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In the whole space $R^d$, $d\ge 2$, we study homogenization of a divergence form elliptic fourth-order operator $A_\varepsilon$ with measurable $\varepsilon$-periodic coefficients, where $\varepsilon$ is a small parameter. For the resolvent $(A_\varepsilon+1)^{-1}$, acting as an operator from $L^2$ to $H^2$, we find an approximation with remainder term of order $O(\varepsilon^2)$ as $\varepsilon$ tends to $0$. Relying on this result, we construct the resolvent approximation with remainder of order $O(\varepsilon^3)$ in the operator $L^2$-norm. We employ two-scale expansions that involve smoothing. | Improved approximations of resolvents in homogenization of fourth-order operators with periodic coefficients |
We study experimentally and theoretically the transfer of population between the ground state and the second excited state in a transmon circuit by the use of superadiabatic stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (saSTIRAP). We show that the transfer is remarkably resilient against variations in the amplitudes of the pulses (scaling errors), thus demostrating that the superadiabatic process inherits certain robustness features from the adiabatic one. In particular, we put in evidence a new plateau that appears at high values of the counterdiabatic pulse strength, which goes beyond the usual framework of saSTIRAP. | Experimental demonstration of robustness under scaling errors for superadiabatic population transfer in a superconducting circuit |
The plants, Althaea officinalis, Tilia cordata and Psidium guaja have been used traditionally to treat respiratory infection symptoms. Flowers of A. officinalis and leaves of T. cordata and P. guaja have been used to treat cough, sore throat, catarrh, oral and pharyngeal mucosa irritation. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the antibacterial and antibiofilm effects of these plants individually as well as in combination, as a formula against respiratory infections causing pathogens. The tested pathogens were Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamase producing Escherichia coli (ESBL), Beta-Lactamase producing Escherichia coli (BL), Beta-Lactamase producing Klebsiella pneumoniae (BL), Beta-Lactamase producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa (BL), Enterobacter cloacae, and Beta-Lactamase producing Staphylococcus aureus (BL). The tested plants were extracted using ethanol and then fractionated using different polarity solvents (hexane, ethyl acetate and water). Disc diffusion and microdilution (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) methods were used to evaluate the antibacterial activity while the antibiofilm activity was tested using crystal violet assay. The results showed that A. officinalis and T. cordata extracts and fractions exhibited weak antibacterial activity having MIC values ranged from 6.25 to 12.5 mg/mL. P. guaja exhibited moderate antibacterial activity with MIC values ranged from 6.25 to 1.56 mg/mL. Combination between these plants extracts and fractions in equal proportion provides stronger antibacterial (with MIC values ranged from 6.25 to 0.8 mg/mL) and antibiofilm activities (MBIC50 was 0.2 mg/mL). Therefore, this study provides a valuable scientific knowledge to support the use of plants in combination rather than individually. | Antibacterial and antibiofilm activities of a traditional herbal formula against respiratory infection causing bacteria |
Within the future Global Information Grid, complex massively interconnected systems, isolated defense vehicles, sensors and effectors, and infrastructures and systems demanding extremely low failure rates, to which human security operators cannot have an easy access and cannot deliver fast enough reactions to cyber-attacks, need an active, autonomous and intelligent cyber defense. Multi Agent Systems for Cyber Defense may provide an answer to this requirement. This paper presents the concept and architecture of an Autonomous Intelligent Cyber defense Agent (AICA). First, we describe the rationale of the AICA concept. Secondly, we explain the methodology and purpose that drive the definition of the AICA Reference Architecture (AICARA) by NATO's IST-152 Research and Technology Group. Thirdly, we review some of the main features and challenges of Multi Autonomous Intelligent Cyber defense Agent (MAICA). Fourthly, we depict the initially assumed AICA Reference Architecture. Then we present one of our preliminary research issues, assumptions and ideas. Finally, we present the future lines of research that will help develop and test the AICA / MAICA concept. | Towards an Active, Autonomous and Intelligent Cyber Defense of Military Systems: the NATO AICA Reference Architecture |
We discuss a theoretical model for the cooperative binding dynamics of tropomyosin to actin filaments. Tropomyosin binds to actin by occupying seven consecutive monomers. The model includes a strong attraction between attached tropomyosin molecules. We start with an empty lattice and show that the binding goes through several stages. The first stage represents fast initial binding and leaves many small vacancies between blocks of bound molecules. In the second stage the vacancies annihilate slowly as tropomyosin molecules detach and re-attach. Finally the system approaches equilibrium. Using a grain-growth model and a diffusion-coagulation model we give analytical approximations for the vacancy density in all regimes. | The binding dynamics of tropomyosin on actin |
A topological measure on a locally compact space is a set function on open and closed subsets which is finitely additive on the collection of open and compact sets, inner regular on open sets, and outer regular on closed sets. Almost all works devoted to topological measures, corresponding non-linear functionals, and their applications deal with compact spaces. The present paper is one in a series that investigates topological measures and corresponding non-linear functionals on locally compact spaces. Here we examine solid and semi-solid sets on a locally compact space. We then give a method of constructing topological measures from solid-set functions on a locally compact, connected, locally connected space. The paper gives examples of finite and infinite topological measures on locally compact, non-compact spaces and presents an easy way to generate topological measures on spaces whose one-point compactification has genus 0 from existing examples of topological measures on compact spaces. | Solid-set functions and topological measures on locally compact spaces |
We introduce tensor numerical techniques for solving optimal control problems constrained by elliptic operators in $\mathbb{R}^d$, $d=2,3$, with variable coefficients, which can be represented in a low rank separable form. We construct a preconditioned iterative method with an adaptive rank truncation for solving the equation for the control function, governed by a sum of the elliptic operator and its inverse $M=A + A^{-1}$, both discretized over large $n^{\otimes d}$, $d=2,3$, spatial grids. Two basic solution schemes are proposed and analyzed. In the first approach, one solves iteratively the initial linear system of equations with the matrix $M$ such that the matrix vector multiplication with the elliptic operator inverse, $y=A^{-1} u,$ is performed as an embedded iteration by using a rank-structured solver for the equation of the form $A y=u$. The second numerical scheme avoids the embedded iteration by reducing the initial equation to an equivalent one with the polynomial system matrix of the form $A^2 +I$. For both schemes, a low Kronecker rank spectrally equivalent preconditioner is constructed by using the corresponding matrix valued function of the anisotropic Laplacian diagonalized in the Fourier basis. Numerical tests for control problems in 2D setting confirm the linear-quadratic complexity scaling of the proposed method in the univariate grid size $n$. Further, we numerically demonstrate that for our low rank solution method, a cascadic multigrid approach reduces the number of PCG iterations considerably, however the total CPU time remains merely the same as for the unigrid iteration. | Tensor numerical method for optimal control problems constrained by an elliptic operator with general rank-structured coefficients |
We report on electrical spin injection measurements on MWNTs . We use a ferromagnetic alloy Pd$_{1-x}$Ni$_{x}$ with x $\approx$ 0.7 which allows to obtain devices with resistances as low as 5.6 $k\Omega$ at 300 $K$. The yield of device resistances below 100 $k\Omega$, at 300 $K$, is around 50%. We measure at 2 $K$ a hysteretic magneto-resistance due to the magnetization reversal of the ferromagnetic leads. The relative difference between the resistance in the antiparallel (AP) orientation and the parallel (P) orientation is about 2%. | Electrical Spin Injection in Multi-Wall carbon NanoTubes with transparent ferromagnetic contacts |
We present n-CPS - a generalisation of the recent state-of-the-art cross pseudo supervision (CPS) approach for the task of semi-supervised semantic segmentation. In n-CPS, there are n simultaneously trained subnetworks that learn from each other through one-hot encoding perturbation and consistency regularisation. We also show that ensembling techniques applied to subnetworks outputs can significantly improve the performance. To the best of our knowledge, n-CPS paired with CutMix outperforms CPS and sets the new state-of-the-art for Pascal VOC 2012 with (1/16, 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 supervised regimes) and Cityscapes (1/16 supervised). | n-CPS: Generalising Cross Pseudo Supervision to n Networks for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation |
We consider the energy difference restricted to a finite volume for certain pairs of incongruent ground states (if they exist) in the d-dimensional Edwards-Anderson (EA) Ising spin glass at zero temperature. We prove that the variance of this quantity with respect to the couplings grows at least proportionally to the volume in any dimension greater than or equal to two. An essential aspect of our result is the use of the excitation metastate. As an illustration of potential applications, we use this result to restrict the possible structure of spin glass ground states in two dimensions. | Zero-Temperature Fluctuations in Short-Range Spin Glasses |
The surface impedance of Nb/CuMn (superconducting/spin-glass) bilayers has been measured at 10 GHz with the parallel plate resonator technique to obtain information about the exotic behavior of the order parameter in superconducting/magnetic proximity systems. The data strongly differs from the superconducting/normal-metal case, showing the magnetic nature of the CuMn layer, which acts as a weak ferromagnet. The results are described in the framework of two models for the electrodynamics of superconducting/ferromagnetic (S/M) bilayers characterized by a proximity-coupling length scale which is independent of temperature. | Microwave surface impedance of proximity-coupled superconducting (Nb) / spin-glass (CuMn) bilayers |
By the density of a finite graph we mean its average vertex degree. For an $m$-generated group, the density of its Cayley graph in a given set of generators, is the supremum of densities taken over all its finite subgraphs. It is known that a group with $m$ generators is amenable iff the density of the corresponding Cayley graph equals $2m$. A famous problem on the amenability of R.\,Thompson's group $F$ is still open. What is known due to the result by Belk and Brown, is that the density of its Cayley graph in the standard set of group generators $\{x_0,x_1\}$, is at least $3.5$. This estimate has not been exceeded so far. For the set of symmetric generators $S=\{x_1,\bar{x}_1\}$, where $\bar{x}_1=x_1x_0^{-1}$, the same example gave the estimate only $3$. There was a conjecture that for this generating set the equality holds. If so, $F$ would be non-amenable, and the symmetric generating set had doubling property. This means that for any finite set $X\subset F$, the inequality $|S^{\pm1}X|\ge2|X|$ holds. In this paper we disprove this conjecture showing that the density of the Cayley graph of $F$ in symmetric generators $S$ strictly exceeds $3$. Moreover, we show that even larger generating set $S_0=\{x_0,x_1,\bar{x}_1\}$ does not have doubling property. | On the density of Cayley graphs of R.Thompson's group $F$ in symmetric generators |
Surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms (SAEAs) hold significant importance in resolving expensive optimization problems~(EOPs). Extensive efforts have been devoted to improving the efficacy of SAEAs through the development of proficient model-assisted selection methods. However, generating high-quality solutions is a prerequisite for selection. The fundamental paradigm of evaluating a limited number of solutions in each generation within SAEAs reduces the variance of adjacent populations, thus impacting the quality of offspring solutions. This is a frequently encountered issue, yet it has not gained widespread attention. This paper presents a framework using unevaluated solutions to enhance the efficiency of SAEAs. The surrogate model is employed to identify high-quality solutions for direct generation of new solutions without evaluation. To ensure dependable selection, we have introduced two tailored relation models for the selection of the optimal solution and the unevaluated population. A comprehensive experimental analysis is performed on two test suites, which showcases the superiority of the relation model over regression and classification models in the selection phase. Furthermore, the surrogate-selected unevaluated solutions with high potential have been shown to significantly enhance the efficiency of the algorithm. | Enhancing SAEAs with Unevaluated Solutions: A Case Study of Relation Model for Expensive Optimization |
The FTTH (Fiber To The Home) market currently needs new network maintenance technologies that can, economically and effectively, cope with massive fiber plants. However, operating these networks requires adequate means for an effective monitoring cost. Especially for troubleshooting faults that are associated with the possibility of remote identification of fiber breaks, which may exist in the network. Optical Time Domain Reflectometry (OTDR) techniques are widely used in point-to-point optical network topologies. Nevertheless, it has major limitations in tree-structured PONs (Passive Optical Networks), where all different branches backscatter the light in just one conventional OTDR trace with combined signals arriving on the OLT (Optical Line Terminal) side. Furthermore, passive power splitters used in FTTH networks input large attenuation, impoverishing the reflected signal. This makes the identification of the very branch affected by the problem practically impossible, when considering conventional analyses. The use of constraint-based techniques have been applied in a large amount of applications for Engineering Design, where the duties imposed for graphics and equations constraints result in valued features to CAD/CAE software capabilities. Currently, it provides a faster decision making capacity for engineers. This work applies the constraint based approach along with a Differential Evolutionary Algorithm to separate the superimposed OTDR signals, after the splitters of a FTTH Passive Optical Networks. This research introduces a new set of algorithms performing a coupling to an Optical Network (ON) CAD Design with its correspondent OTDR measurement signal, considering its geographical distribution branches of different lengths after the splitter. Results of this work are presented in a FTTN (Fiber To The Node) prototype arrangement, using a 1:8 passive power splitter. | Applying a Differential Evolutionary Algorithm to a Constraint-based System to support Separation of OTDR Superimposed Signal after Passive Optical Network Splitters |
Clustering measurements of obscured and unobscured quasars show that obscured quasars reside in more massive dark matter halos than their unobscured counterparts. These results are inconsistent with simple unified (torus) scenarios, but might be explained by models in which the distribution of obscuring material depends on Eddington ratio or galaxy stellar mass. We test these possibilities by constructing simple physical models to compare to observed AGN populations. We find that previously observed relationships between obscuration and Eddington ratio or stellar mass are not sufficient reproduce the observed quasar clustering results ($\langle \log M_{\text{halo}}/M_{\odot} \rangle = 12.94 ^{+ 0.10}_{- 0.11}$ and $\langle \log M_{\text{halo}}/M_{\odot} \rangle = 12.49 ^{+ 0.08}_{- 0.08}$ for obscured and unobscured populations, respectively) while maintaining the observed fraction of obscured quasars (30-65$\%$). This work suggests that evolutionary models, in which obscuration evolves on the typical timescale for black hole growth, are necessary to understand the observed clustering of mid-IR selected quasars. | Physical Models for the Clustering of Obscured and Unobscured Quasars |
We study a novel problem of sponsored search (SS) for E-Commerce platforms: how we can attract query users to click product advertisements (ads) by presenting them features of products that attract them. This not only benefits merchants and the platform, but also improves user experience. The problem is challenging due to the following reasons: (1) We need to carefully manipulate the ad content without affecting user search experience. (2) It is difficult to obtain users' explicit feedback of their preference in product features. (3) Nowadays, a great portion of the search traffic in E-Commerce platforms is from their mobile apps (e.g., nearly 90% in Taobao). The situation would get worse in the mobile setting due to limited space. We are focused on the mobile setting and propose to manipulate ad titles by adding a few selling point keywords (SPs) to attract query users. We model it as a personalized attractive SP prediction problem and carry out both large-scale offline evaluation and online A/B tests in Taobao. The contributions include: (1) We explore various exhibition schemes of SPs. (2) We propose a surrogate of user explicit feedback for SP preference. (3) We also explore multi-task learning and various additional features to boost the performance. A variant of our best model has already been deployed in Taobao, leading to a 2% increase in revenue per thousand impressions and an opt-out rate of merchants less than 4%. | Personalized Attraction Enhanced Sponsored Search with Multi-task Learning |
We study the evolution of the stellar and dark matter components in a galaxy cluster of $10^{15} \, \rm{M_{\odot}}$ from $z=3$ to the present epoch using the high-resolution collisionless simulations of Ruszkowski & Springel (2009). At $z=3$ the dominant progenitor halos were populated with spherical model galaxies with and without accounting for adiabatic contraction. We apply a weighting scheme which allows us to change the relative amount of dark and stellar material assigned to each simulation particle in order to produce luminous properties which agree better with abundance matching arguments and observed bulge sizes at $z=3$. This permits the study of the effect of initial compactness on the evolution of the mass-size relation. We find that for more compact initial stellar distributions the size of the final Brightest Cluster Galaxy grows with mass according to $r\propto M^{2}$, whereas for more extended initial distributions, $r\propto M$. Our results show that collisionless mergers in a cosmological context can reduce the strength of inner dark matter cusps with changes in logarithmic slope of 0.3 to 0.5 at fixed radius. Shallow cusps such as those found recently in several strong lensing clusters thus do not necessarily conflict with CDM, but may rather reflect on the initial structure of the progenitor galaxies, which was shaped at high redshift by their formation process. | Shallow Dark Matter Cusps in Galaxy Clusters |
We present stable de Sitter solutions of $\mathcal{N} = 1$ supergravity in a geometric type IIB duality frame with the addition of non-perturbative contributions. Contrary to the standard approach, we retain the moduli dependence of both the tree level superpotential and its non-perturbative contribution. This provides the possibility for a single-step stabilisation of all moduli simultaneously in a de Sitter vacuum. Using a genetic algorithm we find explicit solutions with different features. | De Sitter Vacua from Non-perturbative Flux Compactifications |
Wet-chemical syntheses for quasi two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as promising methods for straightforward solution-processing of these materials. However, photoluminescence properties of colloidal TMDs are virtually unexplored due to the typically non-emitting synthesis products. In this work, we demonstrate room temperature micro-photoluminescence of delicate ultrathin colloidal WS2 nanosheets synthesized from WCl6 and elemental sulfur in oleic acid and oleylamine at 320 {\deg}C for the first time. Both, mono- and multilayer photoluminescence are observed, revealing comparable characteristics to exfoliated TMD monolayers and underpinning the high quality of colloidal WS2 nanosheets. In addition, a promising long-term air-stability of colloidal WS2 nanosheets is found and the control of photodegradation of the structures under laser excitation is identified as a challenge for further advancing nanosheet monolayers. Our results render colloidal TMDs as easily synthesized and highly promising 2D semiconductors with optical properties fully competitive with conventionally fabricated ultrathin TMDs. | Room Temperature Micro-Photoluminescence Studies of Colloidal WS2 Nanosheets |
A novel route to the exponential trapping-time distribution within a solidlike state in water clusters is described. We propose a simple homogeneous network (SHN) model to investigate dynamics on the potential energy networks of water clusters. In this model, it is shown that the trapping-time distribution in a solidlike state follows the exponential distribution, whereas the trapping-time distribution in local potential minima within the solidlike state is not exponential. To confirm the exponential trapping-time distribution in a solidlike state, we investigate water clusters, $($H${}_2$O$)_6$ and $($H${}_2$O$)_{12}$, by molecular dynamics simulations. These clusters change dynamically from solidlike to liquidlike state and vice versa. We find that the probability density functions of trapping times in a solidlike state are described by the exponential distribution whereas those of interevent times of large fluctuations in potential energy within the solidlike state follow the Weibull distributions. The results provide a clear evidence that transition dynamics between solidlike and liquidlike states in water clusters are well described by the SHN model, suggesting that the exponential trapping-time distribution within a solidlike state originates from the homogeneous connectivity in the potential energy network. | Homogeneous Connectivity of Potential Energy Network in a Solidlike State of Water Cluster |
The Mott insulating phase of the parent compounds is frequently taken as starting point for the underdoped high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors. In particular, the pseudogap state is often considered as deriving from the Mott insulator. In this work, we systematically investigate different weakly-doped Mott insulators on the square and triangular lattice to clarify the relationship between the pseudogap and Mottness. We show that doping a two-dimensional Mott insulator does not necessarily lead to a pseudogap phase. Despite its inherent strong-coupling nature, we find that the existence or absence of a pseudogap depends sensitively on non-interacting band parameters and identify the crucial role played by the van Hove singularities of the system. Motivated by a SU(2) gauge theory for the pseudogap state, we propose and verify numerically a simple equation that governs the evolution of characteristic features in the electronic scattering rate. | Not all doped Mott insulators have a pseudogap: key role of van Hove singularities |
In this paper we investigate the Wightman function, the renormalized vacuum expectation values of the field square, and the energy-momentum tensor for a massive scalar field with general curvature coupling inside and outside of a cylindrical shell in the generalized spacetime of straight cosmic string. For the general case of Robin boundary condition, by using the generalized Abel-Plana formula, the vacuum expectation values are presented in the form of the sum of boundary-free and boundary-induced parts. The asymptotic behavior of the vacuum expectation values of the field square, energy density and stresses are investigated in various limiting cases. The generalization of the results to the exterior region is given for a general cylindrically symmetric static model of the string core with finite support. | Vacuum polarization induced by a cylindrical boundary in the cosmic string spacetime |
This paper considers contextual bandits with a finite number of arms, where the contexts are independent and identically distributed $d$-dimensional random vectors, and the expected rewards are linear in both the arm parameters and contexts. The LinUCB algorithm, which is near minimax optimal for related linear bandits, is shown to have a cumulative regret that is suboptimal in both the dimension $d$ and time horizon $T$, due to its over-exploration. A truncated version of LinUCB is proposed and termed "Tr-LinUCB", which follows LinUCB up to a truncation time $S$ and performs pure exploitation afterwards. The Tr-LinUCB algorithm is shown to achieve $O(d\log(T))$ regret if $S = Cd\log(T)$ for a sufficiently large constant $C$, and a matching lower bound is established, which shows the rate optimality of Tr-LinUCB in both $d$ and $T$ under a low dimensional regime. Further, if $S = d\log^{\kappa}(T)$ for some $\kappa>1$, the loss compared to the optimal is a multiplicative $\log\log(T)$ factor, which does not depend on $d$. This insensitivity to overshooting in choosing the truncation time of Tr-LinUCB is of practical importance. | Truncated LinUCB for Stochastic Linear Bandits |
