911 research outputs found
A high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons from a periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter
We have demonstrated a high-flux source of polarization-entangled photons
using a type-II phase-matched periodically-poled KTP parametric downconverter
in a collinearly propagating configuration. We have observed quantum
interference between the single-beam downconverted photons with a visibility of
99% and a measured coincidence flux of 300/s/mW of pump. The
Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell's inequality was violated with a
value of 2.711 +/- 0.017.Comment: 7 pages submitted to Physical Review
Livestock Policy Analysis Brief no. 9 . Fertiliser use in semi-arid West Africa: Profitability and supporting policy
An important debate is currently under way among researchers and policy makers about the relative merits of using organic versus inorganic fertilisers to improve soil fertility in semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Environmentalists argue that use of inorganic fertiliser contributes to natural resource degradation and recommend use of organic fertilisers as a means of promoting sustainable agriculture. Opponents of this view maintain that a more rapid introduction of inorganic fertilisers is required in sub-Saharan Africa where current levels of use are extremely low, even when compared with other developing countries. This debate has important implications for agricultural intensification and sustainable development in the Sudanian and Sahelo-Sudanian agro-ecological zones of semi-arid West Africa. This paper assesses the profitability of using inorganic fertiliser and constraints posed on its use in the semi-arid farming systems of West Africa. It argues that under current conditions in these regions, organic and inorganic fertilisers are complements and not substitutes. The critical requirement for improving food production in these regions is to increase the use of inorganic fertiliser. Government policies need to support fertiliser importation and diffusion with conductive policies
Entanglement-Assisted Communication Surpassing the Ultimate Classical Capacity
Entanglement underpins a variety of quantum-enhanced communication, sensing,
and computing capabilities. Entanglement-assisted communication (EACOMM)
leverages entanglement pre-shared by communication parties to boost the rate of
classical information transmission. Pioneering theory works showed that EACOMM
can enable a communication rate well beyond the ultimate classical capacity of
optical communications, but an experimental demonstration of any EACOMM
advantage remains elusive. Here, we report the implementation of EACOMM
surpassing the classical capacity over lossy and noisy bosonic channels. We
construct a high-efficiency entanglement source and a phase-conjugate quantum
receiver to reap the benefit of pre-shared entanglement, despite entanglement
being broken by channel loss and noise. We show that EACOMM beats the
Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland capacity of classical communication by up to
14.6%, when both protocols are subject to the same power constraint at the
transmitter. As a practical performance benchmark, a classical communication
protocol without entanglement assistance is implemented, showing that EACOMM
can reduce the bit-error rate by up to 69% over the same bosonic channel. Our
work opens a route to provable quantum advantages in a wide range of quantum
information processing tasks.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Comments are welcom
Observational constraints on the neutron star mass distribution
Radio observations of neutron star binary pulsar systems have constrained
strongly the masses of eight neutron stars. Assuming neutron star masses are
uniformly distributed between lower and upper bounds and , the
observations determine with 95\% confidence that and . These limits give observational
support to neutron star formation scenarios that suggest that masses should
fall predominantly in the range , and will also be
important in the interpretation of binary inspiral observations by the Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.Comment: Postscript, 4 pages, NU-GR-
Shimura curve computations via K3 surfaces of Neron-Severi rank at least 19
It is known that K3 surfaces S whose Picard number rho (= rank of the
Neron-Severi group of S) is at least 19 are parametrized by modular curves X,
and these modular curves X include various Shimura modular curves associated
with congruence subgroups of quaternion algebras over Q. In a family of such K3
surfaces, a surface has rho=20 if and only if it corresponds to a CM point on
X. We use this to compute equations for Shimura curves, natural maps between
them, and CM coordinates well beyond what could be done by working with the
curves directly as we did in ``Shimura Curve Computations'' (1998) =
Comment: 16 pages (1 figure drawn with the LaTeX picture environment); To
appear in the proceedings of ANTS-VIII, Banff, May 200
Searches for violation of fundamental time reversal and space reflection symmetries in solid state experiments
The electric dipole moment (EDM) of a particle violates both time reversal
(T) and space reflection (P) symmetries. There have been recent suggestions for
searches of the electron EDM using solid state experiments [1,2]. These
experiments could improve the sensitivity compared to present atomic and
molecular experiments by several orders of magnitude. In the present paper we
calculate the expected effect. We also suggest that this kind of experiment is
sensitive to T,P-violation in nuclear forces and calculate effects caused by
the nuclear Schiff moment.
The compounds under consideration contain magnetic Gd ions and oxygen
O ions. We demonstrate that the main mechanism for the T,P-odd effects
is related to the penetration of the Oxygen 2p-electrons to the Gd core. All
the effects are related to the deformation of the crystal lattice.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Quantum-Noise Reduction in a Driven Cavity with Feedback
We show that amplitude-squeezed states may be produced by driving a feedback-controlled cavity with a coherent input signal. The feedback controls the transmissivity of one output from the cavity and is essentially equivalent to nonlinear absorption. The cavity effectively acts as a nonlinear reflector. Hence, amplitude-squeezed states with arbitrarily strong coherent intensities can be obtained
Boundedness, compactness and Schatten-class membership of weighted composition operators
The boundedness and compactness of weighted composition operators on the
Hardy space of the unit disc is analysed. Particular reference
is made to the case when the self-map of the disc is an inner function.
Schatten-class membership is also considered; as a result, stronger forms of
the two main results of a recent paper of Gunatillake are derived. Finally,
weighted composition operators on weighted Bergman spaces are considered, and the results of Harper and Smith,
linking their properties to those of Carleson embeddings, are extended to this
situation.Comment: 12 page
Male frequent attenders of general practice and their help seeking preferences
Background: Low rates of health service usage by men are commonly linked to masculine values and traditional male gender roles. However, not all men conform to these stereotypical notions of masculinity, with some men choosing to attend health services on a frequent basis, for a variety of different reasons. This study draws upon the accounts of male frequent attenders of the General Practitioner's (GP) surgery, examining their help-seeking preferences and their reasons for choosing services within general practice over other sources of support. Methods: The study extends thematic analysis of interview data from the Self Care in Primary Care study (SCinPC), a large scale multi-method evaluation study of a self care programme delivered to frequent attenders of general practice. Data were collected from 34 semi-structured interviews conducted with men prior to their exposure to the intervention. Results: The ages of interviewed men ranged from 16 to 72 years, and 91% of the sample (n= 31) stated that they had a current health condition. The thematic analysis exposed diverse perspectives within male help-seeking preferences and the decision-making behind men's choice of services. The study also draws attention to the large variation in men's knowledge of available health services, particularly alternatives to general practice. Furthermore, the data revealed some men's lack of confidence in existing alternatives to general practice. Conclusions: The study highlights the complex nature of male help-seeking preferences, and provides evidence that there should be no 'one size fits all' approach to male service provision. It also provides impetus for conducting further studies into this under researched area of interest. © 2011 WPMH GmbH
Running coupling: Does the coupling between dark energy and dark matter change sign during the cosmological evolution?
In this paper we put forward a running coupling scenario for describing the
interaction between dark energy and dark matter. The dark sector interaction in
our scenario is free of the assumption that the interaction term is
proportional to the Hubble expansion rate and the energy densities of dark
sectors. We only use a time-variable coupling (with the scale factor
of the universe) to characterize the interaction . We propose a
parametrization form for the running coupling in which the
early-time coupling is given by a constant , while today the coupling is
given by another constant, . For investigating the feature of the running
coupling, we employ three dark energy models, namely, the cosmological constant
model (), the constant model (), and the time-dependent
model (). We constrain the models with the current
observational data, including the type Ia supernova, the baryon acoustic
oscillation, the cosmic microwave background, the Hubble expansion rate, and
the X-ray gas mass fraction data. The fitting results indicate that a
time-varying vacuum scenario is favored, in which the coupling crosses
the noninteracting line () during the cosmological evolution and the sign
changes from negative to positive. The crossing of the noninteracting line
happens at around , and the crossing behavior is favored at about
1 confidence level. Our work implies that we should pay more attention
to the time-varying vacuum model and seriously consider the phenomenological
construction of a sign-changeable or oscillatory interaction between dark
sectors.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; refs added; to appear in EPJ
- …