1,790 research outputs found
Can Literature Know Itself and Not Become Philosophy?
Before puzzling over some possible conjunction between literature and philosophy, one has to agree on what such concepts mean. However, as soon as one wonders about their definitions, concepts like “literature” or “the novel” on the one hand, or “philosophy” or even “concept” on the other, prove all too elusive. If one thinks they know what a novel is, it proves virtually impossible to freeze a suitable definition of the aesthetic concept. The reason for that impossibility might be that philosophy’s mission, to the extent that it reflects upon concepts, is somehow to blur them. Yet this article aims to show that it is precisely in that sense that literature, through the example of the novel, is in itself philosophical to the degree that what defines the novel is a self-reflexive interrogation of what makes it so. With the example of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the article concludes that there might be no intrinsic knowledge of our (aesthetic) concepts outside examples.Avant de s’interroger sur une éventuelle conjonction entre littérature et philosophie, encore faut-il s’entendre sur ce que recouvrent ces concepts. Or dès qu’on soulève la question de leur définition, les concepts de « littérature » ou de « roman » d’un côté, de « philosophie » voire de « concept » de l’autre, s’avèrent éminemment fuyants. Si on pense savoir ce qu’est un roman, en arrêter une définition acceptable s’avère quasiment impossible. La raison en est que la philosophie, en tant qu’elle s’interroge sur des concepts, a pour mission de les brouiller. Or, cet article vise à démontrer que c’est précisément en ce sens que l’écriture littéraire, à travers l’exemple du roman, est philosophique, puisque c’est aussi le propre du roman, à l’instar de To the Lighthouse de Virginia Woolf, de s’interroger sur ce qui le définit en tant que tel. De sorte qu’il n’y a de connaissance possible que dans l’exemple
Adaptive Optical Phase Estimation Using Time-Symmetric Quantum Smoothing
Quantum parameter estimation has many applications, from gravitational wave
detection to quantum key distribution. We present the first experimental
demonstration of the time-symmetric technique of quantum smoothing. We consider
both adaptive and non-adaptive quantum smoothing, and show that both are better
than their well-known time-asymmetric counterparts (quantum filtering). For the
problem of estimating a stochastically varying phase shift on a coherent beam,
our theory predicts that adaptive quantum smoothing (the best scheme) gives an
estimate with a mean-square error up to times smaller than that
from non-adaptive quantum filtering (the standard quantum limit). The
experimentally measured improvement is
Statistical Analysis of Magnetic Field Spectra
We have calculated and statistically analyzed the magnetic-field spectrum
(the ``B-spectrum'') at fixed electron Fermi energy for two quantum dot systems
with classically chaotic shape. This is a new problem which arises naturally in
transport measurements where the incoming electron has a fixed energy while one
tunes the magnetic field to obtain resonance conductance patterns. The
``B-spectrum'', defined as the collection of values at which
conductance takes extremal values, is determined by a quadratic
eigenvalue equation, in distinct difference to the usual linear eigenvalue
problem satisfied by the energy levels. We found that the lower part of the
``B-spectrum'' satisfies the distribution belonging to Gaussian Unitary
Ensemble, while the higher part obeys a Poisson-like behavior. We also found
that the ``B-spectrum'' fluctuations of the chaotic system are consistent with
the results we obtained from random matrices
Recommended from our members
A Decision Support System for Insect Pest Management on Peppermint (IPMP V. 2.0)
Weak localization in disordered systems at the ballistic limit
The weak localization (WL) contribution to the two-level correlation function
is calculated for two-dimensional disordered conductors. Our analysis extends
to the nondiffusive (ballistic) regime, where the elastic mean path is of order
of the size of the system. In this regime the structure factor (the Fourier
transform of the two-point correlator) exhibits a singular behavior consisting
of dips superimposed on a smooth positive background. The strongest dips appear
at periods of the periodic orbits of the underlying clean system. Somewhat
weaker singularities appear at times which are sums of periods of two such
orbits. The results elucidate various aspects of the weak localization physics
of ballistic chaotic systems.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure
Heralded Noiseless Amplification of a Photon Polarization Qubit
Non-deterministic noiseless amplification of a single mode can circumvent the
unique challenges to amplifying a quantum signal, such as the no-cloning
theorem, and the minimum noise cost for deterministic quantum state
amplification. However, existing devices are not suitable for amplifying the
fundamental optical quantum information carrier, a qubit coherently encoded
across two optical modes. Here, we construct a coherent two-mode amplifier, to
demonstrate the first heralded noiseless linear amplification of a qubit
encoded in the polarization state of a single photon. In doing so, we increase
the transmission fidelity of a realistic qubit channel by up to a factor of
five. Qubit amplifiers promise to extend the range of secure quantum
communication and other quantum information science and technology protocols.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Algebraic approach in the study of time-dependent nonlinear integrable systems: Case of the singular oscillator
The classical and the quantal problem of a particle interacting in
one-dimension with an external time-dependent quadratic potential and a
constant inverse square potential is studied from the Lie-algebraic point of
view. The integrability of this system is established by evaluating the exact
invariant closely related to the Lewis and Riesenfeld invariant for the
time-dependent harmonic oscillator. We study extensively the special and
interesting case of a kicked quadratic potential from which we derive a new
integrable, nonlinear, area preserving, two-dimensional map which may, for
instance, be used in numerical algorithms that integrate the
Calogero-Sutherland-Moser Hamiltonian. The dynamics, both classical and
quantal, is studied via the time-evolution operator which we evaluate using a
recent method of integrating the quantum Liouville-Bloch equations \cite{rau}.
The results show the exact one-to-one correspondence between the classical and
the quantal dynamics. Our analysis also sheds light on the connection between
properties of the SU(1,1) algebra and that of simple dynamical systems.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, Accepted in PR
Gauge fields, geometric phases, and quantum adiabatic pumps
Quantum adiabatic pumping of charge and spin between two reservoirs (leads) has recently been demonstrated in nanoscale electronic devices. Pumping occurs when system parameters are varied in a cyclic manner and sufficiently slowly that the quantum system always remains in its ground state. We show that quantum pumping has a natural geometric representation in terms of gauge fields (both Abelian and non-Abelian) defined on the space of system parameters. Tunneling from a scanning tunneling microscope tip through a magnetic atom could be used to demonstrate the non-Abelian character of the gauge field
Recommended from our members
A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons
Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal
of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs
bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data
collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and
we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard
Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots
for b/w printin
- …