Information transmission over an amplitude damping channel with an arbitrary degree of memory

We study the performance of a partially correlated amplitude damping channel acting on two qubits. We derive lower bounds for the single-shot classical capacity by studying two kinds of quantum ensembles, one which allows to maximize the Holevo quantity for the memoryless channel and the other allowing the same task but for the full-memory channel. In these two cases, we also show the amount of entanglement which is involved in achieving the maximum of the Holevo quantity. For the single-shot quantum capacity we discuss both a lower and an upper bound, achieving a good estimate for high values of the channel transmissivity. We finally compute the entanglement-assisted classical channel capacity.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Decoherence due to telegraph and 1/f noise in Josephson qubits

We study decoherence due to random telegraph and 1/f noise in Josephson qubits. We illustrate differences between gaussian and non gaussian effects at different working points and for different protocols. Features of the intrinsically non-gaussian and non-Markovian low-frequency noise may explain the rich physics observed in the spectroscopy and the dynamics of charge based devices.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Mesoscopic Superconductivity and Spintronics 2004 (MS+S2004), Atsugi, Japa

Classical and quantum capacities of a fully correlated amplitude damping channel

We study information transmission over a fully correlated amplitude damping channel acting on two qubits. We derive the single-shot classical channel capacity and show that entanglement is needed to achieve the channel best performance. We discuss the degradability properties of the channel and evaluate the quantum capacity for any value of the noise parameter. We finally compute the entanglement-assisted classical channel capacity.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

Correlated tunneling into a superconductor in a multiprobe hybrid structure

We consider tunneling in a hybrid system consisting of a superconductor with two or more probe electrodes which can be either normal metals or polarized ferromagnets. In particular we study transport at subgap voltages and temperatures. Besides Andreev pair tunneling at each contact, in multi-probe structures subgap transport involves additional channels, which are due to coherent propagation of two particles (electrons or holes), each originating from a different probe electrode. The relevant processes are electron cotunneling through the superconductor and conversion of two electrons stemming from different probes in a Cooper pair. These processes are non-local and decay when the distance between the pair of involved contacts is larger than the superconducting coherence length. The conductance matrix of a the three terminal hybrid structure is calculated. The multi-probe processes enhance the conductance of each contact. If the contacts are magnetically polarized the contribution of the various conduction channels may be separately detected.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, accepted in Europhysics Letters, minor changes, 3 references adde

Andreev tunneling into a one-dimensional Josephson junction array

In this letter we consider Andreev tunneling between a normal metal and a one dimensional Josephson junction array with finite-range Coulomb energy. The $I-V$ characteristics strongly deviate from the classical linear Andreev current. We show that the non linear conductance possesses interesting scaling behavior when the chain undergoes a T=0 superconductor-insulator transition of Kosterlitz-Thouless-Berezinskii type. When the chain has quasi-long range order, the low lying excitation are gapless and the $I-V$ curves are power-law (the linear relation is recovered when charging energy can be disregarded). When the chain is in the insulating phase the Andreev current is blocked at a threshold which is proportional to the inverse correlation length in the chain (much lower than the Coulomb gap) and which vanishes at the transition point.Comment: 8 pages LATEX, 3 figures available upon reques

Indagini sulla incidenza della microcitosi e/o ipocromia nel cane

La microcitosi è una caratteristica alterazione ematologica comune a diversi stati patologici; molte di queste cause riconducono la loro patogenesi, seppur con meccanismi diversi, all’alterazione del metabolismo marziale, per altre i meccanismi sono ancora da accertare. L’obbiettivo della presente tesi è stato quello di valutare l’incidenza della microcitosi nel cane, associata o meno all’ipocromia, in un campione di 2300 emogrammi. Per gli emogrammi risultati microcitici, sono state esaminate le relative cartelle cliniche; queste sono state valutate singolarmente ricavandone informazioni riguardo l’anamnesi, lo stato patologico, la razza, il sesso ed altre variabili. Sono stati valutati anche il leucogramma, la morfologia cellulare ed altri parametri ematologici che potevano avere una possibile relazione con l’argomento trattato. Dalla casistica esaminata è scaturita una incidenza del 8,5% della microcitosi nell’emogramma del cane con maggior incidenza delle razze Rottweiler e Labrador. Le diagnosi più frequenti associate a microcitosi sono state di sindrome gastroenterica cronica, leishmaniosi, shunt portosistemico e artriti-artrosi . Le alterazioni ematologiche più rilevanti sono risultate: anemia non rigenerativa, anisocitosi eritrocitaria, macrotrombocitosi, ipocromia, iposideremia, iperfibrinogenemia