Baryon loading and the Weibel instability in gamma-ray bursts

The dynamics of two counter-streaming electron-positron-ion unmagnetized plasma shells with zero net charge is analyzed in the context of magnetic field generation in GRB internal shocks due to the Weibel instability. The effects of large thermal motion of plasma particles, arbitrary mixture of plasma species and space charge effects are taken into account. We show that, although thermal effects slow down the instability, baryon loading leads to a non-negligible growth rate even for large temperatures and different shell velocities, thus guaranteeing the robustness and the occurrence of the Weibel instability for a wide range of scenarios.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Creation and pinning of vortex-antivortex pairs

Computer modeling is reported about the creation and pinning of a magnetic vortex-antivortex (V-AV) pair in a superconducting thin film, due to the magnetic field of a vertical magnetic dipole above the film, and two antidot pins inside the film. For film thickness $= 0.1\xi$, $\kappa = 2$, and no pins, we find the film carries two V-AV pairs at steady state in the imposed flux range $2.10\Phi_0 < \Phi^+ < 3.0\Phi_0$, and no pairs below. With two antidot pins suitably introduced into the film, a single V-AV pair can be stable in the film for $\Phi^+ \ge 1.3\Phi_0$. At pin separation $\ge 17\xi$, we find the V-AV pair remains pinned after the dipole field is removed, and, so can represent a 1 for a nonvolatile memory.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Coherent spin control by electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations

In coherent control, electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations usually cause coherence loss through irreversible spontaneous emission. However, since the dissipation via emission is essentially due to correlation of the fluctuations, when emission ends in a superposition of multiple final states, correlation between different pathways may build up if the "which-way" information is not fully resolved (i.e., the emission spectrum is broader than the transition energy range). Such correlation can be exploited for spin-flip control in a $\Lambda$-type three-level system, which manifests itself as an all-optical spin echo in nonlinear optics with two orders of optical fields saved as compared with stimulated Raman processes. This finding represents a new class of optical nonlinearity induced by electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations.Comment: 7 pages including 5 figure

A global simulation for laser driven MeV electrons in 50μm50\mu m-diameter fast ignition targets

The results from 2.5-dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations for the interaction of a picosecond-long ignition laser pulse with a plasma pellet of 50-$\mu m$ diameter and 40 critical density are presented. The high density pellet is surrounded by an underdense corona and is isolated by a vacuum region from the simulation box boundary. The laser pulse is shown to filament and create density channels on the laser-plasma interface. The density channels increase the laser absorption efficiency and help generate an energetic electron distribution with a large angular spread. The combined distribution of the forward-going energetic electrons and the induced return electrons is marginally unstable to the current filament instability. The ions play an important role in neutralizing the space charges induced by the the temperature disparity between different electron groups. No global coalescing of the current filaments resulted from the instability is observed, consistent with the observed large angular spread of the energetic electrons.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Physics of Plasmas (May 2006

Non-Markovian dynamics and strong coupling between atomic transitions and a waveguide continuum edge

In quantum communication and distributed quantum computing, one-dimensional waveguides provide directional transfer of quantum information. A single-mode waveguide has a density-of-states singularity at the lower cut-off frequency, which resembles sharp resonances of a cavity but with non-Markovian dynamics. Thus we put forward schemes of coupling atomic transitions and a waveguide continuum edge. We first present a scheme of spin-photon quantum interface operating in the non-Markovian regime for a $\Lambda$-type three-level system coupled to a waveguide. Then we show that strong coupling between atomic transitions and a waveguide continuum edge can lead to vacuum Rabi oscillations and bound polariton states.Comment: 8 pages 5 figure

Image Co-localization by Mimicking a Good Detector's Confidence Score Distribution

Given a set of images containing objects from the same category, the task of image co-localization is to identify and localize each instance. This paper shows that this problem can be solved by a simple but intriguing idea, that is, a common object detector can be learnt by making its detection confidence scores distributed like those of a strongly supervised detector. More specifically, we observe that given a set of object proposals extracted from an image that contains the object of interest, an accurate strongly supervised object detector should give high scores to only a small minority of proposals, and low scores to most of them. Thus, we devise an entropy-based objective function to enforce the above property when learning the common object detector. Once the detector is learnt, we resort to a segmentation approach to refine the localization. We show that despite its simplicity, our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted to Proc. European Conf. Computer Vision 201

Measurement of atmospheric nitrous acid at Blodgett Forest during BEARPEX2007

Nitrous acid (HONO) is an important precursor of the hydroxyl radical (OH) in the lower troposphere. Understanding HONO chemistry, particularly its sources and contribution to HO_x (=OH+HO_2) production, is very important for understanding atmospheric oxidation processes. A highly sensitive instrument for detecting atmospheric HONO based on wet chemistry followed by liquid waveguide long path absorption photometry was deployed in the Biosphere Effects on Aerosols and Photochemistry Experiment (BEARPEX) at Blodgett Forest, California in late summer 2007. The median diurnal variation shows minimum HONO levels of about 20–30 pptv during the day and maximum levels of about 60–70 pptv at night, a diurnal pattern quite different from the results at various other forested sites. Measured HONO/NO_2 ratios for a 24-h period ranged from 0.05 to 0.13 with a mean ratio of 0.07. Speciation of reactive nitrogen compounds (NO_y) indicates that HONO accounted for only ~3% of total NO_y. However, due to the fast HONO loss through photolysis, a strong HONO source (1.59 ppbv day^(−1)) existed in this environment in order to sustain the observed HONO levels, indicating the significant role of HONO in NO_y cycling. The wet chemistry HONO measurements were compared to the HONO measurements made with a Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) over a three-day period. Good agreement was obtained between the measurements from the two different techniques. Using the expansive suite of photochemical and meteorological measurements, the contribution of HONO photolysis to HO_x budget was calculated to be relatively small (6%) compared to results from other forested sites. The lower HONO mixing ratio and thus its smaller contribution to HO_x production are attributed to the unique meteorological conditions and low acid precipitation at Blodgett Forest. Further studies of HONO in this kind of environment are needed to test this hypothesis and to improve our understanding of atmospheric oxidation and nitrogen budget

Phononics: Manipulating heat flow with electronic analogs and beyond

The form of energy termed heat that typically derives from lattice vibrations, i.e. the phonons, is usually considered as waste energy and, moreover, deleterious to information processing. However, with this colloquium, we attempt to rebut this common view: By use of tailored models we demonstrate that phonons can be manipulated like electrons and photons can, thus enabling controlled heat transport. Moreover, we explain that phonons can be put to beneficial use to carry and process information. In a first part we present ways to control heat transport and how to process information for physical systems which are driven by a temperature bias. Particularly, we put forward the toolkit of familiar electronic analogs for exercising phononics; i.e. phononic devices which act as thermal diodes, thermal transistors, thermal logic gates and thermal memories, etc.. These concepts are then put to work to transport, control and rectify heat in physical realistic nanosystems by devising practical designs of hybrid nanostructures that permit the operation of functional phononic devices and, as well, report first experimental realizations. Next, we discuss yet richer possibilities to manipulate heat flow by use of time varying thermal bath temperatures or various other external fields. These give rise to a plenty of intriguing phononic nonequilibrium phenomena as for example the directed shuttling of heat, a geometrical phase induced heat pumping, or the phonon Hall effect, that all may find its way into operation with electronic analogs.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures, modified title and revised, accepted for publication in Rev. Mod. Phy