  In this work, by using the strong coupling expansion and exact diagonization
(ED), we study the $ Z_2/U(1) $ Dicke model with independent rotating wave (RW)
coupling $ g $ and counter-rotating wave (CRW) coupling $ g^{\prime} $ at a
finite $ N $.
  This model includes the four standard quantum optics model: Rabi, Dicke,
Jaynes-Cummings ( JC ) and Tavis-Cummings (TC) model as its various special
limits. We show that in the super-radiant phase, the system's energy levels are
grouped into doublets with even and odd parity.
  Any anisotropy $ \beta=g/g^{\prime} \neq 1 $ leads to the oscillation of
parities in both the ground and excited doublets as the atom-photon coupling
strength increases.
  The oscillations will be pushed to the infinite coupling strength in the
isotropic $ Z_2 $ limit $ \beta=1 $.
  We find nearly perfect agreements between the strong coupling expansion and
the ED in the super-radiant regime.
  We also compute the photon correlation functions, squeezing spectrum, number
correlation functions which can be measured by various standard optical
techniques.


  Atiyah and Manton have outlined a scheme to obtain approximations to the
SU(2) skyrmions from instantons in $\R^4$. In this paper we apply this scheme
to construct, in an explicit form, approximations to static spherically
symmetric SU(N) skyrmions with various baryon numbers. In particular we show
how to obtain the skyrmions from instantons using harmonic maps into complex
projective spaces.


  A small body orbiting a black hole follows a trajectory that, at leading
order, is a geodesic of the black hole spacetime. Much effort has gone into
computing "self force" corrections to this motion, arising from the small
body's own contributions to the system's spacetime. Another correction to the
motion arises from coupling of the small body's spin to the black hole's
spacetime curvature. Spin-curvature coupling drives a precession of the small
body, and introduces a "force" (relative to the geodesic) which shifts the
small body's worldline. These effects scale with the small body's spin at
leading order. In this paper, we show that the equations which govern
spin-curvature coupling can be analyzed with a frequency-domain decomposition,
at least to leading order in the small body's spin. We show how to compute the
frequency of precession along generic orbits, and how to describe the small
body's precession and motion in the frequency domain. We illustrate this
approach with a number of examples. This approach is likely to be useful for
understanding spin coupling effects in the extreme mass ratio limit, and may
provide insight into modeling spin effects in the strong field for non-extreme
mass ratios.


  If a Quillen model category can be specified using a certain logical syntax
(intuitively, ``is algebraic/combinatorial enough''), so that it can be defined
in any category of sheaves, then the satisfaction of Quillen's axioms over any
site is a purely formal consequence of their being satisfied over the category
of sets. Such data give rise to a functor from the category of topoi and
geometric morphisms to Quillen model categories and Quillen adjunctions.


  A Lempel-Ziv complexity measure is introduced into the theory of a Minority
Game (MG) in order to capture some features that volatility, one of the central
quantities in this model of interacting agents, is not able to. Extracted
solely from the binary string of outcomes of the game complexity offers new and
valuable information on collective behavior of players. Also, we show that an
expression for volatility may be included in the analytical expression for
complexity.


  Bell appealed to the theory of relativity in formulating his principle of
local causality. But he maintained that quantum field theories do not conform
to that principle, even when their field equations are relativistically
covariant and their observable algebras satisfy a relativistically motivated
microcausality condition. A pragmatist view of quantum theory and an
interventionist approach to causation prompt the reevaluation of local
causality and microcausality. Local causality cannot be understood as a
reasonable requirement on relativistic quantum field theories: it is
unmotivated even if applicable to them. But microcausality emerges as a
sufficient condition for the consistent application of a relativistic quantum
field theory.


  Although artificial intelligence-based perception (AIP) using deep neural
networks (DNN) has achieved near human level performance, its well-known
limitations are obstacles to the safety assurance needed in autonomous
applications. These include vulnerability to adversarial inputs, inability to
handle novel inputs and non-interpretability. While research in addressing
these limitations is active, in this paper, we argue that a fundamentally
different approach is needed to address them. Inspired by dual process models
of human cognition, where Type 1 thinking is fast and non-conscious while Type
2 thinking is slow and based on conscious reasoning, we propose a dual process
architecture for safe AIP. We review research on how humans address the
simplest non-trivial perception problem, image classification, and sketch a
corresponding AIP architecture for this task. We argue that this architecture
can provide a systematic way of addressing the limitations of AIP using DNNs
and an approach to assurance of human-level performance and beyond. We conclude
by discussing what components of the architecture may already be addressed by
existing work and what remains future work.


  The paper reports on the Raman/fluorescence study of melt-grown Al2O3/GdAlO3
eutectic composites. Raman bands from the -alumina and gadolinium
perovskite phases identified by X-ray diffraction were systematically observed
together in the domains optically visible, even when the latter were much
larger than the Raman probe. This suggests a more complex interlocking pattern
than appearing on SEM or optical microscopy images. The polarization of alumina
and GdAlO3 Raman bands evidenced the preferential orientation of Al2O3 phase
with respect to the sample growth direction, in agreement with TEM results. In
addition, the position of chromium impurity fluorescence bands was used to map
the residual stress in alumina phase. It is a compression in the 200-300 MPa
range.


  This paper considers the use of singular perturbation approximations for a
class of linear quantum systems arising in the area of linear quantum optics.
The paper presents results on the physical realizability properties of the
approximate system arising from singular perturbation model reduction.


  Fuzzy controllers have gained popularity in the past few decades with
successful implementations in many fields that have enabled designers to
control complex systems through linguistic-based rules in contrast to
traditional methods. This paper presents an educational platform based on
LEGO\c{opyright} NXT to assist the learning of fuzzy logic control principles
at undergraduate level by providing a simple and easy-to-follow teaching setup.
The proposed fuzzy control study aims to accompany students to the learning of
fuzzy control fundamentals by building hands-on robotic experiments. The
proposed educational platform has been successfully applied to several
undergraduate courses within the Electronics Department in the University of
Guadalajara. The description of robotic experiments and the evaluation of their
impact in the student performance are both provided in the paper.


  Nagata solved Hilbert's 14-th problem in 1958 in the negative. The solution
naturally lead him to a tantalizing conjecture that remains widely open after
more than half a century of intense efforts. Using Nagata's theorem as starting
point, and the conjecture, with its multiple variations, as motivation, we
explore the important questions of finite generation for invariant rings, for
support semigroups of multigraded algebras, and for Mori cones of divisors on
blown up surfaces, and the rationality of Waldschimdt constants. Finally we
suggest a connection between the Mori cone of the Zariski-Riemann space and the
continuity of the Waldschmidt constant as a function on the space of
valuations.


  We investigate the dynamics of the majority-rule opinion formation model when
voters experience differential latencies. With this extension, voters that just
adopted an opinion go into a latent state during which they are excluded from
the opinion formation process. The duration of the latent state depends on the
opinion adopted by the voter. The net result is a bias towards consensus on the
opinion that is associated with the shorter latency. We determine the exit
probability and time to consensus for systems of $N$ voters. Additionally, we
derive an asymptotic characterisation of the time to consensus by means of a
continuum model.


  We study the charge-density-wave order and its competition with
superconductivity in the one-band Hubbard model for high-$T_c$ superconducting
cuprates. We use cluster dynamical mean field theory (CDMFT) at $T=0$. The
one-band Hubbard model only contains copper atoms, and a physical
charge-density-wave with charge excesses located on the oxygen atoms manifests
itself as a bond-density-wave (BDW) within this context. It arises purely out
of local correlation effects and also leads to a $s'$-wave pair-density-wave in
the presence of $d$-wave superconductivity. The $d$-wave BDW is suppressed on
increasing $U$ and is favored on increasing the magnitude of the
second-neighbor hopping $t'$. Further, the $d$-wave BDW order is weakened when
in competition with superconductivity, as seen in experiments. Additionally it
behaves quite differently on varying $U$ in the superconducting state compared
to the normal state.


  In this talk we first discuss the motivation for using the AdS/CFT
correspondence as a tool for the understanding of real-time dynamics of
quark-gluon plasma. After describing the effective dual degrees of freedom for
a strongly coupled gauge theory system, we review the subsequent theoretical
`layers' in the physics of quark-gluon plasma: a uniform plasma at fixed
temperature, linearized fluctuations, nonlinear hydrodynamic behaviour and
finally some aspects of addressing non-equilibrium physics. The discussion is
brief and aimed at nonspecialists.


  New phase of matter usually emerges when a given symmetry breaks
spontaneously, which can involve charge, spin, and valley degree of freedoms.
Here, we report an observation of new correlated insulators evolved from spin
polarized states to valley polarized states in AB-BA stacked twisted double
bilayer graphene (TDBG). The transition of the isospin polarization is a result
of the competition between spin and valley, driven by the displacement field
(D). At a high field |D| > 0.7 V/nm, we observe valley polarized correlated
insulators with a big Zeeman g factor of ~10, both at v = 2 in the moir\'e
conduction band and more surprisingly at v = -2 in the moir\'e valence band. At
a medium field |D| < 0.6 V/nm, by contrast, it is a conventional spin polarized
correlated insulator at v = 2 and a featureless metal at v = -2. Moreover, we
observe a valley polarized Chern insulator with C = 2 emanating at v = 2 in the
electron side and a valley polarized Fermi surface around v = -2 in the hole
side. The valley Chern insulator with C = 2 is evident from a well quantized
Hall conductance plateau at 2e^2/h and correspondingly a vanishing longitudinal
component. The valley polarized Fermi surface is topologically trivial with C =
0, and it shows a series of quantized Landau levels with v_LL = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
and others. These observations are in good agreements with our band and
topology calculations. Our results demonstrate a feasible way to realize
isospin control and to obtain new phases of matter in TDBG by the displacement
field, and might benefit other twisted or non-twisted multilayer systems.


