658 research outputs found
Real-time observation of interfering crystal electrons in high-harmonic generation
Accelerating and colliding particles has been a key strategy to explore the
texture of matter. Strong lightwaves can control and recollide electronic
wavepackets, generating high-harmonic (HH) radiation which encodes the
structure and dynamics of atoms and molecules and lays the foundations of
attosecond science. The recent discovery of HH generation in bulk solids
combines the idea of ultrafast acceleration with complex condensed matter
systems and sparks hope for compact solid-state attosecond sources and
electronics at optical frequencies. Yet the underlying quantum motion has not
been observable in real time. Here, we study HH generation in a bulk solid
directly in the time-domain, revealing a new quality of strong-field
excitations in the crystal. Unlike established atomic sources, our solid emits
HH radiation as a sequence of subcycle bursts which coincide temporally with
the field crests of one polarity of the driving terahertz waveform. We show
that these features hallmark a novel non-perturbative quantum interference
involving electrons from multiple valence bands. The results identify key
mechanisms for future solid-state attosecond sources and next-generation
lightwave electronics. The new quantum interference justifies the hope for
all-optical bandstructure reconstruction and lays the foundation for possible
quantum logic operations at optical clock rates
Quantum cryptography with squeezed states
A quantum key distribution scheme based on the use of displaced squeezed
vacuum states is presented. The states are squeezed in one of two field
quadrature components, and the value of the squeezed component is used to
encode a character from an alphabet. The uncertainty relation between
quadrature components prevents an eavesdropper from determining both with
enough precision to determine the character being sent. Losses degrade the
performance of this scheme, but it is possible to use phase-sensitive
amplifiers to boost the signal and partially compensate for their effect.Comment: 15 pages, no figure
Dynamical Casimir effect without boundary conditions
The moving-mirror problem is microscopically formulated without invoking the
external boundary conditions. The moving mirrors are described by the quantized
matter field interacting with the photon field, forming dynamical cavity
polaritons: photons in the cavity are dressed by electrons in the moving
mirrors. The effective Hamiltonian for the polariton is derived, and
corrections to the results based on the external boundary conditions are
discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure
Interaction of the quantized electromagnetic field with atoms in the presence of dispersing and absorbing dielectric bodies
A general theory of the interaction of the quantized electromagnetic field
with atoms in the presence of dispersing and absorbing dielectric bodies of
given Kramers--Kronig consistent permittivities is developed. It is based on a
source-quantity representation of the electromagnetic field, in which the
electromagnetic-field operators are expressed in terms of a continuous set of
fundamental bosonic fields via the Green tensor of the classical problem.
Introducing scalar and vector potentials, the formalism is extended in order to
include in the theory the interaction of the quantized electromagnetic field
with additional atoms. Both the minimal-coupling scheme and the
multipolar-coupling scheme are considered. The theory replaces the standard
concept of mode decomposition which fails for complex permittivities. It
enables us to treat the effects of dispersion and absorption in a consistent
way and to give a unified approach to the atom-field interaction, without any
restriction to a particular interaction regime in a particular frequency range.
All relevant information about the dielectric bodies such as form and intrinsic
dispersion and absorption is contained in the Green tensor. The application of
the theory to the spontaneous decay of an excited atom in the presence of
dispersing and absorbing bodies is addressed.Comment: Paper presented at the International Conference on Quantum Optics and
VIII Seminar on Quantum Optics, Raubichi, Belarus, May 28-31, 2000, 14 pages,
LaTeX2e, no figure
Live Imaging at the Onset of Cortical Neurogenesis Reveals Differential Appearance of the Neuronal Phenotype in Apical versus Basal Progenitor Progeny
The neurons of the mammalian brain are generated by progenitors dividing either at the apical surface of the ventricular zone (neuroepithelial and radial glial cells, collectively referred to as apical progenitors) or at its basal side (basal progenitors, also called intermediate progenitors). For apical progenitors, the orientation of the cleavage plane relative to their apical-basal axis is thought to be of critical importance for the fate of the daughter cells. For basal progenitors, the relationship between cell polarity, cleavage plane orientation and the fate of daughter cells is unknown. Here, we have investigated these issues at the very onset of cortical neurogenesis. To directly observe the generation of neurons from apical and basal progenitors, we established a novel transgenic mouse line in which membrane GFP is expressed from the beta-III-tubulin promoter, an early pan-neuronal marker, and crossed this line with a previously described knock-in line in which nuclear GFP is expressed from the Tis21 promoter, a pan-neurogenic progenitor marker. Mitotic Tis21-positive basal progenitors nearly always divided symmetrically, generating two neurons, but, in contrast to symmetrically dividing apical progenitors, lacked apical-basal polarity and showed a nearly randomized cleavage plane orientation. Moreover, the appearance of beta-III-tubulin–driven GFP fluorescence in basal progenitor-derived neurons, in contrast to that in apical progenitor-derived neurons, was so rapid that it suggested the initiation of the neuronal phenotype already in the progenitor. Our observations imply that (i) the loss of apical-basal polarity restricts neuronal progenitors to the symmetric mode of cell division, and that (ii) basal progenitors initiate the expression of neuronal phenotype already before mitosis, in contrast to apical progenitors
Quantification of mRNA expression using single-molecule nanopore sensing
RNA quantification methods are broadly used in life science research and in clinical diagnostics. Currently, real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) is the most common analytical tool for RNA quantification. However, in cases of rare transcripts or inhibiting contaminants in the sample, an extensive amplification could bias the copy number estimation, leading to quantification errors and false diagnosis. Single-molecule techniques may bypass amplification, but commonly rely on fluorescence detection and probe hybridization, which introduces noise and limits multiplexing. Here, we introduce reverse transcription quantitative nanopore sensing (RT-qNP), an RNA quantification method that involves synthesis and single-molecule detection of gene-specific cDNAs without the need for purification or amplification. RT-qNP allows us to accurately quantify the relative expression of metastasis-associated genes MACC1 and S100A4 in non-metastasizing and metastasizing human cell lines, even at levels for which RT-qPCR quantification produces uncertain results. We further demonstrate the versatility of the method by adapting it to quantify severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA against a human reference gene. This internal reference circumvents the need for producing a calibration curve for each measurement, an imminent requirement in RT-qPCR experiments. In summary, we describe a general method to process complicated biological samples with minimal losses, adequate for direct nanopore sensing. Thus, harnessing the sensitivity of label-free single-molecule counting, RT-qNP can potentially detect minute expression levels of RNA biomarkers or viral infection in the early stages of disease and provide accurate amplification-free quantification
Exact Diagonalization of Two Quantum Models for the Damped Harmonic Oscillator
The damped harmonic oscillator is a workhorse for the study of dissipation in
quantum mechanics. However, despite its simplicity, this system has given rise
to some approximations whose validity and relation to more refined descriptions
deserve a thorough investigation. In this work, we apply a method that allows
us to diagonalize exactly the dissipative Hamiltonians that are frequently
adopted in the literature. Using this method we derive the conditions of
validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) and show how this approximate
description relates to more general ones. We also show that the existence of
dissipative coherent states is intimately related to the RWA. Finally, through
the evaluation of the dynamics of the damped oscillator, we notice an important
property of the dissipative model that has not been properly accounted for in
previous works; namely, the necessity of new constraints to the application of
the factorizable initial conditions.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, ReVTe
Three-dimensional quantization of the electromagnetic field in dispersive and absorbing inhomogeneous dielectrics
A quantization scheme for the phenomenological Maxwell theory of the full
electromagnetic field in an inhomogeneous three-dimensional, dispersive and
absorbing dielectric medium is developed. The classical Maxwell equations with
spatially varying and Kramers-Kronig consistent permittivity are regarded as
operator-valued field equations, introducing additional current- and
charge-density operator fields in order to take into account the noise
associated with the dissipation in the medium. It is shown that the equal-time
commutation relations between the fundamental electromagnetic fields
and and the potentials and in the Coulomb gauge
can be expressed in terms of the Green tensor of the classical problem. From
the Green tensors for bulk material and an inhomogeneous medium consisting of
two bulk dielectrics with a common planar interface it is explicitly proven
that the well-known equal-time commutation relations of QED are preserved
Removal of a single photon by adaptive absorption
We present a method to remove, using only linear optics, exactly one photon
from a field-mode. This is achieved by putting the system in contact with an
absorbing environment which is under continuous monitoring. A feedback
mechanism then decouples the system from the environment as soon as the first
photon is absorbed. We propose a possible scheme to implement this process and
provide the theoretical tools to describe it
Entanglement transformation at absorbing and amplifying four-port devices
Dielectric four-port devices play an important role in optical quantum
information processing. Since for causality reasons the permittivity is a
complex function of frequency, dielectrics are typical examples of noisy
quantum channels, which cannot preserve quantum coherence. To study the effects
of quantum decoherence, we start from the quantized electromagnetic field in an
arbitrary Kramers--Kronig dielectric of given complex permittivity and
construct the transformation relating the output quantum state to the input
quantum state, without placing restrictions on the frequency. We apply the
formalism to some typical examples in quantum communication. In particular we
show that for entangled qubits the Bell-basis states are more
robust against decoherence than the states .Comment: 12 pages, revtex, 10 eps figures, minor corrections in Appendi
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