Relativering van die werklikheid in die romans van André P. Brink

Wil ’n mens iets informatiefs sê oor die hóé van romanmatige vergestalting in eietydse Afrikaans, is die romans van André P. Brink, naamlik Lobola vir die lewe (1964), Die ambassadeur (1964), Orgie (1965), Kennis van die aand (1973) en Oomblik in die wind (1975) ’n goeie keuse. Nêrens in die Afrikaanse prosa vind jy soveel proefneming en volgehoue eksploitering van die moontlikhede wat hierdie genre bied nie. Verder kan Brink beskou word as die leier wat tegniese vemuwing in die Sestigerprosa betref. Hy staan as omstrede outeur en teoretikus in die brand- punt van die literatuurstryd wat sedert die sestigerjare ontbrand het en steeds voortduur. Vir die student is die besondere tema, die romanmatige weergawe van die reaiiteit as ontwykende en be- treklike gegewe, eweneens ’n goeie keuse, want geen ander aspek van Brink se emstige prosa is tiperender daarvan of vollediger ontgin nie. Daarbenewens is dit ook ’n kenmerk van die modeme Afrikaanse letterkunde. As seker een van die belangrikste uitvloeisels van die lewensbeskoulike verandering wat sommige toonaangewende skrywers sedert Sestig verwoord het, behels hierdie relatief geworde werklikheid van die romanwêreld een van die opvallendste verskuiwings weg van die tradisionele Afrikaanse prosa

An ultra-sensitive pulsed balanced homodyne detector: Application to time-domain quantum measurements

A pulsed balanced homodyne detector has been developed for precise measurements of electric field quadratures of pulsed optical quantum states. A high level of common mode suppression (> 85 dB) and low electronic noise (730 electrons per pulse) provide a signal to noise ratio of 14 dB for the measurement of the quantum noise of individual pulses. Measurements at repetition rates up to 1 MHz are possible. As a test, quantum tomography of the coherent state is performed and the Wigner function and the density matrix are reconstructed with a 99.5% fidelity. The detection system can also be used for ultrasensitive balanced detection in cw mode, e.g. for weak absorption measurements.Comment: 3 pages, submitted to Optics Letter

Quantum phase space distributions in thermofield dynamics

It is shown that the the quantum phase space distributions corresponding to a density operator $\rho$ can be expressed, in thermofield dynamics, as overlaps between the state $\mid \rho >$ and "thermal" coherent states. The usefulness of this approach is brought out in the context of a master equation describing a nonlinear oscillator for which exact expressions for the quantum phase distributions for an arbitrary initial condition are derived.Comment: 17 pages, revtex, no figures. number of pages were incorrectly stated as 3 instead of 17. No other correction

Recovering coherence from decoherence: a method of quantum state reconstruction

We present a feasible scheme for reconstructing the quantum state of a field prepared inside a lossy cavity. Quantum coherences are normally destroyed by dissipation, but we show that at zero temperature we are able to retrieve enough information about the initial state, making possible to recover its Wigner function as well as other quasiprobabilities. We provide a numerical simulation of a Schroedinger cat state reconstruction.Comment: 8 pages, in RevTeX, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A (november 1999

Fresnel Representation of the Wigner Function: An Operational Approach

We present an operational definition of the Wigner function. Our method relies on the Fresnel transform of measured Rabi oscillations and applies to motional states of trapped atoms as well as to field states in cavities. We illustrate this technique using data from recent experiments in ion traps [D. M. Meekhof et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1796 (1996)] and in cavity QED [B. Varcoe et al., Nature 403, 743 (2000)]. The values of the Wigner functions of the underlying states at the origin of phase space are W(0)=+1.75 for the vibrational ground state and W(0)=-1.4 for the one-photon number state. We generalize this method to wave packets in arbitrary potentials.Comment: 4 pages include 4 figures, submitted to PR

Self-homodyne tomography of a twin-beam state

A self-homodyne detection scheme is proposed to perform two-mode tomography on a twin-beam state at the output of a nondegenerate optical parametric amplifier. This scheme has been devised to improve the matching between the local oscillator and the signal modes, which is the main limitation to the overall quantum efficiency in conventional homodyning. The feasibility of the measurement is analyzed on the basis of Monte-Carlo simulations, studying the effect of non-unit quantum efficiency on detection of the correlation and the total photon-number oscillations of the twin-beam state.Comment: 13 pages (two-column ReVTeX) including 21 postscript figures; to appear on Phys. Rev.

Parameters estimation in quantum optics

We address several estimation problems in quantum optics by means of the maximum-likelihood principle. We consider Gaussian state estimation and the determination of the coupling parameters of quadratic Hamiltonians. Moreover, we analyze different schemes of phase-shift estimation. Finally, the absolute estimation of the quantum efficiency of both linear and avalanche photodetectors is studied. In all the considered applications, the Gaussian bound on statistical errors is attained with a few thousand data.Comment: 11 pages. 6 figures. Accepted on Phys. Rev.

Aging (Albany NY)

The combination of functional genomics with next generation sequencing facilitates new experimental strategies for addressing complex biological phenomena. Here, we report the identification of a gain-of-function allele of peroxiredoxin (thioredoxin peroxidase, Tsa1p) via whole-genome re-sequencing of a dominantSaccharomyces cerevisiae mutant obtained by chemical mutagenesis. Yeast strain K6001, a screening system for lifespan phenotypes, was treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS). We isolated an oxidative stress-resistant mutant (B7) which transmitted this phenotype in a background-independent, monogenic and dominant way. By massive parallel pyrosequencing, we generated an 38.8 fold whole-genome coverage of the strains, which differed in 12,482 positions from the reference (S288c) genome. Via a subtraction strategy, we could narrow this number to 13 total and 4 missense nucleotide variations that were specific for the mutant. Via expression in wild type backgrounds, we show that one of these mutations, exchanging a residue in the peroxiredoxin Tsa1p, was responsible for the mutant phenotype causing background-independent dominant oxidative stress-resistance. These effects were not provoked by altered Tsa1p levels, nor could they be simulated by deletion, haploinsufficiency or over-expression of the wild-type allele. Furthermore, via both a mother-enrichment technique and a micromanipulation assay, we found a robust premature aging phenotype of this oxidant-resistant strain. Thus, TSA1-B7 encodes for a novel dominant form of peroxiredoxin, and establishes a new connection between oxidative stress and aging. In addition, this study shows that the re-sequencing of entire genomes is becoming a promising alternative for the identification of functional alleles in approaches of classic molecular genetics

Direct measurement of the Wigner function by photon counting

We report a direct measurement of the Wigner function characterizing the quantum state of a light mode. The experimental scheme is based on the representation of the Wigner function as an expectation value of a displaced photon number parity operator. This allowed us to scan the phase space point-by-point, and obtain the complete Wigner function without using any numerical reconstruction algorithms.Comment: 4 pages, REVTe