arXiv subjects

J. M. F. Gunn

Publications and source records attributed to J. M. F. Gunn.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Observation of Fermi acceleration with cold atoms

Cosmic rays are deemed to be generated by a process known as ``Fermi acceleration", in which charged particles scatter against magnetic fluctuations in astrophysical plasmas. The process itself is however universal, has both classical and quantum formulations, and is at the basis of dynamical systems with interesting mathematical properties, such as the celebrated Fermi-Ulam model. Despite its effectiveness in accelerating particles, Fermi acceleration has so far eluded unambiguous verifications in laboratory settings. Here, we realize the first fully controllable Fermi accelerator by colliding ultracold atoms against engineered movable potential barriers. We demonstrate that our Fermi accelerator, which is only 100 um in size, can produce ultracold atomic jets with velocities above half a meter per second. Adding dissipation, we also experimentally test Bell's general argument for the ensuing energy spectra, which is at the basis of any model of cosmic ray acceleration. On the one hand, our work effectively opens the window to the study of high energy astrophysics with cold atoms, offering new capabilities for the understanding of phenomena such as diffusive acceleration at collisionless shocks. On the other, the performance of our Fermi accelerator is competitive with those of best-in-class accelerating methods used in quantum technology and quantum colliders, but with substantially simpler implementation and virtually no upper limit.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

Instabilities and "phonons" of optical lattices in hollow optical fibers

Instabilities are predicted for a sufficiently long hollow photonic optical fiber, or "cavity", containing a one dimensional Bose-gas in the presence of a classical, far red-detuned, confined weak electromagnetic mode. We examine both a single beam with Bose gas (a type of Brillouin instability) and the case of a standing wave, or optical lattice. The instabilities of these driven systems have pronounced spatial structure, of combined modulational instabilities in the electromagnetic and Bose density fields. Near the critical wave vectors for the instability the coupled modes of the BEC and light can be interpreted as "phonons" of the optical lattice. We conjecture these spatially-structured instabilities for the optical lattice, which we predict at weak fields, develop into the source of spatially homogeneous heating predicted for strong fields.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2008

Exact vortex nucleation and cooperative vortex tunneling in dilute BECs

With the imminent advent of mesoscopic rotating BECs in the lowest Landau level (LLL) regime, we explore LLL vortex nucleation. An exact many-body analysis is presented in a weakly elliptical trap for up to 400 particles. Striking non-mean field features are exposed at filling factors >>1 . Eg near the critical rotation frequency pairs of energy levels approach each other with exponential accuracy. A physical interpretation is provided by requantising a mean field theory, where 1/N plays the role of Planck's constant, revealing two vortices cooperatively tunneling between classically degenerate energy minima. The tunnel splitting variation is described in terms of frequency, particle number and ellipticity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2007

Rotating molecules in optical lattices, alignment and monopole crystals

The recent progress towards production of near-ground state quantum-degenerate molecules raises the issue of how such "small" molecules behave in an optical lattice. In this Letter we show that the coupling of the molecular orientation to the local electric field direction will provide severalnew phenomena. In the case where the lasers forming different crystallographic directions of the lattice are incoherent, the orientation of the molecules is conserved (for L = 1) and a novel form of anisotropic superfluidity can be expected. When the lasers are coherent, and the optical lattice is such that the splitting of the rotational levels is large compared to the centre of mass energies,an adiabaic description of the molecular orientation is appropriate. This leads to geometric vector potentials, pseudo-magnetic monopoles and a frustrated band structure with degenerate minima.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2005

Anomalous hydrodynamics and "normal" fluids in rapidly rotating BECs

In rapidly rotating bose systems we show that there is a region of anomalous hydrodynamics whilst the system is still condensed, which coincides with the mean field quantum Hall regime. An immediate consequence is the absence of a normal fluid in any conventional sense. However, even the superfluid hydrodynamics is not described by conventional Bernoulli and continuity equations. We show there are kinematic constraints which connect spatial variations of density and phase, that the positions of vortices are not the simplest description of the dynamics of such a fluid (despite their utility in describing the instantaneous state of the condensate) and that the most compact description allows solution of some illuminating examples of motion. We demonstrate, inter alia, a very simple relation between vortices and surface waves. We show the surface waves can form a "normal fluid" which absorbs energy and angular momentum from vortex motion in the trap. The time scale of this process is sensitive to the initial configuration of the vortices, which can lead to long-lived vortex patches - perhaps related to those observed at JILA.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2001

Quantum Phases of Vortices in Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates

We investigate the groundstates of weakly interacting bosons in a rotating trap as a function of the number of bosons, $N$, and the average number of vortices, $N_V$. We identify the filling fraction $ν\equiv N/N_V$ as the parameter controlling the nature of these states. We present results indicating that, as a function of $ν$, there is a zero temperature {\it phase transition} between a triangular vortex lattice phase, and strongly-correlated vortex liquid phases. The vortex liquid phases appear to be the Read-Rezayi parafermion states.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1999

Field-theoretic methods for systems of particles with exotic exclusion statistics

