1,721,094 research outputs found
An interview with Marisa Michelini: IUPAP-ICPE medal, professor of physicseducation research at Udine University, GIREP President
Full text linkThe present interview was conceived and realized for the occasion of the first 45 years of endless Physics Education Research activity of Professor Marisa Michelini, a lifetime dedicated to innovate teaching and learning environments to all degrees of instruction, and to design institutional architectures, where rooting these innovations. The interview structure is inspired to the nature of scientific thinking, i.e. inducing more general understanding from concrete observations, in two manners. First, the interview focuses on (ten) topics drawing from three box-cases about physics education research and teachers education in scientific areas: innovations in teaching/learning environments; theoretical and methodological frameworks; and strategies and tools for institutional cooperation between schools and governing bodies to urge policy making. Each topic is introduced by observations, from which the interview questions are induced. Second, each question draws from Marisa Michelini’s contributions, to touch core topics at the heart of science education, science and society
Many-Body Entanglement in Short-Range Interacting Fermi Gases for Metrology
Full text linkWe explore many-body entanglement in spinful Fermi gases with short-range interactions, for metrology purposes. We characterize the emerging quantum phases via density-matrix renormalization group simulations and quantify their entanglement content for metrological usability via quantum Fisher information (QFI). Our study establishes a method, promoting QFI to be an order parameter. Short-range interactions reveal to build up metrologically promising entanglement in the XY-ferromagnetic and cluster ordering, the cluster physics being unexplored so far
An experiential program on the foundations of quantum mechanics for final-year high-school students
Full text linkTeaching and learning quantum mechanics is one of the most demanding educational and conceptual challenges, in particular in secondary schools where students do not possess an adequate mathematical background to effectively support the description of quantum behaviour. Educational research shows that traditional approaches, generally based on historical and narrative perspectives, are only partially effective. The reason is that they do not address in depth those basic quantum concepts that radically question the fundamentals of classical physics. A research-based educational program has been proposed to two final-year classes of an Italian scientific high school. In order to build the main concepts of quantum mechanics and their formal basic representation via real and simulated experiments, the program uses the light polarization as a context. A quantum game was then integrated in the educational program, to support students’ learning. Their conceptual paths, monitored by means of tutorials and questionnaires, show significant student learning especially on the concept of state and on appropriating the formalism meaning, whereas students more frequently referred to the geometrical vector representation instead of the algebraic-analytic formula. The quantum game has emerged to support intuition and operative experience in distinguishing the foundational concepts of superposition and entanglement
An interview with Howard Gardner: John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs research professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Full text linkThe present interview was realized for the occasion of the panel on “Educating to Scientific Thinking” at the sixth Edition of the General States of Digital School in Bergamo (Italy, 2021). The interview focuses on six topics reflecting on scientific thinking, the forms of creativity and the many intelligences that it hinges on. Introduced by observations on the educational system, each question is asked in the light of the ideas developed in “A Synthesizing Mind”, as well as in “Frames of Mind”, “The Good Project”, and “Five Minds for Future”. From the conversation, a consistent picture emerges, which is in fact continuously evolving while artificial intelligence and quantum technologies pervade our everyday lives, and fundamental research questions about the human mind gain the center of the stage
Quantum phases of spinful Fermi gases in optical cavities
Full text linkWe explore the quantum phases emerging from the interplay between spin and motional degrees of freedom of a one-dimensional quantum fluid of spinful fermionic atoms, effectively interacting via a photon-mediating mechanism with tunable sign and strength g, as it can be realized in present-day experiments with optical cavities. We find the emergence, in the very same system, of spin- and atomic-density wave ordering, accompanied by the occurrence of superfluidity for g>0, while cavity photons are seen to drive strong correlations at all g values, with fermionic character for g>0, and bosonic character for g<0. Due to the long-range nature of interactions, to infer these results we combine mean-field and exact-diagonalization methods supported by bosonization analysis
Polarization angle dependence of the breathing mode in confined one-dimensional dipolar bosons
No full textProbing the radial collective oscillation of a trapped quantum system is an accurate experimental tool to investigate interactions and dimensionality effects. We consider a fully polarized quasi-one-dimensional dipolar quantum gas of bosonic dysprosium atoms in a parabolic trap at zero temperature. We model the dipolar gas with an effective quasi-one-dimensional Hamiltonian in the single-mode approximation and derive the equation of state using a variational approximation based on the Lieb-Liniger gas Bethe ansatz wave function or perturbation theory. We calculate the breathing mode frequencies while varying polarization angles by a sum-rule approach and find they are in good agreement with recent experimental findings
Interacting two-mode model for ultracold quantum interferometers
Full text linkUltracold gases provide an excellent platform for the realization of quantum interferometers. In the case of implementations based on Bose-Einstein condensates in double well potentials, an effective two-mode model allows to study how the interactions among particles affect the sensitivity of the interferometer. In this work we review the properties of such a model and its application to interferometric protocols, focusing on the achievable sensitivity in the presence of interactions turned on. In particular we study the full interferometric sequence when the initial state is a Twin Fock state, which is perfectly number squeezed. We found that in the presence of interactions and for certain values of the holding time in which a phase difference between the two modes is accumulated, the same sensitivity as in the non interacting case is recovered when using the population imbalance between the two wells as observable. Finally, we characterize the behaviour of the sensitivity by looking at the δ-derivative and the variance of the operator used for the measurement and studying the squeezing parameters
Models and Phenomenology for Conventional and high temperature Superconductivity
No full textProceedings of the CXXXVI Course of the Intern. School of Physics "Enrico Fermi
Hawking temperature and phonon emission in acoustic holes
No full textAcoustic holes are the hydrodynamic analog of standard black holes. Featuring an acoustic horizon, these systems spontaneously emit phonons at the Hawking temperature. We derive the Hawking temperature of the acoustic horizon by fully exploiting the analogy between black and acoustic holes within a covariant kinetic theory approach. After deriving the phonon distribution function from the covariant kinetic equations, we reproduce the expression of the Hawking temperature by equating the entropy and energy losses of the acoustic horizon and the entropy and energy gains of the spontaneously emitted phonons. Differently from previous calculations we do not need a microscopical treatment of normal mode propagation. Our approach opens a different perspective on the meaning of Hawking temperature and its connection with entropy, which may allow an easier study of nonstationary horizons beyond thermodynamic equilibrium, including dissipative effects
Models and Phenomenology for Conventional and high temperature Superconductivity
No full textProceedings of the CXXXVI Course of the Intern. School of Physics "Enrico Fermi
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