8,726 research outputs found
Achievable Qubit Rates for Quantum Information Wires
Suppose Alice and Bob have access to two separated regions, respectively, of
a system of electrons moving in the presence of a regular one-dimensional
lattice of binding atoms. We consider the problem of communicating as much
quantum information, as measured by the qubit rate, through this quantum
information wire as possible. We describe a protocol whereby Alice and Bob can
achieve a qubit rate for these systems which is proportional to N^(-1/3) qubits
per unit time, where N is the number of lattice sites. Our protocol also
functions equally in the presence of interactions modelled via the t-J and
Hubbard models
The ground state of a class of noncritical 1D quantum spin systems can be approximated efficiently
We study families H_n of 1D quantum spin systems, where n is the number of
spins, which have a spectral gap \Delta E between the ground-state and
first-excited state energy that scales, asymptotically, as a constant in n. We
show that if the ground state |\Omega_m> of the hamiltonian H_m on m spins,
where m is an O(1) constant, is locally the same as the ground state
|\Omega_n>, for arbitrarily large n, then an arbitrarily good approximation to
the ground state of H_n can be stored efficiently for all n. We formulate a
conjecture that, if true, would imply our result applies to all noncritical 1D
spin systems. We also include an appendix on quasi-adiabatic evolutions.Comment: 9 pages, 1 eps figure, minor change
The Computer Science Ontology: A Large-Scale Taxonomy of Research Areas
Ontologies of research areas are important tools for characterising, exploring, and analysing the research landscape. Some fields of research are comprehensively described by large-scale taxonomies, e.g., MeSH in Biology and PhySH in Physics. Conversely, current Computer Science taxonomies are coarse-grained and tend to evolve slowly. For instance, the ACM classification scheme contains only about 2K research topics and the last version dates back to 2012. In this paper, we introduce the Computer Science Ontology (CSO), a large-scale, automatically generated ontology of research areas, which includes about 26K topics and 226K semantic relationships. It was created by applying the Klink-2 algorithm on a very large dataset of 16M scientific articles. CSO presents two main advantages over the alternatives: i) it includes a very large number of topics that do not appear in other classifications, and ii) it can be updated automatically by running Klink-2 on recent corpora of publications. CSO powers several tools adopted by the editorial team at Springer Nature and has been used to enable a variety of solutions, such as classifying research publications, detecting research communities, and predicting research trends. To facilitate the uptake of CSO we have developed the CSO Portal, a web application that enables users to download, explore, and provide granular feedback on CSO at different levels. Users can use the portal to rate topics and relationships, suggest missing relationships, and visualise sections of the ontology. The portal will support the publication of and access to regular new releases of CSO, with the aim of providing a comprehensive resource to the various communities engaged with scholarly data
Freak Waves in Random Oceanic Sea States
Freak waves are very large, rare events in a random ocean wave train. Here we
study the numerical generation of freak waves in a random sea state
characterized by the JONSWAP power spectrum. We assume, to cubic order in
nonlinearity, that the wave dynamics are governed by the nonlinear Schroedinger
(NLS) equation. We identify two parameters in the power spectrum that control
the nonlinear dynamics: the Phillips parameter and the enhancement
coefficient . We discuss how freak waves in a random sea state are more
likely to occur for large values of and . Our results are
supported by extensive numerical simulations of the NLS equation with random
initial conditions. Comparison with linear simulations are also reported.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Chicken Farming in Grassland Increases Environmental Sustainability and Economic Efficiency
Background: Grassland degradation caused by overgrazing poses a threat to both animal husbandry and environmental
sustainability in most semi-arid areas especially north China. Although the Chinese Government has made huge efforts to
restore degraded grasslands, a considerable attempt has unfortunately failed due to an inadequate consideration of
economic benefits to local communities.
Methodology/Principal Findings: A controlled field experiment was conducted to test our hypothesis that utilizing natural
grasslands as both habitat and feed resources for chickens and replacing the traditional husbandry system with chicken
farming would increase environmental sustainability and raise income. Aboveground plant biomass elevated from
25 g m22 for grazing sheep to 84 g m22 for chicken farming. In contrast to the fenced (unstocked) grassland, chicken
farming did not significantly decrease aboveground plant biomass, but did increase the root biomass by 60% (p,0.01).
Compared with traditional sheep grazing, chicken farming significantly improved soil surface water content (0–10 cm), from
5% to 15%. Chicken farming did not affect the soil bulk density, while the traditional sheep grazing increased the soil bulk
density in the 0–10 cm soil layer by 35% of the control (p,0.05). Most importantly, the economic income of local herdsmen
has been raised about six times compared with the traditional practice of raising sheep. Ecologically, such an innovative
solution allowed large degraded grasslands to naturally regenerate. Grasslands also provided a high quality organic poultry
product which could be marketed in big cities.