Distantly-Supervised Named Entity Recognition (DS-NER) effectively alleviates the data scarcity problem in NER by automatically generating training samples. Unfortunately, the distant supervision may induce noisy labels, thus undermining the robustness of the learned models and restricting the practical application. To relieve this problem, recent works adopt self-training teacher-student frameworks to gradually refine the training labels and improve the generalization ability of NER models. However, we argue that the performance of the current self-training frameworks for DS-NER is severely underestimated by their plain designs, including both inadequate student learning and coarse-grained teacher updating. Therefore, in this paper, we make the first attempt to alleviate these issues by proposing: (1) adaptive teacher learning comprised of joint training of two teacher-student networks and considering both consistent and inconsistent predictions between two teachers, thus promoting comprehensive student learning. (2) fine-grained student ensemble that updates each fragment of the teacher model with a temporal moving average of the corresponding fragment of the student, which enhances consistent predictions on each model fragment against noise. To verify the effectiveness of our proposed method, we conduct experiments on four DS-NER datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our method significantly surpasses previous SOTA methods. | Distantly-Supervised Named Entity Recognition with Adaptive Teacher Learning and Fine-grained Student Ensemble |
Taking the two-dimensional Ising model for example, short-time behavior of critical dynamics with a conserved order parameter is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. Scaling behavior is observed, but the dynamic exponent $z$ is updating schemes dependent. | Monte Carlo Simulations of Critical Dynamics with Conserved Order Parameter |
Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized Artificial Intelligence (AI) services due to their exceptional proficiency in understanding and generating human-like text. LLM chatbots, in particular, have seen widespread adoption, transforming human-machine interactions. However, these LLM chatbots are susceptible to "jailbreak" attacks, where malicious users manipulate prompts to elicit inappropriate or sensitive responses, contravening service policies. Despite existing attempts to mitigate such threats, our research reveals a substantial gap in our understanding of these vulnerabilities, largely due to the undisclosed defensive measures implemented by LLM service providers. In this paper, we present Jailbreaker, a comprehensive framework that offers an in-depth understanding of jailbreak attacks and countermeasures. Our work makes a dual contribution. First, we propose an innovative methodology inspired by time-based SQL injection techniques to reverse-engineer the defensive strategies of prominent LLM chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing Chat. This time-sensitive approach uncovers intricate details about these services' defenses, facilitating a proof-of-concept attack that successfully bypasses their mechanisms. Second, we introduce an automatic generation method for jailbreak prompts. Leveraging a fine-tuned LLM, we validate the potential of automated jailbreak generation across various commercial LLM chatbots. Our method achieves a promising average success rate of 21.58%, significantly outperforming the effectiveness of existing techniques. We have responsibly disclosed our findings to the concerned service providers, underscoring the urgent need for more robust defenses. Jailbreaker thus marks a significant step towards understanding and mitigating jailbreak threats in the realm of LLM chatbots. | Jailbreaker: Automated Jailbreak Across Multiple Large Language Model Chatbots |
The BCS-BEC crossover in a lattice is a powerful paradigm to understand how a superconductor deviates from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer physics as the attractive interaction increases. Optical lattices loaded with binary mixtures of cold atoms allow to address it experimentally in a clean and controlled way. We show that, however, the possibility to study this phenomenon in actual cold-atoms experiments is limited by the effect of the trapping potential. Real-space Dynamical Mean-Field Theory calculations show indeed that interactions and the confining potential conspire to pack the fermions in the center of the trap, which approaches a band insulator when the attraction become sizeable. We show how this physics reflects in several observables, and we propose an alternative strategy to disentangle the effect of the harmonic potential and measure the intrinsic properties resulting from the interaction strength. | Inhomogeneous BCS-BEC crossover for trapped cold atoms in optical lattices |
Most of existing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ship in-stance segmentation models do not achieve mask interac-tion or offer limited interaction performance. Besides, their multi-scale ship instance segmentation performance is moderate especially for small ships. To solve these problems, we propose a mask attention interaction and scale enhancement network (MAI-SE-Net) for SAR ship instance segmentation. MAI uses an atrous spatial pyra-mid pooling (ASPP) to gain multi-resolution feature re-sponses, a non-local block (NLB) to model long-range spa-tial dependencies, and a concatenation shuffle attention block (CSAB) to improve interaction benefits. SE uses a content-aware reassembly of features block (CARAFEB) to generate an extra pyramid bottom-level to boost small ship performance, a feature balance operation (FBO) to improve scale feature description, and a global context block (GCB) to refine features. Experimental results on two public SSDD and HRSID datasets reveal that MAI-SE-Net outperforms the other nine competitive models, better than the suboptimal model by 4.7% detec-tion AP and 3.4% segmentation AP on SSDD and by 3.0% detection AP and 2.4% segmentation AP on HRSID. | A Mask Attention Interaction and Scale Enhancement Network for SAR Ship Instance Segmentation |
In metals in the vicinity of a polar transition, interactions between electrons and soft phonon modes remain to be determined. Here we explore the consequences of spin-orbit assisted electron-phonon coupling on the collective modes of such nearly polar metals in the presense of magnetic field. We find that the soft polar phonon hybridizes with spin-flip electronic excitations of the Zeeman-split bands leading to an anticrossing. The associated energy splitting allows for an unambiguous determination of the strength of the spin-orbit mediated coupling to soft modes in polar metals by spectroscopic experiments. The approach to the polar transition is reflected by the softening of the effective g-factor of the hybridized spin-flip mode. Analyzing the static limit, we find that the polar order parameter can be oriented by magnetic field. This provides possibilities for new switching protocols in polar metallic materials. We demonstrate that the effects we predict can be observed with current experimental techniques and discuss promising material candidates. | Spin-Phonon Resonances in Nearly Polar Metals with Spin-Orbit Coupling |
Audio quality assessment is critical for assessing the perceptual realism of sounds. However, the time and expense of obtaining ''gold standard'' human judgments limit the availability of such data. For AR&VR, good perceived sound quality and localizability of sources are among the key elements to ensure complete immersion of the user. Our work introduces SAQAM which uses a multi-task learning framework to assess listening quality (LQ) and spatialization quality (SQ) between any given pair of binaural signals without using any subjective data. We model LQ by training on a simulated dataset of triplet human judgments, and SQ by utilizing activation-level distances from networks trained for direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. We show that SAQAM correlates well with human responses across four diverse datasets. Since it is a deep network, the metric is differentiable, making it suitable as a loss function for other tasks. For example, simply replacing an existing loss with our metric yields improvement in a speech-enhancement network. | SAQAM: Spatial Audio Quality Assessment Metric |
Axions are one of the most attractive dark matter candidates. The evolution of their number density in the early universe can be determined by calculating the topological susceptibility $\chi(T)$ of QCD as a function of the temperature. Lattice QCD provides an ab initio technique to carry out such a calculation. A full result needs two ingredients: physical quark masses and a controlled continuum extrapolation from non-vanishing to zero lattice spacings. We determine $\chi(T)$ in the quenched framework (infinitely large quark masses) and extrapolate its values to the continuum limit. The results are compared with the prediction of the dilute instanton gas approximation (DIGA). A nice agreement is found for the temperature dependence, whereas the overall normalization of the DIGA result still differs from the non-perturbative continuum extrapolated lattice results by a factor of order ten. We discuss the consequences of our findings for the prediction of the amount of axion dark matter. | Axion cosmology, lattice QCD and the dilute instanton gas |
We report wide-range optical investigations on transparent conducting networks made from separated (semiconducting, metallic) and reference (mixed) single-walled carbon nanotubes, complemented by transport measurements. Comparing the intrinsic frequency-dependent conductivity of the nanotubes with that of the networks, we conclude that higher intrinsic conductivity results in better transport properties, indicating that the properties of the nanotubes are at least as much important as the contacts. We find that HNO3 doping offers a larger improvement in transparent conductive quality than separation. Spontaneous dedoping occurs in all samples but is most effective in films made of doped metallic tubes, where the sheet conductance returns close to its original value within 24 hours. | Bundle vs. network conductivity of carbon nanotubes separated by type |
We experimentally demonstrate a record net capacity per wavelength of 1.23~Tb/s over a single silicon-on-insulator (SOI) multimode waveguide for optical interconnects employing on-chip mode-division multiplexing and 11$\times$11 multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) digital signal processing. | 1.23-Tb/s per Wavelength Single-Waveguide On-Chip Optical Interconnect Enabled by Mode-division Multiplexing |
Cardiac MR image segmentation is essential for the morphological and functional analysis of the heart. Inspired by how experienced clinicians assess the cardiac morphology and function across multiple standard views (i.e. long- and short-axis views), we propose a novel approach which learns anatomical shape priors across different 2D standard views and leverages these priors to segment the left ventricular (LV) myocardium from short-axis MR image stacks. The proposed segmentation method has the advantage of being a 2D network but at the same time incorporates spatial context from multiple, complementary views that span a 3D space. Our method achieves accurate and robust segmentation of the myocardium across different short-axis slices (from apex to base), outperforming baseline models (e.g. 2D U-Net, 3D U-Net) while achieving higher data efficiency. Compared to the 2D U-Net, the proposed method reduces the mean Hausdorff distance (mm) from 3.24 to 2.49 on the apical slices, from 2.34 to 2.09 on the middle slices and from 3.62 to 2.76 on the basal slices on the test set, when only 10% of the training data was used. | Learning Shape Priors for Robust Cardiac MR Segmentation from Multi-view Images |
We study entropy of chaotic oscillation of electrical currents in the Chua's circuit controlled by triggering a pulse that brings the orbit that goes onto an unstable branch back to a stable branch. A numerical simulation of the voltage of the two capacitors and the current that flows on an inductor of the Chua's circuit reveals various oscillation patterns as the conductance that is connected between the two capacitors and directly connected to an inductor is varied. At small conductance, the Lissajous graph of the voltage of the two capacitors shows a spiral, while at high conductance a double scroll pattern appears. The entropy of the current that flows on the inductor is alocal minimum in the spiral state which is in the steady state, while it is maximum in the stable double scroll state. The stable double scroll samples are analyzed by using the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and the eigenvectors of the transition matrix of long time series are found to be strictly positive but those of unstable short time series have negative components. We thus confirm maximum entropy production in the double scroll of the longest time series around the right fixed point, while the local minimum entropy production occurs in the spiral around the left fixed point. | Entropy of Chaotic Oscillations of Currents in the Chua Circuit and its HMM Analysis |
We investigate the bonding of H in O vacancies of ZnO using density functional calculations. We find that H is anionic and does not form multicenter bonds with Zn in this compound. | Bonding of H in O vacancies of ZnO |
