16,898 research outputs found
Timing performance of 30-nm-wide superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors
We investigated the timing jitter of superconducting nanowire avalanche
photodetectors (SNAPs, also referred to as cascade switching superconducting
single photon detectors) based on 30-nm-wide nanowires. At bias currents (IB)
near the switching current, SNAPs showed sub 35 ps FWHM Gaussian jitter similar
to standard 100 nm wide superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. At
lower values of IB, the instrument response function (IRF) of the detectors
became wider, more asymmetric, and shifted to longer time delays. We could
reproduce the experimentally observed IRF time-shift in simulations based on an
electrothermal model, and explain the effect with a simple physical picture
A Search for Exozodiacal Clouds with Kepler
Planets embedded within dust disks may drive the formation of large scale
clumpy dust structures by trapping dust into resonant orbits. Detection and
subsequent modeling of the dust structures would help constrain the mass and
orbit of the planet and the disk architecture, give clues to the history of the
planetary system, and provide a statistical estimate of disk asymmetry for
future exoEarth-imaging missions. Here we present the first search for these
resonant structures in the inner regions of planetary systems by analyzing the
light curves of hot Jupiter planetary candidates identified by the Kepler
mission. We detect only one candidate disk structure associated with KOI 838.01
at the 3-sigma confidence level, but subsequent radial velocity measurements
reveal that KOI 838.01 is a grazing eclipsing binary and the candidate disk
structure is a false positive. Using our null result, we place an upper limit
on the frequency of dense exozodi structures created by hot Jupiters. We find
that at the 90% confidence level, less than 21% of Kepler hot Jupiters create
resonant dust clumps that lead and trail the planet by ~90 degrees with optical
depths >~5*10^-6, which corresponds to the resonant structure expected for a
lone hot Jupiter perturbing a dynamically cold dust disk 50 times as dense as
the zodiacal cloud.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
A new method to detect event-related potentials based on Pearson\u2019s correlation
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are widely used in brain-computer interface applications and in neuroscience.
Normal EEG activity is rich in background noise, and therefore, in order to detect ERPs, it is usually necessary to take the average from multiple trials to reduce the effects of this noise. The noise produced by EEG activity itself is not correlated with the ERP waveform and so, by calculating the average, the noise is decreased by a factor inversely proportional to the square root of N, where N is the number of averaged epochs. This is the easiest strategy currently used to detect ERPs, which is based on calculating the average of all ERP\u2019s waveform, these waveforms being time- and phase-locked. In this paper, a new method called GW6 is proposed, which calculates the ERP using a mathematical method based only on Pearson\u2019s correlation. The result is a graph with the same time resolution as the classical ERP and which shows only positive peaks representing the increase\u2014in consonance with the stimuli\u2014in EEG signal correlation over all channels. This new method is also useful for selectively identifying
and highlighting some hidden components of the ERP response that are not phase-locked, and that are usually hidden in the standard and simple method based on the averaging of all the epochs. These hidden components seem to be caused by variations (between each successive stimulus) of the ERP\u2019s inherent phase latency period (jitter), although the same stimulus across all EEG channels produces a reasonably constant phase. For this reason, this new method could be very helpful to investigate these hidden components of the ERP response and to develop applications for scientific and medical purposes. Moreover, this new method is more resistant to EEG artifacts than the standard calculations of the average and could be very useful in research and neurology. The method we are proposing can be directly used in the form of a process written in the well-known Matlab programming language and can be easily and quickly written in any other software language
Numerical investigation of a feed-forward linewidth reduction scheme using a mode-locked laser model of reduced complexity
We provide numerical verification of a feed-forward, heterodyne-based phase noise reduction scheme using
single-sideband modulation that obviates the need for optical filtering at the output. The main benefit of a
feed-forward heterodyne linewidth reduction scheme is the simultaneous reduction of the linewidth of all modes
of a mode-locked laser (MLL) to that of a narrow-linewidth single-wavelength laser. At the heart of our simulator
is an MLL model of reduced complexity. Importantly, the main issue being treated is the jitter of MLLs and we
show how to create numerical waveforms that mimic the random-walk nature of timing jitter of pulses from
MLLs. Thus, the model does not need to solve stochastic differential equations that describe the MLL dynamics,
and the model calculates self-consistently the line-broadening of the modes of the MLL and shows good agreement with both the optical linewidth and jitter. The linewidth broadening of the MLL modes are calculated after
the phase noise reduction scheme and we confirm that the phase noise contribution from the timing jitter still
remains. Finally, we use the MLL model and phase noise reduction simulator within an optical communications
system simulator and show that the phase noise reduction technique could enable MLLs as optical carriers for
higher-order modulation formats, such as 16-state and 64-state quadrature amplitude modulation
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