Many arguments have been advanced for the view that “Why be moral?” is a pseudo-question. In this paper I address one of the most widely known and influential of them, one that comes from John Hospers and J. C. Thornton. I do so partly because, strangely, an important phase of that argument has escaped close attention. It warrants such attention because, firstly, not only is it important to the...

A theoretical investigation for implementing a scheme of forced evaporative cooling in radio-frequency rf adiabatic potentials is presented. Supposing the atoms to be trapped in a combination of a dc magnetic field and a rf field at frequency 1, the cooling procedure is facilitated using a second rf source at frequency 2. This second rf field produces a controlled coupling between the spin stat...

We present a theory of topological edge states in onedimensional resonant photonic crystals with compound unit cell. We demonstrate how the structure, despite being onedimensional, can be characterized by topological indices. Contrary to conventional electronic topological states the modes under consideration are radiative, i.e., they decay in time due to the light escape through the structure ...

Time-frequency analysis plays a significant role in seismic data processing and interpretation. Complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition decomposes a seismic signal into a sum of oscillatory components, with guaranteed positive and smoothly varying instantaneous frequencies. Analysis on synthetic and real data demonstrates that this method promises higher spectral-spatial resolution than ...

We have investigated macroscopic quantum tunneling in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ intrinsic Josephson junctions at millikelvin temperatures using microwave irradiation. Measurements show that the escape rate for uniformly switching stacks of N junctions is about N times higher than that of a single junction having the same plasma frequency. We argue that this gigantic enhancement of macroscopic quantum tun...

We consider an initially bound quantum particle subject to an external time-dependent field. When the external field is large, the particle shows a tendency to repeatedly return to its initial state, irrespective of whether the frequency of the field is sufficient for escape from the well. These recurrences, which are absent in a classical calculation, arise from the system evolving primarily l...

We report on the experimental observation of the phase angle of a particle escaping over a periodically modulated potential barrier. Optical tweezers and back-focal plane position detection were used to record particle trajectories in the entire double-well potential. These measurements provide a sensitive test of theories proposed in the past decade of escape driven by random thermal noise fro...