Negotiating sexuality and masculinity in school sport: An autoethnography

This autoethnography explores challenging and ethically sensitive issues around sexual orientation, sexual identity and masculinity in the context of school sport. Through storytelling, I aim to show how sometimes ambiguous encounters with heterosexism, homophobia and hegemonic masculinity through sport problematise identity development for young same-sex attracted males. By foregrounding personal embodied experience, I respond to an absence of stories of gay and bisexual experiences among males in physical education and school sport, in an effort to reduce a continuing sense of Otherness and difference regarding same-sex attracted males. I rely on the story itself to express the embodied forms of knowing that inhabit the experiences I describe, and resist a finalising interpretation of the story. Instead, I offer personal reflections on particular theoretical and methodological issues which relate to both the form and content of the story

Sexual abuse and the grooming process in sport: Learning from Bella's story

Through a process of collaborative autoethnography, we explore the experiences of one female athlete named Bella who was groomed and then sexually abused by her male coach. Bella’s story signals how the structural conditions and power relationships embedded in competitive sporting environments, specifically the power invested in the coach, provide a unique sociocultural context that offers a number of potentialities for sexual abuse and exploitation to take place. We offer Bella’s story as a pedagogical resource for those involved in the world of sport to both think about and with as part of a process of encouraging change at the individual and institutional levels

Storage and Manipulation of Light Using a Raman Gradient Echo Process

The Gradient Echo Memory (GEM) scheme has potential to be a suitable protocol for storage and retrieval of optical quantum information. In this paper, we review the properties of the $\Lambda$-GEM method that stores information in the ground states of three-level atomic ensembles via Raman coupling. The scheme is versatile in that it can store and re-sequence multiple pulses of light. To date, this scheme has been implemented using warm rubidium gas cells. There are different phenomena that can influence the performance of these atomic systems. We investigate the impact of atomic motion and four-wave mixing and present experiments that show how parasitic four-wave mixing can be mitigated. We also use the memory to demonstrate preservation of pulse shape and the backward retrieval of pulses.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

Evaluating femtosecond laser ablation of graphene on SiO<inf>2</inf>/Si substrate

We demonstrate a uniform single layer micropattern of graphene on 300 nm thick SiO2 on a Si substrate using a 1030 nm, 280 fs laser. The cutting process was conducted in air, the pattern defined through the motion of a high-precision translation stage. Approximately 1.6 μm wide graphene microchannels were cut with uniform widths and well defined edges. The ablation threshold of graphene was determined to be 66–120 mJ/cm2, at which the selective removal of graphene was achieved without damage to the SiO2/Si substrate. Scanning electron microscopy images revealed high quality cuts (standard deviation 40 nm) with little damage or re-deposition. Raman maps showed no discernible laser induced damage in the graphene within the ablation zone. Atomic force microscopy revealed an edge step height ranging from less than 2 to 10 nm, suggesting little removal of SiO2 and no damage to the silicon (the central path showed sub ablation threshold swelling). The effect of the ultrafast laser on the surface potential at the cut edge has been measured and it showed a distinguishable boundary.This work was supported by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and National University of Defence Technology (NUDT). The authors also thank Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the American Institute of Physics via http://dx.doi.org/10.2351/1.494451

A Scalable, Self-Analyzing Digital Locking System for use on Quantum Optics Experiments

Digital control of optics experiments has many advantages over analog control systems, specifically in terms of scalability, cost, flexibility, and the integration of system information into one location. We present a digital control system, freely available for download online, specifically designed for quantum optics experiments that allows for automatic and sequential re-locking of optical components. We show how the inbuilt locking analysis tools, including a white-noise network analyzer, can be used to help optimize individual locks, and verify the long term stability of the digital system. Finally, we present an example of the benefits of digital locking for quantum optics by applying the code to a specific experiment used to characterize optical Schrodinger cat states.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Photon number discrimination without a photon counter and its application to reconstructing non-Gaussian states

The non-linearity of a conditional photon-counting measurement can be used to `de-Gaussify' a Gaussian state of light. Here we present and experimentally demonstrate a technique for photon number resolution using only homodyne detection. We then apply this technique to inform a conditional measurement; unambiguously reconstructing the statistics of the non-Gaussian one and two photon subtracted squeezed vacuum states. Although our photon number measurement relies on ensemble averages and cannot be used to prepare non-Gaussian states of light, its high efficiency, photon number resolving capabilities, and compatibility with the telecommunications band make it suitable for quantum information tasks relying on the outcomes of mean values.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Theory section expanded in response to referee comment

Electromagnetically induced transparency and four-wave mixing in a cold atomic ensemble with large optical depth

We report on the delay of optical pulses using electromagnetically induced transparency in an ensemble of cold atoms with an optical depth exceeding 500. To identify the regimes in which four-wave mixing impacts on EIT behaviour, we conduct the experiment in both rubidium 85 and rubidium 87. Comparison with theory shows excellent agreement in both isotopes. In rubidium 87, negligible four-wave mixing was observed and we obtained one pulse-width of delay with 50% efficiency. In rubidium 85, four-wave-mixing contributes to the output. In this regime we achieve a delay-bandwidth product of 3.7 at 50% efficiency, allowing temporally multimode delay, which we demonstrate by compressing two pulses into the memory medium.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure