417 research outputs found
Quantum Master Equation of Particle in Gas Environment
The evolution of the reduced density operator of Brownian particle is
discussed in single collision approach valid typically in low density gas
environments. This is the first succesful derivation of quantum friction caused
by {\it local} environmental interactions. We derive a Lindblad master equation
for , whose generators are calculated from differential cross section of
a single collision between Brownian and gas particles, respectively. The
existence of thermal equilibrium for is proved. Master equations
proposed earlier are shown to be particular cases of our one.Comment: 6 pages PlainTeX, 23-March-199
Deconstructing Decoherence
The study of environmentally induced superselection and of the process of
decoherence was originally motivated by the search for the emergence of
classical behavior out of the quantum substrate, in the macroscopic limit. This
limit, and other simplifying assumptions, have allowed the derivation of
several simple results characterizing the onset of environmentally induced
superselection; but these results are increasingly often regarded as a complete
phenomenological characterization of decoherence in any regime. This is not
necessarily the case: The examples presented in this paper counteract this
impression by violating several of the simple ``rules of thumb''. This is
relevant because decoherence is now beginning to be tested experimentally, and
one may anticipate that, in at least some of the proposed applications (e.g.,
quantum computers), only the basic principle of ``monitoring by the
environment'' will survive. The phenomenology of decoherence may turn out to be
significantly different.Comment: 13 two-column pages, 3 embedded figure
Secular trends in adiposity and musculoskeletal dimensions of elite heavyweight boxers between 1889 and 2019
Purpose:
With improving nutrition and health, athletes have grown taller and heavier over the past century. Since there is no weight restriction in the heavyweight class, secular changes in anthropometric measurements of heavyweight boxers may mirror those of contemporary general populations.
Objectives:
We aimed to (1) examine secular trends in adiposity and musculoskeletal measurements in heavyweight boxers, (2) determine anthropometric differences between champions and unsuccessful challengers.
Methods:
Detailed demographics taken at time of contest (first official World Championship to current contest: 1889–2019) were collected from media archives.
Results:
All 237 boxers (83 champions, 154 challengers) contesting a recognised heavyweight World Championships were identified. They had mean (± SD) age = 28.9 ± 4.1 years, height = 187.3 ± 6.5 cm, reach = 195.2 ± 9.4 cm, weight = 97.5 ± 11.5 kg, BMI = 27.8 ± 2.4 kg/m2 and waist = 87.9 ± 6.2 cm. Contest years explained 25.9% (p < 0.001) of the variance in BMI for champions and 30.9% (p < 0.001) for challengers, 9.1% (p < 0.071) in WC for champions and 19.9% (p < 0.001) for challengers. Contest years correlated with height (r = 0.531, p < 0.001), reach (r = 0.341, p < 0.001), weight (r = 0.603, p < 0.001) and BMI (r = 0.370, p = 0.001) among all documented boxers, and with waist only in challengers (r = 0.349, p < 0.001) but not in champions (r = 0.078, p = 0.509). Compared with challengers, champions had greater stature by + 3.4 cm (p < 0.001), reach + 3.6 cm (p = 0.005) and weight + 3.7 kg (p = 0.017), with similar BMI and waist. Champions had larger biceps and forearms but did not differ from challengers in other musculoskeletal dimensions.
Conclusions:
Over 130 years elite heavyweight boxers have increased in size (BMI) and reach but waists in champions have remained static. Being heavier, taller with longer and bigger arms, but with similar in BMI and waist, appear to be differentiating factors between champions and challengers
A comparative study of no-time-counter and majorant collision frequency numerical schemes in DSMC
The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is a stochastic approach to solve the Boltzmann equation and is built on various numerical schemes for transport, collision and sampling. This work aims to compare and contrast two popular O(N) DSMC collision schemes - no-time-counter (NTC) and majorant collision frequency (MCF) - with the goal of identifying the fundamental differences. MCF and NTC schemes are used in DSMC simulations of a spatially homogeneous equilibrium gas to study convergence with respect to various collision parameters. While the MCF scheme forces the reproduction of the exponential distribution of time between collisions, the NTC scheme requires larger number of simulators per cell to reproduce this Poisson process. The two collision schemes are also applied to the spatially homogeneous relaxation from an isotropic non-Maxwellian given by the Bobylev exact solution to the Boltzmann equation. While the two schemes produce identical results at large times, the initial relaxation shows some differences during the first few timesteps
Master-equations for the study of decoherence
Different structures of master-equation used for the description of
decoherence of a microsystem interacting through collisions with a surrounding
environment are considered and compared. These results are connected to the
general expression of the generator of a quantum dynamical semigroup in
presence of translation invariance recently found by Holevo.Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figures, to appear in Int. J. Theor. Phy
Quality of a Which-Way Detector
We introduce a measure Q of the "quality" of a quantum which-way detector,
which characterizes its intrinsic ability to extract which-way information in
an asymmetric two-way interferometer. The "quality" Q allows one to separate
the contribution to the distinguishability of the ways arising from the quantum
properties of the detector from the contribution stemming from a-priori
which-way knowledge available to the experimenter, which can be quantified by a
predictability parameter P. We provide an inequality relating these two sources
of which-way information to the value of the fringe visibility displayed by the
interferometer. We show that this inequality is an expression of duality,
allowing one to trace the loss of coherence to the two reservoirs of which-way
information represented by Q and P. Finally, we illustrate the formalism with
the use of a quantum logic gate: the Symmetric Quanton-Detecton System (SQDS).
