Charge sensitivity of radio frequency single-electron transistor (RF-SET)

A theoretical analysis of the charge sensitivity of the RF-SET is presented. We use the ``orthodox'' approach and consider the case when the carrier frequency is much less than $I/e$ where $I$ is the typical current through RF-SET. The optimized noise-limited sensitivity is determined by the temperature $T$, and at low $T$ it is only 1.4 times less than the sensitivity of conventional single-electron transistor.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Future Measurements of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering at HERMES

Prospects for future measurements of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering at HERMES are studied using different simple models for parameterizations of generalized parton distributions (GPDs). Measurements of the lepton charge and lepton beam helicity asymmetry will yield important input for theoretical models towards the future extraction of GPDs.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Nonideal quantum detectors in Bayesian formalism

The Bayesian formalism for a continuous measurement of solid-state qubits is derived for a model which takes into account several factors of the detector nonideality. In particular, we consider additional classical output and backaction noises (with finite correlation), together with quantum-limited output and backaction noises, and take into account possible asymmetry of the detector coupling. The formalism is first derived for a single qubit and then generalized to the measurement of entangled qubits.Comment: 10 page

Spectrum of qubit oscillations from Bloch equations

We have developed a formalism suitable for calculation of the output spectrum of a detector continuously measuring quantum coherent oscillations in a solid-state qubit, starting from microscopic Bloch equations. The results coincide with that obtained using Bayesian and master equation approaches. The previous results are generalized to the cases of arbitrary detector response and finite detector temperature.Comment: 8 page

Transversity Distribution and Polarized Fragmentation Function from Semi-inclusive Pion Electroproduction

A method is discussed to determine the hitherto unknown u-quark transversity distribution from a planned HERMES measurement of a single-spin asymmetry in semi-inclusive pion electroproduction off a transversely polarized target. Assuming u-quark dominance, the measurement yields the shapes of the transversity distribution and of the ratio of a polarized and the unpolarized u-quark fragmentation functions. The unknown relative normalization can be obtained by identifying the transversity distribution with the well-known helicity distribution at large x. The systematic uncertainty of the method is dominated by the assumption of u-quark dominance.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, revised version as will be published in EPJ

Violating the Modified Helstrom Bound with Nonprojective Measurements

We consider the discrimination of two pure quantum states with three allowed outcomes: a correct guess, an incorrect guess, and a non-guess. To find an optimum measurement procedure, we define a tunable cost that penalizes the incorrect guess and non-guess outcomes. Minimizing this cost over all projective measurements produces a rigorous cost bound that includes the usual Helstrom discrimination bound as a special case. We then show that nonprojective measurements can outperform this modified Helstrom bound for certain choices of cost function. The Ivanovic-Dieks-Peres unambiguous state discrimination protocol is recovered as a special case of this improvement. Notably, while the cost advantage of the latter protocol is destroyed with the introduction of any amount of experimental noise, other choices of cost function have optima for which nonprojective measurements robustly show an appreciable, and thus experimentally measurable, cost advantage. Such an experiment would be an unambiguous demonstration of a benefit from nonprojective measurements.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure