1,459 research outputs found
Automated operation of a home made torque magnetometer using LabVIEW
In order to simplify and optimize the operation of our home made torque
magnetometer we created a new software system. The architecture is based on
parallel, independently running instrument handlers communicating with a main
control program. All programs are designed as command driven state machines
which greatly simplifies their maintenance and expansion. Moreover, as the main
program may receive commands not only from the user interface, but also from
other parallel running programs, an easy way of automation is achieved. A
program working through a text file containing a sequence of commands and
sending them to the main program suffices to automatically have the system
conduct a complex set of measurements. In this paper we describe the system's
architecture and its implementation in LabVIEW.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Rev. Sci. Inst
Thermal and porosity properties of meteorites : A compilation of published data and new measurements
We report direct measurements of thermal diffusivity and conductivity at room temperature for 38 meteorite samples of 36 different meteorites including mostly chondrites, and thus almost triple the number of meteorites for which thermal conductivity is directly measured. Additionally, we measured porosity for 34 of these samples. Thermal properties were measured using an optical infrared scanning method on samples of cm-sizes with a flat, sawn surface. A database compiled from our measurements and literature data suggests that thermal diffusivities and conductivities at room temperature vary largely among samples even of the same petrologic and chemical type and overlap among, for example, different ordinary chondrite classes. Measured conductivities of ordinary chondrites vary from 0.4 to 5.1 W m(-1) K-1. On average, enstatite chondrites show much higher values (2.33-5.51 W m(-1) K-1) and carbonaceous chondrites lower values (0.5-2.55 W m(-1) K-1). Mineral composition (silicates versus iron-nickel) and porosity control conductivity. Porosity shows (linear) negative correlation with conductivity. Variable conductivity is attributed to heterogeneity in mineral composition and porosity by intra- and intergranular voids and cracks, which are important in the scale of typical meteorite samples. The effect of porosity may be even more significant for thermal properties than that of the metal content in chondrites.Peer reviewe
Shock-Wave Experiment with the Chelyabinsk LL5 Meteorite : Experimental Parameters and the Texture of the Shock-Affected Material
A spherical geometry shock experiment with the light-colored lithology material of the Chelyabinsk LL5 ordinary chondrite was carried out. The material was affected by shock and thermal metamorphism whose grade ranged from initial stage S3-4 to complete melting. The temperature and pressure were estimated at >2000 degrees C and >90 GPa. The textural shock effects were studied by optical and electron microscopy. A single experimental impact has produced the whole the range of shock pressures and temperatures and, correspondingly, four zones identified by petrographic analysis: (1) a melt zone, (2) a zone of melting silicates, (3) a black ring zone, and (4) a zone of weakly shocked initial material. The following textural features of the material were identified: displacement of the metal and troilite phases from the central melt zone; the development of a zone of mixed lithology (light-colored fragments in silicate melt); the origin of a dark-colored lithology ring; and the generation of radiating shock veinlets. The experimental sample shows four textural zones that correspond to the different lithology types of the Chelyabinsk LL5 meteorite found in fragments of the meteoritic shower in the collection at the Ural Federal University. Our results prove that shock wave loading experiment can be successfully applied in modeling of space shocks and can be used to experimentally model processes at the small bodies of the solar system.Peer reviewe
Information preserving structures: A general framework for quantum zero-error information
Quantum systems carry information. Quantum theory supports at least two
distinct kinds of information (classical and quantum), and a variety of
different ways to encode and preserve information in physical systems. A
system's ability to carry information is constrained and defined by the noise
in its dynamics. This paper introduces an operational framework, using
information-preserving structures to classify all the kinds of information that
can be perfectly (i.e., with zero error) preserved by quantum dynamics. We
prove that every perfectly preserved code has the same structure as a matrix
algebra, and that preserved information can always be corrected. We also
classify distinct operational criteria for preservation (e.g., "noiseless",
"unitarily correctible", etc.) and introduce two new and natural criteria for
measurement-stabilized and unconditionally preserved codes. Finally, for
several of these operational critera, we present efficient (polynomial in the
state-space dimension) algorithms to find all of a channel's
information-preserving structures.Comment: 29 pages, 19 examples. Contains complete proofs for all the theorems
in arXiv:0705.428
Load-Balancing for Parallel Delaunay Triangulations
Computing the Delaunay triangulation (DT) of a given point set in
is one of the fundamental operations in computational geometry.
