1,649 research outputs found
Stable hydrogen and carbon isotope ratios of extractable hydrocarbons in the Murchison meteorite
A fairly fool-proof method to ensure that the compounds isolated from meteorites are truly part of the meteorites and not an artifact introduced by exposure to the terrestrial environment, storage, or handling is presented. The stable carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios in several of the chemical compounds extracted from the Murchison meteorite were measured. The results obtained by studying the amino acids in this meteorite gave very unusual hydrogen and carbon isotope ratios. The technique was extended to the different classes of hydrocarbons and the hydrocarbons were isolated using a variety of separation techniques. The results and methods used in this investigation are described in this two page paper
Isotopic composition of Murchison organic compounds: Intramolecular carbon isotope fractionation of acetic acid. Simulation studies of cosmochemical organic syntheses
Recently, in our laboratories, samples of Murchison acetic acid were decarboxylated successfully and the carbon isotopic composition was measured for the methane released by this procedure. These analyses showed significant differences in C-13/C-12 ratios for the methyl and carboxyl carbons of the acetic acid molecule, strongly suggesting that more than one carbon source may be involved in the synthesis of the Murchison organic compounds. On the basis of this finding, laboratory model systems simulating cosmochemical synthesis are being studied, especially those processes capable of involving two or more starting carbon sources
Operational Theory of Homodyne Detection
We discuss a balanced homodyne detection scheme with imperfect detectors in
the framework of the operational approach to quantum measurement. We show that
a realistic homodyne measurement is described by a family of operational
observables that depends on the experimental setup, rather than a single field
quadrature operator. We find an explicit form of this family, which fully
characterizes the experimental device and is independent of a specific state of
the measured system. We also derive operational homodyne observables for the
setup with a random phase, which has been recently applied in an ultrafast
measurement of the photon statistics of a pulsed diode laser. The operational
formulation directly gives the relation between the detected noise and the
intrinsic quantum fluctuations of the measured field. We demonstrate this on
two examples: the operational uncertainty relation for the field quadratures,
and the homodyne detection of suppressed fluctuations in photon statistics.Comment: 7 pages, REVTe
Sub shot noise phase quadrature measurement of intense light beams
We present a setup to perform sub shot noise measurements of the phase
quadrature for intense pulsed light without the use of a separate local
oscillator. A Mach--Zehnder interferometer with an unbalanced arm length is
used to detect the fluctuations of the phase quadrature at a single side band
frequency. Using this setup, the non--separability of a pair of quadrature
entangled beams is demonstrated experimentally.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Optics Letter
Parameters estimation in quantum optics
We address several estimation problems in quantum optics by means of the
maximum-likelihood principle. We consider Gaussian state estimation and the
determination of the coupling parameters of quadratic Hamiltonians. Moreover,
we analyze different schemes of phase-shift estimation. Finally, the absolute
estimation of the quantum efficiency of both linear and avalanche
photodetectors is studied. In all the considered applications, the Gaussian
bound on statistical errors is attained with a few thousand data.Comment: 11 pages. 6 figures. Accepted on Phys. Rev.
Quantum-noise--randomized data-encryption for WDM fiber-optic networks
We demonstrate high-rate randomized data-encryption through optical fibers
using the inherent quantum-measurement noise of coherent states of light.
Specifically, we demonstrate 650Mbps data encryption through a 10Gbps
data-bearing, in-line amplified 200km-long line. In our protocol, legitimate
users (who share a short secret-key) communicate using an M-ry signal set while
an attacker (who does not share the secret key) is forced to contend with the
fundamental and irreducible quantum-measurement noise of coherent states.
Implementations of our protocol using both polarization-encoded signal sets as
well as polarization-insensitive phase-keyed signal sets are experimentally and
theoretically evaluated. Different from the performance criteria for the
cryptographic objective of key generation (quantum key-generation), one
possible set of performance criteria for the cryptographic objective of data
encryption is established and carefully considered.Comment: Version 2: Some errors have been corrected and arguments refined. To
appear in Physical Review A. Version 3: Minor corrections to version
Homodyne detection for measuring internal quantum correlations of optical pulses
A new method is described for determining the quantum correlations at
different times in optical pulses by using balanced homodyne detection. The
signal pulse and sequences of ultrashort test pulses are superimposed, where
for chosen distances between the test pulses their relative phases and
intensities are varied from measurement to measurement. The correlation
statistics of the signal pulse is obtained from the time-integrated difference
photocurrents measured.Comment: 7 pages, A4.sty include
Purity of Gaussian states: measurement schemes and time-evolution in noisy channels
We present a systematic study of the purity for Gaussian states of
single-mode continuous variable systems. We prove the connection of purity to
observable quantities for these states, and show that the joint measurement of
two conjugate quadratures is necessary and sufficient to determine the purity
at any time. The statistical reliability and the range of applicability of the
proposed measurement scheme is tested by means of Monte Carlo simulated
experiments. We then consider the dynamics of purity in noisy channels. We
derive an evolution equation for the purity of general Gaussian states both in
thermal and squeezed thermal baths. We show that purity is maximized at any
given time for an initial coherent state evolving in a thermal bath, or for an
initial squeezed state evolving in a squeezed thermal bath whose asymptotic
squeezing is orthogonal to that of the input state.Comment: 9 Pages, 6 Figures; minor errors correcte
Heterodyne and adaptive phase measurements on states of fixed mean photon number
The standard technique for measuring the phase of a single mode field is
heterodyne detection. Such a measurement may have an uncertainty far above the
intrinsic quantum phase uncertainty of the state. Recently it has been shown
[H. M. Wiseman and R. B. Killip, Phys. Rev. A 57, 2169 (1998)] that an adaptive
technique introduces far less excess noise. Here we quantify this difference by
an exact numerical calculation of the minimum measured phase variance for the
various schemes, optimized over states with a fixed mean photon number. We also
analytically derive the asymptotics for these variances. For the case of
heterodyne detection our results disagree with the power law claimed by
D'Ariano and Paris [Phys. Rev. A 49, 3022 (1994)].Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, minor changes from journal versio
Gaussian Wigner distributions and hierarchies of nonclassical states in quantum optics-The single mode case
A recently introduced hierarchy of states of a single mode quantised
radiation field is examined for the case of centered Guassian Wigner
distributions. It is found that the onset of squeezing among such states
signals the transition to the strongly nonclassical regime. Interesting
consequences for the photon number distribution, and explicit representations
for them, are presented.Comment: 11 Pages Revtex one eps figure. Replaced with minor changes in ref
- …