arXiv subjects

Aik Hui Chan

Publications and source records attributed to Aik Hui Chan.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2015

Optical Intensity Interferometry through Atmospheric Turbulence

Conventional ground-based astronomical observations suffer from image distortion due to atmospheric turbulence. This can be minimized by choosing suitable geographic locations or adaptive optical techniques, and avoided altogether by using orbital platforms outside the atmosphere. One of the promises of optical intensity interferometry is its independence from atmospherically induced phase fluctuations. By performing narrowband spectral filtering on sunlight and conducting temporal intensity interferometry using actively quenched avalanche photon detectors (APDs), the Solar $g^{(2)}(τ)$ signature was directly measured. We observe an averaged photon bunching signal of $g^{(2)}(τ) = 1.693 \pm 0.003$ from the Sun, consistently throughout the day despite fluctuating weather conditions, cloud cover and elevation angle. This demonstrates the robustness of the intensity interferometry technique against atmospheric turbulence and opto-mechanical instabilities, and the feasibility to implement measurement schemes with both large baselines and long integration times.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

Topic-adjusted visibility metric for scientific articles

Measuring the impact of scientific articles is important for evaluating the research output of individual scientists, academic institutions and journals. While citations are raw data for constructing impact measures, there exist biases and potential issues if factors affecting citation patterns are not properly accounted for. In this work, we address the problem of field variation and introduce an article level metric useful for evaluating individual articles' visibility. This measure derives from joint probabilistic modeling of the content in the articles and the citations amongst them using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and the mixed membership stochastic blockmodel (MMSB). Our proposed model provides a visibility metric for individual articles adjusted for field variation in citation rates, a structural understanding of citation behavior in different fields, and article recommendations which take into account article visibility and citation patterns. We develop an efficient algorithm for model fitting using variational methods. To scale up to large networks, we develop an online variant using stochastic gradient methods and case-control likelihood approximation. We apply our methods to the benchmark KDD Cup 2003 dataset with approximately 30,000 high energy physics papers.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2014

Measuring Temporal Photon Bunching in Blackbody Radiation

Light from thermal black body radiators such as stars exhibits photon bunching behaviour at sufficiently short timescales. However, with available detector bandwidths, this bunching signal is difficult to be directly used for intensity interferometry with sufficient statistics in astronomy. Here we present an experimental technique to increase the photon bunching signal in blackbody radiation via spectral filtering of the light source. Our measurements reveal strong temporal photon bunching in light from blackbody radiation, including the Sun. Such filtering techniques may revive the interest in intensity interferometry as a tool in astronomy.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

The robustness of the galaxy distribution function to effects of merging and evolution

We examine the evolution of the spatial counts-in-cells distribution of galaxies and show that the form of the galaxy distribution function does not change significantly as galaxies merge and evolve. In particular, bound merging pairs follow a similar distribution to that of individual galaxies. From the adiabatic expansion of the universe we show how clustering, expansion and galaxy mergers affect the clustering parameter b. We also predict the evolution of b with respect to redshift.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

Friedberg-Lee symmetry and tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing in the inverse seesaw mechanism

The inverse seesaw mechanism with three pairs of gauge-singlet neutrinos offers a natural interpretation of the tiny masses of three active neutrinos at the TeV scale. We combine this picture with the newly-proposed Friedberg-Lee (FL) symmetry in order to understand the observed pattern of neutrino mixing. We show that the FL symmetry requires only two pairs of the gauge-singlet neutrinos to be massive, implying that one active neutrino must be massless. We propose a phenomenological ansatz with broken FL symmetry and exact μ-τsymmetry in the gauge-singlet neutrino sector and obtain the tri-bimaximal neutrino mixing pattern by means of the inverse seesaw relation. We demonstrate that non-unitary corrections to this result are possible to reach the percent level and a soft breaking of μ-τsymmetry can give rise to CP violation in such a TeV-scale seesaw scenario.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Deviations from Tri-bimaximal Neutrino Mixing in Type-II Seesaw and Leptogenesis

Current experimental data allow the zero value for one neutrino mass, either m_1 = 0 or m_3 = 0. This observation implies that a realistic neutrino mass texture can be established by starting from the limit (a) m_1 = m_2 = 0 and m_3 \neq 0 or (b) m_1 = m_2 \neq 0 and m_3 = 0. In both cases, we may introduce a particular perturbation which ensures the resultant neutrino mixing matrix to be the tri-bimaximal mixing pattern or its viable variations with all entries being formed from small integers and their square roots. We find that it is natural to incorporate this kind of neutrino mass matrix in the minimal Type-II seesaw model with only one heavy right-handed Majorana neutrino N in addition to the SU(2)_L Higgs triplet Δ_L. We show that it is possible to account for the cosmological baryon number asymmetry in the m_3 =0 case via thermal leptogenesis, in which the one-loop vertex correction to N decays is mediated by Δ_L and the CP-violating asymmetry of N decays is attributed to the electron flavor.

hep-ph↗

arXiv1995

Measurables of $CP$ Violation in $B_d\to D^0_{CP}K_S$ at a $B$-meson Factory

In the context of the standard electroweak model, we emphasize that $B_d\rightarrow D^0_{CP}K_S$ ($D^0_{CP}$ denotes a $CP$ eigenstate of $D^0$ or $\bar{D}^0$) can compete with $B_d\rightarrow π^+π^-$ in studying $CP$ violation and probing the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity triangle. We discuss the measurables of direct and indirect $CP$ asymmetries in $B^0_d$ vs $\bar{B}^0_d\rightarrow D^0_{CP}K_S$ under the circumstance of an asymmetric $B$-meson factory running on the $Υ(4S)$ resonance, and show that both the weak and strong phases are experimentally determinable even in the presence of unknown final-state interactions.

hep-ex↗