Optimal nonlocal multipartite entanglement concentration based on projection measurements

We propose an optimal nonlocal entanglement concentration protocol (ECP) for multi-photon systems in a partially entangled pure state, resorting to the projection measurement on an additional photon. One party in quantum communication first performs a parity-check measurement on her photon in an N-photon system and an additional photon, and then she projects the additional photon into an orthogonal Hilbert space for dividing the original $N$-photon systems into two groups. In the first group, the N parties will obtain a subset of $N$-photon systems in a maximally entangled state. In the second group, they will obtain some less-entangled N-photon systems which are the resource for the entanglement concentration in the next round. By iterating the entanglement concentration process several times, the present ECP has the maximal success probability which is just equivalent to the entanglement of the partially entangled state. That is, this ECP is an optimal one.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Work Function of Single-wall Silicon Carbide Nanotube

Using first-principles calculations, we study the work function of single wall silicon carbide nanotube (SiCNT). The work function is found to be highly dependent on the tube chirality and diameter. It increases with decreasing the tube diameter. The work function of zigzag SiCNT is always larger than that of armchair SiCNT. We reveal that the difference between the work function of zigzag and armchair SiCNT comes from their different intrinsic electronic structures, for which the singly degenerate energy band above the Fermi level of zigzag SiCNT is specifically responsible. Our finding offers potential usages of SiCNT in field-emission devices.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Efficient multipartite entanglement purification with the entanglement link from a subspace

We present an efficient multipartite entanglement purification protocol (MEPP) for N-photon systems in a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state with parity-check detectors. It contains two parts. One is the conventional MEPP with which the parties can obtain a high-fidelity N-photon ensemble directly, similar to the MEPP with controlled-not gates. The other is our recycling MEPP in which the entanglement link is used to produce some $N$-photon entangled systems from entangled N'-photon subsystems (2 \leq N'<N) coming from the instances which are just discarded in all existing conventional MEPPs. The entangled N'-photon subsystems are obtained efficiently by measuring the photons with potential bit-flip errors. With these two parts, the present MEPP has a higher efficiency than all other conventional MEPPs.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables. We correct the error in the address of the author in the published version (Phys. Rev. A 84, 052312 (2011)

Characterising Probabilistic Processes Logically

In this paper we work on (bi)simulation semantics of processes that exhibit both nondeterministic and probabilistic behaviour. We propose a probabilistic extension of the modal mu-calculus and show how to derive characteristic formulae for various simulation-like preorders over finite-state processes without divergence. In addition, we show that even without the fixpoint operators this probabilistic mu-calculus can be used to characterise these behavioural relations in the sense that two states are equivalent if and only if they satisfy the same set of formulae.Comment: 18 page

Tripartite Graph Clustering for Dynamic Sentiment Analysis on Social Media

The growing popularity of social media (e.g, Twitter) allows users to easily share information with each other and influence others by expressing their own sentiments on various subjects. In this work, we propose an unsupervised \emph{tri-clustering} framework, which analyzes both user-level and tweet-level sentiments through co-clustering of a tripartite graph. A compelling feature of the proposed framework is that the quality of sentiment clustering of tweets, users, and features can be mutually improved by joint clustering. We further investigate the evolution of user-level sentiments and latent feature vectors in an online framework and devise an efficient online algorithm to sequentially update the clustering of tweets, users and features with newly arrived data. The online framework not only provides better quality of both dynamic user-level and tweet-level sentiment analysis, but also improves the computational and storage efficiency. We verified the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches on the November 2012 California ballot Twitter data.Comment: A short version is in Proceeding of the 2014 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of dat

A conceptual framework for developing explorative e-learning strategy using ontology-based knowledge management

This paper presents a conceptual framework for developing explorative e-learning strategy using ontology-based knowledge management. It conducts a comprehensive analysis of the applicability of ontologies in management of knowledge, with a particular reference to the development of explorative e-learning environments for enhancing an efficient use and reuse of available information and knowledge in e-learning, leading to a better understanding of the main issues for developing effective explorative e-learning strategies in an e-learning environment

Circular quantum secret sharing

A circular quantum secret sharing protocol is proposed, which is useful and efficient when one of the parties of secret sharing is remote to the others who are in adjacent, especially the parties are more than three. We describe the process of this protocol and discuss its security when the quantum information carrying is polarized single photons running circularly. It will be shown that entanglement is not necessary for quantum secret sharing. Moreover, the theoretic efficiency is improved to approach 100% as almost all the instances can be used for generating the private key, and each photon can carry one bit of information without quantum storage. It is straightforwardly to utilize this topological structure to complete quantum secret sharing with multi-level two-particle entanglement in high capacity securely.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Quantum secret sharing between m-party and n-party with six states

We propose a quantum secret sharing scheme between $m$-party and $n$-party using three conjugate bases, i.e. six states. A sequence of single photons, each of which is prepared in one of the six states, is used directly to encode classical information in the quantum secret sharing process. In this scheme, each of all $m$ members in group 1 choose randomly their own secret key individually and independently, and then directly encode their respective secret information on the states of single photons via unitary operations, then the last one (the $m$th member of group 1) sends $1/n$ of the resulting qubits to each of group 2. By measuring their respective qubits, all members in group 2 share the secret information shared by all members in group 1. The secret message shared by group 1 and group 2 in such a way that neither subset of each group nor the union of a subset of group 1 and a subset of group 2 can extract the secret message, but each whole group (all the members of each group) can. The scheme is asymptotically 100% in efficiency. It makes the Trojan horse attack with a multi-photon signal, the fake-signal attack with EPR pairs, the attack with single photons, and the attack with invisible photons to be nullification. We show that it is secure and has an advantage over the one based on two conjugate bases. We also give the upper bounds of the average success probabilities for dishonest agent eavesdropping encryption using the fake-signal attack with any two-particle entangled states. This protocol is feasible with present-day technique.Comment: 7 page

Water productivity in Zhanghe Irrigation System: issues of scale

Irrigation systemsWater productivityReservoirsWater useWater stressWater conservationRicePaddy fieldsCrop yield