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

All our former experience with application of quantum theory seems to say:
{\it what is predicted by quantum formalism must occur in laboratory} But the
essence of quantum formalism - entanglement, recognized by Einstein, Podolsky,
Rosen and Schr\"odinger - waited over 70 years to enter to laboratories as a
new resource as real as energy This holistic property of compound quantum systems, which involves
nonclassical correlations between subsystems, is a potential for many quantum
processes, including ``canonical'' ones: quantum cryptography, quantum
teleportation and dense coding However, it appeared that this new resource is
very complex and difficult to detect Being usually fragile to environment, it
is robust against conceptual and mathematical tools, the task of which is to
decipher its rich structure This article reviews basic aspects of entanglement including its
characterization, detection, distillation and quantifying In particular, the
authors discuss various manifestations of entanglement via Bell inequalities,
entropic inequalities, entanglement witnesses, quantum cryptography and point
out some interrelations They also discuss a basic role of entanglement in
quantum communication within distant labs paradigm and stress some
peculiarities such as irreversibility of entanglement manipulations including
its extremal form - bound entanglement phenomenon A basic role of entanglement
witnesses in detection of entanglement is emphasized

Quantum entanglement

We review the field of cavity optomechanics, which explores the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and nano- or micromechanical motion This review covers the basics of optical cavities and mechanical resonators, their mutual optomechanical interaction mediated by the radiation pressure force, the large variety of experimental systems which exhibit this interaction, optical measurements of mechanical motion, dynamical backaction amplification and cooling, nonlinear dynamics, multimode optomechanics, and proposals for future cavity quantum optomechanics experiments In addition, we describe the perspectives for fundamental quantum physics and for possible applications of optomechanical devices

Cavity Optomechanics

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) has been observed in a dilute gas of sodium atoms. A Bose-Einstein condensate consists of a macroscopic population of the ground state of the system, and is a coherent state of matter. In an ideal gas, this phase transition is purely quantum-statistical. The study of BEC in weakly interacting systems which can be controlled and observed with precision holds the promise of revealing new macroscopic quantum phenomena that can be understood from first principles.

Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas of sodium atoms

The accuracy of quantum information processing (QIP) protocols using qubit cluster states is known to be af- fected significantly by sources of environmental decoher- ence and imperfections (13) and removing all but only the most essential qubits in the cluster state is key to effective simulations (14). The central aim of this work is the study of the behavior of QIP carried out when an environment affects single-mode d-dimensional systems that comprise the qudit cluster states. We find that dis- advantages appear, in terms of robustness of QIP pro- tocols, when moving to higher dimensions; the accuracy of simulations decreases as the dimension increases. In addition, entangled pairs of qubit linear clusters appear to be more resilient to environmental effects in compari- son to qudit clusters. Our study questions the worthiness of efforts made toward the extension of one-way QC to higher-dimensional systems, where global properties of the entangled resources are crucial for the performance of a given QIP protocol.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0605212.pdf

Decoherence-based exploration of d-dimensional one-way quantum computation: Information transfer and basic gates

We assess the effects of a realistic intrinsic model for imperfections in cluster states by introducing noisy cluster states and characterizing their role in the one-way computational model A suitable strategy to counter-affect these non-idealities is represented by the use of small clusters, stripped of any redundancy, which leads to the search for compact schemes for one-way quantum computation In light of this, we quantitatively address the behavior of a simple four-qubit cluster which simulates a controlled-NOT under the influences of our model for decoherence Our scheme can be particularly useful in an all-optical setup and the strategy we address can be directly applied in those experimental situations where small cluster states can be constucted

An economical route to one-way quantum computation

We report on the theoretical investigation of Wigner distribution function (WDF) reconstruction of the motional quantum state of large molecules in de Broglie interference. De Broglie interference of fullerenes and as the like already proves the wavelike behaviour of these heavy particles, while we aim to extract more quantitative information about the superposition quantum state in motion. We simulate the reconstruction of the WDF numerically based on an analytic probability distribution and investigate its properties by variation of parameters, which are relevant for the experiment. Even though the WDF described in the near-field experiment cannot be reconstructed completely, we observe negativity even in the partially reconstructed WDF. We further consider incoherent factors to simulate the experimental situation such as a finite number of slits, collimation, and particle-slit van der Waals interaction. From this we find experimental conditions to reconstruct the WDF from Talbot interference fringes in molecule Talbot-Lau interferometry.

Phase Space Tomography of Matter-Wave Diffraction in the Talbot Regime

We have recently presented a protocol for extracting the singlet state of two non-interacting high-dimensional spins through post-selection of the internal state of interaction mediators sent in succession [F. Ciccarello et al., arXiv:0710.3855v1]. The scheme requires each mediator's wavevector to obey appropriate resonance conditions. Here we show the robustness of the scheme in the realistic case where such conditions are not sharply fulfilled.

Resilience of singlet-state extraction against non-optimal resonance conditions

Atomic interferometers have been studied as a promising device for precise sensing of external fields. Among various configurations, a particular configuration with a butterfly-shaped geometry has been designed to sensitively probe field gradients. We introduce a Stern-Gerlach (SG) butterfly interferometer by incorporating magnetic field in the conventional butterfly-shaped configuration. Atomic trajectories of the interferometer can be flexibly adjusted by controlling magnetic fields to increase the sensitivity of the interferometer, while the conventional butterfly interferometer using Raman transitions can be understood as a special case. We also show that the SG interferometer can keep high contrast against a misalignment in position and momentum caused by the field gradient.

/pdf/field-gradient-measurement-using-a-stern-gerlach-atomic-3j0xkc928v.pdf

Myungshik Kim

Papers

Decoherence-based exploration of d-dimensional one-way quantum computation: Information transfer and basic gates

An economical route to one-way quantum computation

Phase Space Tomography of Matter-Wave Diffraction in the Talbot Regime

Resilience of singlet-state extraction against non-optimal resonance conditions

Field-gradient measurement using a Stern-Gerlach atomic interferometer with butterfly geometry