Sensory memory for odors is encoded in spontaneous correlated activity between olfactory glomeruli

Sensory memory is a short-lived persistence of a sensory stimulus in the nervous system, such as iconic memory in the visual system. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying olfactory sensory memory. We have therefore analyzed the effect of odor stimuli on the first odor-processing network in the honeybee brain, the antennal lobe, which corresponds to the vertebrate olfactory bulb. We stained output neurons with a calcium-sensitive dye and measured across-glomerular patterns of spontaneous activity before and after a stimulus. Such a single-odor presentation changed the relative timing of spontaneous activity across glomeruli in accordance with Hebb's theory of learning. Moreover, during the first few minutes after odor presentation, correlations between the spontaneous activity fluctuations suffice to reconstruct the stimulus. As spontaneous activity is ubiquitous in the brain, modifiable fluctuations could provide an ideal substrate for Hebbian reverberations and sensory memory in other neural systems

Asymmetric transmission of linearly polarized light at optical metamaterials

We experimentally demonstrate a three-dimensional chiral optical metamaterial that exhibits an asymmetric transmission for forwardly and backwardly propagating linearly polarized light. The observation of this novel effect requires a metamaterial composed of three-dimensional chiral metaatoms without any rotational symmetry. Our analysis is supported by a systematic investigation of the transmission matrices for arbitrarily complex, lossy media that allows deriving a simple criterion for asymmetric transmission in an arbitrary polarization base. Contrary to physical intuition, in general the polarization eigenstates in such three-dimensional and low-symmetry metamaterials do not obey fxed relations and the associated transmission matrices cannot be symmetrized

Structural disorder versus chiral magnetism in Cr1/3_{1/3}NbS2_2

The crystal structure of a disordered form of Cr$_{1/3}$NbS$_2$ has been characterized using diffraction and inelastic scattering of synchrotron radiation. In contrast to the previously reported symmetry (P6$_3$22), the crystal can be described by a regular twinning of an average P6$_3$ structure with three disordered positions of the Cr ions. Short-range correlations of the occupational disorder result in a quite intense and structured diffuse scattering; a static nature of the disorder was unambiguously attributed by the inelastic x-ray scattering. The diffuse scattering has been modeled using a reverse Monte-Carlo algorithm assuming a disorder of the Cr sub-lattice only. The observed correlated disorder of the Cr sub-lattice reduces the temperature of the magnetic ordering from 130 K to 88 K and drastically modifies the field dependence of the magnetization as it is evidenced by the SQUID magnetometery. We conclude, that in contrast to the helicoidal spin structure assumed for P6$_3$22 form, the compound under study is ferromagnetically ordered with a pronounced in-plane anisotropy

Planck Spectroscopy and the Quantum Noise of Microwave Beam Splitters

We use a correlation function analysis of the field quadratures to characterize both the black body radiation emitted by a 50 Ohm load resistor and the quantum properties of two types of beam splitters in the microwave regime. To this end, we first study vacuum fluctuations as a function of frequency in a Planck spectroscopy experiment and then measure the covariance matrix of weak thermal states. Our results provide direct experimental evidence that vacuum fluctuations represent the fundamental minimum quantum noise added by a beam splitter to any given input signal.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Comparing extractions of Sivers functions

A comparison is given of the various recently published extractions of the Sivers functions from the HERMES and COMPASS data on single-transverse spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deeply inelastic scattering.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of "The International Workshop on Transverse Polarisation Phenomena in Hard Processes" (Transversity 2005), Villa Olmo (Como), 7-10th. September 200

Multipole nonlinearity of metamaterials

We report on the linear and nonlinear optical response of metamaterials evoked by first and second order multipoles. The analytical ground on which our approach bases permits for new insights into the functionality of metamaterials. For the sake of clarity we focus here on a key geometry, namely the split-ring resonator, although the introduced formalism can be applied to arbitrary structures. We derive the equations that describe linear and nonlinear light propagation where special emphasis is put on second harmonic generation. This contribution basically aims at stretching versatile and existing concepts to describe light propagation in nonlinear media towards the realm of metamaterials.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure