title:
C3PO: Computation Congestion Control (PrOactive) - an algorithm for
  dynamic diffusion of ephemeral in-network services

abstract:
  There is an obvious trend that more and more data and computation are
migrating into networks nowadays. Combining mature virtualization technologies
with service-centric net- working, we are entering into an era where countless
services reside in an ISP network to provide low-latency access. Such services
are often computation intensive and are dynamically created and destroyed on
demands everywhere in the network to perform various tasks. Consequently, these
ephemeral in-network services introduce a new type of congestion in the network
which we refer to as "computation congestion". The service load need to be
effectively distributed on different nodes in order to maintain the
funtionality and responsiveness of the network, which calls for a new design
rather than reusing the centralised scheduler designed for cloud-based
services. In this paper, we study both passive and proactive control
strategies, based on the proactive control we further propose a fully
distributed solution which is low complexity, adaptive, and responsive to
network dynamics.


title: Towards Label Imbalance in Multi-label Classification with Many Labels

abstract:
  In multi-label classification, an instance may be associated with a set of
labels simultaneously. Recently, the research on multi-label classification has
largely shifted its focus to the other end of the spectrum where the number of
labels is assumed to be extremely large. The existing works focus on how to
design scalable algorithms that offer fast training procedures and have a small
memory footprint. However they ignore and even compound another challenge - the
label imbalance problem. To address this drawback, we propose a novel
Representation-based Multi-label Learning with Sampling (RMLS) approach. To the
best of our knowledge, we are the first to tackle the imbalance problem in
multi-label classification with many labels. Our experimentations with
real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


title:
Single and double inclusive forward jet production at the LHC at
  $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 and 13 TeV

abstract:
  We provide a description of the transverse momentum spectrum of single
inclusive forward jets produced at the LHC, at the center-of-mass energies of 7
and 13 TeV, using the high energy factorization (HEF) framework. We
subsequently study double inclusive forward jet production and, in particular,
we calculate contributions to azimuthal angle distributions coming from double
parton scattering. We also compare our results for double inclusive jet
production to those obtained with the Pythia Monte Carlo generator. This
comparison confirms that the HEF resummation acts like an initial state parton
shower. It also points towards the need to include final state radiation
effects in the HEF formalism.


title:
Search for new phenomena in events with a photon and missing transverse
  momentum in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

abstract:
  Results of a search for new phenomena in events with an energetic photon and
large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron
Collider are reported. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at
a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of
3.2 $\rm fb^{-1}$. The observed data are in agreement with the Standard Model
expectations. Exclusion limits are presented in models of new phenomena
including pair production of dark matter candidates or large extra spatial
dimensions. In a simplified model of dark matter and an axial-vector mediator,
the search excludes mediator masses of up to 710 GeV for dark matter candidate
masses up to 150 GeV. In an effective theory of dark matter production, values
of the suppression scale $M_*$ up to 570 GeV are excluded and the effect of
truncation for various coupling values is reported. For the ADD large extra
spatial dimension model the search places more stringent limits than earlier
searches in the same event topology, excluding $M_{\rm D}$ up to about 2.3
(2.8) TeV for two (six) additional spatial dimensions; the limits are reduced
by 20--40% depending on the number of additional spatial dimensions when
applying a truncation procedure.


title:
Discovery of an activity cycle in the solar-analog HD 45184. Exploring
  Balmer and metallic lines as activity proxy candidates

abstract:
  (Abridged) Most stellar activity cycles similar to that found in the Sun have
been detected by using the chromospheric Ca II H&K lines as stellar activity
proxies. However, it is unclear if such activity cycles could be identified
using other optical lines. Aims. To detect activity cycles in solar-analog
stars and determine if these can be identified through other optical lines,
such as Fe II and Balmer lines. We study the solar-analog star HD 45184.
Methods. We analyse the activity signatures of HD 45184 by using 291 HARPS
spectra obtained between 2003 and 2014. In order to search for line-core fluxes
variations, we focus on Ca II H&K and Balmer H$\alpha$, H$\beta$ lines, which
are usually used as optical chromospheric activity indicators. We calculate the
HARPS-S index from Ca II H&K lines and convert it to the Mount-Wilson scale. In
addition, we also consider as activity indicators the equivalent widths of
Balmer lines. Moreover, we analyse the possible variability of Fe II and other
metallic lines in the optical spectra. Results. We report for the first time a
long-term 5.14-yr activity cycle in the solar-analog star HD 45184. This makes
HD 45184 one of most similar stars to the Sun with known activity cycle. Such
variation is also evident in the first lines of the Balmer series, which not
always show a correlation with activity in solar-type stars. Notably, unlike
the solar case, we also found that the equivalent widths of the high
photospheric Fe II lines (4924 \AA, 5018 {\AA} and 5169 \AA) are modulated
($\pm$ 2 m\AA) by the chromospheric cycle of the star. From short-term
modulation of the S index we calculate a rotational period of 19.98 days, which
agrees with its mean chromospheric activity level.


title:
Natural movement with concurrent brain-computer interface control
  induces persistent dissociation of neural activity

abstract:
  As Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology develops it is likely it may be
incorporated into protocols that complement and supplement existing movements
of the user. Two possible scenarios for such a control could be: the increasing
interest to control artificial supernumerary prosthetics, or in cases following
brain injury where BCI can be incorporated alongside residual movements to
recover ability. In this study we explore the extent to which the human motor
cortex is able to concurrently control movements via a BCI and overtly executed
movements. Crucially both movement types are driven from the same cortical
site. With this we aim to dissociate the activity at this cortical site from
the movements being made and instead allow the representation and control for
the BCI to develop alongside motor cortex activity. We investigated both BCI
performance and its effect on the movement evoked potentials originally
associated with overt execution.


title:
Generalized analysis of quantum noise and dynamic back-action in
  signal-recycled Michelson-type laser interferometers

abstract:
  We analyze the radiation pressure induced interaction of mirror motion and
light fields in Michelson-type interferometers used for the detection of
gravitational waves and for fundamental research in table-top quantum
optomechanical experiments, focusing on the asymmetric regime with a (slightly)
unbalanced beamsplitter and a (small) offset from the dark port. This regime,
as it was shown recently, provides new interesting features, in particular a
stable optical spring and optical cooling on cavity resonance.
  We show that generally the nature of optomechanical coupling in
Michelson-type interferometers does not fit into the standard
dispersive/dissipative dichotomy. In particular, a symmetric Michelson
interferometer with signal-recycling but without power-recycling cavity is
characterized by a purely dissipative optomechanical coupling; only in the
presence of asymmetry, additional dispersive coupling arises. In gravitational
waves detectors possessing signal- and power-recycling cavities, yet another,
"coherent" type of optomechanical coupling takes place.
  We develop here a generalized framework for the analysis of asymmetric
Michelson-type interferometers which also covers the possibility of the
injection of carrier light into both ports of the interferometer. Using this
framework, we analyze in depth the "anomalous" features of the Michelson-Sagnac
interferometer which where discussed and observed experimentally in previous
works [1-3].


title: Domain wall-gated skyrmion logic

abstract:
  Skyrmions and domain walls are typical spin textures of significant
technological relevance to magnetic memory and logic applications, where they
are used as carriers of information. The unique topology of skyrmions makes
them to display distinct dynamical properties compared to domain walls. Some
studies have demonstrated that the two topologically inequivalent magnetic
objects could be interconverted by cleverly designed geometric structures.
Here, we numerically address the skyrmion-domain wall collision in a magnetic
racetrack by introducing relative motion between the two objects based on a
specially designed junction. An electric current serves as the driving force
that moves a skyrmion toward a trapped domain-wall pair. We observe different
types of collision dynamics by changing the driving parameters. Most
importantly, the domain wall modulation of skyrmion transport is realized in
this system, allowing a set of domain wall-gated logical NOT, NAND, and NOR
gates to be constructed. By providing a promising logic architecture that is
fully compatible with racetrack memories, this work is expected to speed up the
development of skyrmion-based magnetic computation.


title: Generalized star configurations and the Tutte polynomial

abstract:
  From the generating matrix of a linear code one can construct a sequence of
generalized star configurations which are strongly connected to the generalized
Hamming weights and the underlying matroid of the code. When the code is MDS,
the matrix is generic and we obtain the usual star configurations. In our main
result, we show that the degree of a generalized star configuration as a
projective scheme is determined by the Tutte polynomial of the code. In the
process, we obtain preliminary results on the primary decomposition of the
defining ideals of these schemes. Additionally, we conjecture that these ideals
have linear minimal free resolutions and prove partial results in this
direction.


title: Transient Loschmidt Echo in Quenched Ising Chains

abstract:
  We study the response to sudden local perturbations of highly excited Quantum
Ising Spin Chains. The key quantity encoding this response is the overlap
between time-dependent wave functions, which we write as a two-times Loschmidt
echo. Its asymptotics at long time differences contains crucial information
about the structure of the highly excited non-equilibrium environment induced
by the quench. We compute the Echo perturbatively for a weak local quench but
for arbitrarily large global quench, using a cumulant expansion. Our
perturbative results suggest that the Echo decays exponentially, rather than
power law as in the low-energy Orthogonality Catastrophe, a further example of
quench-induced decoherence already found in the case of quenched Luttinger
Liquids. The emerging decoherence scale is set by the strenght of the local
potential and the bulk excitation energy.


title:
The dependence of gamma-ray burst X-ray column densities on the model
  for Galactic hydrogen

abstract:
  We study the X-ray absorption of a complete sample of 99 bright Swift
gamma-ray bursts. Over the last few years, a strong correlation between the
intrinsic X-ray absorbing column density (N_H(z)) and the redshift was found.
This absorption excess in high-z GRBs is now thought to be due to the
overlooked contribution of the absorption along the intergalactic medium, by
means of both intervening objects and the diffuse warm-hot intergalactic medium
along the line of sight. In this work we neglect the absorption along the IGM,
because our purpose is to study the eventual effect of a radical change in the
Galactic absorption model on the N_H(z) distribution. Therefore, we derive the
intrinsic absorbing column densities using two different Galactic absorption
models, the Leiden Argentine Bonn HI survey and the more recent model including
molecular hydrogen. We find that, if on the one hand the new Galactic model
considerably affects the single column density values, on the other hand there
is no drastic change in the distribution as a whole. It becomes clear that the
contribution of Galactic column densities alone, no matter how improved, is not
sufficient to change the observed general trend and it has to be considered as
a second-order correction. The cosmological increase of N_H(z) as a function of
redshift persists and, in order to explain the observed distribution, it is
necessary to include the contribution of both the diffuse intergalactic medium
and the intervening systems along the line of sight of the GRBs.


title: On the faint-end of the high-$z$ galaxy luminosity function

abstract:
  Recent measurements of the Luminosity Function (LF) of galaxies in the Epoch
of Reionization (EoR, $z\gsim6$) indicate a very steep increase of the number
density of low-mass galaxies populating the LF faint-end. However, as star
formation in low-mass halos can be easily depressed or even quenched by
ionizing radiation, a turnover is expected at some faint UV magnitudes. Using a
physically-motivated analytical model, we quantify reionization feedback
effects on the LF faint-end shape. We find that if reionization feedback is
neglected, the power-law Schechter parameterization characterizing the LF
faint-end remains valid up to absolute UV magnitude $\sim -9$. If instead
radiative feedback is strong enough that quenches star formation in halos with
circular velocity smaller than 50 km s$^{-1}$, the LF starts to drop at
absolute UV magnitude $\sim -15$, i.e. slightly below the detection limits of
current (unlensed) surveys at $z\sim5$. The LFs may rise again at higher
absolute UV magnitude, where, as a result of interplay between reionization
process and galaxy formation, most of the galaxy light is from relic stars
formed before the EoR. We suggest that the galaxy number counts data,
particularly in lensed fields, can put strong constraints on reionization
feedback. In models with stronger reionization feedback, stars in galaxies with
absolute UV magnitude higher than $\sim -13$ and smaller than $\sim - 8$ are
typically older. Hence, the stellar age - UV magnitude relation can be used as
an alternative feedback probe.


title:
Percolation thresholds of two-dimensional continuum systems of
  rectangles [with erratum]

abstract:
  The present work introduces an efficient Monte Carlo algorithm for continuum
percolation composed of randomly-oriented rectangles. By conducting extensive
simulations, we report high precision percolation thresholds for a variety of
homogeneous systems with different rectangle aspect ratios. This work verifies
and extends the excluded area theory. It is confirmed that percolation
thresholds are dominated by the average excluded areas for both homogeneous and
heterogeneous rectangle systems (except for some special heterogeneous systems
where the rectangle lengths differ too much from one another). In terms of the
excluded areas, generalized formulae are proposed to effectively predict
precise percolation thresholds for all these rectangle systems. This work is
therefore helpful for both practical applications and theoretical studies
concerning relevant systems.
  The Erratum addresses errors in our earlier paper "Percolation thresholds of
two-dimensional continuum systems of rectangles" published in [Phys. Rev. E 88,
012101 (2013)].


title:
On normal approximations for the two-sample problem on multidimensional
  tori

abstract:
  In this paper, quantitative central limit theorems for $U$-statistics on the
$q$-dimensional torus defined in the framework of the two-sample problem for
Poisson processes are derived. In particular, the $U$-statistics are built over
tight frames defined by wavelets, named toroidal needlets, enjoying excellent
localization properties in both harmonic and frequency domains. The
Berry-Ess\'een type bounds associated with the normal approximations for these
statistics are obtained by means of the so-called Stein-Malliavin techniques on
the Poisson space, as introduced by Peccati, Sol\'e, Taqqu, Utzet (2011) and
further developed by Peccati, Zheng (2010) and Bourguin, Peccati (2014).
Particular cases of the proposed framework allow to consider the two-sample
problem on the circle as well as the local two-sample problem on $\mathbb{R}^q$
through a local homeomorphism argument.


title: New Error Tolerant Method to Search Long Repeats in Symbol Sequences

abstract:
  A new method to identify all sufficiently long repeating substrings in one or
several symbol sequences is proposed. The method is based on a specific gauge
applied to symbol sequences that guarantees identification of the repeating
substrings. It allows the matching of substrings to contain a given level of
errors. The gauge is based on the development of a heavily sparse dictionary of
repeats, thus drastically accelerating the search procedure. Some genomic
applications illustrate the method.
  This paper is the extended and detailed version of the presentation at the
third International Conference on Algorithms for Computational Biology to be
held at Trujillo, Spain, June 21-22, 2016.


title: The Energy-Momentum Tensor for a Dissipative Fluid in General Relativity

abstract:
  Considering the growing interest of the astrophysicist community in the study
of dissipative fluids with the aim of getting a more realistic description of
the universe, we present in this paper a physical analysis of the
energy-momentum tensor of a viscous fluid with heat flux. We introduce the
general form of this tensor and, using the approximation of small velocity
gradients, we relate the stresses of the fluid with the viscosity coefficients,
the shear tensor and the expansion factor. Exploiting these relations, we can
write the stresses in terms of the extrinsic curvature of the normal surface to
the 4-velocity vector of the fluid, and we can also establish a connection
between the perfect fluid and the symmetries of the spacetime. On the other
hand, we calculate the energy conditions for a dissipative fluid through
contractions of the energy-momentum tensor with the 4-velocity vector of an
arbitrary observer. This method is interesting because it allows us to compute
the conditions in a reasonable easy way and without considering any
approximation or restriction on the energy-momentum tensor.


title: Cohomology of Cryo-Electron Microscopy

abstract:
  The goal of cryo-electron microscopy (EM) is to reconstruct the 3-dimensional
structure of a molecule from a collection of its 2-dimensional projected
images. In this article, we show that the basic premise of cryo-EM --- patching
together 2-dimensional projections to reconstruct a 3-dimensional object --- is
naturally one of Cech cohomology with SO(2)-coefficients. We deduce that every
cryo-EM reconstruction problem corresponds to an oriented circle bundle on a
simplicial complex, allowing us to classify cryo-EM problems via principal
bundles. In practice, the 2-dimensional images are noisy and a main task in
cryo-EM is to denoise them. We will see how the aforementioned insights can be
used towards this end.


title:
Characterizing Exoplanet Atmospheres: From Light-curve Observations to
  Radiative-transfer Modeling

abstract:
  Multi-wavelength transit and secondary-eclipse light-curve observations are
some of the most powerful techniques to probe the thermo-chemical properties of
exoplanets. Although the large planet-to-star brightness contrast and few
available spectral bands produce data with low signal-to-noise ratios, a
Bayesian approach can robustly reveal what constraints we can set, without
over-interpreting the data. Here I performed an end-to-end analysis of
transiting exoplanet data. I analyzed space-telescope data for three planets to
characterize their atmospheres and refine their orbits, investigated correlated
noise estimators, and contributed to the development of the respective
data-analysis pipelines. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the Photometry for Orbits,
Eclipses and Transits (POET) pipeline to model Spitzer Space Telescope light
curves, applied to secondary-eclipse observations of the Jupiter-sized planets
WASP-8b and TrES-1. Chapter 4 studies commonly used correlated-noise estimators
for exoplanet light-curve modeling, time averaging, residual permutations, and
wavelet likelihood, and assesses their applicability and limitations to
estimate parameters uncertainties. Chapter 5 describes the open-source Bayesian
Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (BART) code to characterize exoplanet
atmospheres. BART combines a thermochemical-equilibrium code, a one-dimensional
line-by-line radiative-transfer code, and the Multi-core Markov-chain Monte
Carlo statistical module to constrains the atmospheric temperature and
chemical-abundance profiles of exoplanets. I applied the BART code to the
Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope transit observations of the Neptune-sized
planet HAT-P-11b. BART finds an atmosphere enhanced in heavy elements,
constraining the water abundance to ~100 times that of the solar abundance.


title:
Negative reflection of Lamb waves at a free edge: tunable focusing and
  mimicking phase conjugation

abstract:
  The paper studies the interaction of Lamb waves with the free edge of a
plate. The reflection coefficients of a Lamb mode at a plate free edge are
calculated using a semi-analytical method, as a function of frequency and angle
of incidence. The conversion between forward and backward Lamb modes is
thoroughly investigated. It is shown that, at the zero-group velocity (ZGV)
frequency, the forward $S_1$ Lamb mode fully converts into the backward
$S_{2b}$ Lamb mode at normal incidence. Besides, this conversion is very
efficient over most of the angular spectrum and remains dominant at frequencies
just above the ZGV-point. This effect is observed experimentally on a Duralumin
plate. Firstly, the $S_1$ Lamb mode is selectively generated using a transducer
array, secondly the $S_{2b}$ mode is excited using a single circular
transducer. The normal displacement field is probed with an interferometer. The
free edge is shown to retro-focus the incident wave at different depths
depending on the wave number mismatch between the forward and backward
propagating modes. In the vicinity of the ZGV-point, wave numbers coincide and
the wave is retro-reflected on the source. In this frequency range, the free
edge acts as a perfect phase conjugating mirror.


title: Controllability Analyses on Firm Networks Based on Comprehensive Data

abstract:
  Since governments give stimulus to firms and expect the spillover effect by
fiscal policies, it is important to know the effectiveness that they can
control the economy. To clarify the controllability of the economy, we
investigate a firm production network observed exhaustively in Japan and what
firms should be directly or indirectly controlled by using control theory. By
control theory, we can classify firms into three different types: (a) firms
that should be directly controlled; (b) firms that should be indirectly
controlled; (c) neither of them (ordinary). Since there is a direction
(supplier and client) in the production network, we can consider controls of
two different directions: demand and supply sides. As analyses results, we
obtain the following results: (1) Each industry has diverse share of firms that
should be controlled directly or indirectly. The configurations of the shares
in industries are different between demand- and supply-sides; (2) Advancement
of industries, such like, primary industries or other advanced industries, does
not show apparent difference in controllability; (3) If we clip a network in
descending order of capital size, we do not lose the control effect for both
demand- and supply-sides.


