Un coronographe interférentiel achromatique coaxial

We present a new type of stellar interfero-coronagraph, the ‘CIAXE’, which is a variant of the ‘AIC’, the Achromatic Interfero-Coronagraph. The CIAXE is characterized by a very simple, compact and fully coaxial optical combination. Indeed, contrarily to the classical AIC which has a Michelson interferometer structure, the CIAXE delivers its output beam on the same axis as the input beam. This will ease its insertion in the focal instrumentation of existing telescopes or next generation ones. Such a device could be a step forward in the field of instrumental search for exoplanets. To cite this article: J. Gay et al., C. R. Physique 6 (2005).     

Weakly interacting Bose gas in the one-dimensional limit

We prepare a chemically and thermally one-dimensional (1D) quantum degenerate Bose gas in a single microtrap. We introduce a new interferometric method to distinguish the quasicondensate fraction of the gas from the thermal cloud at finite temperature. We reach temperatures down to kT≈0.5?ω(⊥) (transverse oscillator eigenfrequency ω(⊥)) when collisional thermalization slows down as expected in 1D. At the lowest temperatures the transverse-momentum distribution exhibits a residual dependence on the line density n(1D), characteristic for 1D systems. For very low densities the approach to the transverse single-particle ground state is linear in n(1D).     

Scientific discovery with the James Webb Space Telescope

For the past 400 years, astronomers have sought to observe and interpret the Universe by building more powerful telescopes. These incredible instruments extend the capabilities of one of our most important senses, sight, towards new limits such as increased sensitivity and resolution, new dimensions such as exploration of wavelengths across the full electromagnetic spectrum, new information content such as analysis through spectroscopy, and new cadences such as rapid time-series views of the variable sky. The results from these investments, from small to large telescopes on the ground and in space, have completely transformed our understanding of the Universe; including the discovery that Earth is not the centre of the Universe, that the Milky Way is one among many galaxies in the Universe, that relic cosmic background radiation fills all space in the early Universe, that that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating, that exoplanets are common around stars, that gravitational waves exist, and much more. For modern astronomical research, the next wave of breakthroughs in fields ranging over planetary, stellar, galactic, and extragalactic science motivate a general-purpose observatory that is optimised at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths, and that has much greater sensitivity, resolution, and spectroscopic multiplexing than all previous telescopes. This scientific vision, from measuring the composition of rocky worlds in the nearby Milky Way galaxy to finding the first sources of light in the Universe to other topics at the forefront of modern astrophysics, motivates the state-of-the-art James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). In this review paper, I summarise the design and technical capabilities of Webb and the scientific opportunities that it enables.     

Nulling interferometry for the DARWIN space mission

The DARWIN observatory will include an interferometric instrument dedicated to the search for and spectral analysis of extrasolar planets. This instrument is based on the principle of Bracewell's interferometric coronograph or nulling interferometer, proposed in 1978, but at present never experimentally demonstrated in the thermal infrared with high extinctions.We have shown that high interferometric extinctions can only be obtained with `classical' optical pieces if the beams are cleaned by optical filtering during the recombination. After a short reminder of the nulling interferometer, we present different techniques of optical filtering to perform it. Then, we present a laboratory experimental bench we have constructed, which allows us, at present, to exhibit a monochromatic stable interferometric extinction better than 10³. Finally, we discuss this method, applied to ground-based telescopes.     

Investigation of a High-Temperature Superconducting Josephson Interferometer

Different designs of high-temperature superconducting quantum interferometric devices are evaluated, and the results obtained are presented. The most important problems in developing this kind of devices are to provide high serviceability at the temperature of liquid nitrogen T = 77 K, reasonably high critical currents at this temperature, and reproducibility of the results. These problems taken together have not been solved heretofore. Closely related with the use of high-temperature superconducting quantum interferometric devices in magnetometry, medicine, and electric prospecting is the problem of reducing the noise level at low frequencies where the 1/f noise prevails. This problem has not yet found its solution, and currently available high-temperature superconducting interferometric devices operating in the low-frequency range are inferior to low-temperature ones.     

Beta decay of highly charged ions

Ion storage rings and ion traps provide the very first opportunity to address nuclear beta decay under conditions prevailing in hot stellar plasmas during nucleosynthesis, i.e. at high atomic charge states. Experiments are summarized that were performed in this field during the last decade at the ion storage-cooler ring ESR in Darmstadt. Special emphasis is given to the first observation of bound-state beta decay, where the created electron remains bound in an inner orbital of the daughter atom. The impact of this specific ‘stellar’ decay mode for s-process nucleosynthesis as well as for nuclear ‘eon clocks’ is outlined. Finally, a new technique, single-ion decay spectroscopy, is presented, where one observes two-body beta decay characteristics (i.e. orbital electron capture or bound-state beta decay) of highly charged, single ions for well-defined nuclear and atomic quantum states of both the mother – and the daughter – ion.     

Visible interferometric coupling of two telescopes through single mode optical fibers

The diameter of large conventional astronomical telescopes is currently restricted to the range of eight to ten meters. With this limitation in mind, there is an emerging interest in various applications of optical interferometry which would allow the synthesis of apertures larger than can be realized using current mirror fabrication technologies. Interferometry allows the substitution of the separation between telescopes to determine the limiting resolution rather than the diffraction limited resolving power of the individual telescope aperture(s). The implementation of this process, however, requires solutions to a number of difficult problems in the transport and recombination of optical wavefronts. The use of single mode (SM) optical fibers to transport and recombine optical wavefronts in interferometers offers a number of advantages as compared to other, more established techniques, yet suffers from an inefficient coupling of the wavefront energy into the very narrow fiber cores. We present preliminary results of an experiment in which interferometric recombination of wavefronts from two telescopes using SM fibers was used to obtain white light fringes on the bright star Arcturus ( Bootis). Our experience leads us to believe that for many imaging applications the continued development of fiber based interferometry will yield significant resolution gains over the diffraction limited performance associated with conventional monolithic aperture systems.     

Quantum Non-Gravity and Stellar Collapse

Observational indications combined with analyses of analogue and emergent gravity in condensed matter systems support the possibility that there might be two distinct energy scales related to quantum gravity: the scale that sets the onset of quantum gravitational effects E_BE_{\rm B} (related to the Planck scale) and the much higher scale E_LE_{\rm L} signalling the breaking of Lorentz symmetry. We suggest a natural interpretation for these two scales: E_LE_{\rm L} is the energy scale below which a special relativistic spacetime emerges, E_BE_{\rm B} is the scale below which this spacetime geometry becomes curved. This implies that the first ‘quantum’ gravitational effect around E_BE_{\rm B} could simply be that gravity is progressively switched off, leaving an effective Minkowski quantum field theory up to much higher energies of the order of E_LE_{\rm L}. This scenario may have important consequences for gravitational collapse, inasmuch as it opens up new possibilities for the final state of stellar collapse other than an evaporating black hole.     

A three‐level dark state and double‐control single‐photon logic gates via quantum coherent control

Multilevel quantum coherence and its quantum‐vacuum counterpart, where a three‐level dark state is involved, are suggested in order to achieve new photonic and quantum optical applications. It is shown that such a three‐level dark state in a four‐level tripod‐configuration atomic system consists of three lower levels, where constructive and destructive quantum interference between two control transitions (driven by two control fields) arises. We point out that the controllable optical response due to the double‐control tunable quantum interference can be utilized to design some fascinating new photonic devices such as logic gates, photonic transistors and switches at quantum level. A single‐photon two‐input XOR logic gate (in which the incident “gate” photons are the individual light quanta of the two control fields) based on such an effect of optical switching control with an EIT (electromagnetically induced transparency) microcavity is suggested as an illustrative example of the application of the dark‐state manipulation via the double‐control quantum interference. The present work would open up possibility of new applications in both fundamental physics (e.g., field quantization and relevant quantum optical effects in artificial systems that can mimic atomic energy levels) and applied physics (e.g., photonic devices such as integrated optical circuits at quantum level).     

利用三粒子纠缠态建立量子隐形传态网络的探讨

利用W态纠缠源可以产生三纠缠粒子，用这些相互纠缠的粒子作为量子信道，再辅以经典信道传送Bell基联合测量信息和von Neumann测量信息，便可实现量子隐形传态网络.基于上述思想，研究了三纠缠粒子量子隐形传态网络的物理基础，得到了基于三粒子W 关键词： 量子通信 量子隐形传态 W态')" href="#">W态     

Collinear ternary cluster decay of hyperdeformed <Superscript>60</Superscript>Zn at high angular momentum

Binary and ternary cluster decay of ⁶⁰Zn compound nuclei at high angular momentum, formed in the ³⁶Ar + ²⁴Mg reaction at E _lab(³⁶Ar) = 195 MeV, has been measured in a unique kinematic coincidence setup consisting of two large area position sensitive (x, y) gas detector telescopes with Bragg-ionization chambers (BRS). The BRS provides the opportunity to measure the reaction angles in-and out-of-plane, and through Bragg-curve spectroscopy to achieve a complete identification of the nuclear charge for different final channels. We observed very narrow out-of-plane angular correlations for two heavy fragments emitted either in purely binary events or in events with a missing mass consisting of 2 and 3α particles. These narrow correlations are interpreted as ternary fission decay from compound nuclei at high angular momenta through an elongated (hyperdeformed) shape with a very large moment of inertia. In these stretched configurations, the lighter mass in the neck region remains at rest or with very low momentum in the center of mass. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Quantum locking of mirrors in interferometers

We show that quantum noise in very sensitive interferometric measurements such as gravitational-wave detectors can be drastically modified by quantum feedback. We present a new scheme based on active control to lock the motion of a mirror to a reference mirror at the quantum level. This simple technique allows one to reduce quantum effects of radiation pressure and to greatly enhance the sensitivity of the detection.     

FALCON: multi-object AO

FALCON is a wide-field, multi-object integral field spectrograph equipped with adaptive optics. It is dedicated to the study of the formation process of primordial galaxies. The AO system uses natural guide stars, and the high sky coverage required for these studies is obtained using tomographic techniques for the wavefront analysis. The structure of the OA system is very new, and particularly suited for a future implementation on extremely large telescopes. To cite this article: E. Gendron et al., C. R. Physique 6 (2005).     

光谱描述语言和粗集

根据经验进行研究是天文界研究光谱的习惯，从来没有一个合适的理论框架用于描述光谱，这和以往的观测数据量比较少有关系，随着天文望远镜的发展和现代技术水平的提高，人类获得的光谱数据量正在飞速增长，每天可以收集到多达两万多条光谱的LAMOST望远镜就是其中的代表，面对海量的数据库，只依靠一些简单的经验和规则已经不能满足研究需求，在对大量的光谱做过仔细的观察和研究之后，本文从光谱的形态细节入手，通过定义基元而建立起一种对光谱整体做出完整描述的语言-光谱描述语言，以试图为今后的研究提供一个理论框架，同时本文还在光谱描述语言的基础上引入了数据挖掘的一种技术-粗集理论，通过粗集理论提取出对光谱分类有用的一些规则，这可以看作是光谱描述语言的一个应用。     

Positioning photonic crystal cavities to single InAs quantum dots

We have investigated the optical properties of planar photonic crystal cavities formed by removing a single hole from a two-dimensional square lattice of air holes etched through a thin GaAs slab. We have demonstrated cavity resonances with quality factors (Q’s) as high as 8500, using an internal light source provided by an ensemble of InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The high-Q modes are confined to a very small mode volume, V = 0.7(λ/n)³, making them attractive to study in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics with single QDs, where a high is needed to observe the strong coupling between an electronic state of the dot and the optical cavity mode. To this end, we have developed an accurate and robust alignment technique that positions a photonic crystal cavity to a single QD with 25 nm resolution. We present the details of this new technology and demonstrate its effectiveness by strategically positioning a number of QDs within photonic crystal cavities at points where the electric field intensity is high.     

Incipience of quantum chaos in the spin-boson model

The peculiar spectral properties of the spinboson model make it suitable for an investigation of quantum nonintegrability effects and level statistics from a new perspective. For fixed spin quantum numbers, its energy spectrum consists of 2s+1 sequences of levels with no upper bound. These sequences are identified and labelled consecutively by means of a quantum invariant calculated from the time average of a non-stationary operator. For integrable cases, level repulsion (on the energy axis) is limited to states within each sequence. From the observed spectral properties, we infer a series ofs-dependent level-spacing distributions. They converge towards a Poisson distribution fors. For nonintegrable cases, level repulsion becomes a universal phenomenon, but the amount of repulsion between two states decreases with increasing separation (in label) of the two sequences to which they belong. For smalls, the quantum nonintegrability effects are compelling but not at all chaotic. Nevertheless, they contain all the ingredients necessary to produce the symptoms commonly described as indicators of quantum chaos. In this model, we can observe quantum chaos in the making under very controllable conditions.     

Optimum quantum state of light for gravitational-wave interferometry

The laser interferometric gravitational-wave detectors are sensitive to the quantum state of light employed in the dark port of interferometric system. In this paper a general quantum state for the dark input port is assumed. The quantum state of light is expanded versus the Fock states. The quantum noise of interferometric system is computed as a function of the quantum state of light. The variational method and the genetic algorithm are employed to determine the coefficients of the dark input port and the laser input power for the minimization of the quantum noise. Calculation shows that the optimum quantum state for the dark input port is very close to the vacuum squeezed state. For this optimum quantum state the quantum noise and optimum laser power reduces one order of magnitude relative to the conventional interferometer.     

Tensile-strained 1.3 μm InGaAs/InGaAlAs quantum well structure of high temperature characteristics

A new tensile strained InGaAs/InGaAlAs quantum well structure in the 1.3 μm wavelength region is proposed for high temperature characteristics via quantum well band structure and optical gain calculations. To obtain such features, a tensile-strained InGaAs/InGaAlAs quantum well structure, which emits light dominated by TM polarization, is considered. This proposed structure has very high temperature characteristics (T ₀ > 130 K) due to its high density of state at the first transition edge. This results clearly show the potential of tensile strained quantum well structure usage for the high temperature operation of quantum well semiconductor lasers.     

Disks around young stellar objects

By 1939, when Chandrasekhar’s classic monograph on the theory of Stellar Structure was published, although the need for recent star formation was fully acknowledged, no one had yet recognized an object that could be called a star in the process of being born. Young stellar objects (YSOs), as pre-main-sequence stars, were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s. Infrared excess emission and intrinsic polarization observed in these objects in the 1960s and 1970s indicated that they are surrounded by flattened disks. The YSO disks were seen in direct imaging only in the 1980s. Since then, high-resolution optical imaging with HST, near-infrared adaptive optics on large ground-based telescopes, mm and radiowave interferometry have been used to image disks around a large number of YSOs revealing disk structure with ever-increasing detail and variety. The disks around YSOs are believed to be the sites of planet formation and a few such associations have now been confirmed. The observed properties of the disk structure and their evolution, that have very important consequences for the theory of star and planet formation, are discussed.     

Ultimate quantum limits for resolution of beam displacements

We compare two high sensitivity techniques which are used to measure very small displacements of physical objects by optical techniques: the interferometric devices, measuring longitudinal phase shifts, and the devices used to monitor transverse displacement of light beams. We detail the differences and the similarities for the quantum limits on the resolution of both systems. In both cases squeezed light can be used to resolve beyond the standard quantum limit and number correlated states allow us to reach the “Heisenberg” limit. Received 12 September 2002 Published online 21 January 2003