Air-clad fibers: pump absorption assisted by chaotic wave dynamics?

Wave chaos is a concept which has already proved its practical usefulness in design of double-clad fibers for cladding-pumped fiber lasers and fiber amplifiers. In general, classically chaotic geometries will favor strong pump absorption and we address the extent of chaotic wave dynamics in typical air-clad geometries. While air-clad structures supporting sup-wavelength convex air-glass interfaces (viewed from the high-index side) will promote chaotic dynamics we find guidance of regular whispering-gallery modes in air-clad structures resembling an overall cylindrical symmetry. Highly symmetric air-clad structures may thus suppress the pump-absorption efficiency eta below the ergodic scaling law eta proportional to Ac/Acl, where Ac and Acl are the areas of the rare-earth doped core and the cladding, respectively.Comment: High-resolution figures and animations available in the freely available published version (click the DOI link

Failure detectors as type boosters

The power of an object type T can be measured as the maximum number n of processes that can solve consensus using only objects of T and registers. This number, denoted cons(T), is called the consensus power of T. This paper addresses the question of the weakest failure detector to solve consensus among a number k > n of processes that communicate using shared objects of a type T with consensus power n. In other words, we seek for a failure detector that is sufficient and necessary to "boost” the consensus power of a type T from n to k. It was shown in Neiger (Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on principles of distributed computing (PODC), pp. 100-109, 1995) that a certain failure detector, denoted Ω n , is sufficient to boost the power of a type T from n to k, and it was conjectured that Ω n was also necessary. In this paper, we prove this conjecture for one-shot deterministic types. We first show that, for any one-shot deterministic type T with cons(T) ≤ n, Ω n is necessary to boost the power of T from n to n+1. Then we go a step further and show that Ω n is also the weakest to boost the power of (n+1)-ported one-shot deterministic types from n to any k > n. Our result generalizes, in a precise sense, the result of the weakest failure detector to solve consensus in asynchronous message-passing systems (Chandra etal. in J ACM 43(4):685-722, 1996). As a corollary, we show that Ω t is the weakest failure detector to boost the resilience level of a distributed shared memory system, i.e., to solve consensus among n > t processes using (t − 1)-resilient objects of consensus power

Quantum Noise Limits for Nonlinear, Phase-Invariant Amplifiers

Any quantum device that amplifies coherent states of a field while preserving their phase generates noise. A nonlinear, phase-invariant amplifier may generate less noise, over a range of input field strengths, than any linear amplifier with the same amplification. We present explicit examples of such nonlinear amplifiers, and derive lower bounds on the noise generated by a nonlinear, phase-invariant quantum amplifier.Comment: RevTeX, 6 pages + 4 figures (included in file; hard copy sent on request

The Failure Detector Abstraction

This paper surveys the failure detector concept through two dimensions. First we study failure detectors as building blocks to simplify the design of reliable distributed algorithms. More specifically, we illustrate how failure detectors can factor out timing assumptions to detect failures in distributed agreement algorithms. Second, we study failure detectors as computability benchmarks. That is, we survey the weakest failure detector question and illustrate how failure detectors can be used to classify problems. We also highlights some limitations of the failure detector abstraction along each of the dimensions

The weakest failure detectors to boost obstruction-freedom

It is considered good practice in concurrent computing to devise shared object implementations that ensure a minimal obstruction-free progress property and delegate the task of boosting liveness to independent generic oracles called contention managers. This paper determines necessary and sufficient conditions to implement wait-free and non-blocking contention managers, i.e., contention managers that ensure wait-freedom (resp. non-blockingness) of any associated obstruction-free object implementation. The necessary conditions hold even when universal objects (like compare-and-swap) or random oracles are available in the implementation of the contention manager. On the other hand, the sufficient conditions assume only basic read/write objects, i.e., registers. We show that failure detector \lozenge{\fancyscript{P}} is the weakest to convert any obstruction-free algorithm into a wait-free one, and Ω *, a new failure detector which we introduce in this paper, and which is strictly weaker than \lozenge\fancyscript{P} but strictly stronger than Ω, is the weakest to convert any obstruction-free algorithm into a non-blocking one. We also address the issue of minimizing the overhead imposed by contention management in low contention scenarios. We propose two intermittent failure detectors $$I_{\Omega^*}$$ and I_{\lozenge\fancyscript{P}} that are in a precise sense equivalent to, respectively, Ω * and \lozenge\fancyscript{P} , but allow for reducing the cost of failure detection in eventually synchronous systems when there is little contention. We present two contention managers: a non-blocking one and a wait-free one, that use, respectively, $$I_{\Omega^*}$$ and I_{\lozenge\fancyscript{P}} . When there is no contention, the first induces very little overhead whereas the second induces some non-trivial overhead. We show that wait-free contention managers, unlike their non-blocking counterparts, impose an inherent non-trivial overhead even in contention-free execution

Absence of anisotropic universal transport in YBCO

There exists significant in-plane anisotropy between $a$ and $b$ axis for various properties in YBCO. However recent thermal conductivity measurement by Chiao et al. which confirms previous microwave conductivity measurement by Zhang et al., shows no obvious anisotropy in the context of universal transport. We give a possible explanation of why the anisotropy is seen in most properties but not seen in the universal transport.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure