title:
The Multi-component Correlated Basis Function Method and its Application
  to Multilayered Dipolar Bose Gases

abstract:
  We present a method for calculating the dynamics of a bosonic mixture, the
multi-component correlated basis function (CBF) method. For single components,
CBF results for the excitation energies agree quite well with experimental
results, even for highly correlated systems like $^4$He, and recent systematic
improvements of CBF achieve perfect agreement. We give a full derivation of
multi-component CBF, and apply the method to a dipolar Bose gas cut into
two-dimensional layers by a deep optical lattice, with coupling between layers
due to the long-ranged dipole-dipole interaction. We consider the case of
strong coupling, leading to large positive interlayer correlations. We
calculate the spectrum for a system of 8 layers and show that the strong
coupling can lead to a simpler spectrum than in the uncoupled case, with a
single peak carrying most of the spectral weight.


title:
Structure and Dynamics of Brain Lobes Functional Networks at the Onset
  of Anesthesia Induced Loss of Consciousness

abstract:
  Anesthetic agents are neurotropic drugs able to induce dramatic alterations
in the thalamo-cortical system, promoting a drastic reduction in awareness and
level of consciousness. There is experimental evidence that general anesthesia
impacts large scale functional networks leading to alterations in the brain
state. However, the way anesthetics affect the structure assumed by functional
connectivity in different brain regions have not been reported yet. Within this
context, the present study has sought to characterize the functional brain
networks respective to the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. In
this experiment, electro-physiological neural activity was recorded through the
use of a dense ECoG-electrode array positioned directly over the cortical
surface of an old world monkey of the species Macaca fuscata. Networks were
serially estimated over time at each five seconds, while the animal model was
under controlled experimental conditions of an anesthetic induction process. In
each one of the four cortical brain lobes, prominent alterations on distinct
properties of the networks evidenced a transition in the networks architecture,
which occurred within about one and a half minutes after the administration of
the anesthetics. The characterization of functional brain networks performed in
this study represents important experimental evidence and brings new knowledge
towards the understanding of neural correlates of consciousness in terms of the
structure and properties of the functional brain networks.


title: Completely positive maps on Hilbert modules over pro-C*-algebras

abstract:
  We derive Paschke's GNS construction for completely positive maps on unital
pro-C*-algebras from the KSGNS construction, presented by M. Joita [J. London
Math. Soc. {\bf 66} (2002), 421--432], and then we deduce an analogue of
Stinespring theorem for Hilbert modules over pro-C*-algebras. Also, we obtain a
Radon-Nikodym type theorem for operator valued completely positive maps on
Hilbert modules over pro-C*-algebras.


title: The Opening Scholarly Communication in Social Sciences project OSCOSS

abstract:
  The OSCOSS project (Opening Scholarly Communication in Social Sciences),
which will be outlined, aims at providing integrated support for all steps of
the scholarly communication process. Incl. collaborative writing of a
scientific paper, collecting data related to existing publications,
interpreting and including data in a paper, submitting the paper for peer
review, reviewing the paper, publishing an article, and, finally, facilitating
its consumption by readers. The OSCOSS project will support this process
considering in particular the perspective of three main actors detailed in the
use case descriptions below: readers, authors and reviewers.


title: Heavy Hybrids: decay to and mixing with Heavy Quarkonium

abstract:
  We report on a recent QCD based research on hybrid mesons containing $c\bar
c$ or $b\bar b$ quarks. We present results for the spectrum, the decay widths
to heavy quarkonium, and the role of mixing with the latter. We point out that
mixing with heavy quarkonium provides a potentially large source of spin
symmetry breaking. We identify candidates to hybrid mesons among the so called
XYZ states in the charmonium and bottomonium spectrum.


title: Stochastic Source Seeking with Forward and Angular Velocity Regulation

abstract:
  This paper studies a stochastic extremum seeking method to steer a
nonholonomic vehicle to the unknown source of a static spatially distributed
filed in a plane. The key challenge lies in the lack of vehicle's position
information and the distribution of the scalar field. Different from the
existing stochastic strategy that keeps the forward velocity constant and
controls only the angular velocity, we design a stochastic extremum seeking
controller to regulate both forward and angular velocities simultaneously in
this work. Thus, the vehicle decelerates near the source and stays within a
small area as if it comes to a full stop, which solves the overshoot problem in
the constant forward velocity case. We use the stochastic averaging theory to
prove the local exponential convergence, both almost surely and in probability,
to a small neighborhood near the source for elliptical level sets. Finally,
simulations are included to illustrate the theoretical results.


title:
Simulation of chemical bond distributions and phase transformation in
  carbon chains

abstract:
  In the present work we develop a Monte Carlo algorithm of the carbon chains
ordered into 2D hexagonal array. The chemical bond of the chained carbon is
computed from 1K to 1300K. Our model confirms that the beta phase is more
energetic preferable at low temperatures but the system prefers the alpha phase
at high temperatures. Based on the thermal effect on the bond distributions and
3D atomic vibrations in the carbon chains, the bond softening temperature is
observed at 500K. The bond softening temperature is higher in the presence of
interstitial doping but it does not change with the length of nanowire. The
elastic modulus of the carbon chains is 1.7TPa at 5K and the thermal expansion
is +7 x 10-5 K-1 at 300K via monitoring the collective atomic vibrations and
bond distributions. Thermal fluctuation in terms of heat capacity as a function
of temperatures is computed in order to study the phase transition across
melting point. The heat capacity anomaly initiates around 3800K.


title: Radiation dominated implosion

abstract:
  Inertical Confinement Fusion configuration model is analized for direct
ignition without an ablator. The compression of the target pellet is neglected
and rapid volume ignition is achieved by a laser pulse, which is as short as
the penetraton time of the light across the pellet. The reflectivity of the
target is assumed to be negligible, and the absorptivity is constant so that
the light pulse can reach the opposite side of the pellet. The necessary pulse
length and pulse strength is calculated.


title:
Large deviations for method-of-quantiles estimators of one-dimensional
  parameters

abstract:
  We consider method-of-quantiles estimators of unknown parameters, namely the
analogue of method-of-moments estimators obtained by matching empirical and
theoretical quantiles at some probability level lambda in (0,1). The aim is to
present large deviation results for these estimators as the sample size tends
to infinity. We study in detail several examples; for specific models we
discuss the choice of the optimal value of lambda and we compare the
convergence of the method-of-quantiles and method-of-moments estimators.


title: Differentiable Genetic Programming

abstract:
  We introduce the use of high order automatic differentiation, implemented via
the algebra of truncated Taylor polynomials, in genetic programming. Using the
Cartesian Genetic Programming encoding we obtain a high-order Taylor
representation of the program output that is then used to back-propagate errors
during learning. The resulting machine learning framework is called
differentiable Cartesian Genetic Programming (dCGP). In the context of symbolic
regression, dCGP offers a new approach to the long unsolved problem of constant
representation in GP expressions. On several problems of increasing complexity
we find that dCGP is able to find the exact form of the symbolic expression as
well as the constants values. We also demonstrate the use of dCGP to solve a
large class of differential equations and to find prime integrals of dynamical
systems, presenting, in both cases, results that confirm the efficacy of our
approach.


title:
Prediction of Seasonal Temperature Using Soft Computing Techniques:
  Application in Benevento (Southern Italy) Area

abstract:
  In this work two soft computing methods, Artificial Neural Networks and
Genetic Programming, are proposed in order to forecast the mean temperature
that will occur in future seasons. The area in which the soft computing
techniques were applied is that of the surroundings of the town of Benevento,
in the south of Italy, having geographic coordinates (lat. 41{\deg}07'50"N;
long.14{\deg}47'13"E). This area is not affected by maritime influences as well
as by winds coming from the west. The methods are fed by data recorded in the
meteorological stations of Benevento and Castelvenere, located in the hilly
area, which characterizes the territory surrounding this city, at 144 m a.s.l.
Both the applied methods show low error rates, while the Genetic Programming
offers an explicit rule representation (a formula) explaining the prevision.
  Keywords Seasonal Temperature Forecasting; Soft Computing; Artificial Neural
Networks; Genetic Programming; Southern Italy.


title:
Modelling theoretical uncertainties in phenomenological analyses for
  particle physics

abstract:
  The determination of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model (and
its extensions) is often limited by the presence of statistical and theoretical
uncertainties. We present several models for the latter uncertainties (random,
nuisance, external) in the frequentist framework, and we derive the
corresponding $p$-values. In the case of the nuisance approach where
theoretical uncertainties are modeled as biases, we highlight the important,
but arbitrary, issue of the range of variation chosen for the bias parameters.
We introduce the concept of adaptive $p$-value, which is obtained by adjusting
the range of variation for the bias according to the significance considered,
and which allows us to tackle metrology and exclusion tests with a single and
well-defined unified tool, which exhibits interesting frequentist properties.
We discuss how the determination of fundamental parameters is impacted by the
model chosen for theoretical uncertainties, illustrating several issues with
examples from quark flavour physics.


title:
On the relation between the CP phases in the PMNS matrix, CP-violation
  with sterile neutrinos and leptogenesis

abstract:
  We discuss the connection between observable CP violation in the lepton
sector, the properties of heavy neutrinos and the baryon asymmetry of the
universe in the minimal seesaw model. A measurement of the Dirac phase $\delta$
would allow to make testable predictions for the couplings of the heavy
neutrinos to individual Standard Model lepton flavours. If any heavy neutral
leptons are experimentally discovered in the future, this provides a powerful
test for the mechanism of neutrino mass generation and baryogenesis.


title:
Coherent and incoherent aspects of polariton dynamics in semiconductor
  microcavities

abstract:
  The interaction between coherent polaritons and incoherent excitons plays an
important role in polariton physics. Using resonant pump-probe spectroscopy
with selective excitation of single polariton branches, we investigate the
different dephasing mechanisms responsible for generating a long-lived exciton
reservoir. As expected, pumping the upper polariton results in a strong
dephasing process that leads to the generation of a long lived reservoir.
Unexpectedly, we observe an efficient reservoir creation while exciting only
the lower polariton branch when the detuning is increased towards positive
detuning. We propose a simple theoretical model, the polaritonic Bloch
equations, to describe the dynamics of the system.


title: Sufficient Conditions for Orbital Stability of Periodic Traveling Waves

abstract:
  The present paper deals with sufficient conditions for orbital stability of
periodic waves of a general class of evolution equations supporting nonlinear
dispersive waves. Our method can be seen as an extension to spatially periodic
waves of the theory of solitary waves recently developed in \cite{st}. Firstly,
our main result do not depend on the parametrization of the periodic wave
itself. Secondly, motived by the well known orbital stability criterion for
solitary waves, we show that the same criterion holds for periodic waves. In
addition, we show that the positiveness of the principal entries of the Hessian
matrix related to the "energy surface function" are also sufficient to obtain
the stability. Consequently, we can establish the orbital stability of periodic
waves for several nonlinear dispersive models. We believe our method can be
applied in a wide class of evolution equations; in particular it can be
extended to regularized dispersive wave equations.


title:
Experimental Verification of Multipartite Entanglement in Quantum
  Networks

abstract:
  Multipartite entangled states are a fundamental resource for a wide range of
quantum information processing tasks. In particular, in quantum networks it is
essential for the parties involved to be able to verify if entanglement is
present before they carry out a given distributed task. Here we design and
experimentally demonstrate a protocol that allows any party in a network to
check if a source is distributing a genuinely multipartite entangled state,
even in the presence of untrusted parties. The protocol remains secure against
dishonest behaviour of the source and other parties, including the use of
system imperfections to their advantage. We demonstrate the verification
protocol in a three- and four-party setting using polarization-entangled
photons, highlighting its potential for realistic photonic quantum
communication and networking applications.


title: Hyperscaling-Violating Lifshitz hydrodynamics from black-holes: Part II

abstract:
  The derivation of Lifshitz-invariant hydrodynamics from holography, presented
in [arXiv:1508.02494] is generalized to arbitrary hyperscaling violating
Lifshitz scaling theories with an unbroken U(1) symmetry. The hydrodynamics
emerging is non-relativistic with scalar "forcing". By a redefinition of the
pressure it becomes standard non-relativistic hydrodynamics in the presence of
specific chemical potential for the mass current. The hydrodynamics is
compatible with the scaling theory of Lifshitz invariance with hyperscaling
violation. The bulk viscosity vanishes while the shear viscosity to entropy
ratio is the same as in the relativistic case. We also consider the dimensional
reduction ansatz for the hydrodynamics and clarify the difference with previous
results suggesting a non-vanishing bulk viscosity.

categories: hep-th cond-mat.quant-gas cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.str-el


title:
Engineering the optoelectronic properties of MoS2 photodetectors through
  reversible noncovalent functionalization

abstract:
  We present an easy drop-casting based functionalization of MoS2-based
photodetectors that results in an enhancement of the photoresponse of about
four orders of magnitude, reaching responsivities up to 100 A/W. The
functionalization is technologically trivial, air-stable, fully reversible and
reproducible, and opens the door to the combination of 2D-materials with
molecular dyes for the development of high performance photodetectors.


title:
Experimental Demonstration of Uncertainty Relations for the Triple
  Components of Angular Momentum

abstract:
  The uncertainty principle is considered to be one of the most striking
features in quantum mechanics. In the textbook literature, uncertainty
relations usually refer to the preparation uncertainty which imposes a
limitation on the spread of measurement outcomes for a pair of non-commuting
observables. In this work, we study the preparation uncertainty for the angular
momentum, especially in the spin-1/2 representation. We derive uncertainty
relations encompassing the triple components of angular momentum, and show that
compared with the relations involving only two components, a triple constant
$2/\sqrt{3}$ often arises. Intriguingly, this constant is the same for the
position and momentum case. Experimental verification is carried out on a
single spin in diamond, and the results confirm the triple constant in a wide
range of experimental parameters.


title: Spherical convective dynamos in the rapidly rotating asymptotic regime

abstract:
  Self-sustained convective dynamos in planetary systems operate in an
asymptotic regime of rapid rotation, where a balance is thought to hold between
the Coriolis, pressure, buoyancy and Lorentz forces (the MAC balance).
Classical numerical solutions have previously been obtained in a regime of
moderate rotation where viscous and inertial forces are still significant. We
define a unidimensional path in parameter space between classical models and
asymptotic conditions from the requirements to enforce a MAC balance and to
preserve the ratio between the magnetic diffusion and convective overturn times
(the magnetic Reynolds number). Direct numerical simulations performed along
this path show that the spatial structure of the solution at scales larger than
the magnetic dissipation length is largely invariant. This enables the
definition of large-eddy simulations resting on the assumption that small-scale
details of the hydrodynamic turbulence are irrelevant to the determination of
the large-scale asymptotic state. These simulations are shown to be in good
agreement with direct simulations in the range where both are feasible, and can
be computed for control parameter values far beyond the current state of the
art, such as an Ekman number $E=10^{-8}$. We obtain strong-field convective
dynamos approaching the MAC balance and a Taylor state to an unprecedented
degree of accuracy. The physical connection between classical models and
asymptotic conditions is shown to be devoid of abrupt transitions,
demonstrating the asymptotic relevance of classical numerical dynamo
mechanisms. The fields of the system are confirmed to follow diffusivity-free,
power-based scaling laws along the path.


title: Does Levinson's theorem count complex eigenvalues ?

abstract:
  Yes it does ! Indeed an extended version of Levinson's theorem is proposed
for a system involving complex eigenvalues. The perturbed system corresponds to
a realization of the Schroedinger operator with inverse square potential on the
half-line, while the Dirichlet Laplacian on the half-line is chosen for the
reference system. The resulting relation is an equality between the number of
eigenvalues of the perturbed system and the winding number of the scattering
system together with additional operators living at 0-energy and at infinite
energy.


title:
Channeling and Radiation of 855 MeV Electrons and Positrons in Straight
  and Bent Tungsten (110) Crystals

abstract:
  Planar channeling of 855 MeV electrons and positrons in straight and bent
tungsten (110) crystal is simulated by means of the \MBNExplorer software
package. The results of simulations for a broad range of bending radii are
analyzed in terms of the channel acceptance, dechanneling length, and spectral
distribution of the emitted radiation. Comparison of the results with
predictions of other theories as well as with the data for (110) oriented
diamond, silicon and germanium crystals is carried out.


title: Direct calibration of click-counting detectors

abstract:
  We introduce and experimentally implement a method for the absolute detector
calibration of photon-number-resolving time-bin multiplexing layouts based on
the measured click statistics of superconduncting nanowire detectors. In
particular, the quantum efficiencies, the dark count rates, and the positive
operator-valued measures of these measurement schemes are directly obtained
with high accuracy. The method is based on the moments of the click-counting
statistics for coherent states with different coherent amplitudes. The strength
of our analysis is that we can directly conclude -- on a quantitative basis --
that the detection strategy under study is well described by a linear response
function for the light-matter interaction and that it is sensitive to the
polarization of the incident light field. Moreover, our method is further
extended to a two-mode detection scenario. Finally, we present possible
applications for such well characterized detectors, such as sensing of
atmospheric loss channels and phase sensitive measurements.


title:
Gapped superconductivity with all symmetries in InSb (110) quantum wells
  in proximity to s-wave superconductor in Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov
  phase or with a supercurrent

abstract:
  We show that all the singlet even-frequency, singlet odd-frequency, triplet
even-frequency and triplet odd-frequency pairings, and together with the
corresponding order parameters (gaps) can be realized in InSb (110)
spin-orbit-coupled quantum well in proximity to s-wave superconductor in
Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase or with a supercurrent. It is revealed
that with the singlet even-frequency order parameter induced by the proximity
effect, triplet even-frequency pairing is induced due to the broken
spin-rotational symmetry by the spin-orbit coupling. Since the translational
symmetry is broken by the center-of-mass momentum of Cooper pair in the
Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase or with a supercurrent, the singlet
odd-frequency pairing can be induced. With the translational and
spin-rotational asymmetries, the triplet odd-frequency pairing is also
realized. Then, we show that the corresponding order parameters can be obtained
from the self-energy of the electron-electron Coulomb interaction with the
dynamic screening. The singlet and the induced triplet even-frequency order
parameters are found to exhibit the conventional s-wave and p-wave characters
in the momentum space, respectively. Whereas for the induced odd-frequency
order parameters in quantum well, the singlet and triplet ones show the p-wave
and d-wave characters, respectively. Moreover, the p-wave character of the
singlet odd-frequency order parameter exhibits anisotropy with respect to the
direction of the center-of-mass momentum. While for the triplet one, we find
that $d_{x^2}$-wave and $d_{xy}$-wave characters can be obtained with respect
to the direction of the center-of-mass momentum. ......


title:
Modeling potent pathways for APC/C inhibition: pivotal roles for MCC and
  BubR1

abstract:
  The highly conserved spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) ensures that the
sister chromatids of the duplicated genome are not separated and distributed to
the spindle poles before all chromosomes have been properly linked to the
microtubules of the mitotic spindle. Biochemically, the SAC delays cell cycle
progression by preventing activation of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC/C)
or cyclosome; whose activation by Cdc20 is required for sister-chromatid
separation, which marks the transition into anaphase. In response to activation
of the checkpoint, various species control the activity of both APC/C and
Cdc20. However, the underlying regulatory pathways remain largely elusive. In
this study, five possible model variants of APC/C regulation were constructed,
namely BubR1, Mad2, MCC, MCF2 and an all-pathways model variant. These models
are validated with experimental data from the literature. A wide range of
parameter values have been tested to find critical values of the APC binding
rate. The results show that all variants are able to capture the wild type
behaviour of the APC. However, only one model variant, which included both MCC
as well as BubR1 as potent inhibitors of the APC, was able to reproduce both
wild type and mutant type behaviour of APC regulation. The presented work has
successfully distinguished between five competing dynamical models of the same
biological system using a systems biology approach. Furthermore, the results
suggest that systems-level approach is vital for molecular biology and could
also be used for compare the pathways of relevance with the objective to
generate hypotheses and improve our understanding.


