Resonant generation of coherent phonons in a superconductor by ultrafast optical pump pulses

We study the generation of coherent phonons in a superconductor by ultrafast optical pump pulses. The nonequilibrium dynamics of the coupled Bogoliubov quasiparticle-phonon system after excitation with the pump pulse is analyzed by means of the density-matrix formalism with the phonons treated at a full quantum kinetic level. For ultrashort excitation pulses, the superconductor exhibits a nonadiabatic behavior in which the superconducting order parameter oscillates. We find that in this nonadiabatic regime the generation of coherent phonons is resonantly enhanced when the frequency of the order-parameter oscillation is tuned to the phonon energy, a condition that can be achieved in experiments by varying the integrated pump pulse intensity.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, typos correcte

A Study of the Antiferromagnetic Phase in the Hubbard Model by means of the Composite Operator Method

We have investigated the antiferromagnetic phase of the 2D, the 3D and the extended Hubbard models on a bipartite cubic lattice by means of the Composite Operator Method within a two-pole approximation. This approach yields a fully self-consistent treatment of the antiferromagnetic state that respects the symmetry properties of both the model and the algebra. The complete phase diagram, as regards the antiferromagnetic and the paramagnetic phases, has been drawn. We firstly reported, within a pole approximation, three kinds of transitions at half-filling: Mott-Hubbard, Mott-Heisenberg and Heisenberg. We have also found a metal-insulator transition, driven by doping, within the antiferromagnetic phase. This latter is restricted to a very small region near half filling and has, in contrast to what has been found by similar approaches, a finite critical Coulomb interaction as lower bound at half filling. Finally, it is worth noting that our antiferromagnetic gap has two independent components: one due to the antiferromagnetic correlations and another coming from the Mott-Hubbard mechanism.Comment: 20 pages, 37 figures, RevTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Towards joint reconstruction of noise and losses in quantum channels

The calibration of a quantum channel, i.e. the determination of the transmission losses affecting it, is definitely one of the principal objectives in both the quantum communication and quantum metrology frameworks. Another task of the utmost relevance is the identification, e.g. by extracting its photon number distribution, of the noise potentially present in the channel. Here we present a protocol, based on the response of a photon-number-resolving detector at different quantum efficiencies, able to accomplish both of these tasks at once, providing with a single measurement an estimate of the transmission losses as well as the photon statistics of the noise present in the exploited quantum channel. We show and discuss the experimental results obtained in the practical implementation of such protocol, with different kinds and levels of noise.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

LA SAGGISTICA DI GIOVANNI GIUDICI: IDEOLOGIA, CRITICA E TEORIA

The present work examines essays and articles of the poet Giovanni Giudici, published between the second postwar period and the Eighties. Lifestyle and costums articles, travel reports, reviews, literary essays: during his long career, as journilist, poet and copywriter, Giudici expriments many kinds of prose. I will focus on this large corpus in order to shed light on still unknown aspects of these writings, and analyse the highly complex combination of different elements which are contained in these proses. The research will be grounded on text analysis, considering at the same time social and cultural contests in which texts took life

Fermi surface evolution of the 2D Hubbard model within a novel four-pole approximation

We present a novel solution of the 2D Hubbard model in the framework of the Composite Operator Method within a four-pole approximation. We adopt a basis of four fields: the two Hubbard operators plus two fields describing the Hubbard transitions dressed by nearest-neighbor spin fluctuations. We include these nonlocal operators because spin fluctuations play a dominant role in strongly correlated electronic systems with respect to other types of nonlocal charge, pair and double-occupancy fluctuations. The approximate solution performs very well once compared with advanced (semi-) numerical methods from the weak-to the strong-coupling regime, being by far less computational-resource demanding. We adopt this solution to study the single-particle properties of the model in the strong coupling regime, where the effects of strong short-range magnetic correlations are more relevant and could be responsible for anomalous features. In particular, we will focus on the characterization of the Fermi surface and of its evolution with doping.We present a novel solution of the 2D Hubbard model in the framework of the Composite Operator Method within a four-pole approximation. We adopt a basis of four fields: the two Hubbard operators plus two fields describing the Hubbard transitions dressed by nearest-neighbor spin fluctuations. We include these nonlocal operators because spin fluctuations play a dominant role in strongly correlated electronic systems with respect to other types of nonlocal charge, pair and double-occupancy fluctuations. The approximate solution performs very well once compared with advanced (semi-) numerical methods from the weak-to the strong-coupling regime, being by far less computational-resource demanding. We adopt this solution to study the single-particle properties of the model in the strong coupling regime, where the effects of strong short-range magnetic correlations are more relevant and could be responsible for anomalous features. In particular, we will focus on the characterization of the Fermi surface and of it..

Positive Operator-Valued Measure reconstruction of a beam-splitter tree based photon-number-resolving detector

Here we present a reconstruction of the Positive Operator-Value Measurement of a photon-number-resolving detector comprised of three 50:50 beamsplitters in a tree configuration, terminated with four single-photon avalanche detectors. The four detectors' outputs are processed by an electronic board that discriminates detected photon number states from 0 to 4 and implements a "smart counting" routine to compensate for dead time issues at high count rates

High-order correlation effects in the two-dimensional Hubbard model

The electronic states of the two-dimensional Hubbard model are investigated by means of a 4-pole approximation within the Composite Operator Method. In addition to the conventional Hubbard operators, we consider other two operators which come from the hierarchy of the equations of motion and carry information regarding nearest-neighbor spin and charge configurations. By means of this operatorial basis, we can study the physics related to the energy scale of J=4t^2/U in addition to the one of U. Present results show relevant physical features, well beyond those previously obtained by means of a 2-pole approximation, such as a four-band structure with shadow bands and a quasi-particle peak at the Fermi level. The Fermi level stays pinned to the band flatness located at (pi,0)-point within a wide range of hole-doping (0 <= delta <= 0.15). A comprehensive analysis of double occupancy, internal energy, specific heat and entropy features have been also performed. All reported results are in excellent agreement with the data of numerical simulations.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Experiment Investigating the Connection between Weak Values and Contextuality

Weak value measurements have recently given rise to a large interest for both the possibility of measurement amplification and the chance of further quantum mechanics foundations investigation. In particular, a question emerged about weak values being proof of the incompatibility between Quantum Mechanics and Non-Contextual Hidden Variables Theories (NCHVT). A test to provide a conclusive answer to this question was given in [M. Pusey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 200401 (2014)], where a theorem was derived showing the NCHVT incompatibility with the observation of anomalous weak values under specific conditions. In this paper we realize this proposal, clearly pointing out the strict connection between weak values and the contextual nature of Quantum Mechanics.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure