High-power laser with Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber grown by the micro-pulling-down technique

We present optical characterization and laser results achieved with single-crystal fibers directly grown by the micro-pulling-down technique. We investigate the spectroscopic and optical quality of the fiber, and we present the first laser results. We achieved a cw laser power of 10 W at 1064 nm for an incident pump power of 60 W at 808 nm and 360 kW peak power for 12 ns pulses at 1 kHz in the Q-switched regime. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest laser power ever achieved with directly grown single-crystal fibers.     

Thermodynamic non-additivity in disordered systems with extended phase space

Non-additivity effects in coupled dynamic-stochastic systems are investigated. It is shown that there is a mapping of the replica approach to disordered systems with finite replica indexn on Tsallis non-extensive statistics, if the average thermodynamic entropy of the dynamic subsystem differs from the information entropy for the probability distribution in the stochastic subsystem. The entropic indexq is determined by the entropy difference ΔS. In the case of incomplete information, the entropic indexq=1−n is shown to be related to the degree of lost information.     

The Piracicaba River basin: isotope hydrology of a tropical river basin under anthropogenic stress

The stable isotope content of samples of precipitation and of the river water throughout the Piracicaba basin in Brazil was measured over a two-year period. The isotope values of precipitation follow a consistent pattern of relatively depleted values of both deuterium and oxygen 18 during the rainy summers and enriched ones during the dry winters, with all values aligned slightly above the Global Meteoric Water Line. The isotopic composition of the river water throughout the basin shows a remarkable spatial coherence and much smaller scatter of data than those of the precipitation. The isotope composition of river water is close to that of the precipitation in the rainy season, however, with a consistent lower d-excess value by 1/1000-2/1000. This is attributed to evaporative water loss in the basin, in part an expression of the recycling of water due to the anthropogenic activity in the region. The more divergent values are recorded during high-water stages in the rivers. In many cases, the floods during the beginning of the rainy season are characterized by an enrichment of the heavy isotopes and lower d-excess values when compared to the precipitation, with the opposite situation later in the rainy season. This is interpreted as resulting from the watershed/riverflow interaction pattern, and it thus suggests that the isotope composition can monitor the hydrologic situation in the basin and its changes.     

Intracavity phase interferometry: frequency combs sensor inside a laser cavity

In traditional interferometric measurements, a physical quantity that changes the phase of a resonator is monitored through a change of its transmission. Interferometry inside a laser exploits the ultimate Q‐factor of that resonator, and converts the phase to be measured into a frequency. A mode‐locked laser with two intracavity pulses emits two frequency combs of the same repetition rate. The quantity to be measured (a sub‐nano displacement, a nonlinear index, an acceleration or rotation, a magnetic or electric field) produces a minute phase change ( rad) in one of the two intracavity pulses, which is converted into a frequency, measured by beating the two pulse trains emitted by the laser. This paper presents methods of operating mode‐locked lasers in which two independent pulses circulate, producing two frequency combs of the same repetition rate. Various examples of physical quantities that can be measured through this technique are presented.     

Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance tomoangiography: A new imaging technique for studying thoracic great vessels

The authors propose a new imaging approach for studying thoracic great vessels, using high-speed MR imaging combined with intravenous rapid bolus injection of a paramagnetic contrast media. The decrease of the T₁ relaxation time of flowing blood induced by the contrast agent (Gd-DOTA) caused an increased signal intensity within the vessel lumen for a time period allowing multiplanar imaging of various vascular structures. The intraluminal signal enhancement is mainly related to the blood concentration of the contrast agent as in conventional X-ray angiography. Information on the aorta and pulmonary arteries obtained by the so-called contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance tomoangiography appears complementary to that obtained with other vascular MR imaging procedures such as cine-MRI and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA).     

Dynamical systems theory for music dynamics

We show that, when music pieces are cast in the form of time series of pitch variations, the concepts and tools of dynamical systems theory can be applied to the analysis of temporal dynamics in music. (i) Phase space portraits are constructed from the time series wherefrom the dimensionality is evaluated as a measure of the global dynamics of each piece. (ii) Spectral analysis of the time series yields power spectra ( approximately f(-nu)) close to red noise (nu approximately 2) in the low frequency range. (iii) We define an information entropy which provides a measure of the local dynamics in the musical piece; the entropy can be interpreted as an evaluation of the degree of complexity in the music, but there is no evidence of an analytical relation between local and global dynamics. These findings are based on computations performed on eighty sequences sampled in the music literature from the 18th to the 20th century. (c) 1995 American Institute of Physics.     

Vowel Intelligibility in Classical Singing

Vowel intelligibility during singing is an important aspect of communication during performance. The intelligibility of isolated vowels sung by Western classically trained singers has been found to be relatively low, in fact, decreasing as pitch rises, and it is lower for women than for men. The lack of contextual cues significantly deteriorates vowel intelligibility. It was postulated in this study that the reduced intelligibility of isolated sung vowels may be partly from the vowels used by the singers in their daily vocalises. More specifically, if classically trained singers sang only a few American English vowels during their vocalises, their intelligibility for American English vowels would be less than for those classically trained singers who usually vocalize on most American English vowels. In this study, there were 21 subjects (15 women, 6 men), all Western classically trained performers as well as teachers of classical singing. They sang 11 words containing 11 different American English vowels, singing on two pitches a musical fifth apart. Subjects were divided into two groups, those who normally vocalize on 4, 5, or 6 vowels, and those who sing all 11 vowels during their daily vocalises. The sung words were cropped to isolate the vowels, and listening tapes were created. Two listening groups, four singing teachers and five speech-language pathologists, were asked to identify the vowels intended by the singers. Results suggest that singing fewer vowels during daily vocalises does not decrease intelligibility compared with singing the 11 American English vowels. Also, in general, vowel intelligibility was lower with the higher pitch, and vowels sung by the women were less intelligible than those sung by the men. Identification accuracy was about the same for the singing teacher listeners and the speech-language pathologist listeners except for the lower pitch, where the singing teachers were more accurate.     

Cell refractive index tomography by digital holographic microscopy

For what we believe to be the first time, digital holographic microscopy is applied to perform optical diffraction tomography of a pollen grain. Transmission phase images with nanometric axial accuracy are numerically reconstructed from holograms acquired for different orientations of the rotating sample; then the three-dimensional refractive index spatial distribution is computed by inverse radon transform. A precision of 0.01 for the refractive index estimation and a spatial resolution in the micrometer range are demonstrated.     

Dynamic compressibility and aging in Wigner crystals and quantum glasses

We study the nonequilibrium linear response of quantum elastic systems pinned by quenched disorder with Schwinger-Keldysh real-time techniques complemented by a mean-field variational approach. We find (i) a quasiequilibrium regime in which the analytic continuation from the imaginary-time replica results holds provided the marginality condition is enforced, and (ii) an aging regime. The conductivity and compressibility are computed. The latter is found to cross over from its dynamic to static value on a scale set by the waiting time after a quench, an effect which can be probed in experiments in, e.g., Wigner glasses.     

Propagation of local excitations through strongly correlated quantum chains

The propagation of an external transverse magnetic signal acting locally on a 1d chain of spins generates a disturbance which runs through the system. This quantum effect can be interpreted as a classical travelling wave which contains a superposition of a large set of frequencies depending on the size of the chain. Its local amplitude fixes the size of the z-component of the spins at any location in the chain. The average and maximum value of the group velocity are determined and compared with the transmission velocity fixed by the Lieb-Robinson upper bound inequality.