40,765 research outputs found
Black holes without boundaries
We discuss some of the drawbacks of using event horizons to define black
holes and suggest ways in which black holes can be described without event
horizons, using trapping horizons. We show that these trapping horizons give
rise to thermodynamic behavior and possibly Hawking radiation too. This raises
the issue of whether the event horizon or the trapping horizon should be seen
as the true boundary of a black hole. This difference is important if we
believe that quantum gravity will resolve the central singularity of the black
hole and clarifies several of the issues associated with black hole
thermodynamics and information loss.Comment: 8 pages. Invited essay for special edition of the International
Journal of Modern Physics
High purity bright single photon source
Using cavity-enhanced non-degenerate parametric downconversion, we have built
a frequency tunable source of heralded single photons with a narrow bandwidth
of 8 MHz, making it compatible with atomic quantum memories. The photon state
is 70% pure single photon as characterized by a tomographic measurement and
reconstruction of the quantum state, revealing a clearly negative Wigner
function. Furthermore, it has a spectral brightness of ~1,500 photons/s per MHz
bandwidth, making it one of the brightest single photon sources available. We
also investigate the correlation function of the down-converted fields using a
combination of two very distinct detection methods; photon counting and
homodyne measurement.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; minor changes, added referenc
Why Nature has made a choice of one time and three space coordinates?
We propose a possible answer to one of the most exciting open questions in
physics and cosmology, that is the question why we seem to experience four-
dimensional space-time with three ordinary and one time dimensions. We have
known for more than 70 years that (elementary) particles have spin degrees of
freedom, we also know that besides spin they also have charge degrees of
freedom, both degrees of freedom in addition to the position and momentum
degrees of freedom. We may call these ''internal degrees of freedom '' the
''internal space'' and we can think of all the different particles, like quarks
and leptons, as being different internal states of the same particle. The
question then naturally arises: Is the choice of the Minkowski metric and the
four-dimensional space-time influenced by the ''internal space''?
Making assumptions (such as particles being in first approximation massless)
about the equations of motion, we argue for restrictions on the number of space
and time dimensions. (Actually the Standard model predicts and experiments
confirm that elementary particles are massless until interactions switch on
masses.)
Accepting our explanation of the space-time signature and the number of
dimensions would be a point supporting (further) the importance of the
''internal space''.Comment: 13 pages, LaTe
Time gating of heralded single photons for atomic memories
We demonstrate a method for time gating the standard heralded continuous-
wave (cw) spontaneous parametric down-converted (SPDC) single photon source by
using pulsed pumping of the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) below
threshold. The narrow bandwidth, high purity, high spectral brightness and the
pseudo-deterministic character make the source highly suitable for light-atom
interfaces with atomic memories.Comment: Accepted for publication in Optics Letter
Fermionization, Number of Families
We investigate bosonization/fermionization for free massless fermions being
equivalent to free massless bosons with the purpose of checking and correcting
the old rule by Aratyn and one of us (H.B.F.N.) for the number of boson species
relative to the number of fermion species which is required to have
bosonization possible. An important application of such a counting of degrees
of freedom relation would be to invoke restrictions on the number of families
that could be possible under the assumption, that all the fermions in nature
are the result of fermionizing a system of boson species. Since a theory of
fundamental fermions can be accused for not being properly local because of
having anticommutativity at space like distances rather than commutation as is
more physically reasonable to require, it is in fact called for to have all
fermions arising from fermionization of bosons. To make a realistic scenario
with the fermions all coming from fermionizing some bosons we should still have
at least some not fermionized bosons and we are driven towards that being a
gravitational field, that is not fermionized. Essentially we reach the
spin-charge-families theory by one of us (N.S.M.B.) with the detail that the
number of fermion components and therefore of families get determined from what
possibilities for fermionization will finally turn out to exist. The
spin-charge-family theory has long been plagued by predicting 4 families rather
than the phenomenologically more favoured 3. Unfortunately we do not yet
understand well enough the unphysical negative norm square components in the
system of bosons that can fermionize in higher dimensions because we have no
working high dimensional case of fermionization. But suspecting they involve
gauge fields with complicated unphysical state systems the corrections from
such states could putatively improve the family number prediction.Comment: 30 pages, H.B. Nielsen presented the talk at Workshop
"What Comes Beyond the Standard Models", Bled, 09-17 of July, 201
Multimode analysis of the light emitted from a pulsed optical parametric oscillator
We present a multimode treatment of the optical parametric oscillator, which
is valid for both pulsed and continuous-wave pump fields. The two-time
correlation functions of the output field are derived, and we apply the theory
to analyze a scheme for heralded production of non-classical field states that
may be subsequently stored in an atomic quantum memory.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
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