A low stray light, high current, low energy electron source

A design of an electron gun system is presented whose stray light emission is reduced by about three orders of magnitude compared to a regular low-energy electron diffraction gun. This is achieved by a combination of a BaO cathode run at rather low temperature and a 30° tandem parallel-plate analyzer used as an optical baffle. The system provides a high beam current of several microampers at 50 eV beam energy. The system can be used down to ∼10 eV

Measurement of the hyperfine structure of the S1/2-D5/2 transition in 43Ca+

The hyperfine structure of the S1/2-D5/2 quadrupole transition at 729 nm in 43Ca+ has been investigated by laser spectroscopy using a single trapped 43Ca+ ion. We determine the hyperfine structure constants of the metastable level as A=-3.8931(2) MHz and B=-4.241(4) MHz. The isotope shift of the transition with respect to 40Ca+ was measured to be 4134.713(5) MHz. We demonstrate the existence of transitions that become independent of the first-order Zeeman shift at non-zero low magnetic fields. These transitions might be better suited for building a frequency standard than the well-known 'clock transitions' between m=0 levels at zero magnetic field.Comment: corrected for sign errors in the hyperfine constants. No corrections to were made to the data analysi

Process tomography of ion trap quantum gates

A crucial building block for quantum information processing with trapped ions is a controlled-NOT quantum gate. In this paper, two different sequences of laser pulses implementing such a gate operation are analyzed using quantum process tomography. Fidelities of up to 92.6(6)% are achieved for single gate operations and up to 83.4(8)% for two concatenated gate operations. By process tomography we assess the performance of the gates for different experimental realizations and demonstrate the advantage of amplitude--shaped laser pulses over simple square pulses. We also investigate whether the performance of concatenated gates can be inferred from the analysis of the single gates

Low Field set-up for Magnetic Resonance Imaging

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Wind Energy and the Turbulent Nature of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Wind turbines operate in the atmospheric boundary layer, where they are exposed to the turbulent atmospheric flows. As the response time of wind turbine is typically in the range of seconds, they are affected by the small scale intermittent properties of the turbulent wind. Consequently, basic features which are known for small-scale homogeneous isotropic turbulence, and in particular the well-known intermittency problem, have an important impact on the wind energy conversion process. We report on basic research results concerning the small-scale intermittent properties of atmospheric flows and their impact on the wind energy conversion process. The analysis of wind data shows strongly intermittent statistics of wind fluctuations. To achieve numerical modeling a data-driven superposition model is proposed. For the experimental reproduction and adjustment of intermittent flows a so-called active grid setup is presented. Its ability is shown to generate reproducible properties of atmospheric flows on the smaller scales of the laboratory conditions of a wind tunnel. As an application example the response dynamics of different anemometer types are tested. To achieve a proper understanding of the impact of intermittent turbulent inflow properties on wind turbines we present methods of numerical and stochastic modeling, and compare the results to measurement data. As a summarizing result we find that atmospheric turbulence imposes its intermittent features on the complete wind energy conversion process. Intermittent turbulence features are not only present in atmospheric wind, but are also dominant in the loads on the turbine, i.e. rotor torque and thrust, and in the electrical power output signal. We conclude that profound knowledge of turbulent statistics and the application of suitable numerical as well as experimental methods are necessary to grasp these unique features (...)Comment: Accepted by the Journal of Turbulence on May 17, 201

Robust entanglement

It is common belief among physicists that entangled states of quantum systems loose their coherence rather quickly. The reason is that any interaction with the environment which distinguishes between the entangled sub-systems collapses the quantum state. Here we investigate entangled states of two trapped Ca$^+$ ions and observe robust entanglement lasting for more than 20 seconds