1,325 research outputs found
Myocardial Architecture and Patient Variability in Clinical Patterns of Atrial Fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation (AF) increases the risk of stroke by a factor of four to
five and is the most common abnormal heart rhythm. The progression of AF with
age, from short self-terminating episodes to persistence, varies between
individuals and is poorly understood. An inability to understand and predict
variation in AF progression has resulted in less patient-specific therapy.
Likewise, it has been a challenge to relate the microstructural features of
heart muscle tissue (myocardial architecture) with the emergent temporal
clinical patterns of AF. We use a simple model of activation wavefront
propagation on an anisotropic structure, mimicking heart muscle tissue, to show
how variation in AF behaviour arises naturally from microstructural differences
between individuals. We show that the stochastic nature of progressive
transversal uncoupling of muscle strands (e.g., due to fibrosis or gap
junctional remodelling), as occurs with age, results in variability in AF
episode onset time, frequency, duration, burden and progression between
individuals. This is consistent with clinical observations. The uncoupling of
muscle strands can cause critical architectural patterns in the myocardium.
These critical patterns anchor micro-re-entrant wavefronts and thereby trigger
AF. It is the number of local critical patterns of uncoupling as opposed to
global uncoupling that determines AF progression. This insight may eventually
lead to patient specific therapy when it becomes possible to observe the
cellular structure of a patient's heart.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. For supplementary materials please contact Kishan
A. Manani at [email protected]
Generation of Hyperentangled Photons Pairs
We experimentally demonstrate the first quantum system entangled in every
degree of freedom (hyperentangled). Using pairs of photons produced in
spontaneous parametric downconversion, we verify entanglement by observing a
Bell-type inequality violation in each degree of freedom: polarization, spatial
mode and time-energy. We also produce and characterize maximally hyperentangled
states and novel states simultaneously exhibiting both quantum and classical
correlations. Finally, we report the tomography of a 2x2x3x3 system
(36-dimensional Hilbert space), which we believe is the first reported photonic
entangled system of this size to be so characterized.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, published versio
Testing highly nonlinear fiber for squeezed-light generation
Squeezed light, which is easily degraded by loss, could benefit from
generation directly in optical fiber. Furthermore, highly nonlinear fiber could
offer more efficient generation with lower pump power and shorter fiber lengths
than standard single-mode fiber. We investigate non-polarization-maintaining
highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) for squeezed-light generation by characterizing
possible sources of excess noise, including its zero-dispersion wavelength
(ZDW) variation and polarization noise. We find significant ZDW variation and
excess polarization noise. We believe the polarization noise is from non-linear
polarization-mode dispersion. These findings are indicative of excess noise
that would reduce and potentially completely overtake any squeezing generated,
except possibly using intensity difference detection.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
Measurement of geometric phase for mixed states using single photon interferometry
Geometric phase may enable inherently fault-tolerant quantum computation.
However, due to potential decoherence effects, it is important to understand
how such phases arise for {\it mixed} input states. We report the first
experiment to measure mixed-state geometric phases in optics, using a
Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and polarization mixed states that are produced in
two different ways: decohering pure states with birefringent elements; and
producing a nonmaximally entangled state of two photons and tracing over one of
them, a form of remote state preparation.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. 4 pages, 3 figure
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