Atomic Josephson vortex

We show that Josephson vortices in a quasi-1D atomic Bose Josephson junction can be controllably manipulated by imposing a difference of chemical potentials on the atomic BEC waveguides forming the junction. This effect, which has its origin in the Berry phase structure of a vortex, turns out to be very robust in the whole range of the parameters where such vortices can exist. We also propose that a Josephson vortex can be created by the phase imprinting technique and can be identified by a specific tangential feature in the interference picture produced by expanding clouds released from the waveguides.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, revtex4, submitted to Phys. Rev. A, title and abstract changed, old sections revised, new sections added, references adde

Leptoproduction of charm revisited

We calculate the energy--momentum distribution of the charmed quarks produced in neutrino reactions on protons, quantifying the importance of mass and current non--conservation effects. We study the strange and charm distributions probed in neutrino interactions in the presently accessible kinematical region. Some ambiguities inherent to the extraction of the parton densities from dimuon data are pointed out.Comment: 9 pages, DFTT 72/9

The Zeta Function Method and the Harmonic Oscillator Propagator

We show how the pre-exponential factor of the Feynman propagator for the harmonic oscillator can be computed by the generalized $\zeta$-function method. Besides, we establish a direct equivalence between this method and Schwinger's propertime method.Comment: 12 latex pages, no figure

Non universality of structure functions and measurement of the strange sea density

We show that there is no real conflict between the two determinations of the strange sea density from the opposite--sign dimuon production and from the difference of the $F_2$ structure functions measured in neutrino and muon deep inelastic scattering. Once non universal sea parton densities are introduced, which take into account the effects of different mass thresholds and different longitudinal contributions, the discrepancy is shown to disappear and both sets of data are simultaneously well reproduced. No need for a large strange sea content of the nucleon emerges.Comment: latex, DFTT-93-3

Localization of Gauge Fields and Monopole Tunnelling

We study the dynamical localization of a massless gauge field on a lower-dimensional surface (2-brane). In flat space, the necessary and sufficient condition for this phenomenon is the existence of confinement in the bulk. The resulting configuration is equivalent to a dual Josephson junction. This duality leads to an interesting puzzle, as it implies that a localized massless theory, even in the Abelian case, must become confining at exponentially large distances. Through the use of topological arguments we clarify the physics behind this large-distance confinement and identify the instantons of the brane world-volume theory that are responsible for its appearance. We show that they correspond to the (condensed) bulk magnetic charges (monopoles), that occasionally tunnel through the brane and induce weak confinement of the brane theory. We consider the possible generalization of this effect to higher dimensions and discuss phenomenological bounds on the confinement of electric charges at exponentially large distances within our Universe.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, improvements in the presentation, version to appear in Physical Review

Gas phase formation of the prebiotic molecule formamide: insights from new quantum computations

New insights into the formation of interstellar formamide, a species of great relevance in prebiotic chemistry, are provided by electronic structure and kinetic calculations for the reaction NH2 + H2CO -> NH2CHO + H. Contrarily to what previously suggested, this reaction is essentially barrierless and can, therefore, occur under the low temperature conditions of interstellar objects thus providing a facile formation route of formamide. The rate coefficient parameters for the reaction channel leading to NH2CHO + H have been calculated to be A = 2.6x10^{-12} cm^3 s^{-1}, beta = -2.1 and gamma = 26.9 K in the range of temperatures 10-300 K. Including these new kinetic data in a refined astrochemical model, we show that the proposed mechanism can well reproduce the abundances of formamide observed in two very different interstellar objects: the cold envelope of the Sun-like protostar IRAS16293-2422 and the molecular shock L1157-B2. Therefore, the major conclusion of this Letter is that there is no need to invoke grain-surface chemistry to explain the presence of formamide provided that its precursors, NH2 and H2CO, are available in the gas-phase.Comment: MNRAS Letters, in pres

Charged currents, color dipoles and xF_3 at small x

We develop the light-cone color dipole description of highly asymmetric diffractive interactions of left-handed and right-handed electroweak bosons. We identify the origin and estimate the strength of the left-right asymmetry effect in terms of the light-cone wave functions. We report an evaluation of the small-x neutrino-nucleon DIS structure functions xF_3 and 2xF_1 and present comparison with experimental data.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, misprints correcte

Nonlinear dynamics, rectification, and phase locking for particles on symmetrical two-dimensional periodic substrates with dc and circular ac drives

We investigate the dynamical motion of particles on a two-dimensional symmetric periodic substrate in the presence of both a dc drive along a symmetry direction of the periodic substrate and an additional circular ac drive. For large enough ac drives, the particle orbit encircles one or more potential maxima of the periodic substrate. In this case, when an additional increasing dc drive is applied in the longitudinal direction, the longitudinal velocity increases in a series of discrete steps that are integer multiples of the lattice constant of the substrate times the frequency. Fractional steps can also occur. These integer and fractional steps correspond to distinct stable dynamical orbits. A number of these phases also show a rectification in the positive or negative transverse direction where a non-zero transverse velocity occurs in the absence of a dc transverse drive. We map out the phase diagrams of the regions of rectification as a function of ac amplitude, and find a series of tongues. Most of the features, including the steps in the longitudinal velocity and the transverse rectification, can be captured with a simple toy model and by arguments from nonlinear maps. We have also investigated the effects of thermal disorder and incommensuration on the rectification phenomena, and find that for increasing disorder, the rectification regions are gradually smeared and the longitudinal velocity steps are no longer flat but show a linearly increasing velocity.Comment: 14 pages, 17 postscript figure

Vacuum energies due to delta-like currents: simulating classical objects along branes with arbitrary codimensions

In this paper we investigate the vacuum energies of several models of quantum fields interacting with static external currents (linear couplings) concentrated along parallel branes with an arbitrary number of codimensions. We show that we can simulate the presence of static charges distributions as well as the presence of classical static dipoles in any dimension for massive and massless fields. We also show that we can produce confining potentials with massless self interacting scalar fields as well as long range anisotropic potentials.Comment: 18 latex page

Magnetic-field-induced supercurrent enhancement in hybrid superconductor/magnetic metal structures

The dc transport properties of the (S/M)I(M/S) tunnel structure - proximity coupled superconductor (S) and magnetic (M) layers separated by an insulator (I) - in a parallel magnetic field have been investigated. We choose for the M metal the one in which the effective magnetic interaction, whether it arises from direct exchange interaction or due to configuration mixing, aligns spins of the conducting electrons antiparallel to the localized spins of magnetic ions. For tunnel structures under consideration, we predict that there are the conditions when the destructive action of the internal and applied magnetic fields on Cooper pairs is weakened and the increase of the applied magnetic field causes the field-induced enhancement of the tunnel critical current. The experimental realization of the novel interesting effect of the interplay between superconducting and magnetic orders is also discussed.Comment: 6 pages 2 figure