Recently, Funke and Sanders (2017) presented a divide-and-conquer DT algorithm
that merges two partial triangulations by re-triangulating a small subset of
their vertices - the border vertices - and combining the three triangulations
efficiently via parallel hash table lookups. The input point division should
therefore yield roughly equal-sized partitions for good load-balancing and also
result in a small number of border vertices for fast merging. In this paper, we
present a novel divide-step based on partitioning the triangulation of a small
sample of the input points. In experiments on synthetic and real-world data
sets, we achieve nearly perfectly balanced partitions and small border
triangulations. This almost cuts running time in half compared to
non-data-sensitive division schemes on inputs exhibiting an exploitable
underlying structure.Comment: Short version submitted to EuroPar 201
Spectral thresholding quantum tomography for low rank states
The estimation of high dimensional quantum states is an important statistical problem arising in current quantum technology applications. A key example is the tomography of multiple ions states, employed in the validation of state preparation in ion trap experiments (Häffner et al 2005 Nature 438 643). Since full tomography becomes unfeasible even for a small number of ions, there is a need to investigate lower dimensional statistical models which capture prior information about the state, and to devise estimation methods tailored to such models. In this paper we propose several new methods aimed at the efficient estimation of low rank states and analyse their performance for multiple ions tomography. All methods consist in first computing the least squares estimator, followed by its truncation to an appropriately chosen smaller rank. The latter is done by setting eigenvalues below a certain 'noise level' to zero, while keeping the rest unchanged, or normalizing them appropriately. We show that (up to logarithmic factors in the space dimension) the mean square error of the resulting estimators scales as where r is the rank, is the dimension of the Hilbert space, and N is the number of quantum samples. Furthermore we establish a lower bound for the asymptotic minimax risk which shows that the above scaling is optimal. The performance of the estimators is analysed in an extensive simulations study, with emphasis on the dependence on the state rank, and the number of measurement repetitions. We find that all estimators perform significantly better than the least squares, with the 'physical estimator' (which is a bona fide density matrix) slightly outperforming the other estimators
Rank-based model selection for multiple ions quantum tomography
The statistical analysis of measurement data has become a key component of
many quantum engineering experiments. As standard full state tomography becomes
unfeasible for large dimensional quantum systems, one needs to exploit prior
information and the "sparsity" properties of the experimental state in order to
reduce the dimensionality of the estimation problem. In this paper we propose
model selection as a general principle for finding the simplest, or most
parsimonious explanation of the data, by fitting different models and choosing
the estimator with the best trade-off between likelihood fit and model
complexity. We apply two well established model selection methods -- the Akaike
information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) -- to
models consising of states of fixed rank and datasets such as are currently
produced in multiple ions experiments. We test the performance of AIC and BIC
on randomly chosen low rank states of 4 ions, and study the dependence of the
selected rank with the number of measurement repetitions for one ion states. We
then apply the methods to real data from a 4 ions experiment aimed at creating
a Smolin state of rank 4. The two methods indicate that the optimal model for
describing the data lies between ranks 6 and 9, and the Pearson test
is applied to validate this conclusion. Additionally we find that the mean
square error of the maximum likelihood estimator for pure states is close to
that of the optimal over all possible measurements.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 3 table
Beating noise with abstention in state estimation
We address the problem of estimating pure qubit states with non-ideal (noisy)
measurements in the multiple-copy scenario, where the data consists of a number
N of identically prepared qubits. We show that the average fidelity of the
estimates can increase significantly if the estimation protocol allows for
inconclusive answers, or abstentions. We present the optimal such protocol and
compute its fidelity for a given probability of abstention. The improvement
over standard estimation, without abstention, can be viewed as an effective
noise reduction. These and other results are exemplified for small values of N.
For asymptotically large N, we derive analytical expressions of the fidelity
and the probability of abstention, and show that for a fixed fidelity gain the
latter decreases with N at an exponential rate given by a Kulback-Leibler
(relative) entropy. As a byproduct, we obtain an asymptotic expression in terms
of this very entropy of the probability that a system of N qubits, all prepared
in the same state, has a given total angular momentum. We also discuss an
extreme situation where noise increases with N and where estimation with
abstention provides a most significant improvement as compared to the standard
approach
On compatibility and improvement of different quantum state assignments
When Alice and Bob have different quantum knowledges or state assignments
(density operators) for one and the same specific individual system, then the
problems of compatibility and pooling arise. The so-called first
Brun-Finkelstein-Mermin (BFM) condition for compatibility is reobtained in
terms of possessed or sharp (i. e., probability one) properties. The second BFM
condition is shown to be generally invalid in an infinite-dimensional state
space. An argument leading to a procedure of improvement of one state
assifnment on account of the other and vice versa is presented.Comment: 8 page
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