53,482 research outputs found
Penetrating radiation system for detecting the amount of liquid in a tank Patent
Radiation source and detection system for measuring amount of liquid inside tanks independently of liquid configuratio
Experimental quantum tomography of photonic qudits via mutually unbiased basis
We present the experimental quantum tomography of 7- and 8-dimensional
quantum systems based on projective measurements in the mutually unbiased basis
(MUB-QT). One of the advantages of MUB-QT is that it requires projections from
a minimal number of bases to be performed. In our scheme, the higher
dimensional quantum systems are encoded using the propagation modes of single
photons, and we take advantage of the capabilities of amplitude- and
phase-modulation of programmable spatial light modulators to implement the
MUB-QT.Comment: Published versio
Model-independent determination of the cosmic expansion rate. I. Application to type-Ia supernovae
Aims: In view of the substantial uncertainties regarding the possible
dynamics of the dark energy, we aim at constraining the expansion rate of the
universe without reference to a specific Friedmann model and its parameters.
Methods: We show that cosmological observables integrating over the cosmic
expansion rate can be converted into a Volterra integral equation which is
known to have a unique solution in terms of a Neumann series. Expanding
observables such as the luminosity distances to type-Ia supernovae into a
series of orthonormal functions, the integral equation can be solved and the
cosmic expansion rate recovered within the limits allowed by the accuracy of
the data. Results: We demonstrate the performance of the method applying it to
synthetic data sets of increasing complexity, and to the first-year SNLS data.
In particular, we show that the method is capable of reproducing a hypothetical
expansion function containing a sudden transition.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; accepted by A&A; subsection 3.6 added, new
references and minor change
BBO and the Neutron-Star-Binary Subtraction Problem
The Big Bang Observer (BBO) is a proposed space-based gravitational-wave (GW)
mission designed primarily to search for an inflation-generated GW background
in the frequency range 0.1-1 Hz. The major astrophysical foreground in this
range is gravitational radiation from inspiraling compact binaries. This
foreground is expected to be much larger than the inflation-generated
background, so to accomplish its main goal, BBO must be sensitive enough to
identify and subtract out practically all such binaries in the observable
universe. It is somewhat subtle to decide whether BBO's current baseline design
is sufficiently sensitive for this task, since, at least initially, the
dominant noise source impeding identification of any one binary is confusion
noise from all the others. Here we present a self-consistent scheme for
deciding whether BBO's baseline design is indeed adequate for subtracting out
the binary foreground. We conclude that the current baseline should be
sufficient. However if BBO's instrumental sensitivity were degraded by a factor
2-4, it could no longer perform its main mission. It is impossible to perfectly
subtract out each of the binary inspiral waveforms, so an important question is
how to deal with the "residual" errors in the post-subtraction data stream. We
sketch a strategy of "projecting out" these residual errors, at the cost of
some effective bandwidth. We also provide estimates of the sizes of various
post-Newtonian effects in the inspiral waveforms that must be accounted for in
the BBO analysis.Comment: corrects some errors in figure captions that are present in the
published versio
Ultrafast switching of photonic entanglement
To deploy and operate a quantum network which utilizes existing
telecommunications infrastructure, it is necessary to be able to route
entangled photons at high speeds, with minimal loss and signal-band noise,
and---most importantly---without disturbing the photons' quantum state. Here we
present a switch which fulfills these requirements and characterize its
performance at the single photon level; it exhibits a 200-ps switching window,
a 120:1 contrast ratio, 1.5 dB loss, and induces no measurable degradation in
the switched photons' entangled-state fidelity (< 0.002). Furthermore, because
this type of switch couples the temporal and spatial degrees of freedom, it
provides an important new tool with which to encode multiple-qubit states in a
single photon. As a proof-of-principle demonstration of this capability, we
demultiplex a single quantum channel from a dual-channel,
time-division-multiplexed entangled photon stream, effectively performing a
controlled-bit-flip on a two-qubit subspace of a five-qubit, two-photon state
Exploiting the full potential of photometric quasar surveys: Optimal power spectra through blind mitigation of systematics
We present optimal measurements of the angular power spectrum of the XDQSOz
catalogue of photometric quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. These
measurements rely on a quadratic maximum likelihood estimator that
simultaneously measures the auto- and cross-power spectra of four redshift
samples, and provides minimum-variance, unbiased estimates even at the largest
angular scales. Since photometric quasars are known to be strongly affected by
systematics such as spatially-varying depth and stellar contamination, we
introduce a new framework of extended mode projection to robustly mitigate the
impact of systematics on the power spectrum measurements. This technique
involves constructing template maps of potential systematics, decorrelating
them on the sky, and projecting out modes which are significantly correlated
with the data. Our method is able to simultaneously process several thousands
of nonlinearly-correlated systematics, and mode projection is performed in a
blind fashion. Using our final power spectrum measurements, we find a good
agreement with theoretical predictions, and no evidence for further
contamination by systematics. Extended mode projection not only obviates the
need for aggressive sky and quality cuts, but also provides control over the
level of systematics in the measurements, enabling the search for small signals
of new physics while avoiding confirmation bias.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. v2: version accepted by MNRAS. v3: systematics
templates publicly available on www.earlyuniverse.org/code, no change to
pape
In situ characterization of an optical cavity using atomic light shift
We report the precise characterization of the optical potential obtained by
injecting a distributed-feedback erbium-doped fiber laser (DFB EDFL) at 1560 nm
to the transversal modes of a folded optical cavity. The optical potential was
mapped in situ using cold rubidium atoms, whose potential energy was spectrally
resolved thanks to the strong differential light shift induced by the 1560 nm
laser on the two levels of the probe transition. The optical potential obtained
in the cavity is suitable for trapping rubidium atoms, and eventually to
achieve all-optical Bose-Einstein condensation directly in the resonator.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
- …