Third density and acoustic virial coefficients of helium isotopologues from ab initio calculations.

Improved two-body and three-body potentials for helium have been used to calculate from first principles the third density and acoustic virial coefficients for both 4He and 3He. For the third density virial coefficient C(T), uncertainties have been reduced by a factor of 4-5 compared to the previous state of the art; the accuracy of first-principles C(T) now exceeds that of the best experiments by more than two orders of magnitude. The range of calculations has been extended to temperatures as low as 0.5 K. For the third acoustic virial coefficient γa(T), we applied the Schlessinger point method, which can calculate γa and its uncertainty based on the C(T) data, overcoming some limitations of direct path-integral calculation. The resulting γa are calculated at temperatures down to 0.5 K; they are consistent with available experimental data but have much smaller uncertainties. The first-principles data presented here will enable improvement of primary temperature and pressure metrology based on gas properties.

Fresh Extraction of the Proton Charge Radius from Electron Scattering.

We present a novel method for extracting the proton radius from elastic electron-proton (ep) scattering data. The approach is based on interpolation via continued fractions augmented by statistical sampling and avoids any assumptions on the form of function used for the representation of data and subsequent extrapolation onto Q^{2}≃0. Applying the method to extant modern ep datasets, we find that all results are mutually consistent and, combining them, we arrive at r_{p}=0.847(8) fm. This result compares favorably with values obtained from contemporary measurements of the Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen, transitions in electronic hydrogen, and muonic deuterium spectroscopy.

Forward-backward equations for nonlinear propagation in axially invariant optical systems.

We present a general framework to deal with forward and backward components of the electromagnetic field in axially invariant nonlinear optical systems, which include those having any type of linear or nonlinear transverse inhomogeneities. With a minimum amount of approximations, we obtain a system of two first-order equations for forward and backward components, explicitly showing the nonlinear couplings among them. The modal approach used allows for an effective reduction of the dimensionality of the original problem from 3 + 1 (three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension) to 1 + 1 (one spatial dimension plus one frequency dimension). The new equations can be written in a spinor Dirac-like form, out of which conserved quantities can be calculated in an elegant manner. Finally, these equations inherently incorporate spatiotemporal couplings, so that they can be easily particularized to deal with purely temporal or purely spatial effects. Nonlinear forward pulse propagation and nonparaxial evolution of spatial structures are analyzed as examples.

Spatial soliton formation in photonic crystal fibers.

We demonstrate the existence of spatial soliton solutions in photonic crystal fibers (PCF's). These guided localized nonlinear waves appear as a result of the balance between the linear and nonlinear diffraction properties of the inhomogeneous photonic crystal cladding. The spatial soliton is realized self-consistently as the fundamental mode of the effective fiber defined simultaneously by the PCF linear and the self-induced nonlinear refractive indices. It is also shown that the photonic crystal cladding is able to stabilize these solutions, which would be unstable otherwise if the medium was entirely homogeneous.

Vortex solitons in photonic crystal fibers.

We demonstrate the existence of vortex soliton solutions in photonic crystal fibers. We analyze the role played by the photonic crystal fiber defect in the generation of optical vortices. An analytical prediction for the angular dependence of the amplitude and phase of the vortex solution based on group theory is also provided. Furthermore, all the analysis is performed in the non-paraxial regime.