Last Week Papers (13th week 2012)

I'm back from vacations and trying to catch up with the quantum optics pile of papers that came out in those two weeks. Here're some of the articles that caught my eye:

• "An analysis of the changes in ability and knowledge of students taking A-level physics and mathematics over a 35 year period" by Peter J Barham, Physics Education 47, 162-168 (2012).
  
  I loved the closing phrase, I cite: "The change in mathematical ability makes teaching physics at degree level more challenging, but that is a challenge we should embrace, rather than simply protest about."


• "Extracting Dynamical Equations from Experimental Data is NP Hard" by Toby S. Cubitt, Jens Eisert, and Michael M. Wolf, Physical Review Letters 108, 120503 (2012).
  
  In other words, it is damn hard to figure out the underlying math just from experimental data. The result is nice to read and quite interesting.


• "Cooling by Heating: Refrigeration Powered by Photons" by B. Cleuren, B. Rutten, and C. Van den Broeck, Physical Review Letters 108, 120603 (2012).
  
  This is interesting, you can cool a lead by joining it to another lead through two quantum dots. There was another interesting paper in the same issue about cooling with incoherent light but I seem to have misplaced it on my files.


• "Generation of Mesoscopic Entangled States in a Cavity Coupled to an Atomic Ensemble" by G. Nikoghosyan, M. J. Hartmann, and M. B. Plenio, Physical Review Letters 108, 123603 (2012).
  
  Something like dark states but by using 6-level atoms.


• "Controlled Dicke Subradiance from a Large Cloud of Two-Level Systems" by Tom Bienaime, Nicola Piovella, and Robin Kaiser, Physical Review Letters 108, 123602 (2012).
  
  Everybody was talking about Dicke super-radiance two years ago, now it is time for Dicke subradiance to be shown experimentally and used to control storage in long-lived subradiant modes