arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Janusz Smulko.
We discuss some of the fundamental practical limitations of the Fluctuation-Enhanced Sensing of odors and gases. We address resolution, measurement speed, reproducibility, memory and other problems such as humidity. Various techniques and ideas are presented to overcome these problems. Circuit solutions are also discussed.
We briefly address Landauer's Principle and some related issues in thermal demons. We show that an error-free Turing computer works in the zero-entropy limit, which proves Landauer's derivation incorrect. To have a physical logic gate, memory or information-engine, a few essential components necessary for the operation of these devices are often neglected, such as various aspects of control, damping and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. We also point out that bit erasure is typically not needed or used for the functioning of computers or engines (except for secure erasure).
A recent paper by Gunn-Allison-Abbott (GAA) [L.J. Gunn et al., Scientific Reports 4 (2014) 6461] argued that the Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) secure key exchange system could experience a severe information leak. Here we refute their results and demonstrate that GAA's arguments ensue from a serious design flaw in their system. Specifically, an attenuator broke the single Kirchhoff-loop into two coupled loops, which is an incorrect operation since the single loop is essential for the security in the KLJN system, and hence GAA's asserted information leak is trivial. Another consequence is that a fully defended KLJN system would not be able to function due to its built-in current-comparison defense against active (invasive) attacks. In this paper we crack GAA's scheme via an elementary current comparison attack which yields negligible error probability for Eve even without averaging over the correlation time of the noise.
We survey and show our earlier results about three different ways of fluctuation-enhanced sensing of bio agent, the phage-based method for bacterium detection published earlier; sensing and evaluating the odors of microbes; and spectral and amplitude distribution analysis of noise in light scattering to identify spores based on their diffusion coefficient.
Information theoretical tools are applied for the study of the sensitivity and selectivity enhancements of resistive fluctuation-enhanced sensors. General considerations are given for the upper limit of selectivity enhancement. The signal-to-noise ratio and information channel capacity of fluctuation-enhanced chemical sensors is compared to that of classical sensors providing a single output. The considerations are done at the generic level with a few concrete examples and include the estimation of scaling relations between the sensor size, speed of measurements, sampling rate, measurement time, signal power and noise power.