7,528 research outputs found
Longwall shearer tracking system
A tracking system for measuring and recording the movements of a longwall shearer vehicle includes an optical tracking assembly carried at one end of a desired vehicle path and a retroreflector assembly carried by the vehicle. Continuous horizontal and vertical light beams are alternately transmitted by means of a rotating Dove prism to the reflector assembly. A vertically reciprocating reflector interrupts the continuous light beams and converts these to discrete horizontal and vertical light beam images transmitted at spaced intervals along the path. A second rotating Dove prism rotates the vertical images to convert them to a second series of horizontal images while the first mentioned horizontal images are left unrotated and horizontal. The images are recorded on a film
Detecting groundwater discharge dynamics from point-to-catchment scale in a lowland stream : Combining hydraulic and tracer methods
Acknowledgements. We would like to thank members of the Northern Rivers Institute, Aberdeen University, for helpful discussions of data. We also thank Lars Rasmussen, Jolanta Kazmierczak and Charlotte Ditlevsen for help in the field. This study is part of the Hydrology Observatory, HOBE (http://www.hobe.dk), funded by the Villum Foundation and was as well funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Design, fabrication and test of last cut Follower
An optical device for following the cut in mining operations is described, and the results of acceptance testing reported. A measuring accuracy of + or - 1/16 inch was demonstrated. Preliminary results on longwall testing with the device mounted on a shearer are presented. Roof profiles measured during tramming and during cutting are presented. Comparison of acoustic measurements with optical measurement of the roof profiles indicates close agreement
Atomic quantum superposition state generation via optical probing
We analyze the performance of a protocol to prepare an atomic ensemble in a
superposition of two macroscopically distinguishable states. The protocol
relies on conditional measurements performed on a light field, which interacts
with the atoms inside an optical cavity prior to detection, and we investigate
cavity enhanced probing with continuous beams of both coherent and squeezed
light. The stochastic master equations used in the analysis are expressed in
terms of the Hamiltonian of the probed system and the interaction between the
probed system and the probe field and are thus quite generally applicable.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
Reconstruction of implanted marker trajectories from cone-beam CT projection images using interdimensional correlation modeling
PURPOSE: Cone-beam CT (CBCT) is a widely used imaging modality for image-guided radiotherapy. Most vendors provide CBCT systems that are mounted on a linac gantry. Thus, CBCT can be used to estimate the actual 3-dimensional (3D) position of moving respiratory targets in the thoracic/abdominal region using 2D projection images. The authors have developed a method for estimating the 3D trajectory of respiratory-induced target motion from CBCT projection images using interdimensional correlation modeling. METHODS: Because the superior-inferior (SI) motion of a target can be easily analyzed on projection images of a gantry-mounted CBCT system, the authors investigated the interdimensional correlation of the SI motion with left-right and anterior-posterior (AP) movements while the gantry is rotating. A simple linear model and a state-augmented model were implemented and applied to the interdimensional correlation analysis, and their performance was compared. The parameters of the interdimensional correlation models were determined by least-square estimation of the 2D error between the actual and estimated projected target position. The method was validated using 160 3D tumor trajectories from 46 thoracic/abdominal cancer patients obtained during CyberKnife treatment. The authors' simulations assumed two application scenarios: (1) retrospective estimation for the purpose of moving tumor setup used just after volumetric matching with CBCT; and (2) on-the-fly estimation for the purpose of real-time target position estimation during gating or tracking delivery, either for full-rotation volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) in 60 s or a stationary six-field intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with a beam delivery time of 20 s. RESULTS: For the retrospective CBCT simulations, the mean 3D root-mean-square error (RMSE) for all 4893 trajectory segments was 0.41 mm (simple linear model) and 0.35 mm (state-augmented model). In the on-the-fly simulations, prior projections over more than 60° appear to be necessary for reliable estimations. The mean 3D RMSE during beam delivery after the simple linear model had established with a prior 90° projection data was 0.42 mm for VMAT and 0.45 mm for IMRT. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method does not require any internal/external correlation or statistical modeling to estimate the target trajectory and can be used for both retrospective image-guided radiotherapy with CBCT projection images and real-time target position monitoring for respiratory gating or tracking.NHMRC, National Research Foundation of Kore
Differential atom interferometry beyond the standard quantum limit
We analyze methods to go beyond the standard quantum limit for a class of
atomic interferometers, where the quantity of interest is the difference of
phase shifts obtained by two independent atomic ensembles. An example is given
by an atomic Sagnac interferometer, where for two ensembles propagating in
opposite directions in the interferometer this phase difference encodes the
angular velocity of the experimental setup. We discuss methods of squeezing
separately or jointly observables of the two atomic ensembles, and compare in
detail advantages and drawbacks of such schemes. In particular we show that the
method of joint squeezing may improve the variance by up to a factor of 2. We
take into account fluctuations of the number of atoms in both the preparation
and the measurement stage, and obtain bounds on the difference of the numbers
of atoms in the two ensembles, as well as on the detection efficiency, which
have to be fulfilled in order to surpass the standard quantum limit. Under
realistic conditions, the performance of both schemes can be improved
significantly by reading out the phase difference via a quantum non-demolition
(QND) measurement. Finally, we discuss a scheme using macroscopically entangled
ensembles.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; eq. (3) corrected and other minor change
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