31,951 research outputs found
A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales
Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales
The Majorana particles and the Majorana sea
Can one make a Majorana field theory for fermions starting from the zero mass
Weyl theory, then adding a mass term as an interaction? The answer to this
question is: yes we can. We can proceed similarly to the case of the Dirac
massive field theory. In both cases one can start from the zero mass Weyl
theory and then add a mass term as an interacting term of massless particles
with a constant (external) field. In both cases the interaction gives rise to a
field theory for a free massive fermion field. We present the procedure for the
creation of a mass term in the case of the Dirac and the Majorana field and we
look for a massive field as a superposition of massless fields.Comment: 11 pages, no figure
Why Nature has made a choice of one time and three space coordinates?
We propose a possible answer to one of the most exciting open questions in
physics and cosmology, that is the question why we seem to experience four-
dimensional space-time with three ordinary and one time dimensions. We have
known for more than 70 years that (elementary) particles have spin degrees of
freedom, we also know that besides spin they also have charge degrees of
freedom, both degrees of freedom in addition to the position and momentum
degrees of freedom. We may call these ''internal degrees of freedom '' the
''internal space'' and we can think of all the different particles, like quarks
and leptons, as being different internal states of the same particle. The
question then naturally arises: Is the choice of the Minkowski metric and the
four-dimensional space-time influenced by the ''internal space''?
Making assumptions (such as particles being in first approximation massless)
about the equations of motion, we argue for restrictions on the number of space
and time dimensions. (Actually the Standard model predicts and experiments
confirm that elementary particles are massless until interactions switch on
masses.)
Accepting our explanation of the space-time signature and the number of
dimensions would be a point supporting (further) the importance of the
''internal space''.Comment: 13 pages, LaTe
Efficient Toffoli Gates Using Qudits
The simplest decomposition of a Toffoli gate acting on three qubits requires
{\em five} 2-qubit gates. If we restrict ourselves to controlled-sign (or
controlled-NOT) gates this number climbs to six. We show that the number of
controlled-sign gates required to implement a Toffoli gate can be reduced to
just {\em three} if one of the three quantum systems has a third state that is
accessible during the computation, i.e. is actually a qutrit. Such a
requirement is not unreasonable or even atypical since we often artificially
enforce a qubit structure on multilevel quantums systems (eg. atoms, photonic
polarization and spatial modes). We explore the implementation of these
techniques in optical quantum processing and show that linear optical circuits
could operate with much higher probabilities of success
Coherently controlled entanglement generation in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate
Considering a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well
potential, a method to generate a Bell state consisting of two spatially
separated condensates is suggested. For repulsive interactions, the required
tunnelling control is achieved numerically by varying the amplitude of a
sinusoidal potential difference between the wells. Both numerical and
analytical calculations reveal the emergence of a highly entangled mesoscopic
state.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, epl2.cl
Classical and Quantum Correlations of Scalar Field in the Inflationary Universe
We investigate classical and quantum correlations of a quantum field in the
inflationary universe using a particle detector model. By considering the
entanglement and correlations between two comoving detectors interacting with a
scalar field, we find that the entanglement between the detectors becomes zero
after their physical separation exceeds the Hubble horizon. Furthermore, the
quantum discord, which is defined as the quantum part of total correlation,
approaches zero on super horizon scale. These behaviors support appearance of
classical nature of the quantum fluctuation generated during the inflationary
era.Comment: 21 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
A Note on Asymptotic Freedom at High Temperatures
This short note considers, within the external field approach outlined in
hep-ph/0202026, the role of the lowest lying gluon Landau mode in QCD in the
high temperature limit. Its influence on a temperature- and field-dependent
running coupling constant is examined. The thermal imaginary part of the mode
is temperature-independent in our approach and exactly cancels the well-known
zero temperature imaginary part, thus rendering the Savvidy vacuum stable.
Combining the real part of the mode with the contributions from the higher
lying Landau modes and the vacuum contribution, a field-independent coupling
alpha_s(T) is obtained. It can be interpreted as the ordinary zero temperature
running coupling constant with average thermal momenta \approx 2pi T for
gluons and \approx pi T for quarks.Comment: 4 pages; minor changes, version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Quantum correlations and least disturbing local measurements
We examine the evaluation of the minimum information loss due to an unread
local measurement in mixed states of bipartite systems, for a general entropic
form. Such quantity provides a measure of quantum correlations, reducing for
pure states to the generalized entanglement entropy, while in the case of mixed
states it vanishes just for classically correlated states with respect to the
measured system, as the quantum discord. General stationary conditions are
provided, together with their explicit form for general two-qubit states.
Closed expressions for the minimum information loss as measured by quadratic
and cubic entropies are also derived for general states of two-qubit systems.
As application, we analyze the case of states with maximally mixed marginals,
where a general evaluation is provided, as well as X states and the mixture of
two aligned states.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Equilibration of quantum systems and subsystems
We unify two recent results concerning equilibration in quantum theory. We
first generalise a proof of Reimann [PRL 101,190403 (2008)], that the
expectation value of 'realistic' quantum observables will equilibrate under
very general conditions, and discuss its implications for the equilibration of
quantum systems. We then use this to re-derive an independent result of Linden
et. al. [PRE 79, 061103 (2009)], showing that small subsystems generically
evolve to an approximately static equilibrium state. Finally, we consider
subspaces in which all initial states effectively equilibrate to the same
state.Comment: 5 page
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