Earthly Destruction: Catholic Social Teaching, War, and the Environment

For more than 1700 years in Christian theology, there has been a chasm between just war thinking and pacifism. Advocates of these two ideological positions have attempted to bridge this divide in a number of ways through the centuries. Some, such as Glen Stassen, have brought together thinkers on both sides of the divide to propose a just peacemaking theory. Others, such as Michael Schuck, Mark Allman, and Tobias Winright, have added new stages to just war thinking in order to make that existing tradition more robust. Some groups may identify as contingent pacifists. These would generally accept the criteria of the just war theory, but would not ever acknowledge violent force to be justified under certain conditions. This dissertation argues that, while it may not be possible to overcome the impasse between pacifists and adherents to just war thinking, it is possible for the two factions to work together for peace. One of the main areas in which this goal may be advanced is through common care and respect for the natural environment. In this study, the author examines the development of the Catholic social tradition on the topics of peace and ecology, including a careful reading of Pope Francis’s social encyclical, Laudato si’. The dissertation introduces a new type of contingent pacifism: ecological pacifism. Ecological pacifism argues against any type of violent intervention that will harm the earth, on the basis of earth’s sacredness as God’s creation. The dissertation maintains that both pacifism and just war thinking in Catholic social thought will be enhanced by this addition

Book Review: After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice

It is uncommon to find a work that has the potential to change the level of thought for an entire discipline. In After the Smoke Clears, Allman and Winright have accomplished precisely this feat. There is little doubt that just war theory is one of the most controversial elements of Christian ethics, and one that has been debated for the better part of two millennia. The authors not only recognize this fact, but also set out to write a book intended for those scattered all over the just war theory continuum – adherents to the theory and pacifists alike. The entire work consists of an Introduction, followed by two parts which succinctly present the authors’ major thesis: that there is inadequate attention devoted to the period following the cessation of violent force in warfare and that this needs to change in order for just war theory to be complete. An addition to the existing Christian tradition of just war is needed for it to continue to foster peace

On-demand generation of higher-order Fock states in quantum-dot--cavity systems

The on-demand preparation of higher-order Fock states is of fundamental importance in quantum information sciences. We propose and compare different protocols to generate higher-order Fock states in solid state quantum-dot--cavity systems. The protocols make use of a series of laser pulses to excite the quantum dot exciton and off-resonant pulses to control the detuning between dot and cavity. Our theoretical studies include dot and cavity loss processes as well as the pure-dephasing type coupling to longitudinal acoustic phonons in a numerically complete fashion. By going beyond the two-level approximation for quantum dots, we study the impact of a finite exchange splitting, the impact of a higher energetic exciton state, and an excitation with linearly polarized laser pulses leading to detrimental occupations of the biexciton state. We predict that under realistic conditions, a protocol which keeps the cavity at resonance with the quantum dot until the desired target state is reached is able to deliver fidelities to the Fock state $| 5\rangle$ well above $40\,\%$.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Two-photon excitation with finite pulses unlocks pure dephasing-induced degradation of entangled photons emitted by quantum dots

Semiconductor quantum dots have emerged as an especially promising platform for the generation of polarization-entangled photon pairs. However, it was demonstrated recently that the two-photon excitation scheme employed in state-of-the-art experiments limits the achievable degree of entanglement by introducing which-path information. In this work, the combined impact of two-photon excitation and longitudinal acoustic phonons on photon pairs emitted by strongly-confining quantum dots is investigated. It is found that phonons further reduce the achievable degree of entanglement even in the limit of vanishing temperature due to phonon-induced pure dephasing and phonon-assisted one-photon processes, which increase the reexcitation probability. In addition, the degree of entanglement, as measured by the concurrence, decreases with rising temperature and/or pulse duration, even if the excitonic fine-structure splitting is absent and when higher electronic states are out of reach. Furthermore, in the case of finite fine-structure splittings, phonons enlarge the discrepancy in concurrence for different laser polarizations.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure