1,828 research outputs found
Reading Fantasy for a Better Understanding of Spiritual Life in a Material World
Can reading the fantasy works of certain authors help us better understand difficult spiritual concepts, gain insights bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds, and help us live spiritually-fulfilled lives in a material world? In George MacDonald’s novel Phantasies: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women, Anodos experiences twenty-one years of life in fairyland in twenty-one days, gains spiritual insights from those adventures, and is thereafter a changed person. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel, The Children of Húrin, the son Túrin repeatedly illustrates the spiritual interplay between God’s Grace, evil’s curse, and consequences in the material world of man’s free will. In C. S. Lewis’s fantasy, The Screwtape Letters one sentence, “Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal”, is an important key concept on the dynamic challenge of living spiritually in a material world and gives insights into Lewis’ writing
Heat pumping with optically driven excitons
We present a theoretical study showing that an optically driven excitonic
two-level system in a solid state environment acts as a heat pump by means of
repeated phonon emission or absorption events. We derive a master equation for
the combined phonon bath and two-level system dynamics and analyze the
direction and rate of energy transfer as a function of the externally
accessible driving parameters. We discover that if the driving laser is detuned
from the exciton transition, cooling the phonon environment becomes possible
A general approach to quantum dynamics using a variational master equation: Application to phonon-damped Rabi rotations in quantum dots
We develop a versatile master equation approach to describe the
non-equilibrium dynamics of a two-level system in contact with a bosonic
environment, which allows for the exploration of a wide range of parameter
regimes within a single formalism. As an experimentally relevant example, we
apply this technique to the study of excitonic Rabi rotations in a driven
quantum dot, and compare its predictions to the numerical Feynman integral
approach. We find excellent agreement between the two methods across a
generally difficult range of parameters. In particular, the variational master
equation technique captures effects usually considered to be non-perturbative,
such as multi-phonon processes and bath-induced driving renormalisation, and
can give reliable results even in regimes in which previous master equation
approaches fail.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Published version, revised title, minor changes
to the tex
Quantum-enhanced capture of photons using optical ratchet states
Natural and artificial light harvesting systems often operate in a regime
where the flux of photons is relatively low. Besides absorbing as many photons
as possible it is therefore paramount to prevent excitons from annihilation via
photon re-emission until they have undergone an irreversible energy conversion
process. Taking inspiration from photosynthetic antenna structures, we here
consider ring-like systems and introduce a class of states we call ratchets:
excited states capable of absorbing but not emitting light. This allows our
antennae to absorb further photons whilst retaining the excitations from those
that have already been captured. Simulations for a ring of four sites reveal a
peak power enhancement by up to a factor of 35 under ambient conditions owing
to a combination of ratcheting and the prevention of emission through
dark-state population. In the slow extraction limit the achievable power
enhancement due to ratcheting alone exceeds 20%.Comment: major revision with improved model (all data and figures updated
The type of adjuvant in whole inactivated influenza a virus vaccines impacts vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease
Influenza A virus (IAV) causes a disease burden in the swine industry in the US and is a challenge to prevent due to substantial genetic and antigenic diversity of IAV that circulate in pig populations. Whole inactivated virus (WIV) vaccines formulated with oil-in-water (OW) adjuvant are commonly used in swine. However, WIV-OW are associated with vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD) when the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase of the vaccine strain are mismatched with the challenge virus. Here, we assessed if different types of adjuvant in WIV vaccine formulations impacted VAERD outcome. WIV vaccines with a swine δ1-H1N2 were formulated with different commercial adjuvants: OW1, OW2, nano-emulsion squalene-based (NE) and gel polymer (GP). Pigs were vaccinated twice by the intramuscular route, 3 weeks apart, then challenged with an H1N1pdm09 three weeks post-boost and necropsied at 5 days post infection. All WIV vaccines elicited antibodies detected using the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay against the homologous vaccine virus, but not against the heterologous challenge virus; in contrast, all vaccinated groups had cross-reactive IgG antibody and IFN-γ responses against H1N1pdm09, with a higher magnitude observed in OW groups. Both OW groups demonstrated robust homologous HI titers and cross-reactivity against heterologous H1 viruses in the same genetic lineage. However, both OW groups had severe immunopathology consistent with VAERD after challenge when compared to NE, GP, and non-vaccinated challenge controls. None of the WIV formulations protected pigs from heterologous virus replication in the lungs or nasal cavity. Thus, although the type of adjuvant in the WIV formulation played a significant role in the magnitude of immune response to homologous and antigenically similar H1, none tested here increased the breadth of protection against the antigenically-distinct challenge virus, and some impacted immunopathology after challenge
Overcoming phonon-induced dephasing for indistinguishable photon sources
Reliable single photon sources constitute the basis of schemes for quantum
communication and measurement based quantum computing. Solid state single
photon sources based on quantum dots are convenient and versatile but the
electronic transitions that generate the photons are subject to interactions
with lattice vibrations. Using a microscopic model of electron-phonon
interactions and a quantum master equation, we here examine phonon-induced
decoherence and assess its impact on the rate of production, and
indistinguishability, of single photons emitted from an optically driven
quantum dot system. We find that, above a certain threshold of desired
indistinguishability, it is possible to mitigate the deleterious effects of
phonons by exploiting a three-level Raman process for photon production
Entanglement of Remote Spins with Unequal Coupling to an Optically Active Mediator
We demonstrate that two remote qubits can be entangled through an optically
active intermediary even if the coupling strengths between mediator and qubits
are different. This is true for a broad class of interactions. We consider two
contrasting scenarios. First, we extend the analysis of a previously studied
gate operation which relies on pulsed, dynamical control of the optical state
and which may be performed quickly. We show that remote spins can be entangled
in this case even when the intermediary coupling strengths are unequal. Second,
we propose an alternative adiabatic control procedure, and find that the system
requirements become even less restrictive in this case. The scheme could be
tested immediately in a range of systems including molecules, quantum dots, or
defects in crystals.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
Screening nuclear field fluctuations in quantum dots for indistinguishable photon generation
A semiconductor quantum dot can generate highly coherent and
indistinguishable single photons. However, intrinsic semiconductor dephasing
mechanisms can reduce the visibility of two-photon interference. For an
electron in a quantum dot, a fundamental dephasing process is the hyperfine
interaction with the nuclear spin bath. Here we directly probe the consequence
of the fluctuating nuclear spins on the elastic and inelastic scattered photon
spectra from a resident electron in a single dot. We find the nuclear spin
fluctuations lead to detuned Raman scattered photons which are distinguishable
from both the elastic and incoherent components of the resonance fluorescence.
This significantly reduces two-photon interference visibility. However, we
demonstrate successful screening of the nuclear spin noise which enables the
generation of coherent single photons that exhibit high visibility two-photon
interference.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Informatio
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