Bose-enhanced chemistry: Amplification of selectivity in the dissociation of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the photodissociation chemistry of a quantum degenerate gas of bosonic triatomic $ABC$ molecules, assuming two open rearrangement channels ($AB+C$ or $A+BC$). The equations of motion are equivalent to those of a parametric multimode laser, resulting in an exponential buildup of macroscopic mode populations. By exponentially amplifying a small differential in the single-particle rate-coefficients, Bose stimulation leads to a nearly complete selectivity of the collective $N$-body process, indicating a novel type of ultra-selective quantum degenerate chemistry.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A mid-IR study of Hickson Compact Groups II. Multi-wavelength analysis of the complete GALEX-Spitzer Sample

We present a comprehensive study on the impact of the environment of compact galaxy groups on the evolution of their members using a multi-wavelength analysis, from the UV to the infrared, for a sample of 32 Hickson compact groups (HCGs) containing 135 galaxies. Fitting the SEDs of all galaxies with the state-of-the-art model of da Cunha (2008) we can accurately calculate their mass, SFR, and extinction, as well as estimate their infrared luminosity and dust content. We compare our findings with samples of field galaxies, early-stage interacting pairs, and cluster galaxies with similar data. We find that classifying the groups as dynamically "old" or "young", depending on whether or not at least one quarter of their members are early-type systems, is physical and consistent with past classifications of HCGs based on their atomic gas content. [...ABRIDGED...] We also examine their SF properties, UV-optical and mid-IR colors, and we conclude that all the evidence point to an evolutionary scenario in which the effects of the group environment and the properties of the galaxy members are not instantaneous. Early on, the influence of close companions to group galaxies is similar to the one of galaxy pairs in the field. However, as the time progresses, the effects of tidal torques and minor merging, shape the morphology and star formation history of the group galaxies, leading to an increase of the fraction of early-type members and a rapid built up of the stellar mass in the remaining late-type galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Figure resolution degraded for arXiv limits, full resolution paper available at http://www.physics.uoc.gr/~bitsakis/paperII_bitsakis.pd

Exploring L2 learners' Task-related Identities in a Reading Circle Task Through Conversation Analysis

Using conversation analysis as the research approach, this study explores how L2 learners utilize their task-related identities during task interactions and how those identities are used as resources for task management. Eight students in an ESL academic reading class formed two groups while they did their reading circle task for six rounds. In each round, the students took turns to be in charge of a specific role in the discussion session (i.e., discussion leader, notetaker, vocabulary definer, and contextualizer). Data was collected from all rounds and analyzed for emerging patterns. Results showed that (a) the participants used each other’s assigned identities skillfully to orient the group to the institutional goal, and (b) the participants used their own existing obligations to problematize the task interactions. By providing insights on those dynamic task-related identities, this study broadens our understanding of interactions happening at the task implementation stage and suggests pedagogical implications.S’inscrivant dans le courant de l’analyse de la conversation, cette étude explore comment les apprenants d'anglais utilisent leurs identités liées aux tâches lors des interactions entre les tâches et comment ces identités sont utilisées comme ressources pour la gestion des tâches. Huit étudiants dans une classe de lecture universitaire en anglais ont formé deux groupes pendant qu'ils effectuaient leur tâche de cercle de lecture pendant six tours. À chaque tour, les étudiants se sont relayés pour être responsables d'un rôle spécifique dans la session de discussion. Les données ont été collectées à tous les cycles et analysées afin de dégager les éléments les plus saillants. Les résultats ont montré que (a) les participants utilisaient habilement les identités qui leur avaient été attribuées pour orienter le groupe vers l’objectif identifié en amont; et que (b) les participants ont utilisé leurs propres obligations existantes pour problématiser les interactions entre les tâches

Weak local rules for planar octagonal tilings

We provide an effective characterization of the planar octagonal tilings which admit weak local rules. As a corollary, we show that they are all based on quadratic irrationalities, as conjectured by Thang Le in the 90s.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure

Correlation between electric-field-induced phase transition and piezoelectricity in lead zirconate titanate films

We observed that electric field induces phase transition from tetragonal to rhombohedral in polycrystalline morphotropic lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films, as reported in 2011 for bulk PZT. Moreover, we evidenced that this field-induced phase transition is strongly correlated with PZT film piezoelectric properties, that is to say the larger the phase transition, the larger the longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient d 33,eff . Although d 33,eff is already comprised between as 150 to 170 pm/V, our observation suggests that one could obtain larger d 33,eff values, namely 250 pm/V, by optimizing the field-induced phase transition thanks to composition fine tuning

Robust probabilistic-constrained optimization for IRS-aided MISO communication systems

Taking into account imperfect channel state information, this letter formulates and solves a joint active/passive beamforming optimization problem in multiple-input single-output systems with the support of an intelligent reflecting surface. In particular, we introduce an optimization problem to minimize the total transmit power subject to maintaining the users' signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio coverage probability above a predefined target. Due to the presence of probabilistic constraints, the proposed optimization problem is non-convex. To circumvent this issue, we first recast the proposed problem in a convex form by adopting the Bernstein-type inequality, and we then introduce a converging alternating optimization approach to iteratively find the active/passive beamforming vectors. In particular, the transformed robust optimization problem can be effectively solved by using standard interior-point methods. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of jointly optimizing the active/passive beamforming vectors

Revival of Silenced Echo and Quantum Memory for Light

We propose an original quantum memory protocol. It belongs to the class of rephasing processes and is closely related to two-pulse photon echo. It is known that the strong population inversion produced by the rephasing pulse prevents the plain two-pulse photon echo from serving as a quantum memory scheme. Indeed gain and spontaneous emission generate prohibitive noise. A second $\pi$-pulse can be used to simultaneously reverse the atomic phase and bring the atoms back into the ground state. Then a secondary echo is radiated from a non-inverted medium, avoiding contamination by gain and spontaneous emission noise. However, one must kill the primary echo, in order to preserve all the information for the secondary signal. In the present work, spatial phase mismatching is used to silence the standard two-pulse echo. An experimental demonstration is presented.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Words are Malleable: Computing Semantic Shifts in Political and Media Discourse

Recently, researchers started to pay attention to the detection of temporal shifts in the meaning of words. However, most (if not all) of these approaches restricted their efforts to uncovering change over time, thus neglecting other valuable dimensions such as social or political variability. We propose an approach for detecting semantic shifts between different viewpoints--broadly defined as a set of texts that share a specific metadata feature, which can be a time-period, but also a social entity such as a political party. For each viewpoint, we learn a semantic space in which each word is represented as a low dimensional neural embedded vector. The challenge is to compare the meaning of a word in one space to its meaning in another space and measure the size of the semantic shifts. We compare the effectiveness of a measure based on optimal transformations between the two spaces with a measure based on the similarity of the neighbors of the word in the respective spaces. Our experiments demonstrate that the combination of these two performs best. We show that the semantic shifts not only occur over time, but also along different viewpoints in a short period of time. For evaluation, we demonstrate how this approach captures meaningful semantic shifts and can help improve other tasks such as the contrastive viewpoint summarization and ideology detection (measured as classification accuracy) in political texts. We also show that the two laws of semantic change which were empirically shown to hold for temporal shifts also hold for shifts across viewpoints. These laws state that frequent words are less likely to shift meaning while words with many senses are more likely to do so.Comment: In Proceedings of the 26th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM2017