title: Vital nodes identification in complex networks

abstract:
  Real networks exhibit heterogeneous nature with nodes playing far different
roles in structure and function. To identify vital nodes is thus very
significant, allowing us to control the outbreak of epidemics, to conduct
advertisements for e-commercial products, to predict popular scientific
publications, and so on. The vital nodes identification attracts increasing
attentions from both computer science and physical societies, with algorithms
ranging from simply counting the immediate neighbors to complicated machine
learning and message passing approaches. In this review, we clarify the
concepts and metrics, classify the problems and methods, as well as review the
important progresses and describe the state of the art. Furthermore, we provide
extensive empirical analyses to compare well-known methods on disparate real
networks, and highlight the future directions. In despite of the emphasis on
physics-rooted approaches, the unification of the language and comparison with
cross-domain methods would trigger interdisciplinary solutions in the near
future.


title:
Clever mothers balance time and effort in parental care: a study on
  free-ranging dogs

abstract:
  Mammalian offspring require parental care, at least in the form of suckling
during their early development. While mothers need to invest considerable time
and energy in ensuring the survival of their current offspring, they also need
to optimize their investment in one batch of offspring in order to ensure
future reproduction and hence lifetime reproductive success. Free-ranging dogs
live in small social groups, mate promiscuously, and lack the cooperative
breeding biology of other group living canids. They face high early life
mortality, which in turn reduces fitness benefits of the mother from a batch of
pups. We carried out a field based study on free-ranging dogs in India to
understand the nature of parental care provided by mothers at different stages
of pup development. Using behavioural patterns of mother-pup interactions, we
draw up a timeline of pup ontogeny. Our analysis reveals that mothers cleverly
reduce investment in energy intensive active care and increase passive care as
the pups grow older, thereby keeping overall levels of parental care more or
less constant over pup age.


title:
Minimalist Regression Network with Reinforced Gradients and Weighted
  Estimates: a Case Study on Parameters Estimation in Automated Welding

abstract:
  This paper presents a minimalist neural regression network as an aggregate of
independent identical regression blocks that are trained simultaneously.
Moreover, it introduces a new multiplicative parameter, shared by all the
neural units of a given layer, to maintain the quality of its gradients.
Furthermore, it increases its estimation accuracy via learning a weight factor
whose quantity captures the redundancy between the estimated and actual values
at each training iteration. We choose the estimation of the direct weld
parameters of different welding techniques to show a significant improvement in
calculation of these parameters by our model in contrast to state-of-the-arts
techniques in the literature. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability of our
model to retain its performance when presented with combined data of different
welding techniques. This is a nontrivial result in attaining an scalable model
whose quality of estimation is independent of adopted welding techniques.


title: Crack front instabilities under mixed mode loading in three dimensions

abstract:
  The evolution of a crack front under mixed mode loading (I+III) is studied
using a phase field model in 3 dimensions with no stress boundary conditions.
As previously observed experimentally in gels, there is a relaxation toward a
geometry where $K_{III}=0$ without any front fragmentation even for high values
of the initial mode mixity $K_{III}/K_{I}$. The effects of the initial
condition is studied and it is shown that irregularities in the initial slit
can lead to front fragmentation for smaller values of the ratio $K_{III}/K_{I}$
as is observed in experiments.


title:
Do dogs live in joint families? Understanding allo-parental care in
  free-ranging dogs

abstract:
  Cooperative breeding is an excellent example of altruistic cooperation in
social groups. Domestic dogs have evolved from cooperatively hunting and
breeding ancestors, but have adapted to a facultatively social scavenging
lifestyle on streets, and solitary living in human homes. Pets typically breed
and reproduce under human supervision, but free-ranging dogs can provide
insights into the natural breeding biology of dogs. We conducted a five year
long study on parental care of free-ranging dogs in India. We observed
widespread alloparenting by both adult males and females. Allomothers provided
significantly less care that the mothers, but the putative fathers showed
comparable levels of care with the mothers. However, the nature of care varied;
mothers invested more effort in feeding and allogrooming, while the putative
fathers played and protected more. We were unsure of the relatedness of the
pups with the putative fathers, but all the allomothers were maternal relatives
of the pups, which provides support for both the benefit-of-philopatry and
assured fitness returns hypotheses. Free-ranging dogs are not cooperative
breeders like wolves, but are more similar to communal breeders. Their breeding
biology bears interesting similarities with the human joint family system.


title: Revisiting constraints on uplifts to de Sitter vacua

abstract:
  We revisit the issue of uplifting the potential to de Sitter (dS) vacua in
type IIB flux compactifications of Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi (KKLT).
We shed light on some tension between two constraints on dS vacua in type IIB
string theory. One is the well-known and much-discussed constraint which leads
to the no-go theorem that can in principle be evaded. The other follows from
4-dimensional Einstein's equations, which has, however, been much less
discussed in connection with the former constraint. In addition to the
challenges previously posed, it is suggested that the uplifting scenarios, in
particular, obstruct the evasion of the no-go theorem more strongly than one
might have assumed.


title: Revealing non-classicality of inaccessible objects

abstract:
  Some physical objects are hardly accessible to direct experimentation. It is
then desirable to infer their properties based solely on the interactions they
have with systems over which we have control. In this spirit, here we introduce
schemes for assessing the non-classicality of the inaccessible objects as
characterised by quantum discord. We consider two probes individually
interacting with the inaccessible object, but not with each other. The schemes
are based on monitoring entanglement dynamics between the probes. Our method is
robust and experimentally friendly as it allows the probes and the object to be
open systems, makes no assumptions about the initial state, dimensionality of
involved Hilbert spaces and details of the probe-object Hamiltonian. We apply
our scheme to a membrane-in-the-middle optomechanical system, to detect
system-environment correlations in open system dynamics as well as
non-classicality of the environment, and we foresee potential benefits for the
inference of the non-classical nature of gravity.


title: A note on projective norm graphs

abstract:
  The projective norm graphs P(q, 4) introduced by Alon, R\'onyai and Szab\'o
are explicit examples of extremal graphs not containing K_4,7. Ball and Pepe
showed that P(q, 4) does not contain a copy of K_5,5 either for q >= 7,
asymptotically improving the best lower bound for ex(n, K_5,5).
  We show that these results can not be improved, in the sense that P(q, 4)
contains a copy of K_4,6 for infinitely many primes q.


title: Quantum correspondences of affine Lie superalgebras

abstract:
  There is a surprising isomorphism between the quantised universal enveloping
algebras of osp(1|2n) and so(2n+1). This same isomorphism emerged in recent
work of Mikhaylov and Witten in the context of string theory as a T-duality
composed with an S-duality. We construct similar Hopf superalgebra isomorphisms
for families of pairs of quantum affine superalgebras. An immediate consequence
is that the representation categories of the quantum affine superalgebras in
each pair are equivalent as strict tensor categories.


title: Symmetric Liapunov center theorem

abstract:
  In this article, using an infinite-dimensional equivariant Conley index, we
prove a generalization of the profitable Liapunov center theorem for symmetric
potentials. Consider the system $\ddot{q}= -\nabla U(q),$ where $U(q)$ is a
$\Gamma$-symmetric potential, where $\Gamma$ is a compact Lie group acting
linearly on $\mathbb{R}^n$. If the system possess a non-degenerate orbit of
stationary solutions $\Gamma(q_0)$ with trivial isotropy group, such that there
exists at least one positive eigenvalue of the Hessian $\nabla^2 U(q_0)$, then
in any neighbourhood of orbit $\Gamma(q_0)$ there is a periodic orbit of
solutions of the system.


title: Kitaev lattice models as a Hopf algebra gauge theory

abstract:
  We prove that Kitaev's lattice model for a finite-dimensional semisimple Hopf
algebra H is equivalent to the combinatorial quantisation of Chern-Simons
theory for the Drinfeld double D(H). This shows that Kitaev models are a
special case of the older and more general combinatorial models. This
equivalence is an analogue of the relation between Turaev-Viro and
Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFTs and relates them to the quantisation of moduli spaces
of flat connections.
  We show that the topological invariants of the two models, the algebra of
operators acting on the protected space of the Kitaev model and the quantum
moduli algebra from the combinatorial quantisation formalism, are isomorphic.
This is established in a gauge theoretical picture, in which both models appear
as Hopf algebra valued lattice gauge theories.
  We first prove that the triangle operators of a Kitaev model form a module
algebra over a Hopf algebra of gauge transformations and that this module
algebra is isomorphic to the lattice algebra in the combinatorial formalism.
Both algebras can be viewed as the algebra of functions on gauge fields in a
Hopf algebra gauge theory. The isomorphism between them induces an algebra
isomorphism between their subalgebras of invariants, which are interpreted as
gauge invariant functions or observables. It also relates the curvatures in the
two models, which are given as holonomies around the faces of the lattice. This
yields an isomorphism between the subalgebras obtained by projecting out
curvatures, which can be viewed as the algebras of functions on flat gauge
fields and are the topological invariants of the two models.


title: Simple structure estimation via prenet penalization

abstract:
  We propose a $prenet$ ($pr$oduct $e$lastic $net$), which is a new
penalization method for factor analysis models. The penalty is based on the
product of a pair of elements in each row of the loading matrix. The prenet not
only shrinks some of the factor loadings toward exactly zero, but also enhances
the simplicity of the loading matrix, which plays an important role in the
interpretation of the common factors. In particular, with a large amount of
prenet penalization, the estimated loading matrix possesses a perfect simple
structure, which is known as a desirable structure in terms of the simplicity
of the loading matrix. Furthermore, the perfect simple structure estimation via
the prenet turns out to be a generalization of the $k$-means clustering of
variables. On the other hand, a mild amount of the penalization approximates a
loading matrix estimated by the quartimin rotation, one of the most commonly
used oblique rotation techniques. Thus, the proposed penalty bridges a gap
between the perfect simple structure and the quartimin rotation. Monte Carlo
simulation is conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed
procedure. Three real data analyses are given to illustrate the usefulness of
our penalty.


title: On a new convergence class in k-bounded sober spaces

abstract:
  Recently, J. D. Lawson encouraged the domain theory community to consider the
scientific program of developing domain theory in the wider context of $T_0$
spaces instead of restricting to posets. In this paper, we respond to this
calling by proving a topological parallel of a 2005 result due to B. Zhao and
D. Zhao, i.e., an order-theoretic characterisation of those posets for which
the lim-inf convergence is topological. We do this by adopting a recent
approach due to D. Zhao and W. K. Ho by replacing directed subsets with
irreducible sets. As a result, we formulate a new convergence class on $T_0$
spaces called Irr-convergence and established that this convergence class
$\mathcal{I}$ on a $k$-bounded sober space $X$ is topological if and only if
$X$ is Irr-continuous.


title: F-thresholds, integral closure and convexity

abstract:
  The purpose of this note is to revisit the results of arXiv:1407.4324 from a
slightly different perspective, outlining how, if the integral closures of a
finite set of prime ideals abide the expected convexity patterns, then the
existence of a peculiar polynomial allows to compute the F-jumping numbers of
all the ideals formed by taking sums of products of the original ones. The note
concludes with the suggestion of a possible source of examples falling in such
a framework.


title:
Explicit optimization of plan quality measures in intensity-modulated
  radiation therapy treatment planning

abstract:
  Conventional planning objectives in optimization of intensity-modulated
radiotherapy treatment (IMRT) plans are designed to minimize the violation of
dose-volume histogram (DVH) thresholds using penalty functions. Although
successful in guiding the DVH curve towards these thresholds, conventional
planning objectives offer limited control of the individual points on the DVH
curve (doses-at-volume) used to evaluate plan quality. In this study, we
abandon the usual penalty-function framework and propose planning objectives
that more explicitly relate to DVH statistics. The proposed planning objectives
are based on mean-tail-dose, resulting in convex optimization. We also
demonstrate how to adapt a standard optimization method to the proposed
formulation in order to obtain a substantial reduction in computational cost.
  We investigate the potential of the proposed planning objectives as tools for
optimizing DVH statistics through juxtaposition with the conventional planning
objectives on two patient cases. Sets of treatment plans with differently
balanced planning objectives are generated using either the proposed or the
conventional approach. Dominance in the sense of better distributed
doses-at-volume is observed in plans optimized within the proposed framework,
indicating that the DVH statistics are better optimized and more efficiently
balanced using the proposed planning objectives.


title:
Target-Side Context for Discriminative Models in Statistical Machine
  Translation

abstract:
  Discriminative translation models utilizing source context have been shown to
help statistical machine translation performance. We propose a novel extension
of this work using target context information. Surprisingly, we show that this
model can be efficiently integrated directly in the decoding process. Our
approach scales to large training data sizes and results in consistent
improvements in translation quality on four language pairs. We also provide an
analysis comparing the strengths of the baseline source-context model with our
extended source-context and target-context model and we show that our extension
allows us to better capture morphological coherence. Our work is freely
available as part of Moses.


title:
Multiplicity results of fractional-Laplace system with sign-changing and
  singular nonlinearity

abstract:
  In this article, we study the following fractional-Laplacian system with
singular nonlinearity \begin{equation*} (P_{\lambda,\mu}) \left\{
\begin{array}{lr} (-\Delta)^s u = \lambda f(x) u^{-q}+
\frac{\alpha}{\alpha+\beta}b(x) u^{\alpha-1} w^\beta\; \text{in}\;\Omega \\
(-\Delta)^s w = \mu g(x) w^{-q}+ \frac{\beta}{\alpha+\beta} b(x) u^{\alpha}
w^{\beta-1}\; \text{in}\;\Omega \\ \quad \quad u, w>0\;\text{in}\;\Omega, \quad
u = w = 0 \; \mbox{in}\; \mathbb{R}^n \setminus\Omega, \end{array} \quad
\right. \end{equation*} where $\Omega$ is a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$
with smooth boundary $\partial \Omega$, $n>2s$, $s\in(0,1)$, $0<q<1$,
$\alpha>1$, $\beta>1$ satisfy $2<\alpha+\beta< 2_{s}^*-1$ with
$2_{s}^*=\frac{2n}{n-2s}$, the pair of parameters $(\lambda,\mu) \in
\mathbb{R}^2\setminus\{(0,0)\}$. The weight functions $f,g:
\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ such that $0<f$, $g\in
L^{\frac{\alpha+\beta}{\alpha+\beta-1+q}}(\Omega)$, and $b:\Omega\subset
\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ is a sign-changing function such that $b(x)\in
L^{\infty}(\Omega)$. Using variational methods, we show existence and
multiplicity of positive solutions of $(P_{\lambda,\mu})$ with respect to the
pair of parameters $(\lambda,\mu)$.


title:
Sparse-BSOS: a bounded degree SOS hierarchy for large scale polynomial
  optimization with sparsity

abstract:
  We provide a sparse version of the bounded degree SOS hierarchy BSOS [7] for
polynomial optimization problems. It permits to treat large scale problems
which satisfy a structured sparsity pattern. When the sparsity pattern
satisfies the running intersection property this Sparse-BSOS hierarchy of
semidefinite programs (with semidefinite constraints of fixed size) converges
to the global optimum of the original problem. Moreover, for the class of
SOS-convex problems, finite convergence takes place at the first step of the
hierarchy, just as in the dense version.


title:
How to Evaluate the Quality of Unsupervised Anomaly Detection
  Algorithms?

abstract:
  When sufficient labeled data are available, classical criteria based on
Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) or Precision-Recall (PR) curves can be
used to compare the performance of un-supervised anomaly detection algorithms.
However , in many situations, few or no data are labeled. This calls for
alternative criteria one can compute on non-labeled data. In this paper, two
criteria that do not require labels are empirically shown to discriminate
accurately (w.r.t. ROC or PR based criteria) between algorithms. These criteria
are based on existing Excess-Mass (EM) and Mass-Volume (MV) curves, which
generally cannot be well estimated in large dimension. A methodology based on
feature sub-sampling and aggregating is also described and tested, extending
the use of these criteria to high-dimensional datasets and solving major
drawbacks inherent to standard EM and MV curves.


title:
One particle self correlations for a separable representation of the
  singlet spin state beyond standard Quantum Mechanics

abstract:
  A new pure quantum state, isotropic in spin variables, is defined in an
extended spin phase space beyond standard quantum mechanics. It allows to
represent the entangled singlet state in separable form. The statistical
correlations between Alice and Bob measurements become self correlations
between hidden spin values for each particle, together with perfect anti
correlation between spin values on the pair. Alice determines through
measurement on her particle the value of spin in some direction. Spin in
another direction is inferred from Bob measurement on the companion. Bell's
inequalities are violated because of the wave like behaviour of quantum
systems. In full analogy with the two slit experiment, interference terms
between spin field components appear determining the contextual character of
quantum distributions of probability.


title:
Robust quantum state transfer via topologically protected edge channels
  in dipolar arrays

abstract:
  We show how to realize quantum state transfer between distant qubits using
the chiral edge states of a two-dimensional topological spin system. Our
implementation based on Rydberg atoms allows to realize the quantum state
transfer protocol in state of the art experimental setups. In particular, we
show how to adapt the standard state transfer protocol to make it robust
against dispersive and disorder effects.


title:
Exact null controllability, complete stabilizability and exact final
  observability: the case of neutral type systems

abstract:
  For abstract linear systems in Hilbert spaces we revisit the problems of
exact controllability and complete stabilizability (stabilizability with an
arbitrary decay rate), the latter property is equivalent to exact null
controllability. We extend this result to the case when the feedback is not
bounded. This enables the characterization of exact null controllability and
complete stabilizability for neutral type systems. By duality, we obtain a
result about continuous final observability.Illustrative examples are given.


title:
Pulsating fronts for Fisher-KPP systems with mutations as models in
  evolutionary epidemiology

abstract:
  We consider a periodic reaction diffusion system which, because of
competition between $u$ and $v$, does not enjoy the comparison principle. It
also takes into account mutations, allowing $u$ to switch to $v$ and vice
versa. Such a system serves as a model in evolutionary epidemiology where two
types of pathogens compete in a heterogeneous environment while mutations can
occur, thus allowing coexistence.We first discuss the existence of nontrivial
positive steady states, using some bifurcation technics. Then, to sustain the
possibility of invasion when nontrivial steady states exist, we construct
pulsating fronts. As far as we know, this is the first such construction in a
situation where comparison arguments are not available.


title: Collective effects in the radiation pressure force

abstract:
  We discuss the role of diffuse, Mie and cooperative scattering on the
radiation pressure force acting on the center of mass of a cloud of cold atoms.
Even though a mean-field Ansatz (the `timed Dicke state'), previously derived
from a cooperative scattering approach, has been shown to agree satisfactorily
with experiments, diffuse scattering also describes very well most features of
the radiation pressure force on large atomic clouds. We compare in detail an
incoherent, random walk model for photons and a diffraction approach to the
more complete description based on coherently coupled dipoles. We show that a
cooperative scattering approach, although it provides a quite complete
description of the scattering process, is not necessary to explain the previous
experiments on the radiation pressure force.


title:
Top-antitop production from $W_L^+ W_L^-$ and $Z_L Z_L$ scattering under
  a strongly-interacting symmetry-breaking sector

abstract:
  By using a Non-linear Electroweak Chiral Lagrangian, including the Higgs,
coupled to heavy quarks, and the Equivalence Theorem, we compute (in the regime
$M_t^2/v^2\ll\sqrt{s}M_t/v^2\ll s/v^2$) the one-loop amplitudes $W^+W^-\to
t\bar t$, $ZZ\to t\bar t$ and $hh\to t\bar t$ (to NLO in the effective theory).
We calculate the scalar partial-wave helicity amplitudes which allow us to
check unitarity at the perturbative level in both $M_t/v$ and $s/v$. As with
growing energy perturbative unitarity deteriorates, we also introduce a new
unitarization method with the right analytical behavior on the complex
$s$-plane and that can support poles on the second Riemann sheet to describe
resonances in terms of the Lagrangian couplings. Thus we have achieved a
consistent phenomenological description of any resonant $t\bar t$ production
that may be enhanced by a possible strongly interacting Electroweak Symmetry
Breaking Sector.


title: Towards Network-Failure-Tolerant Content Delivery for Web Content

abstract:
  Popularly used to distribute a variety of multimedia content items in today
Internet, HTTP-based web content delivery still suffers from various content
delivery failures. Hindered by the expensive deployment cost, the conventional
CDN can not deploy as many edge servers as possible to successfully deliver
content items to all users under these delivery failures. In this paper, we
propose a joint CDN and peer-assisted web content delivery framework to address
the delivery failure problem. Different from conventional peer-assisted
approaches for web content delivery, which mainly focus on alleviating the CDN
servers bandwidth load, we study how to use a browser-based peer-assisted
scheme, namely WebRTC, to resolve content delivery failures. To this end, we
carry out large-scale measurement studies on how users access and view
webpages. Our measurement results demonstrate the challenges (e.g., peers stay
on a webpage extremely short) that can not be directly solved by conventional
P2P strategies, and some important webpage viewing patterns. Due to these
unique characteristics, WebRTC peers open up new possibilities for helping the
web content delivery, coming with the problem of how to utilize the dynamic
resources efficiently. We formulate the peer selection that is the critical
strategy in our framework, as an optimization problem, and design a heuristic
algorithm based on the measurement insights to solve it. Our simulation
experiments driven by the traces from Tencent QZone demonstrate the
effectiveness of our design: compared with non-peer-assisted strategy and
random peer selection strategy, our design significantly improves the
successful relay ratio of web content items under network failures, e.g., our
design improves the content download ratio up to 60% even when users located in
a particular region (e.g., city) where none can connect to the regional CDN
server.


title:
Quantum Zeno and Anti-Zeno Effects on the Entanglement Dynamics of
  Qubits Dissipating into a Common and non-Markovian Environment

abstract:
  We investigate the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects on pairwise
entanglement dynamics of a collective of non-interacting qubits which have been
initially prepared in a Werner state and are off-resonantly coupled to a common
and non-Markovian environment. We obtain the analytical expression of the
concurrence in the absence and presence of the non-selective measurements. In
particular, we express our results in the strong and weak coupling regimes and
examine the role of the system size, and the effect of the detuning from the
cavity field frequency on the temporal behaviour of the pairwise entanglement.
We show that, the detuning parameter has a positive role in the protection of
entanglement in the absence of the measurement for weak coupling regime. We
find that for the values of detuning parameter less than the cavity damping
rate, the quantum Zeno effect is always dominant, while for the values greater
than the cavity damping rate, both Zeno and anti-Zeno effects can occur,
depending on the measurement intervals. We also find that the anti-Zeno effect
can occur in the pairwise entanglement dynamics in the absence and presence of
the detuning in the strong coupling regime.


title:
ELM control with RMP: plasma response models and the role of edge
  peeling response

abstract:
  Resonant magnetic perturbations (RMP) have extensively been demonstrated as a
plausible technique for mitigating or suppressing large edge localized modes
(ELMs). Associated with this is a substantial amount of theory and modelling
efforts during recent years. Various models describing the plasma response to
the RMP fields have been proposed in the literature, and are briefly reviewed
in this work. Despite their simplicity, linear response models can provide
alternative criteria, than the vacuum field based criteria, for guiding the
choice of the coil configurations to achieve the best control of ELMs. The role
of the edge peeling response to the RMP fields is illustrated as a key
indicator for the ELM mitigation in low collisionality plasmas, in various
tokamak devices.


title: Unit Interval Vertex Deletion: Fewer Vertices are Relevant

abstract:
  The unit interval vertex deletion problem asks for a set of at most $k$
vertices whose deletion from an $n$-vertex graph makes it a unit interval
graph. We develop an $O(k^4)$-vertex kernel for the problem, significantly
improving the $O(k^{53})$-vertex kernel of Fomin, Saurabh, and Villanger
[ESA'12; SIAM J. Discrete Math 27(2013)]. We introduce a novel way of
organizing cliques of a unit interval graph. Our constructive proof for the
correctness of our algorithm, using interval models, greatly simplifies the
destructive proofs, based on forbidden induced subgraphs, for similar problems
in literature.


title:
Simplices in Newton-Okounkov bodies and the Gromov width of coadjoint
  orbits

abstract:
  We give a uniform proof for the conjectured Gromov width of coadjoint orbits
of all compact connected simple Lie groups, by analyzing simplices in
Newton-Okounkov bodies.


title: Domains via approximation operators

abstract:
  In this paper, we tailor-make new approximation operators inspired by rough
set theory and specially suited for domain theory. Our approximation operators
offer a fresh perspective to existing concepts and results in domain theory,
but also reveal ways to establishing novel domain-theoretic results. For
instance, (1) the well-known interpolation property of the way-below relation
on a continuous poset is equivalent to the idempotence of a certain
set-operator; (2) the continuity of a poset can be characterized by the
coincidence of the Scott closure operator and the upper approximation operator
induced by the way below relation; (3) meet-continuity can be established from
a certain property of the topological closure operator. Additionally, we show
how, to each approximating relation, an associated order-compatible topology
can be defined in such a way that for the case of a continuous poset the
topology associated to the way-below relation is exactly the Scott topology. A
preliminary investigation is carried out on this new topology.


title: QCD and High Energy Interactions: Moriond 2016 Theory Summary

abstract:
  I summarize the theory talks presented at the 50 year anniversary conference.
The talks covered a wide range of topics, but common threads included
next-to-next-to-leading order predictions for many 2 -> 2 processes, beyond QCD
lattice simulations, work on the set of persistent flavor physics anomalies,
and discussions of the significance and possible explanations of the diphoton
excess at 750 GeV.


title:
Convergence of random oscillatory integrals in the presence of
  long-range dependence and application to homogenization

abstract:
  This paper deals with the asymptotic behavior of random oscillatory integrals
in the presence of long-range dependence. As a byproduct, we solve the
corrector problem in random homogenization of one-dimensional elliptic
equations with highly oscillatory random coefficients displaying long-range
dependence, by proving convergence to stochastic integrals with respect to
Hermite processes.


title:
Deterministic polynomial-time approximation algorithms for partition
  functions and graph polynomials

abstract:
  In this paper we show a new way of constructing deterministic polynomial-time
approximation algorithms for computing complex-valued evaluations of a large
class of graph polynomials on bounded degree graphs. In particular, our
approach works for the Tutte polynomial and independence polynomial, as well as
partition functions of complex-valued spin and edge-coloring models.
  More specifically, we define a large class of graph polynomials $\mathcal C$
and show that if $p\in \cal C$ and there is a disk $D$ centered at zero in the
complex plane such that $p(G)$ does not vanish on $D$ for all bounded degree
graphs $G$, then for each $z$ in the interior of $D$ there exists a
deterministic polynomial-time approximation algorithm for evaluating $p(G)$ at
$z$. This gives an explicit connection between absence of zeros of graph
polynomials and the existence of efficient approximation algorithms, allowing
us to show new relationships between well-known conjectures.
  Our work builds on a recent line of work initiated by. Barvinok, which
provides a new algorithmic approach besides the existing Markov chain Monte
Carlo method and the correlation decay method for these types of problems.


title:
Eastward-expanding auroral surges observed in the post-midnight sector
  during a multiple-onset substorm

abstract:
  We present three eastward-expanding auroral surge (EEAS) events that were
observed intermittently at intervals of about 15 min in the post-midnight
sector (01:55-02:40 MLT) by all-sky imagers and magnetometers in northern
Europe. It was deduced that each surge occurred just after each onset of a
multiple-onset substorm, which was small-scale and did not clearly expand
westward, because they were observed almost simultaneously with Pi 2 pulsations
at the magnetic equator and magnetic bay variations at middle-to-high latitudes
associated with the DP-1 current system. The EEASs showed similar properties to
omega bands or torches reported in previous studies, such as recurrence
intervals of about 15 min, concurrence with magnetic pulsations with amplitudes
of several tens of nanotesla, horizontal scales of 300-400 km, and occurrence
of a pulsating aurora in a diffuse aurora after the passage of the EEASs.
Furthermore, the EEASs showed similar temporal evolution to the omega bands,
during which eastward-propagating auroral streamers occurred simultaneously in
the poleward region, followed by the formation of north-south-aligned auroras,
which eventually connected with the EEASs. Thus, we speculate that EEASs may be
related to the generation process of omega bands. (Continued)


title: Moduli spaces of framed flags of sheaves on the projective plane

abstract:
  We study the moduli space of framed flags of sheaves on the projective plane
via an adaptation of the ADHM construction of framed sheaves. In particular, we
prove that, for certain values of the topological invariants, the moduli space
of framed flags of sheaves is an irreducible, nonsingular variety carrying a
holomorphic pre-symplectic form.


title:
Recent progress in lattice supersymmetry: from lattice gauge theory to
  black holes

abstract:
  Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a fascinating topic in theoretical physics, because
of its unique and counterintuitive properties. It is expected to emerge as new
physics beyond the standard model, and it is also a building block for
supergravity and superstring theory. A number of exact results obtained via
SUSY theories provide insights into field theory. However, the dynamics of many
SUSY theories are not yet fully understood, and numerical study of SUSY
theories through lattice simulations is promising as regards furthering this
understanding. In this paper, I overview the current status of lattice SUSY by
discussing its development in chronological order, and by reviewing some simple
models. In addition, I discuss the numerical verification of gauge/gravity
duality, which is one of the recent significant developments in this field.


title: Upgrade of the ALICE Inner Tracking System

abstract:
  A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) is built to study the properties of
the strongly interacting matter created in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.
With the upgrade of its Inner Tracking System (ITS), the ALICE experiment is
going to increase the rate of data taking by almost two orders of magnitude. At
the same time, the precision of secondary vertex reconstruction will become by
at least a factor 3 better than it currently is. In this talk, we briefly show
some selected physics results motivating the upgrade of the ITS, describe the
design goals and the layout of the new detector, and highlight a few important
measurements that will be realized after the completion of this upgrade.


title: A Measurement Study of TCP Performance for Chunk Delivery in DASH

abstract:
  Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has emerged as an increasingly
popular paradigm for video streaming [13], in which a video is segmented into
many chunks delivered to users by HTTP request/response over Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) con- nections. Therefore, it is intriguing to study the
performance of strategies implemented in conventional TCPs, which are not
dedicated for video streaming, e.g., whether chunks are efficiently delivered
when users per- form interactions with the video players. In this paper, we
conduct mea- surement studies on users chunk requesting traces in DASH from a
rep- resentative video streaming provider, to investigate users behaviors in
DASH, and TCP-connection-level traces from CDN servers, to investi- gate the
performance of TCP for DASH. By studying how video chunks are delivered in both
the slow start and congestion avoidance phases, our observations have revealed
the performance characteristics of TCP for DASH as follows: (1) Request
patterns in DASH have a great impact on the performance of TCP variations
including cubic; (2) Strategies in conventional TCPs may cause user perceived
quality degradation in DASH streaming; (3) Potential improvement to TCP
strategies for better delivery in DASH can be further explored.


title: Progress and prospects for heavy flavour physics on the lattice

abstract:
  I review recent progress in lattice computations relevant for $B$- and charm
physics, focusing on decay and mixing amplitudes with a direct impact on CKM
analysis. Emphasis is put on the interplay with the upcoming new generation of
experimental results, and the subsequent challenges for lattice computations in
the heavy quark sector.


title:
Improved Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino with the Full Configuration
  of the Daya Bay Experiment

abstract:
  This Letter reports an improved search for light sterile neutrino mixing in
the electron antineutrino disappearance channel with the full configuration of
the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. With an additional 404 days of data
collected in eight antineutrino detectors, this search benefits from 3.6 times
the statistics available to the previous publication, as well as from
improvements in energy calibration and background reduction. A relative
comparison of the rate and energy spectrum of reactor antineutrinos in the
three experimental halls yields no evidence of sterile neutrino mixing in the
$2\times10^{-4} \lesssim |\Delta m^{2}_{41}| \lesssim 0.3$ eV$^{2}$ mass range.
The resulting limits on $\sin^{2}2\theta_{14}$ are improved by approximately a
factor of 2 over previous results and constitute the most stringent constraints
to date in the $|\Delta m^{2}_{41}| \lesssim 0.2$ eV$^{2}$ region.


title:
Temperature Dependent Product Yields for the Spin Forbidden Singlet
  Channel of the C(3P) + C2H2 Reaction

abstract:
  The atomic hydrogen formation channels of the C + C2H2 reaction have been
investigated using a continuous supersonic flow reactor over the 52 K 296 K
temperature range. H-atoms were detected directly at 121.567 nm by vacuum
ultraviolet laser induced fluorescence. Absolute H-atom yields were determined
by comparison with the H-atom signal generated by the C + C2H4 reaction. The
product yields agree with earlier crossed beam experiments employing universal
detection methods. Incorporating these branching ratios in a gas-grain model of
dense interstellar clouds increases the cC3H abundance. This reaction is a
minor source of C3 containing molecules in the present simulations.


title: Search for Sterile Neutrinos Mixing with Muon Neutrinos in MINOS

abstract:
  We report results of a search for oscillations involving a light sterile
neutrino over distances of 1.04 and $735\,\mathrm{km}$ in a
$\nu_{\mu}$-dominated beam with a peak energy of $3\,\mathrm{GeV}$. The data,
from an exposure of $10.56\times 10^{20}\,\textrm{protons on target}$, are
analyzed using a phenomenological model with one sterile neutrino. We constrain
the mixing parameters $\theta_{24}$ and $\Delta m^{2}_{41}$ and set limits on
parameters of the four-dimensional Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix,
$|U_{\mu 4}|^{2}$ and $|U_{\tau 4}|^{2}$, under the assumption that mixing
between $\nu_{e}$ and $\nu_{s}$ is negligible ($|U_{e4}|^{2}=0$). No evidence
for $\nu_{\mu} \to \nu_{s}$ transitions is found and we set a world-leading
limit on $\theta_{24}$ for values of $\Delta m^{2}_{41} \lesssim
1\,\mathrm{eV}^{2}$.


title:
Limits on Active to Sterile Neutrino Oscillations from Disappearance
  Searches in the MINOS, Daya Bay, and Bugey-3 Experiments

abstract:
  Searches for a light sterile neutrino have been performed independently by
the MINOS and the Daya Bay experiments using the muon (anti)neutrino and
electron antineutrino disappearance channels, respectively. In this Letter,
results from both experiments are combined with those from the Bugey-3 reactor
neutrino experiment to constrain oscillations into light sterile neutrinos. The
three experiments are sensitive to complementary regions of parameter space,
enabling the combined analysis to probe regions allowed by the LSND and
MiniBooNE experiments in a minimally extended four-neutrino flavor framework.
Stringent limits on $\sin^2 2\theta_{\mu e}$ are set over 6 orders of magnitude
in the sterile mass-squared splitting $\Delta m^2_{41}$. The sterile-neutrino
mixing phase space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments is excluded
for $\Delta m^2_{41} < 0.8$ eV$^2$ at 95% CL$_s$.


title:
Generalized geodesic deviation equations and an entanglement first law
  for rotating BTZ black holes

abstract:
  The change in Holographic entanglement entropy (HEE) for small fluctuations
about pure AdS is given by a perturbative expansion of the area functional in
terms of the change in the bulk metric and the embedded extremal surface.
However it is known that change in the embedding appear at second order or
higher. In this paper we show that these changes in the embedding can be
systematically calculated in the 2+1 dimensional case by accounting for the
deviation of the spacelike geodesics between a spacetime and perturbations over
it. Here we consider rotating BTZ as perturbation over $AdS_3$ and study
deviations of spacelike geodesics in them. We argue that these deviations arise
naturally as solutions of a "generalized geodesic deviation equation". Using
this we perturbatively calculate the changes in HEE upto second order, for
rotating BTZ. This expression matches with the small system size expansion of
the change in HEE obtained by HRT (Hubeny, Rangamani and Takayanagi) proposal
for rotating BTZ. We also write an alternative form of entanglement first law
for rotating BTZ. To do this one needs to go beyond the leading order in the
perturbation series discussed above. That's precisely the reason we consider
finding a systematic way to calculate it. To put our result on a firm footing
we further show that it is this alternative first law that approaches the
thermal first law in the large subsystem size limit.


title: Robust clustering tools based on optimal transportation

abstract:
  A robust clustering method for probabilities in Wasserstein space is
introduced. This new "trimmed $k$-barycenters" approach relies on recent
results on barycenters in Wasserstein space that allow intensive computation,
as required by clustering algorithms. The possibility of trimming the most
discrepant distributions results in a gain in stability and robustness, highly
convenient in this setting. As a remarkable application we consider a
parallelized estimation setup in which each of $m$ units processes a portion of
the data, producing an estimate of $k$-features, encoded as $k$ probabilities.
We prove that the trimmed $k$-barycenter of the $m\times k$ estimates produces
a consistent aggregation. We illustrate the methodology with simulated and real
data examples. These include clustering populations by age distributions and
analysis of cytometric data.


title:
Effects of intense optical phonon pumping on the structure and
  electronic properties of yttrium barium copper oxide

abstract:
  We investigate the structural modulations induced by optical excitation of a
polar phonon mode in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$, using first-principles calculations
based on density functional theory. We focus on the intense-excitation regime
in which we expect that fourth-order phonon-phonon coupling terms dominate, and
model the structural modulations induced by pulses of such intensity. Our
calculations of the phonon-phonon anharmonicities confirm that the cubic
coupling between modes, shown in earlier work to cause a quasi-static change in
the apical O - Cu distance and a buckling of the CuO$_2$ planes, is the leading
contribution at moderate pump strengths. At higher pump strengths ($\sim$10
MV/cm) the previously neglected quartic couplings become relevant and produce
an additional shearing of the CuO$_2$ planes. Finally, we analyze the changes
in the electronic and magnetic properties associated with the induced
structural changes.


title: Compact Massive Object in Galaxies

abstract:
  The central regions of galaxies show the presence of super massive black
holes and/or very dense stellar clusters. Both objects seem to follow similar
host-galaxy correlations, suggesting that they are members of the same family
of Compact Massive Objects. We investigate here a huge data collection of
Compact Massive Objects properties to correlate them with absolute magnitude,
velocity dispersion and mass of their host galaxies.


title:
WISE x SuperCOSMOS photometric redshift catalog: 20 million galaxies
  over 3pi steradians

abstract:
  We cross-match the two currently largest all-sky photometric catalogs,
mid-infrared WISE and SuperCOSMOS scans of UKST/POSS-II photographic plates, to
obtain a new galaxy sample that covers 3pi steradians. In order to characterize
and purify the extragalactic dataset, we use external GAMA and SDSS
spectroscopic information to define quasar and star loci in multicolor space,
aiding the removal of contamination from our extended-source catalog. After
appropriate data cleaning we obtain a deep wide-angle galaxy sample that is
approximately 95% pure and 90% complete at high Galactic latitudes. The catalog
contains close to 20 million galaxies over almost 70% of the sky, outside the
Zone of Avoidance and other confused regions, with a mean surface density of
over 650 sources per square degree. Using multiwavelength information from two
optical and two mid-IR photometric bands, we derive photometric redshifts for
all the galaxies in the catalog, using the ANNz framework trained on the final
GAMA-II spectroscopic data. Our sample has a median redshift of z_{med} = 0.2
but with a broad dN/dz reaching up to z>0.4. The photometric redshifts have a
mean bias of |delta_z|~10^{-3}, normalized scatter of sigma_z = 0.033 and less
than 3% outliers beyond 3sigma_z. Comparison with external datasets shows no
significant variation of photo-z quality with sky position. Together with the
overall statistics, we also provide a more detailed analysis of photometric
redshift accuracy as a function of magnitudes and colors. The final catalog is
appropriate for `all-sky' 3D cosmology to unprecedented depths, in particular
through cross-correlations with other large-area surveys. It should also be
useful for source pre-selection and identification in forthcoming surveys such
as TAIPAN or WALLABY.


title:
Dielectric function and thermodynamic properties of jellium in the GW
  approximation

abstract:
  The fully self-consistent GW approximation is an established method for
electronic structure calculations. Its most serious deficiency is known to be
an incorrect prediction of the dielectric response. In this work we examine the
GW approximation for the homogeneous electron gas and find that problems with
the dielectric response are solved by enforcing the particle-number
conservation law in the polarization function. Previously reported data for the
ground-state energy were plainly contradicting each other well outside of
reported error bounds. Some of these results created a false impression of how
accurate the fully self-consistent GW approximation is. We resolve this
controversy by confirming that only Ref. [15] was reporting correct energy
data, and present values for other key Fermi-liquid properties.


title:
Calculation of mutual information for nonlinear communication channel at
  large SNR

abstract:
  Using the path-integral technique we examine the mutual information for the
communication channel modelled by the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with
additive Gaussian noise. The nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation is one of the
fundamental models in nonlinear physics, and it has a broad range of
applications, including fiber optical communications --- the backbone of the
Internet. At large signal-to-noise ratio ($\mathrm{SNR}$) we present the mutual
information through the path-integral which is convenient for the perturbative
expansion in nonlinearity. In the limit of small noise and small nonlinearity
we derive analytically the first nonzero nonlinear correction to the mutual
information for the channel.


title: Dynamical systems of conflict in terms of structural measures

abstract:
  We investigate the dynamical systems modeling conflict processes between a
pair of opponents. We assume that opponents are given on a common space by
distributions (probability measures) having the similar or self-similar
structure. Our main result states the existence of the controlled conflict in
which one of the opponents occupies almost whole conflicting space. Besides, we
compare conflicting effects stipulated by the rough structural approximation
under controlled redistributions of starting measures.


title: Generalized optimal transport with singular sources

abstract:
  We present a generalized optimal transport model in which the mass-preserving
constraint for the $L^2$-Wasserstein distance is relaxed by introducing a
source term in the continuity equation. The source term is also incorporated in
the path energy by means of its squared $L^2$-norm in time of a functional with
linear growth in space. This extension of the original transport model enables
local density modulation, which is a desirable feature in applications such as
image warping and blending. A key advantage of the use of a functional with
linear growth in space is that it allows for singular sources and sinks, which
can be supported on points or lines. On a technical level, the $L^2$-norm in
time ensures a disintegration of the source in time, which we use to obtain the
well-posedness of the model and the existence of geodesic paths. Furthermore, a
numerical scheme based on the proximal splitting approach (Papadakis et al.,
2014) is presented. We compare our model with the corresponding model involving
the $L^2(L^2)$-norm of the source, which merges the metamorphosis approach and
the optimal transport approaches in imaging. Selected numerical test cases show
strikingly different behaviour.


title:
Uniform resolvent and Strichartz estimates for Schr\"odinger equations
  with critical singularities

abstract:
  This paper deals with global dispersive properties of Schr\"odinger equations
with real-valued potentials exhibiting critical singularities, where our class
of potentials is more general than inverse-square type potentials and includes
several anisotropic potentials. We first prove weighted resolvent estimates,
which are uniform with respect to the energy, with a large class of weight
functions in Morrey-Campanato spaces. Uniform Sobolev inequalities in Lorentz
spaces are also studied. The proof employs the iterated resolvent identity and
a classical multiplier technique. As an application, the full set of
global-in-time Strichartz estimates including the endpoint case is derived. In
the proof of Strichartz estimates, we develop a general criterion on
perturbations ensuring that both homogeneous and inhomogeneous endpoint
estimates can be recovered form resolvent estimates. Finally, we also
investigate uniform resolvent estimates for long range repulsive potentials
with critical singularities by using an elementary version of the Mourre
theory.


title:
Machine-learning identification of galaxies in the WISExSuperCOSMOS
  all-sky catalogue

abstract:
  The two currently largest all-sky photometric datasets, WISE and SuperCOSMOS,
were cross-matched by Bilicki et al. (2016) (B16) to construct a novel
photometric redshift catalogue on 70% of the sky. Galaxies were therein
separated from stars and quasars through colour cuts, which may leave
imperfections because of mixing different source types which overlap in colour
space. The aim of the present work is to identify galaxies in the
WISExSuperCOSMOS catalogue through an alternative approach of machine learning.
This allows us to define more complex separations in the multi-colour space
than possible with simple colour cuts, and should provide more reliable source
classification. For the automatised classification we use the support vector
machines learning algorithm, employing SDSS spectroscopic sources cross-matched
with WISExSuperCOSMOS as the training and verification set. We perform a number
of tests to examine the behaviour of the classifier (completeness, purity and
accuracy) as a function of source apparent magnitude and Galactic latitude. We
then apply the classifier to the full-sky data and analyse the resulting
catalogue of candidate galaxies. We also compare thus produced dataset with the
one presented in B16. The tests indicate very high accuracy, completeness and
purity (>95%) of the classifier at the bright end, deteriorating for the
faintest sources, but still retaining acceptable levels of 85%. No significant
variation of classification quality with Galactic latitude is observed.
Application of the classifier to all-sky WISExSuperCOSMOS data gives 15 million
galaxies after masking problematic areas. The resulting sample is purer than
the one in B16, at a price of lower completeness over the sky. The automatic
classification gives a successful alternative approach to defining a reliable
galaxy sample as compared to colour cuts.


title: The SuperCOSMOS all-sky galaxy catalogue

abstract:
  We describe the construction of an all-sky galaxy catalogue, using
SuperCOSMOS scans of Schmidt photographic plates from the UKST and POSS2
surveys. The photographic photometry is calibrated using SDSS data, with
results that are linear to 2% or better. All-sky photometric uniformity is
achieved by matching plate overlaps and also by requiring homogeneity in
optical-to-2MASS colours, yielding zero points that are uniform to 0.03 mag. or
better. The typical AB depths achieved are B_J<21, R_F<19.5 and I_N<18.5, with
little difference between hemispheres. In practice, the I_N plates are
shallower than the B_J & R_F plates, so for most purposes we advocate the use
of a catalogue selected in these two latter bands. At high Galactic latitudes,
this catalogue is approximately 90% complete with 5% stellar contamination; we
quantify how the quality degrades towards the Galactic plane. At low latitudes,
there are many spurious galaxy candidates resulting from stellar blends: these
approximately match the surface density of true galaxies at |b|=30 deg. Above
this latitude, the catalogue limited in B_J & R_F contains in total about 20
million galaxy candidates, of which 75% are real. This contamination can be
removed, and the sky coverage extended, by matching with additional datasets.
This SuperCOSMOS catalogue has been matched with 2MASS and with WISE, yielding
quasi-allsky samples of respectively 1.5 million and 18.5 million galaxies, to
median redshifts of 0.08 and 0.20. This legacy dataset thus continues to offer
a valuable resource for large-angle cosmological investigations.


title: Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Exploring the WISE Cosmic Web in G12

abstract:
  We present an analysis of the mid-infrared WISE sources seen within the
equatorial GAMA G12 field, located in the North Galactic Cap. Our motivation is
to study and characterize the behavior of WISE source populations in
anticipation of the deep multi-wavelength surveys that will define the next
decade, with the principal science goal of mapping the 3D large scale
structures and determining the global physical attributes of the host galaxies.
In combination with cosmological redshifts, we identify galaxies from their
WISE W1 3.4um resolved emission, and by performing a star-galaxy separation
using apparent magnitude, colors and statistical modeling of star-counts. The
resultant galaxy catalog has ~590,000 sources in 60 deg^2, reaching a W1
5-sigma depth of 31 uJy. At the faint end, where redshifts are not available,
we employ a luminosity function analysis to show that approximately 27% of all
WISE extragalactic sources to a limit of 17.5 mag (31 uJy) are at high
redshift, z > 1. The spatial distribution is investigated using two-point
correlation functions and a 3D source density characterization at 5 Mpc and 20
Mpc scales. For angular distributions, we find brighter and more massive
sources are strongly clustered relative to fainter and lower mass source;
likewise, based on WISE colors, spheroidal galaxies have the strongest
clustering, while late-type disk galaxies have the lowest clustering
amplitudes. Along the radial direction, the strongest clustering is in the
largest redshift shell, while the weakest is in the nearest redshift shell,
consistent with the stellar mass and morphological type dependency results. In
three dimensions, we find a number of distinct groupings, often bridged by
filaments and super-structures. Using special visualization tools, we map these
structures, exploring how clustering may play a role with stellar mass and
galaxy type.


title:
Best Practices for Replicability, Reproducibility and Reusability of
  Computer-Based Experiments Exemplified by Model Reduction Software

abstract:
  Over the recent years the importance of numerical experiments has gradually
been more recognized. Nonetheless, sufficient documentation of how
computational results have been obtained is often not available. Especially in
the scientific computing and applied mathematics domain this is crucial, since
numerical experiments are usually employed to verify the proposed hypothesis in
a publication. This work aims to propose standards and best practices for the
setup and publication of numerical experiments. Naturally, this amounts to a
guideline for development, maintenance, and publication of numerical research
software. Such a primer will enable the replicability and reproducibility of
computer-based experiments and published results and also promote the
reusability of the associated software.


title:
Bounded Influence Propagation {\tau}-Estimation: A New Robust Method for
  ARMA Model Estimation

abstract:
  A new robust and statistically efficient estimator for ARMA models called the
bounded influence propagation (BIP) {\tau}-estimator is proposed. The estimator
incorporates an auxiliary model, which prevents the propagation of outliers.
Strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator for ARMA models
that are driven by independently and identically distributed (iid) innovations
with symmetric distributions are established. To analyze the infinitesimal
effect of outliers on the estimator, the influence function is derived and
computed explicitly for an AR(1) model with additive outliers. To obtain
estimates for the AR(p) model, a robust Durbin-Levinson type and a
forward-backward algorithm are proposed. An iterative algorithm to robustly
obtain ARMA(p,q) parameter estimates is also presented. The problem of finding
a robust initialization is addressed, which for orders p+q>2 is a non-trivial
matter. Numerical experiments are conducted to compare the finite sample
performance of the proposed estimator to existing robust methodologies for
different types of outliers both in terms of average and of worst-case
performance, as measured by the maximum bias curve. To illustrate the practical
applicability of the proposed estimator, a real-data example of outlier
cleaning for R-R interval plots derived from electrocardiographic (ECG) data is
considered. The proposed estimator is not limited to biomedical applications,
but is also useful in any real-world problem whose observations can be modeled
as an ARMA process disturbed by outliers or impulsive noise.


title: Kazantsev model in nonhelical 2.5D flows

abstract:
  We study the dynamo instability for a Kazantsev-Kraichnan flow with three
velocity components that depends only on two-dimensions u = (u(x, y, t), v(x,
y, t), w(x, y, t)) often referred to as 2.5 dimensional (2.5D) flow. Within the
Kazantsev-Kraichnan frame- work we derive the governing equations for the
second order magnetic field correlation function and examine the growth rate of
the dynamo instability as a function of the control parameters of the system.
In particular we investigate the dynamo behaviour for large magnetic Reynolds
numbers Rm and flows close to being two-dimensional and show that these two
limiting procedures do not commute. The energy spectra of the unstable modes
are derived analytically and lead to power-law behaviour that differs from the
three dimensional and two dimensional case. The results of our analytical
calculation are compared with the results of numerical simulations of dynamos
driven by prescribed fluctuating flows as well as freely evolving turbulent
flows, showing good agreement.


title: Symmetry Breaking of Counter-Propagating Light in a Nonlinear Resonator

abstract:
  Light is generally expected to travel through isotropic media independent of
its direction. This makes it challenging to develop non-reciprocal optical
elements like optical diodes or circulators, which currently rely on
magneto-optical effects and birefringent materials. Here we present
measurements of non-reciprocal transmission and spontaneous symmetry breaking
between counter-propagating light in dielectric microresonators. The symmetry
breaking corresponds to a resonance frequency splitting that allows only one of
two counter-propagating (but otherwise identical) light waves to circulate in
the resonator. Equivalently, the symmetry breaking can be seen as the collapse
of standing waves and transition to travelling waves within the resonator. We
present theoretical calculations to show that the symmetry breaking is induced
by Kerr-nonlinearity-mediated interaction between the counter-propagating
light. This effect is expected to take place in any dielectric ring-resonator
and might constitute one of the most fundamental ways to induce optical
non-reciprocity. Our findings pave the way for a variety of applications
including all optical switching, nonlinear-enhanced rotation sensing, optically
controllable circulators and isolators, optical flip-flops for photonic
memories as well as exceptionally sensitive power and refractive index sensors.


title: Charge order in an interacting monolayer under transverse bias

abstract:
  A monolayer of molecules or quantum dots sandwiched between electrodes can be
driven out of equilibrium by the application of a bias voltage between the
electrodes. We study charge ordering, i.e., the spontaneous formation of a
charge density wave, and the perpendicular current in such a system within a
master-equation approach augmented by mean-field and classical Monte Carlo
methods. Our approach is suitable for weak tunneling between the monolayer and
the electrodes. For a square lattice with nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion,
we present a comprehensive study of the zero-temperature phases controlled by
the on-site energy, the bias voltage, and the degeneracy of the occupied
single-site state. One of the most interesting results is the prediction of a
conducting charge-density-wave phase that only occurs at a finite bias voltage.
We also study the universality classes of the phase transitions towards
charge-ordered states at zero and nonzero temperatures. While all transitions
at $T>0$ and some at $T=0$ belong to the two-dimensional Ising universality
class, we also find an absorbing-to-active phase transition in the
$\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetric directed percolation (DP2) class at $T=0$.


title: Drawing Graphs on Few Lines and Few Planes

abstract:
  We investigate the problem of drawing graphs in 2D and 3D such that their
edges (or only their vertices) can be covered by few lines or planes. We insist
on straight-line edges and crossing-free drawings. This problem has many
connections to other challenging graph-drawing problems such as small-area or
small-volume drawings, layered or track drawings, and drawing graphs with low
visual complexity. While some facts about our problem are implicit in previous
work, this is the first treatment of the problem in its full generality. Our
contribution is as follows.
  We show lower and upper bounds for the numbers of lines and planes needed for
covering drawings of graphs in certain graph classes. In some cases our bounds
are asymptotically tight; in some cases we are able to determine exact values.
  We relate our parameters to standard combinatorial characteristics of graphs
(such as the chromatic number, treewidth, maximum degree, or arboricity) and to
parameters that have been studied in graph drawing (such as the track number or
the number of segments appearing in a drawing).
  We pay special attention to planar graphs. For example, we show that there
are planar graphs that can be drawn in 3-space on a lot fewer lines than in the
plane.


title:
Leading terms of anticyclotomic Stickelberger elements and p-adic
  periods

abstract:
  Let E be a quadratic extension of a totally real number field. We construct
Stickelberger elements for Hilbert modular forms of parallel weight 2 in
anticyclotomic extensions of E. Extending methods developed by Dasgupta and
Spie{\ss} from the multiplicative group to an arbitrary one-dimensional torus
we bound the order of vanishing of these Stickelberger elements from below and,
in the analytic rank zero situation, we give a description of their leading
terms via automorphic L-invariants. If the field E is totally imaginary, we use
the p-adic uniformization of Shimura curves to show the equality between
automorphic and arithmetic L-invariants. This generalizes a result of Bertolini
and Darmon from the case that the ground field is the field of rationals to
arbitrary totally real number fields.


title:
Quantization of Measures and Gradient Flows: a Perturbative Approach in
  the 2-Dimensional Case

abstract:
  In this paper we study a perturbative approach to the problem of quantization
of measures in the plane. Motivated by the fact that, as the number of points
tends to infinity, hexagonal lattices are asymptotically optimal from an
energetic point of view (see [Morgan, Bolton: Amer. Math. Monthly 109 (2002),
165-172]), we consider configurations that are small perturbations of the
hexagonal lattice and we show that: (1) in the limit as the number of points
tends to infinity, the hexagonal lattice is a strict minimizer of the energy;
(2) the gradient flow of the limiting functional allows us to evolve any
perturbed configuration to the optimal one exponentially fast. In particular,
our analysis provides a solid mathematical justification of the asymptotic
optimality of the hexagonal lattice among its nearby configurations.


title:
Spontaneous symmetry breaking and Goldstone theorem for composite states
  revisited

abstract:
  We discuss the well-known phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking for a
linear sigma model for scalar and pseudoscalar mesons based on the meson
composite structure and the normalization of the quantum states. To test our
formulation and validate our approach we give another proof of the Goldstone
theorem and derive the corresponding mass eigenstates of the theory. We briefly
describe the possible wave function of a meson that leads to the adequate mass
eigenstates.


title: Fractional Kirchhoff problem with critical indefinite nonlinearity

abstract:
  We study the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions for a family of
fractional Kirchhoff equations with critical nonlinearity of the form
\begin{equation*}
M\left(\int_\Omega|(-\Delta)^{\frac{\alpha}{2}}u|^2dx\right)(-\Delta)^{\alpha}
u= \lambda f(x)|u|^{q-2}u+|u|^{2^*_\alpha-2}u\;\; \text{in}\;
\Omega,\;u=0\;\textrm{in}\;\mathbb R^n\setminus \Omega, \end{equation*} where
$\Omega\subset \mathbb R^n$ is a smooth bounded domain, $ M(t)=a+\varepsilon t,
\; a, \; \varepsilon>0,\; 0<\alpha<1, \; 2\alpha<n<4\alpha$ and $ \; 1<q<2$.
Here $2^*_\alpha={2n}/{(n-2\alpha)}$ is the fractional critical Sobolev
exponent, $\lambda$ is a positive parameter and the coefficient $f(x)$ is a
real valued continuous function which is allowed to change sign. By using a
variational approach based on the idea of Nehari manifold technique, we combine
effects of a sublinear and a superlinear term to prove our main results.


title:
A Macroscopic Mathematical Model For Cell Migration Assays Using A
  Real-Time Cell Analysis

abstract:
  Experiments of cell migration and chemotaxis assays have been classically
performed in the so-called Boyden Chambers. A recent technology, xCELLigence
Real Time Cell Analysis, is now allowing to monitor the cell migration in real
time. This technology measures impedance changes caused by the gradual increase
of electrode surface occupation by cells during the course of time and provide
a Cell Index which is proportional to cellular morphology, spreading, ruffling
and adhesion quality as well as cell number. In this paper we propose a
macroscopic mathematical model, based on \emph{advection-reaction-diffusion}
partial differential equations, describing the cell migration assay using the
real-time technology. We carried out numerical simulations to compare simulated
model dynamics with data of observed biological experiments on three different
cell lines and in two experimental settings: absence of chemotactic signals
(basal migration) and presence of a chemoattractant. Overall we conclude that
our minimal mathematical model is able to describe the phenomenon in the real
time scale and numerical results show a good agreement with the experimental
evidences.


title: Optimal control for a robotic exploration, pick-up and delivery problem

abstract:
  This paper addresses an optimal control problem for a robot that has to find
and collect a finite number of objects and move them to a depot in minimum
time. The robot has fourth-order dynamics that change instantaneously at any
pick-up or drop-off of an object. The objects are modeled by point masses with
a-priori unknown locations in a bounded two-dimensional space that may contain
unknown obstacles. For this hybrid system, an Optimal Control Problem (OCP) is
approximately solved by a receding horizon scheme, where the derived lower
bound for the cost-to-go is evaluated for the worst and for a probabilistic
case, assuming a uniform distribution of the objects. First, a time-driven
approximate solution based on time and position space discretization and mixed
integer programming is presented. Due to the high computational cost of this
solution, an alternative event-driven approximate approach based on a suitable
motion parameterization and gradient-based optimization is proposed. The
solutions are compared in a numerical example, suggesting that the latter
approach offers a significant computational advantage while yielding similar
qualitative results compared to the former. The methods are particularly
relevant for various robotic applications like automated cleaning, search and
rescue, harvesting or manufacturing.


title:
Weak Gravity Conjecture as a Razor Criterium for Exotic D-brane
  instantons

abstract:
  We discuss implications of Weak gravity conjecture (WGC) for exotic D-brane
instantons. In particular, WGC leads to indirect stringent bounds on
non-perturbative superpotentials generated by exotic instantons, with many
implications for phenomenology: R-parity violating processes, neutrino mass,
$\mu$-problem, Neutron-Antineutron transitions and collider physics.


title: Distribution and Generalized Center in Planar Nearrings

abstract:
  Planar nearrings play an important role in nearring theory, both from the
structural side as being close to generalised nearfields, as well as from an
applications perspective, in geometry and designs. We investigate the
distributive elements of planar nearrings. If a planar nearring has nonzero
distributive elements, then it is an extension of its zero multiplier part by
an abelian group. In the case that there are distributive elements that are not
zero multipliers, then this extension splits, giving an explicit description of
the nearring. This generalises the structure of planar rings. We provide a
family of examples where this does not occur, the distributive elements being
precisely the zero multipliers. We apply this knowledge to the question of
determining the generalized center of planar nearrings as well as finding new
proofs of other older results.


title: Learning the semantic structure of objects from Web supervision

abstract:
  While recent research in image understanding has often focused on recognizing
more types of objects, understanding more about the objects is just as
important. Recognizing object parts and attributes has been extensively studied
before, yet learning large space of such concepts remains elusive due to the
high cost of providing detailed object annotations for supervision. The key
contribution of this paper is an algorithm to learn the nameable parts of
objects automatically, from images obtained by querying Web search engines. The
key challenge is the high level of noise in the annotations; to address it, we
propose a new unified embedding space where the appearance and geometry of
objects and their semantic parts are represented uniformly. Geometric
relationships are induced in a soft manner by a rich set of nonsemantic
mid-level anchors, bridging the gap between semantic and non-semantic parts. We
also show that the resulting embedding provides a visually-intuitive mechanism
to navigate the learned concepts and their corresponding images.