  Frictional sliding is an intrinsically complex phenomenon, emerging from the
interplay between driving forces, elasto-frictional instabilities, interfacial
nonlinearity and dissipation, material inertia and bulk geometry. We show that
homogeneous rate-and-state dependent frictional systems, driven at a prescribed
boundary velocity -- as opposed to a prescribed stress -- in a range where the
frictional interface is rate-weakening, generically host self-healing slip
pulses, a sliding mode not yet fully understood. Such velocity-driven
frictional systems are then shown to exhibit coarsening dynamics saturated at
the system length in the sliding direction, independently of the system's
height, leading to steadily propagating pulse trains. The latter may be viewed
as a propagating phase-separated state, where slip and stick characterize the
two phases. While pulse trains' periodicity is coarsening-limited by the
system's length, the single pulse width, characteristic slip velocity and
propagation speed exhibit rich properties, which are comprehensively understood
using theory and extensive numerics. Finally, we show that for sufficiently
small system heights, pulse trains are accompanied by periodic
elasto-frictional instabilities.


  The onset of the {\em wave resistance}, via generation of capillary gravity
waves, of a small object moving with velocity $V$, is investigated
experimentally. Due to the existence of a minimum phase velocity $V_c$ for
surface waves, the problem is similar to the generation of rotons in superfluid
helium near their minimum. In both cases waves or rotons are produced at
$V>V_c$ due to {\em Cherenkov radiation}. We find that the transition to the
wave drag state is continuous: in the vicinity of the bifurcation the wave
resistance force is proportional to $\sqrt{V-V_c}$ for various fluids.


  Based on the Lax compatibility, the negative-order coupled Harry--Dym (ncHD)
hierarchy depending upon one parameter $\alpha$ is retrieved in the Lenard
scheme, which includes the two-component Camassa--Holm (2CH) equation as a
special member with $\alpha=-\frac14$. By using a symmetric constraint, it is
found that only in the case of $\alpha>1$ the ncHD hierarchy can be reduced to
a family of backward Neumann type systems by separating the temporal and
spatial variables on the tangent bundle of a unit sphere. The resultant
backward Neumann type systems are proved to be completely integrable in the
Liouville sense via a Lax equation. Finally, for $\alpha>1$, the relation
between the ncHD hierarchy and the backward Neumann type systems is
established, where the involutive solutions of backward Neumann type systems
yield the finite parametric solutions to the ncHD hierarchy.


  In this paper we study different restrictions imposed over the set of
permutations of size $n$, $S_n$, and for specific classes of restrictions study
the cycle structure of corresponding permutations. More specifically, we prove
that for any fixed positive integer $k$, the number of $k$-cycles of a
uniformly chosen permutation $\pi \in S_n$ with the restriction "$\pi(i) \geq
i-1$" for $i \in \{2, \ldots, n\}$ has a Normal asymptotic distribution. We
further prove that this result translates into CLTs regarding multiplicities of
fixed-size parts of a uniformly selected composition of $n$.


  A system of renewal equations on a graph provides a framework to describe the
exploitation of a biological resource. In this context, we formulate an optimal
control problem, prove the existence of an optimal control and ensure that the
target cost function is polynomial in the control. In specific situations,
further information about the form of this dependence is obtained. As a
consequence, in some cases the optimal control is proved to be necessarily
bang--bang, in other cases the computations necessary to find the optimal
control are significantly reduced.


  The large-scale structure of the Universe should soon be measured at high
redshift during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) through line-intensity mapping.
A number of ongoing and planned surveys are using the 21 cm line to trace
neutral hydrogen fluctuations in the intergalactic medium (IGM) during the EoR.
These may be fruitfully combined with separate efforts to measure large-scale
emission fluctuations from galactic lines such as [CII], CO, H-$\alpha$, and
Ly-$\alpha$ during the same epoch. The large scale power spectrum of each line
encodes important information about reionization, with the 21 cm power spectrum
providing a relatively direct tracer of the ionization history. Here we show
that the large scale 21 cm power spectrum can be extracted using only
cross-power spectra between the 21 cm fluctuations and each of two separate
line-intensity mapping data cubes. This technique is more robust to residual
foregrounds than the usual 21 cm auto-power spectrum measurements and so can
help in verifying auto-spectrum detections. We characterize the accuracy of
this method using numerical simulations and find that the large-scale 21 cm
power spectrum can be inferred to an accuracy of within 5% for most of the EoR,
reaching 0.6% accuracy on a scale of $k\sim0.1\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$ at $\left< x_i
\right> = 0.36$ ($z = 8.34$ in our model). An extension from two to $N$
additional lines would provide $N(N-1)/2$ cross-checks on the large-scale 21 cm
power spectrum. This work strongly motivates redundant line-intensity mapping
surveys probing the same cosmological volumes.


  We consider the fixed-delay synthesis problem for continuous-time Markov
chains extended with fixed-delay transitions (fdCTMC). The goal is to
synthesize concrete values of the fixed-delays (timeouts) that minimize the
expected total cost incurred before reaching a given set of target states. The
same problem has been considered and solved in previous works by computing an
optimal policy in a certain discrete-time Markov decision process (MDP) with a
huge number of actions that correspond to suitably discretized values of the
timeouts.
  In this paper, we design a symbolic fixed-delay synthesis algorithm which
avoids the explicit construction of large action spaces. Instead, the algorithm
computes a small sets of "promising" candidate actions on demand. The candidate
actions are selected by minimizing a certain objective function by computing
its symbolic derivative and extracting a univariate polynomial whose roots are
precisely the points where the derivative takes zero value. Since roots of high
degree univariate polynomials can be isolated very efficiently using modern
mathematical software, we achieve not only drastic memory savings but also
speedup by three orders of magnitude compared to the previous methods.


  This paper presents the approach developed at the Faculty of Engineering of
University of Porto, to participate in SemEval 2017, Task 5: Fine-grained
Sentiment Analysis on Financial Microblogs and News. The task consisted in
predicting a real continuous variable from -1.0 to +1.0 representing the
polarity and intensity of sentiment concerning companies/stocks mentioned in
short texts. We modeled the task as a regression analysis problem and combined
traditional techniques such as pre-processing short texts, bag-of-words
representations and lexical-based features with enhanced financial specific
bag-of-embeddings. We used an external collection of tweets and news headlines
mentioning companies/stocks from S\&P 500 to create financial word embeddings
which are able to capture domain-specific syntactic and semantic similarities.
The resulting approach obtained a cosine similarity score of 0.69 in sub-task
5.1 - Microblogs and 0.68 in sub-task 5.2 - News Headlines.


  Coupled Tchebyscheff maps have recently been introduced to explain parameters
in the standard model of particle physics, using the stochastic quantisation of
Parisi and Wu. This paper studies dynamical properties of these maps, finding
analytic expressions for a number of periodic states and determining their
linear stability. Numerical evidence is given for nonlinear stability of these
states, and also the presence of exponentially slow dynamics for some ranges of
the parameter. These results indicate that a theory of particle physics based
on coupled map lattices must specify strong physical arguments for any choice
of initial conditions, and explain how stochastic quantisation is obtained in
the many stable parameter regions.


  We give a version of Ax-Katz's $p$-adic congruences and Moreno-Moreno's
$p$-weight refinement that holds over any finite commutative ring of prime
characteristic. We deduce this from a purely group-theoretic result that gives
a lower bound on the $p$-adic divisibility of the number of simultaneous zeros
of a system of maps $f_j: A\to B_j$ from a fixed ``source'' finite commutative
group $A$ of exponent $p$ to varying ``target'' finite commutative $p$-groups
$B_j$. Our proof combines Wilson's proof of Ax-Katz over $\mathbb{F}_p$ with
the functional calculus of Aichinger-Moosbauer.


  Consider the following forest fire model where the possible locations of
trees are the sites of $\mathbb{Z}$. Each site has three possible states:
'vacant', 'occupied' or 'burning'. Vacant sites become occupied at rate $1$. At
each site, ignition (by lightning) occurs at rate $\lambda$. When a site is
ignited, a fire starts and propagates to neighbors at rate $\pi$. We study the
asymptotic behavior of this process as $\lambda\to0$ and $\pi\to\infty$. We
show that there are three possible classes of scaling limits, according to the
regime in which $\lambda\to0$ and $\pi\to\infty$.


  We discuss the observability of a one-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation on
certain time dependent domain. In linear moving case, we give the exact
boundary and pointwise internal observability for arbitrary time. For the
general moving, we provide exact boundary observability when the curve
satisfies some certain conditions . By duality theory, we establish the
controllability of adjoint system.


  Quantum operations by utilizing the underlying geometric phases produced in
physical systems are favoured due to its potential robustness. When a system in
a non-degenerate eigenstate undergoes an adiabatically cyclic evolution
dominated by its Hamiltonian, it will get a geometric phase, referred to as the
Berry Phase. While a non-adiabatically cyclic evolution produces an
Aharonov-Anandan geometric phase. The two types of Abelian geometric phases are
extended to the non-Abelian cases, where the phase factors become matrix-valued
and the transformations associated with different loops are non-commutable.
Abelian and non-Abelian (holonomic) operations are prevalent in discrete
variable systems, whose limited (say, two) energy levels, form the qubit. While
their developments in continuous systems have also been investigated, mainly
due to that, bosonic modes (in, such as, cat states) with large Hilbert spaces,
provide potential advantages in fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we
propose a feasible scheme to realize non-adiabatic holonomic quantum logic
operations in continuous variable systems with cat codes. We construct
arbitrary single-qubit (two-qubit) gates with the combination of single- and
two-photon drivings applied to a Kerr Parametric Oscillator (KPO) (the coupled
KPOs). Our scheme relaxes the requirements of the previously proposed quantum
geometric operation strategies in continuous variable systems, providing an
effective way for quantum control.


  Structural transitions and the melting behavior of crystalline poly(ethylene
oxide),(CH2-CH2-O)n, (PEO) has been investigated using fully atomistic,
constant pressure-constant temperature (NPT) molecular dynamics (MD)
simulations. Melting of PEO proceeds in two stages; Order parameters reveal the
loss of interchain orientational correlations and of chain helicity in the
first and second stages of melting respectively. Sliding diffusion and
anisotropic reorientational dynamics of the polymer backbone are observed in
the solid state, in agreement with 1H NMR experiments.


