3,366 research outputs found
Temperature gradient driven lasing and stimulated cooling
A laser can be understood as thermodynamic engine converting heat to a
coherent single mode field close to Carnot efficiency. From this perspective
spectral shaping of the excitation light generates a higher effective
temperature on the pump than on the gain transition. Here, using a toy model of
a quantum well structure with two suitably designed tunnel-coupled wells kept
at different temperature, we study a laser operated on an actual spatial
temperature gradient between pump and gain region. We predict gain and narrow
band laser emission for a sufficient temperature gradient and resonator
quality. Lasing appears concurrent with amplified heat flow and points to a new
form of stimulated solid state cooling. Such a mechanism could raise the
operating temperature limit of quantum cascade lasers by substituting phonon
emission driven injection, which generates intrinsic heat, by an extended model
with phonon absorption steps
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Enhancing Small Group Teaching in Plant Sciences: A Research and Development Project in Higher Education
The Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge uses a range of learning and teaching environments including lectures, practical laboratories and small group tutorials'. Under the auspices of the Cambridge-MIT Institute's Pedagogy Programme, a two-year research and development project concerned with the development of small-group teaching is being undertaken. The research element of this project endeavours to illuminate current practice and identify areas in which evidence-based development might take place. The development element will include professional development activities and the production of curriculum resources including appropriate online material. This is a multi-method study including a series of student questionnaires; focus groups of students; semi-structured interviews with staff members; and the collection of video of small group teaching. In this paper we report selected findings from the 'student data' of the first year of this project.The questionnaire, conducted with two cohorts of students (2nd and 3rd year Undergraduates), used a double-scale questionnaire in which students were asked to report both on the prevalence of a range of teaching and learning practices and on how valuable these were in supporting their learning. This type of questionnaire instrument is particularly appropriate because the data it generates is suggestive of areas for changes in practice. The gaps between 'practices' and 'values' (across both cohorts) suggested that students valued activities which improved their understanding of how elements of the course were interrelated; which related course content to 'authentic' examples; and those in which teachers made explicit the characteristics of 'high quality' student work. Small group teaching, in the view of most students, was best used to extend and explore concepts introduced in lectures rather than simply reinforcing them or assessing student understanding.Data gathered through focus group activities illuminated the questionnaire data, providing detailed accounts of how students managed their own learning, and the roles played in this by lectures, small group teaching and other resources. Students identified the processes of planning and writing essays as key learning activities during which they integrated diverse course content and reflected on problematic knowledge. Questionnaire and focus group data suggested that students had less clear views regarding the value of collaborative learning, peer-assessment or activities such as making presentations to other students. When students talked in positive terms about these activities, they often referred to the learning benefits of preparation for the tasks rather than of the collaborative activities themselves. These views may provide indications of potential barriers to changes in learning and teaching environments, and suggest that any such changes may have to be carefully justified to students in terms of benefits to their own learning. Many of our findings are broadly in accord with other work on teaching and learning in Higher Education settings (such as the 'Oxford Learning Context Project' and the 'Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses' Project) in that 'deep learning' and 'authenticity' in learning activities are valued by students, and that the introduction of specific formative practices (such as sharing notions of 'quality') would be welcomed. At the same time, amongst the students in our sample, a view of learning as an individual process of 'learning-as-acquisition' predominates over a view that it is a social process of 'learning-as-participation', and this will inform the planning of the 'development' aspect of the project. We conclude with a discussion of how the approach we have used might be more widely applied both within and beyond the Cambridge-MIT partnership. We also identify potential affordances of, and barriers to, the development of research-informed teaching in Higher Education
Raman-assisted Rabi resonances in two-mode cavity QED
The dynamics of a vibronic system in a lossy two-mode cavity is studied, with
the first mode being resonant to the electronic transition and the second one
being nearly resonant due to Raman transitions. We derive analytical solutions
for the dynamics of this system. For a properly chosen detuning of the second
mode from the exact Raman resonance, we obtain conditions that are closely
related to the phenomenon of Rabi resonance as it is well known in laser
physics. Such resonances can be observed in the spontaneous emission spectra,
where the spectrum of the second mode in the case of weak Raman coupling is
enhanced substantially.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Non-Markovian master equation for a damped oscillator with time-varying parameters
We derive an exact non-Markovian master equation that generalizes the
previous work [Hu, Paz and Zhang, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 45}, 2843 (1992)] to damped
harmonic oscillators with time-varying parameters. This is achieved by
exploiting the linearity of the system and operator solution in Heisenberg
picture. Our equation governs the non-Markovian quantum dynamics when the
system is modulated by external devices. As an application, we apply our
equation to parity kick decoupling problems. The time-dependent dissipative
coefficients in the master equation are shown to be modified drastically when
the system is driven by pulses. For coherence protection to be effective,
our numerical results indicate that kicking period should be shorter than
memory time of the bath. The effects of using soft pulses in an ohmic bath are
also discussed
