Phase-locking in Multi-Frequency Brillouin Oscillator via Four Wave Mixing

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and Kerr-nonlinear four wave-mixing (FWM) are among the most important and widely studied nonlinear effects in optical fibres. At high powers SBS can be cascaded producing multiple Stokes waves spaced by the Brillouin frequency shift. Here, we investigate the complex nonlinear interaction of the cascade of Stokes waves, generated in a Fabry-Perot chalcogenide fibre resonator through the combined action of SBS and FWM. We demonstrate the existence of parameter regimes, in which pump and Stokes waves attain a phase-locked steady state. Real-time measurements of 40ps pulses with 8GHz repetition rate are presented, confirming short-and long-term stability. Numerical simulations qualitatively agree with experiments and show the significance of FWM in phase-locking of pump and Stokes waves. Our findings can be applied for the design of novel picosecond pulse sources with GHz repetition rate for optical communication systems

Creation of Dirac Particles in the Presence of a Constant Electric Field in an Anisotropic Bianchi I Universe

In this article we compute the density of Dirac particles created by a cosmological anisotropic Bianchi I universe in the presence of a constant electric field. We show that the particle distribution becomes thermal when one neglects the electric interaction.Comment: 9 page

The Digital Life of Walkable Streets

Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. That is why web and mobile services have been offering ways of computing walkability scores of individual street segments. Those scores are generally computed from survey data and manual counting (of even trees). However, that is costly, owing to the high time, effort, and financial costs. To partly automate the computation of those scores, we explore the possibility of using the social media data of Flickr and Foursquare to automatically identify safe and walkable streets. We find that unsafe streets tend to be photographed during the day, while walkable streets are tagged with walkability-related keywords. These results open up practical opportunities (for, e.g., room booking services, urban route recommenders, and real-estate sites) and have theoretical implications for researchers who might resort to the use social media data to tackle previously unanswered questions in the area of walkability.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, Proceedings of International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2015

The spectroscopic evolution of the symbiotic-like recurrent nova V407 Cygni during its 2010 outburst. I. The shock and its evolution

On 2010 Mar 10, V407 Cyg was discovered in outburst, eventually reaching V< 8 and detected by Fermi. Using medium and high resolution ground-based optical spectra, visual and Swift UV photometry, and Swift X-ray spectrophotometry, we describe the behavior of the high-velocity profile evolution for this nova during its first three months. The peak of the X-ray emission occurred at about day 40 with a broad maximum and decline after day 50. The main changes in the optical spectrum began at around that time. The He II 4686A line first appeared between days 7 and 14 and initially displayed a broad, symmetric profile that is characteristic of all species before day 60. Low-excitation lines remained comparatively narrow, with v(rad,max) of order 200-400 km/s. They were systematically more symmetric than lines such as [Ca V], [Fe VII], [Fe X], and He II, all of which showed a sequence of profile changes going from symmetric to a blue wing similar to that of the low ionization species but with a red wing extended to as high as 600 km/s . The Na I D doublet developed a broad component with similar velocity width to the other low-ionization species. The O VI Raman features were not detected. We interpret these variations as aspherical expansion of the ejecta within the Mira wind. The blue side is from the shock penetrating into the wind while the red wing is from the low-density periphery. The maximum radial velocities obey power laws, v(rad,max) t^{-n} with n ~ 1/3 for red wing and ~0.8 for the blue. (truncated)Comment: Accepted for publication, A&A (submitted: 9 Oct 2010; accepted: 1 Dec 2010) in press; based on data obtained with Swift, Nordic Optical Telescope, Ondrejov Observatory. Corrected typo, Fermi?LAT detection was at energies above 100 MeV (with thanks to C. C. Cheung

Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set

We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2, -1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012

Quark Mixing Matrix Studies and Lepton Flavor Violation Searches Using Rare Decays of Kaons

I review recent results from experiments on rare decays of kaons, concentrating on searches for lepton flavor violation (LFV) and on measurements of quark mixing (CKM) matrix elements. The LFV results are the culmination of 15 years of experimentation at Brookhaven National Laboratory and are unlikely to be improved upon soon. The CKM studies derive from measurements of decay rates of charged and neutral kaons into lepton anti-lepton pairs, both with and without a charged or neutral pion. I discuss recent results and prospects for improved measurements that could provide an unambiguous test of the Standard Model explanation for CP violation. This paper is the written version of a talk presented at the Lepton-Photon Conference in August 1999.Comment: Written version of a talk at the 1999 Lepton Photon Conferenc

On the resonances and eigenvalues for a 1D half-crystal with localised impurity

We consider the Schr\"odinger operator $H$ on the half-line with a periodic potential $p$ plus a compactly supported potential $q$. For generic $p$, its essential spectrum has an infinite sequence of open gaps. We determine the asymptotics of the resonance counting function and show that, for sufficiently high energy, each non-degenerate gap contains exactly one eigenvalue or antibound state, giving asymptotics for their positions. Conversely, for any potential $q$ and for any sequences (\s_n)_{1}^\iy, \s_n\in \{0,1\}, and (\vk_n)_1^\iy\in \ell^2, \vk_n\ge 0, there exists a potential $p$ such that \vk_n is the length of the $n$-th gap, $n\in\N$, and $H$ has exactly \s_n eigenvalues and 1-\s_n antibound state in each high-energy gap. Moreover, we show that between any two eigenvalues in a gap, there is an odd number of antibound states, and hence deduce an asymptotic lower bound on the number of antibound states in an adiabatic limit.Comment: 25 page