  While the analysis of mean-field spin glass models has seen tremendous
progress in the last twenty years, lattice spin glasses have remained largely
intractable. This article presents the solutions to a number of questions about
the Edwards-Anderson model of short-range spin glasses (in all dimensions) that
were raised in the physics literature many years ago. First, it is shown that
the ground state is sensitive to small perturbations of the disorder, in the
sense that a small amount of noise gives rise to a new ground state that is
nearly orthogonal to the old one with respect to the site overlap inner
product. Second, it is shown that one can overturn a macroscopic fraction of
the spins in the ground state with an energy cost that is negligible compared
to the size of the boundary of the overturned region - a feature that is
believed to be typical of spin glasses but clearly absent in ferromagnets. The
third result is that the boundary of the overturned region in dimension $d$ has
fractal dimension strictly greater than $d-1$, confirming a prediction from
physics. The fourth result is that the correlations between bonds in the ground
state can decay at most like the inverse of the distance. This contrasts with
the random field Ising model, where it has been shown recently that the
correlation decays exponentially in distance in dimension two. The fifth result
is that the expected size of the critical droplet of a bond grows at least like
a power of the volume. Taken together, these results comprise the first
mathematical proof of glassy behavior in a short-range spin glass model.


  We observed the main core F of the rho Ophiuchi cloud, an active star-forming
region located at ~140 pc, using XMM-Newton with an exposure of 33 ks. We
detect 87 X-ray sources within the 30' diameter field-of-view of the it EPIC
imaging detector array. We cross-correlate the positions of XMM-Newton X-ray
sources with previous X-ray and infrared (IR) catalogs: 25 previously unknown
X-ray sources are found from our observation; 43 X-ray sources are detected by
both XMM-Newton and Chandra; 68 XMM-Newton X-ray sources have 2MASS near-IR
counterparts. We show that XMM-Newton and Chandra have comparable sensitivity
for point source detection when the exposure time is set to ~30 ks for both. We
detect X-ray emission from 7 Class I sources, 26 Class II sources, and 17 Class
III sources. The X-ray detection rate of Class I sources is very high (64 %),
which is consistent with previous Chandra observations in this area. We propose
that 15 X-ray sources are new class III candidates, which doubles the number of
known Class III sources, and helps to complete the census of YSOs in this area.
We also detect X-ray emission from two young bona fide brown dwarfs, GY310 and
GY141, out of three known in the field of view. GY141 appears brighter by
nearly two orders of magnitude than in the Chandra observation. We extract
X-ray light curves and spectra from these YSOs, and find some of them showed
weak X-ray flares. We observed an X-ray flare from the bona fide brown dwarf
GY310. We find as in the previous Chandra observation of this region that Class
I sources tend to have higher temperatures and heavier X-ray absorptions than
Class II and III sources.


  We consider Yang-Mills theory with the U(1) gauge group on a non-commutative
plane. Perturbatively it was observed that the invariance of this theory under
area-preserving diffeomorphisms (APDs) breaks down to a rigid subgroup SL(2,R).
Here we present explicit results for the APD symmetry breaking at finite gauge
coupling and finite non-commutativity. They are based on lattice simulations
and measurements of Wilson loops with the same area but with a variety of
different shapes. Our results are consistent with the expected loss of
invariance under APDs. Moreover, they strongly suggest that non-perturbatively
the SL(2,R) symmetry does not persist either.


  Recently, deeper understanding of QCD emerges from the study of the AdS/CFT
correspondence. New results include the properties of quark-gluon plasma and
the confinement/deconfinement phase transition, which are both very important
for the scenario of the QCD phase transition in the early universe. In this
paper, we study some aspects of how the new results may affect the old
calculations of the cosmological QCD phase transition, which are mainly based
on the studies of perturbative QCD, lattice QCD and the MIT bag model.


  We consider accretion-caused deceleration of a gravitationally-powerful
compact stellar object traveling within a cold Fermi-gas medium. We provide
analytical and numerical estimates of the effect manifestation.


  A critical challenge in the observation of the redshifted 21-cm line is its
separation from bright Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. In particular,
the instrumental leakage of polarized foregrounds, which undergo significant
Faraday rotation as they propagate through the interstellar medium, may
harmfully contaminate the 21-cm power spectrum. We develop a formalism to
describe the leakage due to instrumental widefield effects in visibility-based
power spectra measured with redundant arrays, extending the delay-spectrum
approach presented in Parsons et al. (2012). We construct polarized sky models
and propagate them through the instrument model to simulate realistic full-sky
observations with the Precision Array to Probe the Epoch of Reionization. We
find that the leakage due to a population of polarized point sources is
expected to be higher than diffuse Galactic polarization at any $k$ mode for a
30~m reference baseline. For the same reference baseline, a foreground-free
window at $k > 0.3 \, h$~Mpc$^{-1}$ can be defined in terms of leakage from
diffuse Galactic polarization even under the most pessimistic assumptions. If
measurements of polarized foreground power spectra or a model of polarized
foregrounds are given, our method is able to predict the polarization leakage
in actual 21-cm observations, potentially enabling its statistical subtraction
from the measured 21-cm power spectrum.


  In this paper we introduce a new discrete time and continuous state space
stationary process $\{X_n; n = 1, 2, \ldots \}$, such that $X_n$ follows a
two-parameter generalized exponential (GE) distribution. Joint distribution
functions, characterization and some dependency properties of this new process
have been investigated. The GE-process has three unknown parameters, two shape
parameters and one scale parameter, and due to this reason it is more flexible
than the existing exponential process. In presence of the scale parameter, if
the two shape parameters are equal, then the maximum likelihood estimators of
the unknown parameters can be obtained by solving one non-linear equation and
if the two shape parameters are arbitrary, then the maximum likelihood
estimators can be obtained by solving a two dimensional optimization problem.
Two {\color{black} synthetic} data sets, and one real gold-price data set have
been analyzed to see the performance of the proposed model in practice. Finally
some generalizations have been indicated.


  We report the Chandra discovery of an X-ray cluster at redshift z = 1.063
associated with the Compact Steep Spectrum radio loud quasar 3C 186
(Q0740+380). Diffuse X-ray emission is detected out to ~120 kpc from the quasar
and contains 741+/-40 net counts. The X-ray spectrum of the extended emission
shows strong Fe-line emission (EW=412eV) at the quasar redshift and confirms
the thermal nature of this diffuse component. We measure a cluster temperature
of 5.2(+1.2/-0.9) keV and an X-ray luminosity L(0.5-2 keV) ~ 6e44 erg/sec,
which are in agreement with the luminosity-temperature relation for
high-redshift clusters. This is the first detection of a bright X-ray cluster
around a luminous (L_bol ~1e47 erg/sec) CSS quasar at high redshift and only
the fifth z>1 X-ray cluster detected. We find that the CSS radio source is
highly overpressured with respect to the thermal cluster medium by about 3
orders of magnitude. This provides direct observational evidence that the radio
source is not thermally confined as posited in the ``frustrated'' scenario for
CSS sources. Instead, it appears that the radio source may be young and we are
observing it at an early stage of its evolution. In that case the radio source
could supply the energy into the cluster and potentially prevent its cooling.


  This paper studies a novel user cooperation method in a wireless powered
communication network (WPCN), where a pair of distributed terminal users first
harvest wireless energy broadcasted by one energy node (EN) and then use the
harvested energy to transmit information cooperatively to a destination node
(DN). In particular, the two cooperating users exchange their independent
information with each other to form a virtual antenna array and transmit
jointly to the DN. By allowing each user to allocate part of its harvested
energy to transmit the other's information, the proposed cooperation can
effectively mitigate the user unfairness problem in WPCNs, where a user may
suffer from very low data rate due to the poor energy harvesting performance
and high data transmission consumptions. We derive the maximum common
throughput achieved by the cooperation scheme through optimizing the time
allocation on wireless energy transfer, user message exchange, and joint
information transmissions. Through comparing with some representative benchmark
schemes, our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed user
cooperation in enhancing the throughput performance under different setups.


  In this paper, we investigate the management of energy storage control and
load scheduling in scenarios considering a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV)
system using packetized energy management. The aim is to reduce an average
aggregated system cost through the proposed \textit{packetized energy
management controller} considering household energy consumption, procurement
price, load scheduling delays, PV self-sufficiency via generated renewable
energy and battery degradation. The proposed approach solves the joint
optimization problem using established heuristics, namely genetic algorithm
(GA), binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO), and differential evolution
(DE). Additionally, the performances of heuristic algorithms are also compared
in terms of the effectiveness of load scheduling with delay constraints,
packetized energy transactions, and battery degradation cost. Case studies have
been provided to demonstrate and extensively evaluate the algorithms. The
numerical results show that the proposed packetized energy management
controller can considerably reduce the aggregated average system cost up to
4.7\%, 5.14\%, and 1.35\% by GA, BPSO, and DE, respectively while meeting the
packetized energy demand and scheduling delays requirements.


  The layered honeycomb magnet $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ has been suggested to exhibit
a field-induced quantum spin liquid state, in which the reported large thermal
Hall effect close to the half-quantized value still remains a subject of
debate. Recently, oscillatory structures of the magnetothermal conductivity
were reported and interpreted as quantum oscillations of charge-neutral
particles. To investigate the origin of these oscillatory structures, we
performed a comprehensive measurement of the in-plane magnetothermal
conductivity $\kappa(H)$ down to low temperature (100 mK), as well as
magnetization $M$, for single crystals grown by two different techniques:
Bridgman and chemical vapor transport. The results show a series of dips in
$\kappa(H)$ and peaks in the field derivative of $M$ located at the same fields
independent of the growth method. We argue that these structures originate from
field-induced phase transitions rather than quantum oscillations. The positions
of several of these features are temperature-dependent and connected to the
magnetic phase transitions in zero field: the main transition at 7 K and weaker
additional transitions which likely arise from secondary phases at 10 K and 13
K. In contrast to what is expected for quantum oscillations, the magnitude of
the structure in $\kappa(H)$ is smaller for the higher conductivity crystal and
decreases rapidly upon cooling below 1 K.


  Starting from positive and negative helicity Maxwell equations expressed in
Riemann-Silberstein vectors, we derive the ten usual and ten additional
Poincar{\'e} invariants, the latter being related to the electromagnetic spin,
i.e., the intrinsic rotation, or state of polarization, of the electromagnetic
fields. Some of these invariants have apparently not been discussed in the
literature before.


