2,478 research outputs found
Nanoscale Quantum Calorimetry with Electronic Temperature Fluctuations
Motivated by the recent development of fast and ultra-sensitive thermometry
in nanoscale systems, we investigate quantum calorimetric detection of
individual heat pulses in the sub-meV energy range. We propose a hybrid
superconducting injector-calorimeter set-up, with the energy of injected pulses
carried by tunneling electrons. Treating all heat transfer events
microscopically, we analyse the statistics of the calorimeter temperature
fluctuations and derive conditions for an accurate measurement of the heat
pulse energies. Our results pave the way for novel, fundamental quantum
thermodynamics experiments, including calorimetric detection of single
microwave photons.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures plus supplemental material, 8 pages, 1 figur
Useful ‘junk': Alu RNAs in the human transcriptome
Abstract.: Alu elements are the most abundant repetitive elements in the human genome; they have amplified by retrotransposition to reach the present number of more than one million copies. Alu elements can be transcribed in two different ways, by two independent polymerases. ‘Free Alu RNAs' are transcribed by Pol III from their own promoter, while ‘embedded Alu RNAs' are transcribed by Pol II as part of protein- and non-protein-coding RNAs. Recent studies have demonstrated that both free and embedded Alu RNAs play a major role in post transcriptional regulation of gene expression, for example by affecting protein translation, alternative splicing and mRNA stability. These discoveries illustrate how a part of the ‘junk DNA' content of the human genome has been recruited to important functions in regulation of gene expressio
Codebook-based Bayesian speech enhancement for nonstationary environments
In this paper, we propose a Bayesian minimum mean squared error approach for the joint estimation of the short-term predictor parameters of speech and noise, from the noisy observation. We use trained codebooks of speech and noise linear predictive coefficients to model the a priori information required by the Bayesian scheme. In contrast to current Bayesian estimation approaches that consider the excitation variances as part of the a priori information, in the proposed method they are computed online for each short-time segment, based on the observation at hand. Consequently, the method performs well in nonstationary noise conditions. The resulting estimates of the speech and noise spectra can be used in a Wiener filter or any state-of-the-art speech enhancement system. We develop both memoryless (using information from the current frame alone) and memory-based (using information from the current and previous frames) estimators. Estimation of functions of the short-term predictor parameters is also addressed, in particular one that leads to the minimum mean squared error estimate of the clean speech signal. Experiments indicate that the scheme proposed in this paper performs significantly better than competing method
Quantum state tomography with quantum shotnoise
We propose a scheme for a complete reconstruction of one- and two-particle
orbital quantum states in mesoscopic conductors. The conductor in the transport
state continuously emits orbital quantum states. The orbital states are
manipulated by electronic beamsplitters and detected by measurements of average
currents and zero frequency current shotnoise correlators. We show how, by a
suitable complete set of measurements, the elements of the density matrices of
the one- and two-particle states can be directly expressed in terms of the
currents and current correlators.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Orbital entanglement and violation of Bell inequalities in mesoscopic conductors
We propose a spin-independent scheme to generate and detect two-particle
entanglement in a mesoscopic normal-superconductor system. A superconductor,
weakly coupled to the normal conductor, generates an orbitally entangled state
by injecting pairs of electrons into different leads of the normal conductor.
The entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality, formulated in
terms of zero-frequency current cross-correlators. It is shown that the Bell
inequality can be violated for arbitrary strong dephasing in the normal
conductor.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Electrical current noise of a beam splitter as a test of spin-entanglement
We investigate the spin entanglement in the superconductor-quantum dot system
proposed by Recher, Sukhorukov and Loss, coupling it to an electronic
beam-splitter. The superconductor-quantum dot entangler and the beam-splitter
are treated within a unified framework and the entanglement is detected via
current correlations. The state emitted by the entangler is found to be a
linear superposition of non-local spin-singlets at different energies, a
spin-entangled two-particle wavepacket. Colliding the two electrons in the
beam-splitter, the singlet spin-state gives rise to a bunching behavior,
detectable via the current correlators. The amount of bunching depends on the
relative positions of the single particle levels in the quantum dots and the
scattering amplitudes of the beam-splitter. The singlet spin entanglement,
insensitive to orbital dephasing but suppressed by spin dephasing, is
conveniently quantified via the Fano factors. It is found that the
entanglement-dependent contribution to the Fano factor is of the same magnitude
as the non-entangled, making an experimental detection feasible. A detailed
comparison between the current correlations of the non-local spin-singlet state
and other states, possibly emitted by the entangler, is performed. This
provides conditions for an unambiguous identification of the non-local singlet
spin entanglement.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, section on quantification of entanglement adde
- …