Determining theCP-violating phase γ

The weak phase γ is conventionally probed by theB _s→ρ ⁰ mode. The predicted rate is tiny. Even if aB _s→ρ ⁰ K _s rate difference could be established, it would not be clear that sin 2γ had been measured, because amplitudes with other weak phases may contribute significantly. Non-CP eigenstates, such asB _s →D _s ^± K ^?, have a two-fold advantage overB _s→ρ ⁰ K _s. Their rates are orders of magnitude above that forB _s→ρ ⁰ K _s, and they probe theCP-violating phase γ, without any contamination from other weak phases. Detailed time-dependent studies of non-CP eigenstates remove possible final-state phases and extract the weak phase γ.     

The meaning of the terms “phase” and “phase transition”

Various meanings of the terms phase and phase transition encountered in scientific literature are discussed. These terms supplement each other and cover only together all the macroscopic situations which are now denoted by this term.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 8, pp. 67–71, August, 1988.     

Can an electric field induce an antiferroelectric phase out of a ferroelectric phase?

It has been widely accepted that electric fields favor the ferroelectric phase with parallel electric dipoles over the antiferroelectric phase. With detailed measurements in polycrystalline ceramics of Pb(0.99)Nb(0.02[(Zr(0.57)Sn(0.43)(1-y)Ti(y)](0.98)O(3), we demonstrate in this Letter that electric fields can induce an antiferroelectric phase out of a ferroelectric phase, i.e., trigger an apparently unlikely ferroelectric-to-antiferroelectric phase transition. We suggest that it is caused by the volume contraction from the converse piezoelectric effect at the coercive field with a reversed polarity.     

Video stabilization with sub-image phase correlation

A fast video stabilization method is presented, which consists of sub-image phase correlation based global motion estimation, Kalman filtering based motion smoothing and motion modification based compensation. Global motion is decided using phase correlation in four sub-images. Then, the motion vectors are accumulated to be Kalman filtered for smoothing. The ordinal motion compensation is applied to each frame with modification to prevent error propagation. Experimental results show that this stabilization system can remove unwanted translational jitter of video sequences and follow intentional scan at real-time speed.     

Influence of shifted phase value on the output spectra of DFB lasers with phase shifter

DFB lasers with π/2 phase shifter can run stably on single mode and providevery high side mode suppression ratio (MSR). This attractive feature may be degraded ifphase shift deviates from π/2. In this paper, we analyze theoretically how the output spectraand side mode suppression ratio are influenced by the deviation value of phase shift from π/2.     

Diffusion-controlled phase growth on dislocations†

We treat the problem of diffusion of solute atoms around screw dislocations. In particular, we express and solve the diffusion equation in two dimensions with radial symmetry in an elastic field of a screw dislocation subject to conservation of flux at the interface of a new phase. We consider an incoherent second-phase precipitate growing under the action of the stress field of a screw dislocation. The second-phase growth rate as a function of the supersaturation and a strain energy parameter is evaluated in spatial dimensions d = 2. Our calculations show that an increase in the amplitude of the dislocation force, e.g. the magnitude of the Burgers vector, enhances the second-phase growth in an alloy. Moreover, we calculate the reduction in concentration of solute atoms as a function of radius around a second phase which grows cylindrically (in the radial direction) so that its radius varies as the square root of time for various levels of the dislocation force amplitude.     

Carrier–envelope phase stabilization of 5-fs, 0.5-mJ pulses from adaptive phase modulator

We compressed high-power laser pulses to 5 fs and 0.5 mJ using a neon-filled hollow-core fiber and a high-throughput 4f system. The carrier–envelope phase of the two-cycle pulses was measured directly by using their over-one-octave output spectrum. The carrier–envelope phase was stabilized by feedback controlling the grating separation of a stretcher in a chirped pulse amplifier. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that carrier–envelope phase locked few-cycle pulses were generated by using an adaptive phase modulator.     

The prompt phase mechanism of gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray bursts(GRBs)are flashes of ganima-rays occurring at cosmological distances(for a recent review see^[1]).They are divided into two classes based on their prompt emission durations:short-duration(<2 seconds)hard-spectrum bursts and long-duration soft-spectmm bursts(>2 seconds).The observations(including discoveries of both the gravitational wave event GW170817 from an inspiral of two neutron stars and its electromagnetic counterparts)indicate that long-duration GRBs result from core collapses of massive stars and short-duration GRBs are produced from mergers of neutron star-neutron star binaries or black hole-neutron star binaries.     

Reflective Fourier CGH with 16 phase levels

This paper reports design and fabrication of reflective Fourier computer generat-ed hologram(CGH) with 16 phase levels.This CGH converts a single beam to a 5×5 beamarray.The measured diffraction efficiency is 76.16％. The size of the CGH is 10mm×10mm.     

Experimental study on phase perception in speech

As the human ear is dull to the phase in speech, little attention has been paid to phase information in speech coding. In fact, the speech perceptual quality may be degenerated if the phase distortion is very large. The perceptual effect of the STFT (Short time Fourier transform) phase spectrum is studied by auditory subjective hearing tests. Three main conclusions are (1) If the phase information is neglected completely, the subjective quality of the reconstructed speech may be very poor; (2) Whether the neglected phase is in low frequency band or high frequency band, the difference from the original speech can be perceived by ear;(3) It is very difficult for the human ear to perceive the difference of speech quality between original speech and reconstructed speech while the phase quantization step size is shorter than π/7.     

Nonextensive nuclear liquid–gas phase transition

We study an effective relativistic mean-field model of nuclear matter with arbitrary proton fraction at finite temperature in the framework of nonextensive statistical mechanics, characterized by power-law quantum distributions. We investigate the presence of thermodynamic instability in a warm and asymmetric nuclear medium and study the consequent nuclear liquid–gas phase transition by requiring the Gibbs conditions on the global conservation of baryon number and electric charge fraction. We show that nonextensive statistical effects play a crucial role in the equation of state and in the formation of mixed phase also for small deviations from the standard Boltzmann–Gibbs statistics.     

Instabilités de calibration de phase

In very long baseline interferometry, the image reconstruction procedures are very sensitive to the potential instabilities of the phase calibration operation. The analysis presented in this Note reveals that these instabilities are due to the existence of secondary minima (more or less critical) of the phase calibration objective functional. By resolving the corresponding integer ambiguity problems in an appropriate manner, these minima can be explicitly identified and compared. The stability of the self-calibration procedures can thus be easily controlled. To cite this article: A. Lannes, C. R. Physique 4 (2003).     

Experimental verification of combinational-deformable-mirror for phase correction

In adaptive optics (AO) system,the phase compensation capability is limited greatly by the actuator num- ber of the deformable mirror (DM).The actuator number of DM is mainly restricted by the manufacture techniques.The spatial correction capability of AO system can be improved by two or more combinational- DMs (CDMs) with conjugation relationship.The CDM AO system for wavefront correction is built,which consists of two 32-element DMs.The experimental results are in agreement with the numerical simulation results.It is indicated that the CDM AO system provides better correction performance than the single 32-element DM AO system.     

Temperature-induced phase transition of two-dimensional semiconductor GaTe

GaTe is a two-dimensional Ⅲ-Ⅵ semiconductor with suitable direct bandgap of~1.65 eV and high photoresponsivity,which makes it a promising candidate for optoelectronic applications.GaTe exists in two crystalline phases:monoclinic(m-GaTe,with space group C2/m) and hexagonal(h-GaTe,with space group P63/mmc).The phase transition between the two phases was reported under temperature-varying conditions,such as annealing,laser irradiation,etc.The explicit phase transition temperature and energy barrier during the temperature-induced phase transition have not been explored.In this work,we present a comprehensive study of the phase transition process by using first-principles energetic and phonon calculations within the quasi-harmonic approximation framework.We predicted that the phase transition from h-GaTe to m-GaTe occurs at the temperature decreasing to 261 K.This is in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations.It is a two-step transition process with energy barriers 199 meV and 288 meV,respectively.The relatively high energy barriers demonstrate the irreversible nature of the phase transition.The electronic and phonon properties of the two phases were further investigated by comparison with available experimental and theoretical results.Our results provide insightful understanding on the process of temperature-induced phase transition of GaTe.     

Quantum phase transition of the Jaynes-Cummings model

Herein, we propose an experimentally feasible scheme to show the quantum phase transition of the Jaynes-Cummings(JC) model by modulating the transition frequency of a two-level system in a quantum Rabi model with strong coupling. By tuning the modulation frequency and amplitude, the ratio of the effective coupling strength of the rotating terms to the effective cavity(atomic transition) frequency can enter the deep-strong coupling regime, while the counter-rotating terms can be neglected. Thus, ...     

Carrier-envelope phase of ultrashort pulsed Laguerre-Gaussian beam

The carrier-envelope phase of the ultrashort pulsed Laguerre-Gaussian beam is studied.The order of Laguerre function affects seriously the variations of the carrier-envelope phase with the propagation dis- tance increasing.The beam waist also affects the carrier-envelope phase in a few Rayleigh distances.The variation of the carrier-envelope phase is larger on the axis than on the beam periphery in propagation.     

Does sex induce a phase transition?

We discovered a dynamic phase transition induced by sexual reproduction. The dynamics is a pure Darwinian rule applied to diploid bit-strings with both fundamental ingredients to drive Darwin's evolution: (1) random mutations and crossings which act in the sense of increasing the entropy (or diversity); and (2) selection which acts in the opposite sense by limiting the entropy explosion. Selection wins this competition if mutations performed at birth are few enough, and thus the wild genotype dominates the steady-state population. By slowly increasing the average number m of mutations, however, the population suddenly undergoes a mutational degradation precisely at a transition point m_c. Above this point, the “bad” alleles (represented by 1-bits) spread over the genetic pool of the population, overcoming the selection pressure. Individuals become selectively alike, and evolution stops. Only below this point, m < m_c, evolutionary life is possible. The finite-size-scaling behaviour of this transition is exhibited for large enough “chromosome” lengths L, through lengthy computer simulations. One important and surprising observation is the L-independence of the transition curves, for large L. They are also independent on the population size. Another is that m_c is near unity, i.e. life cannot be stable with much more than one mutation per diploid genome, independent of the chromosome length, in agreement with reality. One possible consequence is that an eventual evolutionary jump towards larger L enabling the storage of more genetic information would demand an improved DNA copying machinery in order to keep the same total number of mutations per offspring.     

Micromagnetism simulation on effects of soft phase size on Nd_2Fe_(14)B/α-Fe nanocomposite magnet with soft phase imbedded in hard phase

In this study, micromagnetism simulation by using finite difference method is carried out on the Nd_2Fe_(14)B/α-Fe nanocomposite magnet with soft phase imbedded in hard phase. The effects of soft magnetic phase size(S) on the magnetic properties and magnetic reversal modes are systematically analyzed. As S increases from 1 nm to 48 nm,the remanence(J_r) increases, while the coercivity(H_(ci)) decreases, leading to the result that the magnetic energy product [(BH)_(max)] first increases slowly, and then decreases rapidly, peaking at S = 24 nm with the(BH)_(max) of 72.9 MGOe(1 MGOe = 7.95775 kJ·m~(-3)). Besides, with the increase of S, the coercivity mechanism of the nanocomposite magnet changes from nucleation to pinning. Furthermore, by observing the magnetic moment evolution in demagnetization process, the magnetic reversal of the soft phase in the nanocomposite magnet can be divided into three modes with the increase of S: coherent rotation(S 3 nm), quasi-coherent rotation(3 nm ≤S 36 nm), and the vortex-like rotation(S 36 nm).     

Exchange-induced phase separation in Ni–Cu films

Magneto-structural properties of films of diluted ferromagnetic alloys Ni_xCu_1−x in the concentration range 0.7<x<1.0$0.7<x<1.0$ are studied experimentally. Films deposited by magnetron sputtering show partial phase separation, as evidenced by structural analysis and ferromagnetic resonance measurements. The phase diagram of the Ni_xCu_1−x bulk system is obtained using numerical theoretical analysis of the electronic structure, taking into account the interatomic exchange interactions. The results confirm the experimentally found partial phase separation, explain it as magnetic in origin, and indicate an additional metastable region connected with the ferromagnetic transition in the system.