The duration distribution of Swift Gamma-Ray Bursts

Decades ago two classes of gamma-ray bursts were identified and delineated as having durations shorter and longer than about 2 s. Subsequently indications also supported the existence of a third class. Using maximum likelihood estimation we analyze the duration distribution of 888 Swift BAT bursts observed before October 2015. Fitting three log-normal functions to the duration distribution of the bursts provides a better fit than two log-normal distributions, with 99.9999% significance. Similarly to earlier results, we found that a fourth component is not needed. The relative frequencies of the distribution of the groups are 8% for short, 35% for intermediate and 57% for long bursts which correspond to our previous results. We analyse the redshift distribution for the 269 GRBs of the 888 GRBs with known redshift. We find no evidence for the previously suggested difference between the long and intermediate GRBs' redshift distribution. The observed redshift distribution of the 20 short GRBs differs with high significance from the distributions of the other groups.Comment: accepte

Effective Privacy Amplification for Secure Classical Communications

We study the practical effectiveness of privacy amplification for classical key-distribution schemes. We find that in contrast to quantum key distribution schemes, the high fidelity of the raw key generated in classical systems allow the users to always sift a secure shorter key if they have an upper bound on the eavesdropper probability to correctly guess the exchanged key-bits. The number of privacy amplification iterations needed to achieve information leak of 10^-8 in existing classical communicators is 2 or 3 resulting in a corresponding slowdown 4 to 8. We analyze the inherent tradeoff between the number of iterations and the security of the raw key. This property which is unique to classical key distribution systems render them highly useful for practical, especially for noisy channels where sufficiently low quantum bit error ratios are difficult to achieve.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Multiphoton Coincidence Spectroscopy

We extend the analysis of photon coincidence spectroscopy beyond bichromatic excitation and two-photon coincidence detection to include multichromatic excitation and multiphoton coincidence detection. Trichromatic excitation and three-photon coincidence spectroscopy are studied in detail, and we identify an observable signature of a triple resonance in an atom-cavity system.Comment: 6 page, REVTeXs, 6 Postscript figures. The abstract appeared in the Proceedings of ACOLS9

Exact and Quasi-exact Models of Strange Stars

We construct and compare a variety of simple models for strange stars, namely, hypothetical self-bound objects made of a cold stable version of the quark-gluon plasma. Exact, quasi-exact and numerical models are examined to find the most economical description for these objects. A simple and successful parametrization of them is given in terms of the central density, and many differences among the models are explicitly shown and discussed.Comment: 20 pp. 15 figures, to appear in IJMP