title: The Origin of Element Abundance Variations in Solar Energetic Particles

abstract:
  Abundance enhancements, during acceleration and transport in both gradual and
impulsive solar energetic particle (SEP) events, vary approximately as power
laws in the mass-to-charge ratio [A/Q] of the ions. Since the Q-values depend
upon the electron temperature of the source plasma, this has allowed a
determination of this temperature from the pattern of element-abundance
enhancements and a verification of the expected inverse-time dependence of the
power of A/Q for diffusive transport of ions from the SEP events, with
scattering mean free paths found to be between 0.2 and 1 AU. SEP events derived
from plasma of different temperatures map into different regions in typical
cross-plots of abundances, spreading the distributions. In comparisons of SEP
events with temperatures above 2 MK, impulsive events show much broader
non-thermal variation of abundances than do gradual events. The extensive shock
waves accelerating ions in gradual events may average over much of an active
region where numerous but smaller magnetic reconnections, "nanojets", produce
suprathermal seed ions, thus averaging over varying abundances, while an
impulsive SEP event only samples one local region of abundance variations.
Evidence for a reference He/O abundance ratio of 91, rather than 57, is also
found for the hotter plasma. However, while this is similar to the solar-wind
abundance of He/O, the solar-wind abundances otherwise provide an unacceptably
poor reference for the SEP abundance enhancements, generating extremely large
errors.


title: Stabilizing Stochastic Predictive Control under Bernoulli Dropouts

abstract:
  This article presents tractable and recursively feasible optimization-based
controllers for stochastic linear systems with bounded controls. The stochastic
noise in the plant is assumed to be additive, zero mean and fourth moment
bounded, and the control values transmitted over an erasure channel. Three
different transmission protocols are proposed having different requirements on
the storage and computational facilities available at the actuator. We optimize
a suitable stochastic cost function accounting for the effects of both the
stochastic noise and the packet dropouts over affine saturated disturbance
feedback policies. The proposed controllers ensure mean square boundedness of
the states in closed-loop for all positive values of control bounds and any
non-zero probability of successful transmission over a noisy control channel.


title: Dirac semimetal phase in the hexagonal LiZnBi

abstract:
  Based on first-principles calculations, we find that LiZnBi, a metallic
hexagonal $ABC$ compound, can be driven into a Dirac semimetal with a pair of
Dirac points by strain. The nontrivial topological nature of the strained
LiZnBi is directly demonstrated by calculating its $\mathbb{Z}_2$ index and the
surface states, where the Fermi arcs are clearly observed. The low-energy
states as well as topological properties are shown to be sensitive to the
strain configurations. The finding of Dirac semimetal phase in LiZnBi may
intrigue further researches on the topological properties of hexagonal $ABC$
materials and promote new practical applications.


title:
On the star-height of factor counting languages and their relationship
  to Rees zero-matrix semigroups

abstract:
  Given a word $w$ over a finite alphabet, we consider, in three special cases,
the generalised star-height of the languages in which $w$ occurs as a
contiguous subword (factor) an exact number of times and of the languages in
which $w$ occurs as a contiguous subword modulo a fixed number, and prove that
in each case it is at most one. We use these combinatorial results to show that
any language recognised by a Rees (zero-)matrix semigroup over an abelian group
is of generalised star-height at most one.


title: On the Hughes Model and Numerical Aspects

abstract:
  We study a crowd model proposed by R. Hughes and we describe a numerical
approach to solve it. The Hughes model comprises a Fokker-Planck equation
coupled with an eikonal equation with Dirichlet or Neumann data. First, we
establish a priori estimates for the solutions. Second, we study radial
solutions and identify a shock formation mechanism. Third, we illustrate the
existence of congestion, the breakdown of the model, and the trend to the
equilibrium. Finally, we propose a new numerical method and consider two
numerical examples.


title: The maximum diameter of pure simplicial complexes and pseudo-manifolds

abstract:
  We construct $d$-dimensional pure simplicial complexes and pseudo-manifolds
(without boundary) with $n$ vertices whose combinatorial diameter grows as $c_d
n^{d-1}$ for a constant $c_d$ depending only on $d$, which is the maximum
possible growth. Moreover, the constant $c_d$ is optimal modulo a singly
exponential factor in $d$. The pure simplicial complexes improve on a
construction of the second author that achieved $c_d n^{2d/3}$. For
pseudo-manifolds without boundary, as far as we know, no construction with
diameter greater than $n^2$ was previously known.


