Physics ± Uspekhi 48 (10) 1091 ± 1092 (2005) # 2005 Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, Russian Academy of Sciences

PACS number: 01.90.+g

Physics news on the Internet (based on electronic preprints)

DOI: 10.1070/PU2005v048n10ABEH002327

emission range of the diode laser led to a resonance at the

1. Brown ± Twiss effect for atoms
transition frequency between the excited and ground states of
The Brown ± Twiss (intensity) interferometer measures wave the molecules.
intensity correlation between spatially scattered detectors. Source: http://arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0505732
Brown ± Twiss interferometers with two telescopes are
usually used in astronomy for measuring star diameters.
3. Observation of the Casimir ± Polder effect
The first application of such an instrument to atomic
optics Ð specifically to the study of ultracold gases Ð was The Casimir ± Polder effect consists in the attraction of an
made at the University of Tokyo in 1996. Now, C West- atom to a flat surface and, like the ordinary Casimir effect, is
brook and his colleagues from the University Paris-Sud in due to the change in the spectrum of zero-point fluctuations
France and co-workers at the University of Minho in in a vacuum. The Casimir ± Polder effect has been observed
Portugal have markedly improved the measurement proce- in a number of experiments with ultracold gases. However,
dure to the point where single atoms flying out of a Bose ± due to sensitivity limitations, measurements were only made
Einstein condensate (BEC) can be detected on a time scale at a very small distance ( 0:1 mm) from the surface Ð the
of a few nanoseconds and at distances less than 200 mm. The region where van der Waals forces are also very strong.
team studied the interference properties of magnetically D M Harber and his colleagues at the University of
trapped helium atoms evaporatively cooled to about Colorado in Boulder and JILA have employed a new
0.5 mK. The way to eject atoms from the trap was by technique to investigate the Casimir ± Polder effect at a
turning the magnetic field off. It was found that the distance of ' 5 mm from the surface of a dielectric. The
interference pattern appeared at temperatures above the team studied the mechanical oscillations of a cloud of Bose ±
condensate transition point and disappeared when the gas Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms, located close to the
was cooled and BEC formed. The apparent paradox of a specially treated flat surfaces of sapphire or silicon dioxide.
coherent source failing to produce an interference pattern is Metal surfaces, although more preferable, were of no use
explained by the quantum correlation of the BEC atoms because of surface defects and their associated disturbing
and by the way the intensity interferometer operates. The electric fields. By changing the magnetic field in the trap one
experiment examined the dependence of the magnitude of can vary the cloud-to-surface distance, and by applying a
the effect on the size of a helium gas cloud and provided a short duration pulse, to cause the condensate to oscillate.
full 3D picture of the correlations observed. The presence of a gradient in the Casimir ± Polder force leads
Source: http://arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0508466 to a shift in the oscillation frequency, whose measured value
was found to vary with the distance from the surface much in
the way predicted by theoretical calculations [M Antezza,
2. Molecular Bose ± Einstein condensate
L P Pitaevskii, and S Stringari, Phys. Rev. A70 053619
In recent years, molecular Bose ± Einstein condensates have (2004)]. A spin-off of the Colorado experiment is a limit on
been created in which weak atomic binding in molecules the way in which Newton's force of gravitational attraction
occurs in the vicinity of the Feshbach resonance. Now, at small distances can be modified (the Yukawa potential
K Winkler and his colleagues at the University of Innsbruck being an example). This limitation is less restrictive than
in Austria have used the photoassociation technique to create those obtained in other experiments, but serves as an
a Bose ± Einstein condensate of rubidium, whose molecules independent confirmation.
are in the ground state and bound strongly. The key difficulty Source: Phys. Rev. A72 033610 (2005);
with photoassociation is that the molecules turn out to be http://pra.aps.org
destroyed (dissociated) by the same radiation creating them.
To get around this, the researchers used an approach akin to
4. Curvilinear motion of a soliton
the induced transparency technique familiar from optics.
Radiation from a sapphire laser caused condensate mole- A computer simulation experiment by N N Rosanov,
cules to form in an excited quantum state, and a diode laser, of S V Fedorov, and A N Shatsev of the Research Institute for
a different frequency and lower power, transferred them to Laser Physics in St.-Petersburg has revealed the possibility
the ground state, making them immune to the destructive that a dissipative soliton can follow a curvilinear trajectory in
action of the first laser radiation. In this way, about 100 Rb2 its motion. The condition for this is asymmetry in the
molecules were created in a condensate containing a total of distribution of the field which forms the soliton and the
4  105 Rb atoms. The molecular detection technique relied energy flows into and out of it. The system studied was that
on the absorption spectrum of the molecules. Changing the of several vortex solitons described by nonlinear equations in
the Ginzburg ± Landau form. A detailed study was made of a
pair of strongly coupled solitons interacting with other
Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk 175 (10) 1038 (2005)
Translated by E G Strel'chenko solitons. It was found that the complex of solitons not only
rotated but its center of mass also moved along a curvilinear
trajectory. It is believed that using laser radiation in an active
1092 Physics news on the Internet Physics ± Uspekhi 48 (10)

optical medium may be a way to reproduce these theoretical

findings in a real-life experiment.
Source: Phys. Rev. Lett. 95 053903 (2005);
http://prl.aps.org

5. Cosmic deuterium
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Obser-
vatory team led by A Rogers has detected radio emission
from deuterium in space for the first time. Deuterium is
difficult to observe due to its small amount and because its
spectral lines are close to those of hydrogen. Registering
deuterium is of great interest for the theory of nucleosynth-
esis in the early Universe because its amount is a sensitive
indicator of physical processes taking place during nucleo-
synthesis. In particular, by knowing the amount of deuter-
ium, the average density of baryonic matter can be
evaluated, thus providing a more accurate estimate of the
amount of dark matter (or unseen mass) in the Universe.
Further data accumulation and analysis will allow more
accurate determination of these quantities.
Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/

6. The hyperfast pulsar

Measurements with the National Science Foundation's Very
Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope have yielded the
parallax and angular speed of the pulsar B1508‡55, allowing
the model-independent calculation of its distance from the
Earth (2.4 kpc) and proper speed of motion (1100 km sÿ1 ).
The pulsar B1508‡55 is thus the fastest one known and will
necessarily leave the Milky Way Galaxy in the future.
Measurements in the frequency range 1.4 ± 1.7 MHz were
made in eight series at 3-month intervals. From the rate of
decrease in its pulse period, the age of the pulsar was found to
be 2:34  106 years. The present distance of the pulsar from
the disk of the Galaxy is about 2 kpc, but given the direction
of its motion it is concluded that the pulsar was born in a disk
near an OB type star association in the constellation Cygnus.
How the pulsar has been accelerated to 1100 km sÿ1 is not yet
known. Of several mechanisms proposed to explain high
pulsar speeds, the most likely one is an asymmetric super-
nova explosion, but even this mechanism needs improvement
when it comes to speeds in excess of 1000 km sÿ1 .
Source: http://www.nrao.edu

Compiled by Yu N Eroshenko