18,185 research outputs found
Time-ordered data simulation and map-making for the PIXIE Fourier transform spectrometer
We develop a time-ordered data simulator and map-maker for the proposed PIXIE
Fourier transform spectrometer and use them to investigate the impact of
polarization leakage, imperfect collimation, elliptical beams, sub-pixel
effects, correlated noise and spectrometer mirror jitter on the PIXIE data
analysis. We find that PIXIE is robust to all of these effects, with the
exception of mirror jitter which could become the dominant source of noise in
the experiment if the jitter is not kept significantly below . Source code is available at https://github.com/amaurea/pixie.Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in JCA
Dichroism for orbital angular momentum using parametric amplification
We theoretically analyze parametric amplification as a means to produce dichroism based on the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of an incident signal field. The nonlinear interaction is shown to provide differential gain between signal states of differing OAM, the peak gain occurring at half the OAM of the pump field
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Experimental cross-correlation Nitrogen Q-branch CARS Thermometry in a Spark Ignition Engine
A purely experimental technique was employed to derive temperatures from nitrogen Q-branch Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) spectra, obtained in a high pressure, high temperature environment (spark ignition Otto engine). This was in order to obviate any errors arising from deficiencies in the spectral scaling laws which are commonly used to represent nitrogen Q-branch CARS spectra at high pressure. The spectra obtained in the engine were compared with spectra obtained in a calibrated high pressure, high temperature cell, using direct cross-correlation in place of the minimisation of sums of squares of residuals. The technique is demonstrated through the measurement of air temperature as a function of crankshaft angle inside the cylinder of a motored single-cylinder Ricardo E6 research engine, followed by the measurement of fuel-air mixture temperatures obtained during the compression stroke in a knocking Ricardo E6 engine. A standard CARS program (SANDIA’s CARSFIT) was employed to calibrate the altered non-resonant background contribution to the CARS spectra that was caused by the alteration to the mole fraction of nitrogen in the unburned fuel-air mixture. The compression temperature profiles were extrapolated in order to predict the auto-ignition temperatures
Measurement of Thermo-Elastic Deformation of an Optic using a Polarization Based Shearing Interferometer
A shearing interferometer is presented which uses polarization control to
shear the wavefront and to modulate the interference pattern. The shear is
generated by spatial walk-off in a birefringent crystal. By adjusting the
orientation of the birefringent crystal, the components of the wavefront
gradient can be independently measured to allow determination of the full
wavefront vector gradient as well as reconstruction of the wavefront. Further,
the monolithic nature of the crystal used for shearing allows the
interferometer to be setup without need for precise alignment of any
components. An algorithm incorporating homodyne detection is presented which
analyzes the modulated interferograms to determine the components of the
wavefront gradient, from which the wavefront is reconstructed. The thermal
deformation of a mirror subject to heating from absorption of a Gaussian pump
beam was accurately observed with a sensitivity better than \lambda/160. We
show that this sensitivity is scale invariant, and present a method to account
for the non-uniform spatial frequency response of the interferometer
Quantum coherent control of highly multipartite continuous-variable entangled states by tailoring parametric interactions
The generation of continuous-variable multipartite entangled states is
important for several protocols of quantum information processing and
communication, such as one-way quantum computation or controlled dense coding.
In this article we theoretically show that multimode optical parametric
oscillators can produce a great variety of such states by an appropriate
control of the parametric interaction, what we accomplish by tailoring either
the spatio-temporal shape of the pump, or the geometry of the nonlinear medium.
Specific examples involving currently available optical parametric oscillators
are given, hence showing that our ideas are within reach of present technology.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Transverse angular momentum of photons
We develop the quantum theory of transverse angular momentum of light beams.
The theory applies to paraxial and quasi-paraxial photon beams in vacuum, and
reproduces the known results for classical beams when applied to coherent
states of the field. Both the Poynting vector, alias the linear momentum, and
the angular momentum quantum operators of a light beam are calculated including
contributions from first-order transverse derivatives. This permits a correct
description of the energy flow in the beam and the natural emergence of both
the spin and the angular momentum of the photons. We show that for collimated
beams of light, orbital angular momentum operators do not satisfy the standard
commutation rules. Finally, we discuss the application of our theory to some
concrete cases.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
The Standard Quantum Limit of Coherent Beam Combining
Coherent beam combining refers to the process of generating a bright output
beam by merging independent input beams with locked relative phases. We report
the first quantum mechanical noise limit calculations for coherent beam
combining and compare our results to quantum-limited amplification. Our
coherent beam combining scheme is based on an optical Fourier transformation
which renders the scheme compatible with integrated optics. The scheme can be
layed out for an arbitrary number of input beams and approaches the shot noise
limit for a large number of inputs
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