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Ontology-based e-assessment for accounting: Outcomes of a pilot study and future prospects
This article reports on a pilot of a novel ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting that draws on the potential of emerging semantic technologies to produce an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free-text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a "concept map" or "ontology" of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. The system used, OeLe, allows not only for marking, but also for feedback to individual students and teachers about student strengths and weaknesses, as well as to whole cohorts, thus providing both a formative and a summative assessment function. This article reports on the results of a "proof of concept" trial of OeLe, in which the system was implemented and evaluated outside its original development environment (an online course in education being used instead in an undergraduate course in financial accounting. It describes the potential affordances and demands of implementing ontology-based assessment in accounting, together with suggestions of what needs to be done if such approaches are to be more widely implemented. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd
Dissipation-driven quantum phase transitions in collective spin systems
We consider two different collective spin systems subjected to strong
dissipation -- on the same scale as interaction strengths and external fields
-- and show that either continuous or discontinuous dissipative quantum phase
transitions can occur as the dissipation strength is varied. First, we consider
a well known model of cooperative resonance fluorescence that can exhibit a
second-order quantum phase transition, and analyze the entanglement properties
near the critical point. Next, we examine a dissipative version of the
Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick interacting collective spin model, where we find that
either first- or second-order quantum phase transitions can occur, depending
only on the ratio of the interaction and external field parameters. We give
detailed results and interpretation for the steady state entanglement in the
vicinity of the critical point, where it reaches a maximum. For the first-order
transition we find that the semiclassical steady states exhibit a region of
bistability.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures, removed section on homodyne spectr
Pure-state quantum trajectories for general non-Markovian systems do not exist
Since the first derivation of non-Markovian stochastic Schr\"odinger
equations, their interpretation has been contentious. In a recent Letter [Phys.
Rev. Lett. 100, 080401 (2008)], Di\'osi claimed to prove that they generate
"true single system trajectories [conditioned on] continuous measurement". In
this Letter we show that his proof is fundamentally flawed: the solution to his
non-Markovian stochastic Schr\"odinger equation at any particular time can be
interpreted as a conditioned state, but joining up these solutions as a
trajectory creates a fiction.Comment: 4 page
Conditional control of quantum beats in a cavity QED system
We probe a ground-state superposition that produces a quantum beat in the
intensity correlation of a two-mode cavity QED system. We mix drive with
scattered light from an atomic beam traversing the cavity, and effectively
measure the interference between the drive and the light from the atom. When a
photon escapes the cavity, and upon detection, it triggers our feedback which
modulates the drive at the same beat frequency but opposite phase for a given
time window. This results in a partial interruption of the beat oscillation in
the correlation function, that then returns to oscillate.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, XVII Reuni\'on Iberoamericana de \'Optica, X
Encuentro de \'Optica, L\'aseres y Aplicaciones (RIAO-OPTILAS-2010
Quantum decoherence in noninertial frames
Quantum decoherence, which appears when a system interacts with its
environment in an irreversible way, plays a fundamental role in the description
of quantum-to-classical transitions and has been successfully applied in some
important experiments. Here, we study the decoherence in noninertial frames for
the first time. It is shown that the decoherence and loss of the entanglement
generated by the Unruh effect will influence each other remarkably. It is
interesting to note that in the case of the total system under decoherence, the
sudden death of entanglement may appear for any acceleration. However, in the
case of only Rob's qubit underging decoherence sudden death may only occur when
the acceleration parameter is greater than a "critical point."Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Full counting statistics of heteronuclear molecules from Feshbach-assisted photo association
We study the effects of quantum statistics on the counting statistics of
ultracold heteronuclear molecules formed by Feshbach-assisted photoassociation
[Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93}, 140405 (2004)]. Exploiting the formal similarities
with sum frequency generation and using quantum optics methods we consider the
cases where the molecules are formed from atoms out of two Bose-Einstein
condensates, out of a Bose-Einstein condensate and a gas of degenerate
fermions, and out of two degenerate Fermi gases with and without superfluidity.
Bosons are treated in a single mode approximation and fermions in a degenerate
model. In these approximations we can numerically solve the master equations
describing the system's dynamics and thus we find the full counting statistics
of the molecular modes. The full quantum dynamics calculations are complemented
by mean field calculations and short time perturbative expansions. While the
molecule production rates are very similar in all three cases at this level of
approximation, differences show up in the counting statistics of the molecular
fields. The intermediate field of closed-channel molecules is for short times
second-order coherent if the molecules are formed from two Bose-Einstein
condensates or a Bose-Fermi mixture. They show counting statistics similar to a
thermal field if formed from two normal Fermi gases. The coherence properties
of molecule formation in two superfluid Fermi gases are intermediate between
the two previous cases. In all cases the final field of deeply-bound molecules
is found to be twice as noisy as that of the intermediate state. This is a
consequence of its coupling to the lossy optical cavity in our model, which
acts as an input port for quantum noise, much like the situation in an optical
beam splitter.Comment: replacement of earlier manuscript cond-mat/0508080
''Feshbach-assisted photoassociation of ultracold heteronuclear molecules''
with minor revision
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