title:
Feature Extraction and Soft Computing Methods for Aerospace Structure
  Defect Classification

abstract:
  This study concerns the effectiveness of several techniques and methods of
signals processing and data interpretation for the diagnosis of aerospace
structure defects. This is done by applying different known feature extraction
methods, in addition to a new CBIR-based one; and some soft computing
techniques including a recent HPC parallel implementation of the U-BRAIN
learning algorithm on Non Destructive Testing data. The performance of the
resulting detection systems are measured in terms of Accuracy, Sensitivity,
Specificity, and Precision. Their effectiveness is evaluated by the Matthews
correlation, the Area Under Curve (AUC), and the F-Measure. Several experiments
are performed on a standard dataset of eddy current signal samples for aircraft
structures. Our experimental results evidence that the key to a successful
defect classifier is the feature extraction method - namely the novel
CBIR-based one outperforms all the competitors - and they illustrate the
greater effectiveness of the U-BRAIN algorithm and the MLP neural network among
the soft computing methods in this kind of application.
  Keywords- Non-destructive testing (NDT); Soft Computing; Feature Extraction;
Classification Algorithms; Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR); Eddy Currents
(EC).


title: Comparison of Brain Networks with Unknown Correspondences

abstract:
  Graph theory has drawn a lot of attention in the field of Neuroscience during
the last decade, mainly due to the abundance of tools that it provides to
explore the interactions of elements in a complex network like the brain. The
local and global organization of a brain network can shed light on mechanisms
of complex cognitive functions, while disruptions within the network can be
linked to neurodevelopmental disorders. In this effort, the construction of a
representative brain network for each individual is critical for further
analysis. Additionally, graph comparison is an essential step for inference and
classification analyses on brain graphs. In this work we explore a method based
on graph edit distance for evaluating graph similarity, when correspondences
between network elements are unknown due to different underlying subdivisions
of the brain. We test this method on 30 unrelated subjects as well as 40 twin
pairs and show that this method can accurately reflect the higher similarity
between two related networks compared to unrelated ones, while identifying node
correspondences.


title:
Rate of convergence of major cost incurred in the in-situ permutation
  algorithm

abstract:
  The in-situ permutation algorithm due to MacLeod replaces
$(x_{1},\cdots,x_{n})$ by $(x_{p(1)},\cdots,x_{p(n)})$ where
$\pi=(p(1),\cdots,p(n))$ is a permutation of $\{1,2,\cdots,n\}$ using at most
$O(1)$ space. Kirshenhofer, Prodinger and Tichy have shown that the major cost
incurred in the algorithm satisfies a recurrence similar to sequence of the
number of key comparisons needed by the Quicksort algorithm to sort an array of
$n$ randomly permuted items. Further, Hwang has proved that the normalized cost
converges in distribution. Here, following Neininger and R\"uschendorf, we
prove the that rate of convergence to be of the order $\Theta(\ln(n)/n)$ in the
Zolotarev metric.


title: Mixed QCD-QED corrections to DGLAP equations

abstract:
  We study the mixed effect of QCD and QED corrections to the evolution of
parton distribution functions (PDFs). The Altarelli-Parisi splitting functions
are extended to one order higher in QED, reaching ${\cal O}(\alpha \,
\alpha_S^2)$ accuracy. This also involves extending DGLAP equations to include
charge separation effects, that are ignored for pure QCD corrections. Besides
that, these effects are crucial for the determination of the photon
distribution, which plays an increasingly important role in nowadays
phenomenological analysis.


title:
AdversariaLib: An Open-source Library for the Security Evaluation of
  Machine Learning Algorithms Under Attack

abstract:
  We present AdversariaLib, an open-source python library for the security
evaluation of machine learning (ML) against carefully-targeted attacks. It
supports the implementation of several attacks proposed thus far in the
literature of adversarial learning, allows for the evaluation of a wide range
of ML algorithms, runs on multiple platforms, and has multi-processing enabled.
The library has a modular architecture that makes it easy to use and to extend
by implementing novel attacks and countermeasures. It relies on other
widely-used open-source ML libraries, including scikit-learn and FANN.
Classification algorithms are implemented and optimized in C/C++, allowing for
a fast evaluation of the simulated attacks. The package is distributed under
the GNU General Public License v3, and it is available for download at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/adversarialib.


title: About subtransversality of collections of sets

abstract:
  We provide dual sufficient conditions for subtransversality of collections of
sets in an Asplund space setting. For the convex case, we formulate a necessary
and sufficient dual criterion of subtransversality in general Banach spaces.
Our more general results suggest an intermediate notion of subtransversality,
what we call weak intrinsic subtransversality, which lies between intrinsic
transversality and subtransversality in Asplund spaces.


title:
Stabilization of class-B broad-area lasers emission by external optical
  injection

abstract:
  We theoretically examine the effect of external optical injection on the
spatio-temporal dynamics of class-B broad-area lasers. We demonstrate that
optical injection can efficiently stabilize the intrinsic transverse
instabilities in such lasers associated with both the boundaries of the pumping
area and with the bulk nonlinearities of the active medium. Stabilizing action
of optical injection is shown to be closely related to the suppression of
inherent relaxation oscillations behavior.


title: Further Study of BRST-Symmetry Breaking on the Lattice

abstract:
  We evaluate the so-called Bose-ghost propagator Q(p^2) for SU(2) gauge theory
in minimal Landau gauge, considering lattice volumes up to 120^4 and physical
lattice extents up to 13.5 f. In particular, we investigate discretization
effects, as well as the infinite-volume and continuum limits. We recall that a
nonzero value for this quantity provides direct evidence of BRST-symmetry
breaking, related to the restriction of the functional measure to the first
Gribov region. Our results show that the prediction (from cluster
decomposition) for Q(p^2) in terms of gluon and ghost propagators is better
satisfied as the continuum limit is approached.


title: Improved Particle Filters for Vehicle Localisation

abstract:
  The ability to track a moving vehicle is of crucial importance in numerous
applications. The task has often been approached by the importance sampling
technique of particle filters due to its ability to model non-linear and
non-Gaussian dynamics, of which a vehicle travelling on a road network is a
good example. Particle filters perform poorly when observations are highly
informative. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing particle
filters that sample around the most recent observation. The proposal leads to
an order of magnitude improvement in accuracy and efficiency over conventional
particle filters, especially when observations are infrequent but low-noise.


title: Towards overcoming the Monte Carlo sign problem with tensor networks

abstract:
  The study of lattice gauge theories with Monte Carlo simulations is hindered
by the infamous sign problem that appears under certain circumstances, in
particular at non-zero chemical potential. So far, there is no universal method
to overcome this problem. However, recent years brought a new class of
non-perturbative Hamiltonian techniques named tensor networks, where the sign
problem is absent. In previous work, we have demonstrated that this approach,
in particular matrix product states in 1+1 dimensions, can be used to perform
precise calculations in a lattice gauge theory, the massless and massive
Schwinger model. We have computed the mass spectrum of this theory, its thermal
properties and real-time dynamics. In this work, we review these results and we
extend our calculations to the case of two flavours and non-zero chemical
potential. We are able to reliably reproduce known analytical results for this
model, thus demonstrating that tensor networks can tackle the sign problem of a
lattice gauge theory at finite density.


title:
An algorithm based on DQM with modified trigonometric cubic Bsplines for
  solving coupled viscous Burgers equations

abstract:
  This paper deals with a new algorithm called modified trigonometric cubic
B-spline differential quadrature method for numerical computation of the time
dependent partial differential equations. Specially the numerical computation
of the Burgers equation is obtained by using modified trigonometric cubic B
spline differential quadrature method with time integration algorithm. The
modified trigonometric cubic B-spline differential quadrature method is
differential quadrature method with modified trigonometric cubic B-splines as
new basis. The initial boundary value system of Burgers equation is first
transformed into an initial value system of ordinary differential equations by
means of modified trigonometric cubic B-spline differential quadrature method.
The resulting system of ordinary differential equations is solved by using an
optimal five stage four order strong stability preserving RK method. The
accuracy and efficiency of the method is illustrated by five test problems in
terms of and error norms and their comparisons with existing results. The
modified trigonometric cubic B-spline differential quadrature method produces
better results than the results due to almost all the existing schemes. The
modified trigonometric cubic B-spline differential quadrature method is shown
conditionally stable using the matrix stability analysis method for various
grid points.


title:
Relativistic effects in model calculations of double parton distribution
  function

abstract:
  In this paper we consider double parton distribution functions (dPDFs) which
are the main non perturbative ingredients appearing in the double parton
scattering cross section formula in hadronic collisions. By using recent
calculation of dPDFs by means of constituent quark models within the so called
Light-Front approach, we investigate the role of relativistic effects on dPDFs.
We find, in particular, that the so called Melosh operators, which allow to
properly convert the LF spin into the canonical one and incorporate a proper
treatment of boosts, produce sizeable effects on dPDFs. We discuss specific
partonic correlations induced by these operators in transverse plane which are
relevant to the proton structure and study under which conditions these results
are stable against variations in the choice of the proton wave function.


title:
Exploring the reproducibility of functional connectivity alterations in
  Parkinson's Disease

abstract:
  Since anatomic MRI is presently not able to directly discern neuronal loss in
Parkinson's Disease (PD), studying the associated functional connectivity (FC)
changes seems a promising approach toward developing non-invasive and
non-radioactive neuroimaging markers for this disease. While several groups
have reported such FC changes in PD, there are also significant discrepancies
between studies. Investigating the reproducibility of PD-related FC changes on
independent datasets is therefore of crucial importance. We acquired
resting-state fMRI scans for 43 subjects (27 patients , 16 controls) and
compared the observed FC changes with those obtained in 2 independent datasets,
one made available by the PPMI consortium and a second one by the group of Tao
Wu. Unfortunately, PD-related functional connectivity changes turned out to be
non-reproducible across datasets. This could be due to disease heterogeneity,
but also to technical differences. To distinguish between the two, we devised a
method to directly check for disease heterogeneity using random splits of a
single dataset. Since we still observe non-reproducibility in a large fraction
of random splits of the same dataset, we conclude that functional heterogeneity
may be a dominating factor behind the lack of reproducibility of FC alterations
in different rs-fMRI studies of PD. While global PD-related functional
connectivity changes were non-reproducible across datasets, we identified a few
individual brain region pairs with marginally consistent FC changes across all
three datasets. However, training classifiers on each one of the 3 datasets to
discriminate PD scans from controls produced only low accuracies on the
remaining two test datasets. Moreover, classifiers trained and tested on random
splits of the same dataset (which are technically homogeneous) also had low
test accuracies, directly substantiating disease heterogeneity.


