Strongly coupled large-angle stimulated Raman scattering of short laser pulses in plasma-filled capillaries

Strongly coupled large-angle stimulated Raman scattering (LA SRS) of a short intense laser pulse proceeds in a plane plasma-filled capillary differently than in a plasma with open boundaries. Oblique mirror reflections off capillary walls partly suppress the lateral convection of scattered radiation and increase the growth rate of the instability: the convective gain of the LA SRS falls with an angle much slower than in an unbounded plasma and even for the near-forward SRS can be close to that of the direct backscatter. The long-term evolution of LA SRS in the interior of the capillary is dominated by quasi-one-dimensional leaky modes, whose damping is related to the transmission of electromagnetic waves through capillary walls.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; to be submitted to Physics of Plasma

Searching for signatures of planet formation in stars with circumstellar debris discs

(Abridged) Tentative correlations between the presence of dusty debris discs and low-mass planets have been presented. In parallel, detailed chemical abundance studies have reported different trends between samples of planet and non-planet hosts. We determine in a homogeneous way the metallicity, and abundances of a sample of 251 stars including stars with known debris discs, with debris discs and planets, and only with planets. Stars with debris discs and planets have the same [Fe/H] behaviour as stars hosting planets, and they also show a similar -Tc trend. Different behaviour in the -Tc trend is found between the samples of stars without planets and the samples of planet hosts. In particular, when considering only refractory elements, negative slopes are shown in cool giant planet hosts, whilst positive ones are shown in stars hosting low-mass planets. Stars hosting exclusively close-in giant planets show higher metallicities and positive -Tc slope. A search for correlations between the -Tc slopes and the stellar properties reveals a moderate but significant correlation with the stellar radius and as well as a weak correlation with the stellar age. The fact that stars with debris discs and stars with low-mass planets do not show neither metal enhancement nor a different -Tc trend might indicate a correlation between the presence of debris discs and the presence of low-mass planets. We extend results from previous works which reported differences in the -Tc trends between planet hosts and non hosts. However, these differences tend to be present only when the star hosts a cool distant planet and not in stars hosting exclusively low-mass planets.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Enabling science with Gaia observations of naked-eye stars

ESA's Gaia space astrometry mission is performing an all-sky survey of stellar objects. At the beginning of the nominal mission in July 2014, an operation scheme was adopted that enabled Gaia to routinely acquire observations of all stars brighter than the original limit of G~6, i.e. the naked-eye stars. Here, we describe the current status and extent of those observations and their on-ground processing. We present an overview of the data products generated for G<6 stars and the potential scientific applications. Finally, we discuss how the Gaia survey could be enhanced by further exploiting the techniques we developed.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Submitted for the proceedings of the 2016 SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation and Telescopes conference (SPIE 9904

Feeding the imaginary

The imaginary that has dominated the fashion system since the mid-twentieth century seems, in recent years, to have been challenged by empirical phenomena. \u2018Imaginary\u2019 is a complex notion that can be addressed from many perspectives. Here, we refer to the stock of images, values, practices and rules that dominate the western fashion system and that its participants take for granted in their relationship with fashion. Of course, different participants base their understanding of fashion on different imaginaries, and different imaginaries may be shared by different communities, but a hegemonic imaginary has underpinned the western fashion discourse for some decades now. For example, pertaining to this imaginary is the ideal of the female body\u2019s thinness (Bordo 1993); the positive value attributed to the youthful body; and the aspiration to the beautiful-and-new as a source of distinction (Lipovetsky 1987), as well as the sur-representation of Caucasian ethnic groups in images of fashion (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006). Also pertaining to this imaginary of fashion are usually implicit assumptions about human life. For instance, assumptions about the temporal organization of the day and the week into work time (office), leisure time (in the countryside) and social time (evening), or the belief that the possession of certain consumer goods certifies social status. These are fragments of representations of the world consistent with the project of western modernity to achieve the ideal of a world in which technology and science enable humans to fulfil themselves as independent adults with the capacity to choose. This, in fact, was the promise of the Enlightenment, with industrial capitalism and the bourgeoisie embodying its. values and assuming the task of realizing it. Fashion as an institution of western modernity (Wilson 1985; Lehmann 2000) has contributed significantly to this project \u2013 and is an explicit manifestation of it. Recently, however, the western fashion system seems to have been able to include meanings that it had thus far marginalized. A number of factors are altering the ordinary metabolism of this system; new ways to do things and new representations (discourses, visual contents, values) appear that seem to provide the dominant fashion imaginary with new contents and avenues. The need to take stock of these new developments prompted the conference entitled Fashion Tales 2015: Feeding the Imaginary, organized in June 2015 by Centro Modacult of the Catholic University of Milan, in collaboration with this journal. The conference \u2013 of which this issue of the International Journal of Fashion Studies collects some contributions \u2013 identified three main directions along which innovative experiences occur. Two of them have to do with the impact of new technologies on the structure of the fashion system itself; in particular, the technologies arising from advances in chemical research, and digital technologies. While the former are transforming the fashion industry under the banner of sustainability, the latter are leading to the widespread mediatization of fashion (Rocamora 2016). The third direction concerns nonwestern fashio

Class of PPT bound entangled states associated to almost any set of pure entangled states

We analyze a class of entangled states for bipartite $d \otimes d$ systems, with $d$ non-prime. The entanglement of such states is revealed by the construction of canonically associated entanglement witnesses. The structure of the states is very simple and similar to the one of isotropic states: they are a mixture of a separable and a pure entangled state whose supports are orthogonal. Despite such simple structure, in an opportune interval of the mixing parameter their entanglement is not revealed by partial transposition nor by the realignment criterion, i.e. by any permutational criterion in the bipartite setting. In the range in which the states are Positive under Partial Transposition (PPT), they are not distillable; on the other hand, the states in the considered class are provably distillable as soon as they are Nonpositive under Partial Transposition (NPT). The states are associated to any set of more than two pure states. The analysis is extended to the multipartite setting. By an opportune selection of the set of multipartite pure states, it is possible to construct mixed states which are PPT with respect to any choice of bipartite cuts and nevertheless exhibit genuine multipartite entanglement. Finally, we show that every $k$-positive but not completely positive map is associated to a family of nondecomposable maps.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Correlation functions of a Lieb-Liniger Bose gas

The ground-state correlation functions of a one-dimensional homogeneous Bose system described by the Lieb-Liniger Hamiltonian are investigated by using exact quantum Monte Carlo techniques. This article is an extension of a previous study published in Phys. Rev. A {\bf 68}, 031602 (2003). New results on the local three-body correlator as a function of the interaction strength are included and compared with the measured value from three-body loss experiments. We also carry out a thorough study of the short- and long-range behavior of the one-body density matrix.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, contribution to Cortona BEC JPB special issu

Universal resources for approximate and stochastic measurement-based quantum computation

We investigate which quantum states can serve as universal resources for approximate and stochastic measurement-based quantum computation, in the sense that any quantum state can be generated from a given resource by means of single-qubit (local) operations assisted by classical communication. More precisely, we consider the approximate and stochastic generation of states, resulting e.g. from a restriction to finite measurement settings or from possible imperfections in the resources or local operations. We show that entanglement-based criteria for universality obtained for the exact, deterministic case can be lifted to the much more general approximate, stochastic case, moving from the idealized situation considered in previous works, to the practically relevant context of non-perfect state preparation. We find that any entanglement measure fulfilling some basic requirements needs to reach its maximum value on some element of an approximate, stochastic universal family of resource states, as the resource size grows. This allows us to rule out various families of states as being approximate, stochastic universal. We provide examples of resources that are efficient approximate universal, but not exact deterministic universal. We also study the robustness of universal resources for measurement-based quantum computation under realistic assumptions about the (imperfect) generation and manipulation of entangled states, giving an explicit expression for the impact that errors made in the preparation of the resource have on the possibility to use it for universal approximate and stochastic state preparation. Finally, we discuss the relation between our entanglement-based criteria and recent results regarding the uselessness of states with a high degree of geometric entanglement as universal resources.Comment: 17 pages; abstract shortened with respect to the published version to respect the arXiv limit of 1,920 character

Conditioning of extreme learning machine for noisy data using heuristic optimization

This article provides a tool that can be used in the exact sciences to obtain good approximations to reality when noisy data is inevitable. Two heuristic optimization algorithms are implemented: Simulated Annealing and Particle Swarming for the determination of the extreme learning machine output weights. The first operates in a large search space and at each iteration it probabilistically decides between staying at its current state or moving to another. The swarm of particles, it optimizes a problem from a population of candidate solutions, moving them throughout the search space according to position and speed. The methodology consists of building data sets around a polynomial function, implementing the heuristic algorithms and comparing the errors with the traditional computation method using the Moore–Penrose inverse. The results show that the heuristic optimization algorithms implemented improve the estimation of the output weights when the input have highly noisy data