Parametric excitation and squeezing in a many-body spinor condensate.

Atomic spins are usually manipulated using radio frequency or microwave fields to excite Rabi oscillations between different spin states. These are single-particle quantum control techniques that perform ideally with individual particles or non-interacting ensembles. In many-body systems, inter-particle interactions are unavoidable; however, interactions can be used to realize new control schemes unique to interacting systems. Here we demonstrate a many-body control scheme to coherently excite and control the quantum spin states of an atomic Bose gas that realizes parametric excitation of many-body collective spin states by time varying the relative strength of the Zeeman and spin-dependent collisional interaction energies at multiples of the natural frequency of the system. Although parametric excitation of a classical system is ineffective from the ground state, we show that in our experiment, parametric excitation from the quantum ground state leads to the generation of quantum squeezed states.

Quantum Kibble-Zurek Mechanism in a Spin-1 Bose-Einstein Condensate.

The dynamics of a quantum phase transition are explored using slow quenches from the polar to the broken-axisymmetry phases in a small spin-1 ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. Measurements of the evolution of the spin populations reveal a power-law scaling of the temporal onset of excitations versus quench speed as predicted from quantum extensions of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. The satisfactory agreement of the measured scaling exponent with the analytical theory and numerical simulations provides experimental confirmation of the quantum Kibble-Zurek model.

An essential receptor for adeno-associated virus infection.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors are currently the leading candidates for virus-based gene therapies because of their broad tissue tropism, non-pathogenic nature and low immunogenicity. They have been successfully used in clinical trials to treat hereditary diseases such as haemophilia B (ref. 2), and have been approved for treatment of lipoprotein lipase deficiency in Europe. Considerable efforts have been made to engineer AAV variants with novel and biomedically valuable cell tropisms to allow efficacious systemic administration, yet basic aspects of AAV cellular entry are still poorly understood. In particular, the protein receptor(s) required for AAV entry after cell attachment remains unknown. Here we use an unbiased genetic screen to identify proteins essential for AAV serotype 2 (AAV2) infection in a haploid human cell line. The most significantly enriched gene of the screen encodes a previously uncharacterized type I transmembrane protein, KIAA0319L (denoted hereafter as AAV receptor (AAVR)). We characterize AAVR as a protein capable of rapid endocytosis from the plasma membrane and trafficking to the trans-Golgi network. We show that AAVR directly binds to AAV2 particles, and that anti-AAVR antibodies efficiently block AAV2 infection. Moreover, genetic ablation of AAVR renders a wide range of mammalian cell types highly resistant to AAV2 infection. Notably, AAVR serves as a critical host factor for all tested AAV serotypes. The importance of AAVR for in vivo gene delivery is further highlighted by the robust resistance of Aavr(-/-) (also known as Au040320(-/-) and Kiaa0319l(-/-)) mice to AAV infection. Collectively, our data indicate that AAVR is a universal receptor involved in AAV infection.

Pre-treatment protoporphyrin IX concentration in actinic keratosis lesions may be a predictive biomarker of response to aminolevulinic-acid based photodynamic therapy.

BACKGROUND: Although aminolevulinic acid (ALA)-induced protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an effective FDA-approved therapy for actinic keratosis (AK), a substantial fraction of patients (up to 25%) do not respond to treatment. This study examined the feasibility of using pre-treatment measurements of PpIX concentration in AK lesions to predict response of ALA-PpIX PDT. METHODS: A non-invasive fiber-optic fluorescence spectroscopy system was used to measure PpIX concentration in patients undergoing standard-of-care ALA-PDT for AK. All patients provided assessments of pain at the time of treatment (n=70), and a subset reported pain and erythema 48-76 h after treatment (n=13). RESULTS: PpIX concentration was significantly higher in lesions of patients reporting high levels of pain (VAS score ≥5) immediately after treatment vs. patients reporting pain scores below VAS=5 (p<0.022) (n=70). However, pain was not an exclusive indicator of PpIX concentration as many patients with low PpIX concentration reported high pain. In a subpopulation of patients surveyed in the days after treatment (n=13), PpIX concentration measured on the day of treatment was uncorrelated with pain-reported immediately after treatment (r=0.17, p<0.57), but positive correlations were found between PpIX concentration and patient-reported pain (r=0.55, p<0.051) and erythema (r=0.58, p<0.039) in the 48-72 h following treatment. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that in vivo optical measurements of PpIX concentration acquired before light delivery may be an objective predictor of response to ALA-PpIX PDT. Identification of non-responding patients on the day of treatment could facilitate the use of interventions that may improve outcomes.

Dynamic stabilization of a quantum many-body spin system.

We demonstrate dynamic stabilization of a strongly interacting quantum spin system realized in a spin-1 atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The spinor Bose-Einstein condensate is initialized to an unstable fixed point of the spin-nematic phase space, where subsequent free evolution gives rise to squeezing and quantum spin mixing. To stabilize the system, periodic microwave pulses are applied that rotate the spin-nematic many-body fluctuations and limit their growth. The stability diagram for the range of pulse periods and phase shifts that stabilize the dynamics is measured and compares well with a stability analysis.

Non-equilibrium dynamics of an unstable quantum pendulum explored in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate.

A pendulum prepared perfectly inverted and motionless is a prototype of unstable equilibrium and corresponds to an unstable hyperbolic fixed point in the dynamical phase space. Here, we measure the non-equilibrium dynamics of a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate initialized as a minimum uncertainty spin-nematic state to a hyperbolic fixed point of the phase space. Quantum fluctuations lead to non-linear spin evolution along a separatrix and non-Gaussian probability distributions that are measured to be in good agreement with exact quantum calculations up to 0.25 s. At longer times, atomic loss due to the finite lifetime of the condensate leads to larger spin oscillation amplitudes, as orbits depart from the separatrix. This demonstrates how decoherence of a many-body system can result in apparent coherent behaviour. This experiment provides new avenues for studying macroscopic spin systems in the quantum limit and for investigations of important topics in non-equilibrium quantum dynamics.

Multiply charged thorium crystals for nuclear laser spectroscopy.

We have produced laser-cooled crystals of 232Th3+ in a linear rf Paul trap. This is the first time that a multiply charged ion has been laser cooled. Our work opens an avenue for excitation of the nuclear transition in a trapped, cold 229Th3+ ion. Laser excitation of nuclear states would establish a new bridge between atomic and nuclear physics, with the promise of new levels of metrological precision.

Dipolar effect in coherent spin mixing of two atoms in a single optical lattice site.

We show that atomic dipolar effects are detectable in the system that recently demonstrated two-atom coherent spin dynamics within individual lattice sites of a Mott state. Based on a two-state approximation for the two-atom internal states and relying on a variational approach, we have estimated the spin dipolar effect. Despite the absolute weakness of the dipole-dipole interaction, it is shown that it leads to experimentally observable effects in the spin mixing dynamics.

Controlled splitting of an atomic wave packet.

We propose a simple scheme capable of adiabatically splitting an atomic wave packet using two independent translating traps. Implemented with optical dipole traps, our scheme allows a high degree of flexibility for atom interferometry arrangements and highlights its potential as an efficient and high fidelity atom optical beam splitter.

PIPATH: an optimized algorithm for generating alpha-helical structures from PISEMA data.

An optimized algorithm for finding structures and assignments of solid-state NMR PISEMA data obtained from alpha-helical membrane proteins is presented. The description of this algorithm, PIPATH, is followed by an analysis of its performance on simulated PISEMA data derived from synthetic and experimental structures. pipath transforms the assignment problem into a path-finding problem for a directed graph, and then uses techniques of graph theory to efficiently find candidate assignments from a very large set of possibilities.

Quantum telecommunication based on atomic cascade transitions.

A quantum repeater at telecommunications wavelengths with long-lived atomic memory is proposed, and its critical elements are experimentally demonstrated using a cold atomic ensemble. Via atomic cascade emission, an entangled pair of 1.53 microm and 780 nm photons is generated. The former is ideal for long-distance quantum communication, and the latter is naturally suited for mapping to a long-lived atomic memory. Together with our previous demonstration of photonic-to-atomic qubit conversion, both of the essential elements for the proposed telecommunications quantum repeater have now been realized.

Intensity and mosaic spread analysis from PISEMA tensors in solid-state NMR.

The solid-state NMR experiment PISEMA, is a technique for determining structures of proteins, especially membrane proteins, from oriented samples. One method for determining the structure is to find orientations of local molecular frames (peptide planes) with respect to the unit magnetic field direction, B0. This is done using equations that compute the coordinates of this vector in the frames. This requires an analysis of the PISEMA function and its degeneracies. As a measure of the sensitivity of peptide plane orientations to the data, we use these equations to derive a formula for the intensity function in the powder pattern. With this function and other measures, we investigate the effect of small changes in peptide plane orientations depending on the location of the resonances in the powder pattern spectrum. This gives us an indication of the change in lineshape due to mosaic spread and a way to interpret these in terms of an orientational error bar.

Dynamical instability and domain formation in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate.

We interpret the recently observed spatial domain formation in spin-1 atomic condensates as a result of dynamical instability. Within the mean field theory, a homogeneous condensate is dynamically unstable (stable) for ferromagnetic (antiferromagnetic) atomic interactions. We find that this dynamical instability naturally leads to spontaneous domain formation as observed in several recent experiments for condensates with rather small numbers of atoms. For trapped condensates, our numerical simulations compare quantitatively to the experimental results, thus largely confirming the physical insight from our analysis of the homogeneous case.

Observation of spinor dynamics in optically trapped 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensates.

We measure spin mixing of F=1 and F=2 spinor condensates of 87Rb atoms confined in an optical trap. We determine the spin mixing time to be typically less than 600 ms and observe spin population oscillations. The equilibrium spin configuration in the F=1 manifold is measured for different magnetic fields and found to show ferromagnetic behavior for low field gradients. An F=2 condensate is created by microwave excitation from the F=1 manifold, and this spin-2 condensate is observed to decay exponentially with time constant 250 ms. Despite the short lifetime in the F=2 manifold, spin mixing of the condensate is observed within 50 ms.

Real space refinement of acto-myosin structures from sectioned muscle.

We have adapted a real space refinement protocol originally developed for high-resolution crystallographic analysis for use in fitting atomic models of actin filaments and myosin subfragment 1 (S1) to 3-D images of thin-sectioned, plastic-embedded whole muscle. The rationale for this effort is to obtain a refinement protocol that will optimize the fit of the model to the density obtained by electron microscopy and correct for poor geometry introduced during the manual fitting of a high-resolution atomic model into a lower resolution 3-D image. The starting atomic model consisted of a rigor acto-S1 model obtained by X-ray crystallography and helical reconstruction of electron micrographs. This model was rebuilt to fit 3-D images of rigor insect flight muscle at a resolution of 7 nm obtained by electron tomography and image averaging. Our highly constrained real space refinement resulted in modest improvements in the agreement of model and reconstruction but reduced the number of conflicting atomic contacts by 70% without loss of fit to the 3-D density. The methodology seems to be well suited to the derivation of stereochemically reasonable atomic models that are consistent with experimentally determined 3-D reconstructions computed from electron micrographs.

All-optical formation of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate.

We have created a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of 87Rb atoms directly in an optical trap. We employ a quasielectrostatic dipole force trap formed by two crossed CO2 laser beams. Loading directly from a sub-Doppler laser-cooled cloud of atoms results in initial phase space densities of approximately 1/200. Evaporatively cooling through the BEC transition is achieved by lowering the power in the trapping beams over approximately 2 s. The resulting condensates are F = 1 spinors with 3.5x10(4) atoms distributed between the m(F) = (-1,0,1) states.

Conformational disorder of proteins assessed by real-space molecular dynamics refinement.

Motion is critical to the function of many proteins, but much more difficult to study than structure. Due to lack of easy alternatives, although there are inherent limitations, there have been several prior attempts to extract some information from the Bragg scattering in conventional diffraction patterns. Bragg diffraction reflects only a small proportion of a protein's motion and disorder, so fitted values likely underestimate reality. However, this work shows that the fitted estimates should be even smaller, because current methods of refinement over-fit the Bragg diffraction, leading to a component of the disorder that is not based on any experimental data, and could be characterized as a guess. Real-space refinement is less susceptible than other methods, but its application depends on the availability of very accurate experimental phases. A future challenge will be the collection of such data without resort to cryo-techniques, so that a physiologically relevant understanding can be achieved.

Imiquimod for plantar and periungual warts.

Plantar and periungual warts are notoriously difficult to eradicate. Two cases of nongenital warts in teenage girls are presented. Imiquimod was used in combination with cryotherapy for the periungual warts and with occlusion for the plantar warts. Both cases showed complete resolution and that imiquimod may be more effective on thicker keratinized (nongenital) skin when occluded or used in combination with cryotherapy.