The compressive sensing (CS) framework aims to ease the burden on analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) by exploiting inherent structure in natural and man-made signals. It has been demon-strated that structured signals can be acquired with just a small number of linear measurements, on the order of the signal complexity. In practice, this enables lower sampling rates that can be more easily achieved by current hardware designs. The primary bottleneck that limits ADC sam-pling rates is quantization, i.e., higher bit-depths impose lower sampling rates. Thus, the decreased sampling rates of CS ADCs accommodate the otherwise limiting quantizer of conventional ADCs. In this thesis, we consider a different approach to CS ADC by shifting towards lower quantizer bit-depths rather than lower sampling rates. We explore the extreme case where each measurement is quantized to just one bit, representing its sign. We develop a new theoretical framework to analyze this extreme case and develop new algorithms for signal reconstruction from such coarsely quantized measurements. The 1-bit CS framework leads us to scenarios where it may be more appropriate to reduce bit-depth instead of sampling rate. We find that there exist two distinct regimes of operation that correspond to high/low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In the measurement

in partial ful2llment of the requirements for the degree of

The principle aim of this dissertation is to investigate the philosophical application of quantum information theory to interpretational issues regarding the theory of quantum mechanics. Recently, quantum information theory has emerged as a potential source for such an interpretation. The main question with which this dissertation will be concerned is whether or not an information-theoretic interpretation can serve as a conceptually acceptable interpretation of quantum mechanics. It will be argued that some of the more obvious approaches – that quantum information theory shows us that ultimately the world is made of information, and quantum Bayesianism – fail as philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. However, the information-theoretic approach of Clifton, Bub, and Halvorson introduces Einstein’s distinction between principle theories and constructive theories, arguing that quantum mechanics is best understood as an information-theoretic principle theory. While I argue that this particular approach fails, it does offer a viable new philosophical role for information theory. Specifically, an investigation of interpretationally successful principle theories such as Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and general

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

We are surrounded by electronic devices that take advantage of wireless technologies, from our computer mice, which require little amounts of information, to our cellphones, which demand increasingly higher data rates. Until today, the coexistence of such a variety of services has been guaranteed by a fixed assignment of spectrum resources by regulatory agencies. This has resulted into a blind alley, as current wireless spectrum has become an expensive and a scarce resource. However, recent measurements in dense areas paint a very different picture: there is an actual underutilization of the spectrum by legacy sys-tems. Cognitive radio exhibits a tremendous promise for increasing the spectral efficiency for future wireless systems. Ideally, new secondary users would have a perfect panorama of the spectrum usage, and would opportunistically communicate over the available re-sources without degrading the primary systems. Yet in practice, monitoring the spectrum resources, detecting available resources for opportunistic communication, and transmit-ting over the resources are hard tasks. This thesis addresses the tasks of monitoring, de-

In this thesis, two sets of experimental studies in bosonic and fermionic gases are described. In the first part of the thesis, itinerant ferromagnetism was studied in a strongly interacting Fermi gas of ultracold atoms. The observation of nonmonotonic behavior of lifetime, kinetic energy, and size for increasing repulsive interactions pro-vides strong evidence for a phase transition to a ferromagnetic state. Our observations imply that itinerant ferromagnetism of delocalized fermions is possible without lattice and band structure, and our data validate the most basic model for ferromagnetism introduced by Stoner. In the second part of the thesis, the coherence properties of a Bose-Einstein con-densate (BEC) was studied in a radio frequency induced double-well potential imple-mented on a microfabricated atom chip. We observed phase coherence between the separated condensates for times up to 200 ms after splitting, a factor of 10 longer than the phase diffusion time expected for a coherent state for our experimental con-ditions. The enhanced coherence time is attributed to number squeezing of the initial

mcmxciv This thesis deals with combinatorics in connection with Coxeter groups, finitely generated but not necessarily finite. The representation theory of groups as nonsingular matrices over a field is of immense theoretical importance, but also basic for computational group theory, where the group elements are data structures in a computer. Matrices are unnecessarily large structures, and part of this thesis is concerned with small and efficient representations of a large class of Coxeter groups (including most Coxeter groups that anyone ever payed any attention to.) The main contents of the thesis can be summarized as follows. • We prove that for all Coxeter graphs constructed from an n-path of unlabelled edges by adding a new labelled edge and a new vertex (sometimes two new edges and vertices), there is a permutational representation of the corresponding group. Group elements correspond to integer n-sequences and the nodes in the path generate all n! permutations. The extra node has a more complicated action, adding a certain quantity to some of the numbers.

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude de la transition liquide/solide amorphe. Cette transition se retrouve dans des systèmes thermiques (par exemple dans les verres moléculaires) ou athermiques (avec entre autres les milieux granulaires), à l’équilibre thermodynamique ou hors équilibre. Nous montrons que la transition de blocage et la transition vitreuse sont deux phénomènes distincts. Nous avons pour cela construit un modèle de sphères dures sur réseau de Bethe où ces deux transitions cohabitent. Nous introduisons également un modèle de verre structural avec désordre gelé qui possède un aspect champ moyen contrôlable. Cela nous permet de suivre l’évolution de la transition vitreuse dynamique entre le champ moyen et la dimension finie. Nous montrons également que ce modèle réalise en champ moyen une approximation de la dynamique comparable, mais pas équivalente, à la théorie de couplage de modes. Enfin, nous présentons quelques remarques théoriques portant sur l’analyse des modes normaux de suspensions colloïdales près de leur transition de blocage. pastel-00601408, version 1- 17 Jun 2011GLASS TRANSITION AND JAMMING TRANSITION: