6,623 research outputs found
Mode spectrum and temporal soliton formation in optical microresonators
The formation of temporal dissipative solitons in optical microresonators
enables compact, high repetition rate sources of ultra-short pulses as well as
low noise, broadband optical frequency combs with smooth spectral envelopes.
Here we study the influence of the resonator mode spectrum on temporal soliton
formation. Using frequency comb assisted diode laser spectroscopy, the measured
mode structure of crystalline MgF2 resonators are correlated with temporal
soliton formation. While an overal general anomalous dispersion is required, it
is found that higher order dispersion can be tolerated as long as it does not
dominate the resonator's mode structure. Mode coupling induced avoided
crossings in the resonator mode spectrum are found to prevent soliton
formation, when affecting resonator modes close to the pump laser. The
experimental observations are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations
based on the nonlinear coupled mode equations, which reveal the rich interplay
of mode crossings and soliton formation
Heat transfer and Fourier's law in off-equilibrium systems
We study the most suitable procedure to measure the effective temperature in
off-equilibrium systems. We analyze the stationary current established between
an off-equilibrium system and a thermometer and the necessary conditions for
that current to vanish. We find that the thermometer must have a short
characteristic time-scale compared to the typical decorrelation time of the
glassy system to correctly measure the effective temperature. This general
conclusion is confirmed analyzing an ensemble of harmonic oscillators with
Monte Carlo dynamics as an illustrative example of a solvable model of a glass.
We also find that the current defined allows to extend Fourier's law to the
off-equilibrium regime by consistently defining effective transport
coefficients. Our results for the oscillator model explain why thermal
conductivities between thermalized and frozen degrees of freedom in structural
glasses are extremely small.Comment: 7 pages, REVTeX, 4 eps figure
Temporal solitons in optical microresonators
Dissipative solitons can emerge in a wide variety of dissipative nonlinear
systems throughout the fields of optics, medicine or biology. Dissipative
solitons can also exist in Kerr-nonlinear optical resonators and rely on the
double balance between parametric gain and resonator loss on the one hand and
nonlinearity and diffraction or dispersion on the other hand. Mathematically
these solitons are solution to the Lugiato-Lefever equation and exist on top of
a continuous wave (cw) background. Here we report the observation of temporal
dissipative solitons in a high-Q optical microresonator. The solitons are
spontaneously generated when the pump laser is tuned through the effective zero
detuning point of a high-Q resonance, leading to an effective red-detuned
pumping. Red-detuned pumping marks a fundamentally new operating regime in
nonlinear microresonators. While usually unstablethis regime acquires unique
stability in the presence of solitons without any active feedback on the
system. The number of solitons in the resonator can be controlled via the pump
laser detuning and transitions to and between soliton states are associated
with discontinuous steps in the resonator transmission. Beyond enabling to
study soliton physics such as soliton crystals our observations open the route
towards compact, high repetition-rate femto-second sources, where the operating
wavelength is not bound to the availability of broadband laser gain media. The
single soliton states correspond in the frequency domain to low-noise optical
frequency combs with smooth spectral envelopes, critical to applications in
broadband spectroscopy, telecommunications, astronomy and low phase-noise
microwave generation.Comment: Includes Supplementary Informatio
The G protein-gated potassium current I(K,ACh) is constitutively active in patients with chronic atrial fibrillation
Background— The molecular mechanism of increased background inward rectifier current (IK1) in atrial fibrillation (AF) is not fully understood. We tested whether constitutively active acetylcholine (ACh)-activated IK,ACh contributes to enhanced basal conductance in chronic AF (cAF).
Methods and Results— Whole-cell and single-channel currents were measured with standard voltage-clamp techniques in atrial myocytes from patients with sinus rhythm (SR) and cAF. The selective IK,ACh blocker tertiapin was used for inhibition of IK,ACh. Whole-cell basal current was larger in cAF than in SR, whereas carbachol (CCh)-activated IK,ACh was lower in cAF than in SR. Tertiapin (0.1 to 100 nmol/L) reduced IK,ACh in a concentration-dependent manner with greater potency in cAF than in SR (−logIC50: 9.1 versus 8.2; P<0.05). Basal current contained a tertiapin-sensitive component that was larger in cAF than in SR (tertiapin [10 nmol/L]-sensitive current at −100 mV: cAF, −6.7±1.2 pA/pF, n=16/5 [myocytes/patients] versus SR, −1.7±0.5 pA/pF, n=24/8), suggesting contribution of constitutively active IK,ACh to basal current. In single-channel recordings, constitutively active IK,ACh was prominent in cAF but not in SR (channel open probability: cAF, 5.4±0.7%, n=19/9 versus SR, 0.1±0.05%, n=16/9; P<0.05). Moreover, IK1 channel open probability was higher in cAF than in SR (13.4±0.4%, n=19/9 versus 11.4±0.7%, n=16/9; P<0.05) without changes in other channel characteristics.
Conclusions— Our results demonstrate that larger basal inward rectifier K+ current in cAF consists of increased IK1 activity and constitutively active IK,ACh. Blockade of IK,ACh may represent a new therapeutic target in AF
Complexity Measures from Interaction Structures
We evaluate new complexity measures on the symbolic dynamics of coupled tent
maps and cellular automata. These measures quantify complexity in terms of
-th order statistical dependencies that cannot be reduced to interactions
between units. We demonstrate that these measures are able to identify
complex dynamical regimes.Comment: 11 pages, figures improved, minor changes to the tex
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