title:
Effects of single- and multi-substituted Zn ions in doped-122 type
  iron-based superconductors

abstract:
  Recent experiments on Zn-substituted 122-type iron-based superconductors
(FeSCs) at electron- and hole- doped region provide us with a testing ground
for understanding the effect of Zn impurities in these systems. Our
first-principle calculations of the electronic structure reveal that the Zn 3d
orbitals are far below the Fermi level and chemically inactive, while the Zn
4s-orbital is partially occupied and its wave function overlapping with those
3d-orbitals of neighboring Fe-ions. This suggests that the impurity effect is
originating in the Zn 4s-orbital, not its 3d-orbitals. Employing a
phenomenological two-orbital lattice model for 122-FeSCs and the
self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, we study how the Zn-impurities
suppress the superconductivity in electron- and hole- doped compounds. Our
obtained results qualitatively agree with the experimental measurements.


title: Quantum field theory of the Casimir force for graphene

abstract:
  We present theoretical description of the Casimir interaction in graphene
systems which is based on the Lifshitz theory of dispersion forces and the
formalism of the polarization tensor in (2+1)-dimensional space-time. The
representation for the polarization tensor of graphene allowing the analytic
continuation to the whole plane of complex frequencies is given. This
representation is used to obtain simple asymptotic expressions for the
reflection coefficients at all Matsubara frequencies and to investigate the
origin of large thermal effect in the Casimir force for graphene. The developed
theory is shown to be in a good agreement with the experimental data on
measuring the gradient of the Casimir force between a Au-coated sphere and a
graphene-coated substrate. The possibility to observe the thermal effect for
graphene due to a minor modification of the already existing experimental setup
is demonstrated.


title: Deep Image Retrieval: Learning global representations for image search

abstract:
  We propose a novel approach for instance-level image retrieval. It produces a
global and compact fixed-length representation for each image by aggregating
many region-wise descriptors. In contrast to previous works employing
pre-trained deep networks as a black box to produce features, our method
leverages a deep architecture trained for the specific task of image retrieval.
Our contribution is twofold: (i) we leverage a ranking framework to learn
convolution and projection weights that are used to build the region features;
and (ii) we employ a region proposal network to learn which regions should be
pooled to form the final global descriptor. We show that using clean training
data is key to the success of our approach. To that aim, we use a large scale
but noisy landmark dataset and develop an automatic cleaning approach. The
proposed architecture produces a global image representation in a single
forward pass. Our approach significantly outperforms previous approaches based
on global descriptors on standard datasets. It even surpasses most prior works
based on costly local descriptor indexing and spatial verification. Additional
material is available at www.xrce.xerox.com/Deep-Image-Retrieval.


title: Tracefree ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-representations of Montesinos links

abstract:
  Given a link $L$, a representation $\pi_1(S^{3}-L)\to {\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$
is {\it tracefree} if the image of each meridian has trace zero. We determine
the conjugacy classes of tracefree representations when $L$ is a Montesinos
link.


title:
Analysis of Galerkin and streamline-diffusion FEMs on piecewise
  equidistant meshes for turning point problems exhibiting an interior layer

abstract:
  We consider singularly perturbed boundary value problems with a simple
interior turning point whose solutions exhibit an interior layer. These
problems are discretised using higher order finite elements on layer-adapted
piecewise equidistant meshes proposed by Sun and Stynes. We also study the
streamline-diffusion finite element method (SDFEM) for such problems. For these
methods error estimates uniform with respect to $\varepsilon$ are proven in the
energy norm and in the stronger SDFEM-norm, respectively. Numerical experiments
confirm the theoretical findings.


title:
Progress in constraining axion and non-Newtonian gravity from the
  Casimir effect

abstract:
  We consider recent progress in constraining the axion-nucleon coupling
constants and the Yukawa-type corrections to Newtonian gravity from experiments
on measuring the Casimir interaction. After a brief review of previously
obtained constraints, we concentrate on the new Casimir-less experiment, which
allows to strengthen the known results up to factors of 60 and 1000 for the
axion-like particles and Yukawa-type corrections, respectively. We also discuss
possibilities allowing to further strengthen the constraints on axion-nucleon
coupling constants, and propose a new experiment aiming to achieve this goal.


title: DNA to DNA transcription might exist in eukaryotic cells

abstract:
  Till now, in biological sciences, the term, transcription, mainly refers to
DNA to RNA transcription. But our recently published experimental findings
obtained from Plasmodium falciparum strongly suggest the existence of DNA to
DNA transcription in the genome of eukaryotic cells, which could shed some
light on the functions of certain noncoding DNA in the human and other
eukaryotic genomes.


title: All-dielectric phase-change reconfigurable metasurface

abstract:
  We harness non-volatile, amorphous-crystalline transitions in the
chalcogenide phase-change medium germanium antimony telluride (GST) to realize
optically-switchable, all-dielectric metamaterials. Nanostructured,
subwavelength-thickness films of GST present high-quality resonances that are
spectrally shifted by laser-induced structural transitions, providing
reflectivity and transmission switching contrast ratios of up to 5:1 (7 dB) at
visible/near-infrared wavelengths selected by design.


title: A smartphone-based vision simulator

abstract:
  Simulators, as tools that can clearly bring out the effect of impairment, are
invaluable in the design and development process of an assistive device.
Simulators are vital in meeting high standards of accessibility. Described is
our work on a smartphone-based vision simulator for diabetic retinopathy that
is economic, portable, flexible and easy-to-use.


title:
Power Counting and Wilsonian Renormalization in Nuclear Effective Field
  Theory

abstract:
  Effective field theories are the most general tool for the description of low
energy phenomena. They are universal and systematic: they can be formulated for
any low energy systems we can think of and offer a clear guide on how to
calculate predictions with reliable error estimates, a feature that is called
power counting. These properties can be easily understood in Wilsonian
renormalization, in which effective field theories are the low energy
renormalization group evolution of a more fundamental ---perhaps unknown or
unsolvable--- high energy theory. In nuclear physics they provide the
possibility of a theoretically sound derivation of nuclear forces without
having to solve quantum chromodynamics explicitly. However there is the problem
of how to organize calculations within nuclear effective field theory: the
traditional knowledge about power counting is perturbative but nuclear physics
is not. Yet power counting can be derived in Wilsonian renormalization and
there is already a fairly good understanding of how to apply these ideas to
non-perturbative phenomena and in particular to nuclear physics. Here we review
a few of these ideas, explain power counting in two-nucleon scattering and
reactions with external probes and hint at how to extend the present analysis
beyond the two-body problem.


title: Invariant quantities of a nondepolarizing Mueller matrix

abstract:
  Orthogonal Mueller matrices can be considered either as corresponding to
retarders or to generalized transformations of the polarization basis for the
representation of Stokes vectors, so that they constitute the only type of
Mueller matrices that preserve the degree of polarization and the intensity of
any partially-polarized input Stokes vector. The physical quantities which
remain invariant when a nondepolarizing Mueller matrix is transformed through
its product by different types of orthogonal Mueller matrices are identified
and interpreted, providing a better knowledge of the information contained in a
nondepolarizing Mueller matrix.


title:
On pointwise and weighted estimates for commutators of
  Calder\'on-Zygmund operators

abstract:
  In recent years, it has been well understood that a Calder\'on-Zygmund
operator $T$ is pointwise controlled by a finite number of dyadic operators of
a very simple structure (called the sparse operators). We obtain a similar
pointwise estimate for the commutator $[b,T]$ with a locally integrable
function $b$. This result is applied into two directions. If $b\in BMO$, we
improve several weighted weak type bounds for $[b,T]$. If $b$ belongs to the
weighted $BMO$, we obtain a quantitative form of the two-weighted bound for
$[b,T]$ due to Bloom-Holmes-Lacey-Wick.


title: Deep Cross Residual Learning for Multitask Visual Recognition

abstract:
  Residual learning has recently surfaced as an effective means of constructing
very deep neural networks for object recognition. However, current incarnations
of residual networks do not allow for the modeling and integration of complex
relations between closely coupled recognition tasks or across domains. Such
problems are often encountered in multimedia applications involving large-scale
content recognition. We propose a novel extension of residual learning for deep
networks that enables intuitive learning across multiple related tasks using
cross-connections called cross-residuals. These cross-residuals connections can
be viewed as a form of in-network regularization and enables greater network
generalization. We show how cross-residual learning (CRL) can be integrated in
multitask networks to jointly train and detect visual concepts across several
tasks. We present a single multitask cross-residual network with >40% less
parameters that is able to achieve competitive, or even better, detection
performance on a visual sentiment concept detection problem normally requiring
multiple specialized single-task networks. The resulting multitask
cross-residual network also achieves better detection performance by about
10.4% over a standard multitask residual network without cross-residuals with
even a small amount of cross-task weighting.


title: Mapping the outer bulge with RRab stars from the VVV Survey

abstract:
  The VISTA Variables in the V\'ia L\'actea (VVV) is a near-IR time-domain
survey of the Galactic bulge and southern plane. One of the main goals of this
survey is to reveal the 3D structure of the Milky Way through their variable
stars. Particularly the RR Lyrae stars have been massively discovered in the
inner regions of the bulge ($-8^\circ \lesssim b \lesssim -1^\circ$) by optical
surveys such as OGLE and MACHO but leaving an unexplored window of more than
$\sim 47$ sq deg ($-10.0^\circ \lesssim \ell \lesssim +10.7^\circ$ and
$-10.3^\circ \lesssim b \lesssim -8.0^\circ$) observed by the VVV Survey. Our
goal is to characterize the RR Lyrae stars in the outer bulge in terms of their
periods, amplitudes, Fourier coefficients, and distances, in order to evaluate
the 3D structure of the bulge in this area. The distance distribution of RR
Lyrae stars will be compared to the one of red clump stars that is known to
trace a X-shaped structure in order to determine if these two different stellar
populations share the same Galactic distribution. We report the detection of
more than 1000 RR Lyrae ab-type stars in the VVV Survey located in the
outskirts of the Galactic bulge. Some of them are possibly associated with the
Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. We calculated colors, reddening,
extinction, and distances of the detected RR Lyrae stars in order to determine
the outer bulge 3D structure. Our main result is that, at the low galactic
latitudes mapped here, the RR Lyrae stars trace a centrally concentrated
spheroidal distribution. This is a noticeably different spatial distribution to
the one traced by red clump stars known to follow a bar and X-shape structure.
We estimate the completeness of our RRab sample in $80\%$ for $K_{\rm
s}\lesssim15$ mag.


title: Lattice Gas Models with Long Range Interactions

abstract:
  We study microcanonical lattice gas models with long range interactions,
including power law interactions. We rigorously obtain a variational principle
for the entropy. In a one dimensional example, we find a first order phase
transition by proving the entropy is non-differentiable along a certain curve.


title: Copula--based Specification of vector MEMs

abstract:
  The Multiplicative Error Model (Engle (2002)) for nonnegative valued
processes is specified as the product of a (conditionally autoregressive) scale
factor and an innovation process with nonnegative support. A multivariate
extension allows for the innovations to be contemporaneously correlated. We
overcome the lack of sufficiently flexible probability density functions for
such processes by suggesting a copula function approach to estimate the
parameters of the scale factors and of the correlations of the innovation
processes. We illustrate this vector MEM with an application to the
interactions between realized volatility, volume and the number of trades. We
show that significantly superior realized volatility forecasts are delivered in
the presence of other trading activity indicators and contemporaneous
correlations.


title:
Photo-z Estimation: An Example of Nonparametric Conditional Density
  Estimation under Selection Bias

abstract:
  Redshift is a key quantity for inferring cosmological model parameters. In
photometric redshift estimation, cosmologists use the coarse data collected
from the vast majority of galaxies to predict the redshift of individual
galaxies. To properly quantify the uncertainty in the predictions, however, one
needs to go beyond standard regression and instead estimate the full
conditional density f(z|x) of a galaxy's redshift z given its photometric
covariates x. The problem is further complicated by selection bias: usually
only the rarest and brightest galaxies have known redshifts, and these galaxies
have characteristics and measured covariates that do not necessarily match
those of more numerous and dimmer galaxies of unknown redshift. Unfortunately,
there is not much research on how to best estimate complex multivariate
densities in such settings. Here we describe a general framework for properly
constructing and assessing nonparametric conditional density estimators under
selection bias, and for combining two or more estimators for optimal
performance. We propose new improved photo-z estimators and illus- trate our
methods on data from the Sloan Data Sky Survey and an application to
galaxy-galaxy lensing. Although our main application is photo-z estimation, our
methods are relevant to any high-dimensional regression setting with
complicated asymmetric and multimodal distributions in the response variable.


title: Magnetic Laplacians of locally exact forms on the Sierpinski Gasket

abstract:
  We give a mathematically rigorous construction of a magnetic Schr\"odinger
operator corresponding to a field with flux through finitely many holes of the
Sierpinski Gasket. The operator is shown to have discrete spectrum accumulating
at $\infty$, and it is shown that the asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues is
the same as that for the Laplacian. Most eigenfunctions may be computed using
gauge transformations corresponding to the magnetic field and the remainder of
the spectrum may be approximated to arbitrary precision by using a sequence of
approximations by magnetic operators on finite graphs.


title:
Influence of ~7 keV sterile neutrino dark matter on the process of
  reionization

abstract:
  Recent reports of a weak unidentified emission line at ~3.5 keV found in
spectra of several matter-dominated objects may give a clue to resolve the
long-standing problem of dark matter. One of the best physically motivated
particle candidate able to produce such an extra line is sterile neutrino with
the mass of ~7 keV. Previous works show that sterile neutrino dark matter with
parameters consistent with the new line measurement modestly affects structure
formation compared to conventional cold dark matter scenario. In this work, we
concentrate for the first time on contribution of the sterile neutrino dark
matter able to produce the observed line at ~3.5 keV, to the process of
reionization. By incorporating dark matter power spectra for ~7 keV sterile
neutrinos into extended semi-analytical 'bubble' model of reionization we
obtain that such sterile neutrino dark matter would produce significantly
sharper reionization compared to widely used cold dark matter models,
impossible to 'imitate' within the cold dark matter scenario under any
reasonable choice of our model parameters, and would have a clear tendency of
lowering both the redshift of reionization and the electron scattering optical
depth (although the difference is still below the existing model
uncertainties). Further dedicated studies of reionization (such as 21 cm
measurements or studies of kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) will thus be
essential for reconstruction of particle candidate responsible the ~3.5 keV
line.


title: The dominance of quenching through cosmic times

abstract:
  The evolution with cosmic time of the star formation rate density (SFRD) and
of the "Main Sequence" star formation rate-stellar mass relations are two well
established observational facts. In this paper the implications of these two
relations combined are analytically explored, showing that quenching of star
formation must start already at very early cosmic times and the quenched
fraction then dominates ever since over the star forming one. Thus, a simple
picture of the cosmic evolution of the global SFRD is derived, in terms of the
interplay between star formation and its quenching.


title:
Results of the engineering run of the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus
  Interaction Experiment (CONNIE)

abstract:
  The CONNIE detector prototype is operating at a distance of 30 m from the
core of a 3.8 GW$_{\rm th}$ nuclear reactor with the goal of establishing
Charge-Coupled Devices (CCD) as a new technology for the detection of coherent
elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. We report on the results of the
engineering run with an active mass of 4 g of silicon. The CCD array is
described, and the performance observed during the first year is discussed. A
compact passive shield was deployed for the detector, producing an order of
magnitude reduction in the background rate. The remaining background observed
during the run was stable, and dominated by internal contamination in the
detector packaging materials. The {\it in-situ} calibration of the detector
using X-ray lines from fluorescence demonstrates good stability of the readout
system. The event rates with the reactor on and off are compared, and no excess
is observed coming from nuclear fission at the power plant. The upper limit for
the neutrino event rate is set two orders of magnitude above the expectations
for the standard model. The results demonstrate the cryogenic CCD-based
detector can be remotely operated at the reactor site with stable noise below 2
e$^-$ RMS and stable background rates. The success of the engineering test
provides a clear path for the upgraded 100 g detector to be deployed during
2016.


title: Designing robust watermark barcodes for multiplex long-read sequencing

abstract:
  A method for designing sequencing barcodes that can withstand a large number
of insertion, deletion and substitution errors and are suitable for use in
multiplex single-molecule real-time sequencing is presented. The manuscript
focuses on the design of barcodes for full-length single-pass reads, impaired
by challenging error rates in the order of 11%. To the authors' knowledge, this
is the first method to specifically address this problem without requiring
upstream quality improvement. The proposed barcodes can multiplex hundreds or
thousands of samples while achieving sample misassignment probabilities as low
as $10^{-7}$, and are designed to be compatible with chemical constraints
imposed by the sequencing process. Software for constructing watermark barcode
sets and demultiplexing barcoded reads, together with example sets of barcodes
and synthetic barcoded reads, are freely available at
www.cifasis-conicet.gov.ar/ezpeleta/NS-watermark.


title:
Integrating Local Material Recognition with Large-Scale Perceptual
  Attribute Discovery

abstract:
  Material attributes have been shown to provide a discriminative intermediate
representation for recognizing materials, especially for the challenging task
of recognition from local material appearance (i.e., regardless of object and
scene context). In the past, however, material attributes have been recognized
separately preceding category recognition. In contrast, neuroscience studies on
material perception and computer vision research on object and place
recognition have shown that attributes are produced as a by-product during the
category recognition process. Does the same hold true for material attribute
and category recognition? In this paper, we introduce a novel material category
recognition network architecture to show that perceptual attributes can, in
fact, be automatically discovered inside a local material recognition
framework. The novel material-attribute-category convolutional neural network
(MAC-CNN) produces perceptual material attributes from the intermediate pooling
layers of an end-to-end trained category recognition network using an auxiliary
loss function that encodes human material perception. To train this model, we
introduce a novel large-scale database of local material appearance organized
under a canonical material category taxonomy and careful image patch extraction
that avoids unwanted object and scene context. We show that the discovered
attributes correspond well with semantically-meaningful visual material traits
via Boolean algebra, and enable recognition of previously unseen material
categories given only a few examples. These results have strong implications in
how perceptually meaningful attributes can be learned in other recognition
tasks.


title:
Odd viscosity in the quantum critical region of a holographic Weyl
  semimetal

abstract:
  We study odd viscosity in a holographic model of a Weyl semimetal. The model
is characterised by a quantum phase transition from a topological semimetal to
a trivial semimetal state. Since the model is axisymmetric in three spatial
dimensions there are two independent odd viscosities. Both odd viscosity
coefficients are non-vanishing in the quantum critical region and non-zero only
due to the mixed axial gravitational anomaly. It is therefore a novel example
in which the mixed axial gravitational anomaly gives rise to a transport
coefficient at first order in derivatives at finite temperature. We also
compute anisotropic shear viscosities and show that one of them violates the
KSS bound. In the quantum critical region, the physics of viscosities as well
as conductivities is governed by the quantum critical point.


title: Marr Revisited: 2D-3D Alignment via Surface Normal Prediction

abstract:
  We introduce an approach that leverages surface normal predictions, along
with appearance cues, to retrieve 3D models for objects depicted in 2D still
images from a large CAD object library. Critical to the success of our approach
is the ability to recover accurate surface normals for objects in the depicted
scene. We introduce a skip-network model built on the pre-trained Oxford VGG
convolutional neural network (CNN) for surface normal prediction. Our model
achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on the NYUv2 RGB-D dataset for surface
normal prediction, and recovers fine object detail compared to previous
methods. Furthermore, we develop a two-stream network over the input image and
predicted surface normals that jointly learns pose and style for CAD model
retrieval. When using the predicted surface normals, our two-stream network
matches prior work using surface normals computed from RGB-D images on the task
of pose prediction, and achieves state of the art when using RGB-D input.
Finally, our two-stream network allows us to retrieve CAD models that better
match the style and pose of a depicted object compared with baseline
approaches.


title: Bayesian Optimization with Exponential Convergence

abstract:
  This paper presents a Bayesian optimization method with exponential
convergence without the need of auxiliary optimization and without the
delta-cover sampling. Most Bayesian optimization methods require auxiliary
optimization: an additional non-convex global optimization problem, which can
be time-consuming and hard to implement in practice. Also, the existing
Bayesian optimization method with exponential convergence requires access to
the delta-cover sampling, which was considered to be impractical. Our approach
eliminates both requirements and achieves an exponential convergence rate.


title:
Conditions for order and chaos in the dynamics of a trapped
  Bose-Einstein condensate in coordinate and energy space

abstract:
  We investigate numerically conditions for order and chaos in the dynamics of
an interacting Bose- Einstein condensate (BEC) confined by an external trap cut
off by a hard-wall box potential. The BEC is stirred by a laser to induce
excitations manifesting as irregular spatial and energy oscillations of the
trapped cloud. Adding laser stirring to the external trap results in an
effective time-varying trapping frequency in connection with the dynamically
changing combined external+laser potential trap. The resulting dynamics are
analyzed by plotting their trajectories in coordinate phase space and in energy
space. The Lyapunov exponents are computed to confirm the existence of chaos in
the latter space. Quantum effects and trap anharmonicity are demonstrated to
generate chaos in energy space, thus confirming its presence and implicating
either quantum effects or trap anharmonicity as its generator. The presence of
chaos in energy space does not necessarily translate into chaos in coordinate
space. In general, a dynamic trapping frequency is found to promote chaos in a
trapped BEC. An apparent means to suppress chaos in a trapped BEC is achieved
by increasing the characteristic scale of the external trap with respect to the
condensate size.


title: Bounded Optimal Exploration in MDP

abstract:
  Within the framework of probably approximately correct Markov decision
processes (PAC-MDP), much theoretical work has focused on methods to attain
near optimality after a relatively long period of learning and exploration.
However, practical concerns require the attainment of satisfactory behavior
within a short period of time. In this paper, we relax the PAC-MDP conditions
to reconcile theoretically driven exploration methods and practical needs. We
propose simple algorithms for discrete and continuous state spaces, and
illustrate the benefits of our proposed relaxation via theoretical analyses and
numerical examples. Our algorithms also maintain anytime error bounds and
average loss bounds. Our approach accommodates both Bayesian and non-Bayesian
methods.


title: Nonparametric Detection of Geometric Structures over Networks

abstract:
  Nonparametric detection of existence of an anomalous structure over a network
is investigated. Nodes corresponding to the anomalous structure (if one exists)
receive samples generated by a distribution q, which is different from a
distribution p generating samples for other nodes. If an anomalous structure
does not exist, all nodes receive samples generated by p. It is assumed that
the distributions p and q are arbitrary and unknown. The goal is to design
statistically consistent tests with probability of errors converging to zero as
the network size becomes asymptotically large. Kernel-based tests are proposed
based on maximum mean discrepancy that measures the distance between mean
embeddings of distributions into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Detection
of an anomalous interval over a line network is first studied. Sufficient
conditions on minimum and maximum sizes of candidate anomalous intervals are
characterized in order to guarantee the proposed test to be consistent. It is
also shown that certain necessary conditions must hold to guarantee any test to
be universally consistent. Comparison of sufficient and necessary conditions
yields that the proposed test is order-level optimal and nearly optimal
respectively in terms of minimum and maximum sizes of candidate anomalous
intervals. Generalization of the results to other networks is further
developed. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the
proposed tests.


title: Framed symplectic sheaves on surfaces

abstract:
  A framed symplectic sheaf on a smooth projective surface $X$ is a
torsion-free sheaf $E$ together with a trivialization on a divisor $D\subseteq
X$ and a morphism $\Lambda^{2}E\rightarrow\mathcal{O}_{X}$ satisfying some
additional conditions. We construct a moduli space for framed symplectic
sheaves on a surface, and present a detailed study for
$X=\mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^{2}$. In this case, the moduli space is irreducible
and admits an ADHM-type description and a birational proper map into the space
of framed symplectic ideal instantons.


title:
Alternative method of Reduction of the Feynman Diagrams to a set of
  Master Integrals

abstract:
  We propose a new set of Master Integrals which can be used as a basis for
certain multiloop calculations in massless gauge field theories. In these
theories we consider three-point Feynman diagrams with arbitrary number of
loops. The corresponding multiloop integrals may be decomposed in terms of this
set of the Master Integrals. We construct a new reduction procedure which we
apply to perform this decomposition.


title:
Radiometric Scene Decomposition: Scene Reflectance, Illumination, and
  Geometry from RGB-D Images

abstract:
  Recovering the radiometric properties of a scene (i.e., the reflectance,
illumination, and geometry) is a long-sought ability of computer vision that
can provide invaluable information for a wide range of applications.
Deciphering the radiometric ingredients from the appearance of a real-world
scene, as opposed to a single isolated object, is particularly challenging as
it generally consists of various objects with different material compositions
exhibiting complex reflectance and light interactions that are also part of the
illumination. We introduce the first method for radiometric scene decomposition
that handles those intricacies. We use RGB-D images to bootstrap geometry
recovery and simultaneously recover the complex reflectance and natural
illumination while refining the noisy initial geometry and segmenting the scene
into different material regions. Most important, we handle real-world scenes
consisting of multiple objects of unknown materials, which necessitates the
modeling of spatially-varying complex reflectance, natural illumination,
texture, interreflection and shadows. We systematically evaluate the
effectiveness of our method on synthetic scenes and demonstrate its application
to real-world scenes. The results show that rich radiometric information can be
recovered from RGB-D images and demonstrate a new role RGB-D sensors can play
for general scene understanding tasks.


title: Supervised Ensemble Classification of Kepler Variable Stars

abstract:
  Variable star analysis and classification is an important task in the
understanding of stellar features and processes. While historically
classifications have been done manually by highly skilled experts, the recent
and rapid expansion in the quantity and quality of data has demanded new
techniques, most notably automatic classification through supervised machine
learning. We present an expansion of existing work on the field by analyzing
variable stars in the {\em Kepler} field using an ensemble approach, combining
multiple characterization and classification techniques to produce improved
classification rates. Classifications for each of the roughly 150,000 stars
observed by {\em Kepler} are produced separating the stars into one of 14
variable star classes.


title: A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight

abstract:
  In the nearly 60 years of spaceflight we have accomplished wonderful feats of
exploration that have shown the incredible spirit of the human drive to explore
and understand our universe. Yet in those 60 years we have barely left our
solar system with the Voyager 1 spacecraft launched in 1977 finally leaving the
solar system after 37 years of flight at a speed of 17 km/s or less than 0.006%
the speed of light. As remarkable as this is we will never reach even the
nearest stars with our current propulsion technology in even 10 millennium. We
have to radically rethink our strategy or give up our dreams of reaching the
stars, or wait for technology that does not currently exist. While we all dream
of human spaceflight to the stars in a way romanticized in books and movies, it
is not within our power to do so, nor it is clear that this is the path we
should choose. We posit a technological path forward, that while not simple, it
is within our technological reach. We propose a roadmap to a program that will
lead to sending relativistic probes to the nearest stars and will open up a
vast array of possibilities of flight both within our solar system and far
beyond. Spacecraft from gram level complete spacecraft on a wafer ("wafersats")
that reach more than $1/4c$ and reach the nearest star in 20 years to
spacecraft with masses more than $10^5$ kg (100 tons) that can reach speeds of
greater than 1000 km/s. These systems can be propelled to speeds currently
unimaginable with existing propulsion technologies. To do so requires a
fundamental change in our thinking of both propulsion and in many cases what a
spacecraft is. In addition to larger spacecraft, some capable of transporting
humans, we consider functional spacecraft on a wafer, including integrated
optical communications, imaging systems, photon thrusters, power and sensors
combined with directed energy propulsion.


title: Heavy hitters via cluster-preserving clustering

abstract:
  In turnstile $\ell_p$ $\varepsilon$-heavy hitters, one maintains a
high-dimensional $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$ subject to $\texttt{update}(i,\Delta)$
causing $x_i\leftarrow x_i + \Delta$, where $i\in[n]$, $\Delta\in\mathbb{R}$.
Upon receiving a query, the goal is to report a small list $L\subset[n]$, $|L|
= O(1/\varepsilon^p)$, containing every "heavy hitter" $i\in[n]$ with $|x_i|
\ge \varepsilon \|x_{\overline{1/\varepsilon^p}}\|_p$, where $x_{\overline{k}}$
denotes the vector obtained by zeroing out the largest $k$ entries of $x$ in
magnitude.
  For any $p\in(0,2]$ the CountSketch solves $\ell_p$ heavy hitters using
$O(\varepsilon^{-p}\log n)$ words of space with $O(\log n)$ update time,
$O(n\log n)$ query time to output $L$, and whose output after any query is
correct with high probability (whp) $1 - 1/poly(n)$. Unfortunately the query
time is very slow. To remedy this, the work [CM05] proposed for $p=1$ in the
strict turnstile model, a whp correct algorithm achieving suboptimal space
$O(\varepsilon^{-1}\log^2 n)$, worse update time $O(\log^2 n)$, but much better
query time $O(\varepsilon^{-1}poly(\log n))$.
  We show this tradeoff between space and update time versus query time is
unnecessary. We provide a new algorithm, ExpanderSketch, which in the most
general turnstile model achieves optimal $O(\varepsilon^{-p}\log n)$ space,
$O(\log n)$ update time, and fast $O(\varepsilon^{-p}poly(\log n))$ query time,
and whp correctness. Our main innovation is an efficient reduction from the
heavy hitters to a clustering problem in which each heavy hitter is encoded as
some form of noisy spectral cluster in a much bigger graph, and the goal is to
identify every cluster. Since every heavy hitter must be found, correctness
requires that every cluster be found. We then develop a "cluster-preserving
clustering" algorithm, partitioning the graph into clusters without destroying
any original cluster.


title: Near Capacity Irregular Turbo Code

abstract:
  The purpose of this study is to construct a near capacity Irregular Turbo
Code and to evaluate its performance over Gaussian channel. The methodology
used to evaluate and measure the performance of the new design is by simulating
the system by developing a software platform using Matlab. The simulation
carried out by implementing the system over different modulation schemes,
different frame sizes, and different code rates in order to achieve a fair
comparison between irregular turbo code and regular Turbo Code. The simulation
results showed that the Irregular Turbo Code with 64QAM modulation is capable
of achieving a coding gain of 1.29 dB over its corresponding Turbo Code for a
low Bit Error Rate 10 to 5, when used in a Gaussian noisy channel. Also, the
Irregular Turbo Code designed in this paper, utilizes a single recursive
Convolution encoder with short frame size of 5012 bits. The new designed codec
can play an important role in many commercial applications such as
Third-Generation wireless phones, Digital Video Broadcasting systems, or
Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks, etc.


title: Physical limits to magnetogenetics

abstract:
  This is an analysis of how magnetic fields affect biological molecules and
cells. It was prompted by a series of prominent reports regarding magnetism in
biological systems. The first claims to have identified a protein complex that
acts like a compass needle to guide magnetic orientation in animals (Qin et
al., 2016). Two other articles report magnetic control of membrane conductance
by attaching ferritin to an ion channel protein and then tugging the ferritin
or heating it with a magnetic field (Stanley et al., 2015; Wheeler et al.,
2016). Here I argue that these claims conflict with basic laws of physics. The
discrepancies are large: from 5 to 10 log units. If the reported phenomena do
in fact occur, they must have causes entirely different from the ones proposed
by the authors. The paramagnetic nature of protein complexes is found to
seriously limit their utility for engineering magnetically sensitive cells.


title:
The Curious Robot: Learning Visual Representations via Physical
  Interactions

abstract:
  What is the right supervisory signal to train visual representations? Current
approaches in computer vision use category labels from datasets such as
ImageNet to train ConvNets. However, in case of biological agents, visual
representation learning does not require millions of semantic labels. We argue
that biological agents use physical interactions with the world to learn visual
representations unlike current vision systems which just use passive
observations (images and videos downloaded from web). For example, babies push
objects, poke them, put them in their mouth and throw them to learn
representations. Towards this goal, we build one of the first systems on a
Baxter platform that pushes, pokes, grasps and observes objects in a tabletop
environment. It uses four different types of physical interactions to collect
more than 130K datapoints, with each datapoint providing supervision to a
shared ConvNet architecture allowing us to learn visual representations. We
show the quality of learned representations by observing neuron activations and
performing nearest neighbor retrieval on this learned representation.
Quantitatively, we evaluate our learned ConvNet on image classification tasks
and show improvements compared to learning without external data. Finally, on
the task of instance retrieval, our network outperforms the ImageNet network on
recall@1 by 3%


title:
Serendipitous discovery of a projected pair of QSOs separated by 4.5
  arcsec on the sky

abstract:
  We present the serendipitous discovery of a projected pair of quasi-stellar
objects (QSOs) with an angular separation of $\Delta\theta =4.50$ arcsec. The
redshifts of the two QSOs are widely different: one, our programme target, is a
QSO with a spectrum consistent with being a narrow line Seyfert 1 AGN at
$z=2.05$. For this target we detect Lyman-$\alpha$, \ion{C}{4}, and
\ion{C}{3]}. The other QSO, which by chance was included on the spectroscopic
slit, is a Type 1 QSO at a redshift of $z=1.68$, for which we detect
\ion{C}{4}, \ion{C}{3]} and \ion{Mg}{2}. We compare this system to previously
detected projected QSO pairs and find that only about a dozen previously known
pairs have smaller angular separation.


title:
The Clusters AgeS Experiment (CASE). Variable stars in the field of the
  globular cluster NGC 3201

abstract:
  The field of the globular cluster NGC 3201 was monitored between 1998 and
2009 in a search for variable stars. $BV$ light curves were obtained for 152
periodic or likely periodic variables, 57 of which are new detections.
Thirty-seven newly detected variables are proper motion members of the cluster.
Among them we found seven detached or semi-detached eclipsing binaries, four
contact binaries, and eight SX Phe pulsators. Four of the eclipsing binaries
are located in the turnoff region, one on the lower main sequence and the
remaining two slightly above the subgiant branch. Two contact systems are blue
stragglers, and another two reside in the turnoff region. In the blue straggler
region a total of 266 objects were found, of which 140 are proper motion (PM)
members of NGC 3201, and another 19 are field stars. Seventy-eight of the
remaining objects for which we do not have PM data are located within the
half-light radius from the center of the cluster, and most of them are likely
genuine blue stragglers. Four variable objects in our field of view were found
to coincide with X-ray sources: three chromosperically active stars and a
quasar at a redshift $z\approx0.5$.


title: Tensor integrand reduction via Laurent expansion

abstract:
  We introduce a new method for the application of one-loop integrand reduction
via the Laurent expansion algorithm, as implemented in the public C++ library
Ninja. We show how the coefficients of the Laurent expansion can be computed by
suitable contractions of the loop numerator tensor with cut-dependent
projectors, making it possible to interface Ninja to any one-loop matrix
element generator that can provide the components of this tensor. We
implemented this technique in the Ninja library and interfaced it to MadLoop,
which is part of the public MadGraph5_aMC@NLO framework. We performed a
detailed performance study, comparing against other public reduction tools,
namely CutTools, Samurai, IREGI, PJFry++ and Golem. We find that Ninja
outperforms traditional integrand reduction in both speed and numerical
stability, the latter being on par with that of the tensor integral reduction
tool Golem which is however more limited and slower than Ninja. We considered
many benchmark multi-scale processes of increasing complexity, involving QCD
and electro-weak corrections as well as effective non-renormalizable couplings,
showing that Ninja's performance scales well with both the rank and
multiplicity of the considered process.


title:
Gap state charge induced spin-dependent negative differential resistance
  in tunnel junctions

abstract:
  We propose and demonstrate through first-principles calculation a new
spin-dependent negative differential resistance (NDR) mechanism in magnetic
tunnel junctions (MTJ) with cubic cation disordered crystals (CCDC) AlO$_x$ or
Mg$_{1-x}$Al$_x$O as barrier materials. The CCDC is a class of insulators whose
band gap can be changed by cation doping. The gap becomes arched in an
ultrathin layer due to the space charge formed from metal-induced gap states.
With an appropriate combination of an arched gap and a bias voltage, NDR can be
produced in either spin channel. This mechanism is applicable to 2D and 3D
ultrathin junctions with a sufficiently small band gap that forms a large space
charge. It provides a new way of controlling the spin-dependent transport in
spintronic devices by an electric field. A generalized Simmons formula for
tunneling current through junction with an arched gap is derived to show the
general conditions under which ultrathin junctions may exhibit NDR.


title: Cosmic walls and filaments formation in modified Chaplygin gas cosmology

abstract:
  We want to study the perturbation growth of an initial seed of an ellipsoidal
shape in Top-Hat collapse model of structure formation in the Modified
Chaplygin gas cosmology. Considering reasonable values of the constants and the
parameters of the model under study, it is shown that a very small deviation
from spherical symmetry (ellipsoidal geometry) in the initial seed leads to a
final highly non-spherical structure which can be considered as a candidate for
justifying already known cosmological structures as cosmic walls and filaments.


title:
Interesting examples in $\mathbb{C}^2$ of maps tangent to the identity
  without domains of attraction

abstract:
  We give an interesting example of a map in $\mathbb{C}^2$ that is tangent to
the identity, but that does not have a domain of attraction along any of its
characteristic direction. This map has three characteristic directions, two of
which are not attracting while the third attracts points to that direction, but
not to the origin. In addition, we show that if we add higher degree terms to
this map, sometimes a domain of attraction along one of its characteristic
directions will exist and sometimes one will not.


title:
Isogeometric nonlinear bending and buckling analysis of
  variable-thickness composite plate structures

abstract:
  This paper investigates nonlinear bending and buckling behaviours of
composite plates characterized by a thickness variation. Layer interfaces are
described as functions of inplane coordinates. Top and bottom surfaces of the
plate are symmetric about the midplane and the plate could be considered as a
flat surface in analysis along with thickness parameters which vary over the
plate. The variable thickness at a certain position in the midplane is modeled
by a set of control points (or thickness-parameters) through NURBS (Non-Uniform
Rational B-Spline) basic functions. The knot parameter space which is referred
in modelling geometry and approximating displacement variables is employed for
approximating thickness, simultaneously. The use of quadratic NURBS functions
results in C^1 continuity of modeling variable thickness and analyzing
solutions. Thin to moderately thick laminates in bound of first-order shear
deformation theory (FSDT) are taken into account. Strain-displacement relations
in sense of von-Karman theory are employed for large deformation. Riks method
is used for geometrically nonlinear analysis. The weak form is approximated
numerically by the isogeometric analysis (IGA), which has been found to be a
robust, stable and realistic numerical tool. Numerical results confirm the
reliability and capacity of the propose method.


title: Early Universe Dynamos from Neutrino Oscillations Induced by Torsion

abstract:
  Earlier de Sabbata and Gasperini have shown that neutrinos oscillation which
gives them a mass can be induced by torsion. More recently Enqvist et al have
shown that it is possible to use massive neutrinos BBN magnetic fields to seed
galactic magnetic fields. Thus based on these previous investigations we
present several examples of how obtaining cosmological magnetic seed fields as
galactic magnetic fields from massive neutrino densities and also from the
torsion obtained by Nitsch as $T\approx{10^{-24}s^{-1}}$ at the present day
which yields magnetic seed field of the order of $B_{seed}\approx{10^{-12}G}$.
In the case we use torsion derived from massive neutrinos given by
$T_{\nu}\approx{10^{-26}s^{-1}}$ one obtains in BBN time $t\approx{1s}$ with
the primordial nucleosynthesis magnetic field given by
$B_{BBN}\approx{10^{11}G}$ a relic magnetic field $B_{c}\approx{10^{39}G}$
which shows that the result obtained by Enqvist et al for the cosmological
fields at the early universe. Galactic dynamo seed could be obtained from
neutrinos at recombination. It is also shown that in the approximation of weak
fields torsion can slow down the decay of magnetic fields which confirms
previous results. At Planck era where the time is $t\sim{10^{-43}s}$ and
$B_{Pl}\sim{10^{58}G}$ the use of formula with the strongest torsion
$10^{-19}G$this yields $B_{seed}\sim{10^{-4}G}$ is a too strong field to
warrant a galactic dynamo seed.


title: Orbital Mott transition in two dimensional Pyrochlore lattice

abstract:
  We study orbital Mott transition in two dimensional pyrochlore lattice, using
a two orbital Hubbard model with only inter-orbital electronic hopping. We use
a real space Monte Carlo based approach to study the model at finite
temperature, and establish temperature-interaction phase diagrams that
highlight the Mott transition, orbital ordering, and spectral trends, and
possible window of pseudo gap. Due to only inter-orbital hopping, the Mott
insulator `generates' ferro exchange resulting in ferro-orbital ordering, with
T$_{corr}/t$ peaked at $\approx$ 0.2 around $U/t \approx 6$. The optical
conductivity shows unusual two peak feature due to two dimensional pyrochlore
lattice.


title: Reply to the comment from Ikeda, Berthier, and Sollich

abstract:
  This is a reply to the recent comment from Ikeda, Berthier, and Sollich
(arXiv:1602.04796) on "Constant stress and pressure rheology of colloidal
suspensions", Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 158301 (2015).


title: Attitude Estimation with Feedback Particle Filter

abstract:
  This paper presents theory, application, and comparisons of the feedback
particle filter (FPF) algorithm for the problem of attitude estimation. The
paper builds upon our recent work on the exact FPF solution of the
continuous-time nonlinear filtering problem on compact Lie groups. In this
paper, the details of the FPF algorithm are presented for the problem of
attitude estimation - a nonlinear filtering problem on SO(3). The quaternions
are employed for computational purposes. The algorithm requires a numerical
solution of the filter gain function, and two methods are applied for this
purpose. Comparisons are also provided between the FPF and some popular
algorithms for attitude estimation on SO(3), including the invariant EKF, the
multiplicative EKF, and the unscented Kalman filter. Simulation results are
presented that help illustrate the comparisons.


title:
Moduli Spaces of semistable rank 2 co-Higgs bundles over $\mathbb{P}^1
  \times \mathbb{P}^1$

abstract:
  It has been observed, by S. Rayan, that the complex projective surfaces that
potentially admit non-trivial examples of semistable co-Higgs bundles must be
found at the lower end of the Enriques-Kodaira classification. Motivated by
this remark, it is natural to study the geometry of these objects over
$\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$. In this paper, we present necessary and
sufficient conditions on the Chern classes $c_1,c_2$ of a bundle that guarantee
the non-emptiness of the moduli space $\mathcal{M^{\text{co}}}(c_1,c_2)$ of
rank 2 semistable co-Higgs bundles over $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$ (we
do this with respect to the standard polarization). We also give an explicit
description of the moduli spaces for certain choices of $c_1$ and $c_2$.


title: Atmospheric Quantum Channels with Weak and Strong Turbulence

abstract:
  The free-space transfer of high-fidelity optical signals between remote
locations has many applications, including both classical and quantum
communication, precision navigation, clock synchronization, etc. The physical
processes that contribute to signal fading and loss need to be carefully
analyzed in the theory of light propagation through the atmospheric turbulence.
Here we derive the probability distribution for the atmospheric transmittance
including beam wandering, beam shape deformation, and beam-broadening effects.
Our model, referred to as the elliptic-beam approximation, applies to weak,
weak-to-moderate, and strong turbulence and hence to the most important regimes
in atmospheric communication scenarios.


title: The Line Graph of the Universal Homogeneous Triangle-free Graph

abstract:
  We present some results on the structure of line graphs of triangle-free
graphs and a homogenization of the line graph of the universal homogeneous
triangle-free graph in a finite relational language with arity 4. This result
is relevant to the study of the relational complexity of structures defined by
forbidden embeddings.


title: A Model of Unified Gauge Interactions

abstract:
  Linear spinor fields are a generalization of the Dirac field that have direct
correspondence with the known physics of fermions, inherent causality
properties in their most fundamental constructions, and positive mass
eigenvalues for all particle types. The algebra of the generators for
infinitesimal transformations of these fields directly constructs the Minkowski
metric \emph{within} the internal group space as a consequence of non-vanishing
commutation relations between generators that carry space-time indexes. In
addition, the generators have a fundamental matrix representation that includes
Lorentz transformations within a group that unifies internal gauge symmetries
generated by a set of hermitian generators for SU(3)$\times$SU(2)$\times$U(1),
and nothing else. The construction of linearly independent internal SU(3) and
SU(2) symmetry groups necessarily involves the mixing of three generations of
the mass eigenstates labeling the (massive) representations of the linear
spinor fields. The group algebra also provides a mechanism for the dynamic
mixing of massless particles of differing "transverse mass" eigenvalues
conjugate to the affine parameter labeling translations along their light-like
trajectories. The inclusion of a transverse mass generator is necessary for
group closure of the extended Poincare algebra, but its eigenvalue must vanish
for massive particle representations. A unified set of space-time group
transformation operations along with internal gauge group symmetry operations
for linear spinor fields will be demonstrated in this paper.


title: Lipschitz Continuity of Mahalanobis Distances and Bilinear Forms

abstract:
  Many theoretical results in the machine learning domain stand only for
functions that are Lipschitz continuous. Lipschitz continuity is a strong form
of continuity that linearly bounds the variations of a function. In this paper,
we derive tight Lipschitz constants for two families of metrics: Mahalanobis
distances and bounded-space bilinear forms. To our knowledge, this is the first
time the Mahalanobis distance is formally proved to be Lipschitz continuous and
that such tight Lipschitz constants are derived.


title: A short proof of the characterization of model sets by almost automorphy

abstract:
  The aim of this note is to provide a conceptually simple demonstration of the
fact that repetitive model sets are characterized as the repetitive Meyer sets
with an almost automorphic associated dynamical system.


title:
Isolate First, Then Share: a New OS Architecture for Datacenter
  Computing

abstract:
  This paper presents the "isolate first, then share" OS model in which the
processor cores, memory, and devices are divided up between disparate OS
instances and a new abstraction, subOS, is proposed to encapsulate an OS
instance that can be created, destroyed, and resized on-the-fly. The intuition
is that this avoids shared kernel states between applications, which in turn
reduces performance loss caused by contention. We decompose the OS into the
supervisor and several subOSes running at the same privilege level: a subOS
directly manages physical resources, while the supervisor can create, destroy,
resize a subOS on-the-fly. The supervisor and subOSes have few state sharing,
but fast inter-subOS communication mechanisms are provided on demand.
  We present the first implementation, RainForest, which supports unmodified
Linux binaries. Our comprehensive evaluation shows RainForest outperforms Linux
with four different kernels, LXC, and Xen in terms of worst-case and average
performance most of time when running a large number of benchmarks. The source
code is available soon.


title: Gauge Fields, Nonlinear Realizations, Supersymmetry

abstract:
  This is a brief survey of the all-years research activity in the Sector
"Supersymmetry" (the former Markov Group) at the Bogoliubov Laboratory of
Theoretical Physics. The focus is on the issues related to gauge fields,
spontaneously broken symmetries in the nonlinear realizations approach, and
diverse aspects of supersymmetry.


title:
Modified Stancu-type Dunkl generalization of Szasz-
  Kantorovich-operators

abstract:
  In this paper, we introduce a modification of the Szasz-Mirakjan-Kantorovich
operators as well as Stancu operators [9] (or a Dunkl generalization of
modified Szasz-Mirakjan-Kantrovich operators [5]) which preserve the linear
functions. These types of operators modification enables better error
estimation than the classical Dunkl Szasz-MirakjanKantrovich as well as Stancu
operators. We obtain some approximation results via well known Korovkin's type
theorem, weighted Korovkin's type theorem convergence properties by using the
modulus of continuity and the rate of convergence of the operators for
functions belonging to the Lipschitz class


title: Voltammetry: mathematical modelling and Inverse Problem

abstract:
  We propose the fast semi-analytical method of modelling the polarization
curves in the voltammetric experiment. The method is based on usage of the
special func- tions and shows a big calculation speed and a high accuracy and
stability. Low computational needs of the proposed algorithm allow us to state
the set of Inverse Problems of voltammetry for the reconstruction of metal ions
concentrations or the other parameters of the electrolyte under investigation.


title:
Reconstructing cosmic growth with kSZ observations in the era of Stage
  IV experiments

abstract:
  Future ground-based CMB experiments will generate competitive large-scale
structure datasets by precisely characterizing CMB secondary anisotropies over
a large fraction of the sky. We describe a method for constraining the growth
rate of structure to sub-1% precision out to $z\approx 1$, using a combination
of galaxy cluster peculiar velocities measured using the kinetic
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, and the velocity field reconstructed from
galaxy redshift surveys. We consider only thermal SZ-selected cluster samples,
which will consist of $\mathcal{O}(10^4-10^5)$ sources for Stage 3 and 4 CMB
experiments respectively. Three different methods for separating the kSZ effect
from the primary CMB are compared, including a novel blind "constrained
realization" method that improves signal-to-noise by a factor of $\sim 2$ over
a commonly-used aperture photometry technique. Measurements of the integrated
tSZ $y$-parameter are used to break the kSZ velocity-optical depth degeneracy,
and the effects of including CMB polarization and SZ profile uncertainties are
also considered. A combination of future Stage 4 experiments should be able to
measure the product of the growth and expansion rates, $\alpha\equiv f H$, to
better than 1% in bins of $\Delta z = 0.1$ out to $z \approx 1$ -- competitive
with contemporary redshift-space distortion constraints from galaxy surveys.


title:
Quantum Bitcoin: An Anonymous and Distributed Currency Secured by the
  No-Cloning Theorem of Quantum Mechanics

abstract:
  The digital currency Bitcoin has had remarkable growth since it was first
proposed in 2008. Its distributed nature allows currency transactions without a
central authority by using cryptographic methods and a data structure called
the blockchain. In this paper we use the no-cloning theorem of quantum
mechanics to introduce Quantum Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-like currency that runs on a
quantum computer. We show that our construction of quantum shards and two
blockchains allows untrusted peers to mint quantum money without risking the
integrity of the currency. The Quantum Bitcoin protocol has several advantages
over classical Bitcoin, including immediate local verification of transactions.
This is a major improvement since we no longer need the computationally
intensive and time-consuming method Bitcoin uses to record all transactions in
the blockchain. Instead, Quantum Bitcoin only records newly minted currency
which drastically reduces the footprint and increases efficiency. We present
formal security proofs for counterfeiting resistance and show that a quantum
bitcoin can be re-used a large number of times before wearing out - just like
ordinary coins and banknotes. Quantum Bitcoin is the first distributed quantum
money system and we show that the lack of a paper trail implies full anonymity
for the users. In addition, there are no transaction fees and the system can
scale to any transaction volume.


