We present a new method to observe direct experimental evidence of Jaynes-Cummings nonlinearities in a strongly dissipative cavity quantum electrodynamics system, where large losses compete with the strong light-matter interaction. This is a highly topical problem, particularly for quantum dots in microcavities where transitions from higher rungs of the Jaynes-Cummings ladder remain to be evidenced explicitly. We compare coherent and incoherent excitations of the system and find that resonant excitation of the detuned emitter make it possible to unambiguously evidence few photon quantum nonlinearities in currently available experimental systems.

In industrial settings, X-ray computed tomography scans are a common tool for inspection of objects. Often the object can not be imaged using standard circular or helical trajectories because of constraints in space or time. Compared to medical applications the variance in size and materials is much larger. Adapting the acquisition trajectory to the object is beneficial and sometimes inevitable. There are currently no sophisticated methods for this adoption. Typically the operator places the object according to his best knowledge. We propose a detectability index based optimization algorithm which determines the scan trajectory on the basis of a CAD-model of the object. The detectability index is computed solely from simulated projections for multiple user defined features. By adapting the features the algorithm is adapted to different imaging tasks. Performance of simulated and measured data was qualitatively and quantitatively assessed.The results illustrate that our algorithm not only allows more accurate detection of features, but also delivers images with high overall quality in comparison to standard trajectory reconstructions. This work enables to reduce the number of projections and in consequence scan time by introducing an optimization algorithm to compose an object specific trajectory.X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is a widely used tool for inspection in industrial settings, in particular for nondestructive testing (NDT). It is used, for example, for dimensional metrology and defect detection. Apart from the non-existing radiation exposure issue, CT in NDT has several differences when compared to medical CT, such as large variations in object-size and attenuation. One common major issue is the importance of reduced scan times. This facilitates the expansion of industrial CT application from the laboratory to the factory with a full test coverage in the production line.Currently, industrial CT almost exclusively uses standard circular or helical trajectories in combination with filtered backprojection (FBP) reconstruction algorithms. The increased availability of high performance computing hardware, for example GPUs 1,2 , facilitates the revival of iterative reconstruction algorithms, which inherently support arbitrary trajectories. To exploit the flexibility of iterative reconstruction methods, it makes sense to move towards trajectories that include "valuable" acquisition poses (position and orientation of the source/detector arrangement, often also called projections) and exclude "less valuable" acquisition poses. In Varga et al. 3 it was demonstrated that not all acquisition poses have the same value for the reconstructed image. For example, for reconstruction of an edge at least one X-ray has to be tangential to the edge 4 . Furthermore, image quality can be severely reduced by artifacts due to beam-hardening and high attenuation materials. Typically it is not possible to avoid such artifacts completely, but one can choose a trajectory in such a way that the region of interest is not (or less) aff...

X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an important and widespread inspection technique in industrial non-destructive testing. However, large-sized and heavily absorbing objects cause artifacts due to either the lack of penetration of the specimen in specific directions or by having data from only a limited angular range of views. In such cases, valuable information about the specimen is not revealed by the CT measurements alone. Further imaging modalities, such as optical scanning and ultrasonic testing, are able to provide data (such as an edge map) that are complementary to the CT acquisition. In this paper, a superiorization approach (a newly developed method for constrained optimization) is used to incorporate the complementary data into the CT reconstruction; this allows precise localization of edges that are not resolvable from the CT data by itself. Superiorization, as presented in this paper, exploits the fact that the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART), often used for CT reconstruction, is resilient to perturbations; i.e., it can be modified to produce an output that is as consistent with the CT measurements as the output of unmodified SART, but is more consistent with the complementary data. The application of this superiorized SART method to measured data of a turbine blade demonstrates a clear improvement in the quality of the reconstructed image.

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In industrial non-destructive testing, x-ray computed tomography (CT) and ultrasonic pulse-echo testing play an important role in the investigation of large-scale samples. One major artifact arises in CT, when the x-ray absorption in specific directions is too intense, so that the material cannot be fully penetrated. Due to different physical interaction principles, ultrasonic imaging is able to show features which are not visible in the CT image. In this contribution, we present a novel fusion method for the complementary data provided by x-ray CT and ultrasonic testing. The ultrasonic data are obtained by an adapted synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) and complement the missing edge information in the CT image. Subsequently, the full edge map is incorporated as a priori information in a modified simultaneous iterative reconstruction method (SIRT) and allows a significant reduction of artifacts in the CT image.

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We present a fusion methodology between neutron and X-ray computed tomography (CT). On the one hand, the inspection by X-ray CT of a wide class of multimaterials in non-destructive testing applications suffers from limited information of object features. On the other hand, neutron imaging can provide complementary data in such a way that the combination of both data sets fully characterizes the object. In this contribution, a novel data fusion procedure, called Fusion Regularized Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique, is developed where the X-ray reconstruction is modified to fulfill the available data from the imaging with neutrons. The experiments, which were obtained from an aluminum profile containing a steel screw, and attached carbon fiber plates demonstrate that the image quality in CT can be significantly improved when the proposed fusion method is used. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.