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We propose a quantum Wheatstone bridge as a fully quantum analogue to the classical version. The bridge is a few-body boundary-driven spin chain exploiting quantum effects to gain an enhanced sensitivity to an unknown coupling. The sensitivity is explained by a drop in population of an entangled Bell state due to destructive interference as the controllable coupling approaches the unknown coupling. A simple criteria for the destructive interference is found, and an approximate expression for the width of the drop is derived. The sensitivity to the unknown coupling is quantified using the quantum Fisher information, and we show that the state of the bridge can be measured indirectly through the spin current. Our results are robust towards calibration errors and generic in the sense that several of the current state-of-the-art quantum platforms could be used as a means of realization. The quantum Wheatstone bridge may thus find use in fields such as sensing and metrology using near-term quantum devices., Comment: 6+8 pages, 3+3 figures

Lattice gauge theories (LGTs) form an intriguing class of theories highly relevant to both high-energy particle physics and low-energy condensed matter physics with the rapid development of engineered quantum devices providing new tools to study e.g. dynamics of such theories. The massive Schwinger model is known to exhibit intricate properties of more complicated theories and has recently been shown to undergo dynamical quantum phase transitions out of equilibrium. With current technology, noise is inevitable and potentially fatal for a successful quantum simulation. This paper studies the dynamics subject to noise of a $(1+1)$D U$(1)$ quantum link model following a quench of the sign of the mass term. We find that not only is the system capable of handling noise at rates realistic in NISQ-era devices, promising the possiblity to study the target dynamics with current technology, but the effect of noise can be understood in terms of simple models. Specifically the gauge-breaking nature of bit-flip channels results in exponential dampening of state amplitudes, and thus observables, which does not affect the structures of interest. This is especially important as it demonstrates that the gauge theory can be successfully studied with devices that only exhibit approximate gauge invariance., 12 pages, 8 figures. Changes: added references

Heat and noise control is essential for the continued development of quantum technologies. For this purpose, a particularly powerful tool is the heat rectifier, which allows for heat transport in one configuration of two baths but not the reverse. Here we propose a class of rectifiers that exploits the unidirectionality of a low temperature bath to force the system into a dark state thus blocking heat transport in one configuration of the two baths. However, if the two baths are switched around, a heat current is observed. An implementation using a qutrit coupled to two harmonic oscillators is proposed and rectification values beyond $10^3$ are achieved for realistic parameter values. Furthermore, we show that the heat current can be amplified by an order of magnitude through external driving without diminishing the diode functionality. The heat rectification effect is seen for a large range of parameters, and it is robust towards both decay and dephasing., 7 pages, 5 figures

The variational quantum eigensolver is a prominent hybrid quantum-classical algorithm expected to impact near-term quantum devices. They are usually based on a circuit ansatz consisting of parameterized single-qubit gates and fixed two-qubit gates. We study the effect of parameterized two-qubit gates in the variational quantum eigensolver. We simulate a variational quantum eigensolver algorithm using fixed and parameterized two-qubit gates in the circuit ansatz and show that the parameterized versions outperform the fixed versions, both when it comes to best energy and reducing outliers, for a range of Hamiltonians with applications in quantum chemistry and materials science., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures + Supplementary material: 5 pages, 8 figures

Lattice gauge theories are a fascinating and rich class of theories relating to the most fundamental models of particle physics, and as experimental control on the quantum level increases there is a growing interest in non-equilibrium effects such as dynamical quantum phase transitions. To demonstrate how these physical theories can be accessed in near-term quantum devices, we study the dynamics of a (1+1)D U(1) quantum link model following quenches of its mass-term. We find that the system undergoes dynamical quantum phase transitions for all system sizes considered, even the smallest where the dynamics can be solved analytically. We devise a gauge invariant string order parameter whose zeros correlates with the structure of the Loschmidt amplitude, making the order parameter useful for experimental study in near-term devices. The zeros of the Loschmidt amplitude as well as the zeros of our order parameter are revealed by vortices in their phases, which can be counted by a topologically invariant winding number. With noisy intermediate scale quantum devices in mind, we propose a class of superconducting circuits for the general implementation of U(1) quantum link models. The principles of these circuits can be generalized to implement other, more complicated gauge symmetries. Furthermore, the circuit can be modularly scaled to any lattice configuration. Simulating the circuit dynamics with realistic circuit parameters we find that it implements the target dynamics with a steady average fidelity of $ 99.5\% $ or higher. Finally, we consider readout of the circuit using a method that yields information about all the degrees of freedom with resonators coupled dispersively to only a subset of them. This constitutes a direct and relatively straightforward protocol to access both Loschmidt amplitudes and the order parameter., Main article: 20 pages, 9 figures. Supplemental: 23 pages, 8 figures