title: A Complete Characterization of Unitary Quantum Space

abstract:
  Motivated by understanding the power of quantum computation with restricted
number of qubits, we give two complete characterizations of unitary quantum
space bounded computation. First we show that approximating an element of the
inverse of a well-conditioned efficiently encoded $2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}$
matrix is complete for the class of problems solvable by quantum circuits
acting on $\mathcal{O}(k(n))$ qubits with all measurements at the end of the
computation. Similarly, estimating the minimum eigenvalue of an efficiently
encoded Hermitian $2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}$ matrix is also complete for this
class. In the logspace case, our results improve on previous results of Ta-Shma
[STOC '13] by giving new space-efficient quantum algorithms that avoid
intermediate measurements, as well as showing matching hardness results.
  Additionally, as a consequence we show that PreciseQMA, the version of QMA
with exponentially small completeness-soundess gap, is equal to PSPACE. Thus,
the problem of estimating the minimum eigenvalue of a local Hamiltonian to
inverse exponential precision is PSPACE-complete, which we show holds even in
the frustration-free case. Finally, we can use this characterization to give a
provable setting in which the ability to prepare the ground state of a local
Hamiltonian is more powerful than the ability to prepare PEPS states.
  Interestingly, by suitably changing the parameterization of either of these
problems we can completely characterize the power of quantum computation with
simultaneously bounded time and space.


title: The consistent histories approach to loop quantum cosmology

abstract:
  We review the application of the consistent (or decoherent) histories
formulation of quantum theory to canonical loop quantum cosmology. Conventional
quantum theory relies crucially on "measurements" to convert unrealized quantum
potentialities into physical outcomes that can be assigned probabilities. In
the early universe and other physical contexts in which there are no observers
or measuring apparatus (or indeed, in any closed quantum system), what criteria
determine which alternative outcomes may be realized and what their
probabilities are? In the consistent histories formulation it is the vanishing
of interference between the branch wave functions describing alternative
histories -- as determined by the system's decoherence functional -- that
determines which alternatives may be assigned probabilities. We describe the
consistent histories formulation and how it may be applied to canonical loop
quantum cosmology, describing in detail the application to homogeneous and
isotropic cosmological models with scalar matter. We show how the theory may be
used to make definite physical predictions in the absence of "observers". As an
application, we demonstrate how the theory predicts that loop quantum models
"bounce" from large volume to large volume, while conventional
"Wheeler-DeWitt"-quantized universes are invariably singular. We also briefly
indicate the relation to other work.


title:
The finite representation property fails for composition and
  intersection

abstract:
  The title theorem is proved by example: an algebra of binary relations,
closed under intersection and composition, that is not isomorphic to any such
algebra on a finite set.


title: Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of two neutrons in finite volume

abstract:
  Ab initio calculations provide direct access to the properties of pure
neutron systems that are challenging to study experimentally. In addition to
their importance for fundamental physics, their properties are required as
input for effective field theories of the strong interaction. In this work, we
perform auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of the ground and
first excited state of two neutrons in a finite box, considering a simple
contact potential as well as chiral effective field theory interactions. We
compare the results against exact diagonalizations and present a detailed
analysis of the finite-volume effects, whose understanding is crucial for
determining observables from the calculated energies. Using the L\"uscher
formula, we extract the low-energy S-wave scattering parameters from ground-
and excited-state energies for different box sizes.


title:
Lepton Number Violation and `Diracness' of massive neutrinos composed of
  Majorana states

abstract:
  Majorana neutrinos naturally lead to a Lepton Number Violation (LNV). A
superposition of Majorana states can mimic Dirac-type neutrinos, leading to its
conservation (LNC). We demonstrate on the example of specific observables
related to high and low energy processes how a strength of LNV correlates with
neutrino parameters such as CP-phases, flavor mixings, mass ratios. We stress
the coaction between low and high energy studies for putting phenomenological
models to a quantitative test. Secondly, we conclude that in order to fully
study the role of heavy neutrinos in search for New Physics (NP) signals, a
departure from trivial scenarios assuming degeneracy in mass and no flavor
mixing or CP-phases becomes necessary for a proper physical analysis.


title:
Homodyne-detected ferromagnetic resonance of in-plane magnetized
  nano-contacts: composite spin wave resonances and their excitation mechanism

abstract:
  This work provides a detailed investigation of the measured in-plane
field-swept homodyne-detected ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) spectra of an
extended Co/Cu/NiFe pseudo spin valve stack using a nanocontact (NC) geometry.
The magnetodynamics are generated by a pulse-modulated microwave current and
the resulting rectified dc mixing voltage, which appears across the NC at
resonance, is detected using a lock-in amplifier. Most notably, we find that
the measured spectra of the NiFe layer are composite in nature and highly
asymmetric, consistent with the broadband excitation of multiple modes.
Additionally, the data must be fit with two Lorentzian functions in order to
extract a reasonable value for the Gilbert damping of the NiFe. Aided by
micromagnetic simulations, we conclude that (i) for in-plane fields the rf
Oersted field in the vicinity of the NC plays the dominant role in generating
the observed spectra, (ii) in addition to the FMR mode, exchange dominated spin
waves are also generated, and (iii) the NC diameter sets the mean wavevector of
the exchange dominated spin wave, in good agreement with the dispersion
relation.


title:
Global phase diagram of a three dimensional dirty topological
  superconductor

abstract:
  We investigate the phase diagram of a three-dimensional, time-reversal
symmetric topological superconductor in the presence of charge impurities and
random $s$-wave pairing. Combining complimentary field theoretic and numerical
methods, we show that the quantum phase transition between two topologically
distinct paired states (or thermal insulators), described by thermal Dirac
semimetal, remains unaffected in the presence of sufficiently weak generic
randomness. At stronger disorder, however, these two phases are separated by an
intervening thermal metallic phase of diffusive Majorana fermions. We show that
across the insulator-insulator and metal-insulator transitions, normalized
thermal conductance displays single parameter scaling, allowing us to
numerically extract the critical exponents across them. The pertinence of our
study in strong spin-orbit coupled, three-dimensional doped narrow gap
semiconductors, such as Cu$_x$Bi$_2$Se$_3$, is discussed.


title: Poisson Centralizer of the Trace

abstract:
  The Poisson centralizer of the trace element is determined in the coordinate
ring of SL_n endowed with the Poisson structure obtained as the semiclassical
limit of its quantized coordinate ring. It turns out that this maximal
Poisson-commutative subalgebra coincides with the subalgebra of invariants with
respect to the adjoint action.


title:
Retrograde binaries of massive black holes in circum-binary accretion
  discs

abstract:
  We explore the hardening of a massive black hole binary embedded in a
circum-binary gas disc when the binary and the gas are coplanar and the gas is
counter-rotating. The secondary black hole, revolving in the direction opposite
to the gas, experiences a drag from gas-dynamical friction and from direct
accretion of part of it. Using two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamical grid
simulations we investigate the effect of changing the accretion prescriptions
on the dynamics of the secondary black hole which in turn affect the binary
hardening and eccentricity evolution. We find that realistic accretion
prescriptions lead to results that differ from those inferred assuming
accretion of all the gas within the Roche Lobe of the secondary black hole.
Different accretion prescriptions result in different disc's surface densities
which alter the black hole's dynamics back. Full 3D SPH realizations of a
number of representative cases, run over a shorter interval of time, validate
the general trends observed in the less computationally demanding 2D
simulations. Initially circular black hole binaries increase only slightly
their eccentricity which then oscillates around small values (<0.1) while they
harden. By contrast, initially eccentric binaries become more and more
eccentric. A semi-analytical model describing the black hole's dynamics under
accretion only explores the late evolution stages of the binary in an otherwise
unperturbed retrograde disc to illustrate how eccentricity evolves with time in
relation to the shape of the underlying surface density distribution.


title: Phase Transition in Loop Quantum Gravity

abstract:
  We point out that with a specific counting of states loop quantum gravity
implies that black holes perform a phase transition at a certain characteristic
temperature $T_C$. In this phase transition the punctures of the spin network
on the stretched horizon of the black hole jump, in effect, from the vacuum to
the excited states. The characteristic temperature $T_C$ may be regarded as the
lowest possible temperature of the hole. From the point of view of a distant
observer at rest with respect to the hole the characteristic temperature $T_C$
corresponds to the Hawking temperature of the hole.


title:
The effect of universe inhomogeneities on cosmological distance
  measurements

abstract:
  Using the focusing equation, the equation for the cosmological angular
diameter distance is derived, based on the ideas of Academician Ya.B.
Zel'dovich, namely, that the distribution of matter at small angles is not
homogeneous, and the light cone is close to being empty. We propose some ways
of testing a method for measuring the angular diameter distances and show that
the proposed method leads to results that agree better with the experimental
data than those obtained by the usual methods.


title:
Influence of Electric Charge and Modified Gravity on Density
  Irregularities

abstract:
  This work aims to identify some inhomogeneity factors for plane symmetric
topology with anisotropic and dissipative fluid under the effects of both
electromagnetic field as well as Palatini $f(R)$ gravity. We construct the
modified field equations, kinematical quantities and mass function to continue
our analysis. We have explored the dynamical quantities, conservation equations
and modified Ellis equations with the help of a viable $f(R)$ model. Some
particular cases are discussed with and without dissipation to investigate the
corresponding inhomogeneity factors. For non-radiating scenario, we examine
such factors with dust, isotropic and anisotropic matter in the presence of
charge. For dissipative fluid, we investigate the inhomogeneity factor with
charged dust cloud. We conclude that electromagnetic field increases the
inhomogeneity in matter while the extra curvature terms make the system more
homogeneous with the evolution of time.