976 publications from this institution
We present the first sensing system for metal ions based on the combination of separation/preconcentration by a permeation liquid membrane (PLM) and fluorescence detection with an optical fiber. As a model, a system for the detection of Cu(II) ions was developed. The wall of a polypropylene hollow fiber serves as support for the permeable liquid membrane. The lumen of the fiber contains the strip solution in which Cu(II) is accumulated. Calcein, a fluorochromic dye, acts as stripping agent and at the same time as metal indicator. The quenching of the calcein fluorescence upon metal accumulation in the strip phase is detected with a multimode optical fiber, which is incorporated into the lumen. Fluorescence is excited with a blue LED and detected with a photon counter. Taking advantage of the high selectivity and sensitivity of PLM preconcentration, a detection limit for Cu(II) of approximately 50 nM was achieved. Among five tested heavy metal ions, Pb(II) was the only major interfering species. The incorporation of small silica optical fibers into the polypropylene capillary allows for real-time monitoring of the Cu(II) accumulation process.
No abstract is provided for this article.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Recently, a novel intuitionistic reconstruction of the foundations of physics has been primarily developed by Nicolas Gisin and Flavio Del Santo drawing on naturalism. Our goal in this paper is to examine and develop the philosophical background of their naturalistic intuitionism for physics in contrast with Brouwer's defense of his intuitionistic mathematics. To be exact, we propose a systematic rearticulation of Brouwer's so-called two acts of intuitionism to serve as the self-contained philosophical framework justifying naturalistic intuitionism in physics. This revision is accompanied by an investigation of the distinctive naturalistic treatment of some central intuitionistic topics, including logic, language, time, ontology, meaning, and truth.
The Differential-Phase-Shift (DPS) and the Coherent-One-Way (COW) are among the most practical protocols for quantum cryptography, and are therefore the object of fast-paced experimental developments. The assessment of their security is also a challenge for theorists: the existing tools, that allow to prove security against the most general attacks, do not apply to these two protocols in any straightforward way. We present new upper bounds for their security in the limit of large distances ($d \gtrsim 50$km with typical values in optical fibers) by considering a large class of collective attacks, namely those in which the adversary attaches ancillary quantum systems to each pulse or to each pair of pulses. We introduce also two modified versions of the COW protocol, which may prove more robust than the original one.
An interferometer using Faraday mirrors is presented. It is self-balanced and shows extraordinarily good stability. A quantum cryptographic key has been created using the BB92 protocol1 with a total error rate as low as 0.5 +/- 0.1 %.
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Simulation tasks are insightful tools to compare information-theoretic resources. Considering a generalization of usual Bell scenarios where external quantum inputs are provided to the parties, we show that any entangled quantum state exhibits correlations that cannot be simulated using only shared randomness and classical communication, even when the amount and rounds of classical communication involved are unrestricted. We indeed construct explicit Bell-like inequalities that are necessarily satisfied by such classical resources but nevertheless violated by correlations obtainable from entangled quantum states, when measured a single copy at a time.
No abstract is provided for this article.
A new class of quantum cryptography (QC) protocols that are robust against the most general photon number splitting attacks in a weak coherent pulse implementation has been recently proposed. In this article we give a quite exhaustive analysis of several eavesdropping attacks on these schemes. The eavesdropper (Eve) is supposed to have unlimited technological power while the honest parties (Alice and Bob) use present day technology, in particular an attenuated laser as an approximation of a single-photon source. They exploit the nonorthogonality of quantum states for decreasing the information accessible to Eve in the multi-photon pulses accidentally produced by the imperfect source. An implementation of some of these protocols using present day technology allow for a secure key distribution up to distances of $\sim$ 150 km. We also show that strong-pulse implementations, where a strong pulse is included as a reference, allow for key distribution robust against photon number splitting attacks.
The evolution of open quantum systems can be “unraveled” into individual “trajectories” in a variety of ways. In the mesoscopic regime, quantum jump (QJ) trajectories approach a diffusive limit similar to quantum state diffusion (QSD). In the classical limit, both unravelings show the rise of classical orbits for both regular and chaotic systems.
We propose a criterion which defines whether a superposition of two photonic components is macroscopic. It is based on the ability to discriminate these components with a particular class of ``classical'' detectors, namely, a photon number measurement with a resolution coarse-grained by noise. We show how our criterion can be extended to a measure of the size of macroscopic superpositions by quantifying the amount of noise that can be tolerated and taking the distinctness of two Fock states differing by N photons as a reference. After applying our measure to several well-known examples, we demonstrate that the superpositions which meet our criterion are very sensitive to phase fluctuations. This suggests that quantifying the macroscopicity of a superposition state through the distinguishability of its components with ``classical'' detectors not only is a natural measure but also explains why it is difficult to observe superpositions at the macroscopic scale.
No abstract is provided for this article.
This paper describes the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) measurements of long standard fibers, dispersion-shifted (DS-) and dispersion-flattened (DF-) fibers uncabled on bobbins and in cables installed in the test links Berlin IV (18 km long) and Berlin VI (22.6 km). The PMD is measured with the aid of the interferometric technique, using a Michelson-interferometer. This method is not restricted to long fibers with low birefringence, it can be used to measuring the PMD and group beatlength of short high-birefringent fibers with a high accuracy. It will be shown that the cabling procedure increases the PMD values considerably, up to one order of magnitude.