We explore a new numerical method for studying one-dimensional quantum systems in a trapping potential. We focus on the setup of an impurity in a fermionic background, where a single distinguishable particle interacts through a contact potential with a number of identical fermions. We can accurately describe this system, for various particle numbers, different trapping potentials and arbitrary finite repulsion, by constructing a truncated basis containing states at both zero and infinite repulsion. The results are compared with matrix product states methods and with the analytical result for two particles in a harmonic well.

Logical devices based on electrical currents are ubiquitous in modern society. However, digital logic does have some drawbacks, such as a relatively high power consumption. It is, therefore, of great interest to seek alternative means to build logical circuits that can either work as stand-alone devices or in conjunction with more traditional electronic circuits. One direction that holds great promise is the use of heat currents for logical components. In the present paper, we discuss a recent abstract proposal for a quantum thermal transistor and provide a concrete design of such a device using superconducting circuits. Using a circuit quantum electrodynamics Jaynes-Cummings model, we propose a three-terminal device that allows heat transfer from source to drain, depending on the temperature of a bath coupled at the gate modulator and show that it provides similar properties to a conventional semiconductor transistor.

In solid state physics, giant magnetoresistance is the large change in electrical resistance due to an external magnetic field. Here we show that giant magnetoresistance is possible in a spin chain composed of weakly interacting layers of strongly coupled spins. This is found for all system sizes even down to a minimal system of four spins. The mechanism driving the effect is a mismatch in the energy spectrum resulting in spin excitations being reflected at the boundaries between layers. This mismatch, and thus the current, can be controlled by external magnetic fields resulting in giant magnetoresistance. A simple rule for determining the behavior of the spin transport under the influence of a magnetic field is presented based on the energy levels of the strongly coupled spins., 5+3 pages, 3+2 figures

The family of $n$-bit Toffoli gates, with the two-bit Toffoli gate as the figurehead, are of great interest in quantum information as they can be used as universal gates and in quantum error correction, among other things. We present a single-step implementation of arbitrary $n$-bit Toffoli gates (up to a local change of basis), based on resonantly driving a single qubit that has a strong Ising coupling to $n$ other qubits. The setup in the two-qubit case turns out to be identical to the universal Barenco gate. The gate time and error are, in theory, independent of the number of control qubits, scaling better than conventional circuit decompositions. We note that our assumptions, namely strongly coupling $n+1$ qubits and a driving frequency that scales with $n$, may break down for large systems. Still, our protocol could enhance the capabilities of intermediate scale quantum computers, and we discuss the prospects of implementing our protocol on trapped ions, Rydberg atoms, and on superconducting circuits. Simulations of the latter platform show that the Toffoli gate with two control bits attains fidelities of above 0.98 even in the presence of decoherence. We also show how similar ideas can be used to make a series of controlled-\textsc{not}-gates in a single step. We show how these can speed up the implementation of quantum error correcting codes and we simulate the encoding steps of the three-qubit bit-flip code and the seven-qubit Steane code., 11 pages, 9 figures. Appendix is 6 pages, 3 figures and 1 table

Scalable quantum information processing will require quantum networks of qubits with the ability to coherently transfer quantum states between the desired sender and receiver nodes. Here we propose a scheme to implement a quantum router that can direct quantum states from an input qubit to a preselected output qubit. The path taken by the transferred quantum state is controlled by the state of one or more ancilla qubits. This enables both directed transport between a sender and a number of receiver nodes, and generation of distributed entanglement in the network. We demonstrate the general idea using a two-output setup and discuss how the quantum routing may be expanded to several outputs. We also present a possible realization of our ideas with superconducting circuits.