The SQDS can be regarded as two qubits trying to acquire which way information
about each other. The SQDS will provide an illustrating example of the
reciprocal effects induced by duality between system and which-way detector.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
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Spatial analysis of food insecurity and obesity by area-level deprivation in children in early years settings in England
BACKGROUND: We assessed manager perceptions of food security and obesity in young children attending nurseries across England, assessing spatial differences by area-level deprivation. METHODS: We conducted an adjusted multinomial logistic regression and an adjusted geographically weighted logistic regression examining the odds of a manager perceiving obesity, food insecurity, or both as a problem among children in care measured via a mailed survey. RESULTS: 851 (54.3%) managers returned the survey. A nursery being in the highest tertile of area-level deprivation was associated with a 1.89 (95% CI 1.00, 3.57) greater odds of perceiving obesity as a problem, a 3.06 (95% CI 1.94, 4.84) greater odds of perceiving food insecurity as a problem, and a 8.39 (95% CI 4.36, 16.15) greater odds of perceiving both as a problem, compared with the lowest tertile. CONCLUSIONS: We observed differences in manager perception by area-level deprivation, but the relationship was especially pronounced for food insecurity.This work was undertaken by the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Public Health Research Centre of Excellence. Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged. The funders did not play any role in the design of the study and collection, analysis and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript
Signatures of non-locality in the first-order coherence of the scattered light
The spatial coherence of an atomic wavepacket can be detected in the
scattered photons, even when the center-of-mass motion is in the quantum
coherent superposition of two distant, non-overlapping wave packets. Spatial
coherence manifests itself in the power spectrum of the emitted photons, whose
spectral components can exhibit interference fringes as a function of the
emission angle. The contrast and the phase of this interference pattern provide
information about the quantum state of the center of mass of the scattering
atom.Comment: 5 pages, one figure, submitted to Laser Physics, special issue in
memory of Herbert Walthe
Atom Lasers, Coherent States, and Coherence:II. Maximally Robust Ensembles of Pure States
As discussed in Wiseman and Vaccaro [quant-ph/9906125], the stationary state
of an optical or atom laser far above threshold is a mixture of coherent field
states with random phase, or, equivalently, a Poissonian mixture of number
states. We are interested in which, if either, of these descriptions of
, is more natural. In the preceding paper we concentrated upon
whether descriptions such as these are physically realizable (PR). In this
paper we investigate another relevant aspect of these ensembles, their
robustness. A robust ensemble is one for which the pure states that comprise it
survive relatively unchanged for a long time under the system evolution. We
determine numerically the most robust ensembles as a function of the parameters
in the laser model: the self-energy of the bosons in the laser mode, and
the excess phase noise . We find that these most robust ensembles are PR
ensembles, or similar to PR ensembles, for all values of these parameters. In
the ideal laser limit (), the most robust states are coherent
states. As the phase noise or phase dispersion is increased, the
most robust states become increasingly amplitude-squeezed. We find scaling laws
for these states. As the phase diffusion or dispersion becomes so large that
the laser output is no longer quantum coherent, the most robust states become
so squeezed that they cease to have a well-defined coherent amplitude. That is,
the quantum coherence of the laser output is manifest in the most robust PR
states having a well-defined coherent amplitude. This lends support to the idea
that robust PR ensembles are the most natural description of the state of the
laser mode. It also has interesting implications for atom lasers in particular,
for which phase dispersion due to self-interactions is expected to be large.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures included. To be published in Phys. Rev. A, as
Part II of a two-part paper. The original version of quant-ph/9906125 is
shortly to be replaced by a new version which is Part I of the two-part
paper. This paper (Part II) also contains some material from the original
version of quant-ph/990612
Robust unravelings for resonance fluorescence
Monitoring the fluorescent radiation of an atom unravels the master equation
evolution by collapsing the atomic state into a pure state which evolves
stochastically. A robust unraveling is one that gives pure states that, on
average, are relatively unaffected by the master equation evolution (which
applies once the monitoring ceases). The ensemble of pure states arising from
the maximally robust unraveling has been suggested to be the most natural way
of representing the system [H.M. Wiseman and J.A. Vaccaro, Phys. Lett. A {\bf
250}, 241 (1998)]. We find that the maximally robust unraveling of a resonantly
driven atom requires an adaptive interferometric measurement proposed by
Wiseman and Toombes [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 60}, 2474 (1999)]. The resultant
ensemble consists of just two pure states which, in the high driving limit, are
close to the eigenstates of the driving Hamiltonian . This
ensemble is the closest thing to a classical limit for a strongly driven atom.
We also find that it is possible to reasonably approximate this ensemble using
just homodyne detection, an example of a continuous Markovian unraveling. This
has implications for other systems, for which it may be necessary in practice
to consider only continuous Markovian unravelings.Comment: 12 pages including 5 .eps figures, plus one .jpg figur
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