Coherent beam superposition of ten diode lasers with a Dammann grating

We demonstrate the use of a binary diffractive optical element in a very simple setup to convert the multilobed beam from a low fill factor array of coherent laser diodes into a quasi-Gaussian beam. The phase profile of the grating is determined with a phase retrieval algorithm. Experimentally, the conversion efficiency reaches more than 44%. We also establish that this setup can be used to make an effective measurement of the coherency of the laser array

Avant-propos

L’histoire du peuplement de la Guinée est encore très mal connue. Elle présente une mosaïque de groupes ethniques dont la répartition, complexe, est pour autant qu’on le sache, le fruit d’une longue histoire de migrations. Les études, réalisées sur des amas coquilliers situés entre la Mauritanie et la Sierra Léone, laissent à penser que des populations occupent le littoral depuis 2 000 ans au moins. A l’arrivée des premiers explorateurs puis commerçants européens, les populations vivaient en..

Avant-propos

L’histoire du peuplement de la Guinée est encore très mal connue. Elle présente une mosaïque de groupes ethniques dont la répartition, complexe, est pour autant qu’on le sache, le fruit d’une longue histoire de migrations. Les études, réalisées sur des amas coquilliers situés entre la Mauritanie et la Sierra Léone, laissent à penser que des populations occupent le littoral depuis 2 000 ans au moins. A l’arrivée des premiers explorateurs puis commerçants européens, les populations vivaient en..

Origin and fate of the pseudogap in the doped Hubbard model

We investigate the doped two-dimensional Hubbard model at finite temperature using controlled diagrammatic Monte Carlo calculations allowing for the computation of spectral properties in the infinite-size limit and, crucially, with arbitrary momentum resolution. We show that three distinct regimes are found as a function of doping and interaction strength, corresponding to a weakly correlated metal with properties close to those of the non-interacting system, a correlated metal with strong interaction effects including a reshaping of the Fermi surface, and a pseudogap regime at low doping in which quasiparticle excitations are selectively destroyed near the antinodal regions of momentum space. We study the physical mechanism leading to the pseudogap and show that it forms both at weak coupling when the magnetic correlation length is large and at strong coupling when it is shorter. In both cases, we show that spin-fluctuation theory can be modified in order to account for the behavior of the non-local component of the self-energy. We discuss the fate of the pseudogap as temperature goes to zero and show that, remarkably, this regime extrapolates precisely to the ordered stripe phase found by ground-state methods. This handshake between finite temperature and ground-state results significantly advances the elaboration of a comprehensive picture of the physics of the doped Hubbard model

Exploratory Analysis of Functional Data via Clustering and Optimal Segmentation

We propose in this paper an exploratory analysis algorithm for functional data. The method partitions a set of functions into $K$ clusters and represents each cluster by a simple prototype (e.g., piecewise constant). The total number of segments in the prototypes, $P$, is chosen by the user and optimally distributed among the clusters via two dynamic programming algorithms. The practical relevance of the method is shown on two real world datasets

La Guinée maritime aujourd’hui

Les travaux menés à l’occasion du programme « Observatoire des mangroves de Guinée » , soit la cartographie de l’ensemble des informations thématiques disponibles sur la Guinée Maritime, une cartographie plus fine pour des sous-préfectures témoins, des enquêtes directes sur un échantillon de villages sur les thèmes des modes de mise en valeur, de leurs contextes ethno-historiques, sociaux et économiques, permettent de faire apparaître les principales dynamiques qui affectent la Guinée Maritime depuis la libéralisation économique de 1984. Deux tendances lourdes se dégagent : la monétarisation croissante des activités dans les campagnes et la polarisation de l’espace régional. Ces dynamiques conjuguées sont porteuses de progrès social mais constituent aussi un nouveau risque pour les ressources.Coastal Guinea Today. The research and study undertaken during the “Observatory of the Guinean Mangroves” program, whether the mapping of the total information available regarding Coastal Guinea, or a more detailed mapping for the sub-prefecture areas concerned, plus direct investigations based on a selection of villages as regards development, their ethno-historical, social and economic contexts, make it possible to reveal the main dynamic forces that affect Coastal Guinea since the economic liberalization inaugurated in 1984. Two tendancies, pregnant with significance, stand out : the growing money-making activities in the countrysides, and the polarization of the regional space. These combined dynamics are encouraging for social progress, but they also constitute a new risk for the natural resources in the entire area

Interaction-enhanced nesting in Spin-Fermion and Fermi-Hubbard models

The spin-fermion (SF) model postulates that the dominant coupling between low-energy fermions in near critical metals is mediated by collective spin fluctuations (paramagnons) peaked at the N\'{e}el wave vector, ${\bf Q}_N$, connecting hot spots on opposite sides of the Fermi surface. It has been argued that strong correlations at hot spots lead to a Fermi surface deformation (FSD) featuring flat regions and increased nesting. This conjecture was confirmed in the perturbative self-consistent calculations when the paramagnon propagator dependence on momentum deviation from ${\bf Q}_N$ is given by $\chi^{-1} \propto |\Delta q|$. Using diagrammatic Monte Carlo (diagMC) technique we show that such a dependence holds only at temperatures orders of magnitude smaller than any other energy scale in the problem, indicating that a different mechanism may be at play. Instead, we find that a $\chi^{-1} \propto |\Delta q|^{2}$ dependence yields a robust finite-$T$ scenario for achieving FSD. To link phenomenological and microscopic descriptions, we applied the connected determinant diagMC method to the $(t-t')$ Hubbard model and found that in this case: (i) the FSD is not very pronounced, and, instead, it is the lines of zeros of the renormalized dispersion relation that deform towards nesting; (ii) this phenomenon appears at large $U/t>5.5$ before the formation of electron and hole pockets; (iii) the static spin susceptibility is well described by $\chi^{-1} \propto |\Delta q|^{2}$. Flat FS regions yield a non-trivial scenario for realizing a non-Fermi liquid state.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Personalised, image-guided, noninvasive brain stimulation in gliomas : Rationale, challenges and opportunities

Malignant brain tumours are among the most aggressive human cancers, and despite intensive efforts made over the last decades, patients' survival has scarcely improved. Recently, high-grade gliomas (HGG) have been found to be electrically integrated with healthy brain tissue, a communication that facilitates tumour mitosis and invasion. This link to neuronal activity has provided new insights into HGG pathophysiology and opened prospects for therapeutic interventions based on electrical modulation of neural and synaptic activity in the proximity of tumour cells, which could potentially slow tumour growth. Noninvasive brain stimulation (NiBS), a group of techniques used in research and clinical settings to safely modulate brain activity and plasticity via electromagnetic or electrical stimulation, represents an appealing class of interventions to characterise and target the electrical properties of tumour-neuron interactions. Beyond neuronal activity, NiBS may also modulate function of a range of substrates and dynamics that locally interacts with HGG (e.g., vascular architecture, perfusion and blood-brain barrier permeability). Here we discuss emerging applications of NiBS in patients with brain tumours, covering potential mechanisms of action at both cellular, regional, network and whole-brain levels, also offering a conceptual roadmap for future research to prolong survival or promote wellbeing via personalised NiBS interventions

The Out-of-Equilibrium Time-Dependent Gutzwiller Approximation

We review the recently proposed extension of the Gutzwiller approximation, M. Schiro' and M. Fabrizio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 076401 (2010), designed to describe the out-of-equilibrium time-evolution of a Gutzwiller-type variational wave function for correlated electrons. The method, which is strictly variational in the limit of infinite lattice-coordination, is quite general and flexible, and it is applicable to generic non-equilibrium conditions, even far beyond the linear response regime. As an application, we discuss the quench dynamics of a single-band Hubbard model at half-filling, where the method predicts a dynamical phase transition above a critical quench that resembles the sharp crossover observed by time-dependent dynamical mean field theory. We next show that one can actually define in some cases a multi-configurational wave function combination of a whole set of mutually orthogonal Gutzwiller wave functions. The Hamiltonian projected in that subspace can be exactly evaluated and is equivalent to a model of auxiliary spins coupled to non-interacting electrons, closely related to the slave-spin theories for correlated electron models. The Gutzwiller approximation turns out to be nothing but the mean-field approximation applied to that spin-fermion model, which displays, for any number of bands and integer fillings, a spontaneous $Z_2$ symmetry breaking that can be identified as the Mott insulator-to-metal transition.Comment: 25 pages. Proceedings of the Hvar 2011 Workshop on 'New materials for thermoelectric applications: theory and experiment

Rushes summarization by IRIM consortium: redundancy removal and multi-feature fusion

International audienceIn this paper, we present the first participation of a consortium of French laboratories, IRIM, to the TRECVID 2008 BBC Rushes Summarization task. Our approach resorts to video skimming. We propose two methods to reduce redundancy, as rushes include several takes of scenes. We also take into account low and midlevel semantic features in an ad-hoc fusion method in order to retain only significant content