Collaborative development of the Lidar Processing Pipeline (LPP) for retrievals of atmospheric aerosols and clouds

Atmospheric lidars can simultaneously measure clouds and aerosols with high temporal and spatial resolution and hence help understand cloud–aerosol interactions, which are the source of major uncertainties in future climate projections. However, atmospheric lidars are typically custom-built, with significant differences between them. In this sense, lidar networks play a crucial role as they coordinate the efforts of different groups, provide guidelines for quality-assured routine measurements and opportunities for side-by-side instrument comparisons, and enforce algorithm validation, all aiming to homogenize the physical retrievals from heterogeneous instruments in a network. Here we provide a high-level overview of the Lidar Processing Pipeline (LPP), an ongoing, collaborative, and open-source coordinated effort in Latin America. The LPP is a collection of tools with the ultimate goal of handling all the steps of a typical analysis of lidar measurements. The modular and configurable framework is generic enough to be applicable to any lidar instrument. The first publicly released version of the LPP produces data files at levels 0 (raw and metadata), 1 (averaging and layer mask), and 2 (aerosol optical properties). We assess the performance of the LPP through quantitative and qualitative analyses of simulated and measured elastic lidar signals. For noiseless synthetic 532 nm elastic signals with a constant lidar ratio (LR), the root mean square error (RMSE) in aerosol extinction within the boundary layer is about 0.1 %. In contrast, retrievals of aerosol backscatter from noisy elastic signals with a variable LR have an RMSE of 11 %, mostly due to assuming a constant LR in the inversion. The application of the LPP for measurements in São Paulo, further constrained by co-located AERONET data, retrieved a lidar ratio of 69.9 ± 5.2 sr at 532 nm, in agreement with reported values for urban aerosols. Over the Amazon, analysis of a 6 km thick multi-layer cirrus found a cloud optical depth of about 0.46, also in agreement with previous studies. From this exercise, we identify the need for new features and discuss a roadmap to guide future development, accommodating the needs of our community.</p

The double Caldeira-Leggett model: Derivation and solutions of the master equations, reservoir-induced interactions and decoherence

In this paper we analyze the double Caldeira-Leggett model: the path integral approach to two interacting dissipative harmonic oscillators. Assuming a general form of the interaction between the oscillators, we consider two different situations: i) when each oscillator is coupled to its own reservoir, and ii) when both oscillators are coupled to a common reservoir. After deriving and solving the master equation for each case, we analyze the decoherence process of particular entanglements in the positional space of both oscillators. To analyze the decoherence mechanism we have derived a general decay function for the off-diagonal peaks of the density matrix, which applies both to a common and separate reservoirs. We have also identified the expected interaction between the two dissipative oscillators induced by their common reservoir. Such reservoir-induced interaction, which gives rise to interesting collective damping effects, such as the emergence of relaxation- and decoherence-free subspaces, is shown to be blurred by the high-temperature regime considered in this study. However, we find that different interactions between the dissipative oscillators, described by rotating or counter-rotating terms, result in different decay rates for the interference terms of the density matrix.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figures, new discussion added, typos adde

From decoherence-free channels to decoherence-free and quasi-free subspaces within bosonic dissipative networks

We present a technique to build, within a dissipative bosonic network, decoherence-free channels (DFCs): a group of normal-mode oscillators with null effective damping rates. We verify that the states protected within the DFC define the well-known decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs) when mapped back into the natural network oscillators. Therefore, our technique to build protected normal-mode channels turns out to be an alternative way to build DFSs, which offers advantages over the conventional method. It enables the computation of all the network-protected states at once, as well as leading naturally to the concept of the decoherence quasi-free subspace (DQFS), inside which a superposition state is quasi-completely protected against decoherence. The concept of the DQFS, weaker than that of the DFS, may provide a more manageable mechanism to control decoherence. Finally, as an application of the DQFSs, we show how to build them for quasi-perfect state transfer in networks of coupled quantum dissipative oscillators.FAPESPFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)CNPQConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

Spontaneous recoherence of quantum states after decoherence

In this work, we identify the set of time-dependent pure states building the statistical mixture to which a system, initially in a pure state, is driven by the reservoir. This set of time-dependent pure states, composing what we term a pure basis, are those that diagonalize the reduced density operator of the system. Next, we show that the evolution of the pure-basis states reveals an interesting phenomenon as the system, after decoherence, evolves toward the equilibrium: the spontaneous recoherence of quantum states. Around our defined recoherence time, the statistical mixture associated with a special kind of initial states termed even-symmetric, spontaneously undergoes a recoherence process, by which the initial state of the system emerges from the mixture except for its reduced excitation drained into the reservoir. This phenomenon reveals that the reservoir only shuffle the original information carried out by the initial state of the system instead of erasing it. Moreover, as the spontaneously recohered state occurs only for asymptotic time, we also present a protocol to extract it from the mixture through specific projective measurements. The password to retrieve the original information stems is the knowledge of both the initial state itself and the associated pure basis. A definition of the decoherence time of an N-state superposition is also presented.FAPESPFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)CNPqConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq