Russian Enterprises and Company Law in Transition

Privatization and company law have been the most important instruments of transforming Russian enterprises. State enterprises have been privatized and modern company law governs how they function, but privatized companies have not changed their business culture. Privatization did not divide management and ownership and did not create efficient stock markets to monitor managers. Managers were able to keep their authoritarian methods inherited from socialist management and rent-seeking in the absence of control. Protection of minority shareholders does not function in practice, since managers can easily circumvent the rules. They can also ignore the rules of company law, which are not widely known and differ from earlier practices. There are already too many forms of companies in Russia. Only two forms of companies are mostly used; namely the joint stock company (open and closed) and the limited liability company. Difficulties already emerge with registration. Local authorities may apply their own rules. Corporate governance is not yet a big issue in Russian company law studies, which concentrate on the rules of forming and dissolving juristic persons. Bodies of companies are in principle modern. The board of directors is already powerful on the basis of the law for joint stock companies, but in practice it is even more powerful. The governance of limited liability companies has been arranged in a flexible way to make the running of a company as easy as possible for small enterprises. Russian company law also recognizes personal liability of managers or shareholders in some exceptional cases. Such rules have been adopted from European company laws and it remains to be seen how they are used in Russian circumstances. Russian enterprises still have a lot of social responsibilities to bear. The situation is quite different from Western company law, where stakeholder theory is being introduced. In Russia too heavy social responsibilities are an obstacle for restructuring and transforming into a profitable modern company. Environmental questions are widely ignored both because of old attitudes and new aspirations of profit and maintaining jobs

Development of Constitutionalism and Federalism in Russia

Building up a rule of law is one of the objectives of transition. This objective, however, cannot be separated from the other main objectives, namely a market economy and democracy. These have all been developed simultaneously in Russia and the failure of one task affects the others."Rebuilding a ship at sea" is an unavoidable vicious circle, but it is the only possible way of transition for Russia, even if it means constant failures and setbacks. The Constitution of the Russian Federation from 1993 technically contains all the bricks needed to build constitutionalism. The separation of powers between the state organs is established as well as a judicial body to guard the Constitution. Newly gained independence of the courts is an important prerequisite for developing the rule of law. There is, however, an institutional setup hindering this development. The political culture still has a long way to develop to the stage of constitutionalism. Authoritarian presidential power, which was the result of the hectic power struggle between the legislative and the executive after separation of powers, enabled an excessively powerful presidency to be the winner of the struggle. A weak party system and an underdeveloped civil society allow authoritarian rule of the president to go even further than the constitution permits. For the same reason corrupted politics can continue. The development of the rule of law has largely been left to the courts and lawyers. The Constitutional Court has, however, chosen a cautious attitude towards presidential power after having supported the legislative in the power struggle and being suspended by the President. If the balance between federal state organs is not yet found, the question of federalism is at an even more underdeveloped stage. Federalism is not developed in an open, transparent and democratic way, but in a power struggle between the center and the powers including fiscal federalism. The center has tried to regain the power, which was given to the regions during the power struggle at the federal center. This is done with the help of new federal laws increasing the powers of the federal center. The Presidential Administration has extended the federal executive power and the President has tried to change regionalist governors into "his own men". The Constitutional Court has repeatedly interpreted the Constitution in favor of the federal center. Decentralization has been developed through the back door with administrative treaties between the federation and different subjects of the federation. These treaties all differ from each other and usually contradict the federal constitution. They also contain secret provisions. These treaties have been a political necessity to prevent the federation from falling apart. In the hierarchy legal norms they are, however, submitted under the Constitution, which makes them vulnerable from the legal point of view

Russian Property Rights in Transition

Property rights are an important political and economic issue in Russia. A weak property rights system is a significant hindrance for economic growth and transition in Russia. This report aims at showing that the problems in creating a new property rights system are institutional. Formal rules are complicated and blurred, because of the lack of consensus in society. Informal institutions prevail and, in spite of the privatization of enterprises, the same elite as before benefits. The privatization of enterprises made managers the owners of former state enterprises and enabled them to keep things going in the same manner as before. The relations of the new economic elite with the governmental sector maintained monopolistic markets. Financial markets are still weak and because of the bank crisis of 1998, banks become bankrupt and the markets change into an even more monopolistic direction. The government can choose who stays in business. Restructuring has not occurred even in spite of the economic boom caused by oil prices and devaluation. It will take a long time before Russia gets rid of the virtual economy with artificial prices and barter trade. Transaction costs for legal trade are too high and keeps the gray market going as well. Land and natural resources are still mainly state property. The land reform, which started with agrarian reform, made land transferable. Enterprises can buy land and family farms are a legally available form of agricultural production. However, the agrarian reform did not transform the Russian countryside to become more productive. There is no proper infrastructure for family farms and the state supports joint stock companies, which are the former state or collective farms. There are regional differences depending on the interests and opinions of regional authorities. The obstacle for building a uniform system of land law is legislative chaos. In the absence of political consensus a new federal land code has not been passed. Regional legislation differs from region to region. There is still a battle going on between the regional and the federal levels on the ownership of natural resources. Even if reorganization is going on, the state management of natural resources has remained quite unchanged. Forest management is the best example of maintaining the old institutions in spite of the privatization of forest enterprises