Conformal field theories (CFT) play an important role in quantum field theories as they allow for exact studies that are hard to access without the conformal symmetries in place. A remarkable recent development is the application of conformal field theory to periodically driven systems, the so-called Floquet-driven CFTs. A number of recent works have found that there are classes of periodically driven (1+1)-dimensional CFTs that can be analytically solved, and that show both heating and non-heating phases, as well as unusual properties in terms of information scrambling. Hitherto, most results have focused on the dynamics of such models at stroboscopic times, i.e. samples taken at each period of the time evolution. In this paper, we consider time-evolution at arbitrary real times and derive formulas for the exact time-propagation of heating and non-heating classes of Floquet-driven CFTs. This requires a subtle treatment of non-stroboscopic time that leads to different interpretations in terms of curved space-time dynamics in these systems compared to previous results in the literature., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

We investigate the physics of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid of spin-polarized fermions superimposed on an ion chain. This compound system features (attractive) long-range interspecies interactions. By means of density matrix renormalization group techniques we compute the Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid parameter and speed of sound as a function of the relative atom/ion density and the two quantum defect parameters, namely, the even and odd short-range phases which characterize the short-range part of the atom-ion polarization potential. The presence of ions is found to allow critical tuning of the atom-atom interaction, and the properties of the system are found to depend significantly on the short-range phases due to the atom-ion interaction. These latter dependencies can be controlled, for instance, by manipulating the ions' internal state. This allows modification of the static properties of the quantum liquid via external driving of the ionic impurities., 11 pages, 8 figures, similar to published version

We show how a superconducting circuit consisting of three identical, non-linear oscillators in series considered in terms of its electrical modes can implement a strong, native three-body interaction among qubits. Because of strong interactions, part of the qubit-subspace is coupled to higher levels. The remaining qubit states can be used to implement a restricted Fredkin gate, which in turn implements a CNOT-gate or a spin transistor. Including non-symmetric contributions from couplings to ground and external control we alter the circuit slightly to compensate, and find average fidelities for our implementation of the above gates above $ 99.5\% $ with operation times on the order of a nanosecond. Additionally we show how to analytically include all orders of the cosine contributions from Josephson junctions to the Hamiltonian of a superconducting circuit., 22 pages, 6 figures

Scientists’ own perspectives on research funding are often missing. To address this, we surveyed Danish scientists about their ideal research grant. In contrast to a trend towards larger grants, most surveyed scientists prefer small or mid-sized grants to pursue their ideas and advance their scientific careers.

We investigate a temporal evolution of an impurity atom in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas following a sudden change of the boson-impurity interaction strength. Our focus is on the effects of inhomogeneity due to the harmonic confinement. These effects can be described by an effective one-body model where both the mass and the spring constant are renormalized. This is in contrast to the classic renormalization, which addresses only the mass. We propose an effective single-particle Hamiltonian and apply the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons to explore its validity. Numerical results suggest that the effective mass is smaller than the impurity mass, which means that it cannot straightforwardly be extracted from translationally invariant models., Version accepted for publication in PRA

With the advent of quantum technologies comes the requirement of building quantum components able to store energy to be used whenever necessary, i.e. quantum batteries. In this paper we exploit an adiabatic protocol to ensure a stable charged state of a three-level quantum battery which allows to avoid the spontaneous discharging regime. We study the effects of the most relevant sources of noise on the charging process and, as an experimental proposal, we discuss superconducting transmon qubits. In addition we study the self-discharging of our quantum battery where it is shown that spectrum engineering can be used to delay such phenomena., 9 pages, 4 figures. Close to published version

In this paper we investigate a linear chain of qubits and determine that it can be configured into a conditional two-qubit swapping gate, where the first and last qubits of the chain are the swapped qubits, and the remaining middle ancilla qubits are controlling the state of the gate. The swapping gate introduces different phases on the final states depending on the initial states. In particular we focus on a chain of four qubits and show the swapping gate it implements. We simulate the chain with realistic parameters, and decoherence noise and leakage to higher excited states, and find an average fidelity of around 0.99. We propose a superconducting circuit which implements this chain of qubits and present a circuit design of the circuit. We also discuss how to operate the superconducting circuit such that the state of the gate can be controlled. Lastly, we discuss how the circuit can be straightforwardly altered and may be used to simulate Hamiltonians with non-trivial topological properties., 8 pages, 6 figures + 15 pages of supplementary material, 3 figures

The exotic phenomenon of time translation symmetry breaking under periodic driving - the time crystal - has been shown to occur in many-body systems even in clean setups where disorder is absent. In this work, we propose the realization of time-crystals in few-body systems, both in the context of trapped cold atoms with strong interactions and of a circuit of superconducting qubits. We show how these two models can be treated in a fairly similar way by adopting an effective spin chain description, to which we apply a simple driving protocol. We focus on the response of the magnetization in the presence of imperfect pulses and interactions, and show how the results can be interpreted, in the cold atomic case, in the context of experiments with trapped bosons and fermions. Furthermore, we provide a set of realistic parameters for the implementation of the superconducting circuit., 6 pages, 4 figures

We investigate the two-proton capture reaction of the prominent rapid proton capture waiting point nucleus, Se, that produces the borromean nucleus Kr (Se68+p+p). We apply a recently formulated general model where the core nucleus, Se, is treated in the mean-field approximation and the three-body problem of the two valence protons and the core is solved exactly. We compare using two popular Skyrme interactions, SLy4 and SkM*. We calculate E2 electromagnetic two-proton dissociation and capture cross sections, and derive the temperature dependent capture rates. We vary the unknown 2 resonance energy without changing any of the structures computed self-consistently for both core and valence particles. We find rates increasing quickly with temperature below 2–4 GK after which we find rates varying by about a factor of two independent of 2 resonance energy. The capture mechanism is sequential through the f proton-core resonance, but the continuum background contributes significantly., This work was funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research DFF Natural Science and the DFF Sapere Aude program. This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under Project FIS2014-51971-P.

We investigate three-body recombination rates into deep dimers in cold atomic gases with large scattering length within hyper-spherical adiabatic zero-range approach. We derive closed analytic expressions for the rates for one- and two-species gases. Although the deep dimers are beyond the zero-range theory the latter can still describe the recombination into deep dimers by use of one additional short-range absorption parameter. The recombination rate, as function of the scattering length, retains the known universal behavior --- the fourth power trend with characteristic log-periodic peaks --- however increasing the short-range absorption broadens the peaks until they are eventually completely smeared out. Increasing the heavy-to-light mass ratio in a two-species system decreases the distance between the peaks and increases the overal scale of the recombination rate., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Conference "Systems on the verge of the stability" (Critical Stability 2014)

6 pags., 5 figs., We investigate the emergence of halos and Efimov states in nuclei by use of a newly designed model that combines self-consistent mean-field and three-body descriptions. Recent interest in neutron heavy calcium isotopes makes 72Ca (70Ca+n+n) an ideal realistic candidate on the neutron dripline, and we use it as a representative example that illustrates our broadly applicable conclusions. By smooth variation of the interactions we simulate the crossover from well-bound systems to structures beyond the threshold of binding, and find that halo configurations emerge from the mean-field structure for three-body binding energy less than ~100¿¿keV. Strong evidence is provided that Efimov states cannot exist in nuclei. The structure that bears the most resemblance to an Efimov state is a giant halo extending beyond the neutron-core scattering length. We show that the observable large-distance decay properties of the wave function can differ substantially from the bulk part at short distances, and that this evolution can be traced with our combination of few- and many-body formalisms. This connection is vital for interpretation of measurements such as those where an initial state is populated in a reaction or by a beta decay., This work was funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research DFF Natural Science and the DFF Sapere Aude program. This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad under Project No. FIS2014-51971-P.

This paper introduces a model for a few repulsively interacting particles trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic well and provides exact solutions for the three-particle case. This model is a hybrid of two other well-known systems, the Calogero model and the contact-interaction model, and coincides with them in limiting cases. However, those models have purely two-body interactions whereas this model has intrinsically few-body interactions. Comparing these three models provides clarifying distinctions among the properties of symmetry, separability, and integrability. The model's analytic solutions provide a useful basis to improve approximation schemes, especially near the unitary limit of hard-core contact interactions.

Luttinger liquid theory is a powerful and widely applicable framework for modelling one-dimensional many-body quantum systems. Within this framework, one supposes that the macroscopic behaviour of such systems is entirely determined by two phenomenological parameters, g(2) and g(4). While there exists an intuitive and seemingly sensible physical interpretation of these parameters in terms of the scattering of the system's constituent particles, g(2) and g(4) are traditionally either fixed by experiment or calculated using heavy-duty numerical techniques, rather than inferred using scattering theory, and for this reason the interpretation remains untested. By applying Luttinger liquid theory in a simple setting, we show that a widely-held and repeatedly-stated belief, namely that the intrabranch terms appearing in Luttinger's model originate from microscopic intrabranch interactions, is a misconception. We begin with the microscopic model of an interacting one-dimensional, spin-polarized Fermi gas, which we systematically transform into a Luttinger model by introducing an effective interaction, linearizing the dispersion, and renormalizing. By this method, we are able to show that the usual interpretation of g(4) as a measure of intrabranch scattering implies that it must vanish in the dilute limit. Since this runs contrary to conservation of particle number, we conclude that g(4) cannot be related to intrabranch scattering. Rather, we show that g(4) interactions must be included in the effective model in order to compensate for the deleterious effect that introducing an effective interaction has upon the model's energetics. We explicitly calculate an approximation to this correction for our simple system, and find that it agrees with the value of g(4) found in the literature. We therefore propose a new fermionic Hamiltonian which agrees with the traditional model after bosonisation, but which better reflects the underlying microscopic physics.

