Fakultät für Physik - Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU - Teil 02/05 Archiv

The absorption of solar radiation by atmospheric aerosol particles is important for the climate effects of aerosols. Absorption by aerosol particles heats atmospheric layers, even though the net effect for the entire atmospheric column may still be a cooling. Most experimental studies on absorbing aerosols so far focussed mainly on the aerosol properties and did not consider the influence of the aerosols on the thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere. In this study, data from two international aircraft field experiments, the Intercontinental Transport of Ozone and Precursors study (ITOP) 2004 and the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) 2006 are investigated. The ITOP data were collected before the work on this thesis started, while the logistics and the instrument preparation of the SAMUM campaign, the weather forecast during SAMUM and the in-situ aerosol measurements during SAMUM were done within this thesis. The experimental data are used to explore the impact of layers containing absorbing forest fire and desert dust aerosol particles on the atmospheric stability and the implications of a changed stability on the development of the aerosol microphysical and optical properties during long-range transport. For the first time, vertical profiles of the Richardson number Ri are used to assess the stability and mixing in forest fire and desert dust plumes. Also for the first time, the conclusions drawn from the observations of forest fire and desert dust aerosol, at first glance apparently quite different aerosol types, are discussed from a common perspective. Two mechanisms, the self-stabilising and the sealed ageing effect, acting in both forest fire and desert dust aerosol layers, are proposed to explain the characteristic temperature structure as well as the aerosol properties observed in lofted forest fire and desert dust plumes. The proposed effects impact on the ageing of particles within the plumes and reduce the plume dilution, therefore extending the plume lifetime. This study combines experimental data, modelling of optical parameters and calculated heating rates to assess the role of forest fire and desert dust plumes. The microphysical, optical and chemical properties of forest fire and desert dust aerosol, and their vertical distribution, were measured with multiple instruments on the DLR Falcon 20-E5 research aircraft during ITOP and SAMUM. Aerosol size information and absorption data were analysed with respect to the aerosol mixing state, effective diameter and parameterisation of forest fire and dust size distributions. Altogether, about 90 size distributions for particles from different sources were extracted from multiple instruments and parameterised with multi-modal log-normal distributions. Subsequently, the optical properties were calculated for the different aerosol layers and compared with other independent measurements of the optical properties like the extinction coefficient determined with a High Spectral Resolution Lidar. The aerosol optical properties serve as the basis for the radiative transfer calculations with libRadtran (library for radiative transfer). Finally, the aerosol microphysical and optical properties, the meteorological data and the heating rates are examined to investigate the proposed self-stabilising and sealed ageing effects. The investigation of numerous forest fire and desert dust plumes in this study revealed characteristic aerosol properties: the aged (age: 4-13 days) forest fire aerosol is characterised by the absence of a nucleation mode, a depleted Aitken mode and an enhanced accumulation mode. In addition, more than 80% of the particles in the Aitken mode and nearly all particles in the accumulation mode of the forest fire plumes are internally mixed with a solid core. The desert dust aerosol exhibits two size regimes of different mixing states: below 0.5 µm, particles have a non-volatile core and a volatile coating; larger particles above 0.5 µm consist of non-volatile components and contain absorbing material. After regional-scale transport from the Sahara to South-western Europe, the volatile fraction in the dust plume did not significantly increase. The lofted forest fire plumes were found during ITOP at altitudes between 3 and 9 km above sea level (ASL), while the lofted desert dust plumes were found during SAMUM between 1 and 6 km ASL. The transition of the aerosol plumes to the free tropospheric background above and below the plumes was remarkably sharp and characterised by strong inversions. Within a height range of 200-300 m, the particle concentrations decreased by more than one order of magnitude. The results of plume dilution were evident only in the upper part of the lofted forest fire and desert dust plumes. The daily mean heating rates in the forest fire and desert dust plumes showed maximum values of ~0.2 K day-1 and ~0.24 K day-1, respectively. Vertical profiles of the heating rate suggest that the processes caused by the interaction between the aerosol particles and the solar radiation stabilise the plume itself and decelerate plume dilution. Apparently, the aerosol in such plumes ages in an almost “closed” system, where suppressed entrainment of condensable gases from the surface inhibits particle nucleation and the formation of coated particles inside the plume. The processes described tend to extend the lifetime of the layer allowing the transport over long distances.

The cosmic origin and evolution is encoded in the large-scale matter distribution observed in astronomical surveys. Galaxy redshift surveys have become in the recent years one of the best probes for cosmic large-scale structures. They are complementary to other information sources like the cosmic microwave background, since they trace a different epoch of the Universe, the time after reionization at which the Universe became transparent, covering about the last twelve billion years. Regarding that the Universe is about thirteen billion years old, galaxy surveys cover a huge range of time, even if the sensitivity limitations of the detectors do not permit to reach the furthermost sources in the transparent Universe. This makes galaxy surveys extremely interesting for cosmological evolution studies. The observables, galaxy position in the sky, galaxy ma gnitude and redshift, however, give an incomplete representation of the real structures in the Universe, not only due to the limitations and uncertainties in the measurements, but also due to their biased nature. They trace the underlying continuous dark matter field only partially being a discrete sample of the luminous baryonic distribution. In addition, galaxy catalogues are plagued by many complications. Some have a physical foundation, as mentioned before, others are due to the observation process. The problem of reconstructing the underlying density field, which permits to make cosmological studies, thus requires a statistical approach. This thesis describes a cosmic cartography project. The necessary concepts, mathematical frame-work, and numerical algorithms are thoroughly analyzed. On that basis a Bayesian software tool is implemented. The resulting Argo-code allows to investigate the characteristics of the large-scale cosmological structure with unprecedented accuracy and flexibility. This is achieved by jointly estimating the large-scale density along with a variety of other parameters ---such as the cosmic flow, the small-scale peculiar velocity field, and the power-spectrum--- from the information provided by galaxy redshift surveys. Furthermore, Argo is capable of dealing with many observational issues like mask-effects, galaxy selection criteria, blurring and noise in a very efficient implementation of an operator based formalism which was carefully derived for this purpose. Thanks to the achieved high efficiency of Argo the application of iterative sampling algorithms based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo is now possible. This will ultimately lead to a full description of the matter distribution with all its relevant parameters like velocities, power spectra, galaxy bias, etc., including the associated uncertainties. Some applications are shown, in which such techniques are used. A rejection sampling scheme is successfully applied to correct for the observational redshift-distortions effect which is especially severe in regimes of non-linear structure formation, causing the so-called finger-of-god effect. Also a Gibbs-sampling algorithm for power-spectrum determination is presented and some preliminary results are shown in which the correct level and shape of the power-spectrum is recovered solely from the data. We present in an additional appendix the gravitational collapse and subsequent neutrino-driven explosion of the low-mass end of stars that undergo core-collapse Supernovae. We obtain results which are for the first time compatible with the Crab Nebula.

Entangled photons are at the heart of experimental quantum physics. They were used for the first fundamental tests of quantum theory, and became a basic building block for many novel quantum protocols, such as quantum cryptography, dense coding or teleportation. Therefore, the efficient generation of entangled photons, as well as their distribution and accurate analysis are of paramount importance, particularly with regard to the practicability of many applications of quantum communication. This thesis deals largely with the problem of efficient generation of photonic entanglement with the principal aim of developing a bright source of polarization-entangled photon pairs, which meets the requirements for reliable and economic operation of quantum communication prototypes and demonstrators. Our approach uses a correlated photon-pair emission in nonlinear process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion pumped by light coming from a compact and cheap blue laser diode. Two alternative source configurations are examined within the thesis. The first makes use of a well established concept of degenerate non-collinear emission from a single type-II nonlinear crystal and the second relies on a novel method where the emissions from two adjacent type-I phase-matched nonlinear crystals operated in collinear non-degenerate regime are coherently overlapped. The latter approach showed to be more effective, yielding a total detected rate of almost 10^6 pairs/s at >98 % quantum interference visibility of polarization correlations. This performance, together with the almost free of alignment operation of the system, suggest that it is an especially promising candidate for many future practical applications, including quantum cryptography, detector calibration or use in undergraduate lab courses. The second issue addressed within the thesis is the simplification and practical implementation of quantum-assisted solutions to multiparty communication tasks. While the recent rapid progress in the development of bright entangled photon-pair sources has been followed with ample experimental reports on two-party quantum communication tasks, the practical implementations of tasks for more than two parties have been held back, so far. This is mainly due to the requirement of multiparty entangled states, which are very difficult to be produced with current methods and moreover suffer from a high noise. We show that entanglement is not the only non-classical resource endowing the quantum multiparty information processing its power. Instead, only the sequential communication and transformation of a single qubit can be sufficient to accomplish certain tasks. This we prove for two distinct communication tasks, secret sharing and communication complexity. Whereas the goal of the first is to split a cryptographic key among several parties in a way that its reconstruction requires their collaboration, the latter aims at reducing the amount of communication during distributed computational tasks. Importantly, our qubit-assisted solutions to the problems are feasible with state-of-the-art technology. This we clearly demonstrate in the laboratory implementation for 6 and 5 parties, respectively, which is to the best of our knowledge the highest number of actively performing parties in a quantum protocol ever implemented. Thus, by successfully solving and implementing a cryptographic task as well as a task originating in computer science, we clearly illustrate the potential to introduce multiparty communication problems into real life.

Die vorliegende Arbeit “Suche nach Cepheid-artigen Veränderlichen Sternen in nördlichen Zwerggalaxien der Lokalen Gruppe” faßt die Ergebnisse des VarStarDwarves-Projektes für alle “blauen”, periodisch Variablen Sterne (VS) zusammen. Die Zielsetzung des VarStarDwarves-Projekts, das seit 1999 an der Universitäts-Sternwarte München betrieben wird, läßt sich am besten durch ein Zitat aus dem zugrundeliegenden DFG-Antrag (Ho1812) erläutern: “Die Bestimmung der Sternentstehungsgeschichte von Zwerggalaxien (ZG) erlaubt, wesentliche Randbedingungen für die Modelle der Evolution von Galaxien abzuleiten. Eine Grundvoraussetzung hierzu ist die Kenntnis der genauen Distanz der ZG. Die Beobachtung hinreichend großer Sample von Veränderlichen Sternen ermöglicht es, diese Distanzen wesentlich präziser als bisher zu bestimmen. Um diese großen Sample zu erhalten, sollen mit für Microlensing entwickelten Bildverarbeitungsmethoden VS in nahen ZG bis weit unter die bis jetzt erreichten Detektionsgrenzen nachgewiesen werden. Darüberhinaus werden die gefundenen VS auch Hinweise zur stellaren Zusammensetzung und damit zum Entwicklungszustand der ZG geben.” Die Ergebnisse für langperiodische, “rote” VS wurden bereits in der Arbeit von Snigula [2006] präsentiert. Im Rahmen des VarStarDwarves-Projekts wurden umfangreiche Modernisierungen und Verbesserungen an den Beobachtungsinstrumenten und dem Umfeld des Observatoriums Wendelstein durchgeführt und darüberhinaus die Entwicklung und der Bau einer neuen, modernen Zweikanal-CCD-Kamera initiiert. Auch diese Aspekte werden hier dokumentiert und die erreichten Fortschritte aufgezeigt (siehe hierzu Kapitel 2.2, 2.3 und 3 sowie die Anhänge A bis C). Diese Dissertation untergliedert sich weiter in eine Einleitung, die neben einer kurzen Vorstellung der mit dem Projekt befaßten Kollegen und ihrer diesbezüglichen Aufgabenbereichen v.a. eine historische Einführung in die Gebiete der Lokalen Zwerggalaxien sowie der “blauen” pulsationsveränderlichen Sterne bietet (Kap. 1), einen Überblick über Kandidatenauswahl und die durchgeführten Beobachtungen (Kap. 2.1, 2.4 und 2.5), sowie eine detaillierte Erläuterung der aufwendigen, z.T. ebenfalls im Rahmen des Projekts entwickelten Datenanalyseverfahren (Kap. 4). Die wesentlichen wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der Arbeit sind neue, unabhängige Entfernungsbestimmungen mittels δ Cephei Perioden-Leuchtkraftbeziehungen zu zwei der sechs VarStarDwarves Zwerge, die Bestätigung der Entfernung eines weiteren Zwergs, sowie die Entdeckung etlicher weiterer VS-Kandidaten, deren endgültige Bedeutungen erst durch weitere Beobachtungen bestimmt werden können, wobei aber durchaus mit weitreichenden Konsequenzen für das physikalische Verständnis der entsprechenden VS oder ihrer “Muttergalaxie” zu rechnen ist (Kap. 5).

In the age of information and globalisation, secure communication as well as the protection of sensitive data against unauthorised access are of utmost importance. Quantum cryptography currently provides the only way to exchange a cryptographic key between two parties in an unconditionally secure fashion. Owing to losses and noise of today's optical fibre and detector technology, at present quantum cryptography is limited to distances below a few 100 km. In principle, larger distances could be subdivided into shorter segments, but the required quantum repeaters are still beyond current technology. An alternative approach for bridging larger distances is a satellite-based system, that would enable secret key exchange between two arbitrary points on the globe using free-space optical communication. The aim of the presented experiment was to investigate the feasibility of satellite-based global quantum key distribution. In this context, a free-space quantum key distribution experiment over a real distance of 144 km was performed. The transmitter and the receiver were situated in 2500 m altitude on the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife, respectively. The small and compact transmitter unit generated attenuated laser pulses, that were sent to the receiver via a 15-cm optical telescope. The receiver unit for polarisation analysis and detection of the sent pulses was integrated into an existing mirror telescope designed for classical optical satellite communications. To ensure the required stability and efficiency of the optical link in the presence of atmospheric turbulence, the two telescopes were equipped with a bi-directional automatic tracking system. Still, due to stray light and high optical attenuation, secure key exchange would not be possible using attenuated pulses in connection with the standard BB84 protocol. The photon number statistics of attenuated pulses follows a Poissonian distribution. Hence, by removing a photon from all pulses containing two or more photons, an eavesdropper could measure its polarisation without disturbing the polarisation state of the remaining pulse. In this way, he can gain information about the key without introducing detectable errors. To protect against such attacks, the presented experiment employed the recently developed method of using additional "decoy" states, i.e., the the intensity of the pulses created by the transmitter were varied in a random manner. By analysing the detection probabilities of the different pulses individually, a photon-number-splitting attack can be detected. Thanks to the decoy-state analysis, the secrecy of the resulting quantum key could be ensured despite the Poissonian nature of the emitted pulses. For a channel attenuation as high as 35 dB, a secret key rate of up to 250 bit/s was achieved. Our outdoor experiment was carried out under real atmospheric conditions and with a channel attenuation comparable to an optical link from ground to a satellite in low earth orbit. Hence, it definitely shows the feasibility of satellite-based quantum key distribution using a technologically comparatively simple system.

Fulgide gehören zu den photochromen molekularen Schaltern auf der Basis eines 6-elektrozyklischen Systems. Ihre ausgeprägte Photochromie wird von einer photoinduzierten, reversiblen Ringöffnung bestimmt: Das farbige Isomer mit geschlossenem Ring wird dabei durch sichtbares Licht in ein farbloses, offenes Isomer überführt. Mithilfe der transienten Absorptionsspektroskopie im UV/VIS und im mittleren IR konnten in der vorliegenden Arbeit entscheidende Fortschritte im Verständnis der perizyklischen Ringöffnung von Fulgiden und von chemisch nahe verwandten Fulgimiden erreicht werden. Erstmals konnte die Kinetik der Ringöffnungsreaktion im Detail vermessen und damit der Reaktionsweg der Ringöffnung aufgeklärt werden: Die Messergebnisse deuten auf einem Modell mit einer direkten photochemischen Umwandlung auf der Zeitskala von wenigen Pikosekunden und ohne langlebige Intermediate hin. Nach Anregung des geschlossenen Isomers in den angeregten S2-Zustand alternative Reaktionspfade abläuft. Die Mehrheit der S2-angeregten Moleküle beschreiten einen direkten Reaktionsweg, während nur etwa 40% die bekannte Abfolge (Kasha-Regel) der molekularen Prozesse für Photoreaktionen aus höheren elektronischen Zuständen durchlaufen: Zunächst erfolgt eine Relaxation in den niedrigsten elektronisch angeregten Zustand und von dort die „normale“ S1-Photochemie. Weiter werden die Auswirkungen optischer und thermischer Überschussenergie auf die Quanteneffizienz der Ringöffnungsreaktion der Fulgide untersucht. Ein einfaches Modell auf der Basis der Arrhenius-Gleichung wird entwickelt, das davon ausgeht, dass beide Arten der Energiezufuhr eine äquivalente photochemische Wirkung zeigen, dass also optische Überschussenergie sehr schnell thermalisiert. Zentrales Element ist dabei ein Konversionskoeffizient, der es in linearer Näherung erlaubt, optische Überschussenergie in zusätzliche thermische Energie umzurechnen. Im Zusammenhang mit potentiellen Anwendungen ist es gelungen, den Prototyp eines extrem schnellen, rein optischen Schreib/Lese/Lösch/Lese Operationszyklus auf molekularer Basis zu realisieren. Dieses „proof of principle“ Experiment demonstriert, dass die einzelnen Elemente des Zyklus basierend auf photochromen Fulgiden mit einer Taktrate von 250 GHz kombiniert werden können.

The topic of this thesis is the correspondence of open and closed strings. Already for a long time it has been evident that those both sectors of string theory do not only couple to each other, but it is also possible to identify excitations of the closed string in the open string sector. This correspondence has been shown in a multitude of examples, which indicates a deep connection.

Particles of micrometer size externally introduced in plasmas usually find their positions of levitation in the plasma sheath, where the gravity force is compensated by the strong electric field. Here due to electrostatic interaction they form different structures, which are interesting objects for the investigation of strongly coupled systems and critical phenomena. Because of the low damping (e.g. in comparison to colloidal suspension) it is possible to measure the dynamics up to the relevant highest frequency (e.g. Einstein frequency) at the most elementary level of single particle motion. The task of this work was to analyze the three dimensional structure, dynamical processes and the limit of the cooperative behavior in small plasma crystals. In addition to the study of the systems formed, the immersed particles themselves may be used for diagnostics of the plasma environment: estimation of parameters or monitoring of the processes inside plasma. The laboratory experiments are performed in two radio-frequency (RF) plasma reactors with parallel plate electrodes, where the lower electrode is a so-called "adaptive electrode". This electrode is segmented into 57 small "pixels" independently driven in DC (direct current) and/or RF voltage. When RF voltage is applied to one of these pixels, a bright localized glow, "secondary plasma ball", appears above. Three dimensional dust crystals with less than 100 particles are formed inside this "plasma ball" - the ideal conditions for the investigation of the transition from cluster systems to collective systems. The investigation of the particle interactions in crystals is performed with an optical diagnostic, which allows determination of all three particle coordinates simultaneously with time resolution of 0.04 sec. The experimental results are: 1. The binary interaction among particles in addition to the repelling Coulomb force exhibits also an attractive part, which is experimentally determined for the first time. 2. Analysis of the dynamical evolution shows the tendency of the systems to approach the state with minimum energy by rearranging particles inside. 3. The measured 63 particles' crystal vibrations are in close agreement with vibrations of a drop with surface tension. This indicates that even a 63 particle crystal already exhibits properties normally associated with the cooperative regime. The possibility to use levitated particles as a new powerful diagnostic of the plasma sheath region is proposed. The existence of different equilibrium positions of microparticles suspended in an Oxygen discharge provides evidence of a structured electronegative plasma sheath, a feature so far only mathematically and numerically investigated.