  We suggest a new idea of Editorial Network - a mixed extractive-abstractive
summarization approach, which is applied as a post-processing step over a given
sequence of extracted sentences. Our network tries to imitate the decision
process of a human editor during summarization. Within such a process, each
extracted sentence may be either kept untouched, rephrased or completely
rejected. We further suggest an effective way for training the "editor" based
on a novel soft-labeling approach. Using the CNN/DailyMail dataset we
demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach compared to state-of-the-art
extractive-only or abstractive-only baseline methods.


  We combine weak lensing measurements from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey and
the VIRMOS-DESCART survey, and present the first direct measurements of the
bias parameter b and the galaxy-mass cross-correlation coefficient r on scales
ranging from 0.2 to 9.3 h_{50}^{-1} Mpc at a lens redshift z~0.35. We find
strong evidence that both b and r change with scale for our sample of lens
galaxies (19.5<R_C<21), which have luminosities around L_*. For the currently
favored cosmology (\Omega_m=0.3,\Omega_\Lambda=0.7), we find b=0.71^+0.06_-0.04
on a scale of 1-2 Mpc, increasing to ~1 on larger scales. The value of r has
only minimal dependence on the assumed cosmology. The variation of r with scale
is very similar to that of b, and reaches a minimum value of r=0.57^+0.08_-0.07
(at 1 Mpc). This suggests significant stochastic biasing and/or non-linear
biasing. On scales larger than ~4 Mpc the value of r is consistent with a value
of 1. In addition we use RCS data alone to measure the ratio b/r on scale
ranging from 0.15 to 12.5 Mpc, and find that the ratio varies somewhat with
scale. We obtain an average value of b/r=1.090+-0.035, in good agreement with
previous estimates. A (future) careful comparison of our results with models of
galaxy formation can provide unique constraints, as r is linked intimately to
the details of galaxy formation.


  Two-photon photoassociation of hot magnesium atoms by femtosecond laser
pulses, creating electronically excited magnesium dimer molecules, is studied
from first principles, combining \textit{ab initio} quantum chemistry and
molecular quantum dynamics. This theoretical framework allows for rationalizing
the generation of molecular rovibrational coherence from thermally hot atoms
[L. Rybak \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 107}, 273001 (2011)]. Random
phase thermal wave functions are employed to model the thermal ensemble of hot
colliding atoms. Comparing two different choices of basis functions, random
phase wavefunctions built from eigenstates are found to have the fastest
convergence for the photoassociation yield. The interaction of the colliding
atoms with a femtosecond laser pulse is modeled non-perturbatively to account
for strong-field effects.


  We report the magnetic, dielectric and ferroelectric properties of
polycrystalline iron vanadate(FeVO4), which has been recently found to exhibit
multiferroicity in low temperature with noncollinear magnetic orderings. The
influence of external magnetic field up to 9T on these properties is
systematically investigated. Besides the suppressing effect on the original
ferroelectric transition, the strong magnetic field seems to induce a secondary
ferroelectric transition at a slight lower temperature. And the corresponding
magnetization measurement reveals a field-induced metamagnetic transition at
low temperatures. Our results will help to clarify the complex magnetic
structure and microscopic mechanism of multiferroicity in FeVO4.


  Suitably normalized differential probabilities of one-photon emission in
external electromagnetic fields are compared to quantify the transit of
nonlinear Compton scattering to linear Compton scattering, described by the
Klein-Nishina formula, and to constant crossed field treatment. The known
Klein-Nishina suppression at large energies is further enforced by increasing
field intensity. In view of the Ritus-Narozhny conjecture, we demonstrate that
different paths in the field intensity vs. energy plane towards large values of
the quantum non-linearity parameter $\chi$ facilitate significantly different
asymptotic dependencies, both in the Klein-Nishina regime and the constant
crossed field regime and in between.


  It is shown that B\"acklund transformations (BTs) and zero-curvature
representations (ZCRs) of systems of partial differential equations (PDEs) are
closely related. The connection is established by nonlinear representations of
the symmetry group underlying the ZCR which induce gauge transformations
relating different BTs. This connection is used to construct BTs from ZCRs (and
vice versa). Furthermore a procedure is outlined which allows a systematic
search for ZCRs of a given system of PDEs.


  As in-vehicle communication becomes more complex, the automotive community is
exploring various architectural options such as centralized and zonal
architectures for their numerous benefits. Zonal architecture reduces the
wiring cost by physically locating related operations and ECUs near their
intended functions and the number of physical ECUs through function
consolidation. Centralized architectures consolidate the number of ECUs into
few, powerful compute units. Common characteristics of these architectures
include the need for high-bandwidth communication and security, which have been
elusive with standard automotive architectures. Further, as automotive
communication technologies evolve, it is also likely that multiple link-layer
technologies such as CAN and Automotive Ethernet will co-exist. These
alternative architectures promise to integrate these diverse sets of
technologies. However, architectures that allow such co-existence have not been
adequately explored.
  In this work we explore a new network architecture called Named Data
Networking (NDN) to achieve multiple goals: provide a foundational security
infrastructure and bridge different link layer protocols such as CAN, LIN, and
automotive Ethernet into a unified communication system.
  We created a proof-of-concept bench-top testbed using CAN HATS and Raspberry
PIs that replay real traffic over CAN and Ethernet to demonstrate how NDN can
provide a secure, high-speed bridge between different automotive link layers.
We also show how NDN can support communication between centralized or zonal
high-power compute components. Security is achieved through digitally signing
all Data packets between these components, preventing unauthorized ECUs from
injecting arbitrary data into the network. We also demonstrate NDN's ability to
prevent DoS and replay attacks between different network segments connected
through NDN.


  We prove that the preimage of a germ of a singular analytic hypersurface
under a germ of a finite holomorphic map $g: (\mathbb{C}^n,0) \rightarrow
(\mathbb{C}^n,0)$ is again singular. This provides a generalization of previous
results of this nature by Ebenfelt-Rothschild [Comm. Anal. Geom. 15 (2007), no.
2, 491-507], Lebl [arXiv:0812.2498], and Denkowski [Manuscripta Math. 149
(2016), no. 1-2, 83-91]. The same statement is proved for pullbacks of singular
codimension one holomorphic foliations.


  There is an increasing need to assess the correct behavior of self-adaptive
and self-healing systems due to their adoption in critical and highly dynamic
environments. However, there is a lack of systematic evaluation methods for
self-adaptive and self-healing systems. We proposed CHESS, a novel approach to
address this gap by evaluating self-adaptive and self-healing systems through
fault injection based on chaos engineering (CE) [ arXiv:2208.13227 ].
  The artifact presented in this paper provides an extensive overview of the
use of CHESS through two microservice-based case studies: a smart office case
study and an existing demo application called Yelb. It comes with a managing
system service, a self-monitoring service, as well as five fault injection
scenarios covering infrastructure faults and functional faults. Each of these
components can be easily extended or replaced to adopt the CHESS approach to a
new case study, help explore its promises and limitations, and identify
directions for future research.
  Keywords: self-healing, resilience, chaos engineering, evaluation, artifact


  We find Feynman-Kac type representation theorems for generalized diffusions.
To do this we need to establish existence, uniqueness and regularity results
for equations with measure-valued coefficients.


  We present the data analysis and the X-ray source counts for the first season
of XMM-Newton observations in the COSMOS field. The survey covers ~2 deg^2
within the region of sky bounded by 9^h57.5^m<R.A.<10^h03.5^m;
1^d27.5^m<DEC<2^d57.5^m with a total net integration time of 504 ks. A maximum
likelihood source detection was performed in the 0.5-2 keV, 2-4.5 keV and
4.5-10 keV energy bands and 1390 point-like sources were detected in at least
one band. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations were performed to fully test the
source detection method and to derive the sky coverage to be used in the
computation of the logN-logS relations. The 0.5--2 keV and 2--10 keV
differential logN-logS were fitted with a broken power-law model which revealed
a Euclidean slope (alpha~2.5) at the bright end and a flatter slope (alpha~1.5)
at faint fluxes. In the 5--10 keV energy band a single power-law provides an
acceptable fit to the observed source counts with a slope alpha~2.4. A
comparison with the results of previous surveys shows good agreement in all the
energy bands under investigation in the overlapping flux range.
  We also notice a remarkable agreement between our logN-logS relations and the
most recent model of the XRB. The slightly different normalizations observed in
the source counts of COSMOS and previous surveys can be largely explained as a
combination of low counting statistics and cosmic variance introduced by the
large scale structure.


  We study the entanglement entropy of eigenstates (including the ground state)
of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We argue for a volume law, whose coefficient
can be calculated analytically from the density of states. The coefficient
depends on not only the energy density of the eigenstate but also the subsystem
size. Very recent numerical results of Liu, Chen, and Balents confirm our
analytical results.


  Inside the symmetric product of a very general curve, we consider the
codimension-one subvarieties of symmetric tuples of points imposing exceptional
secant conditions on linear series on the curve of fixed degree and dimension.
We compute the classes of such divisors, and thus obtain improved bounds for
the slope of the cone of effective divisor classes on symmetric products of a
very general curve. By letting the moduli of the curve vary, we study more
generally the classes of the related divisors inside the moduli space of stable
pointed curves.


  Out-of-plane lattice plasmons (OLPs) supported by metallic nanoparticle
arrays are promising for diverse applications due to their remarkably narrow
linewidths and significant enhancement of local fields. Here we investigate the
necessary conditions for metallic nanoparticle arrays to achieve OLPs. Our
results show that, besides the prerequisites of large height, oblique
incidence, and TM polarization, which have been pointed out by the literature;
the array period should be properly designed within a limited range, the
dielectric environment should be homogeneous, and the height and the angle of
incidence need to be optimized. We expect this work will advance the
understanding and engineering of OLPs in metallic nanoparticle arrays and
promote their applications in nanolasers, ultrasensitive biochemical sensors,
and nonlinear optics.


  In this paper, we investigate the signs changes of Fourier coefficients of
infinite products of $q$-series of Rogers--Ramanujan type. In particular, we
prove a conjecture made by Schlosser--Zhou pertaining to such sign changes for
products of modulus $10$.


  The scaling limit of the critical percolation, is it a black noise? The
answer depends on stability to perturbations concentrated along a line. This
text, containing no proofs, reports experimental results that suggest the
affirmative answer.


  We have withdrawn this paper because we have presented the basic results in
Brunini & Cionco (2005), Icarus 177, 264


  Quasiballistic heat conduction, in which some phonons propagate ballistically
over a thermal gradient, has recently become of intense interest. Most works
report that the thermal resistance associated with nanoscale heat sources is
far larger than predicted by Fourier's law, however, recent experiments show
that in certain cases the difference is negligible despite the heaters being
far smaller than phonon mean free paths. In this work, we examine how thermal
resistance depends on the heater geometry using analytical solutions of the
Boltzmann equation. We show that the spatial frequencies of the heater pattern
play the key role in setting the thermal resistance rather than any single
geometric parameter, and that for many geometries the thermal resistance in the
quasiballistic regime is no different than the Fourier prediction. We also
demonstrate that the spectral distribution of the heat source also plays a
major role in the resulting transport, unlike in the diffusion regime. Our work
provides an intuitive link between the heater geometry, spectral heating
distribution, and the effective thermal resistance in the quasiballistic
regime, a finding that could impact strategies for thermal management in
electronics and other applications.


  We study the asymptotic behavior of parabolic type semigroups acting on the
unit disk as well as those acting on the right half-plane. We use the
asymptotic behavior to investigate the local geometry of the semigroup
trajectories near the boundary Denjoy--Wolff point. The geometric content
includes, in particular, the asymptotes to trajectories, the so-called limit
curvature, the order of contact, and so on. We then establish asymptotic
rigidity properties for a broad class of semigroups of parabolic type.


  This paper studies estimation of panel cointegration models with
cross-sectional dependence generated by unobserved global stochastic trends.
The standard least squares estimator is, in general, inconsistent owing to the
spuriousness induced by the unobservable I(1) trends. We propose two iterative
procedures that jointly estimate the slope parameters and the stochastic
trends. The resulting estimators are referred to respectively as CupBC
(continuously-updated and bias-corrected) and the CupFM (continuously-updated
and fully-modified) estimators. We establish their consistency and derive their
limiting distributions. Both are asymptotically unbiased and asymptotically
mixed normal and permit inference to be conducted using standard test
statistics. The estimators are also valid when there are mixed stationary and
non-stationary factors, as well as when the factors are all stationary.


  The duality relation between one-loop integrals and phase-space integrals,
developed in a previous work, is extended to higher-order loops. The duality
relation is realized by a modification of the customary +i0 prescription of the
Feynman propagators, which compensates for the absence of the multiple-cut
contributions that appear in the Feynman tree theorem. We rederive the duality
theorem at one-loop order in a form that is more suitable for its iterative
extension to higher-loop orders. We explicitly show its application to two- and
three-loop scalar master integrals, and we discuss the structure of the
occurring cuts and the ensuing results in detail.


  We study the concurrent composition properties of interactive differentially
private mechanisms, whereby an adversary can arbitrarily interleave its queries
to the different mechanisms. We prove that all composition theorems for
non-interactive differentially private mechanisms extend to the concurrent
composition of interactive differentially private mechanisms, whenever
differential privacy is measured using the hypothesis testing framework of
$f$-DP, which captures standard $(\eps,\delta)$-DP as a special case. We prove
the concurrent composition theorem by showing that every interactive $f$-DP
mechanism can be simulated by interactive post-processing of a non-interactive
$f$-DP mechanism.
  In concurrent and independent work, Lyu~\cite{lyu2022composition} proves a
similar result to ours for $(\eps,\delta)$-DP, as well as a concurrent
composition theorem for R\'enyi DP. We also provide a simple proof of Lyu's
concurrent composition theorem for R\'enyi DP. Lyu leaves the general case of
$f$-DP as an open problem, which we solve in this paper.


  Text-driven person image generation is an emerging and challenging task in
cross-modality image generation. Controllable person image generation promotes
a wide range of applications such as digital human interaction and virtual
try-on. However, previous methods mostly employ single-modality information as
the prior condition (e.g. pose-guided person image generation), or utilize the
preset words for text-driven human synthesis. Introducing a sentence composed
of free words with an editable semantic pose map to describe person appearance
is a more user-friendly way. In this paper, we propose HumanDiffusion, a
coarse-to-fine alignment diffusion framework, for text-driven person image
generation. Specifically, two collaborative modules are proposed, the Stylized
Memory Retrieval (SMR) module for fine-grained feature distillation in data
processing and the Multi-scale Cross-modality Alignment (MCA) module for
coarse-to-fine feature alignment in diffusion. These two modules guarantee the
alignment quality of the text and image, from image-level to feature-level,
from low-resolution to high-resolution. As a result, HumanDiffusion realizes
open-vocabulary person image generation with desired semantic poses. Extensive
experiments conducted on DeepFashion demonstrate the superiority of our method
compared with previous approaches. Moreover, better results could be obtained
for complicated person images with various details and uncommon poses.


  The properties of magnetic deluted and strong correlated systems of MnxSi1-x
systems are discussed. In frame work of the model of the double defects
including manganese ion and silicon vacancy are considered properties of these
systems. The role of the Jahn -Teller distortions of different symmetry types
in MnSi system magnetic-properties formation is discussed. It has been
established that defect {Mns+1 - Vsio} is the center with negative-U properties
and Jahn-Teller's full symmetric vibration mode initiates change of a
crystal-field value from intermediate (a configuration - {Mns+1 - Vsio}) to
strong (a configuration -{Mns-1 - Vsi+2}).


  The conditions of multi-phase equilibrium are solved for generic polydisperse
systems. The case of multiple polydispersity is treated, where several
properties (e.g. size, charge, shape) simultaneously vary from one particle to
another. By developing a perturbative expansion in the width of the
distribution of constituent species, it is possible to calculate the effects of
polydispersity alone, avoiding difficulties associated with the underlying
many-body problem. Explicit formulae are derived in detail, for the
partitioning of species at coexistence and for the shift of phase boundaries
due to polydispersity. `Convective fractionation' is quantified, whereby one
property (e.g. charge) is partitioned between phases due to a driving force on
another. To demonstrate the ease of use and versatility of the formulae, they
are applied to models of a chemically-polydisperse polymer blend, and of
fluid-fluid coexistence in polydisperse colloid-polymer mixtures. In each case,
the regime of coexistence is shown to be enlarged by polydispersity.


  Using distributional techniques we calculate the energy--momentum tensor of
the Schwarzschild geometry. It turns out to be a well--defined
tensor--distribution concentrated on the $r=0$ region which is usually excluded
from space--time. This provides a physical interpretation for the curvature of
this geometry.


  New implicit and implicit-explicit time-stepping methods for the wave
equation in second-order form are described with application to two and
three-dimensional problems discretized on overset grids. The implicit schemes
are single step, three levels in time, and based on the modified equation
approach. Second and fourth-order accurate schemes are developed and they
incorporate upwind dissipation for stability on overset grids. The fully
implicit schemes are useful for certain applications such as the WaveHoltz
algorithm for solving Helmholtz problems where very large time-steps are
desired. Some wave propagation problems are geometrically stiff due to
localized regions of small grid cells, such as grids needed to resolve fine
geometric features, and for these situations the implicit time-stepping scheme
is combined with an explicit scheme: the implicit scheme is used for component
grids containing small cells while the explicit scheme is used on the other
grids such as background Cartesian grids. The resulting partitioned
implicit-explicit scheme can be many times faster than using an explicit scheme
everywhere. The accuracy and stability of the schemes are studied through
analysis and numerical computations.


  We experimentally characterize a quantum photonic gate that is capable of
converting multiqubit entangled states while acting only on two qubits. It is
an important tool in large quantum networks, where it can be used for re-wiring
of multipartite entangled states or for generating various entangled states
required for specific tasks. The gate can be also used to generate quantum
information processing resources, such as entanglement and discord. In our
experimental demonstration, we converted a linear four-qubit cluster state into
different entangled states, including GHZ and Dicke states. The high quality of
the experimental results show that the gate has the potential of being a
flexible component in distributed quantum photonic networks.


  As a basic task in computer vision, semantic segmentation can provide
fundamental information for object detection and instance segmentation to help
the artificial intelligence better understand real world. Since the proposal of
fully convolutional neural network (FCNN), it has been widely used in semantic
segmentation because of its high accuracy of pixel-wise classification as well
as high precision of localization. In this paper, we apply several famous FCNN
to brain tumor segmentation, making comparisons and adjusting network
architectures to achieve better performance measured by metrics such as
precision, recall, mean of intersection of union (mIoU) and dice score
coefficient (DSC). The adjustments to the classic FCNN include adding more
connections between convolutional layers, enlarging decoders after up sample
layers and changing the way shallower layers' information is reused. Besides
the structure modification, we also propose a new classifier with a
hierarchical dice loss. Inspired by the containing relationship between
classes, the loss function converts multiple classification to multiple binary
classification in order to counteract the negative effect caused by imbalance
data set. Massive experiments have been done on the training set and testing
set in order to assess our refined fully convolutional neural networks and new
types of loss function. Competitive figures prove they are more effective than
their predecessors.


  Given a bounded $C^1$ domain $\Omega\subset\R^n$ and a nonempty subset $E$ of
its boundary (set of tomography), we consider broken rays which start and end
at points of $E$. We ask: If the integrals of a function over all such broken
rays are known, can the function be reconstructed? We give positive answers
when $\Omega$ is a ball and the unknown function is required to be uniformly
quasianalytic in the angular variable and the set of tomography is open. We
also analyze the situation when the set of tomography is a singleton.


  With on- and off- resonant excitation photons, spin-resolved Auger electron
spectra of epitaxial CrO$_{2}$ thin films show an experimental evidence of the
spin-selective KLL Auger decay. The on-resonance O KLL Auger electrons are
found to be highly spin-polarized, while the off-resonance ones with almost
zero spin polarization. These results lead to conclude that the two-hole final
state in KLL Auger decay is a spin-singlet. Applications to spin-resolved
absorption spectroscopy are discussed.


