14,439 research outputs found

    Omnidirectional joint Patent

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    Cord restraint system for pressure suit joint

    Average and worst-case specifications of precipitating auroral electron environment

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    The precipitation electrons in the auroral environment are highly variable in their energy and intensity in both space and time. As such they are a source of potential hazard to the operation of the Space Shuttle and other large spacecraft operating in polar orbit. In order to assess these hazards both the average and extreme states of the precipitating electrons must be determined. Work aimed at such a specification is presented. First results of a global study of the average characteristics are presented. In this study the high latitude region was divided into spatial elements in magnetic local time and corrected geomagnetic latitude. The average electron spectrum was then determined in each spatial element for seven different levels of activity as measured by K sub p using an extremely large data set of auroral observations. Second a case study of an extreme auroral electron environment is presented, in which the electrons are accelerated through field aligned potential as high as 30,000 volts and in which the spacecraft is seen to charge negatively to a potential approaching .5 kilovolts

    Discriminating quantum-optical beam-splitter channels with number-diagonal signal states: Applications to quantum reading and target detection

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    We consider the problem of distinguishing, with minimum probability of error, two optical beam-splitter channels with unequal complex-valued reflectivities using general quantum probe states entangled over M signal and M' idler mode pairs of which the signal modes are bounced off the beam splitter while the idler modes are retained losslessly. We obtain a lower bound on the output state fidelity valid for any pure input state. We define number-diagonal signal (NDS) states to be input states whose density operator in the signal modes is diagonal in the multimode number basis. For such input states, we derive series formulas for the optimal error probability, the output state fidelity, and the Chernoff-type upper bounds on the error probability. For the special cases of quantum reading of a classical digital memory and target detection (for which the reflectivities are real valued), we show that for a given input signal photon probability distribution, the fidelity is minimized by the NDS states with that distribution and that for a given average total signal energy N_s, the fidelity is minimized by any multimode Fock state with N_s total signal photons. For reading of an ideal memory, it is shown that Fock state inputs minimize the Chernoff bound. For target detection under high-loss conditions, a no-go result showing the lack of appreciable quantum advantage over coherent state transmitters is derived. A comparison of the error probability performance for quantum reading of number state and two-mode squeezed vacuum state (or EPR state) transmitters relative to coherent state transmitters is presented for various values of the reflectances. While the nonclassical states in general perform better than the coherent state, the quantitative performance gains differ depending on the values of the reflectances.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. This closely approximates the published version. The major change from v2 is that Section IV has been re-organized, with a no-go result for target detection under high loss conditions highlighted. The last sentence of the abstract has been deleted to conform to the arXiv word limit. Please see the PDF for the full abstrac

    Relative entropy of entanglement for certain multipartite mixed states

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    We prove conjectures on the relative entropy of entanglement (REE) for two families of multipartite qubit states. Thus, analytic expressions of REE for these families of states can be given. The first family of states are composed of mixture of some permutation-invariant multi-qubit states. The results generalized to multi-qudit states are also shown to hold. The second family of states contain D\"ur's bound entangled states. Along the way, we have discussed the relation of REE to two other measures: robustness of entanglement and geometric measure of entanglement, slightly extending previous results.Comment: Single column, 22 pages, 9 figures, comments welcom

    Bell's theorem without inequalities and without unspeakable information

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    A proof of Bell's theorem without inequalities is presented in which distant local setups do not need to be aligned, since the required perfect correlations are achieved for any local rotation of the local setups.Comment: REVTeX4, 4 pages, 1 figure; for Asher Peres' Festschrift, to be published in Found. Phy

    Recovering star formation histories: Integrated-light analyses vs stellar colour-magnitude diagrams

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    Accurate star formation histories (SFHs) of galaxies are fundamental for understanding the build-up of their stellar content. However, the most accurate SFHs - those obtained from colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of resolved stars reaching the oldest main sequence turnoffs (oMSTO) - are presently limited to a few systems in the Local Group. It is therefore crucial to determine the reliability and range of applicability of SFHs derived from integrated light spectroscopy, as this affects our understanding of unresolved galaxies from low to high redshift. To evaluate the reliability of current full spectral fitting techniques in deriving SFHs from integrated light spectroscopy by comparing SFHs from integrated spectra to those obtained from deep CMDs of resolved stars. We have obtained a high signal--to--noise (S/N \sim 36.3 per \AA) integrated spectrum of a field in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using EFOSC2 at the 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla Observatory. For this same field, resolved stellar data reaching the oMSTO are available. We have compared the star formation rate (SFR) as a function of time and the age-metallicity relation (AMR) obtained from the integrated spectrum using {\tt STECKMAP}, and the CMD using the IAC-star/MinnIAC/IAC-pop set of routines. For the sake of completeness we also use and discuss other synthesis codes ({\tt STARLIGHT} and {\tt ULySS}) to derive the SFR and AMR from the integrated LMC spectrum. We find very good agreement (average differences \sim 4.1 %\%) between the SFR(t) and the AMR obtained using {\tt STECKMAP} on the integrated light spectrum, and the CMD analysis. {\tt STECKMAP} minimizes the impact of the age-metallicity degeneracy and has the advantage of preferring smooth solutions to recover complex SFHs by means of a penalized χ2\chi^2. [abridged]Comment: 23 pages, 24 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A (6 Sep 2015
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