Fourier analysis of the parametric resonance in neutrino oscillations

Parametric enhancement of the appearance probability of the neutrino oscillation under the inhomogeneous matter is studied. Fourier expansion of the matter density profile leads to a simple resonance condition and manifests that each Fourier mode modifies the energy spectrum of oscillation probability at around the corresponding energy; below the MSW resonance energy, a large-scale variation modifies the spectrum in high energies while a small-scale one does in low energies. In contrast to the simple parametric resonance, the enhancement of the oscillation probability is itself an slow oscillation as demonstrated by a numerical analysis with a single Fourier mode of the matter density. We derive an analytic solution to the evolution equation on the resonance energy, including the expression of frequency of the slow oscillation.     

Quantum non-demolition measurements in optics: a review and some recent experimental results

We review the schemes which have been implemented, in order to achieve quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements in the optical domain. The simplest schemes can be obtained using the optical Kerr effect, which yields a crossed-phase modulation coupling between two light beams. Other schemes use either independently generated squeezed light, or coupled-mode parametric amplifiers. These various schemes can be characterized using three criteria, which describe, respectively, the quality of the quantum measurement, the non-destruction of the signal, and the conditional variance of the output signal beam, given the output meter beam (quantum-state preparation criterion). We show that quantitative limits can be defined with respect to these criteria, delimiting classical and quantum domains of operation. Then we present in more detail a new experimental implementation of QND measurements, using three-level atoms inside a doubly-resonant optical cavity.     

Quantum dynamics of bosons in a double-well potential: Josephson oscillations,self-trapping and ultralong tunneling times

The dynamics of the population imbalance of bosons in a double-well potential is investigated from the point of view of many-body quantum mechanics in the framework of the two-mode model. For small initial population imbalances, coherent superpositions of almost equally spaced energy eigenstates lead to Josephson oscillations. The suppression of tunneling at population imbalances beyond a critical value is related to a high concentration of initial state population in the region of the energy spectrum with quasi-degenerate doublets. Negligible coherences among adjacent doublets result in imbalance oscillations with a very small amplitude. For unaccessible long times, however, the system recovers the regime of Josephson oscillations.     

Symplectic capacities and the geometry of uncertainty: The irruption of symplectic topology in classical and quantum mechanics

This paper aims at conducting an analysis of various uncertainty principles from a topological point of view where the notion of symplectic capacity plays a key role. The existence of symplectic capacities follows from a deep theorem of symplectic topology, Gromov’s non-squeezing theorem, which was discovered in the mid 1980’s, and which has led to numerous developments whose applications to Physics are not fully understood or exploited at the time of writing. We will show that the notion of symplectic non-squeezing contains, as a watermark, not only the Robertson–Schrödinger uncertainty relations (and a classical version thereof), but also Hardy’s uncertainty principle for a function and its Fourier transform. This observation will allow us to formulate the characterization of positivity for density matrices in a topological way. We also address some open questions and conjectures, whose solution cannot be given at the present time due to the lack of a sufficiently developed mathematical theory.     

Hidden variables in quantum mechanics: Generic models, set-theoretic forcing, and the appearance of probability

The hidden-variables premise is shown to be equivalent to the existence of generic filters for systems of commuting observables of a quantum system. The significance of this equivalence is interpreted in light of the theory of generic filters and boolean-valued models in set theory. The apparent stochastic nature of quantum observation is derived for these hidden-variables models.     

Quantum theory of rotation angles: The problem of angle sum and angle difference

We reconsider the problem of the sum and difference of two angle variables in quantum mechanics. The spectra of the sum and difference operators have widths of , but angles differing by are indistinguishable. This means that the angle sum and difference probability distributions must be cast into a range. We obtain probability distributions for the angle sum and difference and relate this problem to the representation of nonbijective canonical transformations. Received: 6 December 1997 / Revised: 15 April 1998 / Accepted: 7 May 1998