Conclusion/Significance: Chicken farming is an innovative alternative strategy for increasing environmental sustainability
and economic income, rather than a challenge to the traditional nomadic pastoral system. Our approach might be
technically applicable to other large degraded grasslands of the world, especially in China
A-STAR: The All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter
The small mission A-STAR (All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter) aims to
locate the X-ray counterparts to ALIGO and other gravitational wave detector
sources, to study the poorly-understood low luminosity gamma-ray bursts, and to
find a wide variety of transient high-energy source types, A-STAR will survey
the entire available sky twice per 24 hours. The payload consists of a coded
mask instrument, Owl, operating in the novel low energy band 4-150 keV, and a
sensitive wide-field focussing soft X-ray instrument, Lobster, working over
0.15-5 keV. A-STAR will trigger on ~100 GRBs/yr, rapidly distributing their
locations.Comment: Accepted for the European Astronomical Society Publications Series:
Proceedings of the Fall 2012 Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium held in Marbella,
Spain, 8-12 Oct 201
Simulating adiabatic evolution of gapped spin systems
We show that adiabatic evolution of a low-dimensional lattice of quantum
spins with a spectral gap can be simulated efficiently. In particular, we show
that as long as the spectral gap \Delta E between the ground state and the
first excited state is any constant independent of n, the total number of
spins, then the ground-state expectation values of local operators, such as
correlation functions, can be computed using polynomial space and time
resources. Our results also imply that the local ground-state properties of any
two spin models in the same quantum phase can be efficiently obtained from each
other. A consequence of these results is that adiabatic quantum algorithms can
be simulated efficiently if the spectral gap doesn't scale with n. The
simulation method we describe takes place in the Heisenberg picture and does
not make use of the finitely correlated state/matrix product state formalism.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, minor change
Timing accuracy of the Swift X-Ray Telescope in WT mode
The X-Ray Telescope (XRT) on board Swift was mainly designed to provide
detailed position, timing and spectroscopic information on Gamma-Ray Burst
(GRB) afterglows. During the mission lifetime the fraction of observing time
allocated to other types of source has been steadily increased. In this paper,
we report on the results of the in-flight calibration of the timing
capabilities of the XRT in Windowed Timing read-out mode. We use observations
of the Crab pulsar to evaluate the accuracy of the pulse period determination
by comparing the values obtained by the XRT timing analysis with the values
derived from radio monitoring. We also check the absolute time reconstruction
measuring the phase position of the main peak in the Crab profile and comparing
it both with the value reported in literature and with the result that we
obtain from a simultaneous Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) observation. We
find that the accuracy in period determination for the Crab pulsar is of the
order of a few picoseconds for the observation with the largest data time span.
The absolute time reconstruction, measured using the position of the Crab main
peak, shows that the main peak anticipates the phase of the position reported
in literature for RXTE by ~270 microseconds on average (~150 microseconds when
data are reduced with the attitude file corrected with the UVOT data). The
analysis of the simultaneous Swift-XRT and RXTE Proportional Counter Array
(PCA) observations confirms that the XRT Crab profile leads the PCA profile by
~200 microseconds. The analysis of XRT Photodiode mode data and BAT event data
shows a main peak position in good agreement with the RXTE, suggesting the
discrepancy observed in XRT data in Windowed Timing mode is likely due to a
systematic offset in the time assignment for this XRT read out mode.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication on
Astronomy&Astrophysic
Typical local measurements in generalised probabilistic theories: emergence of quantum bipartite correlations
What singles out quantum mechanics as the fundamental theory of Nature? Here
we study local measurements in generalised probabilistic theories (GPTs) and
investigate how observational limitations affect the production of
correlations. We find that if only a subset of typical local measurements can
be made then all the bipartite correlations produced in a GPT can be simulated
to a high degree of accuracy by quantum mechanics. Our result makes use of a
generalisation of Dvoretzky's theorem for GPTs. The tripartite correlations can
go beyond those exhibited by quantum mechanics, however.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure v2: more details in the proof of the main resul
Continuous variable tangle, monogamy inequality, and entanglement sharing in Gaussian states of continuous variable systems
For continuous-variable systems, we introduce a measure of entanglement, the
continuous variable tangle ({\em contangle}), with the purpose of quantifying
the distributed (shared) entanglement in multimode, multipartite Gaussian
states. This is achieved by a proper convex roof extension of the squared
logarithmic negativity. We prove that the contangle satisfies the
Coffman-Kundu-Wootters monogamy inequality in all three--mode Gaussian states,
and in all fully symmetric --mode Gaussian states, for arbitrary . For
three--mode pure states we prove that the residual entanglement is a genuine
tripartite entanglement monotone under Gaussian local operations and classical
communication. We show that pure, symmetric three--mode Gaussian states allow a
promiscuous entanglement sharing, having both maximum tripartite residual
entanglement and maximum couplewise entanglement between any pair of modes.
These states are thus simultaneous continuous-variable analogs of both the GHZ
and the states of three qubits: in continuous-variable systems monogamy
does not prevent promiscuity, and the inequivalence between different classes
of maximally entangled states, holding for systems of three or more qubits, is
removed.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure. Replaced with published versio
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