204 research outputs found
Explaining interindividual differences in toddlers' collaboration with unfamiliar peers: individual, dyadic, and social factors
During their third year of life, toddlers become increasingly skillful at coordinating their actions with peer partners and they form joint commitments in collaborative situations. However, little effort has been made to explain interindividual differences in collaboration among toddlers. Therefore, we examined the relative influence of distinct individual, dyadic, and social factors on toddlers' collaborative activities (i.e., level of coordination and preference for joint activity) in joint problem-solving situations with unfamiliar peer partners (n = 23 dyads aged M = 35.7 months). We analyzed the dyadic nonindependent data with mixed models. Results indicated that mothers' expectations regarding their children's social behaviors significantly predicted toddlers' level of coordination. Furthermore, the models revealed that toddlers' positive mutual experiences with the unfamiliar partner assessed during an initial free play period (Phase 1) and their level of coordination in an obligatory collaboration task (Phase 2) promoted toddlers' preference for joint activity in a subsequent optional collaboration task (Phase 3). In contrast, children's mastery motivation and shyness conflicted with their collaborative efforts. We discuss the role of parents' socialization goals in toddlers' development toward becoming active collaborators and discuss possible mechanisms underlying the differences in toddlers' commitment to joint activities, namely social preferences and the trust in reliable cooperation partners
Direct laser acceleration of electrons in free-space
Compact laser-driven accelerators are versatile and powerful tools of
unarguable relevance on societal grounds for the diverse purposes of science,
health, security, and technology because they bring enormous practicality to
state-of-the-art achievements of conventional radio-frequency accelerators.
Current benchmarking laser-based technologies rely on a medium to assist the
light-matter interaction, which impose material limitations or strongly
inhomogeneous fields. The advent of few cycle ultra-intense radially polarized
lasers has materialized an extensively studied novel accelerator that adopts
the simplest form of laser acceleration and is unique in requiring no medium to
achieve strong longitudinal energy transfer directly from laser to particle.
Here we present the first observation of direct longitudinal laser acceleration
of non-relativistic electrons that undergo highly-directional multi-GeV/m
accelerating gradients. This demonstration opens a new frontier for direct
laser-driven particle acceleration capable of creating well collimated and
relativistic attosecond electron bunches and x-ray pulses
Two-photon coincident-frequency-entanglement via extended phase matching
We demonstrate a new class of frequency-entangled states generated via
spontaneous parametric down-conversion under extended phase matching
conditions. Biphoton entanglement with coincident signal and idler frequencies
is observed over a broad bandwidth in periodically poled KTiOPO. We
demonstrate high visibility in Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometric measurements
under pulsed pumping without spectral filtering, which indicates excellent
frequency indistinguishability between the down-converted photons. The
coincident-frequency entanglement source is useful for quantum information
processing and quantum measurement applications.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR
Terahertz-driven linear electron acceleration
The cost, size and availability of electron accelerators is dominated by the
achievable accelerating gradient. Conventional high-brightness radio-frequency
(RF) accelerating structures operate with 30-50 MeV/m gradients. Electron
accelerators driven with optical or infrared sources have demonstrated
accelerating gradients orders of magnitude above that achievable with
conventional RF structures. However, laser-driven wakefield accelerators
require intense femtosecond sources and direct laser-driven accelerators and
suffer from low bunch charge, sub-micron tolerances and sub-femtosecond timing
requirements due to the short wavelength of operation. Here, we demonstrate the
first linear acceleration of electrons with keV energy gain using
optically-generated terahertz (THz) pulses. THz-driven accelerating structures
enable high-gradient electron or proton accelerators with simple accelerating
structures, high repetition rates and significant charge per bunch. Increasing
the operational frequency of accelerators into the THz band allows for greatly
increased accelerating gradients due to reduced complications with respect to
breakdown and pulsed heating. Electric fields in the GV/m range have been
achieved in the THz frequency band using all optical methods. With recent
advances in the generation of THz pulses via optical rectification of slightly
sub-picosecond pulses, in particular improvements in conversion efficiency and
multi-cycle pulses, increasing accelerating gradients by two orders of
magnitude over conventional linear accelerators (LINACs) has become a
possibility. These ultra-compact THz accelerators with extremely short electron
bunches hold great potential to have a transformative impact for free electron
lasers, future linear particle colliders, ultra-fast electron diffraction,
x-ray science, and medical therapy with x-rays and electron beams
Laser cooling of trapped ytterbium ions with an ultraviolet diode laser
We demonstrate an ultraviolet diode laser system for cooling of trapped
ytterbium ions. The laser power and linewidth are comparable to previous
systems based on resonant frequency doubling, but the system is simpler, more
robust, and less expensive. We use the laser system to cool small numbers of
ytterbium ions confined in a linear Paul trap. From the observed spectra, we
deduce final temperatures < 270 mK.Comment: submitted to Opt. Let
Quantum diffusion of microcavity solitons
Coherently pumped (Kerr) solitons in an ideal optical microcavity are expected to undergo random quantum motion that determines fundamental performance limits in applications of the soliton microcombs. Here this random walk and its impact on Kerr soliton timing jitter are studied experimentally. The quantum limit is discerned by measuring the relative position of counter-propagating solitons. Their relative motion features weak interactions and also presents common-mode suppression of technical noise, which typically hides the quantum fluctuations. This is in contrast to co-propagating solitons, which are found to have relative timing jitter well below the quantum limit of a single soliton on account of strong correlation of their mutual motion. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment. The results establish the fundamental limits to timing jitter in soliton microcombs and provide new insights on multisoliton physics
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Broadband Dispersion-Free Optical Cavities Based on Zero Group Delay Dispersion Mirror Sets
A broadband dispersion-free optical cavity using a zero group delay dispersion (zero-GDD) mirror set is demonstrated. In general zero-GDD mirror sets consist of two or more mirrors with opposite group delay dispersion (GDD), that when used together, form an optical cavity with vanishing dispersion over an enhanced bandwidth in comparison with traditional low GDD mirrors. More specifically, in this paper, we show a realization of such a two-mirror cavity, where the mirrors show opposite GDD and simultaneously a mirror reflectivity of 99.2% over 100 nm bandwidth (480 nm - 580 nm).Physic
Compact x-ray source based on burst-mode inverse Compton scattering at 100 kHz
A design for a compact x-ray light source (CXLS) with flux and brilliance
orders of magnitude beyond existing laboratory scale sources is presented. The
source is based on inverse Compton scattering of a high brightness electron
bunch on a picosecond laser pulse. The accelerator is a novel high-efficiency
standing-wave linac and RF photoinjector powered by a single ultrastable RF
transmitter at x-band RF frequency. The high efficiency permits operation at
repetition rates up to 1 kHz, which is further boosted to 100 kHz by operating
with trains of 100 bunches of 100 pC charge, each separated by 5 ns. The entire
accelerator is approximately 1 meter long and produces hard x-rays tunable over
a wide range of photon energies. The colliding laser is a Yb:YAG solid-state
amplifier producing 1030 nm, 100 mJ pulses at the same 1 kHz repetition rate as
the accelerator. The laser pulse is frequency-doubled and stored for many
passes in a ringdown cavity to match the linac pulse structure. At a photon
energy of 12.4 keV, the predicted x-ray flux is
photons/second in a 5% bandwidth and the brilliance is in pulses with RMS pulse
length of 490 fs. The nominal electron beam parameters are 18 MeV kinetic
energy, 10 microamp average current, 0.5 microsecond macropulse length,
resulting in average electron beam power of 180 W. Optimization of the x-ray
output is presented along with design of the accelerator, laser, and x-ray
optic components that are specific to the particular characteristics of the
Compton scattered x-ray pulses.Comment: 25 pages, 24 figures, 54 reference
Nonclassical correlations in damped quantum solitons
Using cumulant expansion in Gaussian approximation, the internal quantum
statistics of damped soliton-like pulses in Kerr media are studied numerically,
considering both narrow and finite bandwidth spectral pulse components. It is
shown that the sub-Poissonian statistics can be enhanced, under certain
circumstances, by absorption, which damps out some destructive interferences.
Further, it is shown that both the photon-number correlation and the
correlation of the photon-number variance between different pulse components
can be highly nonclassical even for an absorbing fiber. Optimum frequency
windows are determined in order to realize strong nonclassical behavior, which
offers novel possibilities of using solitons in optical fibers as a source of
nonclassically correlated light beams.Comment: 15 pages, 11 PS figures (color
Coherent instabilities in a semiconductor laser with fast gain recovery
We report the observation of a coherent multimode instability in quantum
cascade lasers (QCLs), which is driven by the same fundamental mechanism of
Rabi oscillations as the elusive Risken-Nummedal-Graham-Haken (RNGH)
instability predicted 40 years ago for ring lasers. The threshold of the
observed instability is significantly lower than in the original RNGH
instability, which we attribute to saturable-absorption nonlinearity in the
laser. Coherent effects, which cannot be reproduced by standard laser rate
equations, can play therefore a key role in the multimode dynamics of QCLs, and
in lasers with fast gain recovery in general.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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