We calculate the partition function of a gas of particles obeying Haldane exclusion statistics, using a definition of a Hilbert space having a `fractional dimension' and constructing appropriate coherent states. The fractional dimension is expressed though the form of the identity operator in the Hilbert space. We find that there many possible generalisations of the Pauli exclusion principle, with particular choices of the scalar product leading to consistency either with Haldane's original definition of the effective dimensionality of the Hilbert space or with the combinatorial procedure invoked by Haldane and Wu. We explicitly demonstrate that at low particle densities these definitions are equivalent.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv1999

Condensation of `composite bosons' in a rotating BEC

We provide evidence for several novel phases in the dilute limit of rotating BECs. By exact calculation of wavefunctions and energies for small numbers of particles, we show that the states near integer angular momentum per particle are best considered condensates of composite entities, involving vortices and atoms. We are led to this result by explicit comparison with a description purely in terms of vortices. Several parallels with the fractional quantum Hall effect emerge, including the presence of the Pfaffian state.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv1999

`Baryonic' bound-state instability in trapped fermionic atoms

We consider a homogeneous gas of spin-S fermionic atoms, as might occur near the center of an optical trap. In the case where all scattering lengths are negative and of the same magnitude we demonstrate the instability of the Fermi sea to the condensation of bound `baryonic' composites containing 2S+1 atoms. The gap in the excitation spectrum is calculated.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1998

Superfluid Flow Past an Array of Scatterers

We consider a model of nonlinear superfluid flow past a periodic array of point-like scatterers in one dimension. An application of this model is the determination of the critical current of a Josephson array in a regime appropriate to a Ginzburg-Landau formulation. Here, the array consists of short normal-metal regions, in the presence of a Hartree electron-electron interaction, and embedded within a one-dimensional superconducting wire near its critical temperature, $Tc$. We predict the critical current to depend linearly as $A (Tc-T)$, while the coefficient $A$ depends sensitively on the sizes of the superconducting and normal-metal regions and the strength and sign of the Hartree interaction. In the case of an attractive interaction, we find a further feature: the critical current vanishes linearly at some temperature $T*$ less than $Tc$, as well as at $Tc$ itself. We rule out a simple explanation for the zero value of the critical current, at this temperature $T*$, in terms of order parameter fluctuations at low frequencies.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv1998

Images and nonlocal vortex pinning in thin superfluid films

For thin films of superfluid adsorbed on a disordered substrate, we derive the equation of motion for a vortex in the presence of a random potential within a mean field (Hartree) description of the condensate. The compressible nature of the condensate leads to an effective pinning potential experienced by the vortex which is nonlocal, with a long range tail that smoothes out the random potential coupling the condensate to the substrate. We interpret this nonlocality in terms of images, and relate the effective potential governing the dynamics to the pinning energy arising from the expectation value of the Hamiltonian with respect to the vortex wavefunction.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv1997

Mapping spin-charge separation without constraints

The general form of a mapping of the spin and charge degrees of freedom of electrons onto spinless fermions and local `spin'-1/2 operators is derived. The electron Hilbert space is mapped onto a tensor productspin-charge Hilbert space. The single occupancy condition of the t-J model is satisfied exactly without the constraints between the operators required with slave particle methods and the size of the Hilbert space (four states per site) is conserved. The connection and distinction between the physical electron spin and the ``pseudospin'' used in these maps is made explicit. Specifically the pseudospin generates rotations both in spin space and particle-hole space. A geometric description (up to sign) is provided using two component spinors. The form of the mapped t-J Hamiltonian involves the coupling of spin and spinless fermion currents, as one expects.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv1995

Fractional dimensional Fock space and Haldane's exclusion statistics. q/p case

The discussion of Fractional dimensional Hilbert spaces in the context of Haldane exclusion statistics is extended from the case \cite{IG} of $g=1/p$ for the statistical parameter to the case of rational $g=q/p$ with $q,p$-coprime positive integers. The corresponding statistical mechanics for a gas of such particles is constructed. This procedure is used to define the statistical mechanics for particles with irrational $g$. Applications to strongly correlated systems such as the Hubbard and $t-J$ models are discussed.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1995

A Generalization of Haldane state-counting procedure and $π$-deformations of statistics

We consider the generalization of Haldane's state-counting procedure to describe all possible types of exclusion statistics which are linear in the deformation parameter $g$. The statistics are parametrized by elements of the symmetric group of the particles in question. For several specific cases we determine the form of the distribution functions which generalizes results obtained by Wu. Using them we analyze the low-temperature behavior and thermodynamic properties of these systems and compare our results with previous studies of the thermodynamics of a gas of $g$-ons. Various possible physical applications of these constructions are discussed.

hep-th↗

arXiv1995

Fractional dimensional Hilbert spaces and Haldane's exclusion statistics

We examine the notion of Haldane's dimension and the corresponding statistics in a probabilistic spirit. Motivated by the example of dimensional-regularization we define the dimension of a space as the trace of a diagonal `unit operator', where the diagonal matrix elements are not, in general, unity but are probabilities to place the system into a given state. These probabilities are uniquely defined by the rules of Haldane's statistics. We calculate the second virial coefficient for our system and demonstrate agreement with Murthy and Shankar's calculation. The partition function for an ideal gas of the particles, a state-counting procedure, the entropy and a distribution function for the particles are investigated using our probabilistic definition. We compare our results with previous calculations of exclusion statistics.

hep-th↗