Fabrication of high-quality-factor photonic crystal microcavities in InAsP/InGaAsP membranes

Optical fiber taper waveguides are used to improve the efficiency of room temperature photoluminescence measurements of AlGaAs microdisk resonant cavities with embedded self-assembled InAs quantum dots. As a near-field collection optic, the fiber taper improves the collection efficiency from microdisk lasers by a factor of ∼15–100 times in comparison to conventional normal incidence free-space collection techniques. In addition, the fiber taper can serve as an efficient means for pumping these devices, and initial measurements employing fiber pumping and collection are presented. Implications of this work towards chip-based cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments are discussed

Ma-Xu quantization rule and exact WKB condition for translationally shape invariant potentials

For translationally shape invariant potentials, the exact quantization rule proposed by Ma and Xu is a direct consequence of exactness of the modified WKB quantization condition proved by Barclay. We propose here a very direct alternative way to calculate the appropriate correction for the whole class of translationally shape invariant potentials

The Specifics of the First Female Biographies in the 17th-century Russian Official Discourse

This article is based upon the surprising deficiency of philological studies dedicated to the examination of the first female biographical descriptions that there in abundance in the Russian official discourse of the 17th century. Indeed, these early works reflect fundamental functions attributed to the lives of mediaeval women and depict family connections, locations, class affiliations, fiscal standings, and the legal rights to inherited property and assets. Likewise, we witness a limited choice of female occupations and their dreadful living conditions throughout tragic historical Russian epochs. These external facts, when combined with the incarnate use of applicable female proper names in the official discourse, give a new life to limited-gender terms such as maid, wife, mother, sister, daughter-in-law, widow, and midwife.This gender terminology played a specific-marker role in first female biographical descriptions, replacing the use of the women’s actual first names with their function as maid, wife, sister, mother, etc.To complete such tasks, goals, and functions are evident in their use in the original manuscripts found in Russian and Swedish archives and also previously published as official sources from the 17th century in the history of Volgograd, Novgorod, Tver, and Yaroslavl. This broad linguistic context allowed us to see and analyse the written processes in the formation and depiction of the first female biographical descriptions, some traits of which are still seen in modern Russian.The historical-linguistic materials presented in my article might have been useful in the 17th-century Russian Language Courses as well as interdisciplinary studies examining Slavic onomastic and mediaeval gender theories and studies.Актуальность настоящей статьи заключается в отсутствии филологических исследо- ваний, посвященных подробному изучению и описанию первых женских биографических формуляров, которые появились в русской официально-деловой письменности в XVII веке. Именно в них отразились такие важные эпизоды из жизни средневековых женщин, как их семейные связи и сословные принадлежности, фискальные сведения и юридические права наследования на землю другое имущество, лимитированный выбор профессий и условия выживаемости в трагические периоды развития России, места проживания и даже внешние черты. Эти перечисленные экстралингвистические факторы воплотились в лексическом на- полнении писцовых документов, в которых главную роль играли собственные женские имена и такие гендерные термины, как девка, жена, мать, сестра, сноха, вдова и повивальная баб- ка. Перечисленная гендерная терминология выполняла роль своеобразного маркера, который компенсировал возможные пропуски женских имен в писцовой документации в исследуемый промежуток времени.Для выполнения поставленных целей и задач автором использовались оригинальные рукописи, хранящиеся в российских и шведских государственных архивах, а также уже опу- бликованные писцовые источники по истории Вологды, Новгорода, Твери и Ярославля. Этот широкий исторический контекст и связанный с ним лингвистический материал позволили увидеть и проанализировать письменные процессы формирования первых женских биографических формуляров, отдельные черты из которых до сих пор используются в современном русском языке.Полученные данные могут быть использованы в курсах по истории русского языка XVII века, а также в смежных дисциплинах по исторической славянской ономастике и сред- невековым гендерным исследованиям

On the indistinguishability of Raman photons

We provide a theoretical framework to study the effect of dephasing on the quantum indistinguishability of single photons emitted from a coherently driven cavity QED $\Lambda$-system. We show that with a large excited-state detuning, the photon indistinguishability can be drastically improved provided that the fluctuation rate of the noise source affecting the excited state is fast compared with the photon emission rate. In some cases a spectral filter is required to realize this improvement, but the cost in efficiency can be made small.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, final versio

Shape Invariance and Its Connection to Potential Algebra

Exactly solvable potentials of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics are known to be shape invariant. For these potentials, eigenvalues and eigenvectors can be derived using well known methods of supersymmetric quantum mechanics. The majority of these potentials have also been shown to possess a potential algebra, and hence are also solvable by group theoretical techniques. In this paper, for a subset of solvable problems, we establish a connection between the two methods and show that they are indeed equivalent.Comment: Latex File, 10 pages, One figure available on request. Appeared in the proceedings of the workshop on "Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics and Integrable Models" held at University of Illinois, June 12-14, 1997; Ed. H. Aratyn et a

The Genesis 12–19 (G1219) Study: A Twin and Sibling Study of Gene–Environment Interplay and Adolescent Development in the UK

The Genesis 12–19 (G1219) Study is an ongoing longitudinal study of a sample of UK twin pairs, non-twin sibling pairs, and their parents. G1219 was initially designed to examine the role of gene–environment interplay in adolescent depression. However, since then data have continued to be collected from both parents and their offspring into young adulthood. This has allowed for longitudinal analyses of depression and has enabled researchers to investigate multiple phenotypes and to ask questions about intermediate mechanisms. The study has primarily focused on emotional development, particularly depression and anxiety, which have been assessed at multiple levels of analysis (symptoms, cognitions, and relevant environmental experiences). G1219 has also included assessment of a broader range of psychological phenotypes ranging from antisocial behaviors and substance use to sleep difficulties, in addition to multiple aspects of the environment. DNA has also been collected. The first wave of data collection began in the year 1999 and the fifth wave of data collection will be complete before the end of 2012. In this article, we describe the sample, data collection, and measures used. We also summarize some of the key findings to date

The Rich Structure of Gauss-Bonnet Holographic Superconductors

We study fully backreacting, Gauss-Bonnet (GB) holographic superconductors in 5 bulk spacetime dimensions. We explore the system's dependence on the scalar mass for both positive and negative GB coupling, $\alpha$. We find that when the mass approaches the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound and $\alpha\rightarrow L^2/4$ the effect of backreaction is to increase the critical temperature, $T_c$, of the system: the opposite of its effect in the rest of parameter space. We also find that reducing $\alpha$ below zero increases $T_c$ and that the effect of backreaction is diminished. We study the zero temperature limit, proving that this system does not permit regular solutions for a non-trivial, tachyonic scalar field and constrain possible solutions for fields with positive masses. We investigate singular, zero temperature solutions in the Einstein limit but find them to be incompatible with the concept of GB gravity being a perturbative expansion of Einstein gravity. We study the conductivity of the system, finding that the inclusion of backreaction hinders the development of poles in the conductivity that are associated with quasi-normal modes approaching the real axis from elsewhere in the complex plane.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, V3, Added discussion of non-tachyonic scalars, alterations to figures and tex