"Nothing about us, without us":an investigation into the justification for Indigenous peoples to be involved in every step of Indigenous digital product design

This paper focuses on the experiences of built coalitions between the authors, students and the Indigenous peoples involved in a study of digital design. Ontario Tech University has been working with the Indigenous communities of the First Nations in Ontario, Canada. The report begins with a brief overview of the issues faced by the Indigenous communities in Canada. For example, retaining their traditional language, knowledge, and culture on their traditional lands. The paper then outlines the study's design and methods to understand how technology may help the Indigenous community address these issues. To do this, the authors set up a course project for 21 graduate students in Computer Science at Ontario Tech University in Winter 2021. The students were formed into nine groups. Each group was assigned the design and development an interactive design product prototype that would address some of the Indigenous community’s social issues considering user experience and co-design from the outset. Lastly, the report shares the findings of the study and discusses the success of ‘Nothing about us, without us’ and how the prototypes may ameliorate the issues faced by the Indigenous peoples. The takeaway that we aim for is an understanding that no matter how honourable it may seem to create something on their behalf, it is essential to involve the primary culture/language speakers. We also intend to create a model for this mutual collaboration which then can be pursued to enable mutually respectful relationships. Following the old adage, “give a man an app, and he will use it for one day, teach a man to design an app and he will share it with the world.

Reflection by two level system: phase singularities on the Poincaré hypersphere

We consider the reflection of a photon by a two-level system in a quasi-one-dimensional waveguide. The waveguide polarisation at the location of the two-level system and the transition dipole are key determinants of the physics, controlling of the phase and amplitude of the scattered light in both directions. In most cases full control is possible by tuning only one of these two degrees of freedom. In reverse, this enables unique characterisation of the dipole from measurements of the scattered light. Phase singularities occur where the reflection coefficient is zero, with the (hyper-)spherical parameter space determining the dynamics of these singularities

Design principles for >90% efficiency and >99% indistinguishability broadband quantum dot cavities

Quantum dots have the potential to be the brightest deterministic single photon source with plausible high end applications in quantum computing and cluster state generation. In this work, we re-examine the design of simple micropillars by meticulously examining the structural effects of the decay into leaky channels beyond the atom-like cavity estimation. We show that precise control of the side losses with the diameter and avoidance of propagating Bloch modes in the DBR structure can result in easy to manufacture broadband (Q$\approx750-2500$) micropillars and demonstrate extremely high internal efficiency ($90.5\%-96.4\%$). We also demonstrate that such cavities naturally decouple from the phonon sideband, with the phonon sideband reducing by a factor of $5-33$ allowing us to predict that the photons should show $99.2\%-99.8\%$ indistinguishability

Polarization Responses of a Solitary and Optically Injected Vertical Cavity Spin Laser

The polarisation properties of a quantum well spin - vertical cavity surface emitting laser (spin - VCSEL), both without injection and with variable polarisation optical injection, are investigated experimentally and compared with the spin flip model (SFM). Without injection, we demonstrate two distinct types of VCSEL-pump response depending on the signs of the linewidth enhancement factor, birefringence and dichroism: firstly where the pump and VCSEL have the same sign of the ellipticity, and secondly where the VCSEL ellipticity, accompanied by the linear polarisation, switches sign. We show that by controlling the injected power, ellipticity or linear angle, near circular polarisation can be obtained. These responses both give insight into the electro-optical injected spin-VCSEL system, and have practical implications for the use of spin VCSELs in unique applications exploiting the ellipticity degree of freedom

Application of a novel tool for diagnosing bile acid diarrhoea

Bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) is a common disease that requires expensive imaging to diagnose. We have tested the efficacy of a new method to identify BAD, based on the detection of differences in volatile organic compounds (VOC) in urine headspace of BAD vs. ulcerative colitis and healthy controls. A total of 110 patients were recruited; 23 with BAD, 42 with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 45 controls. Patients with BAD also received standard imaging (Se75HCAT) for confirmation. Urine samples were collected and the headspace analysed using an AlphaMOS Fox 4000 electronic nose in combination with an Owlstone Lonestar Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer (FAIMS). A subset was also tested by gas chromatography, mass spectrometry (GCMS). Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was used to explore both the electronic nose and FAIMS data. LDA showed statistical differences between the groups, with reclassification success rates (using an n-1 approach) at typically 83%. GCMS experiments confirmed these results and showed that patients with BAD had two chemical compounds, 2-propanol and acetamide, that were either not present or were in much reduced quantities in the ulcerative colitis and control samples. We believe that this work may lead to a new tool to diagnose BAD, which is cheaper, quicker and easier that current methods

Perfect Chirality with Imperfect Polarization

Unidirectional (chiral) emission of light from a circular dipole emitter into a waveguide is only possible at points of perfect circular polarization (C points), with elliptical polarizations yielding a lower directional contrast. However, there is no need to restrict engineered systems to circular dipoles, and with an appropriate choice of dipole unidirectional emission is possible for any elliptical polarization. Using elliptical dipoles, rather than circular, typically increases the size of the area suitable for chiral interactions (in an exemplary mode by a factor ∼30), while simultaneously increasing coupling efficiencies. We propose illustrative schemes to engineer the necessary elliptical transitions in both atomic systems and quantum dots

Efficient Quantum Photonic Phase Shift in a Low Q-Factor Regime

This work was funded by the Future Emerging Technologies (FET)-Open FP7-284743 [project Spin Photon Angular Momentum Transfer for Quantum Enabled Technologies (SPANGL4Q)] and the German Ministry of Education and research (BMBF) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/M024156/1, EP/N003381/1 and EP/M024458/1). J.J.H. was supported by the Bristol Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training, EPSRC grant EP/L015730/1. We acknowledge the GW4 network for funding of A.Y.Solid-state quantum emitters have long been recognised as the ideal platform to realize integrated quantum photonic technologies. We demonstrate that a self-assembled negatively charged quantum dot (QD) in a low Q-factor photonic micropillar is a suitable design for deterministic polarisation switching and spin-photon entanglement. We show this by measuring a shift in phase of an input single photon of at least 2π/3. As we explain in the text, this is strong experimental proof that input photons can interact with the emitter deterministically. A deterministic photon-emitter interaction is a viable and scalable means to achieve several vital functionalities such as single photon switches and entanglement gates. Our experimentally determined value is limited by mode mismatch between the input laser and the cavity, QD spectral fluctuations and spin relaxation. When on-resonance we estimate that up to ∼80% of the collected photons couple into the cavity mode and have interacted with the QD and undergone a phase shift of π.PostprintPeer reviewe

Telecommunication wavelength confined Tamm plasmon structures containing InAs/GaAs quantum dot emitters at room temperature

We experimentally demonstrate gold microdisc structures that produce confined Tamm plasmons (CTPs)— interface modes between a metal layer and a distributed Bragg reflector— resonant around 1.3 μm. Quantum dots grown within the structures show an order of magnitude increase in the photoluminescence emitted at room temperature. Varying the disc diameter, we show spectral tuning of the resonance and measure the dispersion relation as evidence of mode confinement. The simplicity of fabrication and tuneability of these structures make CTPs an ideal platform for making scalable telecom devices based on quantum dots