Quasi-two-dimensional complex plasma containing spherical particles and their binary agglomerates

A new type of quasi-two-dimensional complex plasma system was observed which consisted of monodisperse microspheres and their binary agglomerations (dimers). The particles and their dimers levitated in a plasma sheath at slightly different heights and formed two distinct sublayers. The sys- tem did not crystallize and may be characterized as disordered solid. The dimers were identified based on their characteristic appearance in defocused images, i.e., rotating interference fringe pat- terns. The in-plane and inter-plane particle separations exhibit nonmonotonic dependence on the discharge pressure which agrees well with theoretical predictions

Nonclassicality of noisy quantum states

Nonclassicality conditions for an oscillator-like system interacting with a hot thermal bath are considered. Nonclassical properties of quantum states can be conserved up to a certain temperature threshold only. In this case, affection of the thermal noise can be compensated via transformation of an observable, which tests the nonclassicality (witness function). Possibilities for experimental implementations based on unbalanced homodyning are discussed. At the same time, we demonstrate that the scheme based on balanced homodyning cannot be improved for noisy states with proposed technique and should be applied directly.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure