Experimental Realization of Entanglement Concentration and A Quantum Repeater

We report an experimental realization of entanglement concentration using two polarization-entangled photon pairs produced by pulsed parametric down-conversion. In the meantime, our setup also provides a proof-in-principle demonstration of a quantum repeater. The quality of our procedure is verified by observing a violation of Bell's inequality by more than 5 standard deviations. The high experimental accuracy achieved in the experiment implies that the requirement of tolerable error rate in multi-stage realization of quantum repeaters can be fulfilled, hence providing a practical toolbox for quantum communication over large distances.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitte

Application of RetCamⅡ in the screening of neonatal fundus disease

AIM: To investigate the safe and reliable examination method for neonatal fundus screening.<p>METHODS: Fundus information of 2 836 neonates performed by RetCamⅡ in our hospital from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012 were retrospectively analyzed, including 1 625 cases(57.30%)of premature infants which were first examined 1-4 weeks after birth and 1 211 cases(42.70%)of term infants which were first examined within 4 weeks after birth.<p>RESULTS: Totally 454 cases of abnormalfundus were found, including 207 cases(12.74%)of retinopathy of prematurity(ROP), ROPⅠ in 118 cases(57%), ROPⅡ in 58 cases(28.02%), ROPⅢ in 23 cases(11.11%), ROPⅣ in 8 cases(3.86%), no case of ROPV. A total of 247(20.40%)term infants had abnormal fundus, of which 68 cases(27.53%)were developmental or hereditary disease, retinoblastoma in 1 case(0.40%), retinal hemorrhage in 102 cases(41.30%), retinal exudative changes in 68 cases(27.53%), optic atrophy in 5 cases(2.02%)and optic disc edema in 3 cases(1.21%).<p>CONCLUSION: Neonatal fundus diseases were so various and harmful that early screening should be attended to. Premature infants and term infants with high risk are treated as focus group of fundus screening and RetCamII examination is safe and effective

Realization of Zero-Refractive-Index Lens with Ultralow Spherical Aberration

Optical complex materials offer unprecedented opportunity to engineer fundamental band dispersion which enables novel optoelectronic functionality and devices. Exploration of photonic Dirac cone at the center of momentum space has inspired an exceptional characteristic of zero-index, which is similar to zero effective mass in fermionic Dirac systems. Such all-dielectric zero-index photonic crystals provide an in-plane mechanism such that the energy of the propagating waves can be well confined along the chip direction. A straightforward example is to achieve the anomalous focusing effect without longitudinal spherical aberration, when the size of zero-index lens is large enough. Here, we designed and fabricated a prototype of zero-refractive-index lens by comprising large-area silicon nanopillar array with plane-concave profile. Near-zero refractive index was quantitatively measured near 1.55 um through anomalous focusing effect, predictable by effective medium theory. The zero-index lens was also demonstrated to perform ultralow longitudinal spherical aberration. Such IC compatible device provides a new route to integrate all-silicon zero-index materials into optical communication, sensing, and modulation, and to study fundamental physics on the emergent fields of topological photonics and valley photonics.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Experimental demonstration of a non-destructive controlled-NOT quantum gate for two independent photon-qubits

Universal logic gates for two quantum bits (qubits) form an essential ingredient of quantum information processing. However, the photons, one of the best candidates for qubits, suffer from the lack of strong nonlinear coupling required for quantum logic operations. Here we show how this drawback can be overcome by reporting a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of a non-destructive controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate for two independent photons using only linear optical elements in conjunction with single-photon sources and conditional dynamics. Moreover, we have exploited the CNOT gate to discriminate all the four Bell-states in a teleportation experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitte

The Hamiltonian index of graphs

The Hamiltonian index of a graph G is defined as h ( G ) = min { m : L m ( G ) is Hamiltonian } . In this paper, using the reduction method of Catlin [P.A. Catlin, A reduction method to find spanning Eulerian subgraphs, J. Graph Theory 12 (1988) 29–44], we constructed a graph H ̃ ( m ) ( G ) from G and prove that if h ( G ) ≥ 2 , then h ( G ) = min{ m : H ̃ ( m ) ( G ) has a spanning Eulerian subgraph }

Colorectal cancer screening with fecal occult blood test: A 22-year cohort study.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening with a three-tier fecal occult blood test (FOBT) in the Chinese population. The study was performed between 1987 and 2008 at the Beijing Military General Hospital, in a cohort of army service males and females aged &gt;50 years. Between 1987 and 2005, a three-tier screening program, comprising guaiac-based FOBTs (gFOBTs), followed by immunochemical FOBTs for positive guaiac test samples and then colonoscopy for positive immunochemical test subjects, was performed annually. The cohort was followed up until 2008. The cohort included 5,104 subjects, of which, 3,863 subjects participated in screening (screening group) and 1,241 did not (non-screening group). The two groups did not differ in age, gender or other major risk factors for colon cancer. Overall, 36 CRCs occurred in the screening group and 21 in the non-screening group. Compared with the non-screening group, the relative risk for the incidence and mortality of CRC was 0.51 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.30-0.87] and 0.36 (95% CI, 0.18-0.71), respectively, in the screening group. The general sensitivity of this three-tier FOBT was 80.6% (95% CI, 65.3-91.1). Thus, annual screening using the three-tier FOBT program may reduce the CRC incidence and mortality rate

Ultrastable actinide endohedral borospherenes.

Since the discovery of the first all-boron fullerenes B40-/0, metal-doped borospherenes have received extensive attention. So far, in spite of theoretical efforts on metalloborospherenes, the feasibility of actinide analogues remains minimally explored. Here we report a series of actinide borospherenes AnBn (An = U, Th; n = 36, 38, and 40) using DFT-PBE0 calculations. All the AnBn complexes are found to possess endohedral structures (An@Bn) as the global minima. In particular, U@B36 (C2h, 3Ag) and Th@B38 (D2h, 1Ag) exhibit nearly ideal endohedral borospherene structures. The C2h U@B36 and D2h Th@B38 complexes are predicted to be highly robust both thermodynamically and dynamically. In addition to the actinide size match to the cage, the covalent character of the metal-cage bonding in U@B36 and Th@B38 affords further stabilization. Bonding analysis indicates that U@B36 and Th@B38 can be qualified as 32-electron systems, and Th@B38 exhibits 3D aromaticity with σ plus π double delocalization bonding. The results demonstrate that doping with appropriate actinide atoms is promising to stabilize diverse borospherenes, and may provide routes for borospherene modification and functionalization