A Search for Rules for International Wheat Surplus Disposal

Before a cooperative plan can be formulated for utilizing the wheat surpluses in underdeveloped countries, there are three points on which the exporting nations will have to agree. They are: (1) uniform terms (rates of interest and repayment, and etc.) for concessional sales; (2) the level of commercial wheat imports, if any, that the underdeveloped countries should be required to maintain; and (3) a basis for determining the quantity of wheat each exporting nation should supply on concessional terms. The general purpose of this study was to attempt to establish a basic rule for determining the level of commercial wheat imports, if any, that the underdeveloped countries should be required to maintain in addition to concessional purchases and to offer a rule and some procedures that the exporting countries might follow in supplying wheat on concessional terms

On the Bragg, Leibfried, and Modified Leibfried Numbers

The Bragg, Leibfried, and modified Leibfried numbers are defined in the context of a theory of dislocation-mediated melting, and their values are determined from the properties of the dislocation ensemble at the melting temperature. The approximate numerical coincidence of the Bragg and modified Leibfried numbers is explained. The parameter K in the definition of the modified Leibfried number is shown to be the natural logarithm of the effective coordination number. Our analysis reveals that the Bragg number can be considered an elemental constant, in contrast to the Leibfried and modified Leibfried numbers.Comment: 5 pages, LaTe

Electrostatics of Gapped and Finite Surface Electrodes

We present approximate methods for calculating the three-dimensional electric potentials of finite surface electrodes including gaps between electrodes, and estimate the effects of finite electrode thickness and an underlying dielectric substrate. As an example we optimize a radio-frequency surface-electrode ring ion trap, and find that each of these factors reduces the trapping secular frequencies by less than 5% in realistic situations. This small magnitude validates the usual assumption of neglecting the influences of gaps between electrodes and finite electrode extent.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures (minor changes

Discrete Wigner functions and the phase space representation of quantum teleportation

We present a phase space description of the process of quantum teleportation for a system with an $N$ dimensional space of states. For this purpose we define a discrete Wigner function which is a minor variation of previously existing ones. This function is useful to represent composite quantum system in phase space and to analyze situations where entanglement between subsystems is relevant (dimensionality of the space of states of each subsystem is arbitrary). We also describe how a direct tomographic measurement of this Wigner function can be performed.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys Rev

Jaynes-Cummings Models with trapped surface-state electrons in THz cavities

An electron floating on the liquid Helium is proposed to be trapped (by a micro-electrode set below the liquid Helium) in a high finesse cavity. Two lowest levels of the vertical motion of the electron acts as a two-level "atom", which could resonantly interact with the THz cavity. In the Lamb-Dicke regime, wherein the electron's in-plane activity region is much smaller than the wavelength of the cavity mode, the famous Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM) could be realized. By applying an additional external classical laser beam to the electron, a driven JCM could also be implemented. With such a driven JCM certain quantum states, e.g., coherent states and the Schrodinger cat states, of the THz cavity field could be prepared by one-step evolution. The numerical results show that, for the typical parameters of the cavity and electron on liquid Helium, a strong coupling between the artificial atom and the THz cavity could be obtained.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure

Two-photon interaction between trapped ions and cavity fields

In this paper, we generalize the ordinary two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model (TPJCM) by considering the atom (or ion) to be trapped in a simple harmonic well. A typical setup would be an optical cavity containing a single ion in a Paul trap. Due to the inclusion of atomic vibrational motion, the atom-field coupling becomes highly nonlinear what brings out quite different behaviors for the system dynamics when compared to the ordinary TPJCM. In particular, we derive an effective two-photon Hamiltonian with dependence on the number operator of the ion's center-of-mass motion. This dependence occurs both in the cavity induced Stark-shifs and in the ion-field coupling, and its role in the dynamics is illustrated by showing the time evolution of the probability of occupation of the electronic levels for simple initial preparations of the state of the system.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Frenkel-Kontorova model with cold trapped ions

We study analytically and numerically the properties of one-dimensional chain of cold ions placed in a periodic potential of optical lattice and global harmonic potential of a trap. In close similarity with the Frenkel-Kontorova model, a transition from sliding to pinned phase takes place with the increase of the optical lattice potential for the density of ions incommensurate with the lattice period. Quantum fluctuations lead to a quantum phase transition and melting of pinned instanton glass phase at large values of dimensional Planck constant. The obtained results are also relevant for a Wigner crystal placed in a periodic potential.Comment: RevTeX, 5 pages, 11 figures, research at http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.f

Optimal approach to quantum communication using dynamic programming

Reliable preparation of entanglement between distant systems is an outstanding problem in quantum information science and quantum communication. In practice, this has to be accomplished via noisy channels (such as optical fibers) that generally result in exponential attenuation of quantum signals at large distances. A special class of quantum error correction protocols--quantum repeater protocols--can be used to overcome such losses. In this work, we introduce a method for systematically optimizing existing protocols and developing new, more efficient protocols. Our approach makes use of a dynamic programming-based searching algorithm, the complexity of which scales only polynomially with the communication distance, letting us efficiently determine near-optimal solutions. We find significant improvements in both the speed and the final state fidelity for preparing long distance entangled states.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

A trapped-ion local field probe

We introduce a measurement scheme that utilizes a single ion as a local field probe. The ion is confined in a segmented Paul trap and shuttled around to reach different probing sites. By the use of a single atom probe, it becomes possible characterizing fields with spatial resolution of a few nm within an extensive region of millimeters. We demonstrate the scheme by accurately investigating the electric fields providing the confinement for the ion. For this we present all theoretical and practical methods necessary to generate these potentials. We find sub-percent agreement between measured and calculated electric field values

Randomized Benchmarking of Quantum Gates

A key requirement for scalable quantum computing is that elementary quantum gates can be implemented with sufficiently low error. One method for determining the error behavior of a gate implementation is to perform process tomography. However, standard process tomography is limited by errors in state preparation, measurement and one-qubit gates. It suffers from inefficient scaling with number of qubits and does not detect adverse error-compounding when gates are composed in long sequences. An additional problem is due to the fact that desirable error probabilities for scalable quantum computing are of the order of 0.0001 or lower. Experimentally proving such low errors is challenging. We describe a randomized benchmarking method that yields estimates of the computationally relevant errors without relying on accurate state preparation and measurement. Since it involves long sequences of randomly chosen gates, it also verifies that error behavior is stable when used in long computations. We implemented randomized benchmarking on trapped atomic ion qubits, establishing a one-qubit error probability per randomized pi/2 pulse of 0.00482(17) in a particular experiment. We expect this error probability to be readily improved with straightforward technical modifications.Comment: 13 page