Assessment of sexual difficulties associated with multi-modal treatment for cervical or endometrial cancer: A systematic review of measurement instruments

Background: Practitioners and researchers require an outcome measure that accurately identifies the range of common treatment-induced changes in sexual function and well-being experienced by women after cervical or endometrial cancer. This systematic review critically appraised the measurement properties and clinical utility of instruments validated for the measurement of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) in this clinical population. Methods: A bibliographic database search for questionnaire development or validation papers was completed and methodological quality and measurement properties of selected studies rated using the Consensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instrument (COSMIN) checklist. Results: 738 articles were screened, 13 articles retrieved for full text assessment and 7 studies excluded, resulting in evaluation of 6 papers; 2 QoL and 4 female sexual morbidity measures. Five of the six instruments omitted one or more dimension of female sexual function and only one instrument explicitly measured distress associated with sexual changes as per DSM V (APA 2013) diagnostic criteria. None of the papers reported measurement error, responsiveness data was available for only two instruments, three papers failed to report on criterion validity, and test-retest reliability reporting was inconsistent. Heterosexual penile-vaginal intercourse remains the dominant sexual activity focus for sexual morbidity PROMS terminology and instruments lack explicit reference to solo or non-coital sexual expression or validation in a non-heterosexual sample. Four out of six instruments included mediating treatment or illness items such as vaginal changes, menopause or altered body image. Conclusions: Findings suggest that the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) remains the most robust sexual morbidity outcome measure, for research or clinical use, in sexually active women treated for cervical or endometrial cancer

A new energy upper bound for AdS black holes inspired by free field theory

We consider the toroidally compactified planar AdS-Schwarzschild solution to 4-dimensional gravity with negative cosmological constant. This has a flat torus conformal boundary metric. We show that if the spatial part of the boundary metric is deformed, keeping it static and the temperature and area fixed, then assuming a static bulk solution exists, its energy is less than that of the AdS-Schwarzschild solution. The proof is non-perturbative in the metric deformation. While we expect the same holds for the free energy for black hole solutions we are so far are not able to prove it. In the context of AdS-CFT this implies a 3-dimensional holographic CFT on a flat spatial torus whose bulk dual is AdS-Schwarzschild has a greater energy than if the spatial geometry is deformed in any way that preserves temperature and area. This work was inspired by previous results in free field theory, where scalars and fermions in 3-dimensions have been shown to energetically disfavour flat space

Heterodyne and adaptive phase measurements on states of fixed mean photon number

The standard technique for measuring the phase of a single mode field is heterodyne detection. Such a measurement may have an uncertainty far above the intrinsic quantum phase uncertainty of the state. Recently it has been shown [H. M. Wiseman and R. B. Killip, Phys. Rev. A 57, 2169 (1998)] that an adaptive technique introduces far less excess noise. Here we quantify this difference by an exact numerical calculation of the minimum measured phase variance for the various schemes, optimized over states with a fixed mean photon number. We also analytically derive the asymptotics for these variances. For the case of heterodyne detection our results disagree with the power law claimed by D'Ariano and Paris [Phys. Rev. A 49, 3022 (1994)].Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, minor changes from journal versio

From Black Strings to Black Holes

Using recently developed numerical methods, we examine neutral compactified non-uniform black strings which connect to the Gregory-Laflamme critical point. By studying the geometry of the horizon we give evidence that this branch of solutions may connect to the black hole solutions, as conjectured by Kol. We find the geometry of the topology changing solution is likely to be nakedly singular at the point where the horizon radius is zero. We show that these solutions can all be expressed in the coordinate system discussed by Harmark and Obers.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, RevTe

Adaptive single-shot phase measurements: The full quantum theory

The phase of a single-mode field can be measured in a single-shot measurement by interfering the field with an effectively classical local oscillator of known phase. The standard technique is to have the local oscillator detuned from the system (heterodyne detection) so that it is sometimes in phase and sometimes in quadrature with the system over the course of the measurement. This enables both quadratures of the system to be measured, from which the phase can be estimated. One of us [H.M. Wiseman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4587 (1995)] has shown recently that it is possible to make a much better estimate of the phase by using an adaptive technique in which a resonant local oscillator has its phase adjusted by a feedback loop during the single-shot measurement. In Ref.~[H.M. Wiseman and R.B. Killip, Phys. Rev. A 56, 944] we presented a semiclassical analysis of a particular adaptive scheme, which yielded asymptotic results for the phase variance of strong fields. In this paper we present an exact quantum mechanical treatment. This is necessary for calculating the phase variance for fields with small photon numbers, and also for considering figures of merit other than the phase variance. Our results show that an adaptive scheme is always superior to heterodyne detection as far as the variance is concerned. However the tails of the probability distribution are surprisingly high for this adaptive measurement, so that it does not always result in a smaller probability of error in phase-based optical communication.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 8 figures (concatenated), Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Phonon number quantum jumps in an optomechanical system

We describe an optomechanical system in which the mean phonon number of a single mechanical mode conditionally displaces the amplitude of the optical field. Using homodyne detection of the output field we establish the conditions under which phonon number quantum jumps can be inferred from the measurement record: both the cavity damping rate and the measurement rate of the phonon number must be much greater than the thermalization rate of the mechanical mode. We present simulations of the conditional dynamics of the measured system using the stochastic master equation. In the good-measurement limit, the conditional evolution of the mean phonon number shows quantum jumps as phonons enter and exit the mechanical resonator via the bath.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. minor revisions since first versio

Static Axisymmetric Vacuum Solutions and Non-Uniform Black Strings

We describe new numerical methods to solve the static axisymmetric vacuum Einstein equations in more than four dimensions. As an illustration, we study the compactified non-uniform black string phase connected to the uniform strings at the Gregory-Laflamme critical point. We compute solutions with a ratio of maximum to minimum horizon radius up to nine. For a fixed compactification radius, the mass of these solutions is larger than the mass of the classically unstable uniform strings. Thus they cannot be the end state of the instability.Comment: 48 pages, 13 colour figures; v2: references correcte

On Black-Brane Instability In an Arbitrary Dimension

The black-hole black-string system is known to exhibit critical dimensions and therefore it is interesting to vary the spacetime dimension $D$, treating it as a parameter of the system. We derive the large $D$ asymptotics of the critical, i.e. marginally stable, string following an earlier numerical analysis. For a background with an arbitrary compactification manifold we give an expression for the critical mass of a corresponding black brane. This expression is completely explicit for ${\bf T}^n$, the $n$ dimensional torus of an arbitrary shape. An indication is given that by employing a higher dimensional torus, rather than a single compact dimension, the total critical dimension above which the nature of the black-brane black-hole phase transition changes from sudden to smooth could be as low as $D\leq 11$.Comment: 1+14 pages, 2 eps figures. Replaced with the published versio

Weak Values, Quantum Trajectories, and the Stony-Brook Cavity QED experiment

Weak values as introduced by Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman (AAV) are ensemble average values for the results of weak measurements. They are interesting when the ensemble is preselected on a particular initial state and postselected on a particular final measurement result. I show that weak values arise naturally in quantum optics, as weak measurements occur whenever an open system is monitored (as by a photodetector). I use quantum trajectory theory to derive a generalization of AAV's formula to include (a) mixed initial conditions, (b) nonunitary evolution, (c) a generalized (non-projective) final measurement, and (d) a non-back-action-evading weak measurement. I apply this theory to the recent Stony-Brook cavity QED experiment demonstrating wave-particle duality [G.T. Foster, L.A. Orozco, H.M. Castro-Beltran, and H.J. Carmichael, Phys. Rev. Lett. {85}, 3149 (2000)]. I show that the ``fractional'' correlation function measured in that experiment can be recast as a weak value in a form as simple as that introduced by AAV.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.

The Uncertainty Relation in "Which-Way" Experiments: How to Observe Directly the Momentum Transfer using Weak Values

A which-way measurement destroys the twin-slit interference pattern. Bohr argued that distinguishing between two slits a distance s apart gives the particle a random momentum transfer \wp of order h/s. This was accepted for more than 60 years, until Scully, Englert and Walther (SEW) proposed a which-way scheme that, they claimed, entailed no momentum transfer. Storey, Tan, Collett and Walls (STCW) in turn proved a theorem that, they claimed, showed that Bohr was right. This work reviews and extends a recent proposal [Wiseman, Phys. Lett. A 311, 285 (2003)] to resolve the issue using a weak-valued probability distribution for momentum transfer, P_wv(\wp). We show that P_wv(\wp) must be wider than h/6s. However, its moments can still be zero because P_wv(\wp) is not necessarily positive definite. Nevertheless, it is measurable in a way understandable to a classical physicist. We introduce a new measure of spread for P_wv(\wp): half of the unit-confidence interval, and conjecture that it is never less than h/4s. For an idealized example with infinitely narrow slits, the moments of P_wv(\wp) and of the momentum distributions are undefined unless a process of apodization is used. We show that by considering successively smoother initial wave functions, successively more moments of both P_wv(\wp) and the momentum distributions become defined. For this example the moments of P_wv(\wp) are zero, and these are equal to the changes in the moments of the momentum distribution. We prove that this relation holds for schemes in which the moments of P_wv(\wp) are non-zero, but only for the first two moments. We also compare these moments to those of two other momentum-transfer distributions and \hat{p}_f-\hat{p}_i. We find agreement between all of these, but again only for the first two moments.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, submitted to J. Opt.