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The nucleosynthesis of elements beyond iron is dominated by neutron captures in the s and r processes. However, 32 stable, proton-rich isotopes cannot be formed during those processes, because they are shielded from the s-process flow and r-process beta-decay chains. These nuclei are attributed to the p and rp process. For all those processes, current research in nuclear astrophysics addresses the need for more precise reaction data involving radioactive isotopes. Depending on the particular reaction, direct or inverse kinematics, forward or time-reversed direction are investigated to determine or at least to constrain the desired reaction cross sections. The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will offer unique, unprecedented opportunities to investigate many of the important reactions. The high yield of radioactive isotopes, even far away from the valley of stability, allows the investigation of isotopes involved in processes as exotic as the r or rp processes., Comment: Invited Talk given at the Conference Nuclear Physice in Astrophysics VI (NPA6), Lisbon, Portugal, May 19-24 2013. To appear in the NPA6 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS)

Single-photon sources that emit photons at the same energy play a key role in the emerging concepts of quantum information, such as entanglement swapping, quantum teleportation and quantum networks. They can be realized in a variety of systems, where semiconductor quantum dots, or 'artificial atoms', are arguably among the most attractive. However, unlike 'natural atoms', no two artificial atoms are alike. This peculiarity is a serious hurdle for quantum information applications that require photonic quantum states with identical energies. Here we demonstrate a single artificial atom that generates photons with an absolute energy that is locked to an optical transition in a natural atom. Furthermore, we show that our system is robust and immune to drifts and fluctuations in the environment of the emitter. Our demonstration is crucial for realization of a large number of universally-indistinguishable solid-state systems at arbitrary remote locations, where frequency-locked artificial atoms might become fundamental ingredients.

Hybrid silicon nanowires with an integrated light-emitting segment can significantly advance nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. They would combine transport and optical characteristics in a nanoscale device, which can operate in the fundamental single-electron and single-photon regime. III-V materials, such as direct bandgap gallium-arsenide, are excellent candidates for such optical segments. However, interfacing them with silicon during crystal growth is a major challenge, because of the lattice mismatch, different expansion coefficients and the formation of anti-phase boundaries. Here, we demonstrate a silicon nanowire with an integrated gallium-arsenide segment. We precisely control the catalyst composition and surface chemistry to obtain dislocation-free interfaces. The integration of gallium-arsenide of high optical quality with silicon is enabled by short gallium phosphide buffers. We anticipate that such hybrid silicon/III-V nanowires open practical routes for quantum information devices, where for instance electronic and photonic quantum bits are manipulated in a III-V segment and stored in a silicon section.

Quantum dots (QDs) can act as convenient hosts of two-level quantum szstems, such as single electron spins, hole spins or excitons (bound electron-hole pairs). Due to quantum confinement, the ground state of a single hole confined in a QD usually has dominant heavy-hole (HH) character. For this reason light-hole (LH) states have been largely neglected, despite the fact that may enable the realilzation of coherent photon-to-spin converters or allow for faster spin manipulation compared to HH states. In this work, we use tensile strains larger than 0.3% to switch the ground state of excitons confined in high quality GaAs/AlGaAs QDs from the conventional HH- to LH-type. The LH-exciton fine structure is characterized by two in-plane-polarized lines and, ~400 micro-eV above them, by an additional line with pronounced out-of-plane oscillator strength, consistent with theoretical predictions based on atomistic empirical pseudopotential calculations and a simple mesoscopic model., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures

The ability to achieve near-unity light extraction efficiency is necessary for a truly deterministic single photon source. The most promising method to reach such high efficiencies is based on embedding single photon emitters in tapered photonic waveguides defined by top-down etching techniques. However, light extraction efficiencies in current top-down approaches are limited by fabrication imperfections and etching induced defects. The efficiency is further tempered by randomly positioned off-axis quantum emitters. Here, we present perfectly positioned single quantum dots on the axis of a tailored nanowire waveguide using bottom-up growth. In comparison to quantum dots in nanowires without waveguide, we demonstrate a 24-fold enhancement in the single photon flux, corresponding to a light extraction efficiency of 42 %. Such high efficiencies in one-dimensional nanowires are promising to transfer quantum information over large distances between remote stationary qubits using flying qubits within the same nanowire p-n junction., Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures

The 0+ ground state of the 10He nucleus produced in the 3H(8He,p)10He reaction was found at about $2.1\pm0.2$ MeV (\Gamma ~ 2 MeV) above the three-body 8He+n+n breakup threshold. Angular correlations observed for 10He decay products show prominent interference patterns allowing to draw conclusions about the structure of low-energy excited states. We interpret the observed correlations as a coherent superposition of the broad 1- state having a maximum at energy 4-6 MeV and the 2+ state above 6 MeV, setting both on top of the 0+ state "tail". This anomalous level ordering indicates that the breakdown of the N=8 shell known in 12Be thus extends also to the 10He system., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

For a partial order $\preceq$ on a set X and an equivalency relation S defined on the same set X we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such a total preorder on X whose asymmetric part contains the asymmetric part of the given partial order $\preceq$ and whose symmetric part coincides with the given equivalence relation S. This result generalizes the classical Szpilrajn theorem on extension of a partial order to a perfect (linear) order., Comment: 7 pages

We have investigated the optical properties of a single InAsP quantum dot embedded in a standing InP nanowire. A regular array of nanowires was fabricated by epitaxial growth and electron-beam patterning. The elongation of transverse exciton spin relaxation time of the exciton state with decreasing excitation power was observed by first-order photon correlation measurements. This behavior is well explained by the motional narrowing mechanism induced by Gaussian fluctuations of environmental charges in the InP nanowire. The longitudinal exciton spin relaxation time was evaluated by the degree of the random polarization of emission originating from exciton state confined in a single nanowire quantum dots by using Mueller Calculus based on Stokes parameters representation., Comment: 6 page, 5 figures

By using the 1H(6Li,6Be)n charge-exchange reaction, continuum states in 6Be were populated up to E_t=16 MeV, E_t being the 6Be energy above its three-body decay threshold. In kinematically complete measurements performed by detecting alpha+p+p coincidences, an E_t spectrum of high statistics was obtained, containing approximately ~5x10^6 events. The spectrum provides detailed correlation information about the well-known 0^+ ground state of 6Be at E_t=1.37 MeV and its 2^+ state at E_t=3.05 MeV. Moreover, a broad structure extending from 4 to 16 MeV was observed. It contains negative parity states populated by Delta L=1 angular momentum transfer without other significant contributions. This structure can be interpreted as a novel phenomenon, i.e. the isovector soft dipole mode associated with the 6Li ground state. The population of this mode in the charge-exchange reaction is a dominant phenomenon for this reaction, being responsible for about 60% of the cross section obtained in the measured energy range., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

Unknown isotope 26S, expected to decay by two-proton (2p) emission, was studied theoretically and was searched experimentally. The structure of this nucleus was examined within the relativistic mean field (RMF) approach. A method for taking into account the many-body structure in the three-body decay calculations was developed. The results of the RMF calculations were used as an input for the three-cluster decay model worked out to study a possible 2p decay branch of this nucleus. The experimental search for 26S was performed in fragmentation reactions of a 50.3 A MeV 32S beam. No events of 26S or 25P (a presumably proton-unstable subsystem of 26S) were observed. Based on the obtained production systematics an upper half-life limit of T_{1/2}<79 ns was established from the time-of-flight through the fragment separator. Together with the theoretical lifetime estimates for two-proton decay this gives a decay energy limit of Q_{2p}>640 keV for 26S. Analogous limits for 25P are found as T_{1/2}<38 ns and Q_{p}>110 keV. In the case that the one-proton emission is the main branch of the 26S decay a limit Q_{2p}>230 keV would follow for this nucleus. It is likely that 26S resides in the picosecond lifetime range and the further search for this isotope is prospective for the decay-in-flight technique., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

We study the absorption and emission polarization of single semiconductor quantum dots in semiconductor nanowires. We show that the polarization of light absorbed or emitted by a nanowire quantum dot strongly depends on the orientation of the nanowire with respect to the directions along which light is incident or emitted. Light is preferentially linearly polarized when directed perpendicular to the nanowire elongation. In contrast, the degree of linear polarization is low for light directed along the nanowire. This result is vital for photonic applications based on intrinsic properties of quantum dots, such as generation of entangled photons. As an example, we demonstrate optical access to the spin states of a single nanowire quantum dot., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

The low-lying spectra of $^8$He and $^{10}$He nuclei were studied in the $^3$H($^6$He,$p$)$^8$He and $^3$H($^8$He,$p$)$^{10}$He transfer reactions. The $0^+$ ground state (g.s.) of $^8$He and excited states, $2^+$ at $3.6-3.9$ MeV and $(1^+)$ at $5.3-5.5$ MeV, were populated with cross sections of 200, 100-250, and 90-125 $\mu$b/sr, respectively. Some evidence for $^8$He state at about 7.5 MeV is obtained. We discuss a possible nature of the near-threshold anomaly above 2.14 MeV in $^8$He and relate it to the population of a $1^-$ continuum (soft dipole excitation) with peak value at about 3 MeV. The lowest energy group of events in the $^{10}$He spectrum was observed at $\sim 3$ MeV with a cross section of $\sim 140$ $\mu$b/sr. We argue that this result is possibly consistent with the previously reported observation of $^{10}$He, in that case providing a new g.s. position for $^{10}$He at about 3 MeV., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. B

We develop a framework to calculate the density matrix of a pair of photons emitted in a decay cascade with partial "which path" ambiguity. We describe an appropriate entanglement distillation scheme which works also for certain random cascades. The qualitative features of the distilled entanglement are presented in a two dimensional "phase diagram". The theory is applied to the quantum tomography of the decay cascade of a biexciton in a semiconductor quantum dot. Agreement with experiment is obtained.

We present an experimental and theoretical study of the polarized photoluminescence spectrum of single semiconductor quantum dots in various charge states. We compare our high resolution polarization sensitive spectral measurements with a new many-carrier theoretical model, which was developed for this purpose. The model considers both the isotropic and anisotropic exchange interactions between all participating electron-hole pairs. With this addition, we calculate both the energies and polarizations of all optical transitions between collective, quantum dot confined charge carrier states. We succeed in identifying most of the measured spectral lines. In particular, the lines resulting from singly-, doubly- and triply- negatively charged excitons and biexcitons. We demonstrate that lines emanating from evenly charged states are linearly polarized. Their polarization direction does not necessarily coincide with the traditional crystallographic direction. It depends on the shells of the single carriers, which participate in the recombination process., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Revised version

The method for determination of the Supernovae (SNe) explosions frequency distribution function based on the assumption of explosions independence are offered. The method is based on assumption that the sequence of SNe explosions in an individual galaxy is a Poisson sequence. The essence of the method is in the determination of statistical moments of the frequency of the SNe explosions and subsequent determination of distribution function . The program of numerical simulation has been developed for testing the efficiency of the method. Numerical simulations show that even for a small mean number of registered SNe explosions, method allows restoring initial distribution function. The results of numerical simulations are given.

The spectrum of $^9$He was studied by means of the $^8$He($d$,$p$)$^9$He reaction at a lab energy of 25 MeV/n and small center of mass (c.m.) angles. Energy and angular correlations were obtained for the $^9$He decay products by complete kinematical reconstruction. The data do not show narrow states at $\sim $1.3 and $\sim $2.4 MeV reported before for $^9$He. The lowest resonant state of $^9$He is found at about 2 MeV with a width of $\sim $2 MeV and is identified as $1/2^-$. The observed angular correlation pattern is uniquely explained by the interference of the $1/2^-$ resonance with a virtual state $1/2^+$ (limit on the scattering length is obtained as $a > -20$ fm), and with the $5/2^+$ resonance at energy $\geq 4.2$ MeV., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables

When basic tools of quantum information are applied to the quantum tomography data presented in Nature 439, 179 (2006), none of their devices appears to be a source of entangled photons.

Tomographic analysis demonstrates that the polarization state of pairs of photons emitted from a biexciton decay cascade becomes entangled when spectral filtering is applied. The measured density matrix of the photon pair satisfies the Peres criterion for entanglement by more than 3 standard deviations of the experimental uncertainty and violates Bell's inequality. We show that the spectral filtering erases the ``which path'' information contained in the photons color and that the remanent information in the quantum dot degrees of freedom is negligible.