Speckle Statistics in Adaptively Corrected Images

(abridged) Imaging observations are generally affected by a fluctuating background of speckles, a particular problem when detecting faint stellar companions at small angular separations. Knowing the distribution of the speckle intensities at a given location in the image plane is important for understanding the noise limits of companion detection. The speckle noise limit in a long-exposure image is characterized by the intensity variance and the speckle lifetime. In this paper we address the former quantity through the distribution function of speckle intensity. Previous theoretical work has predicted a form for this distribution function at a single location in the image plane. We developed a fast readout mode to take short exposures of stellar images corrected by adaptive optics at the ground-based UCO/Lick Observatory, with integration times of 5 ms and a time between successive frames of 14.5 ms ($\lambda=2.2$ $\mu$m). These observations temporally oversample and spatially Nyquist sample the observed speckle patterns. We show, for various locations in the image plane, the observed distribution of speckle intensities is consistent with the predicted form. Additionally, we demonstrate a method by which $I_c$ and $I_s$ can be mapped over the image plane. As the quantity $I_c$ is proportional to the PSF of the telescope free of random atmospheric aberrations, this method can be used for PSF calibration and reconstruction.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, ApJ accepte

Electrically pumped semiconductor laser with low spatial coherence and directional emission

We design and fabricate an on-chip laser source that produces a directional beam with low spatial coherence. The lasing modes are based on the axial orbit in a stable cavity and have good directionality. To reduce the spatial coherence of emission, the number of transverse lasing modes is maximized by fine-tuning the cavity geometry. Decoherence is reached in a few nanoseconds. Such rapid decoherence will facilitate applications in ultrafast speckle-free full-field imaging

Disorder-Induced Shift of Condensation Temperature for Dilute Trapped Bose Gases

We determine the leading shift of the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature for an ultracold dilute atomic gas in a harmonic trap due to weak disorder by treating both a Gaussian and a Lorentzian spatial correlation for the quenched disorder potential. Increasing the correlation length from values much smaller than the geometric mean of the trap scale and the mean particle distance to much larger values leads first to an increase of the positive shift to a maximum at this critical length scale and then to a decrease.Comment: Author information under http://www.theo-phys.uni-essen.de/tp/ags/pelster_di

Detector for imaging of explosions: present status and future prospects with higher energy X-rays

The detector for imaging of explosions (DIMEX) is in operation at the synchrotron radiation (SR) beam-line at VEPP-3 electron ring at Budker INP since 2002. DIMEX is based on one-coordinate gas ionization chamber filled with Xe-CO2(3:1) mixture at 7atm, and active Frisch-grid made of Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM). The detector has spatial resolution of ~0.2mm and dynamic range of ~100 that allows to realize the precision of signal measurement at a percent level. The frame rate can be tuned up to 8 MHz (125 ns per image) and up to 32 images can be stored in one shot. At present DIMEX is used with the X-ray beam from 2T wiggler that has ~20 keV average energy. Future possibility to install similar detector at the SR beam-line at VEPP-4 electron ring is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures. Submitted to JINS

Balancing employee needs, project requirements and organisational priorities in team deployment

The 'people and performance' model asserts that performance is a sum of employee ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO). Despite extensive evidence of this people-performance link within manufacturing and many service sectors, studies within the construction industry are limited. Thus, a recent research project set out to explore the team deployment strategies of a large construction company with the view of establishing how a balance could be achieved between organisational strategic priorities, operational project requirements and individual employee needs and preferences. The findings suggested that project priorities often took precedence over the delivery of the strategic intentions of the organisation in meeting employees' individual needs. This approach is not sustainable in the long term because of the negative implications that such a policy had in relation to employee stress and staff turnover. It is suggested that a resourcing structure that takes into account the multiple facets of AMO may provide a more effective approach for balancing organisational strategic priorities, operational project requirements and individual employee needs and preferences more appropriately in the future

Atomic Bose and Anderson glasses in optical lattices

An ultra cold atomic Bose gas in an optical lattice is shown to provide an ideal system for the controlled analysis of disordered Bose lattice gases. This goal may be easily achieved under the current experimental conditions, by introducing a pseudo-random potential created by a second additional lattice or, alternatively, by placing a speckle pattern on the main lattice. We show that for a non commensurable filling factor, in the strong interaction limit, a controlled growing of the disorder drives a dynamical transition from superfluid to Bose-glass phase. Similarly, in the weak interaction limit, a dynamical transition from superfluid to Anderson-glass phase may be observed. In both regimes, we show that even very low-intensity disorder-inducing lasers cause large modifications of the superfluid fraction of the system.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Minor changes. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2003