There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) has been observed in a dilute gas of sodium atoms. A Bose-Einstein condensate consists of a macroscopic population of the ground state of the system, and is a coherent state of matter. In an ideal gas, this phase transition is purely quantum-statistical. The study of BEC in weakly interacting systems which can be controlled and observed with precision holds the promise of revealing new macroscopic quantum phenomena that can be understood from first principles.

Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of sodium atoms

Two classically identical expressions for the mutual information generally differ when the systems involved are quantum. This difference defines the quantum discord. It can be used as a measure of the quantumness of correlations. Separability of the density matrix describing a pair of systems does not guarantee vanishing of the discord, thus showing that absence of entanglement does not imply classicality. We relate this to the quantum superposition principle, and consider the vanishing of discord as a criterion for the preferred effectively classical states of a system, i.e., the pointer states.

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Quantum discord: a measure of the quantumness of correlations.

Monthly Notices is one of the three largest general primary astronomical research publications. It is an international journal, published by the Royal Astronomical Society. This article 1 describes its publication policy and practice.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

We present a theoretical analysis of a new one-dimensional laser-cooling scheme that was recently demonstrated on a beam of metastable 4He atoms. Both internal and translational degrees of freedom are treated quantum mechanically. Unlike semiclassical approaches, such a treatment can be applied to situations in which the atomic coherence length is of the same order of or larger than the laser wavelength, which is the case for atoms cooled below the one-photon recoil energy. We introduce families of states that are closed with respect to absorption and stimulated emission, and we establish the generalized optical Bloch equations that are satisfied by the corresponding matrix elements. The existence of velocity-selective trapping states that are linear combinations of states with different internal and translational quantum numbers is demonstrated, and the mechanism of accumulation of atoms in these trapping states by fluorescence cycles is analyzed. From a numerical solution of the generalized optical Bloch equations, we study in detail how the final atomic-momentum distribution depends on the various physical parameters: interaction time, width of the initial distribution, laser detuning, laser power, and imbalance between the two counterpropagating waves. We show that the final temperature decreases when the interaction time increases, so that there is no fundamental limit to the lowest temperature that can be achieved by such a method. Finally, possible extensions of this method to two-dimensional cooling are presented.

Laser cooling below the one-photon recoil energy by velocity-selective coherent population trapping: theoretical analysis

Since Dicke's seminal paper on coherence in spontaneous radiation by atomic ensembles, superradiance has been extensively studied. Subradiance, on the contrary, has remained elusive, mainly because subradiant states are weakly coupled to the environment and are very sensitive to nonradiative decoherence processes. Here, we report the experimental observation of subradiance in an extended and dilute cold-atom sample containing a large number of particles. We use a far detuned laser to avoid multiple scattering and observe the temporal decay after a sudden switch-off of the laser beam. After the fast decay of most of the fluorescence, we detect a very slow decay, with time constants as long as 100 times the natural lifetime of the excited state of individual atoms. This subradiant time constant scales linearly with the cooperativity parameter, corresponding to the on-resonance optical depth of the sample, and is independent of the laser detuning, as expected from a coupled-dipole model.

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Subradiance in a Large Cloud of Cold Atoms.

Raman scattering and superconductivity of titanium nitride with various N deficiencies have been investigated. While in stoichiometric superconducting TiN second-order Raman scattering is predominant, first-order Raman scattering increases with increasing N deficiency. The first-order Raman spectrum which agrees well with the phonon density of states shifts to higher frequencies when the N deficiency grows. This frequency shift is particularly strong at small N deficiencies (\ensuremath{\sim}5%) and is coupled with a drastic drop of ${T}_{c}$. The shift of the phonon density of states indicates phonon anomalies in stoichiometric TiN at 200 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ in close agreement with just performed neutron studies. In almost stoichiometric TiN the mean-square frequencies $〈{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{2}〉$ from the Raman spectra are in good agreement with corresponding specific-heat data. The similarities between the nonstoichiometric Ti${\mathrm{N}}_{0.55}$ and TiC are discussed.

Raman scattering, superconductivity, and phonon density of states of stoichiometric and nonstoichiometric TiN

Coherent atomic matter waves

Light propagating in an optically thick sample experiences multiple scattering It is now known that interferences alter this propagation, leading to an enhanced backscattering, a manifestation of weak localization of light in such diffuse samples This phenomenon has been extensively studied with classical scatterers In this Letter we report the first experimental evidence for coherent backscattering of light in a laser-cooled gas of rubidium atoms

Robin Kaiser

Papers

Laser cooling below the one-photon recoil energy by velocity-selective coherent population trapping: theoretical analysis

Subradiance in a Large Cloud of Cold Atoms.

Raman scattering, superconductivity, and phonon density of states of stoichiometric and nonstoichiometric TiN

Coherent atomic matter waves

Coherent Backscattering of Light by Cold Atoms