4,275 research outputs found
Control of coherent backscattering by breaking optical reciprocity
Reciprocity is a universal principle that has a profound impact on many areas
of physics. A fundamental phenomenon in condensed-matter physics, optical
physics and acoustics, arising from reciprocity, is the constructive
interference of quantum or classical waves which propagate along time-reversed
paths in disordered media, leading to, for example, weak localization and
metal-insulator transition. Previous studies have shown that such coherent
effects are suppressed when reciprocity is broken. Here we show that by
breaking reciprocity in a controlled manner, we can tune, rather than simply
suppress, these phenomena. In particular, we manipulate coherent backscattering
of light, also known as weak localization. By utilizing a non-reciprocal
magneto-optical effect, we control the interference between time-reversed paths
inside a multimode fiber with strong mode mixing, and realize a continuous
transition from the well-known peak to a dip in the backscattered intensity.
Our results may open new possibilities for coherent control of classical and
quantum waves in complex systemsComment: Comments are welcom
Critical States Embedded in the Continuum
We introduce a class of critical states which are embedded in the continuum
(CSC) of one-dimensional optical waveguide array with one non-Hermitian defect.
These states are at the verge of being fractal and have real propagation
constant. They emerge at a phase transition which is driven by the imaginary
refractive index of the defect waveguide and it is accompanied by a mode
segregation which reveals analogies with the Dicke super -radiance. Below this
point the states are extended while above they evolve to exponentially
localized modes. An addition of a background gain or loss can turn these
localized states to bound states in the continuum.Comment: 4.5 pages, 3 figures, 1 page of supplementary material including one
figur
Quantum walks of correlated particles
Quantum walks of correlated particles offer the possibility to study
large-scale quantum interference, simulate biological, chemical and physical
systems, and a route to universal quantum computation. Here we demonstrate
quantum walks of two identical photons in an array of 21 continuously
evanescently-coupled waveguides in a SiOxNy chip. We observe quantum
correlations, violating a classical limit by 76 standard deviations, and find
that they depend critically on the input state of the quantum walk. These
results open the way to a powerful approach to quantum walks using correlated
particles to encode information in an exponentially larger state space
Failed Gamma-Ray Bursts: Thermal UV/Soft X-ray Emission Accompanied by Peculiar Afterglows
We show that the photospheres of "failed" Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), whose bulk
Lorentz factors are much lower than 100, can be outside of internal shocks. The
resulting radiation from the photospheres is thermal and bright in UV/Soft
X-ray band. The photospheric emission lasts for about one thousand seconds with
luminosity about several times 10^46 erg/s. These events can be observed by
current and future satellites. It is also shown that the afterglows of failed
GRBs are peculiar at the early stage, which makes it possible to distinguish
failed GRBs from ordinary GRBs and beaming-induced orphan afterglows.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journa
Discrete charging of metallic grains: Statistics of addition spectra
We analyze the statistics of electrostatic energies (and their differences)
for a quantum dot system composed of a finite number of electron islands
(metallic grains) with random capacitance-inductance matrix , for which the
total charge is discrete, (where is the charge of an electron and
is an integer). The analysis is based on a generalized charging model,
where the electrons are distributed among the grains such that the
electrostatic energy E(N) is minimal. Its second difference (inverse
compressibility) represents the spacing between
adjacent Coulomb blockade peaks appearing when the conductance of the quantum
dot is plotted against gate voltage. The statistics of this quantity has been
the focus of experimental and theoretical investigations during the last two
decades. We provide an algorithm for calculating the distribution function
corresponding to and show that this function is piecewise
polynomial.Comment: 21 pages, no figures, mathematical nomenclature (except for Abstract
and Introduction
A nonlinear theory of non-stationary low Mach number channel flows of freely cooling nearly elastic granular gases
We use hydrodynamics to investigate non-stationary channel flows of freely
cooling dilute granular gases. We focus on the regime where the sound travel
time through the channel is much shorter than the characteristic cooling time
of the gas. As a result, the gas pressure rapidly becomes almost homogeneous,
while the typical Mach number of the flow drops well below unity. Eliminating
the acoustic modes, we reduce the hydrodynamic equations to a single nonlinear
and nonlocal equation of a reaction-diffusion type in Lagrangian coordinates.
This equation describes a broad class of channel flows and, in particular, can
follow the development of the clustering instability from a weakly perturbed
homogeneous cooling state to strongly nonlinear states. If the heat diffusion
is neglected, the reduced equation is exactly soluble, and the solution
develops a finite-time density blowup. The heat diffusion, however, becomes
important near the attempted singularity. It arrests the density blowup and
brings about novel inhomogeneous cooling states (ICSs) of the gas, where the
pressure continues to decay with time, while the density profile becomes
time-independent. Both the density profile of an ICS, and the characteristic
relaxation time towards it are determined by a single dimensionless parameter
that describes the relative role of the inelastic energy loss and heat
diffusion. At large values of this parameter, the intermediate cooling dynamics
proceeds as a competition between low-density regions of the gas. This
competition resembles Ostwald ripening: only one hole survives at the end.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, final versio
Leading particle effect, inelasticity and the connection between average multiplicities in {\bf } and {\bf } processes
The Regge-Mueller formalism is used to describe the inclusive spectrum of the
proton in collisions. From such a description the energy dependences of
both average inelasticity and leading proton multiplicity are calculated. These
quantities are then used to establish the connection between the average
charged particle multiplicities measured in {\bf } and {\bf } processes. The description obtained for the leading proton cross section
implies that Feynman scaling is strongly violated only at the extreme values of
, that is at the central region () and at the diffraction
region (), while it is approximately observed in the
intermediate region of the spectrum.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Physical Review
On the experimental verification of quantum complexity in linear optics
The first quantum technologies to solve computational problems that are
beyond the capabilities of classical computers are likely to be devices that
exploit characteristics inherent to a particular physical system, to tackle a
bespoke problem suited to those characteristics. Evidence implies that the
detection of ensembles of photons, which have propagated through a linear
optical circuit, is equivalent to sampling from a probability distribution that
is intractable to classical simulation. However, it is probable that the
complexity of this type of sampling problem means that its solution is
classically unverifiable within a feasible number of trials, and the task of
establishing correct operation becomes one of gathering sufficiently convincing
circumstantial evidence. Here, we develop scalable methods to experimentally
establish correct operation for this class of sampling algorithm, which we
implement with two different types of optical circuits for 3, 4, and 5 photons,
on Hilbert spaces of up to 50,000 dimensions. With only a small number of
trials, we establish a confidence >99% that we are not sampling from a uniform
distribution or a classical distribution, and we demonstrate a unitary specific
witness that functions robustly for small amounts of data. Like the algorithmic
operations they endorse, our methods exploit the characteristics native to the
quantum system in question. Here we observe and make an application of a
"bosonic clouding" phenomenon, interesting in its own right, where photons are
found in local groups of modes superposed across two locations. Our broad
approach is likely to be practical for all architectures for quantum
technologies where formal verification methods for quantum algorithms are
either intractable or unknown.Comment: Comments welcom
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