title:
Gender-Related Systematics in the NRAO and ALMA Proposal Review
  Processes

abstract:
  A study has been made of the evidence for gender-related systematics in the
proposal review processes for the four facilities operated by NRAO: the Jansky
Very Large Array (JVLA; hereafter VLA), the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA),
the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter
Array (ALMA) in Chile which is operated by NRAO/AUI in partnership with the
European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the National Astronomical Observatories
of Japan (NAOJ), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. A significant
gender-related effect is found in the proposal rankings in favor of men over
women in the ALMA Proposal Review Processes (PRP) for ALMA Cycles 2-4, with
reliability of 99.998% that the underlying rank distributions for male and
female PIs are not the same. The effect is largest and most significant for
ALMA Cycle 3. A similar overall result is found for the other three NRAO
telescopes over proposal Semesters 2012A-2017A, but with lower reliability
level overall (98.3%), and with some reversals across semesters in the trend
for better performance in the rankings for male PIs. The results align with
similar studies recently completed for the HST (Reid 2014) and the ESO proposal
review processes (Patat 2016). No correlations are found between the
gender-related proposal ranking trends and the gender fractions on review
panels. The HST and ESO proposal reviews have come to different conclusions
from each other on the role of seniority on the gender-related proposal
outcomes at those observatories. The currently available data for the ALMA and
NRAO user base do not allow us to investigate the important question of the
dependence on the gender-related trends of the seniority of the principal
investigators.


title:
The regular representations of $\mathrm{GL}_{N}$ over finite local
  principal ideal rings

abstract:
  Let $\mathfrak{o}$ be the ring of integers in a non-Archimedean local field
with finite residue field, $\mathfrak{p}$ its maximal ideal, and $r\geq2$ an
integer. An irreducible representation of the finite group
$G_{r}=\mathrm{GL}_{N}(\mathfrak{o}/\mathfrak{p}^{r})$ is called regular if its
restriction to the principal congruence kernel
$K^{r-1}=1+\mathfrak{p}^{r-1}\mathrm{M}_{N}(\mathfrak{o}/\mathfrak{p}^{r})$
consists of representations whose stabilisers modulo $K^{1}$ are centralisers
of regular elements in $\mathrm{M}_{N}(\mathfrak{o}/\mathfrak{p})$.
  The regular representations form the largest class of representations of
$G_{r}$ which is currently amenable to explicit construction. Their study,
motivated by constructions of supercuspidal representations, goes back to
Shintani, but the general case remained open for a long time. In this paper we
give an explicit construction of all the regular representations of $G_{r}$.


title:
"Charged" phonons in an external field: a QED analog with Bose-Einstein
  condensates

abstract:
  We propose a method for using ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, to
form an analog model of a relativistic massive field that carries "charge" and
interacts with an external nondynamical gauge field. Such a "scalar QED" analog
model, may be useful for simulating various effects of QFT involving charged
particles, such as the Schwinger pair-creation of charged phonons in a constant
external field, and vacuum instability.


title:
Toward Multilingual Neural Machine Translation with Universal Encoder
  and Decoder

abstract:
  In this paper, we present our first attempts in building a multilingual
Neural Machine Translation framework under a unified approach. We are then able
to employ attention-based NMT for many-to-many multilingual translation tasks.
Our approach does not require any special treatment on the network architecture
and it allows us to learn minimal number of free parameters in a standard way
of training. Our approach has shown its effectiveness in an under-resourced
translation scenario with considerable improvements up to 2.6 BLEU points. In
addition, the approach has achieved interesting and promising results when
applied in the translation task that there is no direct parallel corpus between
source and target languages.


title:
Magnetic thermal conductivity far above the N\'eel temperatures in the
  Kitaev-magnet candidate $\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$

abstract:
  We have investigated the longitudinal thermal conductivity of
$\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$, the magnetic state of which is considered to be proximate
to a Kitaev honeycomb model, along with the spin susceptibility and magnetic
specific heat. We found that the temperature dependence of the thermal
conductivity exhibits an additional peak around 100 K, which is well above the
phonon peak temperature ($\sim$ 50 K). The higher-temperature peak position is
comparable to the temperature scale of the Kitaev couplings rather than the
N\'eel temperatures below 15 K. The additional heat conduction was observed for
all five samples used in this study, and was found to be rather immune to a
structural phase transition of $\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$, which suggests its
different origin from phonons. Combined with experimental results of the
magnetic specific heat, our transport measurement suggests strongly that the
higher-temperature peak in the thermal conductivity is attributed to itinerant
spin excitations associated with the Kitaev couplings of $\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$. A
kinetic approximation of the magnetic thermal conductivity yields a mean free
path of $\sim$ 20 nm at 100 K, which is well longer than the nearest Ru-Ru
distance ($\sim$ 3 \AA), suggesting the long-distance coherent propagation of
magnetic excitations driven by the Kitaev couplings.


title:
Saturation Effects and the Concurrency Hypothesis: Insights from an
  Analytic Model

abstract:
  Sexual partnerships that overlap in time (concurrent relationships) may play
a significant role in the HIV epidemic, but the precise effect is unclear. We
derive edge-based compartmental models of disease spread in idealized dynamic
populations with and without concurrency to allow for an investigation of its
effects. Our models assume that partnerships change in time and individuals
enter and leave the at-risk population. Infected individuals transmit at a
constant per-partnership rate to their susceptible partners. In our idealized
populations we find regions of parameter space where the existence of
concurrent partnerships leads to substantially faster growth and higher
equilibrium levels, but also regions in which the existence of concurrent
partnerships has very little impact on the growth or the equilibrium.
Additionally we find mixed regimes in which concurrency significantly increases
the early growth, but has little effect on the ultimate equilibrium level.
Guided by model predictions, we discuss general conditions under which
concurrent relationships would be expected to have large or small effects in
real-world settings. Our observation that the impact of concurrency saturates
suggests that concurrency-reducing interventions may be most effective in
populations with low to moderate concurrency.


title: Analysis of Fully Preconditioned ADMM with Relaxation in Hilbert Spaces

abstract:
  Alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is a powerful first order
methods for various applications in signal processing and imaging. However,
there is no clear result on the weak convergence of ADMM with relaxation
studied by Eckstein and Bertsakas \cite{EP} in infinite dimensional Hilbert
spaces. In this paper, by employing a kind of "partial" gap analysis, we prove
the weak convergence of general preconditioned and relaxed ADMM in infinite
dimensional Hilbert spaces, with preconditioning for solving all the involved
implicit equations under mild conditions. We also give the corresponding
ergodic convergence rates respecting to the "partial" gap function.
Furthermore, the connections between certain preconditioned and relaxed ADMM
and the corresponding Douglas-Rachford splitting methods are also discussed,
following the idea of Gabay in \cite{DGBA}. Numerical tests also show the
efficiency of the proposed overrelaxation variants of preconditioned ADMM.


title:
Differential kinetic dynamics and heating of ions in the turbulent solar
  wind

abstract:
  The solar wind plasma is a fully ionized and turbulent gas ejected by the
outer layers of the solar corona at very high speed, mainly composed by protons
and electrons, with a small percentage of helium nuclei and a significantly
lower abundance of heavier ions. Since particle collisions are practically
negligible, the solar wind is typically not in a state of thermodynamic
equilibrium. Such a complex system must be described through self-consistent
and fully nonlinear models, taking into account its multi-species composition
and turbulence. We use a kinetic hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell numerical code to
reproduce the turbulent energy cascade down to ion kinetic scales, in typical
conditions of the uncontaminated solar wind plasma, with the aim of exploring
the differential kinetic dynamics of the dominant ion species, namely protons
and alpha particles. We show that the response of different species to the
fluctuating electromagnetic fields is different. In particular, a significant
differential heating of alphas with respect to protons is observed.
Interestingly, the preferential heating process occurs in spatial regions
nearby the peaks of ion vorticity and where strong deviations from
thermodynamic equilibrium are recovered. Moreover, by feeding a simulator of a
top-hat ion spectrometer with the output of the kinetic simulations, we show
that measurements by such spectrometer planned on board the Turbulence Heating
ObserveR (THOR mission), a candidate for the next M4 space mission of the
European Space Agency, can provide detailed three-dimensional ion velocity
distributions, highlighting important non-Maxwellian features. These results
support the idea that future space missions will allow a deeper understanding
of the physics of the interplanetary medium.


title: Three-dimensional structure of a sunspot light bridge

abstract:
  Active regions are the most prominent manifestations of solar magnetic
fields; their generation and dissipation are fundamental problems in solar
physics. Light bridges are commonly present during sunspot decay, but a
comprehensive picture of their role in the removal of photospheric magnetic
field is still missing. We study the three dimensional configuration of a
sunspot and in particular its light bridge during one of the last stages of its
decay. We present the magnetic and thermodynamical stratification inferred from
full Stokes inversions of the photospheric Si I 10827 \AA\ and Ca I 10839 \AA\
lines obtained with the GREGOR Infrared Spectrograph of the GREGOR telescope at
Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife, Spain. The analysis is complemented by a
study of continuum images covering the disk passage of the active region, which
are provided by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar
Dynamics Observatory. The sunspot shows a light bridge with penumbral continuum
intensity that separates the central umbra from a smaller umbra. We find that
in this region the magnetic field lines form a canopy with lower magnetic field
strength in the inner part. The photospheric light bridge is dominated by gas
pressure (high-$\beta$), as opposed to the surrounding umbra where the magnetic
pressure is higher. A convective flow is observed in the light bridge. This
flow is able to bend the magnetic field lines and to produce field reversals.
The field lines close above the light bridge and become as vertical and strong
as in the surrounding umbra. We conclude that it develops because of two highly
magnetized regions which come closer during the sunspot evolution.


title: N=2 gauge theories on the hemisphere $HS^4$

abstract:
  Using localization techniques, we compute the path integral of $N=2$ SUSY
gauge theory coupled to matter on the hemisphere $HS^4$, with either Dirichlet
or Neumann supersymmetric boundary conditions. The resulting quantities are
wave-functions of the theory depending on the boundary data. The one-loop
determinant are computed using $SO(4)$ harmonics basis. We solve kernel and
co-kernel equations for the relevant differential operators arising from gauge
and matter localizing actions. The second method utilizes full $SO(5)$
harmonics to reduce the computation to evaluating $Q_{SUSY}^2$ eigenvalues and
its multiplicities. In the Dirichlet case, we show how to glue two
wave-functions to get back the partition function of round $S^4$. We will also
describe how to obtain the same results using $SO(5)$ harmonics basis.


title: Spherical Schr\"odinger Hamiltonians: Spectral Analysis and Time Decay

abstract:
  In this survey, we review recent results concerning the canonical dispersive
flow $e^{itH}$ led by a Schr\"odinger Hamiltonian $H$. We study, in particular,
how the time decay of space $L^p$-norms depends on the frequency localization
of the initial datum with respect to the some suitable spherical expansion. A
quite complete description of the phenomenon is given in terms of the
eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the restriction of $H$ to the unit sphere,
and a comparison with some uncertainty inequality is presented.


title: Atmospheric tides in Earth-like planets

abstract:
  Atmospheric tides can strongly affect the rotational dynamics of planets. In
the family of Earth-like planets, such as Venus, this physical mechanism
coupled with solid tides makes the angular velocity evolve over long timescales
and determines the equilibrium configurations of their spin. Contrary to the
solid core, the atmosphere is submitted to both tidal gravitational potential
and insolation flux coming from the star. The complex response of the gas is
intrinsically linked to its physical properties. This dependence has to be
characterized and quantified to study the large variety of extrasolar planetary
systems. We develop a theoretical global model where radiative losses, which
are predominant in slowly rotating atmospheres, are taken into account. We
analytically compute the tidal perturbation of pressure, density, temperature
and velocity field from which we deduce the expressions of atmospheric Love
numbers and tidal torque exerted by the star. The dynamics of atmospheric tides
depends on the frequency regime of the tidal perturbation: the thermal regime
near synchronization and the dynamical regime characterizing fast-rotating
planets. The dependence of the torque on the tidal frequency is quantified for
Earth-like and Venus-like exoplanets and is in good agreement with the results
given by Global Climate Models (GCM) simulations. Introducing dissipative
processes such as radiation regularizes the tidal response of the atmosphere,
otherwise it is singular at synchronization. We demonstrate the important role
played by the physical and dynamical properties of a super-Earth atmosphere
(e.g. Coriolis, stratification, background pressure, density, temperature,
radiative emission) and point out the key parameters defining tidal regimes
(e.g. inertia, Brunt-V\"ais\"al\"a, radiative frequencies, tidal frequency) and
characterize the behaviour of the fluid shell with dissipation.


title:
Persistence of periodic solutions for higher order perturbed
  differential systems via Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction

abstract:
  In this work we first provide sufficient conditions to assure the persistence
of some zeros of functions having the form
$$g(z,\varepsilon)=g_0(z)+\sum_{i=1}^k \varepsilon^i
g_i(z)+\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{k+1}),$$ for $|\varepsilon|\neq0$ sufficiently
small. Here $g_i:\mathcal{D}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^n$, for $i=0,1,\ldots,k$, are
smooth functions being $\mathcal{D}\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ an open bounded set.
Then we use this result to compute the bifurcation functions which controls the
periodic solutions of the following $T$-periodic smooth differential system $$
x'=F_0(t,x)+\sum_{i=1}^k \varepsilon^i F_i(t,x)+\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{k+1}),
\quad (t,z)\in\mathbb{S}^1\times\mathcal{D}. $$ It is assumed that the
unperturbed differential system has a sub-manifold of periodic solutions
$\mathcal{Z}$, $\textrm{dim}(\mathcal{Z})\leq n$. We also study the case when
the bifurcation functions have a continuum of zeros. Finally we provide the
explicit expressions of the bifurcation functions up to order 5.


title:
The second-order analysis of marked spatio-temporal point processes,
  with an application to earthquake data

abstract:
  To analyse interaction in marked spatio-temporal point processes (MSTPPs), we
introduce marked (cross) second-order reduced moment measures and K-functions
for general inhomogeneous second-order intensity reweighted stationary MSTPPs.
These summary statistics, which allow us to quantify dependence between
different mark categories of the points, are depending on the specific mark
space and mark reference measure chosen. We also look closer at how the summary
statistics reduce under assumptions such as the MSTPP being multivariate and/or
stationary. A new test for independent marking is devised and unbiased
minus-sampling estimators are derived for all statistics considered. In
addition, we treat Voronoi intensity estimators for MSTPPs and indicate their
unbiasedness. These new statistics are finally employed to analyse the
well-known Andaman sea earthquake dataset. We find that clustering takes place
between main and fore-/aftershocks at virtually all space and time scales. In
addition, we find evidence that, conditionally on the space-time locations of
the earthquakes, the magnitudes do not behave like an iid sequence.


title: Hereditarily Structurally Complete Superintuitionistic Deductive Systems

abstract:
  The paper studies hereditarily complete superintuitionistic deductive
systems, that is, the deductive system which logic is an extension of the
intuitionistic propositional logic. It is proven that for deductive systems a
criterion of hereditary structurality - similar to one that exists for logics -
does not exists. Nevertheless, it is proven that many standard
superintuitionistic logics (including Int) can be defined by a hereditarily
structurally complete deductive system.


title:
The NOESIS Network-Oriented Exploration, Simulation, and Induction
  System

abstract:
  Network data mining has become an important area of study due to the large
number of problems it can be applied to. This paper presents NOESIS, an open
source framework for network data mining that provides a large collection of
network analysis techniques, including the analysis of network structural
properties, community detection methods, link scoring, and link prediction, as
well as network visualization algorithms. It also features a complete
stand-alone graphical user interface that facilitates the use of all these
techniques. The NOESIS framework has been designed using solid object-oriented
design principles and structured parallel programming. As a lightweight library
with minimal external dependencies and a permissive software license, NOESIS
can be incorporated into other software projects. Released under a BSD license,
it is available from http://noesis.ikor.org.


title:
Dihadron Production at LHC: BFKL Predictions for Cross Sections and
  Azimuthal Correlations

abstract:
  A study of the inclusive production of a pair of hadrons (a "dihadron"
system), having high transverse momenta and separated by a large interval of
rapidity, is presented. This process has much in common with the widely
discussed Mueller--Navelet jet production and can be also used to access the
BFKL dynamics at proton colliders. Large contributions enhanced by logarithms
of energy can be resummed in perturbation theory within the BFKL formalism in
the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. The experimental study of dihadron
production would provide with an additional clear channel to test the BFKL
dynamics. The first theoretical predictions for cross sections and azimuthal
angle correlations of the two hadrons produced with LHC kinematics are
presented.


title:
Modelling the proliferation of transposable elements in populations
  under environmental stress

abstract:
  In this article, we investigate the evolution of sexual diploid populations
which are hosts for active TE families. Our purpose is to explore the
relationship between the environmental change, that influences such population
and activity of those TEs that are present in genomes.


title:
Inclusive three- and four-jet production in multi-Regge kinematics at
  the LHC

abstract:
  A study of differential cross sections for the production of three and four
jets in multi-Regge kinematics is presented. The main focus lies on the
azimuthal angle dependences in events with two forward/backward jets are tagged
in the final state. Furthermore, the tagging of one or two extra jets in more
central regions of the detector with a relative separation in rapidity from
each other is requested. It is found that the dependence of the cross sections
on the transverse momenta and the rapidities of the central jet(s) can offer
new means of studying the onset of BFKL dynamics.


title:
Conformal field theory of critical Casimir forces between surfaces with
  alternating boundary conditions in two dimensions

abstract:
  Systems as diverse as binary mixtures and inclusions in biological membranes,
and many more, can be described effectively by interacting spins. When the
critical fluctuations in these systems are constrained by boundary conditions,
critical Casimir forces (CCF) emerge. Here we analyze CCF between boundaries
with alternating boundary conditions in two dimensions, employing conformal
field theory (CFT). After presenting the concept of boundary changing
operators, we specifically consider two different boundary configurations for a
strip of critical Ising spins: (I) alternating equi-sized domains of up and
down spins on both sides of the strip, with a possible lateral shift, and (II)
alternating domains of up and down spins of different size on one side and
homogeneously fixed spins on the other side of the strip. Asymptotic results
for the CCF at small and large distances are derived. We introduce a novel
modified Szeg\"o formula for determinants of real antisymmetric block Toeplitz
matrices to obtain the exact CCF and the corresponding scaling functions at all
distances. We demonstrate the existence of a surface Renormalization Group flow
between universal force amplitudes of different magnitude and sign. The Casimir
force can vanish at a stable equilibrium position that can be controlled by
parameters of the boundary conditions. Lateral Casimir forces assume a
universal simple cosine form at large separations.


title: Restless Tuneup of High-Fidelity Qubit Gates

abstract:
  We present a tuneup protocol for qubit gates with tenfold speedup over
traditional methods reliant on qubit initialization by energy relaxation. This
speedup is achieved by constructing a cost function for Nelder-Mead
optimization from real-time correlation of non-demolition measurements
interleaving gate operations without pause. Applying the protocol on a transmon
qubit achieves 0.999 average Clifford fidelity in one minute, as independently
verified using randomized benchmarking and gate set tomography. The adjustable
sensitivity of the cost function allows detecting fractional changes in gate
error with nearly constant signal-to-noise ratio. The restless concept
demonstrated can be readily extended to the tuneup of two-qubit gates and
measurement operations.


title:
Full- and reduced-dimensionality instanton calculations of the
  tunnelling splitting in the formic acid dimer

abstract:
  The ring-polymer instanton approach is applied to compute the ground-state
tunnelling splitting of four isotopomers of the formic acid dimer using the
accurate PES of Qu and Bowman [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2016, 18, 24835]. As
well as performing the calculations in full dimensionality, we apply a
reduced-dimensionality approach to study how the results converge as
successively more degrees of freedom are included. The instanton approximation
compares well to exact quantum results where they are available but shows that
nearly all the modes are required to quantitatively obtain the tunnelling
splitting. The full-dimensional instanton calculation reproduces the
experimental results, with an error of only about 20 percent.


title:
Theoretical motivations for precision measurements of oscillation
  parameters

abstract:
  We discuss two theoretical motivations of precision measurements of
oscillation parameters. One is the guidance for flavour model building with
flavour symmetries, and the other is the connection with the origin of
matter-antimatter asymmetry. We also present our recent progress in these
aspects, a new approach of flavour model building based on cross coupling in
the flavon potential and a novel mechanism of leptogenesis via phase
transition.


title:
Evaluation of vaccination strategies for SIR epidemics on random
  networks incorporating household structure

abstract:
  This paper is concerned with the analysis of vaccination strategies in a
stochastic SIR (susceptible $\to$ infected $\to$ removed) model for the spread
of an epidemic amongst a population of individuals with a random network of
social contacts that is also partitioned into households. Under various vaccine
action models, we consider both household-based vaccination schemes, in which
the way in which individuals are chosen for vaccination depends on the size of
the households in which they reside, and acquaintance vaccination, which
targets individuals of high degree in the social network. For both types of
vaccination scheme, assuming a large population with few initial infectives, we
derive a threshold parameter which determines whether or not a large outbreak
can occur and also the probability and fraction of the population infected by
such an outbreak. The performance of these schemes is studied numerically,
focusing on the influence of the household size distribution and the degree
distribution of the social network. We find that acquaintance vaccination can
significantly outperform the best household-based scheme if the degree
distribution of the social network is heavy-tailed. For household-based
schemes, when the vaccine coverage is insufficient to prevent a major outbreak
and the vaccine is imperfect, we find situations in which both the probability
and size of a major outbreak under the scheme which minimises the threshold
parameter are \emph{larger} than in the scheme which maximises the threshold
parameter.


title: Hypergroups and Quantum Bessel Processes of Non-integer Dimensions

abstract:
  It is demonstrated how to use certain family of commutative hypergroups to
provide a universal construction of Biane's quantum Bessel processes of all
dimensions not smaller than 1. The classical Bessel processes BES$(\delta)$ are
analogously constructed with the aid of the Bessel-Kingman hypergroups for all,
not necessarily integer, dimensions $\delta\ge1$.


title: Information transport in classical statistical systems

abstract:
  For "static memory materials" the bulk properties depend on boundary
conditions. Such materials can be realized by classical statistical systems
which admit no unique equilibrium state. We describe the propagation of
information from the boundary to the bulk by classical wave functions. The
dependence of wave functions on the location of hypersurfaces in the bulk is
governed by a linear evolution equation that can be viewed as a generalized
Schr\"odinger equation. Classical wave functions obey the superposition
principle, with local probabilities realized as bilinears of wave functions.
For static memory materials the evolution within a subsector is unitary, as
characteristic for the time evolution in quantum mechanics. The
space-dependence in static memory materials can be used as an analogue
representation of the time evolution in quantum mechanics - such materials are
"quantum simulators". For example, an asymmetric Ising model on a Euclidean
two-dimensional lattice represents the time evolution of free relativistic
fermions in two-dimensional Minkowski space.

categories: cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.quant-gas hep-lat quant-ph


title: Joint load balancing and interference mitigation in 5G HETNETS

abstract:
  We study the problem of joint load balancing and interference mitigation in
heterogeneous networks (HetNets) in which massive multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) macro cell base station (BS) equipped with a large
number of antennas, overlaid with wireless self-backhauled small cells (SCs)
are assumed. Self-backhauled SC BSs with full-duplex communication employing
regular antenna arrays serve both macro users and SC users by using the
wireless backhaul from macro BS in the same frequency band. We formulate the
joint load balancing and interference mitigation problem as a network utility
maximization subject to wireless backhaul constraints. Subsequently, leveraging
the framework of stochastic optimization, the problem is decoupled into dynamic
scheduling of macro cell users, backhaul provisioning of SCs, and offloading
macro cell users to SCs as a function of interference and backhaul links. Via
numerical results, we show the performance gains of our proposed framework
under the impact of small cells density, number of base station antennas, and
transmit power levels at low and high frequency bands. We further provide
insights into the performance analysis and convergence of the proposed
framework. The numerical results show that the proposed user association
algorithm outperforms other baselines. Interestingly, we find that even at
lower frequency band the performance of open access small cell is close to that
of closed access at some operating points, the open access full- duplex small
cell still yields higher gain as compared to the closed access at higher
frequency bands. With increasing the small cell density or the wireless
backhaul quality, the open access full- duplex small cells outperform and
achieve a 5.6x gain in terms of cell-edge performance as compared to the closed
access ones in ultra-dense networks with 350 small cell base stations per km2 .


title: SimDoc: Topic Sequence Alignment based Document Similarity Framework

abstract:
  Document similarity is the problem of estimating the degree to which a given
pair of documents has similar semantic content. An accurate document similarity
measure can improve several enterprise relevant tasks such as document
clustering, text mining, and question-answering. In this paper, we show that a
document's thematic flow, which is often disregarded by bag-of-word techniques,
is pivotal in estimating their similarity. To this end, we propose a novel
semantic document similarity framework, called SimDoc. We model documents as
topic-sequences, where topics represent latent generative clusters of related
words. Then, we use a sequence alignment algorithm to estimate their semantic
similarity. We further conceptualize a novel mechanism to compute topic-topic
similarity to fine tune our system. In our experiments, we show that SimDoc
outperforms many contemporary bag-of-words techniques in accurately computing
document similarity, and on practical applications such as document clustering.


title:
Long time dynamics for semirelativistic NLS and Half Wave in arbitrary
  dimension

abstract:
  We consider the Cauchy problems associated with semirelativistc NLS (sNLS)
and half wave (HW). In particular we focus on the following two main questions:
local/global Cauchy theory; existence and stability/instability of ground
states. In between other results, we prove the existence and stability of
ground states for sNLS in the $L^2$ supercritical regime. This is in sharp
contrast with the instability of ground states for the corresponding HW, which
is also established along the paper, by showing an inflation of norms
phenomenon. Concerning the Cauchy theory we show, under radial symmetry
assumption the following results: a local existence result in $H^1$ for energy
subcritical nonlinearity and a global existence result in the $L^2$ subcritical
regime.


title: Towards regularized higher-order computations in QFT without DREG

abstract:
  In this talk, we review the basis of the loop-tree duality theorem, which
allows to rewrite loop scattering amplitudes in terms of tree-level like
objects. Since the loop measure is converted into a phase-space one, both
virtual and real contributions are expressible using the same integration
variables. A physically motivated momentum mapping allows to generate the real
emission process starting from the Born kinematics and the loop momenta. The
integrand-level combination leads to regular functions, which can be integrated
without using dimensional regularization (DREG) and correctly reproduce the
finite higher-order corrections to physical observables. We explain the
implementation of this novel approach to compute some benchmark physical
processes, and we show how to deal with both infrared and ultraviolet
divergences in four space-time dimensions.


title: Heavy-Hitter Detection Entirely in the Data Plane

abstract:
  Identifying the "heavy hitter" flows or flows with large traffic volumes in
the data plane is important for several applications e.g., flow-size aware
routing, DoS detection, and traffic engineering. However, measurement in the
data plane is constrained by the need for line-rate processing (at 10-100Gb/s)
and limited memory in switching hardware. We propose HashPipe, a heavy hitter
detection algorithm using emerging programmable data planes. HashPipe
implements a pipeline of hash tables which retain counters for heavy flows
while evicting lighter flows over time. We prototype HashPipe in P4 and
evaluate it with packet traces from an ISP backbone link and a data center. On
the ISP trace (which contains over 400,000 flows), we find that HashPipe
identifies 95% of the 300 heaviest flows with less than 80KB of memory.


title:
A novel facility for reduced-gravity testing: a set-up for studying
  low-velocity collisions into granular surfaces

abstract:
  This work presents an experimental design for studying low-velocity
collisions into granular surfaces in low-gravity. In the experiment apparatus,
reduced-gravity is simulated by releasing a free-falling projectile into a
surface container with a downward acceleration less than that of Earth's
gravity. The acceleration of the surface is controlled through the use of an
Atwood machine, or a system of pulleys and counterweights. The starting height
of the surface container and the initial separation distance between the
projectile and surface are variable and chosen to accommodate collision
velocities up to 20 cm/s and effective accelerations of ~0.1 - 1.0 m/s^2.
Accelerometers, placed on the surface container and inside the projectile,
provide acceleration data, while high-speed cameras capture the collision and
act as secondary data sources. The experiment is built into an existing 5.5 m
drop-tower frame and requires the custom design of all components, including
the projectile, surface sample container, release mechanism and deceleration
system. Data from calibration tests verify the efficiency of the experiment's
deceleration system and provide a quantitative understanding of the performance
of the Atwood system.


title:
Three-point vertex functions in Yang-Mills Theory and QCD in Landau
  gauge

abstract:
  Solutions for the three-gluon and quark-gluon vertices from Dyson-Schwinger
equations and the three-particle irreducible formalism are discussed. Dynamical
quarks (``unquenching'') change the three-gluon vertex via the quark-triangle
diagrams which themselves include fully dressed quark-gluon vertex functions.
On the other hand, the quark-swordfish diagram is, at least with the model used
for the two-quark-two-gluon vertex employed here, of minor importance. For the
leading tensor structure of the three-gluon vertex the "unquenching" effect can
be summarized for the nonperturbative part as a shift of the related dressing
function towards the infrared.


title: Coarsening and percolation in a disordered ferromagnet

abstract:
  By studying numerically the phase-ordering kinetics of a two-dimensional
ferromagnetic Ising model with quenched disorder -- either random bonds or
random fields -- we show that a critical percolation structure forms in an
early stage and is then progressively compactified by the ensuing coarsening
process. Results are compared with the non-disordered case, where a similar
phenomenon is observed, and interpreted within a dynamical scaling framework.


title: Sustaining processes from recurrent flows in body-forced turbulence

abstract:
  By extracting unstable invariant solutions directly from body-forced
three-dimensional turbulence, we study the dynamical processes at play when the
forcing is large scale and either unidirectional in the momentum or the
vorticity equations. In the former case, the dynamical processes familiar from
recent work on linearly-stable shear flows - variously called the
Self-Sustaining Process (Waleffe 1997) or Vortex-Wave Interaction (Hall & Smith
1991; Hall & Sherwin 2010) - are important even when the base flow is linearly
unstable. In the latter case, where the forcing drives Taylor-Green vortices, a
number of mechanisms are observed from the various types of periodic orbits
isolated. In particular, two different transient growth mechanisms are
discussed to explain the more complex states found.


title: Duals of quantum semigroups with involution

abstract:
  We define a category $\mathcal{QSI}$ of quantum semigroups with involution
which carries a corepresentation-based duality map $M\mapsto \widehat M$.
Objects in $\mathcal{QSI}$ are von Neumann algebras with comultiplication and
coinvolution, we do not suppose the existence of a Haar weight or of a
distinguished spatial realisation. In the case of a locally compact quantum
group $\mathbb G$, the duality $\;\widehat{\ }\;$ in $\mathcal{QSI}$ recovers
the universal duality of Kustermans: $\widehat{L^\infty(\mathbb G)} =
C_0^u(\hat {\mathbb G})^{**}= \widehat{ C_0^u(\mathbb G)^{**}}$, and
$\widehat{L^\infty(\hat{\mathbb G})} = C_0^u(\mathbb G)^{**} = \widehat{
C_0^u(\hat{\mathbb G})^{**}}$. Other various examples are given.


title: The Power of Normalization: Faster Evasion of Saddle Points

abstract:
  A commonly used heuristic in non-convex optimization is Normalized Gradient
Descent (NGD) - a variant of gradient descent in which only the direction of
the gradient is taken into account and its magnitude ignored. We analyze this
heuristic and show that with carefully chosen parameters and noise injection,
this method can provably evade saddle points. We establish the convergence of
NGD to a local minimum, and demonstrate rates which improve upon the fastest
known first order algorithm due to Ge e al. (2015).
  The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated via an application to the
problem of online tensor decomposition; a task for which saddle point evasion
is known to result in convergence to global minima.


title:
Proposal for measuring the finite-temperature Drude weight of integrable
  systems

abstract:
  Integrable models such as the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain, the Lieb-Liniger or
the one-dimensional Hubbard model are known to avoid thermalization, which was
also demonstrated in several quantum-quench experiments. Another dramatic
consequence of integrability is the zero-frequency anomaly in transport
coefficients, which results in ballistic finite-temperature transport, despite
the presence of strong interactions. While this aspect of nonergodic dynamics
has been known for a long time, there has so far not been any unambiguous
experimental realization thereof. We make a concrete proposal for the
observation ballistic transport via local quantum quench experiments in
fermionic quantum-gas microscopes. Such an experiment would also unveil the
coexistence of ballistic and diffusive transport channels in one and the same
system and provide a means of measuring finite-temperature Drude weights. The
connection between local quenches and linear-response functions is established
via time-dependent Einstein relations.


title:
Steady State Visually Evoked Potentials detection using a single
  electrode consumer-grade EEG device for BCI applications

abstract:
  Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) implement a direct communication pathway
between the brain of an user and an external device, as a computer or a machine
in general. One of the most used brain responses to implement non-invasive BCIs
is the so called steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP). This periodic
response is generated when an user gazes to a light flickering at a constant
frequency. The SSVEP response can be detected in the user's
electroencephalogram (EEG) at the corresponding frequency of the attended
flickering stimulus. In SSVEP based BCIs, multiple stimuli, flickering at
different frequencies, are commonly presented to the user, where to each
stimulus is associated a command for an actuator. One of the limitations to a
wider adoption of BCIs is given by the need of EEG acquisition devices and
software tools which are commonly not meant for end-user usage. In this work,
exploiting state-of-the-art software tools, the use of a low cost easy to wear
single electrode EEG device is demonstrated to be exploitable to implement
simple SSVEP based BCIs. The obtained results, although less impressive than
the ones obtainable with professional EEG equipment, are interesting in view of
practical low cost BCI applications meant for end-users.


title: Stall Pattern Avoidance in Polynomial Product Codes

abstract:
  Product codes are a concatenated error-correction scheme that has been often
considered for applications requiring very low bit-error rates, which demand
that the error floor be decreased as much as possible. In this work, we
consider product codes constructed from polynomial algebraic codes, and propose
a novel low-complexity post-processing technique that is able to improve the
error-correction performance by orders of magnitude. We provide lower bounds
for the error rate achievable under post processing, and present simulation
results indicating that these bounds are tight.


title: Multilinear Low-Rank Tensors on Graphs & Applications

abstract:
  We propose a new framework for the analysis of low-rank tensors which lies at
the intersection of spectral graph theory and signal processing. As a first
step, we present a new graph based low-rank decomposition which approximates
the classical low-rank SVD for matrices and multi-linear SVD for tensors. Then,
building on this novel decomposition we construct a general class of convex
optimization problems for approximately solving low-rank tensor inverse
problems, such as tensor Robust PCA. The whole framework is named as
'Multilinear Low-rank tensors on Graphs (MLRTG)'. Our theoretical analysis
shows: 1) MLRTG stands on the notion of approximate stationarity of
multi-dimensional signals on graphs and 2) the approximation error depends on
the eigen gaps of the graphs. We demonstrate applications for a wide variety of
4 artificial and 12 real tensor datasets, such as EEG, FMRI, BCI, surveillance
videos and hyperspectral images. Generalization of the tensor concepts to
non-euclidean domain, orders of magnitude speed-up, low-memory requirement and
significantly enhanced performance at low SNR are the key aspects of our
framework.


title: Controlled free-induction decay in the extreme ultraviolet

abstract:
  Coherent sources of attosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation present
many challenges if their full potential is to be realized. While many
applications benefit from the broadband nature of these sources, it is also
desirable to produce narrow band XUV pulses, or to study autoionizing
resonances in a manner that is free of the broad ionization background that
accompanies above-threshold XUV excitation. Here we demonstrate a method for
controlling the coherent XUV free induction decay that results from using
attosecond pulses to excite a gas, yielding a fully functional modulator for
XUV wavelengths. We use an infrared (IR) control pulse to manipulate both the
spatial and spectral phase of the XUV emission, sending the light in a
direction of our choosing at a time of our choosing. This allows us to tailor
the light using opto-optical modulation, similar to devices available in the IR
and visible wavelength regions.


title: Lost in Space: Geolocation in Event Data

abstract:
  Extracting the "correct" location information from text data, i.e.,
determining the place of event, has long been a goal for automated text
processing. To approximate human-like coding schema, we introduce a supervised
machine learning algorithm that classifies each location word to be either
correct or incorrect. We use news articles collected from around the world
(Integrated Crisis Early Warning System [ICEWS] data and Open Event Data
Alliance [OEDA] data) to test our algorithm that consists of two stages. In the
feature selection stage, we extract contextual information from texts, namely,
the N-gram patterns for location words, the frequency of mention, and the
context of the sentences containing location words. In the classification
stage, we use three classifiers to estimate the model parameters in the
training set and then to predict whether a location word in the test set news
articles is the place of the event. The validation results show that our
algorithm improves the accuracy rate of the current geolocation methods of
dictionary approach by as much as 25%.


title:
Fast Verifying Proofs of Propositional Unsatisfiability via Window
  Shifting

abstract:
  The robustness and correctness of SAT solvers are receiving more and more
attention. In recent SAT competitions, a proof of unsatisfiability emitted by
SAT solvers must be checked. So far, no proof checker has been efficient for
every case. In the SAT competition 2016, some proofs were not verified within
20000 seconds. For this reason, we decided to develop a more efficient proof
checker called TreeRat. This new checker uses a window shifting technique to
improve the level of efficiency at which it verifies proofs of
unsatisfiability. At the same time, we suggest that tree-search-based SAT
solvers should use an equivalent relation encoding to emit proofs of
subproblems. In our experiments, TreeRat was able to verify almost all proofs
within 20000 seconds. On this point, TreeRat is shown to be superior to
gratgen, which is an improved version of DRAT-trim. Also, in most cases,
TreeRat is faster than gratgen. Like DRAT-trim, TreeRat can output also trace
dependency graphs. Its output format is LRAT. The correctness of TreeRat can be
ensured by checking its LRAT output.


title: Potentially good reduction loci of Shimura varieties

abstract:
  In this paper, we give a notion of the potentially good reduction locus of a
Shimura variety. It consists of the points which should be related with motives
having potentially good reductions in some sense. We show the existence of such
locus for a Shimura variety of preabelian type. Further, we construct a
partition of the adic space associated to a Shimura variety of preabelian type,
which is expected to describe degenerations of motives. Using this partition,
we prove that the cohomology of the potentially good reduction locus is
isomorphic to the cohomology of a Shimura variety up to non-supercuspidal
parts.


title:
Analytic Solutions of Transverse Magneto-hydrodynamics under Bjorken
  Expansion

abstract:
  We review the recent developments of analytic solutions in transverse
magneto-hydrodynamics under Bjorken expansion. It is found that the time
dependence of magnetic fields can either increase or reduce the energy density
depending on the decay exponent of magnetic fields. Moreover, perturbative
solutions under weak magnetic fields with spatial inhomogeneity results in
transverse flow, where the directions of flow also depend on the decay exponent
of magnetic fields in time.


title: Quantitative Entropy Study of Language Complexity

abstract:
  We study the entropy of Chinese and English texts, based on characters in
case of Chinese texts and based on words for both languages. Significant
differences are found between the languages and between different personal
styles of debating partners. The entropy analysis points in the direction of
lower entropy, that is of higher complexity. Such a text analysis would be
applied for individuals of different styles, a single individual at different
age, as well as different groups of the population.


title: The Role of Word Length in Semantic Topology

abstract:
  A topological argument is presented concering the structure of semantic
space, based on the negative correlation between polysemy and word length. The
resulting graph structure is applied to the modeling of free-recall
experiments, resulting in predictions on the comparative values of recall
probabilities. Associative recall is found to favor longer words whereas
sequential recall is found to favor shorter words. Data from the PEERS
experiments of Lohnas et al. (2015) and Healey and Kahana (2016) confirm both
predictons, with correlation coefficients $r_{seq}= -0.17$ and $r_{ass}=
+0.17$. The argument is then applied to predicting global properties of list
recall, which leads to a novel explanation for the word-length effect based on
the optimization of retrieval strategies.


