Best Title Ever

Holy Cow!

pontiff — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:30:12 +0000

Holy Cow!

A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows
Authors: Jie Sun, Erik M. Bollt, Mason A. Porter, Marian S. Dawkins
Abstract: We formulate a mathematical model for daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise affine dynamical system. We analyze the properties of this bovine dynamical system representing the single animal and develop an exact integrative form as a discrete-time mapping. We then couple multiple cow "oscillators" together to study synchrony and cooperation in cattle herds. We comment on the relevant biology and discuss extensions of our model. With this abstract approach, we not only investigate equations with interesting dynamics but also develop interesting biological predictions. In particular, our model illustrates that it is possible for cows to synchronize \emph{less} when the coupling is increased.

Includes an udder disaster of a last line: "Milking these ideas as much as possible should prove to be very insightful from both theoretical and practical perspectives."

pontiff Thu, 05/13/2010 - 16:30

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Best Title Ever

First, assume a spherical cow ...

>Includes an udder disaster of a last line

What exactly is your beef with that line?

>>Includes an udder disaster of a last line

>What exactly is your beef with that line?

It's kind of cheesy, don't you think?

Dave,

The last line isn't the only one that has a pun. (Check out the second to last line, for example. Also see the acknowledgements and a few other places.) And all of the blogs have given me puns that never even occurred to me, so I already have a list of things to do when the referee reports come.

Cud you please explain how cows oscillate? My fodder always told me never to be afraid to ask questions.

Here are two *useful* facts, relating to the nonlinear problem "Persuade a herd of cows to leave the woods."

(1) You must identify the *boss* cow, and focus on persuading *her* to leave the woods ... all the other cows will follow her lead.

(2) Having identified the boss cow, approach her slowly, softly call "hoeh-bos, hoeh-bos" (this 40,000-year-old Indo-European phrase means "hello cow").

(3) Either gently shoo the boss cow out of the woods, or alternatively, bribe her with some salt.

This is the kind of information, that yah don't really need ... until yah *really* need it! :)

Must Resist Joke Blog Post Title

pontiff — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:55:12 +0000

Must Resist Joke Blog Post Title

arXiv:1003.1153:

Quantum Dating Market
Authors: O.G. Zabaleta, C.M. Arizmendi
Abstract: We consider the dating market decision problem under the quantum mechanics point of view. Quantum states whose associated amplitudes are modified by men strategies are used to represent women. Grover quantum search algorithm is used as a playing strategy. Success is more frequently obtained by playing quantum than playing classic.

pontiff Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:55

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Best Title Ever

quantum computing

Damn it. Why didn't I think of that? I always get beaten to the clever ideas...

This reminds me of a quant-ph article from a few years back, where the wave-particle duality was related to male and female properties. It must have been deleted, because I cannot find it anymore... :(

Is it still a threesome if it's a normalized superposition of two women?

It must have been deleted, because I cannot find it anymore.

But then you have to find two normal women who want to date a quantum game theorist...

"So, will we get together again?"

"Yes and no..."

Here is a date-related way to explain Bell's theorem and the EPR experiment by changing the setting of Mermin's RGB gedanken machine:

We have two identical twins, Bob and Bill. They live on opposite sides of the same city, and they only meet together infrequently. Bob and Bill are bland guys, and the only thing that changes about each of them from day to day is the color of their shirt: they each have the same set of three shirts, red / green / blue, and they choose their shirts independently from one another.

Suppose that Bob and Bill like to date Alice and Agatha, respectively, and that these two sisters meet for lunch each day and become synchronized in all their thoughts and actions. After lunch each sister drives to her own home, on the same side of the city as her dating partner, but the sisters remain perfectly correlated all afternoon and into the evening.

The dating ritual is as follows. Several nights a week each brother arrives at the front door of the home of his usual dating partner at precisely 7:00p.m., and depending on her mood and the color of his shirt, she either slaps him and shuts the door, or kisses him and invites him in.

When the brothers do occasionally get together for lunch, it is for one reason only: to compare the success of their dating strategies. The results are as follows:

I. If the two brothers are wearing the same shirt on a given night, they are either both kissed or they are both slapped.

II. If they are wearing different shirts, then their date outcomes are random, uncorrelated (half the time they get the same result while wearing different shirts, and the other half of the time they get opposite results).

If the brothers accept these I and II then Bell's theorem / Mermin's argument forces them to conclude that either (1) the sisters are communicating instantaneously at a distance, presumably by ESP, or (2) that there is no possible definite assignment of thoughts (local reality) to the sisters' heads which could yield the results I and II. (It sounds worse than it is, after all a good solution is to have the sisters thoughts be in an entangled superposition).

Childish QKD

pontiff — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:37:30 +0000

Childish QKD

Michael sends along an entry in the best title ever competition, this time a special baby Bacon edition:

The pulse wave arrival time (QKd interval) in normal children
The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 95, Issue 5, Pages 716-721
B. Bercu, R. Haupt, R. Johnsonbaugh, D. Rodbard

"In this household, young man, we will keep our quantum key distribution pulses above the rate of 1000 keys per second!"

pontiff Mon, 01/11/2010 - 14:37

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Best Title Ever

I live by Homer's gospel:
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

Seeing the Kingdom of God on the arXiv

pontiff — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:18:03 +0000

Seeing the Kingdom of God on the arXiv

A new entry in the best title every contest, arXiv:0907.4152:

Born Again
Authors: Don N. Page
Abstract: A simple proof is given that the probabilities of observations in a large universe are not given directly by Born's rule as the expectation values of projection operators in a global quantum state of the entire universe. An alternative procedure is proposed for constructing an averaged density matrix for a random small region of the universe and then calculating observational probabilities indirectly by Born's rule as conditional probabilities, conditioned upon the existence of an observation.

WWJD? Not quantum Born's rule, apparently.

pontiff Mon, 07/27/2009 - 12:18

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Best Title Ever

Off The Deep End

quantum

This needs to be taken in the context of his earlier paper, which was called "The Born Rule Dies", which could also be a candidate for best paper title. In fact, they work better as a pair.

Despite the cute titles, I must now become a nattering nabob on negativity because I think that these papers are fairly misleading. Firstly, we already know that the Born rule <\psi|P|\psi>, as Page states it, has to be replaced by the "generalized Born rule" Tr(E \rho) where E is a POVM element instead of a projector and \rho is a density matrix instead of a state vector. This can happen in quite mundane situations in the lab and has nothing to do with cosmology. All Don Page is saying is that, in a multiverse scenario, if you are not exactly sure which universe you are in then you have to mix the projection operators corresponding to different universes according to some probability distribution. Unsurprisingly, this gives you a POVM rather than a PVM, which is then supposed to be some sort of big crisis for the formalism of QM. It isn't. If it were, then all quantum information theorists ought to be going around proclaiming the death of the Born rule in dramatic sounding papers as well.

On the other hand, if you like, you can instead put all the uncertainty into the density operator by taking a mixture of all the different permutations of the universes in the state vector. Then you can calculate with projectors as usual. In fact, this solution seems preferable to me because you can trace out all the extraneous unobservable components of the multiverse and just work with a density operator for the local universe. However, for some rather vaguely specified region Don Page thinks that it might not be more elegant to do things this way. Perhaps it is because Page is some sort of an Everettian and so he is wedded to the idea of a pure state vector of the entire multiverse that is evolving unitarily. Well, in any case, both ways of calculating things are equivalent and neither of them is a radical change to any part of the quantum formalism.

The rest of the paper is just a discussion of what the probability weights should be for the different regions. This is really just the standard measure question that multiverse cosmologists are grappling with. In fact, it really has nothing to do with QM because the type of observations that cosmologists are interested in, e.g. temperature and distribution of the CMB, have outcomes that almost certainly correspond to branches of the state-vector that have already strongly decohered. Thus, the whole discussion could just be done with classical probability, which is what everyone except Don Page actually does. Bringing QM into the picture just muddies the waters.

Still, if there is one positive thing to be said about all this confusion it is that it nicely illustrates some of the more subtle points raised in this controversial Bayesian manifesto, particularly the idea that the assignment of operations to measurement devices is subjective.

We really don't know what Jesus would do, but we know what Don Page would do. Thus I think WWDNPD? is more appropriate.

I'm not sure what it says about me when, after seeing the line "Born Again" in the blog entry, my very first thought was "well of course, this will be about the Born rule..."

