A Chain-Boson Model for the Decoherence and Relaxation of a Few Coupled SQUIDs in a Phonon Bath

We develop a "chain-boson model" master equation, within the Born-Markov approximation, for a few superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) coupled into a chain and exchanging their angular momenta with a low temperature phonon bath. Our master equation has four generators; we concentrate on the damping and diffusion and use them to study the relaxation and decoherence of a Heisenberg SQUID chain whose spectrum exhibits critical point energy-level crossings, entangled states, and pairs of resonant transitions. We note that at an energy-level crossing the relevant bath wavelengths are so long that even well-spaced large SQUIDs can partially exhibit collective coupling to the bath, dramatically reducing certain relaxation and decoherence rates. Also, transitions into entangled states can occur even in the case of an independent coupling of each SQUID to the bath. Finally, the pairs of resonant transitions can cause decaying oscillations to emerge in a lower energy subspace.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Fluctuations of the vacuum energy density of quantum fields in curved spacetime via generalized zeta functions

For quantum fields on a curved spacetime with an Euclidean section, we derive a general expression for the stress energy tensor two-point function in terms of the effective action. The renormalized two-point function is given in terms of the second variation of the Mellin transform of the trace of the heat kernel for the quantum fields. For systems for which a spectral decomposition of the wave opearator is possible, we give an exact expression for this two-point function. Explicit examples of the variance to the mean ratio $\Delta' = (-^2)/(^2)$ of the vacuum energy density $\rho$ of a massless scalar field are computed for the spatial topologies of $R^d\times S^1$ and $S^3$, with results of $\Delta'(R^d\times S^1) =(d+1)(d+2)/2$, and $\Delta'(S^3) = 111$ respectively. The large variance signifies the importance of quantum fluctuations and has important implications for the validity of semiclassical gravity theories at sub-Planckian scales. The method presented here can facilitate the calculation of stress-energy fluctuations for quantum fields useful for the analysis of fluctuation effects and critical phenomena in problems ranging from atom optics and mesoscopic physics to early universe and black hole physics.Comment: Uses revte

Gain-constrained recursive filtering with stochastic nonlinearities and probabilistic sensor delays

This is the post-print of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2013 IEEE.This paper is concerned with the gain-constrained recursive filtering problem for a class of time-varying nonlinear stochastic systems with probabilistic sensor delays and correlated noises. The stochastic nonlinearities are described by statistical means that cover the multiplicative stochastic disturbances as a special case. The phenomenon of probabilistic sensor delays is modeled by introducing a diagonal matrix composed of Bernoulli distributed random variables taking values of 1 or 0, which means that the sensors may experience randomly occurring delays with individual delay characteristics. The process noise is finite-step autocorrelated. The purpose of the addressed gain-constrained filtering problem is to design a filter such that, for all probabilistic sensor delays, stochastic nonlinearities, gain constraint as well as correlated noises, the cost function concerning the filtering error is minimized at each sampling instant, where the filter gain satisfies a certain equality constraint. A new recursive filtering algorithm is developed that ensures both the local optimality and the unbiasedness of the designed filter at each sampling instant which achieving the pre-specified filter gain constraint. A simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed filter design approach.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China by Grants 61273156, 61028008, 60825303, 61104125, and 11271103, National 973 Project by Grant 2009CB320600, the Fok Ying Tung Education Fund by Grant 111064, the Special Fund for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China by Grant 2007B4, the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Automation for the Process Industry (Northeastern University) of China, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the U.K. by Grant GR/S27658/01, the Royal Society of the U.K., and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Nonlinear analysis of dynamical complex networks

Copyright © 2013 Zidong Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Complex networks are composed of a large number of highly interconnected dynamical units and therefore exhibit very complicated dynamics. Examples of such complex networks include the Internet, that is, a network of routers or domains, the World Wide Web (WWW), that is, a network of websites, the brain, that is, a network of neurons, and an organization, that is, a network of people. Since the introduction of the small-world network principle, a great deal of research has been focused on the dependence of the asymptotic behavior of interconnected oscillatory agents on the structural properties of complex networks. It has been found out that the general structure of the interaction network may play a crucial role in the emergence of synchronization phenomena in various fields such as physics, technology, and the life sciences

Generating entanglement with low Q-factor microcavities

We propose a method of generating entanglement using single photons and electron spins in the regime of resonance scattering. The technique involves matching the spontaneous emission rate of the spin dipole transition in bulk dielectric to the modified rate of spontaneous emission of the dipole coupled to the fundamental mode of an optical microcavity. We call this regime resonance scattering where interference between the input photons and those scattered by the resonantly coupled dipole transition result in a reflectivity of zero. The contrast between this and the unit reflectivity when the cavity is empty allow us to perform a non demolition measurement of the spin and to non deterministically generate entanglement between photons and spins. The chief advantage of working in the regime of resonance scattering is that the required cavity quality factors are orders of magnitude lower than is required for strong coupling, or Purcell enhancement. This makes engineering a suitable cavity much easier particularly in materials such as diamond where etching high quality factor cavities remains a significant challenge