Magnetic storms around Earth are stoked by the solar wind, but what triggers these powerful events? At this week's American Geophysical Union meeting, UC Berkeley's Marit Oieroset and colleagues report the discovery by the THEMIS spacecraft of two holes in

Now in its second year, the Berkeley Initiative for Leadership on Diversity will fund five staff-initiated projects in 2008-09, advancing diversity on fronts ranging from LGBT awareness through opportunities for African American staff and beyond.

A semester-long design studio at the School of Information culminated last week in a showcase of students' interactive devices designed to teach, solve problems, provoke thought, or create fun. With audio slide show

Anxious people often engage in mindless distractions to keep from thinking scary or troubling thoughts. But results from a new brain imaging study by a UC Berkeley researcher suggest that brain-sharpening activities - rather than mind-numbing ones - can rein

A new working paper by HBS professor Amy C. Edmondson and coauthor James R. Detert looks at the dynamics behind why people may or may not speak up at work. According to the authors, "The results suggest that individuals bring

A school has become embroiled in a row after the headmistress told children who turned up late that they would have to stand out in the cold.

We demonstrate time resolved driving of two-photon blue sideband transitionsbetween superconducting qubits and a transmission line resonator. Using thesidebands, we implement a pulse sequence that first entangles one qubit withthe resonator, and subsequently distributes the entanglement between twoqubits. We show

The collective dipole interaction of N individual atoms, spins or qubits witha photon stored in a single mode of a cavity field is described by theTavis-Cummings model. This model predicts an enhancement of the collectiveN-atom/photon dipole coupling strength g_N by

Quantum state tomography is an important tool in quantum information sciencefor complete characterization of multi-qubit states and their correlations.Here we report a method to perform a joint simultaneous read-out of twosuperconducting qubits dispersively coupled to the same mode of a

In this paper we construct integrable three-dimensional quantum-mechanicalsystems with magnetic fields, admitting pairs of commuting second-orderintegrals of motion. The case of Cartesian coordinates is considered. Most ofthe systems obtained are new and not related to the separation of variables inthe

Practically measurable quantities resulting from quantum field theory are notdescribed by hermitian operators, contradicting one of the cornerstone axiomsof orthodox quantum theory. This could be a sign that some of the axioms oforthodox quantum theory should be reformulated. A non-orthodox

It is explained on a physical basis how absence of contextuality allows Bellinequalities to be violated, without bringing an implication on locality orrealism. The point is that the initial values of the hidden variables of thedetectors are mutually exclusive for

We use classes of Hilbert lattice equations for an alternative representationof Hilbert lattices and Hilbert spaces of arbitrary quantum systems that mightenable a direct introduction of the states of the systems into quantumcomputers. More specifically, we look for a way

The quantum vacuum constitutes a fascinating medium of study, in particularsince near-future laser facilities will be able to probe the nonlinear natureof this vacuum. There has been a large number of proposed tests of thelow-energy, high intensity regime of quantum

We present a model of observation in physics, based on power sets ofclassical bits. The four elements of each power set are given physicalsignificance: two elements represent the usual yes and no states of a detectorwhilst the other two represent

Quantum transients are temporary features of matter waves before they reach astationary regime. Transients may arise after the preparation of an unstableinitial state or due to a sudden interaction or a change in the boundaryconditions. Examples are diffraction in time,

An algorithm for simulating the dynamics of a restricted set of observablesof a many-body system is presented. The set comprises the spectrum-generatingalgebra (SGA) of observables of the system. The technical development of thealgorithm is based on the close connection between

In this paper, we study metrics of quantum states. We will prove that themetrics are joint convex and contractive under quantum operation (i.e.,completely positive and trace-preserving map).

We consider the van der Waals interaction of an excited atom and a groundstate atom across a vacuum-medium interface under the circumstances of theresonant coupling of the excited atom to a surface polariton mode of thesystem. We demonstrate that the

We develop a complete theoretical description of photoassociative StimulatedRaman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) near a Feshbach resonance in a thermal atomicgas. We show that it is possible to use low intensity laser pulses to directlyexcite the continuum at a Feshbach resonance