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Moonlight Over Laurel Canyon, by Antoine Maurice Devine

Posted by Antoine M Devine on May 2, 2017 at 3:29pm

“This isn’t the way to the police station, Jack. You said we would go straight there and tell them what we know.”

“I’ve got something I have to do first. It’s important.”

“What’s so important all of a sudden?”

“You’ll see. We’re almost there, and it won’t take long.”

“What about Hillary? She’s being framed. We have to get her out before something bad happens. She doesn’t belong in a jail cell. You know she won’t last long in there.”

“Don’t you worry about Hillary. She’ll be fine. I promise.”

Jack wasn’t making sense. He and Hillary started getting serious in college. They were going to get married right after she had finished the bar exam. The three of them had known each other since high school. They were so close people joked that they should move to Portland and join the polys. Jack graduated a year before Hillary, and was already enjoying the life of an overpaid associate in a high profile law firm in Beverley Hills catering to Hollywood stars.

Why was he being so nonchalant? Ben thought about what had occurred the night before. The Times Online had reported that Hillary was found unconscious in the living room of her parent’s house. They were found dead in the kitchen, stabbed in the side of their necks, clean through their carotid arteries. Whoever was killed last was probably too shocked to move before the killer got to them. But there was a scream. A neighbor overheard and went to the door. He told the reporter the lights went out as he approached. He tried to peer through the living room window, but the curtains were closed. He ran home and called the police. The cops found a bloody knife lying next to Hillary.

Ben arrived around 10 pm, just after the murders. They were all going out to give Hillary a break from her grueling studies, which went on for nearly twelve hours a day. The California bar was no joke, and she was determined to pass on the first try. He was parking in the driveway in the back when Jack came running out of the house. He said, “Did you see the guy?” He was panting, but Ben didn’t recall that he was sweating.

Ben asked, “Who are you talking about?”

Jack leaned into the car and said, “The guy who just killed Hillary’s parents.”

The strange thing was he didn’t look like someone who had just seen the dead bodies of the people who were about to become his parents-in-law.

Before Ben could respond, Jack said, “C’mon. We might be able to catch him. He ran that way,” pointing down the dark alley, lit only by the moonlight.

“What about Hillary? Where is she?”

“I didn’t see her. Look, we need to get out of here and find this guy. If the police show up, they’ll think we did it.”

“How? We don’t have a motive.”

“LA cops don’t need a motive. They’ll make one up.”

They drove around the area but did not spot anyone. The next morning, the news of the murder popped up on Ben’s ‘Breaking News’ feed. He called Jack while the story unfolded on his laptop screen.

“Have you seen the news? They arrested Hillary.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We need to tell the police what you saw.”

“You mean what we saw. The story will be more credible if we both say we saw someone. Cops love corroborating evidence.”

“You’re right. You’re the lawyer.”

“Cool. I’ll come over and pick you up.”

As Jack drove, Ben noticed he had the same vacant stare he had seen last night. There was a deadness in his eyes that he had chalked up to shock and probably lack of sleep. Then Jack’s nose began to bleed.

“Not again,” he complained.

“What do you mean? You don’t get nosebleeds”

“Just happened recently. How can I help it?”

He wiped the trickling blood away with his sleeve before turning into an empty industrial parking lot. That was not something Jack would normally do. He was meticulous about his clothes, which were expensive, as was his car and the apartment that he bragged overlooked Laurel Canyon but was actually in boring Studio City.

“Here we are,” Jack announced in a flat monotone.

“Are you alright Jack? You’ve been acting strange since last night. You don’t seem concerned about Hillary at all. You didn’t even want to go back to the house to check on her. Did you even call?”

Jack looked at Ben as if he hadn’t heard him at all. Suddenly his eyes became snakelike, turning red and green. Strange bluish spikes appeared on his arms. Ben recoiled and clutched at the door handle, but the locks engaged, trapping him inside. Jack leaned toward him, his eyes glowing with hunger. Ben tried to fend him off, holding his arms in front of his face. He screamed, “What are you? You’re not Jack! Get away from me!”

Jack calmly responded, “No. I’m not.” He slashed Ben’s neck and drained the blood from his convulsing body. He pushed the corpse out the car and drove away. In the fading recesses of its mind, the creature felt sorrow for someone named Hillary.

Photo credit: David Nunuk

Quantum Sensing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 2, 2017 at 9:41am

An artistic rendition of the experimental setup for a quantum sensing experiment. The diamond quantum sensor is controlled by lasers. Graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms) sits atop the sensor. Red lines represent the path of the electrons as they move through the graphene. Credit: David A. Broadway/cqc2t.org

Topics: Graphene, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics

Graphene, a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, has a number of unique electronic properties, so it is ideal for fundamental studies in condensed matter physics and for making novel electronics and sensing devices. Researchers normally study the electron transport properties of graphene by measuring the material’s resistivity but this approach cannot make out variations in electronic properties caused by local structures, such as defects, which are very important in nanomaterials. Now, a team at the University of Melbourne in Australia has overcome this problem with their new technique based on quantum probes made from nitrogen-vacancy centres to image the flow of electric current in 2D nanomaterials like the carbon sheet - and has found that it is indeed disrupted by minute cracks and defects.

“Our technique is non-invasive, offers high sub-micron spatial resolution and works under ambient conditions,” explains lead author of the new study Jean-Philippe Tetienne. “It could be used to study electron transport in any atomically-thin materials and structures, which are especially vulnerable to imperfections like defects. This is important because it will allow us to see how electric currents are affected by these imperfections and so ultimately help us improve the reliability and performance of existing and emerging technologies.”

The new technique is based on a quantum sensing platform that consists of a diamond chip engineered with an array of atomic defects, known as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres. These centres, which form when a nitrogen impurity finds itself next to a missing carbon atom in the diamond lattice, are essentially tiny magnets and can be used as sensors for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the nanoscale. This is because the spin of an electron associated with the NV is relatively insensitive to its environment thanks to the fact that diamond does not have a net nuclear spin.

Nanotechweb: NV-quantum probes measure electron flow in graphene, Belle Dumé

Sisyphus Cooling...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 1, 2017 at 6:48am

Figure 1: Doyle and colleagues [2] have cooled SrOH molecules using Sisyphus cooling. In this type of cooling, the SrOH molecules are made to climb a potential energy hill, only to be transported back to the bottom, much like their Greek eponym who was doomed to roll a boulder up a hill over and over again. The energy lost in climbing the hill cools the SrOH molecules to ultracold temperatures. Show less

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Laser, Modern Physics, Nobel Prize, Quantum Mechanics

Only because of the illustration and the myth, but the process of laser cooling is quite sound, as the article describes below.

Physicists considering a foray into the study of molecules are often warned that “a diatomic molecule is one atom too many!” [1]. Now John Doyle and colleagues [2] at Harvard University have thrown this caution to the wind and tackled laser cooling of a triatomic molecule with success, opening the door to the study of ultracold polyatomic molecules.

The technique of laser cooling [3], which uses the scattering of laser photons and the concomitant momentum transfer to bring atoms to a near halt, has revolutionized atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics. Laser cooling and an important variant known as Sisyphus cooling [4] underpin three Nobel prizes in physics—for magneto-optical trapping (1997), Bose-Einstein condensation (2001), and the manipulation of individual quantum systems (2012)—and are crucial to a host of quantum-assisted technologies and fundamental physics measurements.

Since photons carry very little momentum and therefore reduce an atom’s velocity by just a small amount, a prerequisite for effective laser cooling is the ability to scatter thousands of photons. Thus laser cooling has predominantly been used only to cool simple atoms, whose electronic structure dictates that after a photon is absorbed, spontaneous emission places the atomic electron back into its original state, allowing the process to repeat nearly ad infinitum.

Spurred on by the possibility of another revolution in AMO physics when ultracold molecules become available [5], a brave group of researchers recently began work to achieve laser cooling of diatomic molecules, guided by a new proposal for how to deal with their complex structure [6]. Diatomic molecules, or “diatoms,” are challenging targets for laser cooling as their electronic structure is complicated by their rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom. When a diatom absorbs a photon from the laser, spontaneous emission can place it in any of a multitude of these rotational and vibrational states, whose transition frequencies no longer match that of the cooling laser. These so-called dark states are the bane of laser cooling, bringing the cooling process to a stop. Nonetheless, by carefully choosing molecules with unique properties—for example, those which contain an optically active electron that does not strongly participate in the molecular bonding—laser cooling of molecules has been successful, and it has culminated in the demonstration of magneto-optical trapping of SrF molecules [7].

APS Viewpoint: A Diatomic Molecule is One Atom too FewPaul Hamilton, Eric Hudson, University of California, Los Angeles

Jobs Jobs Jobs!

Posted by Stephen Alexander on April 30, 2017 at 7:00am

A member of the expat group I'm in posted a humongous list of remote jobs.

Sites similar to Fiverr and online teaching gigs, things like that.

Some of the sites are free, some are paid, and some are a combination (pay for greater access, pay to post a gig, etc)

The idea for you, the budding writer/artist, would be to join one of the 58 sites and see if you can attract any work for whatever price you want to set.

I live overseas, so this is the sort of thing I look for when I want to make a little extra on the side, or to find artists for my book projects. Click here for the list.

Our Big list of 58 Digital Nomad Job Sites

Come Forth The Rising Tide

Posted by Thaddeus on April 27, 2017 at 10:08am

It's the Apocalypse, already in progress…

“Gabriel’s Horn is the only thing that can drive back the Rising Tide and you let them take it to Hell?” Father Finnegan threw the glass of box wine into the fireplace in disgust. Renwick didn’t flinch and threw the chain holding Jillian Pace onto his desk.

“Is that what they were doing? You didn’t say anything about a damned horn. You said get the girl away from the Tide. She’s here. Bounty’s done, I want my money. I intend to be on a plane by tomorrow morning."

He pinched that spot between his eyes before continuing. "You can’t beat the Rising Tide. I barely got away and she had to help.” Looking over at Pace, she smiled a toothy snarling smile indicating her respect for the crazed mercenary’s skills.

“You’ll get your lucre, Renwick, as soon as the so-called Master of the Mystic Arts arrives.” Finnegan sat back down in to his armchair after getting a new glass from his cabinet.

The stink of cheap wine permeated the air as the door opened and a short, disheveled, probably drunken man with a scraggly beard and none-too-fresh breath staggered in. “Anyone call for a Master?” Pace’s eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped back into her chair, hiding her face in the shadows.

Another fellow came in behind the Master. Tall. Quiet, with sharp penetrating eyes. His vision swept the room and locked in on the chair where Jillian Pace, cloaked in darkness, clenched her jaw. The tall man’s predatory smile pissed her off.

Darrin Wells, former master of the mystic arts found his way to the dispenser of box wine and placed his mouth on the spigot, slurped noisily without spilling a drop.

When he rose, his facade was gone, replaced by the face of a broken man. “Jillian Pace, you are now the only thing between us and the Rising Tide. They’re past trying to initiate you, they were going to kill you. Are you ready to join us?” An unexpected belch at the end of the statement disrupted any chance he had at sounding ominous.

Pace looked at the failed mystic, the danger-averse but efficient bounty hunter, the sex-crazed architect and the priest who sounded the alarm all those years ago and leapt up from her chair toward Wells screaming, “You let my sister die. You promised me she was the Chosen One and that she would be able to turn them back. She’s dead, and now you come to me, second-best, barely worthy of teaching in your opinion and now you want my fucking help? Screw you.” Only Renwick’s quick reflexes kept Wells from getting knocked flat on his backside.

Not done, she turned to the tall man, “Are you finished with me too? I helped you with your designs, you thought it was okay to take advantage of me and then threw me away when you were done. How did your little project work out? Did you tell your clubhouse buddies what you were doing in your spare time?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. And I am the reason you are sitting in this room, instead of dead on the alter of a bunch of crazed and fanatical demons. I enjoyed your…company and you were very helpful. It was the least I could do.” Reeves licked his lips staring right into her eyes, hungrily feasting on a past memory of their debauchery.

Pace, unflinching, stared back.

Renwick, like a dog with a bone, snarled “What does this have to do with my money? I don’t know what those crazed demon-cultist were doing when I left, but there were thirty other people being sacrificed when I made my escape. I know that can’t be good.”

Wells, recovered, staggered to the table and pointed to a series of magical sigils across the map. “This is what they are trying to do. They want to build a gate straight to the door of Hell. It’ll open right in the middle of the city.”

Renwick looked at the map and noticed of the five points, only one was circled. “That’s here, isn’t it?”

Father Finnegan nodded. “They need this spot and one more to complete their spell. They’ll be coming for this one soon. You and Pace will have to stop them from laying claim to their final location.” The former mystic and Father Finnegan began moving around the room lifting paintings and shoving aside cabinets. Behind them were sigils, old things which made her flesh crawl, something from a time before Man, using a language preceding the Enochian runes used in demon binding.

“We have one more job for you, Renwich, Wells, said. Take her to this address. Your payment has been doubled and already in your account. No complaints. No bitching. Get it done."

Outside the church three vehicles pull up at three different points. Two men get out of each vehicle, stopping only to check the bindings on the three people in the back seats. Slamming the door, each man touches the sides of their vehicle and runes flare causing the cars to burst into flames.

The roaring flames disguised the screams of the victims within. The six men step into the center of the triangle of the three vehicles. They grab each other's hands and are consumed by flames that shoot from each vehicle. When the flame clears, a demon twenty feet tall, with chained manacles and runic symbols etched into its bleeding flesh stands instead.

It roared. Car alarms blare, the walls of the church shake while tiles fly from the roof, doors rattle, windows explode, pre-Enochian symbols flash in response.

The properly attuned heard a bell-like sound reverberating in response to the roar. Surprised, the demon gathers its chains which stretch into its home dimension and crossed the boundary from its world to ours. As the rupture closes, the chains which bound it are severed and it uses them as weapons lashing out at the protections on the ancient but steadfast church.

Each strike makes the symbols grow dimmer. Each blow causes more of the church to crumble. Inside, three men, all mystics of one sort or another, make their final peace. The architect takes his pen and tube and heads to the street, drawing symbols in the air that follow him, glowing with his arcane power.

Father Finnagan, carries an old wooden cross, a relic blessed three centuries ago with the blood of a saint. His belief coursing through it creates a spiritual shield before the last of the men.

The former master of the mystic arts chants and channels the power of ancient gods, redirecting his very life force in sacrifice. These men have no illusions they can defeat this creature. They only have to hold it long enough.

Renwich looked at the chains holding Jillian Pace, chains which bound her magic. “I can’t make you go. You can’t hurt me with your magic. These three men are about to die for you. Will you do this last thing they asked?” He unlocked the manacles with a simple touch of his hand.

Pace, ran out of the door and down the hall to where what looked like lightning lit the sky outside. Her voice caught in her throat as she saw the demon towering over the three men. They looked so old, so feeble, they were tiny stars trying to glow against a backdrop of towering darkness.

She gathered her power. The Darkness, the Light and the Way, the unique energy she bound together making them more powerful than their individual parts. The demon looked at her. It sensed her as the true threat.

“NO, don’t you dare!” Father Finnegan roared and charged the demon, swinging his cross like a club. Where it struck the demon ,a star flared and the priest, defiant to the end, died, a withered husk, drained of his lifeforce in an instant. The demon was thrown back crunching a car with its landing twenty feet away. It turned its eyes to the remaining two men.

A strong hand grabbed hers. Renwich whispered. “No. If they thought you were ready, you would already be there. They brought you here to give you this.” He handed her a box covered with thaumaturgic circles. “Now, we have to go. Trust their wisdom.”

Renwich gripped her arm, almost holding her up as she watched the two men fight a losing battle. She turned her back and ran with a man she couldn’t forgive for bringing her back to a life she never wanted. As they ran to his car, they could still see Wells and Reeves holding the demon in thrall, each in their own way.

Wells shouted out as the two of them pulled away. “You can only stop them with sacrifice! Remember that!”

The demon pulled away from the two men and ran toward the car. The architect, Reeves, stopped and drew a sigil on the ground. The archmage took the architect’s tube and revealed runic symbols on the side. He speared the sigil on the ground and both men fell to the ground. The ground where the demon stood lit up, a searchlight speared the heavens.

Tears streaming, Jillian watched as the demon turned to ash. The smell of death was everywhere.

Kamikaze...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 27, 2017 at 6:20am

A still from a short animated film depicting Cassini’s passage between the cloudtops of Saturn and the giant planet’s innermost rings. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Topics: Astrophysics, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

Definition: "suicide flier," 1945, Japanese, literally "divine wind," from kami "god, providence, divine" (see kami) + kaze "wind." Originally the name given in folklore to a typhoon which saved Japan from Mongol invasion by wrecking Kublai Khan's fleet (August 1281). Dictionary.com

Running low on fuel, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun the final — and most daring — phase of its epic mission to Saturn.

After using a final flyby of the moon Titan on Friday to boost its speed, Cassini was flung by the moon's gravity to a trajectory that sent it diving through the 1,200-mile (1,930 kilometers) gap between the planet's upper atmosphere and innermost rings, NASA officials said.

Cassini completed the first crossing of the ring plane at about 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT, or 0900 GMT) Wednesday, the space agency said in a statement.

This final journey will end Sept. 15 when the spacecraft burns up in Saturn's crushing atmosphere. There is no turning back now; Cassini is on a "ballistic trajectory," and its fate is sealed, NASA scientists have said. The Grand Finale has been designed to prevent the spacecraft from contaminating the potentially habitable Saturnian moons.

September 15 would be Mildred Dean Goodwin's 92 birthday if she were still here. I'll be sure to commemorate it. I think this would make her smile.

Scientific American:NASA's Cassini Mission Conducts Daring Dive through Saturn's Rings, Ian O'Neill

The Gathering Storm

Posted by Thaddeus on April 26, 2017 at 1:40pm

The three ship escort arrived in Havari space, three weeks after we left what was left of Corva Prime. The Havari were preparing a new offensive now that the Hegemony was in disarray.

Rapacious, the Havari had chaffed under the Hegemony’s rules for the annexation of worlds. While they were barely members of the Hegemony, they were forbidden to take any planets that were part of Hegemony space. This meant they were forced to move away from the coreward worlds they preferred, and instead into the radiation-poor regions of the the edgeward planetary systems.

When the news of the Insurrection reached Havari Secundus, they mobilized for a new war. A war where they might be able to annex new territories under the cover of anarchy.

The Havari living ships were already clustered throughout the sector, their energy signatures testament to their biologically-enhanced, self-contained singularities powering their star-drives. Their fleet was one of the few not dependent on the Galactic Gate Network, they could reach most of their close neighbors in as little as three months Standard.

My job was to convince them, not that it was an error to be preparing for war, but that their target was not Corva Prime or any of the Hegemony’s core planets but the approaching alien fleet hoping to take advantage of this moment of engineered weakness.

As we dropped into Secundus’ atmosphere, our ships were reconfigured for the thick, dust-filled air. Two dozen of their winged attack insect ships flew alongside and paced us in directing us where we needed to land.

I could not make heads or tails of the sensor data at first, the land scanning systems were having difficulties determining depth and visibility was low in the upper atmosphere. It was only once we got below the cloud cover did I determine why the land-scanners had problems. It was having trouble discerning hives from mountains! The Havari hive-cities were three to five miles high arches created from the rock of the mountains themselves. They were reputed to be hand-crafted taking hundreds of years to create and perfect.

They were a symbol of power for each hive who created one, such that each was unique, yet signifying a social order and social hierarchy rarely seen in the Hegemony. These were beings who believed in order and were organized through their hive minds to bring about the order they were seeking.

The Hegemony was right to be afraid. These were this sector's apex predators. With a taste for the grand, capable of building what they needed and wanted. And when they could, they would take what they wanted from anyone unable to stop them.

The Hegemony’s destruction of Havari Prime in the First Wars of the Hegemony would not make this an easy sell. We needed them as allies because we had enough enemies.

Truth of the matter is, if we cannot convince them to join us, what’s left of the Hegemony’s Corvan leaders, in their current, devolved state, will destroy every last element of this civilization to make their borders safe making the First Galactic War little more than a border skirmish. The fate of twelve billion sentients lie in my hands.

As our ships dock, my translator activates and my Human crew prepares to disembark. Nothing prepared me for the scale of the Havari. Insectoid, they stand three meter tall. Their armored limbs and insect-like heads are shiny black and covered with sharp spines. They have both simple eyes and compound eyes surrounding their heads. Their segmented bodies are beautiful and yet terribly alien.

There is a sound, a quiet reverberation underfoot, something like the sound of crickets, like a rhythmic breathing, growing louder and then softer. The air is filled with a panoply of scents some sweet, even cloying, others bitter, carrying the rage of the Havari with them.

“I am Essver Dream-singer, of the People of the Sjurani, son of Minru, son of Daor the Terrible, warrior-poet of Harata II, Sjurani Rex, mated to the nǚgōngjué the Glorious Pielienhis, Representative of the Great and Glorious Corvan Hegemony, representing the High Council of Worlds on Toranor.” This is one of the few times I am forced to look up at my hosts. My human cousins bow as deeply as I do.

“We are Hive Harak, representing Havari Secundus and the Confederate of Larani Star-systems. We greet you in the spirit of hospitality. That no arms will be lifted against you, no poisons shall be presented in any cuisine you may partake with us, no threat or ill will shall be directed toward you while you are a member of Hive Harak. We welcome you as Hive Brothers. I am Prefect L’al.”

Before I could even answer the generous benediction, two of the Havari flying overhead, all of whom I assumed were maintenance technicians of one sort or another wheeled about and dropped directly into the center of our group. Weapons were drawn and pointed at my delegation and the House Harak group drew weapons on the two intruders.

“You do not speak for all of Havari Secundus, Prefect L’al. Leave our world aliens; know that we are coming for all of the coreward worlds we can take.” He leveled his weapon and I realized we might all need to defend ourselves in the next few seconds.

I felt it before I saw anything changing. A vibration so powerful it silenced all other sounds in the room. The Havari standing around us moved back and then prostrated themselves on the ground. The two intruders backed up but did not lower their weapons, at first. Then the vibration sounded again and a shadow appeared above my head.

I could hear the thrum of a huge set of wings and feel the backblast as the giant landed in our midst. Black and golden with fiery red highlights, she was twice the size of the warriors who already towered over us.

She landed light as a feather and her giant wingspan folded neatly beneath her carapace. The two armed intruders dropped their weapons but before they could hit the ground, both were beheaded. Their heads were simply gone. Their black blood shot into the air as their bodies toppled backward.

The Queen turned to us, and still chewing she announced, “Forgive the intrusion. Now our negotiations can begin.”

Life As We Know It...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 26, 2017 at 7:16am

Artist’s impression of the super-Earth exoplanet LHS 1140b. Credit: ESO

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Space Exploration

"LHS 1140B": We have to talk about naming conventions.o_0'

IN BRIEF

Scientists have located an exoplanet that's the best candidate for life as we know it. They believe it may prove to be an even more important target for the future characterization of planets in the habitable zone than Proxima b or TRAPPIST-1.

Only a few decades ago, the thought of any alien planets existing in the reaches of space were just hypothetical ideas. Now, we know of thousands of such planets – and today, scientists may have discovered the best candidate yet for alien life.

That candidate is an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth—what the international team of astronomers who discovered it have deemed a “super-Earth.” Using ESO’s HARPS instrument and a range of telescopes around the world, the astronomers located the exoplanet orbiting the dim star – LHS 1140 – within its habitable zone. This world passes in front of its parent stars as it orbits, has likely retained most of its atmosphere, and is a little larger and much more massive than the Earth. In short, super-Earth LHS 1140b is among the most exciting known subjects for atmospheric studies.

Futurism:Scientists Just Discovered an Alien Planet That’s The Best Candidate for Life As We Know It

Qubiits Entanglement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 25, 2017 at 7:20am

This photograph of the quantum device has components highlighted in false colour. The superconducting qubits are numbered 1–10 and the central bus resonator is labelled "B". The red and blue structures are control lines for the individual qubits. (Courtesy: Chao Song et al/ arXiv: 1703.10302)

Topics: Entanglement, Modern Physics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A group of physicists in China has taken the lead in the race to couple together increasing numbers of superconducting qubits. The researchers have shown that they can entangle 10 qubits connected to one another via a central resonator – so beating the previous record by one qubit – and say that their result paves the way to quantum simulators that can calculate the behaviour of small molecules and other quantum-mechanical systems much more efficiently than even the most powerful conventional computers.

Superconducting circuits create qubits by superimposing two electrical currents, and hold the promise of being able to fabricate many qubits on a single chip through the exploitation of silicon-based manufacturing technology. In the latest work, a multi-institutional group led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, built a circuit consisting of 10 qubits, each half a millimetre across and made from slivers of aluminium laid on to a sapphire substrate. The qubits, which act as non-linear LC oscillators, are arranged in a circle around a component known as a bus resonator.

Initially, the qubits are put into a superposition state of two oscillating currents with different amplitudes by supplying each of them with a very low-energy microwave pulse. To avoid interference at this stage, each qubit is set to a different oscillation frequency. However, for the qubits to interact with one another, they need to have the same frequency. This is where the bus comes in. It allows qubits to transfer energy from one another, but does not absorb any of that energy itself.

Physics World: Ten superconducting qubits entangled by physicists in ChinaEdwin Cartlidge

March for Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 24, 2017 at 6:35am

Mid Hudson March for Science, Poughkeepsie, New York

Topics: Education, Politics, Research, Science, STEM

I participated in the Mid Hudson March for Science Saturday, 22 April 2017 at 2:00 pm Eastern. The weather was overcast but not rainy at a comfortable 57 degrees, so it made a 0.6 mile march quite doable and pleasant.

I was a little concerned and jealous when I saw the marches in DC and NYC, the crowds featured by the news outlets in Times Square and the nation's capital were impressive and large. Poughkeepsie held its own quite impressive display of unity for science, reason and ultimately truth. I estimate we had 350 - 400 science enthusiasts, young and old - from toddlers to retired - and as diverse as a prism or rainbow. There was the sign "proud parents of a PhD in Chemistry"; the beautiful fraternal twins, one of them couldn't relax in his dual stroller out of the grasp of his mother. I had interesting side conversations in things ranging from the origin of the Internet, Moore's Law and the current policies that have everyone concerned. I saw a few irritated drivers as we gummed up traffic down Main Street. We had to stay on the sidewalk to the final destination along the Hudson River.

Poughkeepsie March for Science Slide Show

Every march needs a GREAT BAND with a driving beat to step forward, even for brief trek. Please note the creative signs displayed at the march.

A coed from Marist College remarked: "Last semester, I went to concerts. This semester, my life revolves around marches." I asked her and her friend - an African American and Asian - if they were registered to vote. They enthusiastically said yes, and pledged to vote in EVERY election. That, like science matters.

I felt overwhelmed, first at the brief memory of my deceased parents and their support of my science pursuits. Then something I used to experience when I jogged, similar to "runners high," as we got to the end of the march at the shore of the Hudson River at Wayas Park: there were several "science teach ins" and people that wore t-shirts that said "ask me about _____." I talked to a member of the Mid Hudson Astronomical Association (I'm on their meet up) and we talked shop about when and where they meet. Since my schedule had changed, I said I could meet them on their Wednesday night star gazing.

I talked to a man that had a t-shirt that said "ask me about Ebola." I found out he was not a medical doctor as I had surmised, but a historian. He was born in Sierra Leon, and was documenting how colonialism had affected his country in the way of infectious diseases (sounded similar to the book Germs, Guns an Steel by Jared Diamond). We had a pleasant conversation and a good exchange. I shook his hand as I moved to other exhibits.

I saw the STEM teach-in by IBM with the typical wafer samples and motherboards, and chuckled that the electronic snap kits I use to do the same thing they also brought (they had the 100 experiment kit, I have that, the 750 experiment and 3-D kits).

There were conservationists, botanists, possum skeletons and pelts for some reason, people in lab coats and 45 in effigy. I purposely didn't take a photo of it since he's quite ubiquitous and nauseating without my broadcasting.

I guess my high was the concern shown by a diverse community quite concerned with science and its pursuit of truth being warped to the desire of authoritarians that since Galileo have been threatened that the Scientific Method typically doesn't agree with their narrative. I felt my eyes weld; my chest warm as my blood rushed.

Though I went there by myself (my wife exhausted from a real estate exam), I at no time felt "alone."

March for Science web site.

New York Times: Scientists, Feeling Under Siege, March Against Trump PoliciesNicolas St. Fleur

Requiem for Moab...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 14, 2017 at 7:00am

Spock's comment that "Change is the essential process of all existence" remains one of the most memorable lines of dialogue ever uttered on Star Trek. - See more at: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

Topics: Diversity, Existentialism, Futurism, Martin Luther King, Politics, Star Trek

It is Good Friday in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

The Biblical name Moab means "of his father" in Hebrew, the apparent product of the illicit, incestual coitus between Lot and his two daughters during a drunken seduction by both of them to ensure the continuance of his lineage. Several double entendre examples emerge to mind, salacious, lascivious and darkly ironic: manliness, missiles and spermatozoa. We tend to cheer presidents when they lob missiles, even the draft-dodger ones. In one case to conceal a consensual sexual peccadillo; the other to deflect from an active FBI investigation (with one revealed FISA warrant) regarding collusion with a foreign power... to "win."

I re-posted "Last Battlefield," a poignant episode in the third season of the original Star Trek as its ratings declined, eventually going into syndication and rabid fandom for what would or perhaps always was called futurism, a world Roddenberry envisioned beyond the assassinations of a president (John F. Kennedy), his brother (Robert F. Kennedy) and sandwiched between them Civil Rights icons Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. A world where humankind's progeny lives and survives.

This is the third rendition in the age of "mother of all bombs" as a madman plans to up-the-ante in oneupmanship penis envy on the Korean peninsula, a megaton yield promised proportional to 16 Hiroshima's. It may be bluff; it may be bluster. World wars have started on less: WWI, WWII. There is a plan to preemptively strike North Korea to hamper any nuclear program it may have, and at whatever stage. The madman has a "big brother" in the formerly-known-as currency manipulator, China, that will under obligation of treaty challenge such a plan. The impact of escalation would first immediately be felt by South Korea, Japan; world markets and stability.

We also have in this nation, a leader that prevaricates like middle school children generate flatulence. The Air Force drilled us in war games incessantly, then on deployment to the actual exercise or theater, we learned to change on the fly. We derisively called it "rigid flexibility." For the 45th occupant of the Executive Mansion and holder of the nuclear codes, the best description should be "consistent inconsistency." He promised to be unpredictable on the campaign trail, this being the only thing approaching a "doctrine." We - the hapless electorate - follow as best we can with a mixture of angst, attention-deficit, PTSD and whiplash.

What is more frightening than a president that makes obfuscation an Olympic sport is our collective cultural arrogance that the Earth as we know it will always be, and unlike the dinosaur we will not go extinct.

The exception to us with respect to the dinosaurs is they did not know about the missile-meteor that generated the Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico... nor did they design it or tempt Apocalypse in 140 characters (or less).

* * * * *

This was first posted in August of 2013, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. I can hope Star Trek's return in 2017 to CBS has as much cultural impact as this episode did with me at its time and timing.

The vitriol and violence of the 2016 presidential campaign I've seen at political rallies; the racism, misogyny, tribalism and xenophobia purposely designed appealing to our lesser angels will not solve any problems, nor have any substantive policy proposals been forwarded by this particular camp. Sometimes art is a reflection of life. In this case, I sincerely hope life does not imitate art.

* * * * *

One of the most powerful Trek episodes for me as a youth was "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Recall, the 60's weren't just "make love, not war": there was a lot of both. Vietnam overseas, protests of the war and Civil Rights/Voting Rights marches at home. Suspicions that any deviance from the John Birch Society authoritarian "norm" was judged subversive; communist, therefore necessarily purged and crushed from existence. Judging from the date of airings, its first showing came nine months after the sad assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

It also aired during the climate of the Cold War, a period many seemingly LONG to get back to (that madness), where the nuclear "plan" was called MAD: mutually assured destruction. We still possess that insane power, essentially holding humanity hostage; guns to our own heads.

Gene Roddenberry put an interracial, international crew together: Nyota Uhura (literally: "Freedom Star" in Kiswahili); Hikaru Sulu (for the Sulu sea, meant to represent all of Asia, but of fictional Japanese origin); Pavel Andreievich Chekov (a RUSKIE for crying out loud!). You could say in this fictional treatment, Bele and Lokai "stood their ground" until the end. Roddenberry, as I've commented before developed his own eschatology, yet positive and relevant that we might just survive our own hubris, essentially stemming from old tribal conflicts and current contemporary displays of breathtaking stupidity and arrogance.

This episode was a stark warning; the inevitable consequences of NOT...

Source: Wikipedia

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is the fifteenth episode of the third season of the original science fiction television show Star Trek. It was first broadcast on January 10, 1969, and repeated on August 12, 1969. It was written by Oliver Crawford, based on a story by Gene L. Coon (writing under his pen name "Lee Cronin") and directed by Jud Taylor. The script evolved from an outline by Barry Trivers for a possible first season episode called "A Portrait in Black and White". The script was accepted for the third season following budget cuts. The episode guest-stars Lou Antonio and Frank Gorshin, best known for his role as The Riddler in the Batman live-action television series. Contrary to popular rumor and articles, Gorshin was not Emmy nominated for this role.

In this episode, the Enterprise picks up two survivors of a war-torn planet, who are still committed to destroying each other aboard the ship.

Amazon link

Once the Ariannus mission is completed, Bele takes control of the Enterprise again, but this time he deactivates the auto-destruct in the process and sends the ship to Cheron. Once there, the two aliens find the planet's population completely wiped out by a global war fueled by insane racial hatred. Both Lokai and Bele stare silently at the destruction on the monitor and realize they are the only ones left of their race (or, as they see it, their "races").

Instead of calling a truce, the two beings begin to blame each other for the destruction of the planet and a brawl ensues. As the two aliens fight, their innate powers radiate, cloaking them with an energy aura that threatens to damage the ship. With no other choice, Kirk sadly allows the two aliens to chase each other down to their obliterated world to decide their own fates, consumed by their now self-perpetuating mutual hate. Forlorn, Lt. Uhura asks if their hate is all they ever had. Kirk ruefully says no...but it is all they have left.

* * * * *

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

"The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BrainyQuote.com

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Posted by Christopher Love on April 19, 2017 at 6:38pm

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Components and Cornstarch...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 20, 2017 at 6:26am

Credit: American Chemical Society

Topics: Chemistry, Green Tech, Electronics, Nanotechnology

I of course have several nerd shirts. One I bought from my company spells out "I play with chips" using elements of the Periodic Table. The list of elements conform with literally substances used in most electronic devices: Iodine (I⁵³), Phosphorous (P¹⁵), Lanthanum (La⁵⁷), Yttrium (Y³⁹), Tungsten (W⁷⁴), Iodine (I⁵³), Thorium (Th⁹⁰), Carbon (C⁶), Hydrogen (H¹), Iodine (I⁵³), Phosphorous (P¹⁵), Sulfur (S¹⁶). I believe it was contracted to at least my company, but a simple logo change on the left sleeve could disseminate it. I don't see it anywhere else on the Internet.

I put the links to the safety data sheets on them above because with usage there is the discarding, the throwing away in trashcans that end up in landfills that like radioactive elements and plastics, have VERY long shelf lives hazardous to human health. I'm sure cornstarch is probably a lot less harsh. The shirt is still a good conversation starter.

As consumers upgrade their gadgets at an increasing pace, the amount of electronic waste we generate continues to mount. To help combat this environmental problem, researchers have modified a degradable bioplastic derived from corn starch or other natural sources for use in more eco-friendly electronic components. They report their development in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

Abstract

Nano metal–organic frameworks (ZIF-8) particles were synthesized, and poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/ZIF-8 nanocomposite films were prepared by solution-blending and film-casting methods. The addition of nano ZIF-8 particles improved the mechanical properties and had an impact on the crystallization of PLA. The electrical properties of the PLA/ZIF-8 nanocomposites were found to be dependent on the frequency and the ZIF-8 content. The prepared PLA/ZIF-8 films had good transparency even as the content of the nano ZIF-8 particles reached 3 wt %. Compared with 21.5% of pure PLA, the limited oxygen index value of the nanocomposite film containing 1 wt % ZIF-8 reached 26.0%. Therefore, it is proposed that the prepared nanocomposites can be used as the substrates and dielectric to make disposable electronics. The char residues after burning were studied in detail by scanning electron microscopy and Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies, and the flame retardant mechanism was also discussed.

Phys.org: Degradable electronic components created from cornstarch

Twisted Hyperbole...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 21, 2017 at 7:06am

J Robert Oppenheimer, Image Source: YouTube

Topics: Einstein, Existentialism, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Oppenheimer, Politics

What I wouldn't give for "truthful hyperbole." The riff in "The Art of the Deal" that we now know was ghostwritten and probably like the life of the 45th president a blatant, pathological lie, it was at least a strategy towards an end: a clever tactic that bent the rules but did not break them or the administrative state. An armada is headed towards the Korean peninsula until its revealed it was actually in the Indian Ocean thousands of miles away. Two generals on his staff and his press secretary used the word "prudent," perhaps as a prayer that maybe in the long line of obfuscations, this was a legitimate act that wasn't born in indigestion, bad dreams and a tweeted warped imagination. What was alarming is the bluff or buffoonery could have ratcheted up tensions on the 38th parallel. 20+ million South Koreans, military bases and businesses like Hyundai and in the semiconductor industry were at the mercy of chance and blind luck if anything popped off. The closest military bases in South Korea or the pacific theater couldn't have responded in time to interdict catastrophe, only to help bury bodies in a conventional bombing aftermath. They're probably and rightly pissed with us.

His predecessor "wiretapped" him, and because he put his tweet in quotes it takes new meaning. Devin Nunes put himself squarely back on his dairy ranch and his political career in the golden crapper, getting the information from the White House to "reveal" it to the same and the media the next day. Correlate that to now the official log of visitors will in his bumbling aftermath not be revealed, so as to not know which staffer let the congressman in and the time stamp. Surprisingly, his midnight run has not been parodied by late night comedy as I've seen. It also explains 45's frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago: it is his country club, and as a guarantor of the privacy of members at $200,000.00 a year, no logs there are made, or will ever be published. A kingpin of the Mafia could visit or a Russian oligarch, and we would never know.

Andrea Mitchell, exasperated said this administration "flat out lies" as if beyond pathology, this chaos is a source of pleasure: a political pyromaniac that lights fires, denies responsibility while jerking off to the engulfing flames of a crumbling republic.

In geopolitics, it's dangerous. Being unpredictable, or thinking no one will ever challenge us because they think our president is insane is not a doctrine, not a strategy: it is pure insanity. This will embolden Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS/ISIL et al, not cow them. So far, the recent published opinions of ISIS that "the US is bankrupt and being run by an idiot" hasn't as yet resulted in a morning, mean-girl counter tweet storm.

Paul Mason, contributing to the Opinion Page of The Guardian (see Related links) summed it best:

"I don’t wish to alarm you, but right now the majority of the world’s nuclear warheads are in the hands of men for whom the idea of using them is becoming thinkable."

Those men are Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung Un and the 45th president, an "axis of grift, testosterone-driven, short-penis evil," thumping their chests like alpha apes, ignoring the ramifications of the effects of geopolitical gravity if we all plunge over this cliff. Nuclear war is thinkable to these men: megaton yield, radiation sickness, hunger, death, isotope half lives beyond human lifetimes for civilization to recover apparently is not. Trolls love to point out "science created the atomic bomb." Yes, it did. Werner Von Heisenberg was a scientist in the employ of the German Nazis working on the bomb. Father of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics, he likely would have been promptly executed for any misgivings had he not. Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist that almost single-handedly created the modern age during his "Annus Mirabilis," leading to this age of computers, solar panels, transistors, television, the Internet and GPS systems. He was also a Jewish immigrant fleeing Nazi Germany for his life, that wrote the US president on the danger of them getting the bomb first and what this posed, encouraging what became known as The Manhattan Project, a sin science has tried to atone for (since Oppenheimer famously quoted Hindu scripture) in publishing the report annually by the Union of Concerned Scientists about how close we are to extinction. The colloquial phrase is "if we didn't do it, we all might be speaking German." I say we - especially ethnic and social minorities - probably wouldn't be having this pleasant conversation if we hadn't. It doesn't excuse the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most historians now say the Empire of the Sun was literally on its last legs, and a few months more of empty stomachs could have changed the minds of the most recalcitrant regimes. This genie has been out of its bottle for quite some time now. We hope each election our heads of state are levelheaded responsible actors, not someone who tweets reflexively the last thing seen on Fox News without thought or context, or from a White Genocide twitter account. Apparently from the recent US elections and the rise of xenophobia in Europe, fascism - what we fought WWII for and established in its wake NATO and trade agreements - is making a comeback.

Another name for Beelzebub is "the father of lies." Who knew he would be personified in a septuagenarian that could do so in 140 characters or less?

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Teaching Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 19, 2017 at 7:02am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Economy, Education, Jobs, STEM

I've taught physics at the college level as well as high school. I've taught special needs students as well as students acquiring their HSE (high school equivalency, the replacement of the GED).

There's a nostalgia of the "good old days" that like all with the distance of time, we mis-remember things because as students, we typically didn't understand the pedagogy of the times. Our nostalgic recollections do have the absence of distracting technologies like the ubiquitous contronym, "smart phones."

I've found using a method called “mind mapping” a good warm up. For example, when teaching about “work,” I put the word on the board and asked my HSE class what it meant. What I got:

Now of course, the trick is to get the five in the class to Work = Force x Distance, Power = Work/Time and Simple Machines. That takes a certain amount of patience. One student I recall "didn't want to be there." The other four did good work, and we had a humorous back-and-forth on "The Flash" and what I've termed "cartoon physics." Since speed was their thing, I explained what it meant when The Flash made a sonic boom; that it had nothing to do with the speed of light and how VAST that difference actually is. As work goes, we were all "pumped" at the end of the hour.

Hence, the article in Physics Today grabbed me. To continue teaching and propagating an understanding of physics as well as science, we're going to be a little creative, answer questions on cartoon physics and steer them back on the rails... to their own futures.

Physics is the most exciting endeavor I can imagine. That is why I want to become a physicist and join what Richard Feynman called “the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun.”¹ Now, after my second year of undergraduate studies in astrophysics at University College London (UCL), I want to comment on some of the vicissitudes I have experienced while being taught physics. The basic courses of my first two years were disappointing. They didn’t really give me the opportunity to join that greatest adventure. Most of my lecturers followed traditional teaching approaches based heavily on solving standard problems and learning by rote, with no hint of free inquiry or discussion. They seemed to be convinced that we would understand physics through that method. I was not enthusiastic.

Physics Today: How to teach me physics: Tradition is not always a virtue, Ricardo Heras

Electron Beams...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 18, 2017 at 6:23am

Figure 1: Using the Pegasus facility at UCLA, Maxson and colleagues [1] have compressed electron pulses to below 10 fs in duration. In this facility, a relatively long electron pulse (green) produced by an electron source (not shown) enters a specially designed linear accelerator (copper, left), whose electromagnetic fields act to compress the pulse several meters downstream from the accelerator. Here, the pulse can be made so short (below 10 fs) that it would “outrun” all atomic motion in molecules (blue) and materials. In an electron diffraction or microscopy experiment with pulses like this, atoms are effectively frozen in place during an exposure (yellow). [Credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker]

Topics: Electromagnetism, High Energy Physics, Modern Physics, Particle Physics

When you read the term “electron beam,” what comes to mind? If you are a physicist or have a background in physics, it may be the great J. J. Thomson—discoverer of the electron—followed by a vision of an old television or oscilloscope powered by cathode-ray tubes. Very twentieth-century stuff. If this is your view, a new study by Jared Maxson at the Pegasus radiation facility at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues [1] should help make clear how electron beams are one of the primary enablers of twenty-first-century science. Ultrashort electron-beam pulses—less than 10 fs long in this case—are enabling forms of atomic-level dynamic imaging that were previously restricted to the realm of thought experiments [2].

It is difficult to overemphasize the impact that electron beams have had on scientific developments over the last century, or the impact they are expected to have over the next century. While electron beams are currently out of favor in high-energy physics, because of the move from electron-positron colliders to hadron colliders at CERN, Fermilab, and other laboratories, they are central to other areas of science. For example, when we want to perform detailed examinations of the structure of molecules and materials, electron beams are at the forefront. Transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes are remarkably efficient instruments for generating and measuring an enormous range of signals that reveal the structure of materials. These signals come from both the elastic and inelastic interaction of electron beams with materials, and modern materials science is unthinkable without these instruments. When operated at cryogenic temperatures, these same instruments enable 3D reconstructions of proteins, viruses, organelles, and even whole cells [3]. Complementary work can also be performed using synchrotron light sources or free-electron lasers [4], which produce x-ray and infrared beams that are themselves generated from pulsed relativistic electron beams circulating in storage rings or linear accelerators. The size of the facilities that host these instruments, and the properties and limitations of the instruments as sources of x-ray and infrared radiation, are largely determined by the properties of such electron beams.

APS Physics Viewpoint: Electron Pulses Made Faster Than Atomic MotionsBradley Siwick, Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry, Center for the Physics of Materials, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0B8, Canada

DDR...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 17, 2017 at 5:31am

Image Source: Quora

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Semiconductor Technology

Info link: Double Data Rate, Wikipedia

The new, higher-speed DDR4 DRAM generation gained significant marketshare in 2016, representing 45% of total DRAM sales. Previously, DDR3 DRAM, including low-power versions used in tablets, smartphones, and notebook PCs, accounted for 84% of total DRAM sales in 2014 and 76% in 2015, but in 2016, DDR4 price premiums evaporated and prices fell to nearly the same ASP as DDR3 DRAMs. A growing number of microprocessors, like Intel’s newest 14nm x86 Core processors, now contain DDR4 controllers and interfaces. As a result, IC Insights expects DDR4 to become the dominant DRAM generation in 2017 with 58% marketshare versus 39% for DDR3.

The Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) officially launched the fourth generation of DDR in 2012. In 2014, DDR4 memories first began appearing on the market in DRAM modules for powerful servers and a small number of high-end desktop computers, which had souped-up motherboards or the “extreme” versions of Intel’s 22nm Haswell-E processors for high-performance gaming software and PC enthusiasts, but volume sales remained low until 2015, when data centers and Internet companies began loading up servers with the new-generation memories to increase performance and lower power consumption. In 2016, DDR4 memories quickly spread into more data center servers, mainframes, and high-end PCs, accounting for about 45% of total DRAM sales versus 20% in 2015. In 2017, DDR4 will move into more notebook PCs, high-end tablets, and smartphones and is expected to hold a 58% share of DRAM sales.

Solid State Technology:DDR4 set to account for largest share of DRAM market by architecture

Equiangular Geometry...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 13, 2017 at 6:18am

Igor Balla for Quanta Magazine

Topics: Geometry, Mathematics, STEM, Research

Imagine a set of many lines as in a dream. The lines intersect at a point and radiate outward. There’s something perfect about the way they’re spaced that you can’t quite put your finger on. You start counting them, but before you can finish you wake up with a question hanging on the fringe of your mind: Just how many were there?

For at least 70 years, mathematicians have been trying to answer a question like that one. The sets of lines they’re interested in share a basic feature: Any two lines from the set intersect to form the same angle. Such sets of lines are called “equiangular.” Mathematicians want to know just how big those sets can get as you move past the 3-D space of our everyday experience and into higher dimensions.

Equiangular lines are much more than a curiosity — they’re an almost elemental way to think about geometry. Maximal constructions of equiangular lines often align perfectly with the vertices of highly symmetric shapes, which make them a way to discover the existence of those shapes in the first place. In addition, radiating equiangular lines would pass through the surface of a surrounding sphere at equidistant points. This property makes the lines important for so-called spherical codes, which have important applications in applied mathematics and computer science.

Last spring a team of mathematicians found the maximum number of equiangular lines possible in any dimension, given certain conditions. They proved that that number is much smaller than previous best estimates. Benny Sudakov, a professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and one of the lead authors, credits the breakthrough to the wide range of mathematical techniques he and his coauthors were able to apply to the problem.

“It’s like when you’re cooking something, we suddenly found we had the right ingredients,” said Sudakov.

Quanta Magazine: A New Path to Equal-Angle Lines, Kevin Hartnett

Abracadabra...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2017 at 5:51am

Figure 1: Scheme of the setup used by Jennewein and co-workers [1]. A pump laser generates a three-photon entangled state through a cascade of frequency conversion processes in a nonlinear crystal. The oscillations in the rate of three-photon coincidence measured by the detectors provide the signature of genuine three-photon interference.

Topics: Applied Physics, Optical Physics, Photonics, Quantum Mechanics

Quantum interference effects lie at the heart of technologies that promise radically new capabilities for sensors, secure communications, and computing. Most existing experiments and applications rely on one photon interfering with itself, or two photons interfering with each other. However, the interference of a larger number of particles leads to a richer variety of phenomena, and may enable more sophisticated applications. Now, two independent groups, the first led by Thomas Jennewein at the University of Waterloo, in Canada [1], the second by Ian Walmsley at the University of Oxford, in the UK [2], have been able to isolate and observe, for the first time, “genuine” interference between three photons, that is, an effect deriving from the quantum interference of three photons that does not originate from two-photon or single-photon interference. The two studies provide new tools for controlling multiphoton interference, which may help researchers design new fundamental tests of quantum mechanics, quantum-communication protocols, and powerful quantum simulators.

The quintessential example of multiphoton quantum interference is the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, first observed in 1987. In an HOM experiment [3], two independent photons coming from different directions impinge on a 50:50 beam splitter. If the two incoming photons are distinguishable, the outgoing photons will split equally between the two exit ports of the splitter. However, if the two photons are identical and arrive simultaneously, the quantum-mechanical wave functions will interfere, and the two photons will always exit through the same port, even though each of them has an equal probability of exiting through both ports.

APS Physics Viewpoint: Photonic Hat TrickRobert Sewell, The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 3, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), SpainApril 10, 2017• Physics 10, 38

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