of the symmetry breaking order parameter from the almost ideal value to the vanishing equilibrium value. We show this analytically on an exactly soluble model and numerically on a model of noninteracting bosons in an oscillator potential.

We calculate the energy and condensate fraction for a dense system of bosons interacting through an attractive short range interaction with positive $s$-wave scattering length $a$. At high densities $n\gg a^{-3\mathrm{}}$, the energy per particle, chemical potential, and square of the sound speed are independent of the scattering length and proportional to $n^{2/3}$, as in Fermi systems. The condensate is quenched at densities ${\mathrm{na}}^3\simeq 1$.

We derive a single general Bell inequality which is a sufficient and necessary condition for the correlation function for N particles to be describable in a local and realistic picture, for the case in which measurements on each particle can be chosen between two arbitrary dichotomic observables. We also derive a necessary and sufficient condition for an arbitrary N-qubit mixed state to violate this inequality. This condition is a generalization and reformulation of the Horodecki family condition for two qubits.

Any pure entangled state of two particles violates a Bell inequality for two-particle correlation functions (Gisin’s theorem). We show that there exist pure entangled $N>\mathrm{}2\mathrm{}$ qubit states that do not violate any Bell inequality for $N$ particle correlation functions for experiments involving two dichotomic observables per local measuring station. We also find that Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko inequalities may not always be optimal for refutation of local realistic description.