We propose a general framework for first-order functional logic programming, supporting lazy functions, non-determinism and polymorphic datatypes whose data constructors obey a set C of equational axioms. On top of a given C, we specify a program as a set R of C-based conditional rewriting rules for defined functions. We argue that equational logic does not supply the proper semantics for such programs. Therefore, we present an alternative logic which includes C-based rewriting calculi and a notion of model. We get soundness and completeness for C-based rewriting w.r.t. models, existence of free models for all programs, and type preservation results. As operational semantics, we develop a sound and complete procedure for goal solving, which is based on the combination of lazy narrowing with unification modulo C. Our framework is quite expressive for many purposes, such as solving action and change problems, or realizing the GAMMA computation model. | A General Framework For Lazy Functional Logic Programming With Algebraic Polymorphic Types |
The enhancement of thermoelectric figure of merit ZT requires to either increase the power factor or reduce the phonon conductance, or even both. In graphene, the high phonon thermal conductivity is the main factor limiting the thermoelectric conversion. The common strategy to enhance ZT is therefore to introduce phonon scatterers to suppress the phonon conductance while retaining high electrical conductance and Seebeck coefficient. Although thermoelectric performance is eventually enhanced, all studies based on this strategy show a significant reduction of the electrical conductance, most often leading to a lower electronic performance. In this study we show that appropriate sources of disorder, including isotopes and vacancies at lowest electron density positions, can be used as phonon scatterers to reduce the phonon conductance in graphene ribbons without degrading the electrical conductance, particularly in the low-energy region which is the most important range for device operation. By means of atomistic calculations using semi-empirical Tight-Binding and Force Constant models in combination with Non-Equilibrium Green function formalism, we show that the natural electronic properties of graphene ribbons can be fully preserved while their thermoelectric efficiency is strongly enhanced. For ribbons of width M = 5 dimer lines, room-temperature ZT is enhanced from less than 0.26 for defect-free ribbons to more than 2.5. This study is likely to set the milestones of a new generation of nano-devices with dual electronic, thermoelectric functionalities. | Optimizing isotope and vacancy engineering in graphene ribbons to enhance the thermoelectric performance without degrading the electronic properties |
After reminding the main issues at stake in the famous Einstein-Bohr debate initiated in 1935, we tentatively propose a way to get them closer, thus shedding a new light on this historical discussion. | The Einstein-Bohr debate: finding a common ground of understanding ? |
Observations of protoplanetary disks around binary and triple star systems suggest that misalignments between the orbital plane of the stars and the disks are common. Motivated by recent observations of polar circumbinary disks, we explore the possibility for polar circumtriple disks and therefore polar circumtriple planets that could form in such a disk. With n-body simulations and analytic methods we find that the inclusion of the third star, and the associated apsidal precession, significantly reduces the radial range of polar orbits so that circumtriple polar disks and planets can only be found close to the stellar system. Outside of a critical radius, that is typically in the range of 3-10 times the outer binary separation depending upon the binary parameters, the orbits behave the same as they do around a circular orbit binary. For some observed systems that have shorter period inner binaries, the critical radius is considerably larger. If polar circumtriple planets can form, we suggest that it is likely that they form in a disk that was subject to breaking. | Polar circumtriple planets and disks can only form close to a triple star |
This paper considers the task of articulated human pose estimation of multiple people in real world images. We propose an approach that jointly solves the tasks of detection and pose estimation: it infers the number of persons in a scene, identifies occluded body parts, and disambiguates body parts between people in close proximity of each other. This joint formulation is in contrast to previous strategies, that address the problem by first detecting people and subsequently estimating their body pose. We propose a partitioning and labeling formulation of a set of body-part hypotheses generated with CNN-based part detectors. Our formulation, an instance of an integer linear program, implicitly performs non-maximum suppression on the set of part candidates and groups them to form configurations of body parts respecting geometric and appearance constraints. Experiments on four different datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art results for both single person and multi person pose estimation. Models and code available at http://pose.mpi-inf.mpg.de. | DeepCut: Joint Subset Partition and Labeling for Multi Person Pose Estimation |
We study two classes of over-the-counter markets specified by systems of ODE's, in the spirit of Duffie-Garleanu-Pedersen, Econometrica, 2005. We first compute the steady states for many of these ODE's. Then we obtain the prices at which investors trade with each other at these steady states. Finally, we study the stability of the solutions of these ODE's. | Over-the-counter market models with several assets |
Dark matter (DM) halos have long been known to be triaxial, but in studies of possible annihilation and decay signals they are often treated as approximately spherical. In this work, we examine the asymmetry of potential indirect detection signals of DM annihilation and decay, exploiting the large statistics of the hydrodynamic simulation Illustris. We carefully investigate the effects of the baryons on the sphericity of annihilation and decay signals for both the case where the observer is at 8.5 kpc from the center of the halo (exemplified in the case of Milky Way-like halos), and for an observer situated well outside the halo. In the case of Galactic signals, we find that both annihilation and decay signals are expected to be quite symmetric, with axis ratios very different from 1 occurring rarely. In the case of extragalactic signals, while decay signals are still preferentially spherical, the axis ratio for annihilation signals has a much flatter distribution, with elongated profiles appearing frequently. Many of these elongated profiles are due to large subhalos and/or recent mergers. Comparing to gamma-ray emission from the Milky Way and X-ray maps of clusters, we find that the gamma-ray background appears less spherical/more elongated than the expected DM signal from the large majority of halos, and the Galactic gamma ray excess appears very spherical, while the X- ray data would be difficult to distinguish from a DM signal by elongation/sphericity measurements alone. | Spherical Cows in Dark Matter Indirect Detection |
We consider Abelian-by-cyclic groups for which the cyclic factor acts by hyperbolic automorphisms on the Abelian subgroup. We show that if such a group acts faithfully by $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of the closed interval with no global fixed point at the interior, then the action is topologically conjugated to that of an affine group. Moreover, in case of non-Abelian image, we show a rigidity result concerning the multipliers of the homotheties, despite the fact that the conjugacy is not necessarily smooth. Some consequences for non-solvable groups are proposed. In particular, we give new proofs/examples yielding the existence of finitely-generated, locally-indicable groups with no faithful action by $C^1$ diffeomorphisms of the interval. | Rigidity for $C^1$ actions on the interval arising from hyperbolicity I: solvable groups |
Kinetic Monte-Carlo (KMC) simulations are a well-established numerical tool to investigate the time-dependent surface morphology in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) experiments. In parallel, simplified approaches such as limited mobility (LM) models characterized by a fixed diffusion length have been studied. Here, we investigate an extended LM model to gain deeper insight into the role of diffusional processes concerning the growth morphology. Our model is based on the stochastic transition rules of the Das Sarma-Tamborena (DT) model, but differs from the latter via a variable diffusion length. A first guess for this length can be extracted from the saturation value of the mean-squared displacement calculated from short KMC simulations. Comparing the resulting surface morphologies in the sub- and multilayer growth regime to those obtained from KMC simulations, we find deviations which can be cured by adding fluctuations to the diffusion length. This mimics the stochastic nature of particle diffusion on a substrate, an aspect which is usually neglected in LM models. We propose to add fluctuations to the diffusion length by choosing this quantity for each adsorbed particle from a Gaussian distribution, where the variance of the distribution serves as a fitting parameter. We show that the diffusional fluctuations have a huge impact on cluster properties during submonolayer growth as well as on the surface profile in the high coverage regime. The analysis of the surface morphologies on one- and two-dimensional substrates during sub- and multilayer growth shows that the LM model can produce structures that are indistinguishable to the ones from KMC simulations at arbitrary growth conditions. | Modeling of nonequilibrium surface growth by a limited mobility model with distributed diffusion length |
We discuss the possibility to formulate the dynamics of spin states described by the Schrodinger equation for pure states and the von Neumann equation (as well as the GKSL equation) for mixed states in the form of quantum kinetic equations for probability distributions. We review an approach to the spin-state description by means of the probability distributions of dichotomic random variables. | Spin kinetic equations in the probability representation of quantum mechanics |
After a brief account of the derivation of the first-order relativistic hydrodynamic equation as a construction of the invariant manifold of relativistic Boltzmann equation, we give a sketch of derivation of the second-order hydrodynamic equation (extended thermodynamics) both in the nonrelativistic and relativistic cases. We show that the resultant equation suggests a novel ansatz for the functional form to be used in Grad moment method, which turns out to give the same expressions for the transport coefficients as those given in the Chapman-Enskog theory as well as the novel expressions for the relaxation times and lenghts allowing natural physical interpretaion. | New forms of non-relativistic and relativistic hydrodynamic equations as derived by the renormalization-group method - possible functional ansatz in the moment method consistent with Chapman-Enskog theory - |
A repulsive interaction model of superconductivity (SC) is studied for tight-binding models with three-fold degenerate molecular orbitals. Taking a weak-coupling approach, we derive dimensionless coupling constants for various symmetries of SC pairs. In addition to anisotropic SC pairs, the s-wave pairing ($A_g$) can also be formed. With the purely repulsive interaction, however, the $A_g$ pair is not the most stable in both bcc and fcc lattices. The most stable SC pair for the bcc lattice has the $T_g$ symmetry, which is favored by a strongly nesting Fermi surface. In the fcc lattice, various SC symmetries have comparable coupling strengths. With the electron-phonon interaction combined, it is likely that the $A_g$ pair becomes the most stable. | Repulsive interaction helps superconductivity in fullerides |
We construct supersymmetric brane solutions in string and M-theory with moduli parameters that depend arbitrarily on the light-cone time. Our investigation aims in understanding time dependent phenomena in gauge theories at strong coupling within the gauge/gravity correspondence. For that reason we use, as a basic ingredient, multicenter supergravity solutions which model the Coulomb branch of the corresponding strongly coupled gauge theories. We introduce the notion of shape invariant motions and show that in a particular limit involving pulse-type motions of finite energy, the solutions represent gravitational shock waves moving on the brane background geometry. We apply the general formalism for D3-branes distributed on a disc and on a sphere as well as for NS5-branes distributed on a ring, all with time varying radii. We examine the problem of open strings attached on moving branes and suggest a mechanism which may be responsible for giving rise at a macroscopic level to gravitational shock waves. | Fundamental branes and shock waves |
The aim of this paper is to develop a method for proving almost sure convergence in Gromov-Hausodorff-Prokhorov topology for a class of models of growing random graphs that generalises R\'emy's algorithm for binary trees. We describe the obtained limits using some iterative gluing construction that generalises the famous line-breaking construction of Aldous' Brownian tree. In order to do that, we develop a framework in which a metric space is constructed by gluing smaller metric spaces, called \emph{blocks}, along the structure of a (possibly infinite) discrete tree. Our growing random graphs seen as metric spaces can be understood in this framework, that is, as evolving blocks glued along a growing discrete tree structure. Their scaling limit convergence can then be obtained by separately proving the almost sure convergence of every block and verifying some relative compactness property for the whole structure. For the particular models that we study, the discrete tree structure behind the construction has the distribution of an affine preferential attachment tree or a weighted recursive tree. We strongly rely on results concerning those two models of random trees and their connection, obtained in a companion paper. | Growing random graphs with a preferential attachment structure |
We give a fast(er), communication-free, parallel construction of optimal communication schedules that allow broadcasting of $n$ distinct blocks of data from a root processor to all other processors in $1$-ported, $p$-processor networks with fully bidirectional communication. For any $p$ and $n$, broadcasting in this model requires $n-1+\lceil\log_2 p\rceil$ communication rounds. In contrast to other constructions, all processors follow the same, circulant graph communication pattern, which makes it possible to use the schedules for the allgather (all-to-all-broadcast) operation as well. The new construction takes $O(\log^3 p)$ time steps per processor, each of which can compute its part of the schedule independently of the other processors in $O(\log p)$ space. The result is a significant improvement over the sequential $O(p \log^2 p)$ time and $O(p\log p)$ space construction of Tr\"aff and Ripke (2009) with considerable practical import. The round-optimal schedule construction is then used to implement communication optimal algorithms for the broadcast and (irregular) allgather collective operations as found in MPI (the \emph{Message-Passing Interface}), and significantly and practically improves over the implementations in standard MPI libraries (\texttt{mpich}, OpenMPI, Intel MPI) for certain problem ranges. The application to the irregular allgather operation is entirely new. | (Poly)Logarithmic Time Construction of Round-optimal $n$-Block Broadcast Schedules for Broadcast and irregular Allgather in MPI |
With this paper, a consistent and comprehensive treatise on the foundations of the extended Hamilton-Lagrange formalism will be presented. In this formalism, the system's dynamics is parametrized along a system evolution parameter $s$, and the physical time $t$ is treated as a dependent variable $t(s)$ on equal footing with all other configuration space variables $q^{i}(s)$. In the action principle, the conventional classical action $L dt$ is then replaced by the generalized action $L_{e}ds$, with $L$ and $L_{e}$ denoting the conventional and the extended Lagrangian, respectively. It is shown that a class of extended Lagrangians $L_{e}$ exists that are correlated to corresponding conventional Lagrangians $L$ without being homogeneous functions in the velocities. Then the Legendre transformation of $L_{e}$ to an extended Hamiltonian $H_{e}$ exists. With this class of extended Hamiltonians, an extended canonical formalism is presented that is completely analogous to the conventional Hamiltonian formalism. The physical time $t$ and the negative value of the conventional Hamiltonian then constitute and an additional pair of conjugate canonical variables. The extended formalism also includes a theory of extended canonical transformations, where the time variable $t(s)$ is also subject to transformation. In the extended formalism, the system's dynamics is described as a motion on a hypersurface within an extended phase space of even dimension. With the extended Lagrangian $L_{e}$, it is shown that the generalized path integral approach yields the Klein-Gordon equation as the corresponding quantum description. Moreover, the space-time propagator for a free relativistic particle will be derived. These results can be regarded as the proof of principle of the relativistic generalization of Feynman's path integral approach to quantum physics. | Extended Hamilton-Lagrange formalism and its application to Feynman's path integral for relativistic quantum physics |
We present a model that builds ``dark matter"-like halo density profiles from free-falling zero-point vacuum fluctuations. It does not require a modification of Newton's laws, nor the existence of as-yet-undiscovered dark matter particles. The 3D halos predicted by our model are fully constrained by the baryonic mass distribution, and are generally far from spherical. The model introduces a new fundamental constant of vacuum, T, having the dimensions of time. We deduce the associated formalism from some basic assumptions, and adjust the model successfully on several spiral galaxy rotation data while comparing our results to the existing analyses. We believe our approach opens up a new paradigm that is worth further exploration, and that would benefit from checks relating to other phenomena attributed to dark matter at all time and distance scales. Following such a program would allow the present model to evolve, and if successful it would make vacuum fluctuations responsible for the typical manifestations of dark matter. | Gravitational effects of free-falling quantum vacuum |
We explore the operad of finite posets and its algebras. We use order polytopes to investigate the combinatorial properties of zeta values. By generalizing a family of zeta value identities, we demonstrate the applicability of this approach. In addition, we offer new proofs of some of Ramanujan's results on the properties of Eulerian numbers, interpreting his work as dealing with series inheriting the algebraic structure of disjoint unions of points. Finally, we establish a connection between our findings and the linear independence of zeta values. | A poset version of Ramanujan results on Eulerian numbers and zeta values |
Face anti-spoofing (FAS) is indispensable for a face recognition system. Many texture-driven countermeasures were developed against presentation attacks (PAs), but the performance against unseen domains or unseen spoofing types is still unsatisfactory. Instead of exhaustively collecting all the spoofing variations and making binary decisions of live/spoof, we offer a new perspective on the FAS task to distinguish between normal and abnormal movements of live and spoof presentations. We propose Geometry-Aware Interaction Network (GAIN), which exploits dense facial landmarks with spatio-temporal graph convolutional network (ST-GCN) to establish a more interpretable and modularized FAS model. Additionally, with our cross-attention feature interaction mechanism, GAIN can be easily integrated with other existing methods to significantly boost performance. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance in the standard intra- and cross-dataset evaluations. Moreover, our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods by a large margin in the cross-dataset cross-type protocol on CASIA-SURF 3DMask (+10.26% higher AUC score), exhibiting strong robustness against domain shifts and unseen spoofing types. | A Closer Look at Geometric Temporal Dynamics for Face Anti-Spoofing |
Large scale circuit simulation, such as power delivery network analysis, has become increasingly challenge in the VLSI design verification flow. Power delivery network can be simulated by both SPICE-type circuit-based model and eletromagnetics-based model when full-wave accuracy is desired. In the early time of the time domain finite element simulation for integrated circuit, the modes having the highest eigenvalues supported by the numerical system will be excited. Because of the band limited source, after the early time, the modes having a resonance frequency well beyond the input frequency band will die down, and all physically important high-order modes and DC mode will show up and become dominant. Among these modes, the DC mode is the last one to show up. Although the convergence criterion is not applied on the DC mode, the existence of DC mode in the field solution will deteriorate the convergence rate of the first several high order modes. Therefore, this paper first analyzed the mathematic characteristics of the DC mode and proposed a rigorous and fast solution to extract the DC mode from the numerical system in order to speed up the convergence rate. Experimental results demonstrated the robustness and superior performance of this method. | Fast and Rigorous DC Solution in Finite Element Method for Integrated Circuit Analysis |
In this paper, we present the Bag-of-Attributes (BoA) model for video representation aiming at video event retrieval. The BoA model is based on a semantic feature space for representing videos, resulting in high-level video feature vectors. For creating a semantic space, i.e., the attribute space, we can train a classifier using a labeled image dataset, obtaining a classification model that can be understood as a high-level codebook. This model is used to map low-level frame vectors into high-level vectors (e.g., classifier probability scores). Then, we apply pooling operations to the frame vectors to create the final bag of attributes for the video. In the BoA representation, each dimension corresponds to one category (or attribute) of the semantic space. Other interesting properties are: compactness, flexibility regarding the classifier, and ability to encode multiple semantic concepts in a single video representation. Our experiments considered the semantic space created by state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks pre-trained on 1000 object categories of ImageNet. Such deep neural networks were used to classify each video frame and then different coding strategies were used to encode the probability distribution from the softmax layer into a frame vector. Next, different pooling strategies were used to combine frame vectors in the BoA representation for a video. Results using BoA were comparable or superior to the baselines in the task of video event retrieval using the EVVE dataset, with the advantage of providing a much more compact representation. | Bag of Attributes for Video Event Retrieval |
Quantizing neural networks to low-bitwidth is important for model deployment on resource-limited edge hardware. Although a quantized network has a smaller model size and memory footprint, it is fragile to adversarial attacks. However, few methods study the robustness and training efficiency of quantized networks. To this end, we propose a new method by recasting robust quantization as an online domain generalization problem, termed ODG-Q, which generates diverse adversarial data at a low cost during training. ODG-Q consistently outperforms existing works against various adversarial attacks. For example, on CIFAR-10 dataset, ODG-Q achieves 49.2% average improvements under five common white-box attacks and 21.7% average improvements under five common black-box attacks, with a training cost similar to that of natural training (viz. without adversaries). To our best knowledge, this work is the first work that trains both quantized and binary neural networks on ImageNet that consistently improve robustness under different attacks. We also provide a theoretical insight of ODG-Q that accounts for the bound of model risk on attacked data. | ODG-Q: Robust Quantization via Online Domain Generalization |
We extend Choiceless Polynomial Time (CPT), the currently only remaining promising candidate in the quest for a logic capturing PTime, so that this extended logic has the following property: for every class of structures for which isomorphism is definable, the logic automatically captures PTime. For the construction of this logic we extend CPT by a witnessed symmetric choice operator. This operator allows for choices from definable orbits. But, to ensure polynomial time evaluation, automorphisms have to be provided to certify that the choice set is indeed an orbit. We argue that, in this logic, definable isomorphism implies definable canonization. Thereby, our construction removes the non-trivial step of extending isomorphism definability results to canonization. This step was a part of proofs that show that CPT or other logics capture PTime on a particular class of structures. The step typically required substantial extra effort. | Choiceless Polynomial Time with Witnessed Symmetric Choice |
Advances in space exploration have led to an explosion of tasks. Conventionally, these tasks are offloaded to ground servers for enhanced computing capability, or to adjacent low-earth-orbit satellites for reduced transmission delay. However, the overall delay is determined by both computation and transmission costs. The existing offloading schemes, while being highly-optimized for either costs, can be abysmal for the overall performance. The computation-transmission cost dilemma is yet to be solved. In this paper, we propose an adaptive offloading scheme to reduce the overall delay. The core idea is to jointly model and optimize the transmission-computation process over the entire network. Specifically, to represent the computation state migrations, we generalize graph nodes with multiple states. In this way, the joint optimization problem is transformed into a shortest path problem over the state graph. We further provide an extended Dijkstra's algorithm for efficient path finding. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the ground and one-hop offloading schemes by up to 37.56% and 39.35% respectively on SpaceCube v2.0. | Adaptive Task Offloading for Space Missions: A State-Graph-Based Approach |
As an extension of positive and almost positive diagrams and links, we study two classes of links we call successively almost positive and weakly successively almost positive links. We prove various properties of polynomial invariants and signatures of such links, extending previous results or answering open questions about positive or almost positive links. We discuss their minimal genus and fibering property and for the latter prove a fibering extension of Scharlemann-Thompson's theorem (valid for general links). | Invariants of weakly successively almost positive links |
Item response theory aims to estimate respondent's latent skills from their responses in tests composed of items with different levels of difficulty. Several models of item response theory have been proposed for different types of tasks, such as binary or probabilistic responses, response time, multiple responses, among others. In this paper, we propose a new version of $\beta^3$-IRT, called $\beta^{4}$-IRT, which uses the gradient descent method to estimate the model parameters. In $\beta^3$-IRT, abilities and difficulties are bounded, thus we employ link functions in order to turn $\beta^{4}$-IRT into an unconstrained gradient descent process. The original $\beta^3$-IRT had a symmetry problem, meaning that, if an item was initialised with a discrimination value with the wrong sign, e.g. negative when the actual discrimination should be positive, the fitting process could be unable to recover the correct discrimination and difficulty values for the item. In order to tackle this limitation, we modelled the discrimination parameter as the product of two new parameters, one corresponding to the sign and the second associated to the magnitude. We also proposed sensible priors for all parameters. We performed experiments to compare $\beta^{4}$-IRT and $\beta^3$-IRT regarding parameter recovery and our new version outperformed the original $\beta^3$-IRT. Finally, we made $\beta^{4}$-IRT publicly available as a Python package, along with the implementation of $\beta^3$-IRT used in our experiments. | $\beta^{4}$-IRT: A New $\beta^{3}$-IRT with Enhanced Discrimination Estimation |
Twisted generalized Weyl algebras (TGWAs) $A(R,\sigma,t)$ are defined over a base ring $R$ by parameters $\sigma$ and $t$, where $\sigma$ is an $n$-tuple of automorphisms, and $t$ is an $n$-tuple of elements in the center of $R$. We show that, for fixed $R$ and $\sigma$, there is a natural algebra map $A(R,\sigma,tt')\to A(R,\sigma,t)\otimes_R A(R,\sigma,t')$. This gives a tensor product operation on modules, inducing a ring structure on the direct sum (over all $t$) of the Grothendieck groups of the categories of weight modules for $A(R,\sigma,t)$. We give presentations of these Grothendieck rings for $n=1,2$, when $R=\mathbb{C}[z]$. As a consequence, for $n=1$, any indecomposable module for a TGWA can be written as a tensor product of indecomposable modules over the usual Weyl algebra. In particular, any finite-dimensional simple module over $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ is a tensor product of two Weyl algebra modules. | Grothendieck rings of towers of twisted generalized Weyl algebras |
We establish a sharp Sobolev trace inequality on the Siegel domain $\Omega_{n+1}$ involving the weighted norm-$W^{2,2}(\Omega_{n+1}, \rho^{1-2[\gamma]})$. The inequality is closely related the realization of fractional powers of the sub-Laplacian on the Heisenberg group $H^n=\partial \Omega_{n+1}$ as generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators associated to the weighted poly-sublaplacian, generalizing observations of Frank--Gonz\'alez--Monticelli--Tan. | Sharp weighted CR trace Sobolev inequalities |
Interpolatory projection methods for model reduction of nonparametric linear dynamical systems have been successfully extended to nonparametric bilinear dynamical systems. However, this is not the case for parametric bilinear systems. In this work, we aim to close this gap by providing a natural extension of interpolatory projections to model reduction of parametric bilinear dynamical systems. We introduce necessary conditions that the projection subspaces must satisfy to obtain parametric tangential interpolation of each subsystem transfer function. These conditions also guarantee that the parameter sensitivities (Jacobian) of each subsystem transfer function is matched tangentially by those of the corresponding reduced order model transfer function. Similarly, we obtain conditions for interpolating the parameter Hessian of the transfer function by including extra vectors in the projection subspaces. As in the parametric linear case, the basis construction for two-sided projections does not require computing the Jacobian or the Hessian. | Interpolatory Model Reduction of Parameterized Bilinear Dynamical Systems |
Many research papers that propose models to predict the course of the COVID-19 pandemic either use handcrafted statistical models or large neural networks. Even though large neural networks are more powerful than simpler statistical models, they are especially hard to train on small datasets. This paper not only presents a model with grater flexibility than the other proposed neural networks, but also presents a model that is effective on smaller datasets. To improve performance on small data, six regularisation methods were tested. The results show that the GRU combined with 20% Dropout achieved the lowest RMSE scores. The main finding was that models with less access to data relied more on the regulariser. Applying Dropout to a GRU model trained on only 28 days of data reduced the RMSE by 23%. | The effects of regularisation on RNN models for time series forecasting: Covid-19 as an example |
Context. There are typically two different approaches to inferring the mass formation history (MFH) of a given galaxy from its luminosity in different bands. Non-parametric methods are known for their flexibility and accuracy, while parametric models are more computationally efficient. Aims. In this work we propose an alternative, based on a polynomial expansion around the present time, that combines the advantages of both techniques. Methods. In our approach, the MFH is decomposed through an orthonormal basis of N polynomials in lookback time. To test the proposed framework, synthetic observations are generated from models based on common analytical approximations (exponential, delayed-$\tau$, and Gaussian star formation histories), as well as cosmological simulations for the Illustris-TNG suite. A normalized distance is used to measure the quality of the fit, and the input MFH is compared with the polynomial reconstructions both at the present time and through cosmic evolution. Our polynomial expansion is also compared with widely used parametric and non-parametric methods such as CIGALE anda PROSPECTOR. Results. The observed luminosities are reproduced with an accuracy of around 10 per cent for a constant star formation rate (N=1) and better for higher-order polynomials. Our method provides good results on the reconstruction of the total stellar mass, the star formation rate, and even its first derivative for smooth star formation histories, but it has difficulties in reproducing variations on short timescales and/or star formation histories that peak at the earliest times of the Universe. Conclusions. The polynomial expansion appears to be a promising alternative to other analytical functions used in parametric methods, combining both speed and flexibility. | Polynomial expansion of the star formation history in galaxies |
We investigate the low temperature behaviour of the integrable 1D two-component spinor Bose gas using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz. We find that for strong coupling the characteristics of the thermodynamics at low temperatures are quantitatively affected by the spin ferromagnetic states, which are described by an effective ferromagnetic Heisenberg chain. The free energy, specific heat, susceptibility and local pair correlation function are calculated for various physical regimes in terms of temperature and interaction strength. These thermodynamic properties reveal spin effects which are significantly different than those of the spinless Bose gas. The zero-field susceptibility for finite strong repulsion exceeds that of a free spin paramagnet. The critical exponents of the specific heat $c_v \sim T^{1/2}$ and the susceptibility $\chi \sim T^{-2}$ are indicative of the ferromagnetic signature of the two-component spinor Bose gas. Our analytic results are consistent with general arguments by Eisenberg and Lieb for polarized spinor bosons. | Ferromagnetic behaviour in the strongly interacting two-component Bose gas |
In this study, we solved Schr\"odinger equation with Cornell potential (Coulomb-plus-linear potential) by using neural network approach. Four different types of Cornell potential were used without a physical relevance. Besides that charmonium and bottomonium spin-averaged spectra were also calculated. Obtained results are in good agreement with the reference studies. | Cornell Potential: A Neural Network Approach |
The higher education has been greatly impacted by worldwide trends. In a result, the universities throughout the world are focusing to enhance performance and efficiency in their workings. Therefore, the higher education has moved their systems to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to cope with the needs of changing environment. However, the literature review indicates that there is void on the evaluation of success or failure of ERP systems in higher education Institutes in Pakistan. In overall, ERP systems implementation in higher education of Pakistan has not been given appropriate research focus. Thus, in this paper the authors have attempted to develop a conceptual framework for ERP evaluation in Universities of Pakistan. This seeks to expand the knowledge on ERP in higher educational institutes of Pakistan and focuses on understanding the ERP related critical success factors. | A Conceptual Framework for ERP Evaluation in Universities of Pakistan |
We study accuracy of bootstrap procedures for estimation of quantiles of a smooth function of a sum of independent sub-Gaussian random vectors. We establish higher-order approximation bounds with error terms depending on a sample size and a dimension explicitly. These results lead to improvements of accuracy of a weighted bootstrap procedure for general log-likelihood ratio statistics. The key element of our proofs of the bootstrap accuracy is a multivariate higher-order Berry-Esseen inequality. We consider a problem of approximation of distributions of two sums of zero mean independent random vectors, such that summands with the same indices have equal moments up to at least the second order. The derived approximation bound is uniform on the sets of all Euclidean balls. The presented approach extends classical Berry-Esseen type inequalities to higher-order approximation bounds. The theoretical results are illustrated with numerical experiments. | Nonclassical Berry-Esseen inequalities and accuracy of the bootstrap |
DOA estimation for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system can provide ultra-high-resolution angle estimation. However, due to the high computational complexity and cost of all digital MIMO systems, a hybrid analog digital (HAD) structure MIMO was proposed. In this paper, a fast ambiguous phase elimination method is proposed to solve the problem of direction-finding ambiguity caused by the HAD MIMO. Only two-data-blocks are used to realize DOA estimation. Simulation results show that the proposed method can greatly reduce the estimation delay with a slight performance loss. | Fast Ambiguous DOA Elimination Method of DOA Measurement for Hybrid Massive MIMO Receiver |
We propose a unified representation learning framework to address the Cross Model Compatibility (CMC) problem in the context of visual search applications. Cross compatibility between different embedding models enables the visual search systems to correctly recognize and retrieve identities without re-encoding user images, which are usually not available due to privacy concerns. While there are existing approaches to address CMC in face identification, they fail to work in a more challenging setting where the distributions of embedding models shift drastically. The proposed solution improves CMC performance by introducing a light-weight Residual Bottleneck Transformation (RBT) module and a new training scheme to optimize the embedding spaces. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed solution outperforms previous approaches by a large margin for various challenging visual search scenarios of face recognition and person re-identification. | Unified Representation Learning for Cross Model Compatibility |
This work presents comprehensive results to detect in the early stage the pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs), a group of endocrine tumors arising in the pancreas, which are the second common type of pancreatic cancer, by checking the abdominal CT scans. To the best of our knowledge, this task has not been studied before as a computational task. To provide radiologists with tumor locations, we adopt a segmentation framework to classify CT volumes by checking if at least a sufficient number of voxels is segmented as tumors. To quantitatively analyze our method, we collect and voxelwisely label a new abdominal CT dataset containing $376$ cases with both arterial and venous phases available for each case, in which $228$ cases were diagnosed with PNETs while the remaining $148$ cases are normal, which is currently the largest dataset for PNETs to the best of our knowledge. In order to incorporate rich knowledge of radiologists to our framework, we annotate dilated pancreatic duct as well, which is regarded as the sign of high risk for pancreatic cancer. Quantitatively, our approach outperforms state-of-the-art segmentation networks and achieves a sensitivity of $89.47\%$ at a specificity of $81.08\%$, which indicates a potential direction to achieve a clinical impact related to cancer diagnosis by earlier tumor detection. | Segmentation for Classification of Screening Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors |
We study some aspects of perturbation theory in $N=1$ supersymmetric abelian gauge theories with massive charged matter. In general gauges, infrared (IR) divergences and nonlocal behavior arise in 1PI diagrams, associated with a $1/k^4$ term in the propagator for the vector superfield. We examine this structure in supersymmetric QED. The IR divergences are gauge-dependent and must cancel in physical quantities like the electron pole mass. We demonstrate that cancellation takes place in a nontrivial way, amounting to a reorganization of the perturbative series from powers of $e^2$ to powers of $e$. We also show how these complications are avoided in cases where a Wilsonian effective action can be defined. | Perturbation Theory in Supersymmetric QED: Infrared Divergences and Gauge Invariance |
Let K be a field of characteristic 2. We give a geometric proof that there are no smooth quartic surfaces in IP^3 with more than 64 lines (predating work of Degtyarev which improves this bound to 60). We also exhibit a smooth quartic containing 60 lines which thus attains the record in characteristic 2. | At most 64 lines on smooth quartic surfaces (characteristic 2) |
Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to design a prompt {\gamma}-ray neutron activation analysis (PGNAA) thermal neutron output setup using MCNP5 computer code. In these simulations the moderator materials, reflective materials and structure of the PGNAA 252Cf neutrons of thermal neutron output setup were optimized. Results of the calcuations revealed that the thin layer paraffin and the thick layer of heavy water moderated effect is best for 252Cf neutrons spectrum. The new design compared with the conventional neutron source design, the thermal neutron flux and rate were increased by 3.02 times and 3.27 times. Results indicate that the use of this design should increase the neutron flux of prompt gamma-ray neutron activation analysis significantly. | PGNAA neutron source moderation setup optimization |
We determine all Lie groups compatible with the gauge structure of the Standard Elementary Particle Model (SM) and their representations. The groups are specified by congruence equations of quantum numbers. By comparison with the experimental results, we single out one Lie group and show that this choice implies certain old and new correlations between the quantum numbers of the SM quantum fields as well as some hitherto unknown group theoretical properties of the Higgs mechanism. | Covering groups of the gauge group for the standard elementary particle model |
Video-based human action recognition is currently one of the most active research areas in computer vision. Various research studies indicate that the performance of action recognition is highly dependent on the type of features being extracted and how the actions are represented. Since the release of the Kinect camera, a large number of Kinect-based human action recognition techniques have been proposed in the literature. However, there still does not exist a thorough comparison of these Kinect-based techniques under the grouping of feature types, such as handcrafted versus deep learning features and depth-based versus skeleton-based features. In this paper, we analyze and compare ten recent Kinect-based algorithms for both cross-subject action recognition and cross-view action recognition using six benchmark datasets. In addition, we have implemented and improved some of these techniques and included their variants in the comparison. Our experiments show that the majority of methods perform better on cross-subject action recognition than cross-view action recognition, that skeleton-based features are more robust for cross-view recognition than depth-based features, and that deep learning features are suitable for large datasets. | A Comparative Review of Recent Kinect-based Action Recognition Algorithms |
The generally accepted phase diagrams for the discrete $Z_N$ spin models in two dimensions imply the existence of certain renormalisation group flows, both between conformal field theories and into a massive phase. Integral equations are proposed to describe these flows, and some properties of their solutions are discussed. The infrared behaviour in massless and massive directions is analysed in detail, and the techniques used are applied to a number of other models. | Massive and massless phases in self-dual $Z_N$ spin models: some exact results from the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz |
The first astrophysical results of the VLTI focal instrument AMBER have shown the importance of the differential and closure phase measures, which are supposed to be much less sensitive to atmospheric and instrumental biases than the absolute visibility. However there are artifacts limiting the accuracy of these measures which can be substantially overcome by a specific calibration technique called Beam Commutation. This paper reports the observed accuracies on AMBER/VLTI phases in different modes, discusses some of the instrumental biases and shows the accuracy gain provided by Beam Commutation on the Differential Phase as well as on the Closure Phase. | AMBER closure and differential phases: accuracy and calibration with a Beam Commutation |
In the systems of spin $\frac12$ fermions with resonant $S$-wave interactions supporting only weakly bound dimers the antisymmetry forbids recombination of three (or more) fermions at zero energy. However, the fermion-fermion-dimer recombination is only partially suppressed. It is studied in the framework of momentum-space integral equations for the four-particle transition operators. In the vicinity of the unitary limit the fermion-fermion-dimer recombination rate, rescaled to build dimensionless quantity, is found to be linear in the effective range parameter, enabling a simple and accurate parametrization as well as evaluation of finite-range effects for any potential model. This feature makes the present results very useful in benchmarking different methods for three-cluster breakup and recombination calculations in four-particle systems. The interplay of the three-fermion and fermion-fermion-dimer recombination processes and their consequences for ultracold mixtures of fermions and dimers is discussed. | Recombination in the universal four-fermion system |
We have investigated the time-dependent regime of a two-dimensional metamagnetic model at its tricritical point via Monte Carlo simulations. First of all, we obtained the temperature and magnetic field corresponding to the tricritical point of the model by using a refinement process based on optimization of the coefficient of determination in the log-log fit of magnetization decay as function of time. With these estimates in hand, we obtained the dynamic tricritical exponents $\theta $ and $z$ and the static tricritical exponents $\nu $ and $\beta $ by using the universal power-law scaling relations for the staggered magnetization and its moments at early stage of the dynamic evolution. Our results at tricritical point confirm that this model belongs to the two-dimensional Blume-Capel model universality class for both static and dynamic behaviors, and also they corroborate the conjecture of Janssen and Oerding for the dynamics of tricritical points. | Novel considerations about the non-equilibrium regime of the tricritical point in a metamagnetic model: localization and tricritical exponents |
We investigate the dynamics of an atomtronic SQUID created by two mobile barriers, moving at two different, constant velocities in a quasi-1D toroidal condensate. We implement a multi-band truncated Wigner approximation numerically, to demonstrate the functionality of a SQUID reflected in the oscillatory voltage-flux dependence. The relative velocity of the two barriers results in a chemical potential imbalance analogous to a voltage in an electronic system. The average velocity of the two barriers corresponds to a rotation of the condensate, analogous to a magnetic flux. We demonstrate that the voltage equivalent shows characteristic flux-dependent oscillations. We point out the parameter regime of barrier heights and relaxation times for the phase slip dynamics, resulting in a realistic protocol for atomtronic SQUID operation. | Implementation of an atomtronic SQUID in a strongly confined toroidal condensate |
We simulate the pump-probe experiments of lasing in molecular nitrogen ions with particular interest on the effects of rotational wave-packet dynamics. Our computations demonstrate that the coherent preparation of rotational wave packets in N$_2^+$ by an intense short non-resonant pulse results in a modulation of the subsequent emission from $B^2\Sigma_u^+ \rightarrow X^2\Sigma_g^+$ transitions induced by a resonant seed pulse. We model the dynamics of such pumping and emission using density matrix theory to describe the N$_2^+$ dynamics and the Maxwell wave equation to model the seed pulse propagation. We show that the gain and absorption of a delayed seed pulse is dependent on the pump-seed delay, that is, the rotational coherences excited by the pump pulse can modulate the gain and absorption of the delayed seed pulse. Further, we demonstrate that the coherent rotational dynamics of the nitrogen ions can cause lasing without electronic inversion. | N$_2^+$ Lasing: Gain and Absorption in the Presence of Rotational Coherence |
In earlier work, the planar diagrams of $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory have been regulated on the light-cone by a scheme involving both discrete $p^+$ and $\tau=ix^+$. The transverse coordinates remain continuous, but even so all diagrams are rendered finite by this procedure. In this scheme quartic interactions are represented as two cubics mediated by short lived fictitious particles whose detailed behavior could be adjusted to retain properties of the continuum theory, at least at one loop. Here we use this setup to calculate the one loop three gauge boson triangle diagram, and so complete the calculation of diagrams renormalizing the coupling to one loop. In particular, we find that the cubic vertex is correctly renormalized once the couplings to the fictitious particles are chosen to keep the gauge bosons massless. | One Loop Calculations in Gauge Theories Regulated on an $x^+$-$p^+$ Lattice |
Family members' life course tendencies to remain geographically close to each other or to migrate due to education or job opportunities have been studied relatively little. Here we investigate migration patterns of parents and their children between 19 administrative regions of Finland from 1970 to 2012. Using the FinnFamily register dataset of 60 000 index individuals and their family members, we investigate the patterns of regional migration and regional co-residence of parents and their children. Specifically, we analyse how likely it is for children to reside in the same region as their parents at any specific age, whether parents and children who live in different regions are likely to reunite, and whether siblings function as regional attractors to each other. Results show an intense regional migration of people to the capital area. The migration propensity of individuals is high in early childhood and peaks in early adulthood. About two thirds of Finnish children live in the same region as their parents throughout their adult lives. Females show higher propensity to migrate than males, since daughters move away from their parents earlier and with a higher rate than sons do. The propensity for two full sibling brothers to be in the same region is higher than that for other types of sibling dyads. We conclude that family members serve as important geographical attractors to each other through the life course and that family attraction is stronger for sons and brothers than for daughters and sisters in contemporary Finland. | Migration patterns across the life course of families: Gender differences and proximity with parents and siblings in Finland |
The prediction of structure dependent molecular properties, such as collision cross sections as measured using ion mobility spectrometry, are crucially dependent on the selection of the correct population of molecular conformers. Here, we report an in-depth evaluation of multiple conformation selection techniques, including simple averaging, Boltzmann weighting, lowest energy selection, low energy threshold reductions, and similarity reduction. Generating 50,000 conformers each for 18 molecules, we used the In Silico Chemical Library Engine (ISiCLE) to calculate the collision cross sections for the entire dataset. First, we employed Monte Carlo simulations to understand the variability between conformer structures as generated using simulated annealing. Then we employed Monte Carlo simulations to the aforementioned conformer selection techniques applied on the simulated molecular property - the ion mobility collision cross section. Based on our analyses, we found Boltzmann weighting to be a good tradeoff between precision and theoretical accuracy. Combining multiple techniques revealed that energy thresholds and root-mean-squared deviation-based similarity reductions can save considerable computational expense while maintaining property prediction accuracy. Molecular dynamic conformer generation tools like AMBER can continue to generate new lowest energy conformers even after tens of thousands of generations, decreasing precision between runs. This reduced precision can be ameliorated and theoretical accuracy increased by running density functional theory geometry optimization on carefully selected conformers. | Exploring the impacts of conformer selection methods on ion mobility collision cross section predictions |
We show that a polyregular word-to-word function is regular if and only if its output size is at most linear in its input size. Moreover a polyregular function can be realized by: a transducer with two pebbles if and only if its output has quadratic size in its input, a transducer with three pebbles if and only if its output has cubic size in its input, etc. Moreover the characterization is decidable and, given a polyregular function, one can compute a transducer realizing it with the minimal number of pebbles. We apply the result to mso interpretations from words to words. We show that mso interpretations of dimension k exactly coincide with k-pebble transductions. | Pebble Minimization of Polyregular Functions |
Let No be Conway's class of surreal numbers. I will make explicit the notion of a function f on No recursively defined over some family of functions. Under some "tameness" and uniformity condition, f must satisfy some interesting properties; in particular, the supremum of the class of element greater or equal to a fixed d in No is actually an element of No. For similar reasons, the concatenation function x:y cannot be defined recursively in a uniform way over polynomial functions. | Recursive definitions on surreal numbers |
We present a theoretical framework allowing to properly address the nature of surface-like eigenmodes in a hypersonic surface phononic crystal, a composite structure made of periodic metal stripes of nanometer size and periodicity of 1 micron, deposited over a semi-infinite silicon substrate. In surface-based phononic crystals there is no distinction between the eigenmodes of the periodically nanostructured overlayer and the surface acoustic modes of the semi-infinite substrate, the solution of the elastic equation being a pseudo-surface acoustic wave partially localized on the nanostructures and radiating energy into the bulk. This problem is particularly severe in the hypersonic frequency range, where semi-infinite substrate's surface acoustic modes strongly couple to the periodic overlayer, thus preventing any perturbative approach. We solve the problem introducing a surface-likeness coefficient as a tool allowing to find pseudo-surface acoustic waves and to calculate their line shapes. Having accessed the pseudo-surface modes of the composite structure, the same theoretical frame allows reporting on the gap opening in the now well-defined pseudo-SAW frequency spectrum. We show how the filling fraction, mass loading and geometric factors affect both the frequency gap, and how the mechanical energy is scattered out of the surface waveguiding modes. | Pseudo-surface acoustic waves in hypersonic surface phononic crystals |
In this paper we study a continuous time stochastic inventory model for a commodity traded in the spot market and whose supply purchase is affected by price and demand uncertainty. A firm aims at meeting a random demand of the commodity at a random time by maximizing total expected profits. We model the firm's optimal procurement problem as a singular stochastic control problem in which controls are nondecreasing processes and represent the cumulative investment made by the firm in the spot market (a so-called stochastic "monotone follower problem"). We assume a general exponential L\'evy process for the commodity's spot price, rather than the commonly used geometric Brownian motion, and general convex holding costs. We obtain necessary and sufficient first order conditions for optimality and we provide the optimal procurement policy in terms of a "base inventory" process; that is, a minimal time-dependent desirable inventory level that the firm's manager must reach at any time. In particular, in the case of linear holding costs and exponentially distributed demand, we are also able to obtain the explicit analytic form of the optimal policy and a probabilistic representation of the optimal revenue. The paper is completed by some computer drawings of the optimal inventory when spot prices are given by a geometric Brownian motion and by an exponential jump-diffusion process. In the first case we also make a numerical comparison between the value function and the revenue associated to the classical static "newsvendor" strategy. | Optimal Dynamic Procurement Policies for a Storable Commodity with L\'evy Prices and Convex Holding Costs |
Around 200 bright stars (V < 6) have been monitored with the two-inch star tracker on the WIRE satellite since observations started in 1999. Here we present new results for the solar-like star Procyon A, the two Delta Scuti stars Altair and Epsilon Cephei, and the triple system Lambda Scorpii which consist of two B-type stars -- one of which we find to be an eclipsing binary. | High-precision photometry with the WIRE satellite |
The Kepler Mission provides nearly continuous monitoring of ~156 000 objects with unprecedented photometric precision. Coincident with the first data release, we presented a catalog of 1879 eclipsing binary systems identified within the 115 square degree Kepler FOV. Here, we provide an updated catalog augmented with the second Kepler data release which increases the baseline nearly 4-fold to 125 days. 386 new systems have been added, ephemerides and principle parameters have been recomputed. We have removed 42 previously cataloged systems that are now clearly recognized as short-period pulsating variables and another 58 blended systems where we have determined that the Kepler target object is not itself the eclipsing binary. A number of interesting objects are identified. We present several exemplary cases: 4 EBs that exhibit extra (tertiary) eclipse events; and 8 systems that show clear eclipse timing variations indicative of the presence of additional bodies bound in the system. We have updated the period and galactic latitude distribution diagrams. With these changes, the total number of identified eclipsing binary systems in the Kepler field-of-view has increased to 2165, 1.4% of the Kepler target stars. | Kepler Eclipsing Binary Stars. II. 2165 Eclipsing Binaries in the Second Data Release |
Using time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group, we study the time evolution of electronic wave packets in the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model with on-site and nearest neighbor repulsion, U and V, respectively. As expected, the wave packets separate into spin-only and charge-only excitations (spin-charge separation). Charge and spin velocities exhibit non-monotonic dependence on V. For small and intermediate values of V, both velocities increase with V. However, the charge velocity exhibits a stronger dependence than that of the spin, leading to a more pronounced spin-charge separation. Charge fractionalization, on the other hand, is weakly affected by V. The results are explained in terms of Luttinger liquid theory in the weak-coupling limit, and an effective model in the strong-coupling regime. | Wave packet dynamics in the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model |
We show that the spectral fluctuations of the Two-Body Random Ensemble (TBRE) exhibit 1/f noise. This result supports a recent conjecture stating that chaotic quantum systems are characterized by 1/f noise in their energy level fluctuations. After suitable individual averaging, we also study the distribution of the exponent \alpha in the 1/f^{\alpha} noise for the individual members of the ensemble. Almost all the exponents lie inside a narrow interval around \alpha=1 suggesting that also individual members exhibit 1/f noise, provided they are individually unfolded | 1/f noise in the Two-Body Random Ensemble |
The ultrafast nonadiabatic internal conversion in azomethane is explored by the on-the-fly trajectory surface-hopping simulations of photoinduced dynamics and femtosecond transient absorption (TA) pump-probe (PP) spectra at three electronic-structure theory levels, OM2/MRCI, SA-CASSCF, and XMS-CASPT2. All these dynamics simulations predict ultrafast internal conversion. On the one hand, the OM2/MRCI and SA-CASSCF methods yield similar excited-state dynamics, while the XMS-CASPT2 method predicts a much slower population decay. On the other hand, the TA PP signals simulated at the SA-CASSCF and XMS-CASPT2 levels show the similar spectral features, particularly for the similar stimulated emission contributions, while the OM2/MRCI signals are quite different. This demonstrates that the nonadiabatic population dynamics and time-resolved stimulated emission signals may reflect different aspects of photoinduced processes. The combination of the dynamical and spectral simulations definitely provides more accurate and detailed information which sheds light on the microscopic mechanisms of photophysical and photochemical processes. | Ultrafast Internal Conversion Dynamics Through the on-the-fly Simulation of Transient Absorption Pump-Probe Spectra with Different Electronic Structure Methods |
Motivated by calculations of motivic homotopy groups, we give widely attained conditions under which operadic algebras and modules thereof are preserved under (co)localization functors | On functorial (co)localization of algebras and modules over operads |
We consider the asymptotic behavior of nonlinear nonlocal flows $u_t+(-\La)^{1/2}u=0$ to find the geometric property of the solutions in nonlinear eigenvalue problem: (-\La)^{1/2}\vp=\lambda\vp posed in a strictly convex domain $\Omega\subset\R^n$ with $\vp>0$ in $\Omega$ and $\vp=0$ on $\R^n\bs\Omega$. This is corresponding to an eigenvalue problem for Cauchy process. The concavity of $\vp$ is well known for the dimension $n=1$. In this paper, we will show $\vp^{-\frac{2}{n+1}}$ is convex. Moreover, the eventual power-convexity of the parabolic flows is also proved. In the final section, We extend geometric results to Cauchy problem for the fractional Heat operator. | Geometric property of the Ground State Eigenfunction for Cauchy Process |
We present a computational framework for the simulations of powder-bed fusion of metallic alloys, which combines: (1) CalPhaD calculations of temperature-dependent alloy properties and phase diagrams, (2) macroscale finite element (FE) thermal simulations of the material addition and fusion, and (3) microscopic phase-field (PF) simulations of solidification in the melt pool. The methodology is applied to simulate the selective laser melting (SLM) of an Inconel 718 alloy using realistic processing parameters. We discuss the effect of temperature-dependent properties and the importance of accounting for different properties between the powder bed and the dense material in the macroscale thermal simulations. Using a two-dimensional longitudinal slice of the thermal field calculated via FE simulations, we perform an appropriately-converged PF solidification simulation at the scale of the entire melt pool, resulting in a calculation with over one billion grid points, yet performed on a single cluster node with eight graphics processing units (GPUs). These microscale simulations provide new insight into the grain texture selection via polycrystalline growth competition under realistic SLM conditions, with a level of detail down to individual dendrites. | Multiscale simulation of powder-bed fusion processing of metallic alloys |
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