Information Power and Russia’s National Security Objectives

Russia’s operations in the information domain are an integral part of Russia’s interactions in the international environment. As one of Russia’s levers of national power, information operations work in concert with all other levers of national power to achieve a defined list of Russia’s national security objectives.  Judging from pronouncements, policies, doctrine, and actions, it appears that Russia’s objectives are: 1) Protect the Putin regime; 2) Control the post-Soviet space; 3) Counterweigh the unipolar actor in the world; 4) Portray Russia as an indispensable player in world affairs; and 5) Divide and disrupt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). Russian information operations can be traced through information themes directly to those Russian national security objectives.  Some themes can address multiple objectives simultaneously, and the methods for communication can differ based on the target. However, Russian information operations are not standalone activities but work in concert with all other levers of national power to achieve Russia’s overarching objectives

When the going gets rough – studying the effect of surface roughness on the adhesive abilities of tree frogs

Tree frogs need to adhere to surfaces of various roughnesses in their natural habitats; these include bark, leaves and rocks. Rough surfaces can alter the effectiveness of their toe pads, due to factors such as a change of real contact area and abrasion of the pad epithelium. Here, we tested the effect of surface roughness on the attachment abilities of the tree frog Litoria caerulea. This was done by testing shear and adhesive forces on artificial surfaces with controlled roughness, both on single toe pads and whole animal scales. It was shown that frogs can stick 2–3 times better on small scale roughnesses (3–6 µm asperities), producing higher adhesive and frictional forces, but relatively poorly on the larger scale roughnesses tested (58.5–562.5 µm asperities). Our experiments suggested that, on such surfaces, the pads secrete insufficient fluid to fill the space under the pad, leaving air pockets that would significantly reduce the Laplace pressure component of capillarity. Therefore, we measured how well the adhesive toe pad would conform to spherical asperities of known sizes using interference reflection microscopy. Based on experiments where the conformation of the pad to individual asperities was examined microscopically, our calculations indicate that the pad epithelium has a low elastic modulus, making it highly deformable

Protein-mediated dethreading of a biotin-functionalised pseudorotaxane

In this article, we describe the synthesis of new biotin-functionalised naphthalene derivatives 3 and 4 and their complexation behaviour with avidin and neutravidin using a range of analytical techniques. We have shown using 2-(4prime or minute-hydroxyazobenzene)benzoic acid displacement and ITC experiments{,} that compounds 3 and 4 have the propensity to form reasonably high-affinity bioconjugates with avidin and neutravidin. We have also demonstrated using 1H NMR{,} UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy that the naphthalene moiety of 3 and 4 facilitates the formation of pseudorotaxane-like structures with 1 in water. We have then investigated the ability of avidin and neutravidin to modulate the complexation between 1 and 3 or 4. UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy has shown that in both cases the addition of the protein disrupts complexation between the naphthalene moieties of 3 and 4 with 1

Long range transport of ultra cold atoms in a far-detuned 1D optical lattice

We present a novel method to transport ultra cold atoms in a focused optical lattice over macroscopic distances of many Rayleigh ranges. With this method ultra cold atoms were transported over 5 cm in 250 ms without significant atom loss or heating. By translating the interference pattern together with the beam geometry the trap parameters are maintained over the full transport range. Thus, the presented method is well suited for tightly focused optical lattices that have sufficient trap depth only close to the focus. Tight focusing is usually required for far-detuned optical traps or traps that require high laser intensity for other reasons. The transport time is short and thus compatible with the operation of an optical lattice clock in which atoms are probed in a well designed environment spatially separated from the preparation and detection region.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Doppler cooling and trapping on forbidden transitions

Ultracold atoms at temperatures close to the recoil limit have been achieved by extending Doppler cooling to forbidden transitions. A cloud of ^40Ca atoms has been cooled and trapped to a temperature as low as 6 \mu K by operating a magneto-optical trap on the spin-forbidden intercombination transition. Quenching the long-lived excited state with an additional laser enhanced the scattering rate by a factor of 15, while a high selectivity in velocity was preserved. With this method more than 10% of pre-cooled atoms from a standard magneto-optical trap have been transferred to the ultracold trap. Monte-Carlo simulations of the cooling process are in good agreement with the experiments

Influence of optical aberrations in an atomic gyroscope

In atom interferometry based on light-induced diffraction, the optical aberrations of the laser beam splitters are a dominant source of noise and systematic effect. In an atomic gyroscope, this effect is dramatically reduced by the use of two atomic sources. But it remains critical while coupled to fluctuations of atomic trajectories, and appears as a main source of noise to the long term stability. Therefore we measure these contributions in our setup, using cold Cesium atoms and stimulated Raman transitions

Sympathetic Cooling of Mixed Species Two-Ion Crystals for Precision Spectroscopy

Sympathetic cooling of trapped ions has become an indispensable tool for quantum information processing and precision spectroscopy. In the simplest situation a single Doppler-cooled ion sympathetically cools another ion which typically has a different mass. We analytically investigate the effect of the mass ratio of such an ion crystal on the achievable temperature limit in the presence of external heating. As an example, we show that cooling of a single Al+ with Be+, Mg+ and Ca+ ions provides similar results for heating rates typically observed in ion traps, whereas cooling ions with a larger mass perform worse. Furthermore, we present numerical simulation results of the rethermalisation dynamics after a background gas collision for the Al+/Ca+ crystal for different cooling laser configurations.Comment: Made Graphics black & white print compatible, clarified abstract and summar

Particle separation by phase modulated surface acoustic waves

High efficiency isolation of cells or particles from a heterogeneous mixture is a critical processing step in lab-on-a-chip devices. Acoustic techniques offer contactless and label-free manipulation, preserve viability of biological cells, and provide versatility as the applied electrical signal can be adapted to various scenarios. Conventional acoustic separation methods use time-of-flight and achieve separation up to distances of quarter wavelength with limited separation power due to slow gradients in the force. The method proposed here allows separation by half of the wavelength and can be extended by repeating the modulation pattern and can ensure maximum force acting on the particles. In this work, we propose an optimised phase modulation scheme for particle separation in a surface acoustic wave microfluidic device. An expression for the acoustic radiation force arising from the interaction between acoustic waves in the fluid was derived. We demonstrated, for the first time, that the expression of the acoustic radiation force differs in surface acoustic wave and bulk devices, due to the presence of a geometric scaling factor. Two phase modulation schemes are investigated theoretically and experimentally. Theoretical findings were experimentally validated for different mixtures of polystyrene particles confirming that the method offers high selectivity. A Monte-Carlo simulation enabled us to assess performance in real situations, including the effects of particle size variation and non-uniform acoustic field on sorting efficiency and purity, validating the ability to separate particles with high purity and high resolution

A diode laser stabilization scheme for 40Ca+ single ion spectroscopy

We present a scheme for stabilizing multiple lasers at wavelengths between 795 and 866 nm to the same atomic reference line. A reference laser at 852 nm is stabilized to the Cs D2 line using a Doppler-free frequency modulation technique. Through transfer cavities, four lasers are stabilized to the relevant atomic transitions in 40Ca+. The rms linewidth of a transfer-locked laser is measured to be 123 kHz with respect to an independent atomic reference, the Rb D1 line. This stability is confirmed by the comparison of an excitation spectrum of a single 40Ca+ ion to an eight-level Bloch equation model. The measured Allan variance of 10^(-22) at 10 s demonstrates a high degree of stability for time scales up to 100 s.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

THE "FREELY" FALLING TWO-LEVEL ATOM IN A RUNNING LASER WAVE

The time evolution of a two-level atom which is simultaneously exposed to the field of a running laser wave and a homogeneous gravitational field is studied. The result of the coupled dynamics of internal transitions and center-of-mass motion is worked out exactly. Neglecting spontaneous emission and performing the rotating wave approximation we derive the complete time evolution operator in an algebraical way by using commutation relations. The result is discussed with respect to the physical implications. In particular the long time and short time behaviour is physically analyzed in detail. The breakdown of the Magnus perturbation expansion is shown.Comment: 14 Pages, Late