5,015 research outputs found
Compensating mode conversion due to bend discontinuities through intentional trace asymmetry
In this letter, a comparative analysis is carried out between the mechanism of mode conversion in differential microstrip lines due to bend discontinuities on one side and trace asymmetry on the other side. With the help of equivalent modal circuits, a theoretical basis is provided for the idea to compensate the undesired common mode (CM), due to the presence of the bend, by intentionally designing asymmetric traces. As an application example, the proposed CM-reduction strategy is used in conjunction with another recently-presented wideband CM suppression filter for differential microstrip lines. It is shown that the proposed solution enhances the overall CM-reduction performance of the filter by some decibels, while preserving its transmission properties
10-qubit entanglement and parallel logic operations with a superconducting circuit
Here we report on the production and tomography of genuinely entangled
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with up to 10 qubits connecting to a bus
resonator in a superconducting circuit, where the resonator-mediated
qubit-qubit interactions are used to controllably entangle multiple qubits and
to operate on different pairs of qubits in parallel. The resulting 10-qubit
density matrix is unambiguously probed, with a fidelity of .
Our results demonstrate the largest entanglement created so far in solid-state
architectures, and pave the way to large-scale quantum computation.Comment: Revised version with 16 pages, 13 figures, and 2 table
BICEP2 II: Experiment and Three-Year Data Set
We report on the design and performance of the BICEP2 instrument and on its
three-year data set. BICEP2 was designed to measure the polarization of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) on angular scales of 1 to 5 degrees
(=40-200), near the expected peak of the B-mode polarization signature of
primordial gravitational waves from cosmic inflation. Measuring B-modes
requires dramatic improvements in sensitivity combined with exquisite control
of systematics. The BICEP2 telescope observed from the South Pole with a 26~cm
aperture and cold, on-axis, refractive optics. BICEP2 also adopted a new
detector design in which beam-defining slot antenna arrays couple to
transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers, all fabricated on a common substrate.
The antenna-coupled TES detectors supported scalable fabrication and
multiplexed readout that allowed BICEP2 to achieve a high detector count of 500
bolometers at 150 GHz, giving unprecedented sensitivity to B-modes at degree
angular scales. After optimization of detector and readout parameters, BICEP2
achieved an instrument noise-equivalent temperature of 15.8 K sqrt(s). The
full data set reached Stokes Q and U map depths of 87.2 nK in square-degree
pixels (5.2 K arcmin) over an effective area of 384 square degrees within
a 1000 square degree field. These are the deepest CMB polarization maps at
degree angular scales to date. The power spectrum analysis presented in a
companion paper has resulted in a significant detection of B-mode polarization
at degree scales.Comment: 30 pages, 24 figure
3D Spectrophotometry of Planetary Nebulae in the Bulge of M31
We introduce crowded field integral field (3D) spectrophotometry as a useful
technique for the study of resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies. As
a methodological test, we present a pilot study with selected extragalactic
planetary nebulae (XPN) in the bulge of M31, demonstrating how 3D spectroscopy
is able to improve the limited accuracy of background subtraction which one
would normally obtain with classical slit spectroscopy. It is shown that due to
the absence of slit effects, 3D is a most suitable technique for
spectrophometry. We present spectra and line intensities for 5 XPN in M31,
obtained with the MPFS instrument at the Russian 6m BTA, INTEGRAL at the WHT,
and with PMAS at the Calar Alto 3.5m Telescope. Using 3D spectra of bright
standard stars, we demonstrate that the PSF is sampled with high accuracy,
providing a centroiding precision at the milli-arcsec level. Crowded field 3D
spectrophotometry and the use of PSF fitting techniques is suggested as the
method of choice for a number of similar observational problems, including
luminous stars in nearby galaxies, supernovae, QSO host galaxies,
gravitationally lensed QSOs, and others.Comment: (1) Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, (2) University of Durham.
18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
The VIMOS Integral Field Unit: data reduction methods and quality assessment
With new generation spectrographs integral field spectroscopy is becoming a
widely used observational technique. The Integral Field Unit of the VIsible
Multi-Object Spectrograph on the ESO-VLT allows to sample a field as large as
54" x 54" covered by 6400 fibers coupled with micro-lenses. We are presenting
here the methods of the data processing software developed to extract the
astrophysical signal of faint sources from the VIMOS IFU observations. We focus
on the treatment of the fiber-to-fiber relative transmission and the sky
subtraction, and the dedicated tasks we have built to address the peculiarities
and unprecedented complexity of the dataset. We review the automated process we
have developed under the VIPGI data organization and reduction environment
(Scodeggio et al. 2005), along with the quality control performed to validate
the process. The VIPGI-IFU data processing environment is available to the
scientific community to process VIMOS-IFU data since November 2003.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in PAS
The Taiwan ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey: Ultra-deep J and Ks Imaging in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South
We present ultra-deep J and Ks imaging observations covering a 30' * 30' area
of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South (ECDFS) carried out by our Taiwan
ECDFS Near-Infrared Survey (TENIS). The median 5-sigma limiting magnitudes for
all detected objects in the ECDFS reach 24.5 and 23.9 mag (AB) for J and Ks,
respectively. In the inner 400 arcmin^2 region where the sensitivity is more
uniform, objects as faint as 25.6 and 25.0 mag are detected at 5-sigma. So this
is by far the deepest J and Ks datasets available for the ECDFS. To combine the
TENIS with the Spitzer IRAC data for obtaining better spectral energy
distributions of high-redshift objects, we developed a novel deconvolution
technique (IRACLEAN) to accurately estimate the IRAC fluxes. IRACLEAN can
minimize the effect of blending in the IRAC images caused by the large
point-spread functions and reduce the confusion noise. We applied IRACLEAN to
the images from the Spitzer IRAC/MUSYC Public Legacy in the ECDFS survey
(SIMPLE) and generated a J+Ks selected multi-wavelength catalog including the
photometry of both the TENIS near-infrared and the SIMPLE IRAC data. We
publicly release the data products derived from this work, including the J and
Ks images and the J+Ks selected multiwavelength catalog.Comment: 25 pages, 25 figures, ApJS in pres
Ultradeep Ks Imaging in the GOODS-N
We present an ultradeep Ks-band image that covers 0.5*0.5 deg^2 centered on
the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North (GOODS-N). The image reaches
a 5 \sigma depth of Ks(AB) = 24.45 in the GOODS-N region, which is as deep as
the GOODS-N Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) 3.6 \mu m image. We present a
new method of constructing IRAC catalogs that uses the higher spatial
resolution Ks image and catalog as priors and iteratively subtracts fluxes from
the IRAC images to estimate the IRAC fluxes. Our iterative method is different
from the \chi^2 approach adopted by other groups. We verified our results using
data taken in two different epochs of observations, as well as by comparing our
colors with the colors of stars and with the colors derived from model spectral
energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies at various redshifts. We make available
to the community our WIRCam Ks-band image and catalog (94951 objects in 0.25
deg^2), the Interactive Data Language (IDL) pipeline used for reducing the
WIRCam images, and our IRAC 3.6 to 8.0 \mu m catalog (16950 objects in 0.06
deg^2 at 3.6 \mu m). With this improved Ks and IRAC catalog and a large
spectroscopic sample from our previous work, we study the color-magnitude and
color-color diagrams of galaxies. We compare the effectiveness of using Ks and
IRAC colors to select active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and galaxies at various
redshifts. We also study a color selection of z = 0.65--1.2 galaxies using the
Ks, 3.6 \mu m, and 4.5 \mu m bands.Comment: Accepted for publication on ApJS. Online data are availabl
- âŠ