[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Talk tomorrow (Wed @ 11 am, 4-331)

Hi quantum people, While we don't have a usual meeting this week, Andrew Daley from the University of Innsbruck is visiting, and giving a talk you may or may not find interesting. He's also available to discuss, if you're interested in simulating 1d quantum systems. Regards, Jake Title: Exploring coherent many-body dynamics with cold atoms in optical lattices Andrew Daley (Innsbruck) Abstract: Cold atoms in optical lattices offer new system in which quantum many- body phenomena that are difficult to observe in solid state systems can be probed in experiments. These systems offer clean realisations of many microscopic lattice models, with excellent control over the system parameters and many possibilities to measure the properties of the system. In addition, they exhibit only weak dissipative processes, resulting in long coherence times. This allows new aspects of coherent many-body physics to be probed in an experiment, such as the formation of long lived metastable states or the study of time-dependent many-body dynamics. I will illustrate the different possibilities by discussing our recent work in this direction. In particular, I will address (1) systems of Atomic Lattice Excitons, bound metastable particle-hole pairs that are analogues of excitons in semiconductor systems, but which also exhibit novel properties including a crystalline phase, and (2) possible analogies to mesoscopic transport systems, in particular observing the the propagation of density excitations through the system in order to probe Andreev-like reflections at an interaction boundary. I will also discuss briefly recent calculations of superfluid currents of bosons in an optical lattice confined to move along one dimension. On Jun 9, 2008, at 9:13 AM, Edward Farhi wrote: