Noncontact measurement of liquid-surface properties with knife-edge electric field tweezers technique.

We have developed a technique for the simultaneous measurement of the surface tension and the viscosity of a liquid in a noncontact manner. In this method, a small linear deformation of the liquid surface is induced by a local dielectric force that is brought about by a knife-edge electrode. The surface tension and the viscosity are obtained from the shape of the induced meniscus and from the dynamic response of the surface, respectively.

Measurement of the skin layer in the drying process of a polymer solution.

When a polymer solution is dried in air, a polymer-concentrated region, called a "skin" layer, often appears near the surface. In this paper, an experimental method is proposed for detecting the initial process of the formation of the skin layer. An electric field is applied on the surface of polymer solutions by a wedge-type "electric field tweezers," and the dynamic response of the surface profile is measured by an optical lever technique.

Demonstration of unconditional one-way quantum computations for continuous variables.

One-way quantum computation is a very promising candidate to fulfill the capabilities of quantum information processing. Here we demonstrate an important set of unitary operations for continuous variables using a linear cluster state of four entangled optical modes. These operations are performed in a fully measurement-controlled and completely unconditional fashion.