Domenic: be afraid, be very very afraid :)

Hey, Matt... thanks for the nice comment! I skimmed Page's paper, but not carefully enough to extract a lot from it, so your explication was very helpful.

Nothin' else to say; just wanted to give credit where credit is due.

I too thought Matt Liefer's comment was good ... and I will expand upon it as follows.

Page's article starts off along a generic path that manuy articles on quantum foundations embrace: Assuming that a complete physical theory of the universe is quantum, [a generic article on quantum foundations] would argue that it should contain at least the following elements: [generic attribute list follows]

We begin by noticing that these attribute list generically lacks mathematical depth (IMHO) ... typically the items in attribute list embody mathematical concepts that were well-known a full century ago.

Aren't there some new mathematical features we could include in the attribute list?

To help free ourselves from culture preconceptions, let's shift the focus by asking the isomorphic question: Assuming that a computational simulation is quantum, it should contain at least the following elements: (list follows)

Modern computational simulations typically include: (1) topological structure, (2) symplectic structure, (3) metric structure, (4) thermodynamic structure, (4) informatic structure .... it is notable that both classical and quantum simulation codes typically have all these structures ... in fact the boundary between classical and quantum simulations has become indistinct (in practice if not in the literature).

A mathematical feature that is conspicuously absent from modern simulation codes a global vector structure ... this is typically replaced by a (nonlinear) tensor network structure ... this saves enormously on computational effort, while not notably degrading the accuracy of the simulation.

Since dropping the global vector structure of Hilbert space works so well in practical computations, maybe the foundations-of-physics folks should try it too?

Thus, my main response to many foundations articles is that they regrettably cling to the least interesting---and least useful mathematically---aspect of quantum mechanics, namely its linear structure, instead of focussing on the most interesting (and most useful in practical calculations) mathematical aspects of quantum mechanics, namely, its symplectic, Riemannian, thermodynamic, and informatic stuctures.

... to continue the above thread, this non-vector approach to the foundations-of-physics has a very practical motivation.

At next month's Kavli Conference at Cornell, Molecular Imaging 2009: Routes to Three-Dimensional Imaging of Single Molecules, I'll be presenting a tutorial course on computational algorithms for large-scale spin simulations.

Here "large-scale" means 10^2 to 10^5 interacting spins ... so we have to grapple very seriously with the dilemma that (1) the spin dynamical interactions, and the measurement/observation of these spins in microscopy, are undeniably quantum processes, and yet (2) the dimensionality of a (linear) Hilbert space is infeasibly large for practical computations.

The tutorial will resolve this dilemma along lines modeled upon Chapter 4 of Frenkel and Smit's outstanding (IMHO) textbook Understanding Molecular Simulation: From Algorithms to Applications.

Where Frenkel and Smit simulate liquid systems, we will simulate spin systems (in effect regarding spins as a kind of condensed matter).

Of course, spin systems are quantum ... we know that there are many equivalent ways to describe quantum systems ... and so we are free to pick a way that maps as closely as possible onto existing simulation formalisms. And this turns out to be a formalism that is careful to respect the symplectic, Riemannian, causal, thermodynamic, and informatic aspects of "quantum goodness" --- necessarily sacrificing the linear Hilbert structure to do so.

It's pretty straightforward to transcribe the resulting quantum mechanical formalism into the mathematical language of bio-simulation science ... and straightforward to code-up the resulting algorithms ... and pretty easy to apply the code to simulate processes like dynamic spin polarization.

The effect is to blur the boundary between classical and quantum simulation. For example, it's perfectly feasible to pullback the quantum equations of motion onto low-dimension tensor-network manifolds ... in the resulting formalism the dynamics and measurement are fully quantum and yet the state-space is classical or semi-classical. It's highly enjoyable mathematically---and very efficient computationally---to factor the classical-quantum transition by these pullback methods!

For me, the main lesson-learned has been not to underestimate the mathematical sophistication of the biological simulation community ... because these biological folks have quietly begun to match, or even exceed, the physicists in the depth and sophistication of their understanding of physical processes.

... to continue the above thread, this non-vector approach to the foundations-of-physics has a very practical motivation.

The tutorial will resolve this dilemma along lines modeled upon Chapter 4 of Frenkel and Smit's outstanding (IMHO) textbook Understanding Molecular Simulation: From Algorithms to Applications.

Where Frenkel and Smit simulate liquid systems, we will simulate spin systems (in effect regarding spins as a kind of condensed matter).

... and finally (although Dave's filter may not pass the link given), here's what the quantum physics of Chapters 2 and 8 of Nielsen and Chuang looks like after being (1) transcribed into the symplectic language of Frenkel and Smit, and (2) optimized for efficient large-scale computation.

The resulting quantum formalism fits on a single page ... and looks very much like a classical symplectic formalism ... iff we agree to speak the mathematical language of modern simulation science.

For this reason, it turns out to be very much easier to learn/teach quantum physics as an add-on to simulation science, than it is to learn simulation science as an add-on to quantum physics.

Machine Gun?

pontiff — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:58:55 +0000

Machine Gun?

How did I miss this, an obvious entry into the best title ever contest:

arXiv:0810.2587
A photonic cluster state machine gun
Authors: Netanel H. Lindner, Terry Rudolph

Quick, duck for cover, Terry is shooting us with cluster states!

pontiff Mon, 11/24/2008 - 11:58

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Best Title Ever

quantum computing

I e-mailed him a comment about that when it came out and, in his reply (to something else), he ignored my comment. Isn't silence to be taken as a tacit warning when dealing with people with guns?

Hey Dave, a friend just pointed this out to me. I think my preprint http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9902010 had a better title, but actually none of mine even vauely compare in wittiness to some of the ones you've had here. The Usain Bolt analysis "Velocity dispersion amongst stars" is still a favourite...

Probably not legal in the US then......Maybe if they ratchet it down and make it a semi automatic....

Isn't a laser a machine gun for photons, in terms of lots of "bullets". Single photons on demand, a semi-auto is better actually.

Actually I guess he needs the photon semi-auto first.....

So, what is a "photonic cluster state" as opposed to just shooting out lots of photons at once, which is no big deal? (since the cool thing is to shoot 'em out one at a time.) Are they more in phase? Isn't there a limit on how well you can make a photon to be in phase with another one? (Not as easy as "splitting" the same photon, then interference is easy!) If more than one can be in good phase, then we can more easily play with genuine interference between two or more photons, not just entanglement games - ?

SOHCAHTOA

pontiff — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:36:12 +0000

SOHCAHTOA

A new entry in the best title every competition:

arXiv:0810.0827: Sine function with a cosine attitude
Authors: A. D. Alhaidari

Someday I promise that I will use the phrase "an exponential function with a logarithmic attitude."

pontiff Sun, 10/12/2008 - 14:36

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Best Title Ever

Lately, I kind of like the sci-fi feel of:

arXiv:0808.0839 (replaced) [ps, pdf, other]
Title: Phantom stars and topology change
Authors: Andrew DeBenedictis, Remo Garattini, Francisco S. N. Lobo
Comments: 19 pages, 13 figures. V2: Extended version of the paper accepted for publication in Physical Review D
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); Astrophysics (astro-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)

From the abstract;

The latter vanishes at the origin whereas the derivative of the former becomes zero there.

So the latter is the derivative of the former? Or more precisely; the asymptotically sine one has a derivative that's asymptotically cosine. Whodathunk?

Dickian Physics Abstract

pontiff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:24:28 +0000

Dickian Physics Abstract

An entry into the "best abstract ever" subcompetition of the "best title ever" competition, arXiv:0809.3979:

Counterfactual Quantum Cryptography
Authors: Tae-Gon Noh
Abstract: The 'quantum counterfactuality' is one of the most striking counterintuitive effects predicted by quantum mechanics. This manuscript shows that the counterfactual effect is not merely an interesting academic theme, but that it can also provide practical benefits in everyday life. Based on the quantum counterfactual effect, the task of a secret key distribution between two remote parties can be accomplished even when no particle carrying secret information is in fact transmitted. The secret key obtained in this way may be used for secure communications such as internet banking and military communications. This manuscript also shows that, in some cases, the mere possibility that an eavesdropper can commit a crime is sufficient to detect the eavesdropper, even though the crime is not in fact carried out. In a sense, part of the story of the SF film Minority Report seems plausible.

Emphasis mine. Horselover Fat would be proud.

pontiff Thu, 09/25/2008 - 05:24

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Best Title Ever

quantum computing

The Bar Scene

pontiff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:59:08 +0000

The Bar Scene

Someone at Caltech's PR office sure was having fun:

Caltech Astronomers Describe the Bar Scene at the Beginning of the Universe
PASADENA, Calif.--Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, has found that bars tripled in number over the past seven billion years, indicating that spiral galaxies evolve in shape.

Oh, I can tell you all about the bar scene near Caltech. Dive bar: The Colorado. Beer for graduate students: Lucky Baldwin's. Quantum margarita night: Amigos. Quantum beer night: drive five hours north to Albatross in Berkeley, CA.

pontiff Tue, 07/29/2008 - 13:59

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Astronomy

Best Title Ever

Caltech

Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.

You're forgetting the bar at the Athenaeum. As indicated by the logo on its matchbooks, it's the h-bar.

My wife and I could not convince Tommy Smothers that this was funny, when we bought him a drink there. I guess you have to have taken Quantum Mechnics...

I happened to be talking to Roger Penrose about this, a few nights ago in Tim Allen's little house: he has a nice bar with quantum themes and Roger and I wondered how much Tim could really understand of quantum mechanics.

Needless to say, when I saw Jon Stewart the next day, he had something clever to say about this. Unfortunately, my drinking binge last night with Charlie Sheen and Johnny Depp made me forget all of this again.

It's just cruel of you, John VP, to mention Johnny Depp in your parody. Everyone knows that I first spoke with Mr. Depp at the Memorial for Allen Ginsberg.

Mmmmmmmmmm, Johnny Depp! He could make me forget a lot of things even if I weren't drunk, heh heh heh. ;-)

My High School and middle school students are not impressed by my Feynman stories, nor those involving other Nobel laureates I know, nor my conversations with Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Castenada, or other 60s stars. Nor of Jimmy Carter or other relics of what, to them, in ancient history somewhere back around the Punic Wars. They are vaguely approving of my interactions with Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. They are impressed by my conversations with J. K. Rowling. But they go into ecstatic convulsions when I talk about meeting Johnny Depp. Their standard question: "Isn't he hot?"

"I'm a happily married man," I say. "But I do think that he's a great actor, deeply devoted to his craft, different in every role, and a perfect gentleman. Now, getting back to the rules for exponentiation, please get your homework ready to collect while I draw this picture on the whiteboard..."

I apologize to you, Jonathan Vos Post. Of course I knew you had met our mutual friend Johnny D. in 1997, years before I had the pleasure of having a conversation with him (Paris 2002, Sean P., etc.). I recall he dropped your name at some point.

Devilish Dice Games

pontiff — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:29:18 +0000

Devilish Dice Games

A new entry in the best title ever competition appeared last week on the arXiv:

arXiv:0806.4874
Why devil plays dice?
Authors: Andrzej Dragan
Abstract: Principle of Relativity involving all, not only subluminal, inertial frames
leads to the disturbance of causal laws in a way known from the fundamental
postulates of Quantum Theory. We show how quantum indeterminacy based on
complex probability amplitudes with superposition principle emerges from
Special Relativity.

I bet the devil would play a mean game of liar's dice.

pontiff Wed, 07/09/2008 - 07:29

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Best Title Ever

quantum

Do Dragan and arXiv pay royalties or license fees, or get a quantum qickback? Consulting wikipedia:

Devil Dice (Xi, pronounced "Sai", in Japan) is a video game for the PlayStation. It was originally created by developer Shift on the "homebrew" Yaroze platform, and later turned into a commercial game. Released in 1998, it is one of only a handful of games to make the leap from the Yaroze to commercial release. The game is a million-seller and a demo version was released as a PlayStation Classic game for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable (PSP) on November 7, 2007.

A PSP version, Xi Coliseum, was released in Japan on March 9, 2006. This version includes support for ad-hoc wireless play between up to five players.

The title has a number of sequels, including Devil Dice 2, also for the PlayStation, and Bombastic for the PlayStation 2.

I recommend the wireless play. Less chance of getting entangled with your enemy.

I like this title, especially tasty if you're fighting a cold or at a good deli.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.4213

Matzoh ball soup in spaces of constant curvature
Authors: Genqian Liu
Comments: 28 pages
Subjects: Analysis of PDEs (math.AP); Differential Geometry (math.DG)

In this paper, we generalize Magnanini-Sakaguchi's result from Euclidean space to spaces of constant curvature. More precisely, we show that if a conductor satisfying the exterior geodesic sphere condition in the space of constant curvature has initial temperature 0 and its boundary is kept at temperature 1 (at all times), if the thermal conductivity of the conductor is inverse of its metric, and if the conductor contains a proper sub-domain, satisfying the interior geodesic cone condition and having constant boundary temperature at each given time, then the conductor must be a geodesic ball. Moreover, we show similar result for the wave equations and the Schrodinger equations in spaces of constant curvature.

And then, for dessert:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.4450

Title: Candy-passing Games on General Graphs, I
Authors: Paul M. Kominers, Scott D. Kominers
Comments: 2 pages
Subjects: Combinatorics (math.CO); Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM)

We undertake the first study of the candy-passing game on arbitrary connected graphs. We obtain a general stabilization result which encompasses the first author's results (arXiv:0709.2156) for candy-passing games on n-cycles with at least 3n candies.

Sweet!

The Shrimp! They See Me Polarizations!

pontiff — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:41:33 +0000

The Shrimp! They See Me Polarizations!

A new entry in the best title ever competition: arXiv:0804.2162, "The secret world of shrimps: polarisation vision at its best", by Sonja Kleinlogel and Andrew G. White. Secret lives of shrimp? That sounds more like an expose on the secret drug habits of the Roloffs on the T.V. show Little People Big World, than the title for a scientific article. (Yes it is politically incorrect to call little people "shrimps." Having spent the first many years of my life being stared at for have a little person as a sister, however, I think you can cut me some slack, and just laugh :) ) Let's see if makes it by the title police.

The paper shows, by the way, that the shrimp Gonodactylus smithiare actually measures circular polarizations of light. This is apparently the first biological system to be known to measure circular polarizations. Even more fascinating, apparently the shrimp perform a full characterization of the Stokes parameters of light, and thus are able to take full advantage of polarized light in its environment. What exactly, the shrimp are doing with this information, however, is, of course, the real question. All I know is that if I were a member of a cannibalistic species, I'd probably want any advantage I could find over my fellow shrimp. But how, exactly would seeing Jeffery Dahmer's polarization help me escape his evil deads?

pontiff Thu, 04/24/2008 - 05:41

Tags

Best Title Ever

biology

Physics

An article in New Scientist today describes cuttlefish as being able to alter the polarisation of light reflected off them, using it to send "secret" messages to other cuttlefish. Have the shrimp cracked the cuttlefish code? - it sounds like a research project to me.

It's actually an interesting article. I have a student that is very interested in vision and I had him read it. It's a fascinating idea, title notwithstanding.

This was first shown in a Current Biology paper last month - I've blogged about it here. Alan - the mantis shrimps can see in the types of polarised light that the cuttlefish use and given that cephalopods often eat mantis shrimps, the use of circular polarisation allows them to communicate in ways that even cuttlefish can't see.

As a slight semantic point, mantis shrimps aren't true shrimps.

>This was first shown in a Current Biology paper last month

Hmm, not quite!

Ed, Dr Sonja Kleinlogel was an author on both articles, I'm her co-author on the arXiv paper. The article in Current Biology showed that only the males in a different species of mantis shrimp could see circular polarisation vision, and so considered it was being used for shrimp secret sexual signalling. I think of this as the "prawnographic" hypothesis. :)

It can't be the whole story in our case though. We found the same structures in the eyes of both male and female mantis shrimps, and yet neither have circularly polarised markings on their bodies. Each eye measures the six polarisation components that are precisely required for optimal polarisation vision. In fact, the physics we used to understand what was going on is the same physics that we use in quantum computing for optimal storage of information.

To quote Sonja: "It is this unique talent to measure linear and circular polarisation simultaneously which presents a completely new concept of polarisation vision. There wouldn't be much point in only being able to see circular polarisation as it is extremely rare in nature. Even the polarized light reflected from some shrimp's bodies is only weakly circular polarised and often contains more linear polarisation than circular."