Jerome Dorignac

Transfer of Bose-Einstein condensates through discrete breathers in an optical lattice

We study the effect of discrete breathers (DBs) on the transfer of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in an optical lattice using the discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation. In previous theoretical (primarily numerical) investigations of the dynamics of BECs in leaking optical lattices, collisions between a DB and a lattice excitation, e.g., a moving breather (MB) or phonon, were studied. These collisions led to the transmission of a fraction of the incident (atomic) norm of the MB through the DB, while the DB can be shifted in the direction of the incident lattice excitation. Here we develop an analytic understanding of this phenomenon, based on the study of a highly localized system--namely, a nonlinear trimer--which predicts that there exists a total energy threshold of the trimer, above which the lattice excitation can trigger the destabilization of the DB and that this is the mechanism leading to the movement of the DB. Furthermore, we give an analytic estimate of upper bound to the norm that is transmitted through the DB. We then show numerically that a qualitatively similar threshold exists in extended lattices. Our analysis explains the results of the earlier numerical studies and may help to clarify functional operations with BECs in optical lattices such as blocking and filtering coherent (atomic) beams.

Robust and conserved stochastic self-assembly mechanism for dynamic ParB-parS partition complexes on bacterial chromosomes and plasmids

Chromosome and plasmid segregation in bacteria are mostly driven by ParABS systems. These DNA partitioning machineries rely on large nucleoprotein complexes assembled on centromere sites (parS). However, the mechanism of how a few parS-bound ParB proteins nucleate the formation of highly concentrated ParB clusters remains unclear despite several proposed physico-mathematical models. We discriminated between these different models by varying some key parameters in vivo using the plasmid F partition system. We found that ‘Nucleation & caging’ is the only coherent model recapitulating in vivo data. We also showed that the stochastic self-assembly of partition complexes (i) does not directly involve ParA, (ii) results in a dynamic structure of discrete size independent of ParB concentration, and (iii) is not perturbed by active transcription but is by protein complexes. We refined the ‘Nucleation & Caging’ model and successfully applied it to the chromosomally-encoded Par system of Vibrio cholerae, indicating that this stochastic self-assembly mechanism is widely conserved from plasmids to chromosomes.