We combine few- and many-body degrees of freedom in a new computationally efficient model applicable to both bound and continuum states and adaptable to different subfields of physics. We formulate a self-consistent three-body model for a core nucleus surrounded by two valence nucleons, where the core is treated in the mean-field approximation and the same effective Skyrme interaction is used between both core and valence nucleons. We apply the model to $^{26}\mathrm{O}$, where we reproduce the known experimental data as well as phenomenological models with more parameters. The decay of the ground state is found to proceed directly into the continuum without effect of the virtual sequential decay through the well-reproduced ${d}_{3/2}$ resonance of $^{25}\mathrm{O}$.

We develop a quantum simulator architecture that is suitable for the simulation of $U(1)$ Abelian gauge theories such as quantum electrodynamics. Our approach relies on the ability to control the hopping of a particle through a barrier by means of the internal quantum states of a neutral or charged impurity-particle sitting at the barrier. This scheme is experimentally feasible, as the correlated hopping does not require fine-tuning of the intra- and inter-species interactions. We investigate the applicability of the scheme in a double well potential, which is the basic building block of the simulator, both at the single-particle and the many-body mean-field level. Moreover, we evaluate its performance for different particle interactions and trapping, and, specifically for atom-ion systems, in the presence of micro-motion., 16 pages, 8 figures, final version

We consider quantum scattering of particles in media exhibiting strong dispersion degeneracy. In particular, we study flat-banded lattices and linearly dispersed energy bands. The former constitute a prime example of single-particle frustration while the latter show degeneracy at the few- and many-particle level. We investigate both impurity and two-body scattering and show that, quite generally, scattering does not occur, which we relate to the fact that transition matrices vanish on the energy shell. We prove that scattering is instead replaced by projections onto band-projected eigenstates of the interaction potential. We then use the general results to obtain localised flat band states that are eigenstates of impurity potentials with vanishing eigenvalues in one-dimensional flat bands and study the particular case of a sawtooth lattice. We also uncover the relation between certain solutions of one-dimensional systems that have been categorised as "strange", and the scattering states in linearly dispersed continuum systems., 7 pages, 0 figures. Updated references

A detailed analysis of a system of four interacting ultracold fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap is performed. The analysis is done in the framework of a simple variational ansatz for the many-body ground state, and its predictions are compared with the results of numerically exact diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian. A short discussion of the role of the quantum statistics, i.e., Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi mixtures, is also presented. It is concluded that the variational ansatz, although appearing to be oversimplified, gives surprisingly good predictions of many different quantities for mixtures of equal as well as different mass systems. The result may have some experimental importance since it gives a quite simple and validated method for describing experimental outputs.

We consider few-body bound state systems and provide precise definitions of Borromean and Brunnian systems. The initial concepts are more than a hundred years old and originated in mathematical knot-theory as purely geometric considerations. About thirty years ago they were generalized and applied to the binding of systems in nature. It now appears that recent generalization to higher order Brunnian structures may potentially be realized as laboratory made or naturally occurring systems. With the binding energy as measure, we discuss possibilities of physical realization in nuclei, cold atoms, and condensed matter systems. Appearance is not excluded. However, both the form and the strengths of the interactions must be rather special. The most promising subfields for present searches would be in cold atoms because of external control of effective interactions, or perhaps in condensed-matter systems with non-local interactions. In nuclei, it would only be by sheer luck due to a lack of tunability., 8 pages, 5 figures, revised version

Recently, the topics of many-body localization (MBL) and one-dimensional strongly interacting few-body systems have received a lot of interest. These two topics have been largely developed separately. However, the generality of the latter as far as external potentials are concerned -- including random and quasirandom potentials -- and their shared spatial dimensionality, makes it an interesting way of dealing with MBL in the strongly interacting regime. Utilising tools developed for few-body systems we look to gain insight into the localization properties of the spin in a Fermi gas with strong interactions. We observe a delocalized--localized transition over a range of fillings of a quasirandom lattice. We find this transition to be of a different nature for low and high fillings, due to the diluteness of the system for low fillings., 6 pages, 3 figures

