Topological pumping of photons in nonlinear resonator arrays

We show how to implement topological or Thouless pumping of interacting photons in one dimensional nonlinear resonator arrays, by simply modulating the frequency of the resonators periodically in space and time. The interplay between interactions and the adiabatic modulations enables robust transport of Fock states with few photons per site. We analyze the transport mechanism via an effective analytic model and study its topological properties and its protection to noise. We conclude by a detailed study of an implementation with existing circuit QED architectures.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, and Supplemental Material. Comments are welcom

A comparative impact of cause-related marketing and sponsorship leveraged internet display advertising

Cause-related marketing (CRM) and sponsorship activities have become an increasingly popular corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, whereby firms partner with non-profit organisations (NPOs) to achieve varieties of business objectives, while still supporting NPOs social causes. Advances in internet technology and e-commerce activities have facilitated the widespread use of internet CRM and sponsorship advertisement frames targeting potential donors and online customers. Typically, firms communicate through ads in a variety of ways, such as offering a precise donation amount (PDA) to the charity organisation in question, or by declaring mutually beneficial collaboration of the firms brand with the non-profit organisation (NPO), by stating an imprecise donation (IDA)offer. This study compares the effectiveness of PDA ads (both at low and high donation amounts) with imprecise donation amount (IDA) internet display advertisement frames, in terms of attitude and purchase intention from a fundraising perspective. Using a web-based experimental survey design involving the national representative sample, the results of the ANCOVA analysis revealed that there is no significant difference in attitudes between precise and imprecise donation ad frames(PDA & IPA). However, PDA advertisements were found to indicate higher purchase intention than the IDA ad frame; regardless of the perceived donation amounts were either low or high. Furthermore, PDA ads with higher donation amounts (versus low donation amount) engender greater purchase. This study contributes to the understanding of the effective use of cause-related and sponsorship internet ads, for consumer segmentation and targeting

Exploring Andragogy: Understanding the Implications for Teaching in Higher Education

Andragogy is the theory and practice of educating adults. What are the differences between teaching HE students of different age groups? Do these differences become more prevalent with age, and does this matter? Should we revise our teaching practices to maximise engagement with mature students

Zinc Finger Artificial Transcription Factor-Mediated Chloroplast Genome Interrogation in Arabidopsis thaliana

The large majority of core photosynthesis proteins in plants are encoded by nuclear genes, but a small portion have been retained in the plastid genome. These plastid-encoded chloroplast proteins fulfill essential roles in the process of photochemistry. Here, we report the use of nuclear-encoded, chloroplast-targeted zinc finger artificial transcription factors (ZF-ATFs) with effector domains of prokaryotic origin to modulate the expression of chloroplast genes, and to enhance the photochemical activity and growth characteristics of Arabidopsis thaliana plants. This technique was named chloroplast genome interrogation. Using this novel approach, we obtained evidence that ZF-ATFs can indeed be translocated to chloroplasts of Arabidopsis plants, can modulate their growth and operating light use efficiency of PSII, and finally can induce statistically significant changes in the expression levels of several chloroplast genes. Our data suggest that the distortion of chloroplast gene expression might be a feasible approach to manipulate the efficiency of photosynthesis in plants

Superconductivity in CuxBi2Se3 and its implications for pairing in the undoped topological insulator

Bi2Se3 is one of a handful of known topological insulators. Here we show that copper intercalation in the van der Waals gaps between the Bi2Se3 layers, yielding an electron concentration of ~ 2 x 10^20cm-3, results in superconductivity at 3.8 K in CuxBi2Se3 for x between 0.12 and 0.15. This demonstrates that Cooper pairing is possible in Bi2Se3 at accessible temperatures, with implications for study of the physics of topological insulators and potential devices.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Spectral signatures of many-body localization with interacting photons

Statistical mechanics is founded on the assumption that a system can reach thermal equilibrium, regardless of the starting state. Interactions between particles facilitate thermalization, but, can interacting systems always equilibrate regardless of parameter values\,? The energy spectrum of a system can answer this question and reveal the nature of the underlying phases. However, most experimental techniques only indirectly probe the many-body energy spectrum. Using a chain of nine superconducting qubits, we implement a novel technique for directly resolving the energy levels of interacting photons. We benchmark this method by capturing the intricate energy spectrum predicted for 2D electrons in a magnetic field, the Hofstadter butterfly. By increasing disorder, the spatial extent of energy eigenstates at the edge of the energy band shrink, suggesting the formation of a mobility edge. At strong disorder, the energy levels cease to repel one another and their statistics approaches a Poisson distribution - the hallmark of transition from the thermalized to the many-body localized phase. Our work introduces a new many-body spectroscopy technique to study quantum phases of matter

Rolling quantum dice with a superconducting qubit

One of the key challenges in quantum information is coherently manipulating the quantum state. However, it is an outstanding question whether control can be realized with low error. Only gates from the Clifford group -- containing $\pi$, $\pi/2$, and Hadamard gates -- have been characterized with high accuracy. Here, we show how the Platonic solids enable implementing and characterizing larger gate sets. We find that all gates can be implemented with low error. The results fundamentally imply arbitrary manipulation of the quantum state can be realized with high precision, providing new practical possibilities for designing efficient quantum algorithms.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, including supplementary materia