  In computer security, designing a robust intrusion detection system is one of
the most fundamental and important problems. In this paper, we propose a
system-call language-modeling approach for designing anomaly-based host
intrusion detection systems. To remedy the issue of high false-alarm rates
commonly arising in conventional methods, we employ a novel ensemble method
that blends multiple thresholding classifiers into a single one, making it
possible to accumulate 'highly normal' sequences. The proposed system-call
language model has various advantages leveraged by the fact that it can learn
the semantic meaning and interactions of each system call that existing methods
cannot effectively consider. Through diverse experiments on public benchmark
datasets, we demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method.
Moreover, we show that our model possesses high portability, which is one of
the key aspects of realizing successful intrusion detection systems.


  K-fold cross-validation (CV) with squared error loss is widely used for
evaluating predictive models, especially when strong distributional assumptions
cannot be taken. However, CV with squared error loss is not free from
distributional assumptions, in particular in cases involving non-i.i.d. data.
This paper analyzes CV for correlated data. We present a criterion for
suitability of standard CV in presence of correlations. When this criterion
does not hold, we introduce a bias corrected cross-validation estimator which
we term $CV_c,$ that yields an unbiased estimate of prediction error in many
settings where standard CV is invalid. We also demonstrate our results
numerically, and find that introducing our correction substantially improves
both, model evaluation and model selection in simulations and real data
studies.


  Generalizing Schubert cells in type A and a cell decomposition if Springer
fibres in type A found by L. Fresse we prove that varieties of complete flags
in nilpotent representations of an oriented cycle admit an affine cell
decomposition parametrized by multi-tableaux. We show that they carry a torus
operation and describe the T-equivariant cohomology using
Goresky-Kottwitz-MacPherson-theory. As an application of the cell decomposition
we obtain a vector space basis of certain modules (for quiver Hecke algebras of
nilpotent representations of this quiver), similar modules have been studied by
Kato as analogues of standard modules.


  We present a 3D N-body simulation of the Milky Way including 4*10^5 star- and
dark-like particles and 2*10^4 gas particles, initially distributed according
to an axisymmetric, observationally constrained, mass model. The whole system
is self-gravitating and the gas hydrodynamics is solved using the SPH method.
The simulation leads to the spontaneous formation of a central bar that
strongly affects the gas dynamics. We compute (l-V) diagrams for both the
gaseous and the stellar particles as a function of the angle of the bar with
respect to the observer and compare the results for the gas with HI and CO
observations.


  Dujmovi\'c, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that
for every graph $G$ with Euler genus $g$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at
most 4 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H \boxtimes P \boxtimes
K_{\max\{2g,3\}}$. We improve this result by replacing "4" by "3" and with $H$
planar. We in fact prove a more general result in terms of so-called framed
graphs. This implies that every $(g,d)$-map graph is contained in $ H \boxtimes
P\boxtimes K_\ell$, for some planar graph $H$ with treewidth $3$, where
$\ell=\max\{2g\lfloor \frac{d}{2} \rfloor,d+3\lfloor\frac{d}{2}\rfloor-3\}$. It
also implies that every $(g,1)$-planar graph (that is, graphs that can be drawn
in a surface of Euler genus $g$ with at most one crossing per edge) is
contained in $H\boxtimes P\boxtimes K_{\max\{4g,7\}}$, for some planar graph
$H$ with treewidth $3$.


  Background: Reference intervals are essential to interpret diagnostic tests,
but their determination has become controversial. Methods: In this paper
parametric, non-parametric and robust reference intervals with Tukey and block
elimination are calculated from a dataset of over 32,000 serum immunoglobulin A
(IgA) measurements. Results: The outlier elimination method was significantly
more determinative of the reference intervals than the calculation method. The
Tukey elimination procedure consistently eliminated significantly more values
than the block method of Dixon and Reed across all age ranges. If Tukey
elimination was applied, variation between reference intervals produced by the
different calculation methods was minimal. Block elimination rarely eliminated
values. The non-parametric reference intervals were more sensitive to outliers,
which in the IgA context, led to higher and wider reference intervals for the
older age groups. There were only minimal differences between robust and
parametric reference intervals. Conclusions: This suggests that Tukey
elimination should be preferred over the block D/R method for datasets similar
to the one used in this study. These are predominantly new observations, as
previous literature has focused on the calculation technique and not discussed
outlier elimination. This suggests the robust method is not advantageous over
the parametric method and therefore due to its complexity is not particularly
useful, contrary to CLSI Guidelines.


  HD 164492C is a spectroscopic triple stellar system that has been recently
detected to possess a strong magnetic field. We have obtained high-resolution
spectroscopic and spectropolarimetric observations over a timespan of two years
and derived physical, chemical, and magnetic properties for this object. The
system is formed by an eccentric close spectroscopic binary (Ca1-Ca2) with a
period of 12.5 days, and a massive tertiary Cb. We calculated the orbital
parameters of the close pair, reconstructed the spectra of the three
components, and determined atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances by
spectral synthesis. From spectropolarimetric observations, multi-epoch
measurements of the longitudinal magnetic fields were obtained. The magnetic
field is strongly variable on timescales of a few days, with a most probable
period in the range of 1.4-1.6 days. Star Cb with Teff~25000 K is the
apparently fastest rotator and the most massive star of this triple system and
has anomalous chemical abundances with a marked overabundance of helium,
0.35+/-0.04 by number. We identified this star as being responsible for the
observed magnetic field, although the presence of magnetic fields in the
components of the Ca pair cannot be excluded. Star Ca1 with a temperature of
about 24000 K presents a normal chemical pattern, while the least massive star
Ca2 is a mid-B type star (Teff~15000 K) with an overabundance of silicon. The
obtained stellar parameters of the system components suggest a distance of 1.5
kpc and an age of 10-15 Myr.


  A detailed and systematic investigation of polytropic gas effects in Parker's
solar wind model and coronal-hole flows is given. We present a viable equation
governing the acceleration of solar wind of a polytropic gas and give its exact
analytical and numerical solutions and deduce its asymptotic analytic
properties (i) near the sun, (ii) far away from the sun, (iii) near the Parker
sonic critical point (where the wind speed is equal to the speed of sound in
the wind). We proceed to give a detailed and systematic investigation of
coronal-hole polytropic gas outflows which contribute to bulk of the solar
wind. We will model coronal-hole outflow by considering a single radial stream
tube and use phenomenological considerations to represent its rapidly-diverging
flow geometry. We give analytical and numerical solutions for this outflow and
deduce its asymptotic analytic properties in the three flow regimes above. We
find that, in general, the polytropic effects cause the Parker sonic critical
point to move closer to the sun than that for the case with isothermal gas.
Furthermore, the flow acceleration is found to exhibit (even for an
infinitesimal deviation from isothermality of the gas) a power-law behavior
rather than an exponential-law behavior near the sun or a logarithmic-law
behavior far away from the sun, thus implying a certain robustness of the
power-law behavior. The Parker sonic critical point is shown to continue to be
of X-type, hence facilitating a smooth transition from subsonic to supersonic
wind flow through the transonic regime. Our analytical and numerical solutions
show that the super-radiality of the stream tube causes the Parker sonic
critical point to move further down in the corona, and the gas to become more
diabatic (the polytropic exponent gamma drops further below 5/3), and the flow
acceleration to be enhanced further.


  Often, a community becomes alarmed when high rates of cancer are noticed, and
residents suspect that the cancer cases could be caused by a known source of
hazard. In response, the CDC recommends that departments of health perform a
standardized incidence ratio (SIR) analysis to determine whether the observed
cancer incidence is higher than expected. This approach has several limitations
that are well documented in the literature. In this paper we propose a novel
causal inference approach to cancer cluster investigations, rooted in the
potential outcomes framework. Assuming that a source of hazard representing a
potential cause of increased cancer rates in the community is identified a
priori, we introduce a new estimand called the causal SIR (cSIR). The cSIR is a
ratio defined as the expected cancer incidence in the exposed population
divided by the expected cancer incidence under the (counterfactual) scenario of
no exposure. To estimate the cSIR we need to overcome two main challenges: 1)
identify unexposed populations that are as similar as possible to the exposed
one to inform estimation under the counterfactual scenario of no exposure, and
2) make inference on cancer incidence in these unexposed populations using
publicly available data that are often available at a much higher level of
spatial aggregation than what is desired. We overcome the first challenge by
relying on matching. We overcome the second challenge by developing a Bayesian
hierarchical model that borrows information from other sources to impute cancer
incidence at the desired finer level of spatial aggregation. We apply our
proposed approach to determine whether trichloroethylene vapor exposure has
caused increased cancer incidence in Endicott, NY.


  KaVA (KVN and VERA Array) is a new combined VLBI array with KVN (Korean VLBI
Network) and VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry). First, we briefly
review the imaging capabilities of KaVA array which actually achieves more than
three times better dynamic range than that achieved by VERA alone. The KaVA
images clearly show detailed structures of extended radio jets in AGNs. Next,
we represent the key science program to be led by KaVA AGN sub working group.
We will conduct the monitoring observations of Sgr A* and M87 because of the
largeness of their central super-massive black hole angular sizes. The main
science goals of the program are (i) testing magnetically-driven-jet paradigm
by mapping velocity fields of the M87 jet, and (ii) obtaining tight constraints
on physical properties of radio emitting region in Sgr A*.


  We study in this article the existence and uniqueness of solutions to a class
of stochastic transport equations with irregular coefficients. Asking only
boundedness of the divergence of the coefficients (a classical condition in
both the deterministic and stochastic setting), we can lower the integrability
regularity required in known results on the coefficients themselves and on the
initial condition, and still prove uniqueness of solutions.


  This work examines a novel heterogeneous dynamic spectrum access network
where the primary users (PUs) coexist with both underlay and interweave
cognitive radios (ICRs); all terminals being potentially equipped with multiple
antennas. Underlay cognitive transmitters (UCTs) are allowed to transmit
concurrently with PUs subject to interference constraints, while the ICRs
employ spectrum sensing and are permitted to access the shared spectrum only
when both PUs and UCTs are absent. We investigate the design of MIMO precoding
algorithms for the UCT that increase the detection probability at the ICRs,
while simultaneously meeting a desired Quality-of-Service target to the
underlay cognitive receivers (UCRs) and constraining interference leaked to
PUs. The objective of such a proactive approach, referred to as prescient
precoding, is to minimize the probability of interference from ICRs to the UCRs
and primary receivers due to imperfect spectrum sensing. We begin with downlink
prescient precoding algorithms for multiple single-antenna UCRs and
multi-antenna PUs/ICRs. We then present prescient block-diagonalization
algorithms for the MIMO underlay downlink where spatial multiplexing is
performed for a plurality of multi-antenna UCRs. Numerical experiments
demonstrate that prescient precoding by UCTs provides a pronounced performance
gain compared to conventional underlay precoding strategies.


  The effect of random surface roughness on hydrodynamics of viscous
incompressible liquid is discussed. Roughness-driven contributions to
hydrodynamic flows, energy dissipation, and friction force are calculated in a
wide range of parameters. When the hydrodynamic decay length (the viscous wave
penetration depth) is larger than the size of random surface inhomogeneities,
it is possible to replace a random rough surface by effective stick-slip
boundary conditions on a flat surface with two constants: the stick-slip length
and the renormalization of viscosity near the boundary. The stick-slip length
and the renormalization coefficient are expressed explicitly via the
correlation function of random surface inhomogeneities. The effective
stick-slip length is always negative signifying the effective slow-down of the
hydrodynamic flows by the rough surface (stick rather than slip motion). A
simple hydrodynamic model is presented as an illustration of these general
hydrodynamic results. The effective boundary parameters are analyzed
numerically for Gaussian, power-law and exponentially decaying correlators with
various indices. The maximum on the frequency dependence of the dissipation
allows one to extract the correlation radius (characteristic size) of the
surface inhomogeneities directly from, for example, experiments with torsional
quartz oscillators.


  The orbitally degenerate A-site spinel compound FeSc2S4 has been
experimentally identified as a ``spin-orbital liquid'', with strong
fluctuations of both spins and orbitals. Assuming that the second neighbor spin
exchange J2 is the dominant one, we argued in a recent theoretical study [Chen
et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 096406 (2009)] that FeSc2S4 is in a local
``spin-orbital singlet'' state driven by spin orbit coupling, close to a
quantum critical point, which separates the ``spin-orbital singlet'' phase from
a magnetically and orbitally ordered phase. In this paper, we refine further
and develop this theory of FeSc2S4 . First, we show that inclusion of a small
first neighbor exchange J1 induces a narrow region of incommensurate phase near
the quantum critical point. Next, we derive the phase diagram in the presence
of an external magnetic field B, and show that the latter suppresses the
ordered phase. Lastly, we compute the field dependent dynamical magnetic
susceptibility $\chi(k, \omega; B)$, from which we extract a variety of
physical quantities. Comparison with and suggestions for experiment are
discussed.


  We propose a notion of stability for capillary hypersurfaces with constant
higher order mean curvature and we generalize some results of the classical
stability theory for CMC capillary hypersurfaces.


  The varied radiological applications of tissue equivalent (TE) materials
encompass quality checks, diagnostic imaging and dose evaluations.
Nevertheless, the availability of compounds representative of paediatric
patient tissues for scientific use in lower diagnostic photon energy spectra is
limited. In this study, several TE substitutes were developed which replicate
the radiographic characteristics of human tissue within these energy ranges,
i.e. TE materials for neonatal soft tissue (ESST-NB), neonatal skeletal tissue
(ESTB-NB), and the equivalent tissue types representative of a 5 year old child
(ESST and ESBT, respectively). The ORNL stylised computational model series was
used as a source for the desired elemental proportions. The density, effective
atomic number, CT numbers and electron densities calculated for the developed
tissue substitutes approximated those of the phantom system used as a
reference. Additionally, in keeping with the material choice and production
limitations, as close correlations as possible were achieved for all the
materials in relation to the reference data for mass densities, mass
attenuation coefficients and mass energy-absorption coefficients. The TE
substitutes for the newborn over an energy range of 47 keV to 66 keV exhibited
maximum discrepancies for {\mu}/\r{ho} of 1.6% to -3.01%, and for
{\mu}_en/\r{ho} of 1.15% to -1.4% in relation to the ORNL reference samples.
The respective equivalent data ranges were 1.09 % to -3.02% and 1.92% to -2.53%
for the TE materials representative of a 5-year-old. Given the excellent
concordance achieved between the newly constructed TE materials and the
reference data, these compounds can subsequently be utilised to create physical
phantoms representative of tissue types in neonates and children aged 5 years.


  In the former studies, the time evolution information is missed in deducing
the time-integrated polarizations of gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emission.
Here, it is considered and the time-integrated polarizations is investigated
through the summation of the time-resolved ones. The statistical properties of
the distribution of the time-integrated polarization degree ($\Pi$) can be read
from the $q-\Pi$ curve, where $q\equiv\theta_V/\theta_j$. $\theta_V$ and
$\theta_j$ are the observational and jet half-opening angles, respectively.
Hence, only the $q-\Pi$ curves are studied. In addition to a toroidal magnetic
field in the radiation region, an aligned field is also discussed. We found the
predicted time-integrated PD is around $(40-50)\%$ for High-energy Polarimetry
Detector (HPD) on board POLAR-2 and is roughly $(30-40)\%$ for its Low-energy
Polarimetry Detector (LPD). Therefore, $\Pi$ value detected by the HPD will be
larger than that of the LPD in statistics and the result of the former
estimations will underestimate the value of $\Pi$ in an ordered field. There
are mainly two types of the $q-\Pi$ curve profiles, corresponding to two
ordered magnetic field configurations.


  Null Wilson loops in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills are dual to planar
scattering amplitudes. This duality implies hidden symmetries for both objects.
We consider closely related infrared finite observables, defined as the Wilson
loop with a Lagrangian insertion, normalized by the Wilson loop itself. Unlike
ratio and remainder functions studied in the literature, this observable is
non-trivial already for four scattered particles and bears close resemblance to
(finite parts of) scattering processes in non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.
We study the general structure of the Wilson loop with a Lagrangian insertion,
focusing in particular on its leading singularities and their (hidden) symmetry
properties. We find evidence that the leading singularities can be written as
certain Grassmannian integrals. The latter are manifestly dual conformal. They
also have a conformal symmetry, up to total derivatives. We find that,
surprisingly, the conformal symmetry becomes an invariance in the frame where
the Lagrangian insertion point is sent to infinity. Furthermore, we use
integrability methods to study how higher Yangian charges act on the
Grassmannian integral. We evaluate the $n$-particle observable both at tree-
and at one-loop level, finding compact analytic formulas. These results are
explicitly written in the form of conformal leading singularities, multiplied
by transcendental functions. We then compare these formulas to known
expressions for all-plus amplitudes in pure Yang-Mills theory. We find a
remarkable new connection: the Wilson loop with Lagrangian insertion in
$\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills appears to predict the maximal weight terms of
the planar pure Yang-Mills all-plus amplitude. We test this relationship for
the two-loop $n$-point Yang-Mills amplitude, as well as for the three-loop
four-point amplitude.


  The final state--black hole or naked singularity--of the gravitational
collapse of a marginally bound matter configuration in the presence of
tangential stresses is classified, in full generality, in terms of the initial
data and equation of state. If the tangential pressure is sufficiently strong,
configurations that would otherwise evolve to a spacelike singularity, result
in a locally naked singularity, both in the homogeneous and in the general,
inhomogeneous density case.


  Studies on `strange' particle production have always occupied a very
important space in the domain of Particle Physics. This was and is so, just
because of some conjectures about specially abundant or excess production of
`strange' particles, at certain stages and under certain conditions arising out
of what goes by the name of `Standard' model in Particle Physics. With the help
of Hagedornian power laws we have attempted to understand and interpret here
the nature of the $p_T$-spectra for the strange particle production in a few
high energy nuclear collisions, some interesting ratio-behaviours and the
characteristics of the nuclear modification factors that are measured in
laboratory experiments. After obtaining and analysing the final results we do
not confront any peculiarities or oddities or extraneous excesses in the
properties of the relevant observables with no left-over problems or puzzles.
The model(s) used by us work(s) quite well for explaining the measured data.


  We provide new gradient-based methods for efficiently solving a broad class
of ill-conditioned optimization problems. We consider the problem of minimizing
a function $f : \mathbb{R}^d \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ which is implicitly
decomposable as the sum of $m$ unknown non-interacting smooth, strongly convex
functions and provide a method which solves this problem with a number of
gradient evaluations that scales (up to logarithmic factors) as the product of
the square-root of the condition numbers of the components. This complexity
bound (which we prove is nearly optimal) can improve almost exponentially on
that of accelerated gradient methods, which grow as the square root of the
condition number of $f$. Additionally, we provide efficient methods for solving
stochastic, quadratic variants of this multiscale optimization problem. Rather
than learn the decomposition of $f$ (which would be prohibitively expensive),
our methods apply a clean recursive "Big-Step-Little-Step" interleaving of
standard methods. The resulting algorithms use $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(d m)$
space, are numerically stable, and open the door to a more fine-grained
understanding of the complexity of convex optimization beyond condition number.


  The semiclassical equations of motion are widely used to describe carrier
transport in conducting materials. Nevertheless, the substantial challenge of
incorporating disorder systematically into the semiclassical model persists,
leading to quantitative inaccuracies and occasionally erroneous predictions for
the expectation values of physical observables. In the present work we provide
a general prescription for reformulating the semiclassical equations of motion
for carriers in disordered conductors by taking the quantum mechanical density
matrix as the starting point. We focus on external electric fields, without
magnetic fields, and spin-independent disorder. The density matrix approach
allows averaging over impurity configurations, and the trace of the velocity
operator with the disorder-averaged density matrix can be reinterpreted as the
semiclassical velocity weighted by the Boltzmann distribution function. Through
this rationale the well-known intrinsic group and anomalous velocities are
trivially recovered, while we demonstrate the existence of an extrinsic
interband velocity, namely a disorder correction to the semiclassical velocity
of Bloch electrons, mediated by the interband matrix elements of the Berry
connection. A similar correction is present in the non-equilibrium expectation
value of the spin operator, contributing to spin-orbit torques. To obtain
agreement with diagrammatic approaches the scattering term in the Boltzmann
equation is corrected to first order in the electric field, and the Boltzmann
equation is solved up to sub-leading order in the disorder potential. Our
prescription ensures all vertex corrections present in diagrammatic treatments
are taken into account, and to illustrate this we discuss model cases in
topological insulators, including the anomalous Hall effect as well as
spin-orbit torques.


