Selection rules for the excitation of quantum dots by spatially structured light beams -- Application to the reconstruction of higher excited exciton wave functions

Spatially structured light fields applied to semiconductor quantum dots yield fundamentally different absorption spectra than homogeneous beams. In this paper, we theoretically discuss the resulting spectra for different light beams using a cylindrical multipole expansion. For the description of the quantum dots we employ a model based on the effective mass approximation including Coulomb and valence band mixing. The combination of a single spatially structured light beam and state mixing allows all exciton states in the quantum dot to become optically addressable. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the beams can be tailored such that single states are selectively excited, without the need of spectral separation. Using this selectivity, we propose a method to measure the exciton wave function of the quantum dot eigenstate. The measurement goes beyond electron density measurements by revealing the spatial phase information of the exciton wave function. Thereby polarization sensitive measurements are generalized by including the infinitely large spatial degree of freedom

Dark exciton preparation in a quantum dot by a longitudinal light field tuned to higher exciton states

Several important proposals to use semiconductor quantum dots in quantum information technology rely on the control of the dark exciton ground states, such as dark exciton based qubits with a microsecond lifetime. In this paper, we present an efficient way to occupy the dark exciton ground state by a single short laser pulse. The scheme is based on an optical excitation with a longitudinal field component featured by, e.g., radially polarized beams or certain Laguerre-Gauss or Bessel beams. Utilizing this component, we show within a configuration interaction approach that high-energy exciton states composed of light-hole excitons and higher dark heavy-hole excitons can be addressed. When the higher exciton relaxes, a dark exciton in its ground state is created.Fil: Holtkemper, M.. Westfälische Wilhelms Universität; AlemaniaFil: Quinteiro, Guillermo Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; ArgentinaFil: Reiter, Doris E.. Westfälische Wilhelms Universität; AlemaniaFil: Kuhn, Tilmann. Westfälische Wilhelms Universität; Alemani

High quality, patient centred andcoordinated care for Alstrom syndrome: amodel of care for an ultra-rare disease

Background: Patients with rare and ultra-rare diseases make heavy demands on the resources of both health and social services, but these resources are often used inefficiently due to delays in diagnosis, poor and fragmented care. We analysed the national service for an ultra-rare disease, Alstrom syndrome, and compared the outcome and cost of the service to the standard care. Methods: Between the 9th and 26th of March 2014 we undertook a cross-sectional study of the UK Alstrom syndrome patients and their carers. We developed a semi-structured questionnaire to assess our rare patient need, quality of care and costs incurred to patients and their careers. In the UK all Alstrom syndrome patients are seen in two centres, based in Birmingham, and we systematically evaluated the national service and compared the quality and cost of care with patients’ previous standard of care. Results: One quarter of genetically confirmed Alstrom syndrome UK patients were enrolled in this study. Patients that have access to a highly specialised clinical service reported that their care is well organised, personalised, holistic, and that they have a say in their care. All patients reported high level of satisfaction in their care. Patient treatment compliance and clinic attendance was better in multidisciplinary clinic than the usual standard of NHS care. Following a variable costing approach based on personnel and consumables’ cost, our valuation of the clinics was just under £700/patient/annum compared to the standard care of £960/patient/annum. Real savings, however, came in terms of patients’ quality of life. Furthermore there was found to have been a significant reduction in frequency of clinic visits and ordering of investigations since the establishment of the national service. Conclusions: Our study has shown that organised, multidisciplinary “one stop” clinics are patient centred and individually tailored to the patient need with a better outcome and comparable cost compared with the current standard of care for rare disease. Our proposed care model can be adapted to several other rare and ultra-rare diseases

Maximum likelihood estimation of locus-specific mutation rates in Y-chromosome short tandem repeats

Motivation: Y-chromosome short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) are widely used for population studies, forensic purposes and, potentially, the study of disease, therefore knowledge of their mutation rate is valuable. Here we show a novel method for estimation of site-specific Y-STR mutation rates from partial phylogenetic information, via the maximum likelihood framework

Femtosecond Transfer and Manipulation of Persistent Hot-Trion Coherence in a Single CdSe/ZnSe Quantum Dot

Ultrafast transmission changes around the fundamental trion resonance are studied after exciting a p-shell exciton in a negatively charged II-VI quantum dot. The biexcitonic induced absorption reveals quantum beats between hot trion states at 133 GHz. While interband dephasing is dominated by relaxation of the P-shell hole within 390 fs, trionic coherence remains stored in the spin system for 85 ps due to Pauli blocking of the triplet electron. The complex spectro-temporal evolution of transmission is explained analytically by solving the Maxwell-Liouville equations. Pump and probe polarizations provide full control over amplitude and phase of the quantum beats

AI Lifecycle Zero-Touch Orchestration within the Edge-to-Cloud Continuum for Industry 5.0

The advancements in human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI) systems for Industry 5.0 is a new phase of industrialization that places the worker at the center of the production process and uses new technologies to increase prosperity beyond jobs and growth. HCAI presents new objectives that were unreachable by either humans or machines alone, but this also comes with a new set of challenges. Our proposed method accomplishes this through the knowlEdge architecture, which enables human operators to implement AI solutions using a zero-touch framework. It relies on containerized AI model training and execution, supported by a robust data pipeline and rounded off with human feedback and evaluation interfaces. The result is a platform built from a number of components, spanning all major areas of the AI lifecycle. We outline both the architectural concepts and implementation guidelines and explain how they advance HCAI systems and Industry 5.0. In this article, we address the problems we encountered while implementing the ideas within the edge-to-cloud continuum. Further improvements to our approach may enhance the use of AI in Industry 5.0 and strengthen trust in AI systems

Comprehensive mutation analysis of 17 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat polymorphisms included in the AmpFlSTR® Yfiler® PCR amplification kit

The Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat (Y-STR) polymorphisms included in the AmpFlSTR® Yfiler® polymerase chain reaction amplification kit have become widely used for forensic and evolutionary applications where a reliable knowledge on mutation properties is necessary for correct data interpretation. Therefore, we investigated the 17 Yfiler Y-STRs in 1,730–1,764 DNA-confirmed father–son pairs per locus and found 84 sequence-confirmed mutations among the 29,792 meiotic transfers covered. Of the 84 mutations, 83 (98.8%) were single-repeat changes and one (1.2%) was a double-repeat change (ratio, 1:0.01), as well as 43 (51.2%) were repeat gains and 41 (48.8%) repeat losses (ratio, 1:0.95). Medians from Bayesian estimation of locus-specific mutation rates ranged from 0.0003 for DYS448 to 0.0074 for DYS458, with a median rate across all 17 Y-STRs of 0.0025. The mean age (at the time of son’s birth) of fathers with mutations was with 34.40 (±11.63) years higher than that of fathers without ones at 30.32 (±10.22) years, a difference that is highly statistically significant (p < 0.001). A Poisson-based modeling revealed that the Y-STR mutation rate increased with increasing father’s age on a statistically significant level (α = 0.0294, 2.5% quantile = 0.0001). From combining our data with those previously published, considering all together 135,212 meiotic events and 331 mutations, we conclude for the Yfiler Y-STRs that (1) none had a mutation rate of >1%, 12 had mutation rates of >0.1% and four of <0.1%, (2) single-repeat changes were strongly favored over multiple-repeat ones for all loci but 1 and (3) considerable variation existed among loci in the ratio of repeat gains versus losses. Our finding of three Y-STR mutations in one father–son pair (and two pairs with two mutations each) has consequences for determining the threshold of allelic differences to conclude exclusion constellations in future applications of Y-STRs in paternity testing and pedigree analyses