13,267 research outputs found
A Transactional Analysis of Interaction Free Measurements
The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is applied to the
"interaction-free" measurement scenario of Elitzur and Vaidman and to the
Quantum Zeno Effect version of the measurement scenario by Kwiat, et al. It is
shown that the non-classical information provided by the measurement scheme is
supplied by the probing of the intervening object by incomplete offer and
confirmation waves that do not form complete transactions or lead to real
interactions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Foundations of Physics Letter
The influence of vision on susceptibility to acute motion sickness studied under quantifiable stimulus-response conditions
Twenty-four healthy men, 22 to 25 years of age, were exposed to stressful accelerations in a rotating room until acute mild motion sickness was elicited. Thirteen subjects in one group were exposed first with eyes open and later with eyes covered; the reverse order was used with the remaining eleven in the other group. The stressful accelerations were generated by requiring the subject to execute 120 standardized head movements at each 1-rpm increase in angular velocity until the desired endpoint was reached. When susceptibility to motion sickness with eyes open and covered is compared, 19 subjects were more susceptible with eyes open, three with eyes covered, and in the remaining two susceptibility was the same. The maximum difference in velocity between trial 1 and 2 was 7 rpm when susceptibility was greater with eyes open and 3 rpm when it was greater with eyes covered; the means, respectively, were 3.2 and 2.0 rpm. Among subjects manifesting greater susceptibility with eyes open than covered the group differences were small, indicating little or no adaptation effects. The findings are discussed mainly on the basis that vision may act also to decrease susceptibility under the stimulus conditions described
Exploring local quantum many-body relaxation by atoms in optical superlattices
We establish a setting - atoms in optical superlattices with period 2 - in
which one can experimentally probe signatures of the process of local
relaxation and apparent thermalization in non-equilibrium dynamics without the
need of addressing single sites. This opens up a way to explore the convergence
of subsystems to maximum entropy states in quenched quantum many-body systems
with present technology. Remarkably, the emergence of thermal states does not
follow from a coupling to an environment, but is a result of the complex
non-equilibrium dynamics in closed systems. We explore ways of measuring the
relevant signatures of thermalization in this analogue quantum simulation of a
relaxation process, exploiting the possibilities offered by optical
superlattices.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, version to published in Physical Review Letter
Handbook for estimating toxic fuel hazards
Computer program predicts, from readily available meteorological data, concentration and dosage fields downwind from ground-level and elevated sources of toxic fuel emissions. Mathematical model is applicable to hot plume rise from industrial stacks and should also be of interest to air pollution meteorologists
Quantum equilibration in finite time
It has recently been shown that small quantum subsystems generically
equilibrate, in the sense that they spend most of the time close to a fixed
equilibrium state. This relies on just two assumptions: that the state is
spread over many different energies, and that the Hamiltonian has
non-degenerate energy gaps. Given the same assumptions, it has also been shown
that closed systems equilibrate with respect to realistic measurements. We
extend these results in two important ways. First, we prove equilibration over
a finite (rather than infinite) time-interval, allowing us to bound the
equilibration time. Second, we weaken the non degenerate energy gaps condition,
showing that equilibration occurs provided that no energy gap is hugely
degenerate.Comment: 7 page
Joint density-functional theory for electronic structure of solvated systems
We introduce a new form of density functional theory for the {\em ab initio}
description of electronic systems in contact with a molecular liquid
environment. This theory rigorously joins an electron density-functional for
the electrons of a solute with a classical density-functional theory for the
liquid into a single variational principle for the free energy of the combined
system. A simple approximate functional predicts, without any fitting of
parameters to solvation data, solvation energies as well as state-of-the-art
quantum-chemical cavity approaches, which require such fitting.Comment: Fixed typos and minor updates to tex
Structure of glassy lithium sulfate films sputtered in nitrogen (LISON): Insight from Raman spectroscopy and ab initio calculations
Raman spectra of thin solid electrolyte films obtained by sputtering a
lithium sulfate target in nitrogen plasma are measured and compared to ab
initio electronic structure calculations for clusters composed of 28 atoms.
Agreement between measured and calculated spectra is obtained when oxygen atoms
are replaced by nitrogen atoms and when the nitrogen atoms form bonds with each
other. This suggests that the incorporation of nitrogen during the sputtering
process leads to structures in the film, which prevent crystallization of these
thin film salt glasses.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
An analysis of the acoustic cavitation noise spectrum: The role of periodic shock waves
Research on applications of acoustic cavitation is often reported in terms of the features within the spectrum of the emissions gathered during cavitation occurrence. There is, however, limited understanding as to the contribution of specific bubble activity to spectral features, beyond a binary interpretation of stable versus inertial cavitation. In this work, laser-nucleation is used to initiate cavitation within a few millimeters of the tip of a needle hydrophone, calibrated for magnitude and phase from 125 kHz to 20 MHz. The bubble activity, acoustically driven at f0 = 692 kHz, is resolved with high-speed shadowgraphic imaging at 5 × 106 frames per second. A synthetic spectrum is constructed from component signals based on the hydrophone data, deconvolved within the calibration bandwidth, in the time domain. Cross correlation coefficients between the experimental and synthetic spectra of 0.97 for the f 0/2 and f 0/3 regimes indicate that periodic shock waves and scattered driving field predominantly account for all spectral features, including the sub-harmonics and their over-harmonics, and harmonics of f 0
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