Characterization of a Quantum Light Source Based on Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion

We have built a quantum light source capable of producing different types of quantum states. The quantum light source is based on entangled state preparation in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The single-photon detection rate of eight-hundred thousand per second demonstrates that we have created a bright state-of-the-art quantum light source. As a part of the characterization we measured two-photon quantum interference in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer.Comment: 33 page

Meerjarige tuinbouwsamenwerking met Indonesië beëindigd: HORTIN, terugblik op een succesvolle samenwerking

Eind november 2010 werd in Jakarta de tweede fase van het programma Horticultural Research co-operation between Indonesia and The Netherlands (HORTIN) afgesloten. De eerste fase liep van 2003 tot en met 2006. De samenwerking in de eerste fase concentreerde zich op onderzoek. Tijdens de tweede fase (2007-2010) lag de nadruk op co-innovatie en ontwikkeling in de hele keten, van productie tot afzet van tuinbouwproducten, in nauwe samenwerking met bedrijven uit het mkb

Decision support for crew rostering at NS

This paper describes a method for solving the cyclic crew rostering problem (CCRP). This is the problem of cyclically ordering a set of duties for a number of crew members, such that several complex constraints are satisfied and such that the quality of the obtained roster is as high as possible. The described method was tested on a number of instances of NS, the largest operator of passenger trains in the Netherlands. These instances involve the generation of rosters for groups of train drivers or conductors of NS. The tests show that high quality solutions for practical instances of the CCRP can be generated in an acceptable amount of computing time. Finally, we describe an experiment where we constructed rosters in an automatic way for a group of conductors. They preferred our—generated—rosters over their own manually constructed rosters