Phase Coherence in Multiple Pulse Optical Spectroscopy

In this paper we describe a new technique for the generation of multiple pulse phase coherent sequences in optical spectroscopy. The technique is an extension of the acousto-optic modulation and fluorescence detection methods developed for optical transitions by Zewail and Orlowski (Zewail et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 48, 256 (1977); Orlowski et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 54, 197 (1978)). Application of these multiple pulse trains (of different phases) to optical transitions of two-level and multilevel systems is demonstrated experimentally. It is shown that they can be used to (i) suppress spontaneous emission background, (ii) enhance coherent transients such as photon echoes, (iii) measure additional relaxation parameters in systems with complex rotational-vibrational levels, and (iv) enhance the effective laser bandwidths through composite pulse trains, as demonstrated on I2 gas. Finally, the potential of this development is extended to the possibility of observing selective multiquantum excitation in molecules

Modeling Evolving Coronal Loops with Observations from STEREO, Hinode, and TRACE

The high densities, long lifetimes, and narrow emission measure distributions observed in coronal loops with apex temperatures near 1 MK are difficult to reconcile with physical models of the solar atmosphere. It has been proposed that the observed loops are actually composed of sub-resolution ``threads'' that have been heated impulsively and are cooling. We apply this heating scenario to nearly simultaneous observations of an evolving post-flare loop arcade observed with the EUVI/\textit{STEREO}, XRT/\textit{Hinode}, and \textit{TRACE} imagers and the EIS spectrometer on \textit{HINODE}. We find that it is possible to reproduce the extended loop lifetime, high electron density, and the narrow differential emission measure with a multi-thread hydrodynamic model provided that the time scale for the energy release is sufficiently short. The model, however, does not reproduce the evolution of the very high temperature emission observed with XRT. In XRT the emission appears diffuse and it may be that this discrepancy is simply due to the difficulty of isolating individual loops at these temperatures. This discrepancy may also reflect fundamental problems with our understanding of post-reconnection dynamics during the conductive cooling phase of loop evolution.Comment: Revised version submitted to ApJ in response to referee's comment

Regularity for a log-concave to log-concave mass transfer problem with near Euclidean cost

If the cost function is not too far from the Euclidean cost, then the optimal map transporting Gaussians restricted to a ball will be regular. \ Similarly, given any cost function which is smooth in a neighborhood of two points on a manifold, there are small neighborhoods near each such that a Gaussian restricted to one is transported smoothly to a Gaussian on the otherComment: 12 page

History, Literature, and Authority in International Law

One consequence of international law’s recent historical turn has been to sharpen methodological contrasts between intellectual history and international law. Scholars including Antony Anghie, Anne Orford, Rose Parfitt, and Martti Koskenniemi have taken on board historians’ interest in contingency and context but pointedly relaxed historians’ traditional stricture against presentist instrumentalism. This essay argues that such a move disrupts a longstanding division of labor between history and international law and ultimately brings international legal method closer to literature and literary scholarship. The essay therefore details several more or less endemic ways in which literature and literary studies confront challenges of presentism, anachronism, meaning, and time. Using examples from writers as diverse as Anghie, Spinoza, Geoffrey Hill, Emily St. John Mandel, China Miéville, John Hollander, Pascale Casanova, Matthew Nicholson, John Selden, Shakespeare, and Dante, it proposes a “trilateral” discussion among historians, international lawyers, and literary scholars that takes seriously the multipolar disciplinary field in which each of these disciplines makes and sustains relations with each of the others.

Big Leagues: Specters of Milton and Republican International Justice between Shakespeare and Marx

Through Jacques Derrida’s extended discussion in Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has become “an exemplary text for thinking together about the current state of the world” (Royle). This article concerns Shakespeare’s Hamlet alongside Milton’s Paradise Lost as texts central to writing the “literary history of the International.” Whereas Derrida and Marx placed Hamlet at the center of their influential international visions, this article argues that the role of republicanism in forging international solidarity from the seventeenth-century onwards suggests that any literary history of the International ought also to include that key republican touchstone, Milton’s Paradise Lost. Against current critical consensus, however, it also argues that Paradise Lost’s republican internationalism developed through Milton’s own reading of Hamlet, and that Shakespeare himself may have been Milton’s “old mole.