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.     

Phase separation and flux quantization in the doped quantum dimer model on square and triangular lattices

The doped two-dimensional quantum dimer model is investigated by numerical techniques on the square and triangular lattices, with significantly different results. On the square lattice, at small enough doping, there is always a phase separation between an insulating valence-bond solid and a uniform superfluid phase, whereas on the triangular lattice, doping leads directly to a uniform superfluid in a large portion of the resonating-valence-bond (RVB) phase. Under an applied Aharonov-Bohm flux, the superfluid exhibits quantization in terms of half-flux quanta, consistent with Q=2e elementary charge quanta in transport properties.     

Attenuation in trabecular bone: A comparison between numerical simulation and experimental results in human femur

Numerical simulations (finite-difference time domain) are compared to experimental results of ultrasound wave propagation through human trabecular bones. Three-dimensional high-resolution microcomputed tomography reconstructions served as input geometry for the simulation. The numerical simulation took into account scattering, but not absorption. Simulated and experimental values of the attenuation coefficients (alpha, dB/cm) and the normalized broadband ultrasound attenuation (nBUA, dB/cm/MHz) were measured and compared on a set of 28 samples. While experimental and simulated nBUA values were highly correlated (R(2)=0.83), and showed a similar dependence with bone volume fraction, the simulation correctly predicted experimental nBUA values only for low bone volume fraction (BV/TV). Attenuation coefficients were underestimated by the simulation. The absolute difference between experimental and simulated alpha values increased with both BV/TV and frequency. As a function of frequency, the relative difference between experimental and simulated alpha values decreased from 60% around 400 kHz to 30% around 1.2 MHz. Under the assumption that the observed discrepancy expresses the effect of the absorption, our results suggests that nBUA and its dependence on BV/TV can be mostly explained by scattering, and that the relative contribution of scattering to alpha increases with frequency, becoming predominant (>50 %) over absorption for frequencies above 600 kHz.     

Semi-Classical Dynamics in Quantum Spin Systems

We consider two limiting regimes, the large-spin and the mean-field limit, for the dynamical evolution of quantum spin systems. We prove that, in these limits, the time evolution of a class of quantum spin systems is determined by a corresponding Hamiltonian dynamics of classical spins. This result can be viewed as a Egorov-type theorem. We extend our results to the thermodynamic limit of lattice spin systems and continuum domains of infinite size, and we study the time evolution of coherent spin states in these limiting regimes.     

Observation of geometric phases for mixed states using NMR interferometry

Examples of geometric phases abound in many areas of physics. They offer both fundamental insights into many physical phenomena and lead to interesting practical implementations. One of them, as indicated recently, might be an inherently fault-tolerant quantum computation. This, however, requires one to deal with geometric phases in the presence of noise and interactions between different physical subsystems. Despite the wealth of literature on the subject of geometric phases very little is known about this very important case. Here we report the first experimental study of geometric phases for mixed quantum states. We show how different they are from the well-understood, noiseless, pure-state case.     

Structure of polymeric carbon dioxide CO2-V

The structure of polymeric carbon dioxide (CO2-V) has been solved using synchrotron x-ray powder diffraction, and its evolution followed from 8 to 65 GPa. We compare the experimental results obtained for a 100% CO2 sample and a 1 mol?% CO2/He sample. The latter allows us to produce the polymer in a pure form and study its compressibility under hydrostatic conditions. The high quality of the x-ray data enables us to solve the structure directly from experiments. The latter is isomorphic to the β-cristobalite phase of SiO2 with the space group I42d. Carbon and oxygen atoms are arranged in CO4 tetrahedral units linked by oxygen atoms at the corners. The bulk modulus determined under hydrostatic conditions, B0=136(10) GPa, is much smaller than previously reported. The comparison of our experimental findings with theoretical calculations performed in the present and previous studies shows that density functional theory very well describes polymeric CO2.     

Search for stopped Gluinos in pp collisions at square root s=7 TeV

The results of the first search for long-lived gluinos produced in 7 TeV pp collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider are presented. The search looks for evidence of long-lived particles that stop in the CMS detector and decay in the quiescent periods between beam crossings. In a dataset with a peak instantaneous luminosity of 1×10(32) cm-2 s-1, an integrated luminosity of 10 pb-1, and a search interval corresponding to 62 hours of LHC operation, no significant excess above background was observed. Limits at the 95% confidence level on gluino pair production over 13 orders of magnitude of gluino lifetime are set. For a mass difference mg - mχ1(0) >100 GeV/c2, and assuming BR(g→gχ1(0))=100%, mg < 370 GeV/c2 are excluded for lifetimes from 10 μs to 1000 s.     

Pulse compression and fiber delivery of 45 fs Fourier transform limited pulses at 830 nm

A specific scheme is used for fiber delivery of ultrashort pulses using conventional elements. Starting from a standard femtosecond Ti:Al(2)O(3) oscillator (150 fs @ 830 nm), perfectly compressed ultrashort pulses with a duration of 45 fs are produced at the output of a standard two meter long single-mode fiber. The setup allows compensating independently and simultaneously second and third orders of chromatic dispersion as well as management of self-phase modulation in the fiber. It includes an optimized dispersion compensation line made of the assembly of diffraction gratings and prisms. The unsurpassed performances of the device are experimentally and numerically highlighted. Fiber delivery of sub-30 fs multinanojoule pulses is discussed.     

Real-time increase in depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera using several phase-mask technologies

Imaging systems that combine a phase mask in the pupil and digital postprocessing may have better performance than conventional ones. We have built such a system to enhance the depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera. The phase masks are binary, their structures are optimized thanks to an image quality criterion, and they have been realized with three different technologies that give equivalent results. The deconvolution postprocessing is performed in real time with a graphics processing unit. A significant increase of the depth of field of a factor 3 has been obtained.     

Study of Z Boson Production in PbPb Collisions at √S(NN)=2.76 TeV

A search for Z bosons in the μ(+)μ(-) decay channel has been performed in PbPb collisions at √S(NN)=2.76 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, in a 7.2 μb(-1) data sample. The number of opposite-sign muon pairs observed in the 60-120 GeV/c(2) invariant mass range is 39, corresponding to a yield per unit of rapidity (y) and per minimum bias event of [33.8±5.5(stat)±4.4(syst)]×10(-8), in the |y|<2.0 range. Rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality dependencies are also measured. The results agree with next-to-leading order QCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions.