910 research outputs found
Quasidegeneracy of Majorana Neutrinos and the Origin of Large Leptonic Mixing
We propose that the observed large leptonic mixing may just reflect a
quasidegeneracy of three Majorana neutrinos. The limit of exact degeneracy of
Majorana neutrinos is not trivial, as leptonic mixing and even CP violation may
occur. We conjecture that the smallness of , when compared to the
other elements of , may just reflect the fact that, in the limit of
exact mass degeneracy, the leptonic mixing matrix necessarily has a vanishing
element. We show that the lifting of the mass degeneracy can lead to the
measured value of while at the same time accommodating the observed
solar and atmospheric mixing angles. In the scenario we consider for the
breaking of the mass degeneracy there is only one CP violating phase, already
present in the limit of exact degeneracy, which upon the lifting of the
degeneracy generates both Majorana and Dirac-type CP violation in the leptonic
sector. We analyse some of the correlations among physical observables and
point out that in most of the cases considered, the implied strength of
leptonic Dirac-type CP violation is large enough to be detected in the next
round of experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. Matches published version, references added,
improved discussion, results unchange
Crowdsourcing Linked Data on listening experiences through reuse and enhancement of library data
Research has approached the practice of musical reception in a multitude of ways, such as the analysis of professional critique, sales figures and psychological processes activated by the act of listening. Studies in the Humanities, on the other hand, have been hindered by the lack of structured evidence of actual experiences of listening as reported by the listeners themselves, a concern that was voiced since the early Web era. It was however assumed that such evidence existed, albeit in pure textual form, but could not be leveraged until it was digitised and aggregated. The Listening Experience Database (LED) responds to this research need by providing a centralised hub for evidence of listening in the literature. Not only does LED support search and reuse across nearly 10,000 records, but it also provides machine-readable structured data of the knowledge around the contexts of listening. To take advantage of the mass of formal knowledge that already exists on the Web concerning these contexts, the entire framework adopts Linked Data principles and technologies. This also allows LED to directly reuse open data from the British Library for the source documentation that is already published. Reused data are re-published as open data with enhancements obtained by expanding over the model of the original data, such as the partitioning of published books and collections into individual stand-alone documents. The database was populated through crowdsourcing and seamlessly incorporates data reuse from the very early data entry phases. As the sources of the evidence often contain vague, fragmentary of uncertain information, facilities were put in place to generate structured data out of such fuzziness. Alongside elaborating on these functionalities, this article provides insights into the most recent features of the latest instalment of the dataset and portal, such as the interlinking with the MusicBrainz database, the relaxation of geographical input constraints through text mining, and the plotting of key locations in an interactive geographical browser
Security of the Bennett 1992 quantum-key distribution against individual attack over a realistic channel
The security of two-state quantum key distribution against individual attack
is estimated when the channel has losses and noises. We assume that Alice and
Bob use two nonorthogonal single-photon polarization states. To make our
analysis simple, we propose a modified B92 protocol in which Alice and Bob make
use of inconclusive results and Bob performs a kind of symmetrization of
received states. Using this protocol, Alice and Bob can estimate Eve's
information gain as a function of a few parameters which reflect the
imperfections of devices or Eve's disturbance. In some parameter regions, Eve's
maximum information gain shows counter-intuitive behavior, namely, it decreases
as the amount of disturbances increases. For a small noise rate Eve can extract
perfect information in the case where the angle between Alice's two states is
small or large, while she cannot extract perfect information for intermediate
angles. We also estimate the secret key gain which is the net growth of the
secret key per one pulse. We show the region where the modified B92 protocol
over a realistic channel is secure against individual attack.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figure
Attacks on quantum key distribution protocols that employ non-ITS authentication
We demonstrate how adversaries with unbounded computing resources can break
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols which employ a particular message
authentication code suggested previously. This authentication code, featuring
low key consumption, is not Information-Theoretically Secure (ITS) since for
each message the eavesdropper has intercepted she is able to send a different
message from a set of messages that she can calculate by finding collisions of
a cryptographic hash function. However, when this authentication code was
introduced it was shown to prevent straightforward Man-In-The-Middle (MITM)
attacks against QKD protocols.
In this paper, we prove that the set of messages that collide with any given
message under this authentication code contains with high probability a message
that has small Hamming distance to any other given message. Based on this fact
we present extended MITM attacks against different versions of BB84 QKD
protocols using the addressed authentication code; for three protocols we
describe every single action taken by the adversary. For all protocols the
adversary can obtain complete knowledge of the key, and for most protocols her
success probability in doing so approaches unity.
Since the attacks work against all authentication methods which allow to
calculate colliding messages, the underlying building blocks of the presented
attacks expose the potential pitfalls arising as a consequence of non-ITS
authentication in QKD-postprocessing. We propose countermeasures, increasing
the eavesdroppers demand for computational power, and also prove necessary and
sufficient conditions for upgrading the discussed authentication code to the
ITS level.Comment: 34 page
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