4,509 research outputs found
Vacuum phototriodes for the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter endcap
The measurement of scintillation light from the lead tungstate crystals of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) poses a substantial technical challenge, particularly in the endcap regions, where the radiation levels are highest. The photodetectors must be fast, sensitive, radiationhard, and operate with significant internal gain in a magnetic field of 4 Tesla. The measured performance characteristics of the first batches of series production vacuum phototriodes (VPT), developed to satisfy the needs of CMS, will be described
Basal melting of Ross Ice Shelf from solar heat absorption in an ice-front polynya
Ice-ocean interactions at the base of Antarctic ice shelves are rarely observed, yet have a profound influence on ice sheet evolution and stability. Ice sheet models are highly sensitive to assumed ice shelf basal melt rates; however, there are few direct observations of basal melting or the oceanographic processes that drive this, and consequently our understanding of these interactions remains limited. Here we use new in-situ observations from the Ross Ice Shelf to examine the oceanographic processes that drive basal ablation of the world’s largest ice shelf. We show that basal melt rates beneath a thin and structurally important part of the shelf are an order of magnitude higher than the shelf-wide average. This melting is strongly influenced by a seasonal inflow of solar-heated surface water from the adjacent Ross Sea Polynya that downwells into the ice shelf cavity, nearly tripling basal melt rates during summer. Melting driven by this frequently overlooked process is expected to increase with predicted surface warming. We infer that solar heat absorbed in ice front polynyas can make an important contribution to the present-day mass balance of ice shelves, and potentially impact their future stability.Rutherford Foundation and Antarctica New Zealan
Where do we go from here? An assessment of navigation performance using a compass versus a GPS unit
The Global Positioning System (GPS) looks set to replace the traditional map and
compass for navigation tasks in military and civil domains. However, we may ask
whether GPS has a real performance advantage over traditional methods. We present
an exploratory study using a waypoint plotting task to compare the standard magnetic
compass against a military GPS unit, for both expert and non-expert navigators.
Whilst performance times were generally longer in setting up the GPS unit, once
navigation was underway the GPS was more efficient than the compass. For mediumto
long-term missions, this means that GPS could offer significant performance
benefits, although the compass remains superior for shorter missions.
Notwithstanding the performance times, significantly more errors, and more serious
errors, occurred when using the compass. Overall, then, the GPS offers some clear
advantages, especially for non-expert users. Nonetheless, concerns over the
development of cognitive maps remain when using GPS technologies
Genes Suggest Ancestral Colour Polymorphisms Are Shared across Morphologically Cryptic Species in Arctic Bumblebees
email Suzanne orcd idCopyright: © 2015 Williams et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
The egiin davaa prehistoric rupture, central mongolia: A large magnitude normal faulting earthquake on a reactivated fault with little cumulative slip located in a slowly deforming intraplate setting
The prehistoric Egiin Davaa earthquake rupture is well-preserved in late Quaternary deposits within the Hangay Mountains of central Mongolia. The rupture is expressed by a semicontinuous 80 km-long topographic scarp. Geomorphological reconstructions reveal a relatively constant scarp height of 4-4.5 m and a NW-directed slip vector. Previous researchers have suggested that the scarp's exceptional geomorphological preservation indicates that it may correspond to an earthquake that occurred in the region c. 500 years ago. However, we constrain the last rupture to have been at least 4 ka ago from morphological dating and < 7.4 ka ago based on radiocarbon dating from one of two palaeoseismic trenches. Our study shows that discrete earthquake ruptures, along with details such as the locations of partially infilled fissures, can be preserved for periods well in excess of 1000 years in the interior of Asia, providing an archive of fault movements that can be directly read from the Earth's surface over a timescale appropriate for the study of slowly deforming continental interiors. The Egiin Davaa rupture involved c. 8 m of slip which, along with the observations that it is largely unsegmented along its length and that the ratio of cumulative slip (c. 250 m) to fault length (c. 80 km) is small, suggests relatively recent reactivation of a pre-existing geological structure
Skyrmions in a ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate
The recently realized multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates provide
opportunities to explore the rich physics brought about by the spin degrees of
freedom. For instance, we can study spin waves and phase separation,
macroscopic quantum tunneling, Rabi oscillations, the coupling between spin
gradients and superfluid flow, squeezed spin states, vortices and other
topological excitations. Theoretically, there have been already some studies of
the ground-state properties of these systems and their line-like vortex
excitations. In analogy with nuclear physics or the quantum Hall effect, we
explore here the possibility of observing point-like topological excitations or
skyrmions. These are nontrivial spin textures that in principle can exist in a
spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. In particular, we investigate the stability of
skyrmions in a fictitious spin-1/2 condensate of Rb87 atoms. We find that
skyrmions can exist in this case only as a metastable state, but with a
lifetime of the order of, or even longer than, the typical lifetime of the
condensate itself. In addition to determining the size and the lifetime of the
skyrmion, we also present its spin texture and finally briefly consider its
dynamical properties.Comment: 4 pages (REVtex), 3 PDF figures. See also cond-mat/000237
Mapping the optimal route between two quantum states
A central feature of quantum mechanics is that a measurement is intrinsically
probabilistic. As a result, continuously monitoring a quantum system will
randomly perturb its natural unitary evolution. The ability to control a
quantum system in the presence of these fluctuations is of increasing
importance in quantum information processing and finds application in fields
ranging from nuclear magnetic resonance to chemical synthesis. A detailed
understanding of this stochastic evolution is essential for the development of
optimized control methods. Here we reconstruct the individual quantum
trajectories of a superconducting circuit that evolves in competition between
continuous weak measurement and driven unitary evolution. By tracking
individual trajectories that evolve between an arbitrary choice of initial and
final states we can deduce the most probable path through quantum state space.
These pre- and post-selected quantum trajectories also reveal the optimal
detector signal in the form of a smooth time-continuous function that connects
the desired boundary conditions. Our investigation reveals the rich interplay
between measurement dynamics, typically associated with wave function collapse,
and unitary evolution of the quantum state as described by the Schrodinger
equation. These results and the underlying theory, based on a principle of
least action, reveal the optimal route from initial to final states, and may
enable new quantum control methods for state steering and information
processing.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Manipulating a qubit through the backaction of sequential partial measurements and real-time feedback
Quantum measurements not only extract information from a system but also
alter its state. Although the outcome of the measurement is probabilistic, the
backaction imparted on the measured system is accurately described by quantum
theory. Therefore, quantum measurements can be exploited for manipulating
quantum systems without the need for control fields. We demonstrate
measurement-only state manipulation on a nuclear spin qubit in diamond by
adaptive partial measurements. We implement the partial measurement via tunable
correlation with an electron ancilla qubit and subsequent ancilla readout. We
vary the measurement strength to observe controlled wavefunction collapse and
find post-selected quantum weak values. By combining a novel quantum
non-demolition readout on the ancilla with real-time adaption of the
measurement strength we realize steering of the nuclear spin to a target state
by measurements alone. Besides being of fundamental interest, adaptive
measurements can improve metrology applications and are key to
measurement-based quantum computing.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
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