3,057 research outputs found
Heralded Two-Photon Entanglement from Probabilistic Quantum Logic Operations on Multiple Parametric Down-Conversion Sources
An ideal controlled-NOT gate followed by projective measurements can be used
to identify specific Bell states of its two input qubits. When the input qubits
are each members of independent Bell states, these projective measurements can
be used to swap the post-selected entanglement onto the remaining two qubits.
Here we apply this strategy to produce heralded two-photon polarization
entanglement using Bell states that originate from independent parametric
down-conversion sources, and a particular probabilistic controlled-NOT gate
that is constructed from linear optical elements. The resulting implementation
is closely related to an earlier proposal by Sliwa and Banaszek
[quant-ph/0207117], and can be intuitively understood in terms of familiar
quantum information protocols. The possibility of producing a ``pseudo-demand''
source of two-photon entanglement by storing and releasing these heralded pairs
from independent cyclical quantum memory devices is also discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; submitted to IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in
Quantum Electronics, special issue on "Quantum Internet Technologies
European Renewable Energy Governance under the Hammer: Interrogating the Rise and Rise of the RES Auction
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from UACES via the link in this recordAs a renewable energy pioneer, the EU is a laboratory for policy instrument evolution and innovation. Following many years of debate about the relative merit of feed-in tariffs and tradable green certificates for promoting renewable electricity expansion in Europe, there is a new instrument in town. The renewable energy support (RES) auction has rapidly become the instrument of choice, de facto mandated by the European Commission under state-aid law. RES auctions are now the main instrument in many European countries. A common explanation for the adoption of RES auctions by EU member states is that the Commission requires their implementation under state-aid law, and member states acquiesced. This paper casts a critical eye over this “coercive Commission” explanation by constructing an account of the transition to auctions in Germany and Spain, each titans of EU renewable energy. By focussing on the necessary conditions for the coercive Commission argument – institutional compatibility and supportive domestic interest constituencies – we provide a qualified account of Commission action in this area and show a more dynamic and strategic approach to RES policy instrument harmonisation. We conclude by suggesting that future research may usefully examine the implications of a pan-European system of centrally coordinated auctions for the long-term future in of RES policy in the EU.European Commissio
Photon number resolving detection using time-multiplexing
Detectors that can resolve photon number are needed in many quantum
information technologies. In order to be useful in quantum information
processing, such detectors should be simple, easy to use, and be scalable to
resolve any number of photons, as the application may require great portability
such as in quantum cryptography. Here we describe the construction of a
time-multiplexed detector, which uses a pair of standard avalanche photodiodes
operated in Geiger mode. The detection technique is analysed theoretically and
tested experimentally using a pulsed source of weak coherent light.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, accepted to Journal of Modern Optic
Visualizing sound emission of elephant vocalizations: evidence for two rumble production types
Recent comparative data reveal that formant frequencies are cues to body size in animals, due to a close relationship between formant frequency spacing, vocal tract length and overall body size. Accordingly, intriguing morphological adaptations to elongate the vocal tract in order to lower formants occur in several species, with the size exaggeration hypothesis being proposed to justify most of these observations. While the elephant trunk is strongly implicated to account for the low formants of elephant rumbles, it is unknown whether elephants emit these vocalizations exclusively through the trunk, or whether the mouth is also involved in rumble production. In this study we used a sound visualization method (an acoustic camera) to record rumbles of five captive African elephants during spatial separation and subsequent bonding situations. Our results showed that the female elephants in our analysis produced two distinct types of rumble vocalizations based on vocal path differences: a nasally- and an orally-emitted rumble. Interestingly, nasal rumbles predominated during contact calling, whereas oral rumbles were mainly produced in bonding situations. In addition, nasal and oral rumbles varied considerably in their acoustic structure. In particular, the values of the first two formants reflected the estimated lengths of the vocal paths, corresponding to a vocal tract length of around 2 meters for nasal, and around 0.7 meters for oral rumbles. These results suggest that African elephants may be switching vocal paths to actively vary vocal tract length (with considerable variation in formants) according to context, and call for further research investigating the function of formant modulation in elephant vocalizations. Furthermore, by confirming the use of the elephant trunk in long distance rumble production, our findings provide an explanation for the extremely low formants in these calls, and may also indicate that formant lowering functions to increase call propagation distances in this species'
Using Regular Languages to Explore the Representational Capacity of Recurrent Neural Architectures
The presence of Long Distance Dependencies (LDDs) in sequential data poses
significant challenges for computational models. Various recurrent neural
architectures have been designed to mitigate this issue. In order to test these
state-of-the-art architectures, there is growing need for rich benchmarking
datasets. However, one of the drawbacks of existing datasets is the lack of
experimental control with regards to the presence and/or degree of LDDs. This
lack of control limits the analysis of model performance in relation to the
specific challenge posed by LDDs. One way to address this is to use synthetic
data having the properties of subregular languages. The degree of LDDs within
the generated data can be controlled through the k parameter, length of the
generated strings, and by choosing appropriate forbidden strings. In this
paper, we explore the capacity of different RNN extensions to model LDDs, by
evaluating these models on a sequence of SPk synthesized datasets, where each
subsequent dataset exhibits a longer degree of LDD. Even though SPk are simple
languages, the presence of LDDs does have significant impact on the performance
of recurrent neural architectures, thus making them prime candidate in
benchmarking tasks.Comment: International Conference of Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN) 201
Long-term photometric behaviour of XZ Dra Binarity or magnetic cycle of a Blazhko type RRab star
The extended photometry available for XZ Dra, a Blazhko type RR Lyrae star,
makes it possible to study its long-term behavior. It is shown that its
pulsation period exhibit cyclic, but not strictly regular variations with
approx. 7200 d period. The Blazhko period (approx. 76 d) seems to follow the
observed period changes of the fundamental mode pulsation with dP_B/dP_0=7.7 x
10^4 gradient. Binary model cannot explain this order of period change of the
Blazhko modulation, nevertheless it can be brought into agreement with the O-C
data of the pulsation. The possibility of occurrence of magnetic cycle is
raised.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures (submitted to A&A
Photon number resolution using a time-multiplexed single-photon detector
Photon number resolving detectors are needed for a variety of applications
including linear-optics quantum computing. Here we describe the use of
time-multiplexing techniques that allows ordinary single photon detectors, such
as silicon avalanche photodiodes, to be used as photon number-resolving
detectors. The ability of such a detector to correctly measure the number of
photons for an incident number state is analyzed. The predicted results for an
incident coherent state are found to be in good agreement with the results of a
proof-of-principle experimental demonstration.Comment: REVTeX4, 6 pages, 8 eps figures, v2: minor changes, v3: changes in
response to referee report, appendix added, 1 reference adde
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