title: Generating entangled quantum microwaves in a Josephson-photonics device

abstract:
  When connecting a voltage-biased Josephson junction in series to several
microwave cavities, a Cooper-pair current across the junction gives rise to a
continuous emission of strongly correlated photons into the cavity modes.
Tuning the bias voltage to the resonance where a single Cooper pair provides
the energy to create an additional photon in each of the cavities, we
demonstrate the entangling nature of these creation processes by simple
witnesses in terms of experimentally accessible observables. To characterize
the entanglement properties of the such created quantum states of light to the
fullest possible extent, we then proceed to more elaborate entanglement
criteria based on the knowledge of the full density matrix and provide a
detailed study of bi- and multipartite entanglement. In particular, we
illustrate how due to the relatively simple design of these circuits changes of
experimental parameters allow one to access a wide variety of entangled states
differing, e.g., in the number of entangled parties or the dimension of state
space. Such devices, besides their promising potential to act as a highly
versatile source of entangled quantum microwaves, may thus represent an
excellent natural testbed for classification and quantification schemes
developed in quantum information theory.


title: Gromov-Witten theory of a locally conformally symplectic manifold

abstract:
  We initiate here the study of Gromov-Witten theory of locally conformally
symplectic manifolds or $\lcs$ manifolds, $\lcsm$'s for short, which are a
natural generalization of both contact and symplectic manifolds. We find that
the main new phenomenon (relative to the symplectic case) is the potential
existence of holomorphic sky catastrophes, an analogue for pseudo-holomorphic
curves of sky catastrophes in dynamical systems originally discovered by
Fuller. We are able to rule these out in some situations, particularly for
certain $\lcs$ 4-folds, and as one application we show that in dimension 4 the
classical Gromov non-squeezing theorem has certain $C ^{0} $ rigidity or
persistence with respect to $\lcs$ deformations, this is one version of $\lcs$
non-squeezing a first result of its kind. In a different direction we study
Gromov-Witten theory of the $\lcsm$ $C \times S ^{1} $ induced by a contact
manifold $(C, \lambda)$, and show that the Gromov-Witten invariant (as defined
here) counting certain elliptic curves in $C \times S ^{1} $ is identified with
the classical Fuller index of the Reeb vector field $R ^{\lambda} $. This has
some non-classical applications, and based on the story we develop, we give a
kind of `holomorphic Seifert/Weinstein conjecture' which is a direct extension
for some types of $\lcsm$'s of the classical Seifert/Weinstein conjecture. This
is proved for $\lcs$ structures $C ^{\infty} $ nearby to the Hopf $\lcs$
structure on $S ^{2k+1} \times S ^{1} $.


title: How to justify Born's rule using the pilot wave theory of de Broglie?

abstract:
  In this article we discuss few new derivations of the so called Born's rule
for quantum probability in the context of the pilot wave theory proposed by de
Broglie in 1927.


title:
Revealing the role of electrons and phonons in the ultrafast recovery of
  charge density wave correlations in 1$T$-TiSe$_2$

abstract:
  Using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with selective
near- and mid-infrared photon excitations, we investigate the femtosecond
dynamics of the charge density wave (CDW) phase in 1$T$-TiSe$_2$, as well as
the dynamics of CDW fluctuations at 240 K. In the CDW phase, we observe the
coherent oscillation of the CDW amplitude mode. At 240 K, we single out an
ultrafast component in the recovery of the CDW correlations, which we explain
as the manifestation of electron-hole correlations. Our momentum-resolved study
of femtosecond electron dynamics supports a mechanism for the CDW phase
resulting from the cooperation between the interband Coulomb interaction, the
mechanism of excitonic insulator phase formation, and electron-phonon coupling.


title: Exploring the LHC Landscape with Dileptons

abstract:
  The dilepton decay channels provide clean signatures and are an ideal hunting
ground for high mass resonant, like Z', or non-resonant, like contact
interactions or extra dimensions, searches at the LHC. The production of high
invariant mass opposite sign lepton pairs in proton-proton collisions in the
Standard Model is dominated by the Drell-Yan process. In addition to this
photon or Z exchange mediated mechanism, photons radiated by the incoming
protons can collide and produce lepton pairs. In this paper detailed
calculations of the Drell-Yan process at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD
and next-to-leading order in the electroweak corrections, augmented with the
photon-induced effects, are presented in the typical acceptance of a
multi-purpose LHC detector at center of mass energy 13 TeV. Estimates of the
expected backgrounds for new physics searches are provided for dilepton
invariant masses up to the LHC kinematic limit.


title:
Sharp weighted estimates for multi-linear Calder\'{o}n-Zygmund operators
  on non-homogeneous spaces

abstract:
  In this article, we address pointwise sparse domination for multilinear
Calder\'on-Zygmund operators on upper doubling, geometrically doubling metric
measure spaces. As a consequence, we have obtained sharp quantitative weighted
estimates for multilinear Calder\'on-Zygmund operators.


title:
A simulation study on few parameters of Cherenkov photons in extensive
  air showers of different primaries incident at various zenith angles over a
  high altitude observation level

abstract:
  We have studied the distribution patterns of lateral density, arrival time
and angular position of Cherenkov photons generated in Extensive Air Showers
(EASs) initiated by $\gamma$-ray, proton and iron primaries incident with
various energies and at various zenith angles. This study is the extension of
our earlier work \cite{Hazarika} to cover a wide energy range of ground based
$\gamma$-ray astronomy with a wide range of zenith angles ($\le 40^\circ$) of
primary particles, as well as the extension to study the angular distribution
patterns of Cherenkov photons in EASs. This type of study is important for
distinguishing the $\gamma$-ray initiated showers from the hadronic showers in
the ground based $\gamma$-ray astronomy, where Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique
(ACT) is being used. Importantly, such study gives an insight on the nature of
$\gamma$-ray and hadronic showers in general. In this work, the CORSIKA 6.990
simulation code is used for generation of EASs. Similarly to the case of
Ref.\cite{Hazarika}, this study also revealed that, the lateral density and
arrival time distributions of Cherenkov photons vary almost in accordance with
the functions: $\rho_{ch}(r) = \rho_{0}\;e^{-\beta r}$ and $t_{ch}(r) =
t_{0}e^{\Gamma/r^{\lambda}}$ respectively by taking different values of the
parameters of functions for the type, energy and zenith angle of the primary
particle. The distribution of Cherenkov photon's angular positions with respect
to shower axis shows distinctive features depending on the primary type, its
energy and the zenith angle.


title: The Marshall-Olkin Flexible Weibull Extension Distribution

abstract:
  This paper introduces a new generalization of the flexible Weibull
distribution with three parameters this model called the Marshall-Olkin
flexible Weibull extension (MO-FWE) distribution which exhibits bathtub-shaped
hazard rate. We studied it's statistical properties include, quantile function
skewness and kurtosis, the mode, rth moments and moment generating function and
order statistics. We used the method of maximum likelihood for estimating the
model parameters and the observed Fisher's information matrix is derived. We
illustrate the usefulness of the proposed model by applications to real data.


title: Unipotent representations and the dual pair correspondence

abstract:
  This paper provides a construction of the unipotent representations for
classical complex groups in terms of the Theta correspondence as introduced and
studied by R. Howe. The K-type structure of unipotent representations is
obtained as a consequence of the character formulas for unipotent
representations of D. Vogan and the author. This provides a tight link between
unipotent representations and the orbit philosophy. A parametrization of
unipotent representations for the Spin groups is obtained.


title:
Sign-changing solutions for a class of zero mass nonlocal Schr\"odinger
  equations

abstract:
  We consider the following class of fractional Schr\"odinger equations $$
(-\Delta)^{\alpha} u + V(x)u = K(x) f(u) \mbox{in} \mathbb{R}^{N} $$ where
$\alpha\in (0, 1)$, $N>2\alpha$, $(-\Delta)^{\alpha}$ is the fractional
Laplacian, $V$ and $K$ are positive continuous functions which vanish at
infinity, and $f$ is a continuous function. By using a minimization argument
and a quantitative deformation lemma, we obtain the existence of a
sign-changing solution. Furthermore, when $f$ is odd, we prove that the above
problem admits infinitely many nontrivial solutions. Our result extends to the
fractional framework some well-known theorems proved for elliptic equations in
the classical setting. With respect to these cases studied in the literature,
the nonlocal one considered here presents some additional difficulties, such as
the lack of decompositions involving positive and negative parts, and the
non-differentiability of the Nehari Manifold, so that a careful analysis of the
fractional spaces involved is necessary.


title: StruClus: Structural Clustering of Large-Scale Graph Databases

abstract:
  We present a structural clustering algorithm for large-scale datasets of
small labeled graphs, utilizing a frequent subgraph sampling strategy. A set of
representatives provides an intuitive description of each cluster, supports the
clustering process, and helps to interpret the clustering results. The
projection-based nature of the clustering approach allows us to bypass
dimensionality and feature extraction problems that arise in the context of
graph datasets reduced to pairwise distances or feature vectors. While
achieving high quality and (human) interpretable clusterings, the runtime of
the algorithm only grows linearly with the number of graphs. Furthermore, the
approach is easy to parallelize and therefore suitable for very large datasets.
Our extensive experimental evaluation on synthetic and real world datasets
demonstrates the superiority of our approach over existing structural and
subspace clustering algorithms, both, from a runtime and quality point of view.


title: Learning from the Hindsight Plan -- Episodic MPC Improvement

abstract:
  Model predictive control (MPC) is a popular control method that has proved
effective for robotics, among other fields. MPC performs re-planning at every
time step. Re-planning is done with a limited horizon per computational and
real-time constraints and often also for robustness to potential model errors.
However, the limited horizon leads to suboptimal performance. In this work, we
consider the iterative learning setting, where the same task can be repeated
several times, and propose a policy improvement scheme for MPC. The main idea
is that between executions we can, offline, run MPC with a longer horizon,
resulting in a hindsight plan. To bring the next real-world execution closer to
the hindsight plan, our approach learns to re-shape the original cost function
with the goal of satisfying the following property: short horizon planning (as
realistic during real executions) with respect to the shaped cost should result
in mimicking the hindsight plan. This effectively consolidates long-term
reasoning into the short-horizon planning. We empirically evaluate our approach
in contact-rich manipulation tasks both in simulated and real environments,
such as peg insertion by a real PR2 robot.


title: Twists of Hooley's $\Delta$-function over number fields

abstract:
  We prove tight estimates for averages of the twisted Hooley $\Delta$-function
over arbitrary number fields.


title:
Sign-changing solutions for a class of fractional Schr\"odinger
  equations with vanishing potentials

abstract:
  In this paper we consider a class of fractional Schr\"odinger equations with
potentials vanishing at infinity. By using a minimization argument and a
quantitative deformation Lemma, we prove the existence of a sign-changing
solution.


title: Byte-based Language Identification with Deep Convolutional Networks

abstract:
  We report on our system for the shared task on discriminating between similar
languages (DSL 2016). The system uses only byte representations in a deep
residual network (ResNet). The system, named ResIdent, is trained only on the
data released with the task (closed training). We obtain 84.88% accuracy on
subtask A, 68.80% accuracy on subtask B1, and 69.80% accuracy on subtask B2. A
large difference in accuracy on development data can be observed with
relatively minor changes in our network's architecture and hyperparameters. We
therefore expect fine-tuning of these parameters to yield higher accuracies.


title: Modeling generic aspects of ideal fibril formation

abstract:
  Many different proteins self-aggregate into insoluble fibrils growing
apically by reversible addition of elementary building blocks. But beyond this
common principle, the modalities of fibril formation are very disparate, with
various intermediate forms which can be reshuffled by minor modifications of
physico-chemical conditions or amino-acid sequences. To bypass this complexity,
the multifaceted phenomenon of fibril formation is reduced here to its most
elementary principles defined for a linear prototype of fibril. Selected
generic features, including nucleation, elongation and conformational
recruitment, are modeled using minimalist hypotheses and tools, by separating
equilibrium from kinetic aspects and in vitro from in vivo conditions. These
reductionist approaches allow to bring out known and new rudiments, including
the kinetic and equilibrium effects of nucleation, the dual influence of
elongation on nucleation, the kinetic limitations on nucleation and fibril
numbers and the accumulation of complexes in vivo by rescue from degradation.
Overlooked aspects of these processes are also pointed: the exponential
distribution of fibril lengths can be recovered using various models because it
is attributable to randomness only. It is also suggested that the same term
"critical concentration" is used for different things, involved in either
nucleation or elongation.

categories: physics.bio-ph cond-mat.soft physics.chem-ph q-bio.MN


title:
A minimal model for spontaneous cell polarization and edge activity in
  oscillating, rotating and migrating cells

abstract:
  How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move
directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of
cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback
from the motion itself to describe polarization of edge activity. Theses
approaches, however, fail to explain cell behavior prior to the onset of
polarization. Our analysis using the model system of polarizing and moving fish
epidermal keratocytes suggests a novel and simple principle of
self-organization of cell activity in which local cell-edge dynamics depends on
the distance from the cell center, but not on the orientation with respect to
the front-back axis. We validate this principle with a stochastic model that
faithfully reproduces a range of cell-migration behaviors. Our findings
indicate that spontaneous polarization, persistent motion, and cell shape are
emergent properties of the local cell-edge dynamics controlled by the distance
from the cell center.


title: Unsupervised Neural Hidden Markov Models

abstract:
  In this work, we present the first results for neuralizing an Unsupervised
Hidden Markov Model. We evaluate our approach on tag in- duction. Our approach
outperforms existing generative models and is competitive with the
state-of-the-art though with a simpler model easily extended to include
additional context.


title: Nash multiplicities and isolated points of maximum multiplicity

abstract:
  Let $X$ be an algebraic variety defined over a field of characteristic zero,
and let $\xi \in \mathrm{\underline{Max}\; mult}(X)$ be a point in the closed
subset of maximum multiplicity of $X$. We provide a criterion, given in terms
of arcs, to determine whether $\xi $ is isolated in $\mathrm{\underline{Max}\;
mult}(X)$. More precisely, we use invariants of arcs derived from the Nash
multiplicity sequence to characterize when $\xi $ is an isolated point in
$\mathrm{\underline{Max}\; mult}(X)$.


title: Time-Correlated Blip Dynamics of Open Quantum Systems

abstract:
  The non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems is still a challenging
task, particularly in the non-perturbative regime at low temperatures. While
the Stochastic Liouville-von Neumann equation (SLN) provides a formally exact
tool to tackle this problem for both discrete and continuous degrees of
freedom, its performance deteriorates for long times due to an inherently
non-unitary propagator. Here we present a scheme which combines the SLN with
projector operator techniques based on finite dephasing times, gaining
substantial improvements in terms of memory storage and statistics. The
approach allows for systematic convergence and is applicable in regions of
parameter space where perturbative methods fail, up to the long time domain.
Findings are applied to the coherent and incoherent quantum dynamics of two-
and three-level systems. In the long time domain sequential and super-exchange
transfer rates are extracted and compared to perturbative predictions.


title: Estimation of Graphical Models through Structured Norm Minimization

abstract:
  Estimation of Markov Random Field and covariance models from high-dimensional
data represents a canonical problem that has received a lot of attention in the
literature. A key assumption, widely employed, is that of {\em sparsity} of the
underlying model. In this paper, we study the problem of estimating such models
exhibiting a more intricate structure comprising simultaneously of {\em sparse,
structured sparse} and {\em dense} components. Such structures naturally arise
in several scientific fields, including molecular biology, finance, and
political science. We introduce a general framework based on a novel structured
norm that enables us to estimate such complex structures from high-dimensional
data. The resulting optimization problem is convex and we introduce a
linearized multi-block alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)
algorithm to solve it efficiently. We illustrate the superior performance of
the proposed framework on a number of synthetic data sets generated from both
random and structured networks. Further, we apply the method to a number of
real data sets and discuss the results.


title: Fixed energy universality for Dyson Brownian motion

abstract:
  We consider Dyson Brownian motion for classical values of $\beta$ with
deterministic initial data $V$. We prove that the local eigenvalue statistics
coincide with the GOE/GUE in the fixed energy sense after time $t \gtrsim 1/N$
if the density of states of $V$ is bounded above and below down to scales $\eta
\ll t$ in a window of size $L \gg \sqrt{t}.$ Our results imply that fixed
energy universality holds for essentially any random matrix ensemble for which
averaged energy universality was previously known. Our methodology builds on
the homogenization theory developed in [BEYY] which reduces the microscopic
problem to a mesoscopic problem. As an auxiliary result we prove a mesoscopic
central limit theorem for linear statistics of various classes of test
functions for classical Dyson Brownian motion.


title:
Infrared polarimetry of Mrk 231: Scattering off hot dust grains in the
  central core

abstract:
  We present high-angular (0.17$-$0.35 arcsec) resolution imaging polarimetric
observations of Mrk 231 in the 3.1 $\mu$m filter using MMT-Pol on the 6.5-m
MMT, and in the 8.7 $\mu$m, 10.3 $\mu$m, and 11.6 $\mu$m filters using
CanariCam on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS. In combination with already
published observations, we compile the 1$-$12 $\mu$m total and polarized
nuclear spectral energy distribution (SED). The total flux SED in the central
400 pc is explained as the combination of 1) a hot (731 $\pm$ 4 K) dusty
structure, directly irradiated by the central engine, which is at 1.6 $\pm$ 0.1
pc away and attributed to be in the pc-scale polar region, 2) an
optically-thick, smooth and disk-like dusty structure (`torus') with an
inclination of 48 $\pm$ 23$^{\circ}$ surrounding the central engine, and 3) an
extinguished (A$_{\mbox{V}} =$ 36 $\pm$ 5 mag) starburst component. The
polarized SED decreases from 0.77 $\pm$ 0.14 per cent at 1.2 $\mu$m to 0.31
$\pm$ 0.15 per cent at 11.6 $\mu$m and follows a power-law function,
$\lambda^{\sim0.57}$. The polarization angle remains constant
($\sim$108$^{\circ}$) in the 1$-$12 $\mu$m wavelength range. The dominant
polarization mechanism is explained as scattering off hot dust grains in the
pc-scale polar regions.


title:
Effects of non-uniform distributions of gain and loss in photonic
  crystals

abstract:
  We present a $\mathbf{k} \cdot \mathbf{p}$ theory of photonic crystals
containing gain and loss in which the gain and loss are added to separate
primitive cells of the underlying Hermitian system, thereby creating a
supercell photonic crystal. We show that the supercell bands of this system can
merge outward from the degenerate contour formed from folding the bands of the
underlying Hermitian system into the supercell Brillouin zone, but that other
accidental degeneracies in the band structure of the underlying Hermitian
system do not yield band merging behavior. Finally, we show that the modal
coupling matrix in PhCs with balanced gain and loss is trace-less, and thus the
imaginary components of the eigenvalues can only move relative to one another
as the strength of the gain and loss is varied, without any collective motion.


title:
SWoTSuite: A Development Framework for Prototyping Cross-domain Semantic
  Web of Things Applications

abstract:
  Semantic Web of Things (SWoT) applications focus on providing a wide-scale
interoperability that allows the sharing of IoT devices across domains and the
reusing of available knowledge on the web. However, the application development
is difficult because developers have to do various tasks such as designing an
application, annotating IoT data, interpreting data, and combining application
domains.
  To address the above challenges, this paper demonstrates SWoTSuite, a toolkit
for prototyping SWoT applications. It hides the use of semantic web
technologies as much as possible to avoid the burden of designing SWoT
applications that involves designing ontologies, annotating sensor data, and
using reasoning mechanisms to enrich data. Taking inspiration from sharing and
reuse approaches, SWoTSuite reuses data and vocabularies. It leverages existing
technologies to build applications. We take a hello world naturopathy
application as an example and demonstrate an application development process
using SWoTSuite. The demo video is available at URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zs9flrt.


title:
Compensated Convexity Methods for Approximations and Interpolations of
  Sampled Functions in Euclidean Spaces: Theoretical Foundations

abstract:
  We introduce Lipschitz continuous and $C^{1,1}$ geometric approximation and
interpolation methods for sampled bounded uniformly continuous functions over
compact sets and over complements of bounded open sets in $\mathbb{R}^n$ by
using compensated convex transforms. Error estimates are provided for the
approximations of bounded uniformly continuous functions, of Lipschitz
functions, and of $C^{1,1}$ functions. We also prove that our approximation
methods, which are differentiation and integration free and not sensitive to
sample type, are stable with respect to the Hausdorff distance between samples.


title: A local Ramsey theory for block sequences

abstract:
  We develop local forms of Ramsey-theoretic dichotomies for block sequences in
infinite-dimensional vector spaces, analogous to Mathias' selective coideal
form of Silver's theorem for analytic partitions of $[\mathbb{N}]^\infty$.
Under large cardinals, these results are extended to partitions in
$\mathbf{L}(\mathbb{R})$ and $\mathbf{L}(\mathbb{R})$-generic filters of block
sequences are characterized. Variants of these results are also established for
block sequences in Banach spaces and for projections in the Calkin algebra.


title:
Response to version 2 of the note concerning the observation of quantum
  Hawking radiation and its entanglement in an analogue black hole

abstract:
  The observation of quantum Hawking radiation and its entanglement in an
analogue black hole was recently reported. A subsequent note (arXiv:1609.03803)
criticized the study. Version 2 of the note was recently presented. The note
suffers from technical difficulties which invalidate its main claims. We answer
all of the comments in the note and show that the criticisms are not valid. We
also answer a comment made by the author of the note in a different forum.


title: Deep Architectures for Face Attributes

abstract:
  We train a deep convolutional neural network to perform identity
classification using a new dataset of public figures annotated with age,
gender, ethnicity and emotion labels, and then fine-tune it for attribute
classification. An optimal sharing pattern of computational resources within
this network is determined by experiment, requiring only 1 G flops to produce
all predictions. Rather than fine-tune by relearning weights in one additional
layer after the penultimate layer of the identity network, we try several
different depths for each attribute. We find that prediction of age and emotion
is improved by fine-tuning from earlier layers onward, presumably because
deeper layers are progressively invariant to non-identity related changes in
the input.


title: Psychologically Motivated Text Mining

abstract:
  Natural language processing techniques are increasingly applied to identify
social trends and predict behavior based on large text collections. Existing
methods typically rely on surface lexical and syntactic information. Yet,
research in psychology shows that patterns of human conceptualisation, such as
metaphorical framing, are reliable predictors of human expectations and
decisions. In this paper, we present a method to learn patterns of metaphorical
framing from large text collections, using statistical techniques. We apply the
method to data in three different languages and evaluate the identified
patterns, demonstrating their psychological validity.


title: Characterizing gas flow from aerosol particle injectors

abstract:
  A novel methodology for measuring gas flow from small orifices or nozzles
into vacuum is presented. It utilizes a high-intensity femtosecond laser pulse
to create a plasma within the gas plume produced by the nozzle, which is imaged
by a microscope. Calibration of the imaging system allows for the extraction of
absolute number densities. We show detection down to helium densities of
$4\times10^{16}$~cm$^{-3}$ with a spatial resolution of a few micrometer. The
technique is used to characterize the gas flow from a convergent-nozzle aerosol
injector [Struct.\ Dyn.~2, 041717 (2015)] as used in single-particle
diffractive imaging experiments at free-electron laser sources. Based on the
measured gas-density profile we estimate the scattering background signal under
typical operating conditions of single-particle imaging experiments and
estimate that fewer than 50 photons per shot can be expected on the detector.


title: Single electron gating of topological insulators

abstract:
  Introducing, observing, and manipulating individual impurities coupled to a
host material offers the opportunity to create new device concepts based on
single spin and charge states. Because of potential applications in spintronics
and magneto-electrics, such an approach would be particularly useful for
topological insulators (TI), a recently discovered material class hosting
spin-momentum- locked surface states. To make them useful for new technologies,
a robust control of their interaction with external perturbations is required.
However, traditional approaches such as metal electrodes or doping proved to be
problematic and resulted in strong mesoscopic fluctuations making the
spin-momentum locking ill-defined. Here, we demonstrate the effective gating of
TIs by coupling molecules to their surface which, by using electric fields,
allow to dynamically control the interface charge state by adding or removing
single electrons. This process creates a robust transconductance bistability
resembling a single-electron transistor. Our findings make hybrid molecule/TI
interfaces functional elements while at the same time pushing miniaturization
at its ultimate limit. This opens a new avenue for all electric-controlled
spintronic devices based on these fascinating materials.


title: Eigenvector Statistics of Sparse Random Matrices

abstract:
  We prove that the bulk eigenvectors of sparse random matrices, i.e. the
adjacency matrices of Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graphs or random regular graphs, are
asymptotically jointly normal, provided the averaged degree increases with the
size of the graphs. Our methodology follows [6] by analyzing the eigenvector
flow under Dyson Brownian motion, combining with an isotropic local law for
Green's function. As an auxiliary result, we prove that for the eigenvector
flow of Dyson Brownian motion with general initial data, the eigenvectors are
asymptotically jointly normal in the direction $q$ after time $\eta_*\ll t\ll
r$, if in a window of size $r$, the initial density of states is bounded below
and above down to the scale $\eta_*$, and the initial eigenvectors are
delocalized in the direction $q$ down to the scale $\eta_*$.


title: Poisson's spot and Gouy phase

abstract:
  Recently there have been experimental results on Poisson spot matter wave
interferometry followed by theoretical models describing the relative
importance of the wave and particle behaviors for the phenomenon. We propose an
analytical theoretical model for the Poisson's spot with matter waves based on
Babinet principle in which we use the results for a free propagation and single
slit diffraction. We take into account effects of loss of coherence and finite
detection area using the propagator for a quantum particle interacting with an
environment. We observe that the matter wave Gouy phase plays a role in the
existence of the central peak and thus corroborates the predominantly wavelike
character of the Poisson's spot. Our model shows remarkable agreement with the
experimental data for deuterium ($D_{2}$) molecules.


title:
Dual time scales in simulated annealing of a two-dimensional Ising spin
  glass

abstract:
  We apply a generalized Kibble-Zurek out-of-equilibrium scaling ansatz to
simulated annealing when approaching the spin-glass transition at temperature
$T=0$ of the two-dimensional Ising model with random $J= \pm 1$ couplings.
Analyzing the spin-glass order parameter and the excess energy as functions of
the system size and the annealing velocity in Monte Carlo simulations with
Metropolis dynamics, we find scaling where the energy relaxes slower than the
spin-glass order parameter, i.e., there are two different dynamic exponents.
The values of the exponents relating the relaxation time scales to the system
length, $\tau \sim L^z$, are $z=8.28 \pm 0.03$ for the relaxation of the order
parameter and $z=10.31 \pm 0.04$ for the energy relaxation. We argue that the
behavior with dual time scales arises as a consequence of the entropy-driven
ordering mechanism within droplet theory. We point out that the dynamic
exponents found here for $T \to 0$ simulated annealing are different from the
temperature-dependent equilibrium dynamic exponent $z_{\rm eq}(T)$, for which
previous studies have found a divergent behavior; $z_{\rm eq}(T\to 0) \to
\infty$. Thus, our study shows that, within Metropolis dynamics, it is easier
to relax the system to one of its degenerate ground states than to migrate at
low temperatures between regions of the configuration space surrounding
different ground states. In a more general context of optimization, our study
provides an example of robust dense-region solutions for which the excess
energy (the conventional cost function) may not be the best measure of success.

categories: cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.str-el quant-ph


title:
Learning to Push by Grasping: Using multiple tasks for effective
  learning

abstract:
  Recently, end-to-end learning frameworks are gaining prevalence in the field
of robot control. These frameworks input states/images and directly predict the
torques or the action parameters. However, these approaches are often critiqued
due to their huge data requirements for learning a task. The argument of the
difficulty in scalability to multiple tasks is well founded, since training
these tasks often require hundreds or thousands of examples. But do end-to-end
approaches need to learn a unique model for every task? Intuitively, it seems
that sharing across tasks should help since all tasks require some common
understanding of the environment. In this paper, we attempt to take the next
step in data-driven end-to-end learning frameworks: move from the realm of
task-specific models to joint learning of multiple robot tasks. In an
astonishing result we show that models with multi-task learning tend to perform
better than task-specific models trained with same amounts of data. For
example, a deep-network learned with 2.5K grasp and 2.5K push examples performs
better on grasping than a network trained on 5K grasp examples.


title:
Incidences between points and lines on two- and three-dimensional
  varieties

abstract:
  Let $P$ be a set of $m$ points and $L$ a set of $n$ lines in $\mathbb R^4$,
such that the points of $P$ lie on an algebraic three-dimensional surface of
degree $D$ that does not contain hyperplane or quadric components, and no
2-flat contains more than $s$ lines of $L$. We show that the number of
incidences between $P$ and $L$ is $$ I(P,L) = O\left(m^{1/2}n^{1/2}D +
m^{2/3}n^{1/3}s^{1/3} + nD + m\right) , $$ for some absolute constant of
proportionality. This significantly improves the bound of the authors, for
arbitrary sets of points and lines in $\mathbb R^4$, when $D$ is not too large.
The same bound holds when the three-dimensional surface is embedded in any
higher dimensional space. For the proof of this bound, we revisit certain parts
of [Sharir-Solomon16], combined with the following new incidence bound. Let $P$
be a set of $m$ points and $L$ a set of $n$ lines in $\mathbb R^d$, for $d\ge
3$, which lie in a common two-dimensional algebraic surface of degree $D$
(assumed to be $\ll n^{1/2}$) that does not contain any 2-flat, so that no
2-flat contains more than $s$ lines of $L$ (here we require that the lines of
$L$ also be contained in the surface). Then the number of incidences between
$P$ and $L$ is $$ I(P,L) = O\left(m^{1/2}n^{1/2}D^{1/2} + m^{2/3}D^{2/3}s^{1/3}
+ m + n\right). $$ When $d=3$, this improves the bound of Guth and Katz for
this special case, when $D \ll n^{1/2}$. Moreover, the bound does not involve
the term $O(nD)$, that arises in most standard approaches, and its removal is a
significant aspect of our result. Finally, we also obtain (slightly weaker)
variants of both results over the complex field. For two-dimensional varieties,
the bound is as in the real case, with an added term of $O(D^3)$. For
three-dimensional varieties, the bound is as in the real case, with an added
term of $O(D^6)$.


title:
Hard Corrections in Precision QCD for LHC and FCC Physics: A New
  Approach

abstract:
  With an eye toward the usual unphysical divergence of hard fixed-order
corrections in predictions for the processes probed in high energy colliding
hadron beam devices as one approaches the soft limit, we present a new approach
to the realization of such corrections, with some emphasis on the LHC and the
future FCC devices. We show that the respective divergence is removed in our
approach. This means that we would render the standard results to be closer to
the observed exclusive distributions. While we stress that the approach has
general applicability, we use the single Z and virtual gamma production and
decay to lepton pairs as our prototypical example. Accordingly, our work opens
another part of the way to rigorous baselines for the determination of the
theoretical precision tags for LHC physics, with an attendant generalization to
the future FCC.


title:
Stance Classification in Rumours as a Sequential Task Exploiting the
  Tree Structure of Social Media Conversations

abstract:
  Rumour stance classification, the task that determines if each tweet in a
collection discussing a rumour is supporting, denying, questioning or simply
commenting on the rumour, has been attracting substantial interest. Here we
introduce a novel approach that makes use of the sequence of transitions
observed in tree-structured conversation threads in Twitter. The conversation
threads are formed by harvesting users' replies to one another, which results
in a nested tree-like structure. Previous work addressing the stance
classification task has treated each tweet as a separate unit. Here we analyse
tweets by virtue of their position in a sequence and test two sequential
classifiers, Linear-Chain CRF and Tree CRF, each of which makes different
assumptions about the conversational structure. We experiment with eight
Twitter datasets, collected during breaking news, and show that exploiting the
sequential structure of Twitter conversations achieves significant improvements
over the non-sequential methods. Our work is the first to model Twitter
conversations as a tree structure in this manner, introducing a novel way of
tackling NLP tasks on Twitter conversations.


title: Correlation induced out-of-phase plasmon in an electron liquid

abstract:
  We derive from first principles the existence of a low-frequency plasmon in a
strongly coupled three-dimensional homogeneous electron gas (HEG). From its
dispersion and its satisfaction of the 3rd frequency sum rule we identify it
with the conjectured magnetic excitation in the HEG. This excitation, is
maintained by the out-of-phase oscillations of the spin-up and spin-down
densities of the electron liquid, but governed solely by the Coulomb
interaction between the particles. The frequency square of this mode is
proportional to the overlap ($r=0$) (absolute) value of the spin-up/spin-down
correlation function, and thus slightly affected by, but not contingent upon
the degree of polarization of the electron liquid. We estimate the spectral
weight of the mode: it is expected to be governed by electron-electron
collision induced spin drag. The spectral weight is manifest in the partial
spin-resolved dynamical structure functions and it is proportional to the
product of the densities of the two spin components. An independent derivation
based on a generalized Feynman Ansatz corroborates our result. The relationship
to the recently identified "spin plasmon" excitation is discussed. It is
pointed out that a scattering experiment with polarized neutrons or polarized
X-rays may be possible avenues to observe equilibrium fluctuations associated
with these modes and also to provide information on the spin drag coefficient
in the HEG.


title: S-duality of boundary conditions and the Geometric Langlands program

abstract:
  Maximally supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions admits local
boundary conditions which preserve half of the bulk supersymmetries. The
S-duality of the bulk gauge theory can be extended in a natural fashion to act
on such half-BPS boundary conditions. The purpose of this note is to explain
the role these boundary conditions can play in the Geometric Langlands program.
In particular, we describe how to obtain pairs of Geometric Langland dual
objects from S-dual pairs of half-BPS boundary conditions.


title:
A tight analysis of Kierstead-Trotter algorithm for online unit interval
  coloring

abstract:
  Kierstead and Trotter (Congressus Numerantium 33, 1981) proved that their
algorithm is an optimal online algorithm for the online interval coloring
problem. In this paper, for online unit interval coloring, we show that the
number of colors used by the Kierstead-Trotter algorithm is at most $3
\omega(G) - 3$, where $\omega(G)$ is the size of the maximum clique in a given
graph $G$, and it is the best possible.


title:
IACHEC Cross-Calibration of Chandra, NuSTAR, Swift, Suzaku, and
  XMM-Newton with 3C 273 and PKS 2155-304

abstract:
  On behalf of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy
Calibration (IACHEC), we present results from the cross-calibration campaigns
in 2012 on 3C 273 and in 2013 on PKS 2155-304 between the then active X-ray
observatories Chandra, NuSTAR, Suzaku, Swift and XMM-Newton. We compare
measured fluxes between instrument pairs in two energy bands, 1-5 keV and 3-7
keV and calculate an average cross-normalization constant for each energy
range. We review known cross-calibration features and provide a series of
tables and figures to be used for evaluating cross-normalization constants
obtained from other observations with the above mentioned observatories.


title:
Smoothed estimating equations for instrumental variables quantile
  regression

abstract:
  The moment conditions or estimating equations for instrumental variables
quantile regression involve the discontinuous indicator function. We instead
use smoothed estimating equations (SEE), with bandwidth $h$. We show that the
mean squared error (MSE) of the vector of the SEE is minimized for some $h>0$,
leading to smaller asymptotic MSE of the estimating equations and associated
parameter estimators. The same MSE-optimal $h$ also minimizes the higher-order
type I error of a SEE-based $\chi^2$ test and increases size-adjusted power in
large samples. Computation of the SEE estimator also becomes simpler and more
reliable, especially with (more) endogenous regressors. Monte Carlo simulations
demonstrate all of these superior properties in finite samples, and we apply
our estimator to JTPA data. Smoothing the estimating equations is not just a
technical operation for establishing Edgeworth expansions and bootstrap
refinements; it also brings the real benefits of having more precise estimators
and more powerful tests. Code for the estimator, simulations, and empirical
examples is available from the first author's website.


title: Weakly Laskerian rings versus Noetherian rings

abstract:
  Let R be a commutative ring with identity. We investigate some ring-theoretic
properties of weakly Laskerian R-modules. Our results indicate that weakly
Laskerian rings behave as Noetherian ones in many respects. However, we provide
some examples to illustrate the strange behavior of these rings in some other
respects.


title:
Fractional order statistic approximation for nonparametric conditional
  quantile inference

abstract:
  Using and extending fractional order statistic theory, we characterize the
$O(n^{-1})$ coverage probability error of the previously proposed confidence
intervals for population quantiles using $L$-statistics as endpoints in Hutson
(1999). We derive an analytic expression for the $n^{-1}$ term, which may be
used to calibrate the nominal coverage level to get
$O\bigl(n^{-3/2}[\log(n)]^3\bigr)$ coverage error. Asymptotic power is shown to
be optimal. Using kernel smoothing, we propose a related method for
nonparametric inference on conditional quantiles. This new method compares
favorably with asymptotic normality and bootstrap methods in theory and in
simulations. Code is available from the second author's website for both
unconditional and conditional methods, simulations, and empirical examples.


title:
High-Resolution Directed Human Connectomes and the Consensus Connectome
  Dynamics

abstract:
  Here we show a method of directing the edges of the connectomes, prepared
from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) datasets from the human brain. Before the
present work, no high-definition directed braingraphs (or connectomes) were
published, because the tractography methods in use are not capable of assigning
directions to the neural tracts discovered. Previous work on the functional
connectomes applied low-resolution functional MRI-detected statistical
causality for the assignment of directions of connectomes of typically several
dozens of vertices. Our method is based on the phenomenon of the "Consensus
Connectome Dynamics" (CCD), described earlier by our research group. In this
contribution, we apply the method to the 423 braingraphs, each with 1015
vertices, computed from the public release of the Human Connectome Project, and
we also made the directed connectomes publicly available at the site
\url{http://braingraph.org}. We also show the robustness of our edge directing
method in four independently chosen connectome datasets: we have found that
86\% of the edges, which were present in all four datasets, get the very same
directions in all datasets; therefore the direction method is robust, it does
not depend on the particular choice of the dataset. We think that our present
contribution opens up new possibilities in the analysis of the high-definition
human connectome: from now on we can work with a robust assignment of
directions of the connections of the human brain.


title: Control of Charging of Electric Vehicles through Menu-Based Pricing

abstract:
  We propose an online pricing mechanism for electric vehicle (EV) charging. A
charging station decides prices for each arriving EV depending on the energy
and the time within which the EV will be served (i.e. deadline). The user
selects either one of the contracts by paying the prescribed price or rejects
all depending on their surpluses. The charging station can serve users using
renewable energy and conventional energy. Users may select longer deadlines as
they may have to pay less because of the less amount of conventional energy,
however, they have to wait a longer period. We consider a {\em myopic} charging
station and show that there exists a pricing mechanism which jointly maximizes
the social welfare and the profit of the charging station when the charging
station knows the utilities of the users. However, when the charging station
does not know the utilities of the users, the social welfare pricing strategy
may not maximize the expected profit of the charging station and even the
profit may be $0$. We propose a fixed profit pricing strategy which provides a
guaranteed fixed profit to the charging station and can maximize the profit in
practice. We empirically show that our proposed mechanism reduces the
peak-demand and utilizes the limited charging spots in a charging station
efficiently.


title:
Traces of intertwiners for quantum affine algebras and difference
  equations (after Etingof-Schiffmann-Varchenko)

abstract:
  We modify and give complete proofs for the results of
Etingof-Schiffmann-Varchenko on traces of intertwiners of untwisted quantum
affine algebras in the opposite coproduct and the standard grading. More
precisely, we show that certain normalized generalized traces for
$U_q(\hat{\mathfrak{g}})$ solve four commuting systems of q-difference
equations: the Macdonald-Ruijsenaars, dual Macdonald-Ruijsenaars, q-KZB, and
dual q-KZB equations. In addition, we show a symmetry property for these
renormalized trace functions. Our modifications are motivated by their
appearance in recent work of the author.


title:
A robust and efficient numerical method to compute the dynamics of the
  rotating two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates

abstract:
  In this paper, we propose a robust and efficient numerical method to compute
the dynamics of the rotating two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates
(BEC). Using the rotating Lagrangian coordinates transform \cite{BMTZ2013}, we
reformulate the original coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (CGPE) into new
equations where the rotating term vanishes and the potential becomes
time-dependent. A time-splitting Fourier pseudospectral method is proposed to
simulate the new equations where the nonlocal Dipole-Dipole Interactions (DDI)
are computed by a newly-developed Gaussian-sum (GauSum) solver \cite{EMZ2015}
which helps achieve spectral accuracy in space within $O(N\log N)$ operations
($N$ is the total number of grid points). The new method is spectrally accurate
in space and second order accurate in time, and the accuracies are confirmed
numerically. Dynamical properties of some physical quantities, including the
total mass, energy, center of mass and angular momentum expectation, are
presented and confirmed numerically. Interesting dynamics phenomena that are
peculiar to the rotating two-component dipolar BECs, such as dynamics of center
of mass, quantized vortex lattices dynamics and the collapse dynamics of 3D
cases, are presented.


title: Continuous vs discrete spins in the hyperbolic plane

abstract:
  We study the $O(n)$ model on graphs quasi-isometric to the hyperbolic plane,
with free boundary conditions. We observe that the pair correlations decay
exponentially with distance, for all temperatures, if and only if $n>1$.


title:
Flux-driven Josephson parametric amplifiers: Hysteretic flux response
  and nondegenerate gain measurements

abstract:
  Josephson parametric amplifiers (JPA) have become key devices in quantum
science and technology with superconducting circuits. In particular, they can
be utilized as quantum-limited amplifiers or as a source of squeezed microwave
fields. Here, we report on the detailed measurements of five flux-driven JPAs,
three of them exhibiting a hysteretic dependence of the resonant frequency
versus the applied magnetic flux. We model the measured characteristics by
numerical simulations based on the two-dimensional potential landscape of the
dc superconducting quantum interference devices (dc-SQUID), which provide the
JPA nonlinearity, for a finite screening parameter $\beta_\mathrm{L}\,{>}\,0$
and demonstrate excellent agreement between the numerical results and the
experimental data. Furthermore, we study the nondegenerate response of
different JPAs and accurately describe the experimental results with our
theory.


title:
Operations on Arc Diagrams and Degenerations for Invariant Subspaces of
  Linear Operators. Part II

abstract:
  For a partition $\beta$, denote by $N_\beta$ the nilpotent linear operator of
Jordan type $\beta$. Given partitions $\beta$, $\gamma$, we investigate the
representation space ${}_2{\mathbb V}_{\gamma}^\beta$ of all short exact
sequences $$ \mathcal E: 0\to N_\alpha \to N_\beta \to N_\gamma \to 0$$ where
$\alpha$ is any partition with each part at most 2. Due to the condition on
$\alpha$, the isomorphism type of a sequence $\mathcal E$ is given by an arc
diagram $\Delta$; denote by ${\mathbb V}_\Delta$ the subset of ${}_2{\mathbb
V}_{\gamma}^\beta$ of all sequences isomorphic to $\mathcal E$.
  Thus, the space ${}_2{\mathbb V}_{\gamma}^\beta$ carries a stratification
given by the subsets of type ${\mathbb V}_\Delta$. We compute the dimension of
each stratum and show that the boundary of a stratum ${\mathbb V}_\Delta$
consists exactly of those ${\mathbb V}_{\Delta'}$ where $\Delta'$ is obtained
from $\Delta$ by a non-empty sequence of arc moves of five possible types {\bf
(A) -- (E)}.
  The case where all three partitions are fixed has been studied in [3] and
[4]. There, arc moves of types {\bf (A) -- (D)} suffice to describe the
boundary of a ${\mathbb V}_\Delta$ in ${\mathbb V}_{\alpha,\gamma}^\beta$. Our
fifth move {\bf (E)}, "explosion", is needed to break up an arc into two poles
to allow for changes in the partition $\alpha$.


title:
A Moving Target Approach for Identifying Malicious Sensors in Control
  Systems

abstract:
  In this paper, we consider the problem of attack identification in
cyber-physical systems (CPS). Attack identification is often critical for the
recovery and performance of a CPS that is targeted by malicious entities,
allowing defenders to construct algorithms which bypass harmful nodes. Previous
work has characterized limitations in the perfect identification of adversarial
attacks on deterministic LTI systems. For instance, a system must remain
observable after removing any 2q sensors to only identify q attacks. However,
the ability for an attacker to create an unidentifiable attack requires
knowledge of the system model. In this paper, we aim to limit the adversary's
knowledge of the system model with the goal of accurately identifying all
sensor attacks. Such a scheme will allow systems to withstand larger attacks or
system operators to allocate fewer sensing devices to a control system while
maintaining security. We explore how changing the dynamics of the system as a
function of time allows us to actively identify malicious/faulty sensors in a
control system. We discuss the design of time varying system matrices to meet
this goal and evaluate performance in deterministic and stochastic systems.


title: Lensing smoothing of BAO wiggles

abstract:
  We study non-perturbatively the effect of the deflection angle on the BAO
wiggles of the matter power spectrum in real space. We show that from redshift
z~2 this introduces a dispersion of roughly 1 Mpc at BAO scale, which
corresponds approximately to a 1% effect. The lensing effect induced by the
deflection angle, which is completely geometrical and survey independent,
smears out the BAO wiggles. The effect on the power spectrum amplitude at BAO
scale is about 0.1% for z~2 and 0.2% for z~4. We compare the smoothing effects
induced by the lensing potential and non-linear structure formation, showing
that the two effects become comparable at z~4, while the lensing effect
dominates for sources at higher redshifts. We note that this effect is not
accounted through BAO reconstruction techniques.


title: Kaluza-Klein cosmology from five-dimensional Lovelock-Cartan theory

abstract:
  We study the Kaluza-Klein dimensional reduction of the Lovelock-Cartan theory
in five-dimensional spacetime, with a compact dimension of $S^1$ topology. We
find cosmological solutions of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker class in the
reduced spacetime. The torsion and the fields arising from the dimensional
reduction induce a nonvanishing energy-momentum tensor in four dimensions. We
find solutions describing expanding, contracting and bouncing universes. The
model shows a dynamical compactification of the extra dimension in some regions
of the parameter space.


title: Uniqueness of grim hyperplanes for mean curvature flows

abstract:
  In this paper we show that an immersed nontrivial translating soliton for
mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$($n=2,3)$ is a grim hyperplane if and
only if it is mean convex and has weighted total extrinsic curvature of at most
quadratic growth. For an embedded translating soliton $\Sigma$ with nonnegative
scalar curvature, we prove that if the mean curvature of $\Sigma$ does not
change signs on each end, then $\Sigma$ must have positive scalar curvature
unless it is either a hyperplane or a grim hyperplane.


title: Quantum Tokens for Digital Signatures

abstract:
  The fisherman caught a quantum fish. "Fisherman, please let me go", begged
the fish, "and I will grant you three wishes". The fisherman agreed. The fish
gave the fisherman a quantum computer, three quantum signing tokens and his
classical public key. The fish explained: "to sign your three wishes, use the
tokenized signature scheme on this quantum computer, then show your valid
signature to the king, who owes me a favor".
  The fisherman used one of the signing tokens to sign the document "give me a
castle!" and rushed to the palace. The king executed the classical verification
algorithm using the fish's public key, and since it was valid, the king
complied.
  The fisherman's wife wanted to sign ten wishes using their two remaining
signing tokens. The fisherman did not want to cheat, and secretly sailed to
meet the fish. "Fish, my wife wants to sign ten more wishes". But the fish was
not worried: "I have learned quantum cryptography following the previous story
(The Fisherman and His Wife by the brothers Grimm). The quantum tokens are
consumed during the signing. Your polynomial wife cannot even sign four wishes
using the three signing tokens I gave you".
  "How does it work?" wondered the fisherman. "Have you heard of quantum money?
These are quantum states which can be easily verified but are hard to copy.
This tokenized quantum signature scheme extends Aaronson and Christiano's
quantum money scheme, which is why the signing tokens cannot be copied".
  "Does your scheme have additional fancy properties?" the fisherman asked.
"Yes, the scheme has other security guarantees: revocability, testability and
everlasting security. Furthermore, if you're at sea and your quantum phone has
only classical reception, you can use this scheme to transfer the value of the
quantum money to shore", said the fish, and swam away.


title: Flatness implies smoothness for solutions of the porous medium equation

abstract:
  One of the major problems in the theory of the porous medium equation is the
regularity of the solutions and the free boundaries. Here we assume flatness of
the solution in space time cylinder and derive smoothness of the interface
after a small time, as well as smoothness of the solution in the positivity set
and up to the free boundary for some time interval. We use these facts to prove
the following eventual regularity result: solutions with compactly supported
initial data are smooth after a finite time T that depends on mass and the size
of the initial support.
  This result eliminates the condition of non-degeneracy on the initial data
that has been carried on for decades in the literature.


title: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Tensegrity Robot Locomotion

abstract:
  Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid rods connected by elastic cables, have a
number of unique properties that make them appealing for use as planetary
exploration rovers. However, control of tensegrity robots remains a difficult
problem due to their unusual structures and complex dynamics. In this work, we
show how locomotion gaits can be learned automatically using a novel extension
of mirror descent guided policy search (MDGPS) applied to periodic locomotion
movements, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on tensegrity
robot locomotion. We evaluate our method with real-world and simulated
experiments on the SUPERball tensegrity robot, showing that the learned
policies generalize to changes in system parameters, unreliable sensor
measurements, and variation in environmental conditions, including varied
terrains and a range of different gravities. Our experiments demonstrate that
our method not only learns fast, power-efficient feedback policies for rolling
gaits, but that these policies can succeed with only the limited onboard
sensing provided by SUPERball's accelerometers. We compare the learned feedback
policies to learned open-loop policies and hand-engineered controllers, and
demonstrate that the learned policy enables the first continuous, reliable
locomotion gait for the real SUPERball robot. Our code and other supplementary
materials are available from http://rll.berkeley.edu/drl_tensegrity


title:
Partition function of $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theory and
  two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory

abstract:
  We study four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric $U(N)$ gauge theory
with $2N$ fundamental hypermultiplets in the self-dual $\Omega$-background. The
partition function simplifies at special points of the parameter space and is
related to the partition function of two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory on
$S^{2}$. We also consider the insertion of a Wilson loop operator in
two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory and find the corresponding operator in the
four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theory.


title:
Estimating transmission from genetic and epidemiological data: a metric
  to compare transmission trees

abstract:
  Reconstructing who infected whom is a central challenge in analysing
epidemiological data. Recently, advances in sequencing technology have led to
increasing interest in Bayesian approaches to inferring who infected whom using
genetic data from pathogens. The logic behind such approaches is that isolates
that are nearly genetically identical are more likely to have been recently
transmitted than those that are very different. A number of methods have been
developed to perform this inference. However, testing their convergence,
examining posterior sets of transmission trees and comparing methods'
performance are challenged by the fact that the object of inference - the
transmission tree - is a complicated discrete structure. We introduce a metric
on transmission trees to quantify distances between them. The metric can
accommodate trees with unsampled individuals, and highlights differences in the
source case and in the number of infections per infector. We illustrate its
performance on simple simulated scenarios and on posterior transmission trees
from a TB outbreak. We find that the metric reveals where the posterior is
sensitive to the priors, and where collections of trees are composed of
distinct clusters. We use the metric to define median trees summarising these
clusters. Quantitative tools to compare transmission trees to each other will
be required for assessing MCMC convergence, exploring posterior trees and
benchmarking diverse methods as this field continues to mature.


title: Local Kesten--McKay law for random regular graphs

abstract:
  We study the adjacency matrices of random $d$-regular graphs with large but
fixed degree $d$. In the bulk of the spectrum $[-2\sqrt{d-1}+\varepsilon,
2\sqrt{d-1}-\varepsilon]$ down to the optimal spectral scale, we prove that the
Green's functions can be approximated by those of certain infinite tree-like
(few cycles) graphs that depend only on the local structure of the original
graphs. This result implies that the Kesten--McKay law holds for the spectral
density down to the smallest scale and the complete delocalization of bulk
eigenvectors. Our method is based on estimating the Green's function of the
adjacency matrices and a resampling of the boundary edges of large balls in the
graphs.


title:
Supersolid formation in a quantum gas breaking continuous translational
  symmetry

abstract:
  The concept of a supersolid state is paradoxical. It combines the
crystallization of a many-body system with dissipationless flow of the atoms it
is built of. This quantum phase requires the breaking of two continuous
symmetries, the phase invariance of a superfluid and the continuous
translational invariance to form the crystal,. Proposed for helium almost 50
years ago, experimental verification of supersolidity remains elusive. A
variant with only discrete translational symmetry breaking on a preimposed
lattice structure, the `lattice supersolid', has been realized based on
self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). However, lattice
supersolids do not feature the continuous ground state degeneracy that
characterizes the supersolid state as originally proposed. Here we report the
realization of a supersolid with continuous translational symmetry breaking.
The continuous symmetry emerges from two discrete spatial ones by symmetrically
coupling a BEC to the modes of two optical cavities. We establish the phase
coherence of the supersolid and find a high ground-state degeneracy by
measuring the crystal position over many realizations through the light fields
leaking from the cavities. These light fields are also used to monitor the
position fluctuations in real-time. Our concept provides a route to creating
and studying glassy many-body systems with contrallably lifted ground-state
degeneracies, such as supersolids in the presence of disorder.


title: Anomalous transport from holography: Part II

abstract:
  This is a second study of chiral anomaly induced transport within a
holographic model consisting of anomalous $U(1)_V\times U(1)_A$ Maxwell theory
in Schwarzschild-$AdS_5$ spacetime. In the first part, chiral
magnetic/separation effects (CME/CSE) are considered in presence of a static
spatially-inhomogeneous external magnetic field. Gradient corrections to
CME/CSE are analytically evaluated up to third order in the derivative
expansion. Some of the third order gradient corrections lead to an
anomaly-induced negative $B^2$-correction to the diffusion constant. We also
find non-linear in $B$ modifications to the chiral magnetic wave (CMW). In the
second part, we focus on the experimentally interesting case of the axial
chemical potential being induced dynamically by a constant magnetic and
time-dependent electric fields. Constitutive relations for the vector/axial
currents are computed employing two different approximations: (a) derivative
expansion (up to third order) but fully nonlinear in the external fields, and
(b) weak electric field limit but resuming all orders in the derivative
expansion. A non-vanishing non-linear axial current (CSE) is found in the first
case. Dependence on magnetic field and frequency of linear transport
coefficient functions (TCFs) is explored in the second.


title:
Skyrme model study of proton and neutron properties in a strong magnetic
  field

abstract:
  The proton and neutron properties in a uniform magnetic field are
investigated. The Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula is shown to be satisfied for
baryon states. It is found that with increasing magnetic field strength, the
proton mass first decreases and then increases, while the neutron mass always
increases. The ratio between magnetic moment of proton and neutron increases
with the increase of the magnetic field strength. With increasing magnetic
field strength, the size of proton first increases and then decreases, while
the size of neutron always decreases. The present analyse implies that in the
core part of the magnetar, the equation of state depend on the magnetic field,
which modifies the mass limit of the magnetar.


title:
On side lengths of corners in positive density subsets of the Euclidean
  space

abstract:
  We generalize a result by Cook, Magyar, and Pramanik [3] on three-term
arithmetic progressions in subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d$ to corners in subsets of
$\mathbb{R}^d\times\mathbb{R}^d$. More precisely, if $1<p<\infty$, $p\neq 2$,
and $d$ is large enough, we show that an arbitrary measurable set
$A\subseteq\mathbb{R}^d\times\mathbb{R}^d$ of positive upper Banach density
contains corners $(x,y)$, $(x+s,y)$, $(x,y+s)$ such that the $\ell^p$-norm of
the side $s$ attains all sufficiently large real values. Even though we closely
follow the basic steps from [3], the proof diverges at the part relying on
harmonic analysis. We need to apply a higher-dimensional variant of a
multilinear estimate from [5], which we establish using the techniques from [5]
and [6].


title:
Counting rational points on quartic del Pezzo surfaces with a rational
  conic

abstract:
  Upper and lower bounds, of the expected order of magnitude, are obtained for
the number of rational points of bounded height on any quartic del Pezzo
surface over $\mathbb{Q}$ that contains a conic defined over $\mathbb{Q}$.


title:
A Simple, Fast and Highly-Accurate Algorithm to Recover 3D Shape from 2D
  Landmarks on a Single Image

abstract:
  Three-dimensional shape reconstruction of 2D landmark points on a single
image is a hallmark of human vision, but is a task that has been proven
difficult for computer vision algorithms. We define a feed-forward deep neural
network algorithm that can reconstruct 3D shapes from 2D landmark points almost
perfectly (i.e., with extremely small reconstruction errors), even when these
2D landmarks are from a single image. Our experimental results show an
improvement of up to two-fold over state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms;
3D shape reconstruction of human faces is given at a reconstruction error <
.004, cars at .0022, human bodies at .022, and highly-deformable flags at an
error of .0004. Our algorithm was also a top performer at the 2016 3D Face
Alignment in the Wild Challenge competition (done in conjunction with the
European Conference on Computer Vision, ECCV) that required the reconstruction
of 3D face shape from a single image. The derived algorithm can be trained in a
couple hours and testing runs at more than 1, 000 frames/s on an i7 desktop. We
also present an innovative data augmentation approach that allows us to train
the system efficiently with small number of samples. And the system is robust
to noise (e.g., imprecise landmark points) and missing data (e.g., occluded or
undetected landmark points).


title:
Training recurrent networks to generate hypotheses about how the brain
  solves hard navigation problems

abstract:
  Self-localization during navigation with noisy sensors in an ambiguous world
is computationally challenging, yet animals and humans excel at it. In
robotics, Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms solve this
problem though joint sequential probabilistic inference of their own
coordinates and those of external spatial landmarks. We generate the first
neural solution to the SLAM problem by training recurrent LSTM networks to
perform a set of hard 2D navigation tasks that include generalization to
completely novel trajectories and environments. The hidden unit representations
exhibit several key properties of hippocampal place cells, including stable
tuning curves that remap between environments. Our result is also a proof of
concept for end-to-end-learning of a SLAM algorithm using recurrent networks,
and a demonstration of why this approach may have some advantages for robotic
SLAM.


title: Machine Learning Topological States

abstract:
  Artificial neural networks and machine learning have now reached a new era
after several decades of improvement where applications are to explode in many
fields of science, industry, and technology. Here, we use artificial neural
networks to study an intriguing phenomenon in quantum physics--- the
topological phases of matter. We find that certain topological states, either
symmetry-protected or with intrinsic topological order, can be represented with
classical artificial neural networks. This is demonstrated by using three
concrete spin systems, the one-dimensional (1D) symmetry-protected topological
cluster state and the 2D and 3D toric code states with intrinsic topological
orders. For all three cases we show rigorously that the topological ground
states can be represented by short-range neural networks in an \textit{exact}
and \textit{efficient} fashion---the required number of hidden neurons is as
small as the number of physical spins and the number of parameters scales only
\textit{linearly} with the system size. For the 2D toric-code model, we find
that the proposed short-range neural networks can describe the excited states
with abelain anyons and their nontrivial mutual statistics as well. In
addition, by using reinforcement learning we show that neural networks are
capable of finding the topological ground states of non-integrable Hamiltonians
with strong interactions and studying their topological phase transitions. Our
results demonstrate explicitly the exceptional power of neural networks in
describing topological quantum states, and at the same time provide valuable
guidance to machine learning of topological phases in generic lattice models.

categories: cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.str-el quant-ph


title: Three-dimensional N=4 Linear Quivers and non-Abelian T-duals

abstract:
  In this paper we construct a new Type IIB background with an $AdS_4$ factor
that preserves ${\cal N}=4$ Supersymmetry. This solution is obtained using a
non-Abelian T-duality transformation on the Type IIA reduction of the
$AdS_4\times S^7$ background. We interpret our configuration as a patch of a
more general background with localised sources, dual to the renormalisation
fixed point of a $T_{\rho}^{\hat{\rho}} (SU(N))$ quiver field theory. This
relates explicitly the $AdS_4$ geometry to a D3-D5-NS5 brane intersection,
illuminating what seems to be a more general phenomenon, relating $AdS_{p+1}$
backgrounds generated by non-Abelian T-duality to Dp-D(p+2)-NS5 branes
intersections.


title:
A Study on Altering PostgreSQL from Multi-Processes Structure to
  Multi-Threads Structure

abstract:
  How to altering PostgreSQL database from multi-processes structure to
multi-threads structure is a difficult problem. In the paper, we bring forward
a comprehensive alteration scheme. Especially, put rational methods to account
for three difficult points: semaphores, signal processing and global variables.
At last, applied the scheme successfully to modify a famous open source DBMS.


title:
Interlayer Pairing Symmetry of Composite Fermions in Quantum Hall
  Bilayers

abstract:
  We study the pairing symmetry of the interlayer paired state of composite
fermions in quantum Hall bilayers. Based on the Halperin-Lee-Read (HLR) theory,
the effect of the long-range Coulomb interaction and the internal Chern-Simons
gauge fluctuation is analyzed with the random-phase approximation beyond the
leading order contribution in small momentum expansion, and we observe that the
interlayer paired states with a relative angular momentum $l=+1$ are
energetically favored for filling $\nu=\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{2}$ and
$\frac{1}{4}+\frac{1}{4}$. The degeneracy between states with $\pm l$ is lifted
by the interlayer density-current interaction arising from the interplay of the
long-range Coulomb interaction and the Chern-Simons term in the HLR theory.


title:
Plastic scintillation detectors for precision time-of-flight
  measurements of relativistic heavy ions

abstract:
  Plastic scintillation detectors for Time-of-Flight (TOF) measurements are
almost essential for event-by-event identification of relativistic rare
isotopes. In this work, a pair of plastic scintillation detectors of 50
$\times$ 50 $\times$ 3$^{t}$ mm$^3$ and 80 $\times$ 100 $\times$ 3$^{t}$ mm$^3$
have been set up at the external target facility (ETF), Institute of Modern
Physics. Their time, energy and position responses are measured with $^{18}$O
primary beam at 400 MeV/nucleon. After the off-line walk-effect and position
corrections, the time resolution of the two detectors are determined to be 27
ps ($\sigma$) and 36 ps ($\sigma$), respectively. Both detectors have nearly
the same energy resolution of 3$\%$ ($\sigma$) and position resolution of 2 mm
($\sigma$). The detectors have been used successfully in nuclear reaction cross
section measurements, and will be be employed for upgrading RIBLL2 beam line at
IMP as well as for the high energy branch at HIAF.


title:
Better Data Visibility & Data Use Result in Lower Cost and Improved
  Performance in Medicine Supply Chains

abstract:
  In 2013-2014, Tanzania embarked on a major revamp of the management of its
public health supply chains for medicines and other health supplies. These
upgrades include the establishment of a national electronic logistics
management information system (eLMIS) and the introduction of a Logistics
Management Unit (LMU) to use the eLMIS for managing all key public health
commodities. This paper describes results from the "round one" evaluation of
the impact of those key management upgrades roughly one year after their
introduction. The study has three main components: (1) analysis of reporting,
data use, management practices, and supply chain outcomes; (2) a cost and
cost-effectiveness analysis and (3) a return on investment analysis to measure
savings generated by the new systems. The study used a non-experimental pre-
and post-design to compare the previous system with the upgraded management
system. The quantitative analysis found that stock out rates for all product
goods dropped from 32% to 23%, with the frequency of stock-outs greater than 7
days dropping from 24% to 15%. Annual supply chain costs increased from
$66million to $76million. Performance improved from the 2014 baseline findings
of 68% to 77%, but cost per value of commodities adjusted for performance
decreased from 58% at baseline to 50% in year 1.


title: Refugee Resettlement Housing Scout

abstract:
  According to the United States High Commission for Refugees (UNHCr), there
are 65.3 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, 21.5 million of
them being refugees. This has led to an unprecedented refugee crisis which has
led countries to accept refugee families and to resettle them. Diverse agencies
are helping refugees coming to US to resettle and start their new life in the
country. One of the first and most challenging steps of this process is to find
affordable housing that also meets a suite of additional constraints and
priorities. These include being within a mile of public transportation and near
schools, faith centers and international grocery stores. We detail an
interactive data-driven web-based tool, which incorporates in one consolidated
platform most of the needed information. The tool searches, filters and
demonstrates a list of possible housing locations, and allows for the dynamic
prioritization based on user-specified importance weights on the diverse
criteria. The platform was created in a partnership with New American Pathways,
a nonprofit that supports refugee resettlement in the metro Atlanta, but
exemplifies a methodology that can help many other organizations with similar
goals.


title: Using Big Data to Decode Private Sector Wage Growth

abstract:
  The U.S. labor market is dynamic and complex, and understanding wage data
across different segments of the workforce is critical to providing
policymakers and business leaders with actionable insights. There is no labor
index that assesses the labor market performance at such a detailed level as
the ADP Research Institute's Workforce Vitality Report (WVR). Drawing on the
actual, aggregated and anonymous payroll data of 24 million Americans paid by
ADP, the WVR looks at key dynamics and market indicators including wage growth,
hours worked and turnover rate. Unlike other data sets, the WVR calculates wage
growth of individual workers on a quarter-to-quarter basis, avoiding the
deviations caused by various workplace occurrences, like when new workers are
hired and older ones retire. In this paper, Dr. Ahu Yildirmaz, head of the ADP
Research Institute, drills down into wage growth by industry, age, gender and
income level, as well as for both job holders and job switchers. Using WVR
data, Ahu walks through those factors contributing to overall shifts in wage
growth, the future of the labor market and what this data means for today's
U.S. workforce.


title: Graph partitioning and a componentwise PageRank algorithm

abstract:
  In this article we will present a graph partitioning algorithm which
partitions a graph into two different types of components: the well-known
`strongly connected components' as well as another type of components we call
`connected acyclic component'. We will give an algorithm based on Tarjan's
algorithm for finding strongly connected components used to find such a
partitioning. We will also show that the partitioning given by the algorithm is
unique and that the underlying graph can be represented as a directed acyclic
graph (similar to a pure strongly connected component partitioning).
  In the second part we will show how such an partitioning of a graph can be
used to calculate PageRank of a graph effectively by calculating PageRank for
different components on the same `level' in parallel as well as allowing for
the use of different types of PageRank algorithms for different types of
components.
  To evaluate the method we have calculated PageRank on four large example
graphs and compared it with a basic approach, as well as our algorithm in a
serial as well as parallel implementation.


title: Testing the low scale seesaw and leptogenesis

abstract:
  Heavy neutrinos with masses below the electroweak scale can simultaneously
generate the light neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism and the baryon
asymmetry of the universe via leptogenesis. The requirement to explain these
phenomena imposes constraints on the mass spectrum of the heavy neutrinos,
their flavour mixing pattern and their $CP$ properties. We first combine bounds
from different experiments in the past to map the viable parameter regions in
which the minimal low scale seesaw model can explain the observed neutrino
oscillations, while being consistent with the negative results of past searches
for physics beyond the Standard Model. We then study which additional
predictions for the properties of the heavy neutrinos can be made based on the
requirement to explain the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe. Finally,
we comment on the perspectives to find traces of heavy neutrinos in future
experimental searches at the LHC, NA62, BELLE II, T2K, SHiP or a future high
energy collider, such as ILC, CEPC or FCC-ee. If any heavy neutral leptons are
discovered in the future, our results can be used to assess whether these
particles are indeed the common origin of the light neutrino masses and the
baryon asymmetry of the universe. If the magnitude of their couplings to all
Standard Model flavours can be measured individually, and if the Dirac phase in
the lepton mixing matrix is determined in neutrino oscillation experiments,
then all model parameters can in principle be determined from this data. This
makes the low scale seesaw a fully testable model of neutrino masses and
baryogenesis.


title:
Bayesian Evolution Models for Jupiter with Helium Rain and
  Double-diffusive Convection

abstract:
  Hydrogen and helium demix when sufficiently cool, and this bears on the
evolution of all giant planets at large separations at or below roughly a
Jupiter mass. We model the thermal evolution of Jupiter, including its evolving
helium distribution following results of ab initio simulations for helium
immiscibility in metallic hydrogen. After 4 Gyr of homogeneous evolution,
differentiation establishes a thin helium gradient below 1 Mbar that
dynamically stabilizes the fluid to convection. The region undergoes overstable
double-diffusive convection (ODDC), whose weak heat transport maintains a
superadiabatic temperature gradient. With a generic parameterization for the
ODDC efficiency, the models can reconcile Jupiter's intrinsic flux, atmospheric
helium content, and radius at the age of the solar system if the Lorenzen et
al. H-He phase diagram is translated to lower temperatures. We cast the
evolutionary models in an MCMC framework to explore tens of thousands of
evolutionary sequences, retrieving probability distributions for the total
heavy element mass, the superadiabaticity of the temperature gradient due to
ODDC, and the phase diagram perturbation. The adopted SCvH-I equation of state
favors inefficient ODDC such that a thermal boundary layer is formed, allowing
the molecular envelope to cool rapidly while the deeper interior actually heats
up over time. If the overall cooling time is modulated with an additional free
parameter to imitate the effect of a colder or warmer EOS, the models favor
those that are colder than SCvH-I. In this case the superadiabaticity is modest
and a warming or cooling deep interior are equally likely.


title:
How much can we trust high-resolution spectroscopic stellar chemical
  abundances?

abstract:
  To study stellar populations, it is common to combine chemical abundances
from different spectroscopic surveys/studies where different setups were used.
These inhomogeneities can lead us to inaccurate scientific conclusions. In this
work, we studied one aspect of the problem: When deriving chemical abundances
from high-resolution stellar spectra, what differences originate from the use
of different radiative transfer codes?


title: Light Weakly Coupled Axial Forces: Models, Constraints, and Projections

abstract:
  We investigate the landscape of constraints on MeV-GeV scale, hidden U(1)
forces with nonzero axial-vector couplings to Standard Model fermions. While
the purely vector-coupled dark photon, which may arise from kinetic mixing, is
a well-motivated scenario, several MeV-scale anomalies motivate a theory with
axial couplings which can be UV-completed consistent with Standard Model gauge
invariance. Moreover, existing constraints on dark photons depend on products
of various combinations of axial and vector couplings, making it difficult to
isolate the effects of axial couplings for particular flavors of SM fermions.
We present a representative renormalizable, UV-complete model of a dark photon
with adjustable axial and vector couplings, discuss its general features, and
show how some UV constraints may be relaxed in a model with nonrenormalizable
Yukawa couplings at the expense of fine-tuning. We survey the existing
parameter space and the projected reach of planned experiments, briefly
commenting on the relevance of the allowed parameter space to low-energy
anomalies in pi^0 and 8-Be* decay.


title:
Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector:
  Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129
  Galaxies in the Local Universe

abstract:
  Broadband photometry of galaxies measures an unresolved mix of complex
stellar populations, gas, and dust. Interpreting these data is a challenge for
models: many studies have shown that properties derived from modeling galaxy
photometry are uncertain by a factor of two or more, and yet answering key
questions in the field now requires higher accuracy than this. Here, we present
a new model framework specifically designed for these complexities. Our model,
Prospector-$\alpha$, includes dust attenuation and re-radiation, a flexible
attenuation curve, nebular emission, stellar metallicity, and a 6-component
nonparametric star formation history. The flexibility and range of the
parameter space, coupled with MCMC sampling within the Prospector inference
framework, is designed to provide unbiased parameters and realistic error bars.
We assess the accuracy of the model with aperture-matched optical spectroscopy,
which was excluded from the fits. We compare spectral features predicted solely
from fits to the broadband photometry to the observed spectral features. Our
model predicts H$\alpha$ luminosities with a scatter of $\sim$0.18 dex and an
offset of $\sim$0.1 dex across a wide range of morphological types and stellar
masses. This agreement is remarkable, as the H$\alpha$ luminosity is dependent
on accurate star formation rates, dust attenuation, and stellar metallicities.
The model also accurately predicts dust-sensitive Balmer decrements,
spectroscopic stellar metallicities, PAH mass fractions, and the age- and
metallicity-sensitive features D$_{\mathrm{n}}$4000 and H$\delta$. Although the
model passes all these tests, we caution that we have not yet assessed its
performance at higher redshift or the accuracy of recovered stellar masses.


title:
Evidence for the Direct Detection of the Thermal Spectrum of the
  Non-Transiting Hot Gas Giant HD 88133 b

abstract:
  We target the thermal emission spectrum of the non-transiting gas giant HD
88133 b with high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy, by treating the planet
and its host star as a spectroscopic binary. For sufficiently deep summed flux
observations of the star and planet across multiple epochs, it is possible to
resolve the signal of the hot gas giant's atmosphere compared to the brighter
stellar spectrum, at a level consistent with the aggregate shot noise of the
full data set. To do this, we first perform a principal component analysis to
remove the contribution of the Earth's atmosphere to the observed spectra.
Then, we use a cross-correlation analysis to tease out the spectra of the host
star and HD 88133 b to determine its orbit and identify key sources of
atmospheric opacity. In total, six epochs of Keck NIRSPEC L band observations
and three epochs of Keck NIRSPEC K band observations of the HD 88133 system
were obtained. Based on an analysis of the maximum likelihood curves calculated
from the multi-epoch cross correlation of the full data set with two
atmospheric models, we report the direct detection of the emission spectrum of
the non-transiting exoplanet HD 88133 b and measure a radial projection of the
Keplerian orbital velocity of 40 $\pm$ 15 km/s, a true mass of
1.02$^{+0.61}_{-0.28}M_J$, a nearly face-on orbital inclination of
15${^{+6}_{-5}}^{\circ}$, and an atmosphere opacity structure at high
dispersion dominated by water vapor. This, combined with eleven years of radial
velocity measurements of the system, provides the most up-to-date ephemeris for
HD 88133.


title:
The Pale Green Dot: A Method to Characterize Proxima Centauri b using
  Exo-Aurorae

abstract:
  We examine the feasibility of detecting auroral emission from the potentially
habitable exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. Detection of aurorae would yield an
independent confirmation of the planet's existence, constrain the presence and
composition of its atmosphere, and determine the planet's eccentricity and
inclination, thereby breaking the mass-inclination degeneracy. If Proxima
Centauri b is a terrestrial world with an Earth-like atmosphere and magnetic
field, we estimate the power at the 5577\AA\ OI auroral line is on the order of
0.1 TW under steady-state stellar wind, or ${\sim} 100 {\times}$ stronger than
that on Earth. This corresponds to a planet-star contrast ratio of
$10^{-6}-10^{-7}$ in a narrow band about the 5577\AA\ line, although higher
contrast ($10^{-4}-10^{-5}$) may be possible during periods of strong
magnetospheric disturbance (auroral power $1-10$ TW). We searched the Proxima
Centauri b HARPS data for the 5577\AA\ line and for other prominent oxygen and
nitrogen lines, but find no signal, indicating that the OI auroral line
contrast must be lower than $2\times 10^{-2}$ (with power $\lesssim$ 3,000 TW),
consistent with our predictions. We find that observations of 0.1 TW auroral
emission lines are likely infeasible with current and planned telescopes.
However, future observations with a space-based coronagraphic telescope or a
ground-based extremely large telescope (ELT) with a coronagraph could push
sensitivity down to terawatt oxygen aurorae (contrast $7\times 10^{-6}$) with
exposure times of ${\sim} 1$ day. If a coronagraph design contrast of $10^{-7}$
can be achieved with negligible instrumental noise, a future concept ELT could
observe steady-state auroral emission in a few nights.


title: The Space Weather of Proxima Centauri b

abstract:
  A planet orbiting in the "habitable zone" of our closest neighboring star,
Proxima Centauri, has recently been discovered, and the next natural question
is whether or not Proxima b is "habitable". Stellar winds are likely a source
of atmospheric erosion that could be particularly severe in the case of M dwarf
habitable zone planets that reside close to their parent star. Here we study
the stellar wind conditions that Proxima b experiences over its orbit. We
construct 3-D MHD models of the wind and magnetic field around Proxima Centauri
using a surface magnetic field map for a star of the same spectral type and
scaled to match the observed ~ 600 G surface magnetic field strength of
Proxima. We examine the wind conditions and dynamic pressure over different
plausible orbits that sample the constrained parameters of the orbit of Proxima
b. For all the parameter space explored, the planet is subject to stellar wind
pressures of more than 2000 times those experienced by Earth from the solar
wind. During an orbit, Proxima b is also subject to pressure changes of 1 to 3
orders of magnitude on timescales of a day. Its magnetopause standoff distance
consequently undergoes sudden and periodic changes by a factor of 2 to 5.
Proxima b will traverse the interplanetary current sheet twice each orbit, and
likely crosses into regions of subsonic wind quite frequently. These effects
should be taken into account in any physically realistic assessment or
prediction of its atmospheric reservoir, characteristics and loss.


title:
Radio frequency interference mitigation using deep convolutional neural
  networks

abstract:
  We propose a novel approach for mitigating radio frequency interference (RFI)
signals in radio data using the latest advances in deep learning. We employ a
special type of Convolutional Neural Network, the U-Net, that enables the
classification of clean signal and RFI signatures in 2D time-ordered data
acquired from a radio telescope. We train and assess the performance of this
network using the HIDE & SEEK radio data simulation and processing packages, as
well as early Science Verification data acquired with the 7m single-dish
telescope at the Bleien Observatory. We find that our U-Net implementation is
showing competitive accuracy to classical RFI mitigation algorithms such as
SEEK's SumThreshold implementation. We publish our U-Net software package on
GitHub under GPLv3 license.


title:
Simultaneous Explanation of the $R_K$ and $R_{D^{(*)}}$ Puzzles: a Model
  Analysis

abstract:
  $R_K$ and $R_{D^{(*)}}$ are two $B$-decay measurements that presently exhibit
discrepancies with the SM. Recently, using an effective field theory approach,
it was demonstrated that a new-physics model can simultaneously explain both
the $R_K$ and $R_{D^{(*)}}$ puzzles. There are two UV completions that can give
rise to the effective Lagrangian: (i) $VB$: a vector boson that transforms as
an $SU(2)_L$ triplet, as in the SM, (ii) $U_1$: an $SU(2)_L$-singlet vector
leptoquark. In this paper, we examine these models individually. A key point is
that $VB$ contributes to $B^0_s$-${\bar B}^0_s$ mixing and $\tau \to 3\mu$,
while $U_1$ does not. We show that, when constraints from these processes are
taken into account, the $VB$ model is just barely viable. It predicts ${\cal B}
(\tau^-\to\mu^-\mu^+\mu^-) \simeq 2.1 \times 10^{-8}$. This is measurable at
Belle II and LHCb, and therefore constitutes a smoking-gun signal of $VB$. For
$U_1$, there are several observables that may point to this model. Perhaps the
most interesting is the lepton-flavor-violating decay $\Upsilon(3S) \to \mu
\tau$, which has previously been overlooked in the literature. $U_1$ predicts
${\cal B}(\Upsilon(3S) \to \mu \tau)|_{\rm max} = 8.0 \times 10^{-7}$. Thus, if
a large value of ${\cal B}(\Upsilon(3S) \to \mu \tau)$ is observed -- and this
should be measurable at Belle II -- the $U_1$ model would be indicated.


title: Toward (Finally!) Ruling Out Z and Higgs Mediated Dark Matter Models

abstract:
  In recent years, direct detection, indirect detection, and collider
experiments have placed increasingly stringent constraints on particle dark
matter, exploring much of the parameter space associated with the WIMP
paradigm. In this paper, we focus on the subset of WIMP models in which the
dark matter annihilates in the early universe through couplings to either the
Standard Model $Z$ or the Standard Model Higgs boson. Considering fermionic,
scalar, and vector dark matter candidates within a model-independent context,
we find that the overwhelming majority of these dark matter candidates are
already ruled out by existing experiments. In the case of $Z$ mediated dark
matter, the only scenarios that are not currently excluded are those in which
the dark matter is a fermion with an axial coupling and with a mass either
within a few GeV of the $Z$ resonance ($m_{\rm DM} \simeq m_Z/2$) or greater
than 200 GeV, or with a vector coupling and with $m_{\rm DM} > 6$ TeV. Several
Higgs mediated scenarios are currently viable if the mass of the dark matter is
near the Higgs pole ($m_{\rm DM} \simeq m_H/2$). Otherwise, the only scenarios
that are not excluded are those in which the dark matter is a scalar (vector)
heavier than 400 GeV (1160 GeV) with a Higgs portal coupling, or a fermion with
a pseudoscalar (CP violating) coupling to the Standard Model Higgs boson. With
the exception of dark matter with a purely pseudoscalar coupling to the Higgs,
it is anticipated that planned direct detection experiments will probe nearly
the entire range of models considered in this study.


title:
True exciton condensate of one-dimensional electrons through interwire
  tunneling

abstract:
  We theoretically predict that a true bilayer exciton condensate,characterised
by off-diagonal long range order and global phase coherence, can be created in
one-dimensional solid state electron systems. The mechanism by which this
happens is to introduce a single particle hybridization of electron and hole
populations, which locks the phase of the relevant mode and hence invalidates
the Mermin--Wagner theorem. Electron--hole interactions then amplify this
tendency towards off-diagonal long range order, enhancing the condensate
properties by more than an order of magnitude over the noninteracting limit. We
show that the temperatures below which a substantial condensate fraction would
form could reach hundreds of Kelvin, a benefit of the weak screening in
one-dimensional systems.


title:
On the selection of damped Lyman alpha systems using MgII absorption at
  2<z<4

abstract:
  The XQ-100 survey provides optical and near infrared coverage of 36 blindly
selected, intervening damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) at 2 < z < 4,
simultaneously covering the MgII doublet at 2796A, 2803A, and the Ly-alpha
transition. Using the XQ-100 DLA sample, we investigate the completeness of
selecting DLA absorbers based on their MgII rest-frame equivalent width (W2796)
at these redshifts. Of the 29 DLAs with clean MgII profiles, we find that six
(20% of DLAs) have W2796 < 0.6A. The DLA incidence rate of W2796 < 0.6A
absorbers is a factor of ~5 higher than what is seen in z~1 samples, indicating
a potential evolution in the MgII properties of DLAs with redshift. All of the
W2796 < 0.6A DLAs have low metallicities (-2.5 < [M/H] < -1.7), small velocity
widths (v90 < 50 km/s), and tend to have relatively low N(HI). We demonstrate
that the exclusion of these low W2796 DLAs results in a higher mean N(HI) which
in turn leads to a ~7% increase in the cosmological gas density of HI of DLAs
at 2 < z < 4; and that this exclusion has a minimal effect on the HI-weighted
mean metallicity.