title:
Hardy and Rellich inequalities, identities, and sharp remainders on
  homogeneous groups

abstract:
  We give sharp remainder terms of $L^{p}$ and weighted Hardy and Rellich
inequalities on one of most general subclasses of nilpotent Lie groups, namely
the class of homogeneous groups. As consequences, we obtain analogues of the
generalised classical Hardy and Rellich inequalities and the uncertainty
principle on homogeneous groups. We also prove higher order inequalities of
Hardy-Rellich type, all with sharp constants. A number of identities are
derived including weighted and higher order types.


title: Numerical Stability of Generalized Entropies

abstract:
  In many applications, the probability density function is subject to
experimental errors. In this work the continuos dependence of a class of
generalized entropies on the experimental errors is studied. This class
includes the C. Shannon, C. Tsallis, A. R\'{e}nyi and generalized R\'{e}nyi
entropies. By using the connection between R\'{e}nyi or Tsallis entropies, and
the \textit{distance} in a the Lebesgue functional spaces, we introduce a
further extensive generalizations of the R\'{e}nyi entropy. In this work we
suppose that the experimental error is measured by some generalized $L^{p}$
distance. In line with the methodology normally used for treating the so called
\textit{ill-posed problems}, auxiliary stabilizing conditions are determined,
such that small - in the sense of $L^{p}$ metric - experimental errors provoke
small variations of the classical and generalized entropies. These stabilizing
conditions are formulated in terms of $L^{p}$ metric in a class of generalized
$L^{p}$ spaces of functions. Shannon's entropy requires, however, more
restrictive stabilizing conditions.


title:
Homemade assembly and parameterization of a High Performance Cluster
  using PelicanHPC with Flops testing and controlled temperature thanks to MCUs
  Arduino project

abstract:
  This article shows a lower cost realization of a compute cluster using Debian
distribution such as PelicanHPC. We will explain parameterization and network
configuration for master and compute slave nodes. Performance testing will take
place using flops.f file given by MPI. The results will be compared between
differents clusters. We will explain quickly how the temperature is controlled
by a microcontroller unit.


title: Scalar field dark matter and the Higgs field

abstract:
  We discuss the possibility that dark matter corresponds to an oscillating
scalar field coupled to the Higgs boson. We argue that the initial field
amplitude should generically be of the order of the Hubble parameter during
inflation, as a result of its quasi-de Sitter fluctuations. This implies that
such a field may account for the present dark matter abundance for masses in
the range $10^{-6} - 10^{-4}$ eV, if the tensor-to-scalar ratio is within the
range of planned CMB experiments. We show that such mass values can naturally
be obtained through either Planck-suppressed non-renormalizable interactions
with the Higgs boson or, alternatively, through renormalizable interactions
within the Randall-Sundrum scenario, where the dark matter scalar resides in
the bulk of the warped extra-dimension and the Higgs is confined to the
infrared brane.


title: Preprint: Bigdata Oriented Multimedia Mobile Health Applications

abstract:
  This is the preprint version of our paper on JOMS. In this paper, two mHealth
applications are introduced, which can be employed as the terminals of bigdata
based health service to collect information for electronic medical records
(EMRs). The first one is a hybrid system for improving the user experience in
the hyperbaric oxygen chamber by 3D stereoscopic virtual reality glasses and
immersive perception. Several HMDs have been tested and compared. The second
application is a voice interactive serious game as a likely solution for
providing assistive rehabilitation tool for therapists. The recorder of the
voice of patients could be analysed to evaluate the long-time rehabilitation
results and further to predict the rehabilitation process.


title:
Comparative numerical studies of ion traps with integrated optical
  cavities

abstract:
  We study a range of radio-frequency ion trap geometries and investigate the
effect of integrating dielectric cavity mirrors on their trapping potential. We
aim to identify ion trap and cavity configurations that are best suited for
achieving small cavity volumes and thus large ion-photon coupling as required
for scalable quantum information networks. In particular, we investigate the
trapping potential distortions caused by the dielectric material of the cavity
mirrors for different mirror orientations with respect to the trapping
electrodes, as well as for mirror misalignment. We also analyze the effect of
the mirror material properties such as dielectric constants and surface
conductivity, and study the effect of surface charges on the mirrors. The
smallest trapping potential distortions are found if the cavities are aligned
along the major symmetry axis of the electrode geometries. These cavity
configurations also appear to be the most stable with respect to any mirror
misalignment.


title:
Semi-Analytical Minimum Time Solution for the Optimal Control of a
  Vehicle subject to Limited Acceleration

abstract:
  The basic module for the solution of the minimum time optimal control of a
car-like vehicle is herein presented. The vehicle is subject to the effect of
laminar (linear) and aerodynamic (quadratic) drag, taking into account the
asymmetric bounded longitudinal accelerations. This module is studied and
designed to be fast and robust in sight to be the fundamental building block of
a more extended optimal control problem that considers a given clothoid as the
trajectory and the presence of a constraint on the lateral acceleration of the
vehicle. The nonlinear dynamics and the different possible boundary conditions
yield different analytical solutions of the differential equations, hence they
by themselves a particular attention. The study of the numeric stability of the
computation for limit values of the parameters is essential as showed in the
numerical tests.


title: Bi-Local Holography in the SYK Model

abstract:
  We discuss large $N$ rules of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and the bi-local
representation of holography of this theory. This is done by establishing $1/N$
Feynman rules in terms of bi-local propagators and vertices, which can be
evaluated following the recent procedure of Polchinski and Rosenhaus. These
rules can be interpreted as Witten type diagrams of the dual AdS theory, which
we are able to define at IR fixed point and off.


title: Genus three curves and 56 nodal sextic surfaces

abstract:
  Catanese and Tonoli showed that the maximal cardinality for an even set of
nodes on a sextic surface is 56 and they constructed such nodal surfaces. In
this paper we give an alternative, rather simple, construction for these
surfaces starting from a non-hyperelliptic genus three curve. We illustrate our
method by giving explicitly the equation of such a sextic surface starting from
the Klein curve.


title: Gamma synchronization of the hippocampal spatial map---topological model

abstract:
  The mammalian hippocampus plays a principal role in producing a cognitive map
of space---an internalized representation of the animal's environment. The
neuronal mechanisms producing this map depend primarily on the temporal
structure of the hippocampal neurons' spiking activity, which is modulated by
the oscillatory extracellular electrical field potential. In this paper, we
discuss the integrative effect of the gamma rhythm, one of the principal
components of these oscillations, on the ability of the place cell ensembles to
encode a spatial map. Using methods of algebraic topology and statistical
physics, we demonstrate that gamma-modulation of neuronal activity generates a
synchronized spiking of dynamical cell assemblies, which enables learning a
spatial map at faster timescales.


title: Distribution of gaps between eigenangles of Hecke operators

abstract:
  In 1931, Van der Corput showed that if for each positive integer $s$, the
sequence $\{x_{n+s}-x_n\}$ is uniformly distributed (mod 1), then the sequence
$x_n$ is uniformly distributed (mod 1). The converse of above result is
surprisingly not true. The distribution of consecutive gaps of an
equidistributed sequence has been studied widely in the literature. In this
paper, we have studied the distribution of gaps between one or more
equidistributed sequences. Under certain conditions, we could study the
distribution effectively. As applications, we study the equidistribution of
gaps between eigenangles of Hecke operators acting on space of cusp forms of
weight $k$ and level $N$, primitive Maass forms. We also have studied the
distribution of gaps between corresponding angles of Satake parameters of
$GL_2$ with prescribed local representations.


title:
Different Types of Synchronization in Coupled Network Based Chaotic
  Circuits

abstract:
  We propose a simple and new unified method to achieve lag, complete and
anticipatory synchronizations in coupled nonlinear systems. It can be
considered as an alternative to the subsystem and intentional parameter
mismatch methods. This novel method is illustrated in a unidirectionally
coupled RC phase shift network based Chua's circuit. Employing feedback
coupling, different types of chaos synchronization are observed experimentally
and numerically in coupled identical chaotic oscillators {\emph{without using
time delay}}. With a simple switch in the experimental set up we observe
different kinds of synchronization. We also analyze the coupled system with
numerical simulations.


