Extremely Low Loss Phonon-Trapping Cryogenic Acoustic Cavities for Future Physical Experiments

Low loss Bulk Acoustic Wave devices are considered from the point of view of the solid state approach as phonon-confining cavities. We demonstrate effective design of such acoustic cavities with phonon-trapping techniques exhibiting extremely high quality factors for trapped longitudinally-polarized phonons of various wavelengths. Quality factors of observed modes exceed 1 billion, with a maximum $Q$-factor of 8 billion and $Q\times f$ product of $1.6\cdot10^{18}$ at liquid helium temperatures. Such high sensitivities allow analysis of intrinsic material losses in resonant phonon systems. Various mechanisms of phonon losses are discussed and estimated

Reduction of helium permeation in microfabricated cells using aluminosilicate glass substrates and Al2_2O3_3 coatings

The stability and accuracy of atomic devices can be degraded by the evolution of their cell inner atmosphere. Hence, the undesired entrance or leakage of background or buffer gas, respectively, that can permeate through the cell walls, should be slowed down. In this work, we investigate helium permeation in microfabricated alkali vapor cells filled with He and whose windows are made of borosilicate glass (BSG) or aluminosilicate glass (ASG). The permeation is then derived from routine measurements of the pressure-shifted hyperfine transition frequency of an atomic clock. We first confirm that ASG reduces He permeation rate by more than two orders of magnitude, in comparison with BSG. In addition, we demonstrate that Al$_2$O$_3$ thin-film coatings, known to avoid alkali consumption in vapor cells, can also significantly reduce He permeation. The permeation through BSG is thereby reduced by a factor 110 whereas the one through ASG is decreased by a factor up to 5.8 compared to uncoated substrates. These results may contribute to the development of miniaturized atomic clocks and sensors with improved long-term stability or sensitivity.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

The material soul: Strategies for naturalising the soul in an early modern epicurean context

We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and Descartes as two alternate representatives of this radical break with the past, each ushering in the new era in which ‘I’ am the locus of judgements about the world. A sub-narrative called ‘the mind-body problem’ recounts how Cartesian dualism, responding to the new promise of a mechanistic science of nature, “split off” the world of the soul/mind/self from the world of extended, physical substance—a split which has preoccupied the philosophy of mind up until the present day. We would like to call attention to a different constellation of texts—neither a robust ‘tradition’ nor an isolated ‘episode’, somewhere in between—which have in common their indebtedness to, and promotion of an embodied, Epicurean approach to the soul. These texts follow the evocative hint given in Lucretius’ De rerum natura that ‘the soul is to the body as scent is to incense’ (in an anonymous early modern French version). They neither assert the autonomy of the soul, nor the dualism of body and soul, nor again a sheer physicalism in which ‘intentional’ properties are reduced to the basic properties of matter. Rather, to borrow the title of one of these treatises (L’Âme Matérielle), they seek to articulate the concept of a material soul. We reconstruct the intellectual development of a corporeal, mortal and ultimately material soul, in between medicine, natural philosophy and metaphysics, including discussions of Malebranche and Willis, but focusing primarily on texts including the 1675 Discours anatomiques by the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy; the anonymous manuscript from circa 1725 entitled L’Âme Matérielle, which is essentially a compendium of texts from the later seventeenth century (Malebranche, Bayle) along with excerpts from Lucretius; and materialist writings such Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’Homme-Machine (1748), in order to articulate this concept of a ‘material soul’ with its implications for notions of embodiment, materialism and selfhood

An English cover-up: masks, murders, and English cruelty in Goncourt, Lorrain, and Schwob

Fin-de-siècle writers from diverse disciplines were drawn to the seductive potential of masks and disguise; mask-wearing characters of indefinite identity, indeterminate gender, and insecure psychology proliferate in their texts. However, when characters are designated as English in such stories, they are also, and with remarkable frequency, associated with cruelty or murder: the mask-wielding murderers of Marcel Schwob’s ‘MM. Burke et Hare, Assassins’ carry out their crimes in Britain upon British victims; Edmond de Goncourt weaves his theatrical narrative around the mask-like demeanour of Lord Annandale in La Faustin; and Jean Lorrain’s malicious Lord Ethal exacerbates the Duc de Fréneuse’s perverse obsessions with masks in Monsieur de Phocas. This article explores this unexpected correlation, and examines the ways that English masks are used as narrative devices – at once to mould and play with national distinctions, and to reflect upon the psychological state of the French subject

Dictionnaire Bibliographique, Historique et Critique des livres rares, précieux, curieux, estimés et recherchés : qui n'ont aucun prix fixe, tant des auteurs connus que de ceux qui ne le sont pas, soit manuscrits, avant & depuis l'invention de l'Imprimerie ; soit imprimés, et qui ont paru successivement de nos jours, en François, Grec, Latin, Italien, Espagnol, Anglois, & c. : Avec leur valeur réduite á une juste appréciation ... Aux quels on a ajouté, Des Observations et des Notes pour faciliter la connoissance exacte et certaine des Editions originales, et des Remarques pour les distinguer des Editions contrefaites. Suivi d'un Essai de Bibliographie, où il est traité de la Connoissance & de l'Amour des Livres.- V. 2

Tome second: H-SCA.- [4], 551p., [1] en bl. ; sign.: [ ]2, A-Z8, 2A-2L8, 2M4

Dictionnaire Bibliographique, Historique et Critique des livres rares, précieux, curieux, estimés et recherchés : qui n'ont aucun prix fixe, tant des auteurs connus que de ceux qui ne le sont pas, soit manuscrits, avant & depuis l'invention de l'Imprimerie ; soit imprimés, et qui ont paru successivement de nos jours, en François, Grec, Latin, Italien, Espagnol, Anglois, & c. : Avec leur valeur réduite á une juste appréciation ... Aux quels on a ajouté, Des Observations et des Notes pour faciliter la connoissance exacte et certaine des Editions originales, et des Remarques pour les distinguer des Editions contrefaites. Suivi d'un Essai de Bibliographie, où il est traité de la Connoissance & de l'Amour des Livres.- V. 1

Tome premier: A-G.- XXIV, 552 p. ; sign.: a8, b4, A-Z8, 2A- 2L8, 2M4

Sœur Louise ou La pieuse bergère du mont de Parménie / par M. l'abbé R.

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