Biomedical subjects

I Carusotto

Publications and source records attributed to I Carusotto.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Dipole polarizability of a trapped superfluid Fermi gas.

The polarization produced by the relative displacement of the potentials trapping two spin species of a dilute Fermi gas with N=N is calculated at unitarity by assuming phase separation between the superfluid and a polarized phase at zero temperature. Because of the energy cost associated with pair breaking, the dipole polarizability is strongly quenched and exhibits important deviations from the ideal gas behavior even for nonlinear displacements of the order of the size of the atomic cloud. The behavior in the presence of different trapping frequencies (monopole polarization) for the two spin species is also discussed. Our results suggest new experimental perspectives to explore the quantum phases of interacting Fermi gases.

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PubMed2006

Pair correlations of an expanding superfluid Fermi gas.

The pair correlation function of an expanding gas is investigated with an emphasis on the BEC-BCS crossover of a superfluid Fermi gas at zero temperature. At unitarity quantum Monte Carlo simulations reveal the occurrence of a sizable bunching effect due to interactions in the spin up-down channel which, at short distances, is larger than that exhibited by thermal bosons in the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss effect. We propose a local equilibrium ansatz for the pair correlation function which we predict will remain isotropic during the expansion even if the trapping potential is anisotropic, in contrast with the behavior of the density. The isotropy of the pair correlation function is an experimentally accessible signature, which makes a clear distinction with respect to the case of noninteracting gases and can be understood as a consequence of the violation of scaling.

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PubMed2005

Sensitive measurement of forces at the micron scale using Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms.

We show that Bloch oscillations of ultracold fermionic atoms in the periodic potential of an optical lattice can be used for a sensitive measurement of forces at the micrometer length scale, e.g., in the vicinity of a dielectric surface. In particular, the proposed approach allows us to perform a local and direct measurement of the Casimir-Polder force which is, for realistic experimental parameters, as large as 10(-4) gravity.

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PubMed2003

Vavilov-Cherenkov effect in a driven resonant medium.

The Vavilov-Cherenkov effect in a dispersive and resonant absorbing medium is substantially modified by the presence of an external electromagnetic field. Depending on the field parameters and configuration we anticipate a remarkable increase of the emission yield at resonance. Our predictions are implemented by numerical estimates for cuprous oxide (Cu2O) where the yield turns out to be one to two orders of magnitude that obtained in the absence of the field.

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PubMed2001

Slow group velocity and Cherenkov radiation.

We study theoretically the effect of ultraslow group velocities on the emission of Vavilov-Cherenkov radiation in a coherently driven medium. We show that in this case the aperture of the group cone on which the intensity of the radiation peaks is much smaller than that of the usual wave cone associated with the Cherenkov coherence condition. As a specific example, we consider a coherently driven ultracold atomic gas where such singular behavior may be observed.

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PubMed2001

Fresnel light drag in a coherently driven moving medium.

We theoretically study how the phase of a light plane wave propagating in a resonant medium under electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is affected by the uniform motion of the medium. For cuprous oxide (Cu2O), where EIT can be implemented through a typical pump-probe configuration, the resonant probe beam experiences a phase shift (Fresnel-Fizeau effect) that may vary over a wide range of values, positive or negative, and even vanishing, due to the combined effects of the strong frequency dispersion and anisotropy both induced by the pump. The use of such a coherently driven dragging medium may improve by at least 1 order of magnitude the sensitivity at low velocity in optical drag experiments.

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PubMed2000

Modulated optical lattice as an atomic fabry-perot interferometer

We propose to engineer the atomic band structure in optical lattices in order to design a Fabry-Perot interferometer with large mode spacing and strong nonlinear coupling to be employed in atom optics. The use of an optical lattice allows for a significant reduction of the atomic effective mass, while the slow modulation of its parameters spatially confines the matter waves on a length scale of a few dozen optical wavelengths. As a consequence, the mode spacing in such a cavity would be as high as one-tenth of the recoil energy, allowing for a very efficient filter action, while the nonlinear coupling due to interatomic interactions could lead to bistability and limiting effects in the transmission of the atomic beam.

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