  Point machines (PMs) are used for switching and locking railway turnouts, and
are considered one of the most critical elements of a railway signal system.
The failure of the point mechanism directly affects the operation of the
railway and may cause serious safety accidents. Hence, there is a need for
early detection of the anomalies in PMs. From normal operation to complete
failure, the machine usually undergoes a series of degradation states. If the
degradation states are detected in time, maintenance can be organized in
advance to prevent the malfunction. This paper presents a degradation detection
method that can effectively mine and identify the degradation state of the PM.
First, power data is processed to obtain the feature set that can describe the
PM characteristics effectively. Then, a clustering analysis of the feature set
is carried out by self-organizing feature-mapping network, and various
degradation states are mined. Finally, the optimized support vector machine is
used to build the state classifier to identify the degradation state of the PM.
The experimental results obtained with the Siemens S700K PM show that the
proposed method could not only mine the effective degradation states, but also
obtain high identification accuracy.


  Synchronization is central to many complex systems in engineering physics
(e.g., the power-grid, Josephson junction circuits, and electro-chemical
oscillators) and biology (e.g., neuronal, circadian, and cardiac rhythms).
Despite these widespread applications---for which proper functionality depends
sensitively on the extent of synchronization---there remains a lack of
understanding for how systems evolve and adapt to enhance or inhibit
synchronization. We study how network modifications affect the synchronization
properties of network-coupled dynamical systems that have heterogeneous node
dynamics (e.g., phase oscillators with non-identical frequencies), which is
often the case for real-world systems. Our approach relies on a synchrony
alignment function (SAF) that quantifies the interplay between heterogeneity of
the network and of the oscillators and provides an objective measure for a
system's ability to synchronize. We conduct a spectral perturbation analysis of
the SAF for structural network modifications including the addition and removal
of edges, which subsequently ranks the edges according to their importance to
synchronization. Based on this analysis, we develop gradient-descent algorithms
to efficiently solve optimization problems that aim to maximize phase
synchronization via network modifications. We support these and other results
with numerical experiments.


  This paper considers the uplink (UL) of a multi-cell Massive MIMO
(multiple-input multiple-output) system with spatially correlated Rician fading
channels. The channel model is composed of a deterministic line-of-sight (LoS)
path and a stochastic non-line-of-sight (NLoS) component describing a spatially
correlated multipath environment. We derive the statistical properties of the
minimum mean squared error (MMSE) and least-square (LS) channel estimates for
this model. Using these estimates for maximum ratio (MR) combining, rigorous
closed-form UL spectral efficiency (SE) expressions are derived. Numerical
results show that the SE is higher when using the MMSE estimator than the LS
estimator, and the performance gap increases with the number of antennas.
Moreover, Rician fading provides higher achievable SEs than Rayleigh fading
since the LoS path improves the sum SE.


  We investigate two-photon quantum interference in an opaque scattering medium
that intrinsically supports $10^6$ transmission channels. By adaptive spatial
phase-modulation of the incident wavefronts, the photons are directed at
targeted speckle spots or output channels. From $10^3$ experimentally available
coupled channels, we select two channels and enhance their transmission, to
realize the equivalent of a fully programmable $2\times2$ beam splitter. By
sending pairs of single photons from a parametric down-conversion source
through the opaque scattering medium, we observe two-photon quantum
interference. The programmed beam splitter need not fulfill energy conservation
over the two selected output channels and hence could be non-unitary.
Consequently, we have the freedom to tune the quantum interference from
bunching (Hong-Ou-Mandel-like) to antibunching. Our results establish opaque
scattering media as a platform for high-dimensional quantum interference that
is notably relevant for boson sampling and physical-key-based authentication.


  The limit of the entropy in the stochastic block model (SBM) has been
characterized in the sparse regime for the special case of disassortative
communities [COKPZ17] and for the classical case of assortative communities but
in the dense regime [DAM16]. The problem has not been closed in the classical
sparse and assortative case. This paper establishes the result in this case for
any SNR besides for the interval (1, 3.513). It further gives an approximation
to the limit in this window.
  The result is obtained by expressing the global SBM entropy as an integral of
local tree entropies in a broadcasting on tree model with erasure
side-information. The main technical advancement then relies on showing the
irrelevance of the boundary in such a model, also studied with variants in
[KMS16], [MNS16] and [MX15]. In particular, we establish the uniqueness of the
BP fixed point in the survey model for any SNR above 3.513 or below 1. This
only leaves a narrow region in the plane between SNR and survey strength where
the uniqueness of BP conjectured in these papers remains unproved.


  The paper studies the robust maximization of utility of terminal wealth in
the diffusion financial market model. The underlying model consists with risky
tradable asset, whose price is described by diffusion process with misspecified
trend and volatility coefficients, and non-tradable asset with a known
parameter. The robust utility functional is defined in terms of a HARA utility
function. We give explicit characterization of the solution of the problem by
means of a solution of the HJBI equation.


  The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next ground-based $\gamma$-ray
observatory in the TeV $\gamma$-ray spectral region operating with the Imaging
Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique. It is based on almost 70 telescopes of
different class diameters - LST, MST and SST of 23, 12, and 4 m, respectively -
to be installed in two sites in the two hemispheres (at La Palma, Canary
Islands, and near Paranal, Chile). Several thousands of reflecting mirror tiles
larger than 1 m$^2$ will be produced for realizing the segmented primary
mirrors of a so large number of telescopes. Almost in parallel, the ASTRI
Mini-Array (MA) is being implemented in Tenerife (Canary Islands), composed of
nine 4 m diameter dual-mirror Cherenkov telescopes (very similar to the SSTs).
We completed the mirror production for all nine telescopes of the ASTRI MA and
two MST telescopes (400 segments in total) using the cold glass slumping
replication technology. The results related to the quality achieved with a so
large-scale production are presented, also discussing the adopted testing
methods and approaches. They will be very useful for the adoption and
optimization of the quality assurance process for the huge production (almost
3000 m$^2$ of reflecting surface) of the MST and SST CTA telescopes.


  Digital Twins play a crucial role in bridging the physical and virtual
worlds. Given the dynamic and evolving characteristics of the physical world, a
huge volume of data transmission and exchange is necessary to attain
synchronized updates in the virtual world. In this paper, we propose a semantic
communication framework based on You Only Look Once (YOLO) to construct a
virtual apple orchard with the aim of mitigating the costs associated with data
transmission. Specifically, we first employ the YOLOv7-X object detector to
extract semantic information from captured images of edge devices, thereby
reducing the volume of transmitted data and saving transmission costs.
Afterwards, we quantify the importance of each semantic information by the
confidence generated through the object detector. Based on this, we propose two
resource allocation schemes, i.e., the confidence-based scheme and the
artificial intelligence-generated scheme, aimed at enhancing the transmission
quality of important semantic information. The proposed diffusion model
generates an optimal allocation scheme that outperforms both the average
allocation scheme and the confidence-based allocation scheme. Moreover, to
obtain semantic information more effectively, we enhance the detection
capability of the YOLOv7-X object detector by introducing new Efficient Layer
Aggregation Network-HorNet (ELAN-H) and SimAM attention modules, while reducing
the model parameters and computational complexity, making it easier to run on
edge devices with limited performance. The numerical results indicate that our
proposed semantic communication framework and resource allocation schemes
significantly reduce transmission costs while enhancing the transmission
quality of important information in communication services.


  We propose an effective lagrangian for the coupling of the neutral pion with
gluons whose strength is determined by a low energy theorem. We calculate the
contribution of the gluonic components arising from this interaction to the
pion transition form factor $\gamma^*\gamma^*\to\pi^0 $ using the instanton
liquid model to describe the QCD vacuum. We find that this contribution is
large and might explain the anomalous behavior of the form factor at large
virtuality of one of the photons, a feature which was recently discovered by
the BaBar Collaboration.


  The electromagnetic probe has proven to be a very efficient way to access the
$3-$dimensional structure of the nucleon, particularly thanks to the exclusive
Compton processes. We explore the hard photoproduction of a large invariant
mass diphoton in the kinematical regime where the diphoton is nearly forward
and its invariant mass is the hard scale enabling to factorize the scattering
amplitude in terms of generalized parton distributions. This amplitude has a
very peculiar and interesting analytic structure. We calculate unpolarized
cross sections and the angular asymmetry triggered by a linearly polarized
photon beam.


  We verify a special case of a conjecture of G. Carlsson that describes the
$\l$-adic $K$-theory of a field $F$ of characteristic prime to $\l$ in terms of
the representation theory of the absolute Galois group $G_F$. This conjecture
is known to hold in two cases; in this article we examine the second case, in
which the field in question is the field of Laurent series over a finite field
$\FF_{p}((x))$.


  Polarity imbalance of the photospheric magnetic field was studied using
synoptic maps of NSO Kitt Peak (1976-2016). Imbalance of positive and negative
fluxes was considered for the fields with strength B>50 G in the sunspot zone
(5 deg - 40 deg) and for the fields with strength B<50 G at higher latitudes
(40 deg - 90 deg). The 22-year periodicity in the imbalance of positive and
negative fields was found which maintained itself during four solar cycles.
While for the sunspot zone the sign of the imbalance always coincides with the
northern hemisphere polarity, for the high latitudes the sign of the imbalance
always coincides with the southern hemisphere polarity. Good correspondence of
the flux imbalance with the quadrupole moment (g20) of the potential-field
source-surface (PFSS) model was observed. The polarity imbalance of the sunspot
zone correlates, on one hand, with the asymmetry of the magnetic field of the
Sun-as-a-star and, on the other hand, with the sector structure of the
interplanetary magnetic field. The obtained results show the close connection
of the magnetic fields in active regions with the Sun's polar magnetic field.
The weakest fields B<5 G represent quite a special group with the magnetic flux
developing in antiphase to the fluxes of the stronger fields.


  Sofic entropy theory is a generalization of the classical Kolmogorov-Sinai
entropy theory to actions of large class of non-amenable groups called sofic
groups. This is a short introduction with a guide to the literature.