16,277 research outputs found
Explaining the fuel protests
We describe and analyse the fuel protests in the UK in September and November 2000. We draw on theories of social movements to explain the success of the first of these protests and the failure of the second. We show how the loose, network forms of organisation contributed to the success in September, and the attempts to impose more formal organisations helped to cause the failure in November. We also show how the success of the protests depended on the articulation of the aims of the protestors with dominant social forces in British politics, in particular the oil companies, the police, and the mass media
A complete family of separability criteria
We introduce a new family of separability criteria that are based on the
existence of extensions of a bipartite quantum state to a larger number
of parties satisfying certain symmetry properties. It can be easily shown that
all separable states have the required extensions, so the non-existence of such
an extension for a particular state implies that the state is entangled. One of
the main advantages of this approach is that searching for the extension can be
cast as a convex optimization problem known as a semidefinite program (SDP).
Whenever an extension does not exist, the dual optimization constructs an
explicit entanglement witness for the particular state. These separability
tests can be ordered in a hierarchical structure whose first step corresponds
to the well-known Positive Partial Transpose (Peres-Horodecki) criterion, and
each test in the hierarchy is at least as powerful as the preceding one. This
hierarchy is complete, in the sense that any entangled state is guaranteed to
fail a test at some finite point in the hierarchy, thus showing it is
entangled. The entanglement witnesses corresponding to each step of the
hierarchy have well-defined and very interesting algebraic properties that in
turn allow for a characterization of the interior of the set of positive maps.
Coupled with some recent results on the computational complexity of the
separability problem, which has been shown to be NP-hard, this hierarchy of
tests gives a complete and also computationally and theoretically appealing
characterization of mixed bipartite entangled states.Comment: 21 pages. Expanded introduction. References added, typos corrected.
Accepted for publication in Physical Review
Population inversion of driven two-level systems in a structureless bath
We derive a master equation for a driven double-dot damped by an unstructured
phonon bath, and calculate the spectral density. We find that bath mediated
photon absorption is important at relatively strong driving, and may even
dominate the dynamics, inducing population inversion of the double dot system.
This phenomenon is consistent with recent experimental observations.Comment: 4 Pages, Added Reference [30] to Dykman, 1979, available at
http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/dykman/pub/Sov.J.LowTemp.Phys_5.pd
Network Synthesis of Linear Dynamical Quantum Stochastic Systems
The purpose of this paper is to develop a synthesis theory for linear
dynamical quantum stochastic systems that are encountered in linear quantum
optics and in phenomenological models of linear quantum circuits. In
particular, such a theory will enable the systematic realization of
coherent/fully quantum linear stochastic controllers for quantum control,
amongst other potential applications. We show how general linear dynamical
quantum stochastic systems can be constructed by assembling an appropriate
interconnection of one degree of freedom open quantum harmonic oscillators and,
in the quantum optics setting, discuss how such a network of oscillators can be
approximately synthesized or implemented in a systematic way from some linear
and non-linear quantum optical elements. An example is also provided to
illustrate the theory.Comment: Revised and corrected version, published in SIAM Journal on Control
and Optimization, 200
A new bound of the â2[0, T]-induced norm and applications to model reduction
We present a simple bound on the finite horizon â2/[0, T]-induced norm of a linear time-invariant (LTI), not necessarily stable system which can be efficiently computed by calculating the ââ norm of a shifted version of the original operator. As an application, we show how to use this bound to perform model reduction of unstable systems over a finite horizon. The technique is illustrated with a non-trivial physical example relevant to the appearance of time-irreversible phenomena in statistical physics
Influence of convective transport on tropospheric ozone and its precursors in a chemistry-climate model
The impact of convection on tropospheric O<sub>3</sub> and its precursors has been examined in a coupled chemistry-climate model. There are two ways that convection affects O<sub>3</sub>. First, convection affects O<sub>3</sub> by vertical mixing of O<sub>3</sub> itself. Convection lifts lower tropospheric air to regions where the O<sub>3</sub> lifetime is longer, whilst mass-balance subsidence mixes O<sub>3</sub>-rich upper tropospheric (UT) air downwards to regions where the O<sub>3</sub> lifetime is shorter. This tends to decrease UT O<sub>3</sub> and the overall tropospheric column of O<sub>3</sub>. Secondly, convection affects O<sub>3</sub> by vertical mixing of O<sub>3</sub> precursors. This affects O<sub>3</sub> chemical production and destruction. Convection transports isoprene and its degradation products to the UT where they interact with lightning NO<sub>x</sub> to produce PAN, at the expense of NO<sub>x</sub>. In our model, we find that convection reduces UT NO<sub>x</sub> through this mechanism; convective down-mixing also flattens our imposed profile of lightning emissions, further reducing UT NO<sub>x</sub>. Over tropical land, which has large lightning NO<sub>x</sub> emissions in the UT, we find convective lofting of NO<sub>x</sub> from surface sources appears relatively unimportant. Despite UT NO<sub>x</sub> decreases, UT O<sub>3</sub> production increases as a result of UT HO<sub>x</sub> increases driven by isoprene oxidation chemistry. However, UT O<sub>3</sub> tends to decrease, as the effect of convective overturning of O<sub>3</sub> itself dominates over changes in O<sub>3</sub> chemistry. Convective transport also reduces UT O<sub>3</sub> in the mid-latitudes resulting in a 13% decrease in the global tropospheric O<sub>3</sub> burden. These results contrast with an earlier study that uses a model of similar chemical complexity. Differences in convection schemes as well as chemistry schemes – in particular isoprene-driven changes are the most likely causes of such discrepancies. Further modelling studies are needed to constrain this uncertainty range
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