Spin chains are paradigmatic systems for the studies of quantum phases and phase transitions, and for quantum information applications, including quantum computation and short-distance quantum communication. Here we propose and analyse a scheme for conditional state transfer in a Heisenberg XXZ spin chain which realizes a quantum spin transistor. In our scheme, the absence or presence of a control spin excitation in the central gate part of the spin chain results in either perfect transfer of an arbitrary state of a target spin between the weakly coupled input and output ports, or its complete blockade at the input port. We also discuss a possible proof-of-concept realization of the corresponding spin chain with a one-dimensional ensemble of cold atoms with strong contact interactions. Our scheme is generally applicable to various implementations of tunable spin chains, and it paves the way for the realization of integrated quantum logic elements., Systems of interacting quantum spins provide a basis for quantum computation devices. Here, the authors demonstrate a quantum spin transistor in a Heisenberg spin chain, which may be realized in a system of trapped cold atoms.

We consider dipolar interactions between heteronuclear molecules in low-dimensional geometries. The setup consists of two one-dimensional tubes. We study the stability of possible few-body complexes in the regime of repulsive intratube interaction, where the binding arises from intertube attraction. The stable dimers, trimers, and tetramers are found and we discuss their properties for both bosonic and fermionic molecules. To observe these complexes we propose an optical non-destructive detection scheme that enables in-situ observation of the creation and dissociation of the few-body complexes. A detailed description of the expected signal of such measurements is given using the numerically calculated wave functions of the bound states. We also discuss implications on the many-body physics of dipolar systems in tubular geometries, as well as experimental issues related to the external harmonic confinement along the tube and the prospect of applying an in-tube optical lattice to increase the effective dipole strength., Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, published version

In this Letter, we provide a theoretical analysis of strongly interacting quantum systems confined by a time-dependent external potential in one spatial dimension. We show that such systems can be used to simulate spin chains described by Heisenberg Hamiltonians in which the exchange coupling constants can be manipulated by time-dependent driving of the shape of the external confinement. As illustrative examples, we consider a harmonic trapping potential with a variable frequency and an infinite square well potential with a time-dependent barrier in the middle.

We study the effects of a dark matter component that consists of bosonic particles with ultralight masses in the condensed state. We compare previous studies for both non-interacting condensates and with repulsive two-body terms and show consistency between the proposals. Furthermore, we explore the effects of rotation on a superfluid dark matter condensate, assuming that a vortex lattice forms as seen in ultracold atomic gas experiments. The influence of such a lattice in virialization of gravitationally bound structures and on galactic rotation velocity curves is explored. With fine-tuning of the bosonic particle mass and the two-body repulsive interaction strength, we find that one can have sub-structure on rotation curves that resembles some observations in spiral galaxies. This occurs when the dark matter halo has an array of hollow cylinders. This can cause oscillatory behavior in the galactic rotation curves in similar fashion to the well-known effect of the spiral arms. We also consider how future experiments and numerical simulations with ultracold atomic gases could tell us more about such exotic dark matter proposals., 12 pages, 3 figures, final version

The most promising astrophysical sources of kHz gravitational waves (GWs) are the inspiral and merger of binary neutron star(NS)/black hole systems. Maximizing the scientific return of a GW detection will require identifying a coincident electro-magnetic (EM) counterpart. One of the most likely sources of isotropic EM emission from compact object mergers is a supernova-like transient powered by the radioactive decay of heavy elements synthesized in ejecta from the merger. We present the first calculations of the optical transients from compact object mergers that self-consistently determine the radioactive heating by means of a nuclear reaction network; using this heating rate, we model the light curve with a one dimensional Monte Carlo radiation transfer calculation. For an ejecta mass ~1e-2 M_sun[1e-3 M_sun] the resulting light curve peaks on a timescale ~ 1 day at a V-band luminosity nu L_nu ~ 3e41[1e41] ergs/s (M_V = -15[-14]); this corresponds to an effective "f" parameter ~3e-6 in the Li-Paczynski toy model. We argue that these results are relatively insensitive to uncertainties in the relevant nuclear physics and to the precise early-time dynamics and ejecta composition. Due to the rapid evolution and low luminosity of NS merger transients, EM counterpart searches triggered by GW detections will require close collaboration between the GW and astronomical communities. NS merger transients may also be detectable following a short-duration Gamma-Ray Burst or "blindly" with present or upcoming optical transient surveys. Because the emission produced by NS merger ejecta is powered by the formation of rare r-process elements, current optical transient surveys can directly constrain the unknown origin of the heaviest elements in the Universe.

One-dimensional multi-component Fermi or Bose systems with strong zero-range interactions can be described in terms of local exchange coefficients and mapping the problem into a spin model is thus possible. For arbitrary external confining potentials the local exchanges are given by highly non-trivial geometric factors that depend solely on the geometry of the confinement through the single-particle eigenstates of the external potential. To obtain accurate effective Hamiltonians to describe such systems one needs to be able to compute these geometric factors with high precision which is difficult due to the computational complexity of the high-dimensional integrals involved. An approach using the local density approximation would therefore be a most welcome approximation due to its simplicity. Here we assess the accuracy of the local density approximation by going beyond the simple harmonic oscillator that has been the focus of previous studies and consider some double-wells of current experimental interest. We find that the local density approximation works quite well as long as the potentials resemble harmonic wells but break down for larger barriers. In order to explore the consequences of applying the local density approximation in a concrete setup we consider quantum state transfer in the effective spin models that one obtains. Here we find that even minute deviations in the local exchange coefficients between the exact and the local density approximation can induce large deviations in the fidelity of state transfer for four, five, and six particles., 12 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, final version

Ultracold atomic gases have recently become a driving force in few-body physics due to the observation of the Efimov effect. While initially observed in equal mass systems, one expects even richer few-body physics in the heteronuclear case. In previous experiments with ultracold mixtures of potassium and rubidium, an unexpected non-universal behavior of Efimov resonances was observed. In contrast, we measure the scattering length dependent three-body recombination coefficient in ultracold heteronuclear mixtures of $^{39}\mathrm{K}$-\87Rb and $^{41}\mathrm{K}$-\87Rb and do not observe any signatures of Efimov resonances for accessible scattering lengths in either mixture. Our results show good agreement with our theoretical model for the scattering dependent three-body recombination coefficient and reestablish universality across isotopic mixtures., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table in supplementary material

We describe the dynamical preparation of magnetic states in a strongly interacting two-component Bose gas in a harmonic trap. By mapping this system to an effective spin chain model, we obtain the dynamical spin densities and the fidelities for a few-body system. We show that the spatial profiles transit between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic states as the intraspecies interaction parameter is slowly increased., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

The comparison between observational abundance features and those obtained from nucleosynthesis predictions of stellar evolution and/or explosion simulations can scrutinize two aspects: (a) the conditions in the astrophysical production site and (b) the quality of the nuclear physics input utilized. Here we test the abundance features of r-process nucleosynthesis calculations using four different fission fragment distribution models. Furthermore, we explore the origin of a shift in the third r-process peak position in comparison with the solar r-process abundances which has been noticed in a number of merger nucleosynthesis predictions. We show that this shift occurs during the r-process freeze-out when neutron captures and β-decays compete and an (n,γ)-(γ,n) equilibrium is not maintained anymore. During this phase neutrons originate mainly from fission of material above A = 240. We also investigate the role of β-decay half-lives from recent theoretical advances, which lead either to a smaller amount of fissioning nuclei during freeze-out or a faster (and thus earlier) release of fission neutrons, which can (partially) prevent this shift and has an impact on the second and rare-earth peak as well.

We study a quantum mechanical system consisting of up to three identical dipoles confined to move along a helical shaped trap. The long-range interactions between particles confined to move in this one dimension leads to an interesting effective two-particle potential with an oscillating behaviour. For this system we calculate the spectrum and the wave functions of the bound states. The full quantum solutions show clear imprints of the tendency for the system to form chains of dipoles along the helix, i.e. a configuration in which the dipoles are sitting approximately one winding of the helix apart so that they can take maximal advantage of the strong head-to-tail attraction that is a generic feature of the dipole-dipole interaction., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures and 1 table

Rapid neutron capture in stellar explosions is responsible for the heaviest elements in nature, up to Th , U and beyond. This nucleosynthesis process, the r-process, is unique in the sense that a combination of nuclear physics far from stability (masses, half-lives, neutron-capture and photodisintegration, neutron-induced and beta-delayed fission and last but not least neutrino-nucleus interactions) is intimately linked to ejecta from astrophysical explosions (core collapse supernovae or other neutron star related events). The astrophysics and nuclear physics involved still harbor many uncertainties, either in the extrapolation of nuclear properties far beyond present experimental explorations or in the modeling of multidimensional, general relativistic (neutrino-radiation) hydrodynamics with rotation and possibly required magnetic fields. Observational clues about the working of the r-process are mostly obtained from solar abundances and from the abundance evolution of the heaviest elements as a function of galactic age, as witnessed in old extremely metal-poor stars. They contain information whether the r-process is identical for all stellar events, how abundance features develop with galactic time and whether the frequency of r-process events is comparable to that of average core collapse supernovae - producing oxygen through titanium, as well as iron-group nuclei. The theoretical modeling of the r-process has advanced from simple approaches, where the use of static neutron densities and temperatures can aid to test the influence of nuclear properties far from stability on abundance features, to more realistic expansions with a given entropy, global neutron/proton ratio and expansion timescales, as expected from explosive astrophysical events. The direct modeling in astrophysical events such as supernovae still faces the problem whether the required conditions can be met.

Using the fractional statistical properties of so-called anyonic particles, we present exact solutions for up to six strongly interacting particles in one-dimensional confinement that interpolate the usual bosonic and fermionic limits. Specifically, we consider two-component mixtures of anyons and use these to eludicate the mixing-demixing properties of both balanced and imbalanced systems. Importantly, we demonstrate that the degree of demixing depends sensitively on the external trap in which the particles are confined. We also show how one may in principle probe the statistical parameter of an anyonic system by injection a strongly interacting impurity and doing spectral or tunneling measurements., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, final version with corrected equation (A3)

Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a 'cool' quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap., 7 pages, short review contribution to proceedings of FB21 Chicago May 18-22 2015. Revised version

17 págs.; 9 figs.; 3 tabs., We investigate even-even two-proton Borromean systems at prominent intermediate heavy waiting points for the rapid proton capture process. The most likely single-particle levels are used to calculate three-body energy and structure as a function of proton-core resonance energy. We establish a linear dependence between two- and three-body energies with the same slope, but the absolute value slightly dependent on partial wave structure. Using these relations we estimate low-lying excited states in the isotones following the critical waiting points. The capture rate for producing a Borromean bound state is described based on a full three-body calculation for temperatures about 0.1¿10 GK. In addition, a simple rate expression, depending only on a single resonance state, is found to comply with the three-body calculation for temperatures between 0.1 and 4 GK. The rate calculations are valid for both direct and sequential capture paths. As a result the relevant path of the radiative capture reactions can be determined. We present results for E1 and E2 photon emission, and discuss occurrence preferences in general as well as relative sizes of these most likely processes. Finally, we present a method for estimating proton capture rates in the region around the critical waiting points. ©2016 American Physical Society, This work was funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research DFF Natural Science and the DFF Sapere Aude program, and partly supported by funds provided by DGI of MINECO(Spain) under Contract No. FIS2011-23565. We also acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council under ERC starting grant LOBENA, Grant No. 307447.

The paper examines a trapped one-dimensional system of multicomponent spinless fermions that interact with a zero-range two-body potential. We show that when the repulsion between particles is very large the system can be approached analytically. To illustrate this analytical approach we consider a simple system of three distinguishable particles, which can be addressed experimentally. For this system we show that for infinite repulsion the energy spectrum is sixfold degenerate. We also show that this degeneracy is partially lifted for finitely large repulsion for which we find and describe corresponding wave functions., Paper in connection with the 22nd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Krakow, Poland, 9-13 September 2013

We consider a two-dimensional layer of dipolar particles in the regime of strong dipole moments. Here we can describe the system using classical methods and determine the crystal structure that minimizes the total energy. The dipoles are assumed to be aligned by an external field and we consider different orientations of the dipolar moments with respect to the two-dimensional plane of motion. We observe that when the orientation angle changes away from perpendicular and towards the plane, the crystal structure will change from a hexagonal form to one that has the dipoles sitting in equidistant rows, i.e. a striped configuration. In addition to calculating the crystal unit cell, we also consider the phonon spectrum and the speed of sound. As the orientation changes away from perpendicular the phonon spectrum develops local minima that are a result of the deformation to the crystal structure., 12 pages, 12 figures, 1 appendix, published version