No Arabic abstract
We show that thermalization of the motion of atoms at negative temperature is possible in an optical lattice, for conditions that are feasible in current experiments. We present a method for reversibly inverting the temperature of a trapped gas. Moreover, a negative-temperature ensemble can be cooled, reducing abs(T), by evaporation of the lowest-energy particles. This enables the attainment of the Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition at negative temperature.
We investigate the effects of dimensional reduction in Bose gases induced by a strong harmonic confinement in the transverse cylindric radial direction. By using a generalized Lieb-Liniger theory, based on a variational treatment of the transverse width of the Bose gas, we analyze the transition from a 3D Bose-Einstein condensate to the 1D Tonks-Girardeau gas. The sound velocity and the frequency of the lowest compressional mode give a clear signature of the regime involved. We study also the case of negative scattering length deriving the phase diagram of the Bose gas (uniform, single soliton, multi soliton and collapsed) in toroidal confinement.
We develop a microscopic approach to the consistent construction of the kinetic theory of dilute weakly ionized gases of hydrogen-like atoms. The approach is based on the framework of the second quantization method in the presence of bound states of particles and the method of reduced description of relaxation processes. Within the approach we developed the first-order perturbation theory over the weak interaction for a system of kinetic equations for the Wigner distribution functions of free fermions of both kinds and their bound states, the hydrogen-like atoms. It is shown that the conditions of low-temperature approximation, of the gas non-degeneracy and the approximation of weak interaction are realistic and can be met in a wide range of temperatures and the densities of the studied system. We obtain dispersion equations for determining the frequency and wave attenuation coefficients in dilute weakly ionized gas of hydrogen-like atoms near the described equilibrium state. In the two-level atom approximation it is shown that in the system there are longitudinal waves of matter polarization and transverse waves with the behavior characteristic of plasmon polaritons. The expressions for the dependence of the frequency and the Landau damping coefficients on the wave vector for all branches of the oscillations detected, are obtained. Quantitative estimations of the characteristics of the elementary perturbations in the system on an example of a weakly ionized dilute gas of Na-23 atoms are presented. The possibility of using the results of the theory developed to describe the properties of a Bose condensate of photons in dilute weakly ionized gas of hydrogen-like atoms is noted and the directions of its generalizations are discussed.
Thermalization of a system in the presence of a heat bath has been the subject of many theoretical investigations especially in the framework of solid-state physics. In this setting, the presence of a large bandwidth for the frequency distribution of the harmonic oscillators schematizing the heat bath is crucial, as emphasized in the Caldeira-Leggett model. By contrast, ultracold gases in atomic traps oscillate at well-defined frequencies and therefore seem to lie outside the Caldeira-Leggett paradigm. We introduce interaction Hamiltonians which allow us to adapt the model to an atomic physics framework. The intrinsic nonlinearity of these models differentiates them from the original Caldeira-Leggett model and calls for a nontrivial stability analysis to determine effective ranges for the model parameters. These models allow for molecular dynamics simulations of mixtures of ultracold gases, which is of current relevance for optimizing sympathetic cooling in degenerate Bose-Fermi mixtures.
Do negative absolute temperatures matter physics and specifically Statistical Physics? We provide evidence that we can certainly answer positively to this vexata quaestio. The great majority of models investigated by statistical mechanics over almost one century and a half exhibit positive absolute temperature, because their entropy is a nondecreasing function of energy. Since more than half a century ago it has been realized that this may not be the case for some physical systems as incompressible fluids, nuclear magnetic chains, lasers, cold atoms and optical waveguides. We review these examples and discuss their peculiar thermodynamic properties, which have been associated to the presence of thermodynamic regimes, characterized by negative absolute temperatures. As reported in this review, the ambiguity inherent the definition of entropy has recurrently raised a harsh debate about the possibility of considering negative temperature states as genuine thermodynamic equilibrium ones. Here we show that negative absolute temperatures are consistent with equilibrium as well as with non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In particular, thermometry, thermodynamics of cyclic transformations, ensemble equivalence, fluctuation-dissipation relations, response theory and even transport processes can be reformulated to include them, thus dissipating any prejudice about their exceptionality, typically presumed as a manifestation of transient metastable effects.
The theory of continuous phase transitions predicts the universal collective properties of a physical system near a critical point, which for instance manifest in characteristic power-law behaviours of physical observables. The well-established concept at or near equilibrium, universality, can also characterize the physics of systems out of equilibrium. The most fundamental instance of a genuine non-equilibrium phase transition is the directed percolation universality class, where a system switches from an absorbing inactive to a fluctuating active phase. Despite being known for several decades it has been challenging to find experimental systems that manifest this transition. Here we show theoretically that signatures of the directed percolation universality class can be observed in an atomic system with long range interactions. Moreover, we demonstrate that even mesoscopic ensembles --- which are currently studied experimentally --- are sufficient to observe traces of this non-equilibrium phase transition in one, two and three dimensions.