title: Extension of Whitney jets of controlled growth

abstract:
  We revisit Whitney's extension theorem in the ultradifferentiable Roumieu
setting. Based on the description of ultradifferentiable classes by weight
matrices, we extend results on how growth constraints on Whitney jets on
arbitrary compact subsets in $\mathbb R^n$ are preserved by their extensions to
$\mathbb R^n$. More precisely, for any admissible class $\mathcal C$ of
ultradifferentiable functions on $\mathbb R^n$ we determine a class $\mathcal
C'$ such that all ultradifferentiable Whitney jets of class $\mathcal C'$ on
arbitrary compact subsets admit extensions in $\mathcal C$. The class $\mathcal
C'$ can be explicitly computed from $\mathcal C$.


title:
Natural gas-fired power plants valuation and optimisation under Levy
  copulas and regime-switching

abstract:
  In this work we analyse a stochastic control problem for the valuation of a
natural gas power station while taking into account operating characteristics.
Both electricity and gas spot price processes exhibit mean-reverting spikes and
Markov regime-switches. The Levy regime-switching model incorporates the
effects of demand-supply fluctuations in energy markets and abrupt economic
disruptions or business cycles. We make use of skewed Levy copulas to model the
dependence risk of electricity and gas jumps.
  The corresponding HJB equation is the non-linear PIDE which is solved by an
explicit finite difference method. The numerical approach gives us both the
value of the plant and its optimal operating strategy depending on the gas and
electricity prices, current temperature of the boiler and time. The surfaces of
control strategies and contract values are obtained by implementing the
numerical method for a particular example.


title: Topological recursion for the conifold transition of a torus knot

abstract:
  In this paper we prove a mirror symmetry conjecture based on the work of
Brini-Eynard-Mari\~no \cite{BEM} and Diaconescu-Shende-Vafa \cite{DSV}. This
conjecture relates open Gromov-Witten invariants of the conifold transition of
a torus knot to the topological recursion on the B-model spectral curve.


title:
Gaussian estimates of the density for systems of non-linear stochastic
  heat equations

abstract:
  In this paper we consider a system of non-linear stochastic heat equations on
$\mathbb{R}^d$ driven by a Gaussian noise which is white in time and has a
homogeneous spatial covariance. Under some suitable regularity and non
degeneracy conditions, the smoothness of the joint density of the solution for
this system has been studied by E. Nualart in [11]. The purpose of this paper
is further to study the lower and upper bounds of the density. The main tools
are the Malliavin calculus and the method developed by Kohatasu-Higa in [6] or
E. Nualart and Quer-Sardanyons in [12].


title:
Some Garbage In - Some Garbage Out: Asynchronous t-Byzantine as
  Asynchronous Benign t-resilient system with fixed t-Trojan-Horse Inputs

abstract:
  We show that asynchronous $t$ faults Byzantine system is equivalent to
asynchronous $t$-resilient system, where unbeknownst to all, the private inputs
of at most $t$ processors were altered and installed by a malicious oracle.
  The immediate ramification is that dealing with asynchronous Byzantine
systems does not call for new topological methods, as was recently employed by
various researchers: Asynchronous Byzantine is a standard asynchronous system
with an input caveat. It also shows that two recent independent investigations
of vector $\epsilon$-agreement in the Byzantine model, and then in the
fail-stop model, one was superfluous - in these problems the change of $t$
inputs allowed in the Byzantine has no effect compared to the fail-stop case.
  This result was motivated by the aim of casting any asynchronous system as a
synchronous system where all processors are correct and it is the communication
substrate in the form of message-adversary that misbehaves. Thus, in addition,
we get such a characterization for the asynchronous Byzantine system.


title: Worm Improved Estimators in Continuous-time Quantum Monte Carlo

abstract:
  We derive the improved estimators for general interactions and employ these
for the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method. Using a worm algorithm we
show how measuring higher-ordered correlators leads to an improved
high-frequency behavior in irreducible quantities such as the one-particle
self-energy or the irreducible two-particle vertex for non-density-density
interactions. A good knowledge of the asymptotics of the two-particle vertex is
essential for calculating non-local electronic correlations using diagrammatic
extensions to the dynamical mean field theory as well as for calculating
susceptibilities. We test our algorithm against analytic results for the
multi-orbital atomic-limit and the Falicov-Kimball model.


title: LHCSki 2016 - A First Discussion of 13 TeV Results

abstract:
  These are the proceedings of the LHCSki 2016 workshop "A First Discussion of
13 TeV Results" that has been held at the Obergurgl Universit\"atszentrum,
Tirol, Austria, April 10 - 15, 2016. In this workshop the consequences of the
most recent results from the LHC have been discussed, with a focus also on the
interplay with dark matter physics, flavor physics, and precision measurements.
Contributions from the workshop speakers have been compiled into this document.


title:
Waveguide photonic limiters based on topologically protected resonant
  modes

abstract:
  We propose a concept of chiral photonic limiters utilising topologically
protected localised midgap defect states in a photonic waveguide. The chiral
symmetry alleviates the effects of structural imperfections and guaranties a
high level of resonant transmission for low intensity radiation. At high
intensity, the light-induced absorption can suppress the localised modes, along
with the resonant transmission. In this case the entire photonic structure
becomes highly reflective within a broad frequency range, thus increasing
dramatically the damage threshold of the limiter. Here we demonstrate
experimentally the principle of operation of such photonic structures using a
waveguide consisting of coupled dielectric microwave resonators.


title:
Generating topological optical flux lattices for ultracold atoms by
  modulated Raman and radio-frequency couplings

abstract:
  We propose a scheme to dynamically generate optical flux lattices with
nontrivial band topology using amplitude-modulated Raman lasers and
radio-frequency (rf) magnetic fields. By tuning the strength of Raman and rf
fields, three distinct phases are realized at unit filling for a unit cell.
Respectively, these three phases correspond to normal insulator, topological
Chern insulator, and semimetal. Nearly nondispersive bands are found to appear
in the topological phase, which promises opportunities for investigating
strongly correlated quantum states within a simple cold-atom setup. The
validity of our proposal is confirmed by comparing the Floquet quasienergies
from the evolution operator with the spectrum of the effective Hamiltonian.


title:
Volume of the space of qubit channels and some new results about the
  distribution of the quantum Dobrushin coefficient

abstract:
  The simplest building blocks for quantum computations are the qbit-qbit
quantum channels. In this paper we analyse the structure of these channels via
their Choi representation. The restriction of a quantum channel to the space of
classical states (i.e. probability distributions) is called the underlying
classical channel. The structure of quantum channels over a fixed classical
channel is studied, the volume of general and unital qubit channels over real
and complex state spaces with respect to the Lebesgue measure is computed and
explicit formulas are presented for the distribution of the volume of quantum
channels over given classical channels. Moreover an algorithm is presented to
generate uniformly distributed channels with respect to the Lebesgue measure,
which enables further studies. With this algorithm the distribution of
trace-distance contraction coefficient (Dobrushin) is investigated numerically
by Monte-Carlo simulations, which leads to some conjectures and points out the
strange behaviour of the real state space.


title:
Impact of low-energy nuclear excitations on neutrino-nucleus scattering
  at MiniBooNE and T2K kinematics

abstract:
  [Background] Meticulous modeling of neutrino-nucleus interactions is
essential to achieve the unprecedented precision goals of present and future
accelerator-based neutrino-oscillation experiments. [Purpose] Confront our
calculations of charged-current quasielastic cross section with the
measurements of MiniBooNE and T2K, and to quantitatively investigate the role
of nuclear-structure effects, in particular, low-energy nuclear excitations in
forward muon scattering. [Method] The model takes the mean-field (MF) approach
as the starting point, and solves Hartree-Fock (HF) equations using a Skyrme
(SkE2) nucleon-nucleon interaction. Long-range nuclear correlations are taken
into account by means of the continuum random-phase approximation (CRPA)
framework. [Results] We present our calculations on flux-folded double
differential, and flux-unfolded total cross sections off $^{12}$C and compare
them with MiniBooNE and (off-axis) T2K measurements. We discuss the importance
of low-energy nuclear excitations for the forward bins. [Conclusions] The CRPA
predictions describe the gross features of the measured cross sections. They
underpredict the data (more in the neutrino than in the antineutrino case)
because of the absence of processes beyond pure quasielastic scattering in our
model. At very forward muon scattering, low-energy nuclear excitations ($\omega
< $ 50 MeV) account for nearly 50% of the flux-folded cross section.


title:
Identification of block-oriented nonlinear systems starting from linear
  approximations: A survey

abstract:
  Block-oriented nonlinear models are popular in nonlinear system
identification because of their advantages of being simple to understand and
easy to use. Many different identification approaches were developed over the
years to estimate the parameters of a wide range of block-oriented nonlinear
models. One class of these approaches uses linear approximations to initialize
the identification algorithm. The best linear approximation framework and the
$\epsilon$-approximation framework, or equivalent frameworks, allow the user to
extract important information about the system, guide the user in selecting
good candidate model structures and orders, and prove to be a good starting
point for nonlinear system identification algorithms. This paper gives an
overview of the different block-oriented nonlinear models that can be
identified using linear approximations, and of the identification algorithms
that have been developed in the past. A non-exhaustive overview of the most
important other block-oriented nonlinear system identification approaches is
also provided throughout this paper.


title:
On the symplectic type of isomorphims of the p-torsion of elliptic
  curves

abstract:
  Let $p \geq 3$ be a prime. Let $E/\mathbb{Q}$ and $E'/\mathbb{Q}$ be elliptic
curves with isomorphic $p$-torsion modules $E[p]$ and $E'[p]$. Assume further
that either (i) every $G_\mathbb{Q}$-modules isomorphism $\phi : E[p] \to
E'[p]$ admits a multiple $\lambda \cdot \phi$ with $\lambda \in
\mathbb{F}_p^\times$ preserving the Weil pairing; or (ii) no
$G_\mathbb{Q}$-isomorphism $\phi : E[p] \to E'[p]$ preserves the Weil pairing.
This paper considers the problem of deciding if we are in case (i) or (ii).
  Our approach is to consider the problem locally at a prime $\ell \neq p$.
Firstly, we determine the primes $\ell$ for which the local curves
$E/\mathbb{Q}_\ell$ and $E'/\mathbb{Q}_\ell$ contain enough information to
decide between (i) or (ii). Secondly, we establish a collection of criteria, in
terms of the standard invariants associated to minimal Weierstrass models of
$E/\mathbb{Q}_\ell$ and $E'/\mathbb{Q}_\ell$, to decide between (i) and (ii).
We show that our results give a complete solution to the problem by local
methods away from $p$.
  We apply our methods to show the non-existence of rational points on certain
hyperelliptic curves of the form $y^2 = x^p - \ell$ and $y^2 = x^p - 2\ell$
where $\ell$ is a prime; we also give incremental results on the Fermat
equation $x^2 + y^3 = z^p$. As a different application, we discuss variants of
a question raised by Mazur concerning the existence of symplectic isomorphisms
between the $p$-torsion of two non-isogenous elliptic curves defined over
$\mathbb{Q}$.


title: Moduli of $G_2$ structures and the Strominger system in dimension 7

abstract:
  We consider $G_2$ structures with torsion coupled with $G_2$-instantons, on a
compact $7$-dimensional manifold. The coupling is via an equation for $4$-forms
which appears in supergravity and generalized geometry, known as the Bianchi
identity. The resulting system of partial differential equations can be
regarded as an analogue of the Strominger system in $7$-dimensions. We initiate
the study of the moduli space of solutions and show that it is finite
dimensional using elliptic operator theory. We also relate the associated
geometric structures to generalized geometry.


title: The ExoMol project: Software for computing large molecular line lists

abstract:
  The use of variational nuclear motion programs to compute line lists of
transition frequencies and intensities is now a standard procedure. The ExoMol
project has used this technique to generate line lists for studies of hot
bodies such as the atmospheres of exoplanets and cool stars. The resulting line
list can be huge: many contain 10 billion or more transitions. This software
update considers changes made to our programs during the course of the project
to allow for such calculations. This update considers three programs: {\sc Duo}
which computed vibronic spectra for diatomics, {\sc DVR3D} which computes
rotation-vibration spectra for triatomics, and {\sc TROVE} which computes
rotation-vibration spectra for general polyatomic systems. Important updates in
functionality include the calculation of quasibound (resonance) states and
Land\'e $g$-factors by {\sc Duo} and the calculation of resonance states by
{\sc DVR3D}. Significant algorithmic improvements are reported for both {\sc
DVR3D} and {\sc TROVE}. All three programs are publically available from
ccpforge.cse.rl.ac.uk. Future developments are also considered.


title: Wave Front Shaping in Quasi-One-Dimensional Waveguides

abstract:
  Using 10 monopole antennas reaching into a rectangular multi mode waveguide
we shape the incident wave to create specific transport even after scattering
events. Each antenna is attached to an IQ-Modulator, which allows the
adjustment of the amplitude and phase in a broad band range of 6-18 GHz. All of
them are placed in the near field of the other, thus the excitation of an
individual antenna is influenced by the presence of the other antennas. Still
these 10 antennas are sufficient to generate any combination of the 10
propagating modes in the far field. At the output the propagating modes are
extracted using a movable monopole antenna that is scanning the field. If the
modes are scattered in a scattering region, the incident wave can be adjusted
in such a way, that the outgoing wave can still be adjusted as long as
localization is not present.


title: Surfaces de Bonnet et \'equations de Painlev\'e

abstract:
  Nous montrons que les \'equations du rep\`ere mobile des surfaces de Bonnet
conduisent \`a une paire de Lax matricielle isomonodromique d'ordre deux pour
la sixi\`eme \'equation de Painlev\'e.
  We show that the moving frame equations of Bonnet surfaces can be
extrapolated to a second order, isomonodromic matrix Lax pair of the sixth
Painlev\'e equation.


title:
B.A.T.Mobile: Leveraging Mobility Control Knowledge for Efficient
  Routing in Mobile Robotic Networks

abstract:
  Efficient routing is one of the key challenges of wireless networking for
unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) due to dynamically changing channel and
network topology characteristics. Various well known mobile-ad-hoc routing
protocols, such as AODV, OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N. have been proposed to allow for
proactive and reactive routing decisions. In this paper, we present a novel
approach which leverages application layer knowledge derived from mobility
control algorithms guiding the behavior of UAVs to fulfill a dedicated task.
Thereby a prediction of future trajectories of the UAVs can be integrated with
the routing protocol to avoid unexpected route breaks and packet loss. The
proposed extension of the B.A.T.M.A.N. routing protocol by a mobility
prediction component - called B.A.T.Mobile - has shown to be very effective to
realize this concept. The results of in-depth simulation studies show that the
proposed protocol reaches a distinct higher availability compared to the
established approaches and shows robust behavior even in challenging channel
conditions.


title: Machine Learning for Antimicrobial Resistance

abstract:
  Biological datasets amenable to applied machine learning are more available
today than ever before, yet they lack adequate representation in the
Data-for-Good community. Here we present a work in progress case study
performing analysis on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) using standard ensemble
machine learning techniques and note the successes and pitfalls such work
entails. Broadly, applied machine learning (AML) techniques are well suited to
AMR, with classification accuracies ranging from mid-90% to low- 80% depending
on sample size. Additionally, these techniques prove successful at identifying
gene regions known to be associated with the AMR phenotype. We believe that the
extensive amount of biological data available, the plethora of problems
presented, and the global impact of such work merits the consideration of the
Data- for-Good community.


title:
Temporally modulated phase retrieval method for weak temporal phase
  measurement of laser pulses

abstract:
  The measurement of weak temporal phase for picosecond and nanosecond laser
pulses is important but quite difficult. We propose a simple iterative
algorithm, which is based on a temporally movable phase modulation process, to
retrieve the weak temporal phase of laser pulses. This unambiguous method can
achieve a high accuracy and simultaneously measure the weak temporal phase and
temporal profile of pulses, which are almost transform-limited. Detailed
analysis shows that this iterative method has valuable potential applications
in the characterization of pulses with weak temporal phase.


title: Optical activity of quantum wells

abstract:
  We report on the observation of optical activity of quantum wells resulting
in the conversion of the light polarization state controlled by the light
propagation direction. The polarization conversion is detected in reflection
measurements. We show that a pure $s$-polarized light incident on a quantum
well is reflected as an elliptically polarized wave. The signal is drastically
enhanced in the vicinity of the light-hole exciton resonance. We show that the
polarization conversion is caused by the spin-orbit splitting of the light hole
states and the birefringence of the studied structure. The bulk inversion
asymmetry constant $\beta_{h} \approx 0.14$ eV\AA, is determined for the ground
light hole subband in a 10 nm ZnSe/ZnMgSSe quantum well.


title: Light-cone sum rule approach for Baryon form factors

abstract:
  We present the state-of-the-art of the light-cone sum rule approach to Baryon
form factors. The essence of this approach is that soft Feynman contributions
are calculated in terms of small transverse distance quantities using
dispersion relations and duality. The form factors are thus expressed in terms
of nucleon wave functions at small transverse separations, called distribution
amplitudes, without any additional parameters. The distribution amplitudes,
therefore, can be extracted from the comparison with the experimental data on
form factors and compared to the results of lattice QCD simulations.


title: A canonical polytopal resolution for transversal monomial ideals

abstract:
  Let $S = k[x_{11}, \cdots, x_{1b_1}, \cdots, x_{n1}, \cdots, x_{nb_n}]$ be a
polynomial ring in $m = b_1 + \cdots + b_n$ variables over a field $k$. For all
$j$, $1\le j \le n$, let $P_j$ be the prime ideal generated by variables
$\{x_{j1}, \cdots, x_{jb_j}\}$ and let $$I_{n, t} = \sum_{1\le j_1< \cdots
<j_t\le n} P_{j_1}\ldots P_{j_t}$$ be the transversal monomial ideal of degree
$t$ on $P_1, \cdots, P_n$. We explicitly construct a canonical polytopal
$\mathbb{Z}^t$-graded minimal free resolution for the ideal $I_{n, t}$ by means
of suitable gluing of polytopes.


title: Improved Lower Bounds for Online Hypercube and Rectangle Packing

abstract:
  Packing a given sequence of items into as few bins as possible in an online
fashion is a widely studied problem. We improve lower bounds for packing boxes
into bins in two or more dimensions, both for general algorithms for squares
and rectangles (in two dimensions) and for an important subclass, so-called
Harmonic-type algorithms for hypercubes (in two or more dimensions). Lastly, we
show that two adaptions of ideas from a one-dimensional packing algorithm to
square packing do not help to break the barrier of 2.


title: Magnetic Effects in the Paraxial Regime of Elastic Electron Scattering

abstract:
  Based on a recent claim [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 127203 (2016)] that electron
vortex can be used to image magnetism at the nanoscale in elastic scattering
experiments, using transmission electron microscopy, a comprehensive
computational study is performed to study magnetic effects in the paraxial
regime of elastic electron scattering in magnetic solids. Magnetic interactions
from electron vortex beams, spin polarized electron beams and beams with phase
aberrations are considered, as they pass through ferromagnetic FePt or
antiferromagnetic LaMnAsO. The magnetic signals are obtained by comparing the
intensity over a disk in the diffraction plane for beams with opposite angular
momentum or aberrations. The strongest magnetic signals are obtained from
vortex beams with large orbital angular momentum, where relative magnetic
signals above $10^{-3}$ are indicated for $10\hbar$ orbital angular momentum,
meaning that relative signals of one percent could be expected with the even
larger orbital angular momenta, which have been produced in experimental
setups. All results indicate that beams with low acceleration voltage and small
convergence angles yield stronger magnetic signals, which is unfortunately
problematic for the possibility of high spatial resolution imaging.
Nevertheless, under atomic resolution conditions, relative magnetic signals in
the order of $10^{-4}$ are demonstrated, corresponding to an increase with one
order of magnitude compared to previous work.


title: Stochastic Quasi-Newton Methods for Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization

abstract:
  In this paper we study stochastic quasi-Newton methods for nonconvex
stochastic optimization, where we assume that noisy information about the
gradients of the objective function is available via a stochastic first-order
oracle (SFO). We propose a general framework for such methods, for which we
prove almost sure convergence to stationary points and analyze its worst-case
iteration complexity. When a randomly chosen iterate is returned as the output
of such an algorithm, we prove that in the worst-case, the SFO-calls complexity
is $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ to ensure that the expectation of the squared norm of the
gradient is smaller than the given accuracy tolerance $\epsilon$. We also
propose a specific algorithm, namely a stochastic damped L-BFGS (SdLBFGS)
method, that falls under the proposed framework. {Moreover, we incorporate the
SVRG variance reduction technique into the proposed SdLBFGS method, and analyze
its SFO-calls complexity. Numerical results on a nonconvex binary
classification problem using SVM, and a multiclass classification problem using
neural networks are reported.