196,982 research outputs found
Linking component importance to optimisation of preventive maintenance policy
In reliability engineering, time on performing preventive maintenance (PM) on a component in a system may affect system availability if system operation needs stopping for PM. To avoid such an availability reduction, one may adopt the following method: if a component fails, PM is carried out on a number of the other components while the failed component is being repaired. This ensures PM does not take system’s operating time. However, this raises a question: Which components should be selected for PM? This paper introduces an importance measure, called Component Maintenance Priority (CMP), which is used to select components for PM. The paper then compares the CMP with other importance measures and studies the properties of the CMP. Numerical examples are given to show the validity of the CMP
Qubit quantum-dot sensors: noise cancellation by coherent backaction, initial slips, and elliptical precession
We theoretically investigate the backaction of a sensor quantum dot with
strong local Coulomb repulsion on the transient dynamics of a qubit that is
probed capacitively. We show that the measurement backaction induced by the
noise of electron cotunneling through the sensor is surprisingly mitigated by
the recently identified coherent backaction [PRB 89, 195405] arising from
quantum fluctuations. This renormalization effect is missing in semiclassical
stochastic fluctuator models and typically also in Born-Markov approaches,
which try to avoid the calculation of the nonstationary, nonequilibrium state
of the qubit plus sensor. Technically, we integrate out the current-carrying
electrodes to obtain kinetic equations for the joint, nonequilibrium
detector-qubit dynamics. We show that the sensor-current response, level
renormalization, cotunneling, and leading non-Markovian corrections always
appear together and cannot be turned off individually in an experiment or
ignored theoretically. We analyze the backaction on the reduced qubit state -
capturing the full non-Markovian effects imposed by the sensor quantum dot on
the qubit - by applying a Liouville-space decomposition into quasistationary
and rapidly decaying modes. Importantly, the sensor cannot be eliminated
completely even in the simplest high-temperature, weak-measurement limit: The
qubit state experiences an initial slip that persists over many qubit cycles
and depends on the initial preparation of qubit plus sensor quantum dot. A
quantum-dot sensor can thus not be modeled as a 'black box' without accounting
for its dynamical variables. We furthermore find that the Bloch vector relaxes
(T1) along an axis that is not orthogonal to the plane in which the Bloch
vector dephases (T2), blurring the notions of T1 and T2 times. Finally, the
precessional motion of the Bloch vector is distorted into an ellipse in the
tilted dephasing plane.Comment: This is the version published in Phys. Rev.
Severity-sensitive norm-governed multi-agent planning
This research was funded by Selex ES. The software developed during this research, including the norm analysis and planning algorithms, the simulator and harbour protection scenario used during evaluation is freely available from doi:10.5258/SOTON/D0139Peer reviewedPublisher PD
LiveCap: Real-time Human Performance Capture from Monocular Video
We present the first real-time human performance capture approach that
reconstructs dense, space-time coherent deforming geometry of entire humans in
general everyday clothing from just a single RGB video. We propose a novel
two-stage analysis-by-synthesis optimization whose formulation and
implementation are designed for high performance. In the first stage, a skinned
template model is jointly fitted to background subtracted input video, 2D and
3D skeleton joint positions found using a deep neural network, and a set of
sparse facial landmark detections. In the second stage, dense non-rigid 3D
deformations of skin and even loose apparel are captured based on a novel
real-time capable algorithm for non-rigid tracking using dense photometric and
silhouette constraints. Our novel energy formulation leverages automatically
identified material regions on the template to model the differing non-rigid
deformation behavior of skin and apparel. The two resulting non-linear
optimization problems per-frame are solved with specially-tailored
data-parallel Gauss-Newton solvers. In order to achieve real-time performance
of over 25Hz, we design a pipelined parallel architecture using the CPU and two
commodity GPUs. Our method is the first real-time monocular approach for
full-body performance capture. Our method yields comparable accuracy with
off-line performance capture techniques, while being orders of magnitude
faster
Coherent perfect absorption in photonic structures
The ability to drive a system with an external input is a fundamental aspect
of light-matter interaction. The coherent perfect absorption (CPA) phenomenon
extends to the general multibeam interference phenomenology the well known
critical coupling concepts. This interferometric control of absorption can be
employed to reach full delivery of optical energy to nanoscale systems such as
plasmonic nanoparticles, and multi-port interference can be used to enhance the
absorption of a nanoscale device when it is embedded in a strongly scattering
system, with potential applications to nanoscale sensing. Here we review the
two-port CPA in reference to photonic structures which can resonantly couple to
the external fields. A revised two-port theory of CPA is illustrated, which
relies on the Scattering Matrix formalism and is valid for all linear two-port
systems with reciprocity. Through a semiclassical approach, treating two-port
critical coupling conditions in a non-perturbative regime, it is demonstrated
that the strong coupling regime and the critical coupling condition can indeed
coexist; in this situation, termed strong critical coupling, all the incoming
energy is converted into polaritons. Experimental results are presented, which
clearly display the elliptical trace of absorption as function of input
unbalance in a thin metallo-dielectric metamaterial, and verify polaritonic CPA
in an intersubband-polariton photonic-crystal membrane resonator. Concluding
remarks discuss the future perspectives of CPA with photonic structures.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1605.0890
New Aspects of Geometric Phases in Experiments with polarized Neutrons
Geometric phase phenomena in single neutrons have been observed in
polarimeter and interferometer experiments. Interacting with static and time
dependent magnetic fields, the state vectors acquire a geometric phase tied to
the evolution within spin subspace. In a polarimeter experiment the
non-additivity of quantum phases for mixed spin input states is observed. In a
Si perfect-crystal interferometer experiment appearance of geometric phases,
induced by interaction with an oscillating magnetic field, is verified. The
total system is characterized by an entangled state, consisting of neutron and
radiation fields, governed by a Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian. In addition, the
influence of the geometric phase on a Bell measurement, expressed by the
Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, is studied. It is demonstrated
that the effect of geometric phase can be balanced by an appropriate change of
Bell angles.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure
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