57,177 research outputs found
Designing Cities: A study of collaborative interdisciplinary practice in the London area
This report present the findings of research undertaken to support the development of our new undergraduate planning degree, BA Designing Cities, Planning and Architecture. The research investigated collaborative architectural and planning practice in the London area
Quantum geometry from 2+1 AdS quantum gravity on the torus
Wilson observables for 2+1 quantum gravity with negative cosmological
constant, when the spatial manifold is a torus, exhibit several novel features:
signed area phases relate the observables assigned to homotopic loops, and
their commutators describe loop intersections, with properties that are not yet
fully understood. We describe progress in our study of this bracket, which can
be interpreted as a q-deformed Goldman bracket, and provide a geometrical
interpretation in terms of a quantum version of Pick's formula for the area of
a polygon with integer vertices.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, revised with more explanations, improved
figures and extra figures. To appear GER
Randomized benchmarking of atomic qubits in an optical lattice
We perform randomized benchmarking on neutral atomic quantum bits (qubits)
confined in an optical lattice. Single qubit gates are implemented using
microwaves, resulting in a measured error per randomized computational gate of
1.4(1) x 10^-4 that is dominated by the system T2 relaxation time. The results
demonstrate the robustness of the system, and its viability for more advanced
quantum information protocols.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Comparative Quantizations of (2+1)-Dimensional Gravity
We compare three approaches to the quantization of (2+1)-dimensional gravity
with a negative cosmological constant: reduced phase space quantization with
the York time slicing, quantization of the algebra of holonomies, and
quantization of the space of classical solutions. The relationships among these
quantum theories allow us to define and interpret time-dependent operators in
the ``frozen time'' holonomy formulation.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, no figure
Recommended from our members
The influence of physical and chemical linkage on the properties of nanocomposites
It has been shown by several groups that the mechanical and electrical behavior of composites changes quite substantially, and often beneficially, when the filler particle size is less than 100 nm in diameter. There is also good reason to believe that the interface between the embedded particulates and the polymer matrix holds the key to understanding the bulk phenomena observed. Materials based on an SiO2-polyolefin system have been formulated with functionalized particulates so as to affect the physical and chemical linkages. The agents used to achieve this include amino-silane, hexamethyl-disilazane and triethoxyvinylsilane. The emerging picture of the interface is supported by detailed dielectric spectroscopy and internal space charge assessment. The nature of the internal structure has been related to the bulk properties observed such as the breakdown strength, voltage endurance, and the measurement of internal charges resulting from interfacial polarization
Competition and cooperation in one-dimensional stepping stone models
Cooperative mutualism is a major force driving evolution and sustaining
ecosystems. Although the importance of spatial degrees of freedom and number
fluctuations is well-known, their effects on mutualism are not fully
understood. With range expansions of microbes in mind, we show that, even when
mutualism confers a distinct selective advantage, it persists only in
populations with high density and frequent migrations. When these parameters
are reduced, mutualism is generically lost via a directed percolation process,
with a phase diagram strongly influenced by an exceptional DP2 transition.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Renormalization Group Invariants in the MSSM and Its Extensions
We derive one-loop renormalization group (RG) invariant observables and
analyze their phenomenological implications in the MSSM and its \mu problem
solving extensions, U(1)' model and NMSSM. We show that there exist several RG
invariants in the gauge, Yukawa and soft-breaking sectors of each model. In
general, RG invariants are highly useful for projecting experimental data to
messenger scale, for revealing correlations among the model parameters, and for
probing the mechanism that breaks supersymmetry. The Yukawa couplings and
trilinear soft terms in U(1)' model and NMSSM do not form RG invariants though
there exist approximate invariants in low tan(beta). In the NMSSM, there are no
invariants that contain the Higgs mass-squareds. We provide a comparative
analysis of RG invariants in all three models and analyze their model-building
and phenomenological implications by a number of case studies.Comment: 32 pages, 5 tables; extended previous analysis to include U(1)'
models and NMSSM where a comparative discussion is give
Transformation of stimulus correlations by the retina
Redundancies and correlations in the responses of sensory neurons seem to
waste neural resources but can carry cues about structured stimuli and may help
the brain to correct for response errors. To assess how the retina negotiates
this tradeoff, we measured simultaneous responses from populations of ganglion
cells presented with natural and artificial stimuli that varied greatly in
correlation structure. We found that pairwise correlations in the retinal
output remained similar across stimuli with widely different spatio-temporal
correlations including white noise and natural movies. Meanwhile, purely
spatial correlations tended to increase correlations in the retinal response.
Responding to more correlated stimuli, ganglion cells had faster temporal
kernels and tended to have stronger surrounds. These properties of individual
cells, along with gain changes that opposed changes in effective contrast at
the ganglion cell input, largely explained the similarity of pairwise
correlations across stimuli where receptive field measurements were possible.Comment: author list corrected in metadat
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