title: Lax Distributive Laws for Topology, I

abstract:
  For a quantaloid $\mathcal{Q}$, considered as a bicategory, Walters
introduced categories enriched in $\mathcal{Q}$. Here we extend the study of
monad-quantale-enriched categories of the past fifteen years by introducing
monad-quantaloid-enriched categories. We do so by making lax distributive laws
of a monad $\mathbb{T}$ over the discrete presheaf monad of the small
quantaloid $\mathcal{Q}$ the primary data of the theory, rather than the lax
monad extensions of $\mathbb{T}$ to the category of $\mathcal{Q}$-relations
that they equivalently describe. The central piece of the paper establishes a
Galois correspondence between such lax distributive laws and lax
Eilenberg-Moore $\mathbb{T}$-algebra structures on the set of discrete
presheaves over the object set of $\mathcal{Q}$. We give a precise comparison
of these structures with the more restrictive notion introduced by Hofmann in
the case of a commutative quantale, called natural topological theories here,
and describe the lax monad extensions introduced by him as minimal. Throughout
the paper, a variety of old and new examples of ordered, metric and topological
structures illustrate the theory developed, which includes the consideration of
algebraic functors and change-of-base functors in full generality.


title: Grouping Time-varying Data for Interactive Exploration

abstract:
  We present algorithms and data structures that support the interactive
analysis of the grouping structure of one-, two-, or higher-dimensional
time-varying data while varying all defining parameters. Grouping structures
characterise important patterns in the temporal evaluation of sets of
time-varying data. We follow Buchin et al. [JoCG 2015] who define groups using
three parameters: group-size, group-duration, and inter-entity distance. We
give upper and lower bounds on the number of maximal groups over all parameter
values, and show how to compute them efficiently. Furthermore, we describe data
structures that can report changes in the set of maximal groups in an
output-sensitive manner. Our results hold in $\mathbb{R}^d$ for fixed $d$.


title:
Anomalous refraction of acoustic guided waves in solids with
  geometrically tapered metasurfaces

abstract:
  The concept of metasurface has recently opened new exciting directions to
engineer the refraction properties in both optical and acoustic media.
Metasurfaces are typically designed by assembling arrays of sub-wavelength
anisotropic scatterers able to mold incoming wavefronts in rather
unconventional ways. The concept of metasurface was pioneered in photonics and
later extended to acoustics while its application to the propagation of elastic
waves in solids is relatively unexplored. We investigate the design of acoustic
metasurfaces to control elastic guided waves in thin-walled structural
elements. These engineered discontinuities enable anomalous refraction of
guided wave modes consistently with the generalized Snell's law. The
metasurfaces are made out of locally-resonant torus-like tapers enabling
accurate phase shift of the incoming wave which ultimately affects the
refraction properties. We show that anomalous refraction can be achieved on
transmitted antisymmetric modes ($A_0$) either when using a symmetric ($S_0$)
or antisymmetric ($A_0$) incident wave, the former clearly involving mode
conversion. The same metasurface design also allows achieving structure
embedded planar focal lenses and phase masks for non-paraxial propagation.


title: Stability Analysis of Bilinear Iterative Rational Krylov Algorithm

abstract:
  Models coming from different physical applications are very large in size.
Simulation with such systems is expensive so one usually obtains a reduced
model (by model reduction) that replicates the input-output behaviour of the
original full model. A recently proposed algorithm for model reduction of
bilinear dynamical systems, Bilinear Iterative Rational Krylov Algorithm
(BIRKA), does so in a locally optimal way. This algorithm requires solving very
large linear systems of equations. Usually these systems are solved by direct
methods (e.g., LU), which are very expensive. A better choice is iterative
methods (e.g., Krylov). However, iterative methods introduce errors in linear
solves because they are not exact. They solve the given linear system up to a
certain tolerance. We prove that under some mild assumptions BIRKA is stable
with respect to the error introduced by the inexact linear solves. We also
analyze the accuracy of the reduced system obtained from using these inexact
solves and support all our results by numerical experiments.


title: Open Quantum Random Walks and the Mean Hitting Time Formula

abstract:
  We make use of the Open Quantum Random Walk setting due to S. Attal, F.
Petruccione, C. Sabot and I. Sinayskiy [J. Stat. Phys. (2012) 147:832-852] in
order to discuss hitting times and a quantum version of the Mean Hitting Time
Formula from classical probability theory. We study an open quantum notion of
hitting probability on a finite collection of sites and with this we are able
to describe the problem in terms of linear maps and its matrix representations.
After setting an open quantum version of the fundamental matrix for ergodic
Markov chains we are able to prove our main result and as consequence a version
of the Random Target Lemma. We also study a mean hitting time formula in terms
of the minimal polynomial associated to the matrix representation of the
quantum walk. We discuss applications of the results to open quantum dynamics
on graphs together with open questions.


title:
Is the cluster environment quenching the Seyfert activity in elliptical
  and spiral galaxies?

abstract:
  We developed a hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) to investigate how the
presence of Seyfert activity relates to their environment, herein represented
by the galaxy cluster mass, $M_{200}$, and the normalized cluster-centric
distance, $r/r_{200}$. We achieved this by constructing an unbiased sample of
galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with morphological classifications
provided by the Galaxy Zoo Project. A propensity score matching approach is
introduced to control for the effects of confounding variables: stellar mass,
galaxy colour, and star formation rate. The connection between Seyfert-activity
and environmental properties in the de-biased sample is modelled within an HBM
framework using the so-called logistic regression technique, suitable for the
analysis of binary data (e.g., whether or not a galaxy hosts an AGN). Unlike
standard ordinary least square fitting methods, our methodology naturally
allows modelling the probability of Seyfert-AGN activity in galaxies on their
natural scale, i.e. as a binary variable. Furthermore, we demonstrate how an
HBM can incorporate information of each particular galaxy morphological type in
a unified framework. In elliptical galaxies, our analysis indicates a strong
correlation of Seyfert-AGN activity with $r/r_{200}$, and a weaker correlation
with the mass of the host. In spiral galaxies these trends do not appear,
suggesting that the link between Seyfert activity and the properties of spiral
galaxies are independent of the environment.


title: Symmetric algebras of corepresentations and smash products

abstract:
  We investigate Frobenius algebras and symmetric algebras in the monoidal
category of right comodules over a Hopf algebra $H$; for the symmetric property
$H$ is assumed to be cosovereign. If $H$ is finite dimensional and $A$ is an
$H$-comodule algebra, we uncover the connection between $A$ and the smash
product $A\# H^*$ with respect to the Frobenius and symmetric properties.


title: Quantum network of neutral atom clocks

abstract:
  We propose a protocol for creating a fully entangled GHZ-type state of
neutral atoms in spatially separated optical atomic clocks. In our scheme,
local operations make use of the strong dipole-dipole interaction between
Rydberg excitations, which give rise to fast and reliable quantum operations
involving all atoms in the ensemble. The necessary entanglement between distant
ensembles is mediated by single-photon quantum channels and collectively
enhanced light-matter couplings. These techniques can be used to create the
recently proposed quantum clock network based on neutral atom optical clocks.
We specifically analyze a possible realization of this scheme using neutral Yb
ensembles.


title: Universal Scaling in the Aging of the Strong Glass Former SiO$_2$

abstract:
  We show that the aging dynamics of a strong glass former displays a
strikingly simple scaling behavior, connecting the average dynamics with its
fluctuations, namely the dynamical heterogeneities. We perform molecular
dynamics simulations of SiO$_2$ with BKS interactions, quenching the system
from high to low temperature, and study the evolution of the system as a
function of the waiting time $t_{\rm w}$ measured from the instant of the
quench. We find that both the aging behavior of the dynamic susceptibility
$\chi_4$ and the aging behavior of the probability distribution $P(f_{{\rm
s},{\mathbf r}})$ of the local incoherent intermediate scattering function
$f_{{\rm s},{\mathbf r}}$ can be described by simple scaling forms in terms of
the global incoherent intermediate scattering function $C$. The scaling forms
are the same that have been found to describe the aging of several fragile
glass formers and that, in the case of $P(f_{{\rm s},{\mathbf r}})$, have been
also predicted theoretically. A thorough study of the length scales involved
highlights the importance of intermediate length scales. We also analyze
directly the scaling dependence on particle type and on wavevector $q$, and
find that both the average and the fluctuations of the slow aging dynamics are
controlled by a unique aging clock, which is not only independent of the
wavevector $q$, but is the same for O and Si atoms.


