There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of $1.0 \times 10^{-21}$. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1 {\sigma}. The source lies at a luminosity distance of $410^{+160}_{-180}$ Mpc corresponding to a redshift $z = 0.09^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are $36^{+5}_{-4} M_\odot$ and $29^{+4}_{-4} M_\odot$, and the final black hole mass is $62^{+4}_{-4} M_\odot$, with $3.0^{+0.5}_{-0.5} M_\odot c^2$ radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals.These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

https://physics.aps.org/featured-article-pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102

Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

Quantum networks provide opportunities and challenges across a range of intellectual and technical frontiers, including quantum computation, communication and metrology. The realization of quantum networks composed of many nodes and channels requires new scientific capabilities for generating and characterizing quantum coherence and entanglement. Fundamental to this endeavour are quantum interconnects, which convert quantum states from one physical system to those of another in a reversible manner. Such quantum connectivity in networks can be achieved by the optical interactions of single photons and atoms, allowing the distribution of entanglement across the network and the teleportation of quantum states between nodes.

The quantum internet

Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity.

In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and “natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.” Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science.

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

We present a method of measuring expectation values of quadrature moments of a multimode field through two-level probe “homodyning”. Our approach is based on an integral transform formalism of measurable probe observables, where analytically derived kernels unravel efficiently the required field information at zero interaction time, minimizing decoherence effects. The proposed scheme is suitable for fields that, while inaccessible to a direct measurement, enjoy one and two-photon Jaynes-Cummings interactions with a two-level probe, like spin, phonon, or cavity fields. Available data from previous experiments are used to confirm our predictions.

/pdf/instantaneous-measurement-of-field-quadrature-moments-and-281nfjrpim.pdf

Instantaneous measurement of field quadrature moments and entanglement

The spectrum of the fluorescent radiation of a single trapped 24 Mg + -ion at low excitation intensity was investigated. The measurement was performed by heterodyning the fluorescent radiation with a sideband of the single mode laser radiation used to excite the ion, resulting in a linewidth of 6 Hz. Under identical experimental conditions, the antibunching in the photon statistics of the fluorescent radiation was also investigated. Heterodyne detection and photon correlation measurement are complementary featuring either the wave or the particle nature of the radiation. The combination of both techniques will allow to measure squeezing in resonance fluorescence.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel3/3983/12220/00561648.pdf

Heterodyne Measurement of the Fluorescent Radiation of a Single Trapped Ion

We report what we believe is the first realization of odd dark beams of finite length under controllable initial conditions. We obtain mixed edge–screw phase dislocations by reproducing binary computer-generated holograms. Two effective ways to control the steering of the beams are analyzed experimentally and compared with numerical simulations.

Experimental generation of steering odd dark beams of finite length

Enhanced two-photon decay has been observed for the first time in an electric dipole transition between two Rydberg levels coupled to a single mode of a strongly driven microwave cavity. This was achieved by dynamically suppressing the otherwise dominant single-photon decay. The experiment is compared with a dressed-state model which treats the external driving field exactly. Cavity-induced emission and absorption rates are calculated to fourth order in the interaction to include two-photon processes, and are found to fit the experimental data well.

https://www.prl.res.in/~library/Agarwal_GS_3293_96_abst.pdf

Observation of two-photon decay of Rydberg atoms in a driven cavity.

This paper describes a new method for the determination of the deuterium content in water samples. The absorption of the radiation of a cw deuterium fluoride laser by HDO in water vapor is measured by means of a nonresonant spectrophone (optoacoustic detector). This method enables one to evaluate the isotope ratio of hydrogen in a rather simple and straightforward way. Advantage is taken of the fact that HDO absorbs some of the DF laser lines whereas H2O shows no absorption. Due to the small concentration in natural water deuterium is practically entirely present as HDO. Therefore a selective determination of the deuterium content is possible. In the course of the investigation the absorption coefficients of HDO for the different laser lines were determined. It was thereby established that there exists a strong coincidence of an HDO absorption line with the 2P2 DF laser line. The detection sensitivity of the method was then examined for some selected laser lines. The concentration of HDO in natural water samples could be determined with an accuracy of better than 10%. The experiments, however, show that with appropriate improvements it should be possible to achieve an accuracy of better than 1%. This makes the method very interesting as an analytical tool in hydrology.

Herbert Walther

Papers

Instantaneous measurement of field quadrature moments and entanglement

Heterodyne Measurement of the Fluorescent Radiation of a Single Trapped Ion

Experimental generation of steering odd dark beams of finite length

Observation of two-photon decay of Rydberg atoms in a driven cavity.

Determination of the deuterium abundance in water using a cw chemical DF laser