Rewards for Rights Ratification? Testing for Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Human Rights Treaty Ratification

Among the explanations for state ratification of human rights treaties, few are more common and widely accepted than the conjecture that states are rewarded for ratification by other states. These rewards are expected to come in the form of tangible benefits—foreign aid, trade, and investment—and intangible benefits such as praise, acceptance, and legitimacy. Surprisingly, these explanations for ratification have never been tested empirically. We summarize and clarify the theoretical underpinnings of “reward-for-ratification” theories and test these propositions empirically by looking for increased international aid, economic agreements, and public praise and recognition following ratification of four prominent human rights treaties. We find almost no evidence that states can expect increased tangible or intangible rewards after ratification. Given the lack of empirical support, alternative explanations seem more appealing for understanding human rights treaty ratification

Rewards for Rights Ratification? Testing for Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Human Rights Treaty Ratification

Among the explanations for state ratification of human rights treaties, few are more common and widely accepted than the conjecture that states are rewarded for ratification by other states. These rewards are expected to come in the form of tangible benefits—foreign aid, trade, and investment—and intangible benefits such as praise, acceptance, and legitimacy. Surprisingly, these explanations for ratification have never been tested empirically. We summarize and clarify the theoretical underpinnings of “reward-for-ratification” theories and test these propositions empirically by looking for increased international aid, economic agreements, and public praise and recognition following ratification of four prominent human rights treaties. We find almost no evidence that states can expect increased tangible or intangible rewards after ratification. Given the lack of empirical support, alternative explanations seem more appealing for understanding human rights treaty ratification

The effect of spin-orbit interaction on entanglement of two-qubit Heisenberg XYZ systems in an inhomogeneous magnetic field

The role of spin-orbit interaction on the ground state and thermal entanglement of a Heisenberg XYZ two-qubit system in the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field is investigated. For a certain value of spin-orbit parameter $D$, the ground state entanglement tends to vanish suddenly and when $D$ crosses its critical value $D_c$, the entanglement undergoes a revival. The maximum value of the entanglement occurs in the revival region. In finite temperatures there are revival regions in $D-T$ plane. In these regions, entanglement first increases with increasing temperature and then decreases and ultimately vanishes for temperatures above a critical value. This critical temperature is an increasing function of $D$, thus the nonzero entanglement can exist for larger temperatures. In addition, the amount of entanglement in the revival region depends on the spin-orbit parameter. Also, the entanglement teleportation via the quantum channel constructed by the above system is investigated and finally the influence of the spin-orbit interaction on the fidelity of teleportation and entanglement of replica state is studied.Comment: Two columns, 9 pages, 8 Fig

Local Invariants and Pairwise Entanglement in Symmetric Multi-qubit System

Pairwise entanglement properties of a symmetric multi-qubit system are analyzed through a complete set of two-qubit local invariants. Collective features of entanglement, such as spin squeezing, are expressed in terms of invariants and a classifcation scheme for pairwise entanglement is proposed. The invariant criteria given here are shown to be related to the recently proposed (Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 120502 (2005)) generalized spin squeezing inequalities for pairwise entanglement in symmetric multi-qubit states.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, REVTEX, Replaced with a published versio

Quantum logic with weakly coupled qubits

There are well-known protocols for performing CNOT quantum logic with qubits coupled by particular high-symmetry (Ising or Heisenberg) interactions. However, many architectures being considered for quantum computation involve qubits or qubits and resonators coupled by more complicated and less symmetric interactions. Here we consider a widely applicable model of weakly but otherwise arbitrarily coupled two-level systems, and use quantum gate design techniques to derive a simple and intuitive CNOT construction. Useful variations and extensions of the solution are given for common special cases.Comment: 4 pages, Revte

The Physics of the 'Heartbeat' State of GRS 1915+105

We present the first detailed phase-resolved spectral analysis of a joint Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer observation of the rho variability class in the microquasar GRS 1915+105. The rho cycle displays a high-amplitude, double-peaked flare that recurs roughly every 50 s, and is sometimes referred to as the "heartbeat" oscillation. The spectral and timing properties of the oscillation are consistent with the radiation pressure instability and the evolution of a local Eddington limit in the inner disk. We exploit strong variations in the X-ray continuum, iron emission lines, and the accretion disk wind to probe the accretion geometry over nearly six orders of magnitude in distance from the black hole. At small scales (1-10 R_g), we detect a burst of bremsstrahlung emission that appears to occur when a portion of the inner accretion disk evaporates due to radiation pressure. Jet activity, as inferred from the appearance of a short X-ray hard state, seems to be limited to times near minimum luminosity, with a duty cycle of ~10%. On larger scales (1e5-1e6 R_g) we use detailed photoionization arguments to track the relationship between the fast X-ray variability and the accretion disk wind. For the first time, we are able to show that changes in the broadband X-ray spectrum produce changes in the structure and density of the accretion disk wind on timescales as short as 5 seconds. These results clearly establish a causal link between the X-ray oscillations and the disk wind and therefore support the existence of a disk-jet-wind connection. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the mass loss rate in the wind may be sufficient to cause long-term oscillations in the accretion rate, leading to state transitions in GRS 1915+105.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. 22 pages, 14 figures, uses emulateap

Numerical stability of a new conformal-traceless 3+1 formulation of the Einstein equation

There is strong evidence indicating that the particular form used to recast the Einstein equation as a 3+1 set of evolution equations has a fundamental impact on the stability properties of numerical evolutions involving black holes and/or neutron stars. Presently, the longest lived evolutions have been obtained using a parametrized hyperbolic system developed by Kidder, Scheel and Teukolsky or a conformal-traceless system introduced by Baumgarte, Shapiro, Shibata and Nakamura. We present a new conformal-traceless system. While this new system has some elements in common with the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura system, it differs in both the type of conformal transformations and how the non-linear terms involving the extrinsic curvature are handled. We show results from 3D numerical evolutions of a single, non-rotating black hole in which we demonstrate that this new system yields a significant improvement in the life-time of the simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Evidence for simultaneous jets and disk winds in luminous low-mass X-ray binaries

Recent work on jets and disk winds in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) suggests that they are to a large extent mutually exclusive, with jets observed in spectrally hard states and disk winds observed in spectrally soft states. In this paper we use existing literature on jets and disk winds in the luminous neutron star (NS) LMXB GX 13+1, in combination with archival Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer data, to show that this source is likely able to produce jets and disk winds simultaneously. We find that jets and disk winds occur in the same location on the source's track in its X-ray color-color diagram. A further study of literature on other luminous LMXBs reveals that this behavior is more common, with indications for simultaneous jets and disk winds in the black hole LMXBs V404 Cyg and GRS 1915+105 and the NS LMXBs Sco X-1 and Cir X-1. For the three sources for which we have the necessary spectral information, we find that the simultaneous jets/winds all occur in their spectrally hardest states. Our findings indicate that in LMXBs with luminosities above a few tens of percent of the Eddington luminosity, jets and disk winds are not mutually exclusive, and that the presence of disk winds does not necessarily result in jet suppression.Comment: Updated to match published version (2016, ApJ, 830, L5

Study of localization in the quantum sawtooth map emulated on a quantum information processor

Quantum computers will be unique tools for understanding complex quantum systems. We report an experimental implementation of a sensitive, quantum coherence-dependent localization phenomenon on a quantum information processor (QIP). The localization effect was studied by emulating the dynamics of the quantum sawtooth map in the perturbative regime on a three-qubit QIP. Our results show that the width of the probability distribution in momentum space remained essentially unchanged with successive iterations of the sawtooth map, a result that is consistent with localization. The height of the peak relative to the baseline of the probability distribution did change, a result that is consistent with our QIP being an ensemble of quantum systems with a distribution of errors over the ensemble. We further show that the previously measured distributions of control errors correctly account for the observed changes in the probability distribution.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

Relativistic MHD with Adaptive Mesh Refinement

This paper presents a new computer code to solve the general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) equations using distributed parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). The fluid equations are solved using a finite difference Convex ENO method (CENO) in 3+1 dimensions, and the AMR is Berger-Oliger. Hyperbolic divergence cleaning is used to control the $\nabla\cdot {\bf B}=0$ constraint. We present results from three flat space tests, and examine the accretion of a fluid onto a Schwarzschild black hole, reproducing the Michel solution. The AMR simulations substantially improve performance while reproducing the resolution equivalent unigrid simulation results. Finally, we discuss strong scaling results for parallel unigrid and AMR runs.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, 3 table