1,377 research outputs found
On the attenuation coefficient of monomode periodic waveguides
It is widely accepted that, on ensemble average, the transmission T of guided
modes decays exponentially with the waveguide length L due to small
imperfections, leading to the important figure of merit defined as the
attenuation-rate coefficient alpha = -/L. In this letter, we evidence
that the exponential-damping law is not valid in general for periodic monomode
waveguides, especially as the group velocity decreases. This result that
contradicts common beliefs and experimental practices aiming at measuring alpha
is supported by a theoretical study of light transport in the limit of very
small imperfections, and by numerical results obtained for two waveguide
geometries that offer contrasted damping behaviours
Focal plane wavefront sensor achromatization : The multireference self-coherent camera
High contrast imaging and spectroscopy provide unique constraints for
exoplanet formation models as well as for planetary atmosphere models. But this
can be challenging because of the planet-to-star small angular separation and
high flux ratio. Recently, optimized instruments like SPHERE and GPI were
installed on 8m-class telescopes. These will probe young gazeous exoplanets at
large separations (~1au) but, because of uncalibrated aberrations that induce
speckles in the coronagraphic images, they are not able to detect older and
fainter planets. There are always aberrations that are slowly evolving in time.
They create quasi-static speckles that cannot be calibrated a posteriori with
sufficient accuracy. An active correction of these speckles is thus needed to
reach very high contrast levels (>1e7). This requires a focal plane wavefront
sensor. Our team proposed the SCC, the performance of which was demonstrated in
the laboratory. As for all focal plane wavefront sensors, these are sensitive
to chromatism and we propose an upgrade that mitigates the chromatism effects.
First, we recall the principle of the SCC and we explain its limitations in
polychromatic light. Then, we present and numerically study two upgrades to
mitigate chromatism effects: the optical path difference method and the
multireference self-coherent camera. Finally, we present laboratory tests of
the latter solution.
We demonstrate in the laboratory that the MRSCC camera can be used as a focal
plane wavefront sensor in polychromatic light using an 80 nm bandwidth at 640
nm. We reach a performance that is close to the chromatic limitations of our
bench: contrast of 4.5e-8 between 5 and 17 lambda/D.
The performance of the MRSCC is promising for future high-contrast imaging
instruments that aim to actively minimize the speckle intensity so as to detect
and spectrally characterize faint old or light gaseous planets.Comment: 14 pages, 20 figure
Active compensation of aperture discontinuities for WFIRST-AFTA: analytical and numerical comparison of propagation methods and preliminary results with a WFIRST-AFTA-like pupil
The new frontier in the quest for the highest contrast levels in the focal
plane of a coronagraph is now the correction of the large diffractive artifacts
effects introduced at the science camera by apertures of increasing complexity.
The coronagraph for the WFIRST/AFTA mission will be the first of such
instruments in space with a two Deformable Mirrors wavefront control system.
Regardless of the control algorithm for these multi Deformable Mirrors, they
will have to rely on quick and accurate simulation of the propagation effects
introduced by the out-of-pupil surface. In the first part of this paper, we
present the analytical description of the different approximations to simulate
these propagation effects. In Annex A, we prove analytically that, in the
special case of surfaces inducing a converging beam, the Fresnel method yields
high fidelity for simulations of these effects. We provide numerical
simulations showing this effect. In the second part, we use these tools in the
framework of the Active Compensation of Aperture Discontinuities technique
(ACAD) applied to pupil geometries similar to WFIRST-AFTA. We present these
simulations in the context of the optical layout of the High-contrast imager
for Complex Aperture Telescopes, which will test ACAD on a optical bench. The
results of this analysis show that using the ACAD method, an apodized pupil
lyot coronagraph and the performance of our current deformable mirrors, we are
able to obtain, in numerically simulations, a dark hole with an AFTA-like
pupil. Our numerical simulation shows that we can obtain contrast better than
in monochromatic light and better than 3.e-8 with 10% bandwidth
between 5 and 14 lambda/D.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication (Oct. 23, 2015) in
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, special
WFIRST-AFTA coronagrap
Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Anderson-localized Modes
A major challenge in quantum optics and quantum information technology is to
enhance the interaction between single photons and single quantum emitters.
Highly engineered optical cavities are generally implemented requiring
nanoscale fabrication precision. We demonstrate a fundamentally different
approach in which disorder is used as a resource rather than a nuisance. We
generate strongly confined Anderson-localized cavity modes by deliberately
adding disorder to photonic crystal waveguides. The emission rate of a
semiconductor quantum dot embedded in the waveguide is enhanced by a factor of
15 on resonance with the Anderson-localized mode and 94 % of the emitted
single-photons couple to the mode. Disordered photonic media thus provide an
efficient platform for quantum electrodynamics offering an approach to
inherently disorder-robust quantum information devices
A Simple n-Dimensional Intrinsically Universal Quantum Cellular Automaton
We describe a simple n-dimensional quantum cellular automaton (QCA) capable
of simulating all others, in that the initial configuration and the forward
evolution of any n-dimensional QCA can be encoded within the initial
configuration of the intrinsically universal QCA. Several steps of the
intrinsically universal QCA then correspond to one step of the simulated QCA.
The simulation preserves the topology in the sense that each cell of the
simulated QCA is encoded as a group of adjacent cells in the universal QCA.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. In Proceedings of the 4th International
Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications (LATA 2010),
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Journal version: arXiv:0907.382
Dynamics of particles and cages in an experimental 2D glass former
We investigate the dynamics of a glass forming 2D colloidal mixture and show
the existence of collective motions of the particles. We introduce a mean
square displacement MSD with respect to the nearest neighbors which shows
remarkable deviations from the usual MSD quantifying the individual motion of
our particles. Combined with the analysis of the self part of the Van Hove
function this indicates a coupled motion of particles with their cage as well
as intra cage hopping processes.Comment: Submitted to EP
Determining a Role for Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Encoding Action-Based Value Signals During Reward-Related Decision Making
Considerable evidence has emerged to implicate ventromedial prefrontal cortex in encoding expectations of future reward during value-based decision making. However, the nature of the learned associations upon which such representations depend is much less clear. Here, we aimed to determine whether expected reward representations in this region could be driven by action–outcome associations, rather than being dependent on the associative value assigned to particular discriminative stimuli. Subjects were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing 2 variants of a simple reward-related decision task. In one version, subjects made choices between 2 different physical motor responses in the absence of discriminative stimuli, whereas in the other version, subjects chose between 2 different stimuli that were randomly assigned to different responses on a trial-by-trial basis. Using an extension of a reinforcement learning algorithm, we found activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex tracked expected future reward during the action-based task as well as during the stimulus-based task, indicating that value representations in this region can be driven by action–outcome associations. These findings suggest that ventromedial prefrontal cortex may play a role in encoding the value of chosen actions irrespective of whether those actions denote physical motor responses or more abstract decision options
Review of high-contrast imaging systems for current and future ground- and space-based telescopes I. Coronagraph design methods and optical performance metrics
The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop at the Lorentz Center in
September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands gathered a diverse group of 25
researchers working on exoplanet instrumentation to stimulate the emergence and
sharing of new ideas. In this first installment of a series of three papers
summarizing the outcomes of the OOC workshop, we present an overview of design
methods and optical performance metrics developed for coronagraph instruments.
The design and optimization of coronagraphs for future telescopes has
progressed rapidly over the past several years in the context of space mission
studies for Exo-C, WFIRST, HabEx, and LUVOIR as well as ground-based
telescopes. Design tools have been developed at several institutions to
optimize a variety of coronagraph mask types. We aim to give a broad overview
of the approaches used, examples of their utility, and provide the optimization
tools to the community. Though it is clear that the basic function of
coronagraphs is to suppress starlight while maintaining light from off-axis
sources, our community lacks a general set of standard performance metrics that
apply to both detecting and characterizing exoplanets. The attendees of the OOC
workshop agreed that it would benefit our community to clearly define
quantities for comparing the performance of coronagraph designs and systems.
Therefore, we also present a set of metrics that may be applied to theoretical
designs, testbeds, and deployed instruments. We show how these quantities may
be used to easily relate the basic properties of the optical instrument to the
detection significance of the given point source in the presence of realistic
noise.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the SPIE, vol. 1069
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