The last night of freedom : consumerism, deviance and the ‘stag party’

This article offers an ethnographic examination of the stag party phenomenon in the UK. Stag parties have become socially expected as a rite of passage, pre-marriage celebration for men that usually involves excessive alcohol consumption and engagement in deviant, potentially harmful, behaviour. These events produce a shift in time and space, and together with group expectations for celebration, increase the impetus for excessive consumption. Our contention is that excessive consumption of alcohol and deviant behaviour that often takes place are partially rooted in commercial ideology which has become firmly embedded in the attitudes of young British men

A de-civilizing reversal or system normal? Rising lethal violence in post-recession austerity United Kingdom

This article offers incipient theoretical analysis and reflections on the recent rises in lethal violence recorded in the UK. The rises have attracted considerable media attention, with the more informed discussions drawing plausible causal associations between rising lethal violence and the policy context of austerity. Criminology, however, has been relatively silent so far on the recent rises and this potential association. In response, this article attempts to stimulate debate by critically considering the utility of one of the most widely cited theoretical frameworks in the study of historical patterns of violence in the western nations: the ‘civilizing process’. The article then moves on to consider the applicability of insights from the incipient ultra-realist criminological perspective. The article suggests that the ultra-realist concept of the ‘pseudo-pacification process’ provides a useful means of furthering our understanding of these rises in the current socio-economic context of post-crash capitalism. Keywords: Violence; Austerity; Homicide; Civilizing Process; Pseudo-Pacification; Ultra Realism

“And you didn’t tell them that they were getting robbed!?” : emotional labour, ethnography and danger

This chapter considers emotional labour during the conduct of dangerous ethnography. Specifically, the chapter draws upon the author’s experiences of immersive ethnography over prolonged periods of time with individuals involved in violence and a range of other illicit activities. It is claimed in the chapter that such research not only places the researcher in challenging situations but has the potential to intersect with aspects of their biography and prior emotional experience, leading to the emergence of feelings that must be managed effectively during these encounters and afterwards upon exiting to the field. In particular, the chapter seeks to reflect upon instances where the researcher’s own emotional labour employed to manage their presence during the research, is then subject to scrutiny by others outside of the field

Multi-dimensional photonic states from a quantum dot

Quantum states superposed across multiple particles or degrees of freedom offer an advantage in the development of quantum technologies. Creating these states deterministically and with high efficiency is an ongoing challenge. A promising approach is the repeated excitation of multi-level quantum emitters, which have been shown to naturally generate light with quantum statistics. Here we describe how to create one class of higher dimensional quantum state, a so called W-state, which is superposed across multiple time bins. We do this by repeated Raman scattering of photons from a charged quantum dot in a pillar microcavity. We show this method can be scaled to larger dimensions with no reduction in coherence or single-photon character. We explain how to extend this work to enable the deterministic creation of arbitrary time-bin encoded qudits

Lexicographic cones and the ordered projective tensor product

We introduce lexicographic cones, a method of assigning an ordered vector space \Lex(S) to a poset $S$, generalising the standard lexicographic cone. These lexicographic cones are then used to prove that the projective tensor cone of two arbitrary cones is a cone, and to find a new characterisation of finite-dimensional vector lattices.Comment: 8 page

Implications of large dimuon CP asymmetry in B_{d,s} decays on minimal flavor violation with low tan beta

The D0 collaboration has recently announced evidence for a dimuon CP asymmetry in B_{d,s} decays of order one percent. If confirmed, this asymmetry requires new physics. We argue that for minimally flavor violating (MFV) new physics, and at low tan beta=v_u/v_d, there are only two four-quark operators (Q_{2,3}) that can provide the required CP violating effect. The scale of such new physics must lie below 260 GeV sqrt{tan beta}. The effect is universal in the B_s and B_d systems, leading to S_{psi K}~sin(2beta)-0.15 and S_{psi phi}~0.25. The effects on epsilon_K and on electric dipole moments are negligible. The most plausible mechanism is tree-level scalar exchange. MFV supersymmetry with low tan beta will be excluded. Finally, we explain how a pattern of deviations from the Standard Model predictions for S_{psi phi}, S_{psi K} and epsilon_K can be used to test MFV and, if MFV holds, to probe its structure in detail.Comment: 11 pages. v2: References adde

Ramsey interference in a multilevel quantum system

We report Ramsey interference in the excitonic population of a negatively charged quantum dot measured in resonant fluorescence. Our experiments show that the decay time of the Ramsey interference is limited by the spectral width of the transition. Applying a vertical magnetic field induces Zeeman split transitions that can be addressed by changing the laser detuning to reveal two-, three-, and four-level system behavior. We show that under finite field the phase-sensitive control of two optical pulses from a single laser can be used to prepare both population and spin states simultaneously. We also demonstrate the coherent optical manipulation of a trapped spin in a quantum dot in a Faraday geometry magnetic field

Complete resummation of chirally-enhanced loop-effects in the MSSM with non-minimal sources of flavor-violation

In this article we present the complete resummation of the leading chirally-enhanced corrections stemming from gluino-squark, chargino-sfermion and neutralino-sfermion loops in the MSSM with non-minimal sources of flavor-violation. We compute the finite renormalization of fermion masses and the CKM matrix induced by chirality-flipping self-energies. In the decoupling limit Msusy>>v, which is an excellent approximation to the full theory, we give analytic results for the effective gaugino(higgsino)-fermion-sfermion and the Higgs-fermion-fermion vertices. Using these vertices as effective Feynman rules, all leading chirally-enhanced corrections can consistently be included into perturbative calculations of Feynman amplitudes. We also give a generalized parametrization for the bare CKM matrix which extends the classic Wolfenstein parametrization to the case of complex parameters lambda and A.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures; typos correcte

Violence in the city : inequality, intimidation and fear

The chapter discusses the rise in serious, weapon-enabled violence in major UK cities during the past several years. The chapter positions these rises in a context of austerity cuts and inequalities, and makes policy recommendations to address serious violence in UK cities