title:
Finite Bases with Respect to the Superposition in Classes of Elementary
  Recursive Functions, dissertation

abstract:
  This is a thesis that was defended in 2009 at Lomonosov Moscow State
University.
  In Chapter 1:
  1. It is proved that that the class of lower (Skolem) elementary functions is
the set of all polynomial-bounded functions that can be obtained by a
composition of $x+1$, $xy$, $\max(x-y,0)$, $x\wedge y$, $\lfloor x/y \rfloor$,
and one exponential function ($2^x$ or $x^y$) using formulas that have no more
than 2 floors with respect to an exponent (for example, $(x+y)^{xy+z}+1$ has 2
floors, $2^{2^x}$ has 3 floors). Here $x\wedge y$ is a bitwise AND of $x$ and
$y$.
  2. It is proved that $\{x+y,\ \max(x-y,0),\ x\wedge y,\ \lfloor x/y \rfloor,\
2^{\lfloor \log_2 x \rfloor^2}\}$ and $\{x+y,\ \max(x-y,0),\ x\wedge y,\
\lfloor x/y \rfloor,\ x^{\lfloor \log_2 y \rfloor}\}$ are composition bases in
the functional version of the uniform $\mathrm{TC}^0$ (also known as
$\mathrm{FOM}$).
  3. The hierarchy of classes exhausting the class of elementary functions is
described in terms of compositions with restrictions on a number of floors in a
formula.
  The results of Chapter 1 are published in:
  1) Volkov S.A. An exponential expansion of the Skolem-elementary functions,
and bounded superpositions of simple arithmetic functions (in Russian),
Mathematical Problems of Cybernetics, Moscow, Fizmatlit, 2007, vol. 16, pp.
163-190
  2) doi:10.1134/S1064562407040217
  In Chapter 2 a simple composition basis in the class ${\cal E}^2$ of
Grzegorczyk hierarchy is described. This result is published in DOI:
10.1515/156939206779238436
  In Chapter 3 it is proved that the group of permutations
$\mathrm{Gr}(Q)=\{f:\ f,f^{-1}\in Q\}$ is generated by two permutations for
many classes $Q$. For example, this is proved for $Q=\mathrm{FP}$, where
$\mathrm{FP}$ is the class of all polynomial-time computable functions (of the
length of input). The results of chapter 3 are published in DOI:
10.1515/DMA.2008.046


title:
Characterization of hexagonal boron nitride layers on nickel surfaces by
  low-energy electron microscopy

abstract:
  The thickness and interfacial geometry of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) films
grown by chemical vapor deposition on polycrystalline nickel foils is studied
using low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM). The reflectivity of the electrons,
measured over an energy range of 0 - 20 eV, reveals distinct minima and maxima.
The measured data is compared with simulations based on a first-principles
description of the electronic structure of the material. From this comparison,
the number of hBN layers and the separation between the lowest hBN layer and
the nickel surface is deduced. The coupling of interlayer states of the hBN to
both image-potential and Shockley-type surface states of the nickel is
discussed, and the dependence of the reflectivity spectra on the surface
orientation of nickel grains is examined.


title:
An Evaluation of Information Sharing Parking Guidance Policies Using a
  Bayesian Approach

abstract:
  Real-time parking occupancy information is critical for a parking management
system to facilitate drivers to park more efficiently. Recent advances in
connected and automated vehicle technologies enable sensor-equipped cars (probe
cars) to detect and broadcast available parking spaces when driving through
parking lots. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of market penetration of
probe cars on the system performance, and investigate different parking
guidance policies to improve the data acquisition process. We adopt a
simulation-based approach to impose four policies on an off- street parking lot
influencing the behavior of probe cars to park in assigned parking spaces. This
in turn effects the scanning route and the parking space occupancy estimations.
The last policy we propose is a near-optimal guidance strategy that maximizes
the information gain of posteriors. The results suggest that an efficient
information gathering policy can compensate for low penetration of connected
and automated vehicles. We also highlight the policy trade-off that occur while
attempting to maximize information gain through explorations and improve
assignment accuracy through exploitations. Our results can assist urban policy
makers in designing and managing smart parking systems.


title:
Information Theoretic Performance of Periodogram-based CFO Estimation in
  Massive MU-MIMO Systems

abstract:
  In this paper, we study the information theoretic performance of the modified
time-reversal maximum ratio combining (TR-MRC) receiver (presented in [9]) with
the spatially averaged periodogram-based carrier frequency offset (CFO)
estimator (proposed in [7]) in multi-user massive MIMO systems. Our analysis
shows that an $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{M})$ array gain is achieved with this
periodogram-based CFO estimator, which is same as the array gain achieved in
the ideal/zero CFO scenario ($M$ is the number of base station antennas).
Information theoretic performance comparison with the correlation-based CFO
estimator for massive MIMO systems (proposed in [6]) reveals that this
periodogram-based CFO estimator is more energy efficient in slowly time-varying
channels.


title: The Power of Side-information in Subgraph Detection

abstract:
  In this work, we tackle the problem of hidden community detection. We
consider Belief Propagation (BP) applied to the problem of detecting a hidden
Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi (ER) graph embedded in a larger and sparser ER graph, in the
presence of side-information. We derive two related algorithms based on BP to
perform subgraph detection in the presence of two kinds of side-information.
The first variant of side-information consists of a set of nodes, called cues,
known to be from the subgraph. The second variant of side-information consists
of a set of nodes that are cues with a given probability. It was shown in past
works that BP without side-information fails to detect the subgraph correctly
when an effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) parameter falls below a
threshold. In contrast, in the presence of non-trivial side-information, we
show that the BP algorithm achieves asymptotically zero error for any value of
the SNR parameter. We validate our results through simulations on synthetic
datasets as well as on a few real world networks.


title:
Direct-Photon Spectra and Anisotropic Flow in Heavy Ion Collisions from
  Holography

abstract:
  The thermal-photon emission from strongly coupled gauge theories at finite
temperature is calculated by using holographic models for QCD in the Veneziano
limit (V-QCD). These emission rates are then embedded in hydrodynamic
simulations combined with prompt photons from hard scattering and the thermal
photons from hadron gas to analyze the spectra and anisotropic flow of direct
photons at RHIC and LHC. The results from different sources responsible for the
thermal photons in the quark gluon plasma (QGP) including the weakly coupled
QGP (wQGP) from perturbative calculations, strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}$=4
super Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma (as a benchmark for reference), and Gubser's
phenomenological model mimicking the strongly coupled QGP (sQGP) are then
compared. It is found that the direct-photon spectra are enhanced in the
strongly coupled scenario compared with the ones in the wQGP, especially at
intermediate and high momenta, which improve the agreements with data.
Moreover, by using IP-glassma initial states, both the elliptic flow and
triangular flow of direct photons are amplified at high momenta ($p_T$>2.5 GeV)
for V-QCD, while they are suppressed at low momenta compared to wQGP. The
distinct results in holography stem from the blue-shift of emission rates in
strong coupling. In addition, the spectra and flow in small collision systems
were evaluated for future comparisons. It is found that thermal photons from
the deconfined phase are substantial to reconcile the spectra and flow at high
momenta.


title: Deeply supervised salient object detection with short connections

abstract:
  Recent progress on saliency detection is substantial, benefiting mostly from
the explosive development of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Semantic
segmentation and saliency detection algorithms developed lately have been
mostly based on Fully Convolutional Neural Networks (FCNs). There is still a
large room for improvement over the generic FCN models that do not explicitly
deal with the scale-space problem. Holistically-Nested Edge Detector (HED)
provides a skip-layer structure with deep supervision for edge and boundary
detection, but the performance gain of HED on salience detection is not
obvious. In this paper, we propose a new method for saliency detection by
introducing short connections to the skip-layer structures within the HED
architecture. Our framework provides rich multi-scale feature maps at each
layer, a property that is critically needed to perform segment detection. Our
method produces state-of-the-art results on 5 widely tested salient object
detection benchmarks, with advantages in terms of efficiency (0.15 seconds per
image), effectiveness, and simplicity over the existing algorithms.


title:
Scale-constrained Unsupervised Evaluation Method for Multi-scale Image
  Segmentation

abstract:
  Unsupervised evaluation of segmentation quality is a crucial step in image
segmentation applications. Previous unsupervised evaluation methods usually
lacked the adaptability to multi-scale segmentation. A scale-constrained
evaluation method that evaluates segmentation quality according to the
specified target scale is proposed in this paper. First, regional saliency and
merging cost are employed to describe intra-region homogeneity and inter-region
heterogeneity, respectively. Subsequently, both of them are standardized into
equivalent spectral distances of a predefined region. Finally, by analyzing the
relationship between image characteristics and segmentation quality, we
establish the evaluation model. Experimental results show that the proposed
method outperforms four commonly used unsupervised methods in multi-scale
evaluation tasks.


title:
Multinomial VaR Backtests: A simple implicit approach to backtesting
  expected shortfall

abstract:
  Under the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) capital charges for
the trading book are based on the coherent expected shortfall (ES) risk
measure, which show greater sensitivity to tail risk. In this paper it is
argued that backtesting of expected shortfall - or the trading book model from
which it is calculated - can be based on a simultaneous multinomial test of
value-at-risk (VaR) exceptions at different levels, an idea supported by an
approximation of ES in terms of multiple quantiles of a distribution proposed
in Emmer et al. (2015). By comparing Pearson, Nass and likelihood-ratio tests
(LRTs) for different numbers of VaR levels $N$ it is shown in a series of
simulation experiments that multinomial tests with $N\geq 4$ are much more
powerful at detecting misspecifications of trading book loss models than
standard binomial exception tests corresponding to the case $N=1$. Each test
has its merits: Pearson offers simplicity; Nass is robust in its size
properties to the choice of $N$; the LRT is very powerful though slightly
over-sized in small samples and more computationally burdensome. A
traffic-light system for trading book models based on the multinomial test is
proposed and the recommended procedure is applied to a real-data example
spanning the 2008 financial crisis.