8,015 research outputs found
Bright single photon emission from a quantum dot in a circular Bragg grating microcavity
Bright single photon emission from single quantum dots in suspended circular
Bragg grating microcavities is demonstrated. This geometry has been designed to
achieve efficient (> 50 %) single photon extraction into a near-Gaussian shaped
far-field pattern, modest (~10x) Purcell enhancement of the radiative rate, and
a spectral bandwidth of a few nanometers. Measurements of fabricated devices
show progress towards these goals, with collection efficiencies as high as ~10%
demonstrated with moderate spectral bandwidth and rate enhancement. Photon
correlation measurements are performed under above-bandgap excitation (pump
wavelength = 780 nm to 820 nm) and confirm the single photon character of the
collected emission. While the measured sources are all antibunched and
dominantly composed of single photons, the multi-photon probability varies
significantly. Devices exhibiting tradeoffs between collection efficiency,
Purcell enhancement, and multi-photon probability are explored and the results
are interpreted with the help of finite-difference time-domain simulations.
Below-bandgap excitation resonant with higher states of the quantum dot and/or
cavity (pump wavelength = 860 nm to 900 nm) shows a near-complete suppression
of multi-photon events and may circumvent some of the aforementioned tradeoffs.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure
Computer aided diagnosis system using dermatoscopical image
Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems for melanoma detection aim to mirror the expert
dermatologist decision when watching a dermoscopic or clinical image. Computer Vision
techniques, which can be based on expert knowledge or not, are used to characterize the
lesion image. This information is delivered to a machine learning algorithm, which gives a
diagnosis suggestion as an output.
This research is included into this field, and addresses the objective of implementing a
complete CAD system using âstate of the artâ descriptors and dermoscopy images as input.
Some of them are based on expert knowledge and others are typical in a wide variety of
problems. Images are initially transformed into oRGB, a perceptual color space, looking for
both enhancing the information that images provide and giving human perception to machine
algorithms. Feature selection is also performed to find features that really contribute to
discriminate between benign and malignant pigmented skin lesions (PSL). The problem of
robust model fitting versus statistically significant system evaluation is critical when working
with small datasets, which is indeed the case. This topic is not generally considered in works
related to PSLs. Consequently, a method that optimizes the compromise between these two
goals is proposed, giving non-overfitted models and statistically significant measures of
performance. In this manner, different systems can be compared in a fairer way. A database
which enjoys wide international acceptance among dermatologists is used for the
experiments.IngenierĂa de Sistemas Audiovisuale
Image processing for plastic surgery planning
This thesis presents some image processing tools for plastic surgery planning. In particular,
it presents a novel method that combines local and global context in a probabilistic
relaxation framework to identify cephalometric landmarks used in Maxillofacial plastic
surgery. It also uses a method that utilises global and local symmetry to identify abnormalities
in CT frontal images of the human body. The proposed methodologies are
evaluated with the help of several clinical data supplied by collaborating plastic surgeons
History of Galaxy Interactions and their Impact on Star Formation over the Last 7 Gyr from GEMS
We perform a comprehensive estimate of the frequency of galaxy mergers and
their impact on star formation over z~0.24--0.80 (lookback time T_b~3--7 Gyr)
using 3698 (M*>=1e9 Msun) galaxies with GEMS HST, COMBO-17, and Spitzer data.
Our results are: (1) Among 790 high mass (M*>=2.5e10 Msun) galaxies, the
visually-based merger fraction over z~0.24--0.80, ranges from 9%+-5% to 8%+-2%.
Lower limits on the major and minor merger fractions over this interval range
from 1.1% to 3.5%, and 3.6% to 7.5%, respectively. This is the first
approximate empirical estimate of the frequency of minor mergers at z<1. For a
visibility timescale of ~0.5 Gyr, it follows that over T_b~3--7 Gyr, ~68% of
high mass systems have undergone a merger of mass ratio >1/10, with ~16%, 45%,
and 7% of these corresponding respectively to major, minor, and ambiguous
`major or minor' mergers. The mean merger rate is a few x 1e-4 Gyr-1 Mpc-3. (2)
We compare the empirical merger fraction and rate for high mass galaxies to a
suite of Lambda CDM-based models: halo occupation distribution models,
semi-analytic models, and hydrodynamic SPH simulations. We find qualitative
agreement between observations and models such that the (major+minor) merger
fraction or rate from different models bracket the observations, and show a
factor of five dispersion. Near-future improvements can now start to rule out
certain merger scenarios. (3) Among ~3698 M*>=1e9 Msun galaxies, we find that
the mean SFR of visibly merging systems is only modestly enhanced compared to
non-interacting galaxies over z~0.24--0.80. Visibly merging systems only
account for less than 30% of the cosmic SFR density over T_b~3--7 Gyr. This
suggests that the behavior of the cosmic SFR density over the last 7 Gyr is
predominantly shaped by non-interacting galaxies.Comment: Accepted for Publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 17 pages of
text, 21 figures, 3 tables. Uses emulateapj5.st
Weak-coupling superconductivity in a strongly correlated iron pnictide
Iron-based superconductors have been found to exhibit an intimate interplay
of orbital, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom, dramatically affecting their
low-energy electronic properties, including superconductivity. Albeit the
precise pairing mechanism remains unidentified, several candidate interactions
have been suggested to mediate the superconducting pairing, both in the orbital
and in the spin channel. Here, we employ optical spectroscopy (OS),
angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), ab initio band-structure,
and Eliashberg calculations to show that nearly optimally doped
NaFeCoAs exhibits some of the strongest orbitally selective
electronic correlations in the family of iron pnictides. Unexpectedly, we find
that the mass enhancement of itinerant charge carriers in the strongly
correlated band is dramatically reduced near the point and attribute
this effect to orbital mixing induced by pronounced spin-orbit coupling.
Embracing the true band structure allows us to describe all low-energy
electronic properties obtained in our experiments with remarkable consistency
and demonstrate that superconductivity in this material is rather weak and
mediated by spin fluctuations.Comment: Open access article available online at
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep1862
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