A hybrid (Al)GaAs-LiNbO3 surface acoustic wave resonator for cavity quantum dot optomechanics

A hybrid device comprising a (Al)GaAs quantum dot heterostructure and a LiNbO$_3$ surface acoustic wave resonator is fabricated by heterointegration. High acoustic quality factors $Q>4000$ are demonstrated for an operation frequency $f\approx 300$ MHz. The measured large quality factor-frequency products $Q\times f>10^{12}$ ensures the suppression of decoherence due to thermal noise for temperatures exceeding $T>50\,\mathrm{K}$. Frequency and position dependent optomechanical coupling of single quantum dots and the resonator modes is observed.Comment: Accepted manuscrip

Novel Data Acquisition System for Silicon Tracking Detectors

We have developed a novel data acquisition system for measuring tracking parameters of a silicon detector in a particle beam. The system is based on a commercial Analog-to-Digital VME module and a PC Linux based Data Acquisition System. This DAQ is realized with C++ code using object-oriented techniques. Track parameters for the beam particles were reconstructed using off-line analysis code and automatic detector position alignment algorithm. The new DAQ was used to test novel Czochralski type silicon detectors. The important silicon detector parameters, including signal size distributions and signal to noise distributions, were successfully extracted from the detector under study. The efficiency of the detector was measured to be 95 %, the resolution about 10 micrometers, and the signal to noise ratio about 10.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures. PSN TUGP00

Heterogeneous integration of superconducting thin films and epitaxial semiconductor heterostructures with lithium niobate

We report on scalable heterointegration of superconducting electrodes and epitaxial semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) on strong piezoelectric and optically nonlinear lithium niobate. The implemented processes combine the sputter-deposited thin film superconductor niobium nitride and III–V compound semiconductor membranes onto the host substrate. The superconducting thin film is employed as a zero-resistivity electrode material for a surface acoustic wave resonator with internal quality factors approx Q≈17,000 representing a three-fold enhancement compared to identical devices with normal conducting electrodes. Superconducting operation of ≈400MHz resonators is achieved to temperatures T>7K and electrical radio frequency powers Prf>+9dBm. Heterogeneously integrated single QDs couple to the resonant phononic field of the surface acoustic wave resonator operated in the superconducting regime. Position and frequency selective coupling mediated by deformation potential coupling is validated using time-integrated and time-resolved optical spectroscopy. Furthermore, acoustoelectric charge state control is achieved in a modified device geometry harnessing large piezoelectric fields inside the resonator. The hybrid QD—surface acoustic wave resonator can be scaled to higher operation frequencies and smaller mode volumes for quantum phase modulation and transduction between photons and phonons via the QD. Finally, the employed materials allow for the realization of other types of optoelectronic devices, including superconducting single photon detectors and integrated photonic and phononic circuits

On-chip generation and dynamic piezo-optomechanical rotation of single photons

Integrated photonic circuits are key components for photonic quantum technologies and for the implementation of chip-based quantum devices. Future applications demand flexible architectures to overcome common limitations of many current devices, for instance the lack of tuneabilty or built-in quantum light sources. Here, we report on a dynamically reconfigurable integrated photonic circuit comprising integrated quantum dots (QDs), a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and surface acoustic wave (SAW) transducers directly fabricated on a monolithic semiconductor platform. We demonstrate on-chip single photon generation by the QD and its sub-nanosecond dynamic on-chip control. Two independently applied SAWs piezo-optomechanically rotate the single photon in the MZI or spectrally modulate the QD emission wavelength. In the MZI, SAWs imprint a time-dependent optical phase and modulate the qubit rotation to the output superposition state. This enables dynamic single photon routing with frequencies exceeding one gigahertz. Finally, the combination of the dynamic single photon control and spectral tuning of the QD realizes wavelength multiplexing of the input photon state and demultiplexing it at the output. Our approach is scalable to multi-component integrated quantum photonic circuits and is compatible with hybrid photonic architectures and other key components for instance photonic resonators or on-chip detectors

On-chip generation and dynamic piezo-optomechanical rotation of single photons

Integrated photonic circuits are key components for photonic quantum technologies and for the implementation of chip-based quantum devices. Future applications demand flexible architectures to overcome common limitations of many current devices, for instance the lack of tuneabilty or built-in quantum light sources. Here, we report on a dynamically reconfigurable integrated photonic circuit comprising integrated quantum dots (QDs), a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and surface acoustic wave (SAW) transducers directly fabricated on a monolithic semiconductor platform. We demonstrate on-chip single photon generation by the QD and its sub-nanosecond dynamic on-chip control. Two independently applied SAWs piezo-optomechanically rotate the single photon in the MZI or spectrally modulate the QD emission wavelength. In the MZI, SAWs imprint a time-dependent optical phase and modulate the qubit rotation to the output superposition state. This enables dynamic single photon routing with frequencies exceeding one gigahertz. Finally, the combination of the dynamic single photon control and spectral tuning of the QD realizes wavelength multiplexing of the input photon state and demultiplexing it at the output. Our approach is scalable to multi-component integrated quantum photonic circuits and is compatible with hybrid photonic architectures and other key components for instance photonic resonators or on-chip detectors

Commissioning of the CMS High-Level Trigger with Cosmic Rays

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