A Web-Based Distributed Virtual Educational Laboratory

Evolution and cost of measurement equipment, continuous training, and distance learning make it difficult to provide a complete set of updated workbenches to every student. For a preliminary familiarization and experimentation with instrumentation and measurement procedures, the use of virtual equipment is often considered more than sufficient from the didactic point of view, while the hands-on approach with real instrumentation and measurement systems still remains necessary to complete and refine the student's practical expertise. Creation and distribution of workbenches in networked computer laboratories therefore becomes attractive and convenient. This paper describes specification and design of a geographically distributed system based on commercially standard components

Generation of mechanical interference fringes by multi-photon counting

Exploring the quantum behaviour of macroscopic objects provides an intriguing avenue to study the foundations of physics and to develop a suite of quantum-enhanced technologies. One prominent path of study is provided by quantum optomechanics which utilizes the tools of quantum optics to control the motion of macroscopic mechanical resonators. Despite excellent recent progress, the preparation of mechanical quantum superposition states remains outstanding due to weak coupling and thermal decoherence. Here we present a novel optomechanical scheme that significantly relaxes these requirements allowing the preparation of quantum superposition states of motion of a mechanical resonator by exploiting the nonlinearity of multi-photon quantum measurements. Our method is capable of generating non-classical mechanical states without the need for strong single photon coupling, is resilient against optical loss, and offers more favourable scaling against initial mechanical thermal occupation than existing schemes. Moreover, our approach allows the generation of larger superposition states by projecting the optical field onto NOON states. We experimentally demonstrate this multi-photon-counting technique on a mechanical thermal state in the classical limit and observe interference fringes in the mechanical position distribution that show phase superresolution. This opens a feasible route to explore and exploit quantum phenomena at a macroscopic scale.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. v1: submitted for review on 28 Jan 2016. v2: significantly revised manuscript. v3: some further revisions and some extra results included. v3: new results added, extra author added, close to published version, supplementary material available with published versio

A Web-Based Distributed Virtual Educational Laboratory

Evolution and cost of measurement equipment, continuous training, and distance learning make it difficult to provide a complete set of updated workbenches to every student. For a preliminary familiarization and experimentation with instrumentation and measurement procedures, the use of virtual equipment is often considered more than sufficient from the didactic point of view, while the hands-on approach with real instrumentation and measurement systems still remains necessary to complete and refine the student's practical expertise. Creation and distribution of workbenches in networked computer laboratories therefore becomes attractive and convenient. This paper describes specification and design of a geographically distributed system based on commercially standard components

GNSS-based Location Determination System Architecture for railway performance assessment in presence of local effects

GNSS plays a strategic role on the introduction of the Virtual Balise functionality and the train integrity. Thanks to GNSS, it could be possible to realize cost effective solutions to increase the safety in the regional lines, where the traffic density is lower. The train position estimation is implemented taking into account that the train is constrained to lie on the track (i.e. track constraint). In this way, we can express the position in terms of the curvilinear abscissa (progressive mileage) of the track corresponding to the train position. However, the impact of local effects such as multipath, foliage attenuation and shadowing in the railway environment plays a crucial role due to the presence of infrastructures like platform roofs, side walls, tunnel entrances, buildings and so on close to the trackside. In the paper, we analyse the impact of those threats on the train GNSS-based position estimation performance. At this aim, several scenarios have been generated by using both real data acquired on a railway test-bed in Sardinia, and synthetic data generated in the lab through ad hoc multipath and foliage models. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted, varying main scenarios parameters (e.g. height of obstacles, presence of trees and shadowing). The result of the performed analysis, in terms of availability, accuracy and integrity, are here presented. mitigations implemented by the ERTMS at system level are not considered since the attention is focused on GNSS only

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Quantum Technologies

In recent years, the dramatic progress in machine learning has begun to impact many areas of science and technology significantly. In the present perspective article, we explore how quantum technologies are benefiting from this revolution. We showcase in illustrative examples how scientists in the past few years have started to use machine learning and more broadly methods of artificial intelligence to analyze quantum measurements, estimate the parameters of quantum devices, discover new quantum experimental setups, protocols, and feedback strategies, and generally improve aspects of quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum simulation. We highlight open challenges and future possibilities and conclude with some speculative visions for the next decade