title: All-fibre multiplexed source of high-purity heralded single photons

abstract:
  Single photon sources based on spontaneous photon-pair generation have
enabled pioneering experiments in quantum optics. However, their
non-determinism presents a bottleneck to scaling up photonic and hybrid
quantum-enhanced technologies. Furthermore, photon pairs are typically emitted
into many correlated frequency modes, producing an undesirable mixed state on
heralding. Here we present a complete fibre-integrated heralded single photon
source that addresses both these difficulties simultaneously. We use active
switching to provide a path to deterministic operation by multiplexing separate
spontaneous sources, and dispersion engineering to minimise frequency
correlation for high-purity single photon generation. All the essential
elements -- nonlinear material with dispersion control, wavelength isolation,
optical delay, and fast switching -- are incorporated in a low-loss
alignment-free package that heralds photons in telecoms single-mode fibre. Our
results demonstrate a scalable approach to delivering pure single photons
directly into guided-wave photonic devices.


title:
Multiple-scale integro-differential perturbation method for generic
  non-Markovian environments

abstract:
  Non-Markovianity may significantly speed up quantum dynamics when the system
interacts strongly with an infinite large reservoir, of which the coupling
spectrum should be fine-tuned. The potential benefits are evident in many
dynamics schemes, especially the continuous-time quantum walk. Difficulty
exists, however, in producing closed-form solutions with controllable accuracy
against the complexity of memory kernels. Here, we introduce a new
multiple-scale perturbation method that works on integro-differential equations
for general study of memory effects in dynamical systems. We propose an
open-system model in which a continuous-time quantum walk is enclosed in a
non-Markovian reservoir, that naturally corresponds to an error correction
algorithm scheme. By applying the multiple-scale method we show how emergence
of different time scales is related to transition of system dynamics into the
non-Markovian regime. We find that up to two long-term modes and two short-term
modes exist in regular networks, limited by their intrinsic symmetries. In
addition to the effective approximation by our perturbation method on general
forms of reservoirs, the speed-up of quantum walks assisted by non-Markovianity
is also confirmed, revealing the advantage of reservoir engineering in
designing time-sensitive quantum algorithms.


title:
The peculiar velocities in the Galactic outer disk--hints of the
  elliptical disk and the perturbation of the spiral structures

abstract:
  We present the peculiar in-plane velocities derived from the LAMOST red clump
stars. From the variations of the in-plane velocity with the Galactocentric
radius for the young and old red clump stars, we are able to identify two types
of peculiar velocities: 1) both the two red clump populations show that the
radial velocity is negative within $R=9.0$\,kpc and becomes positive beyond
(denoted as the \emph{long-wave} mode); and 2) the young red clump stars show
larger mean radial velocity than the old population by about 3\,km$\rm s^{-1}$
between $R=9$ and 12\,kpc (denoted as the \emph{short-wave} mode). We find that
the elliptical disk induced by the rotating bar can well explain the
\emph{long-wave} mode peculiar velocity. The axis ratio of the elliptical disk
is around 0.8-0.95 and the disk keeps circular at $R=9.24\pm0.2$\,kpc, which
should be the location of the outer Lindblad resonance radius (OLR). Adopting
the circular speed of 238\,km$\rm s^{-1}$, the pattern speed of the bar is then
derived as $48\pm3$\,km$\rm s^{-1}$kpc$^{-1}$ from the location of OLR. On the
other hand, the \emph{short-wave} mode is likely the perturbation of the spiral
arms as density waves.


title: Data-Driven Robust Taxi Dispatch under Demand Uncertainties

abstract:
  In modern taxi networks, large amounts of taxi occupancy status and location
data are collected from networked in-vehicle sensors in real-time. They provide
knowledge of system models on passenger demand and mobility patterns for
efficient taxi dispatch and coordination strategies. Such approaches face new
challenges: how to deal with uncertainties of predicted customer demand while
fulfilling the system's performance requirements, including minimizing taxis'
total idle mileage and maintaining service fairness across the whole city; how
to formulate a computationally tractable problem. To address this problem, we
develop a data-driven robust taxi dispatch framework to consider
spatial-temporally correlated demand uncertainties. The robust vehicle dispatch
problem we formulate is concave in the uncertain demand and convex in the
decision variables. Uncertainty sets of random demand vectors are constructed
from data based on theories in hypothesis testing, and provide a desired
probabilistic guarantee level for the performance of robust taxi dispatch
solutions. We prove equivalent computationally tractable forms of the robust
dispatch problem using the minimax theorem and strong duality. Evaluations on
four years of taxi trip data for New York City show that by selecting a
probabilistic guarantee level at 75%, the average demand-supply ratio error is
reduced by 31.7%, and the average total idle driving distance is reduced by
10.13% or about 20 million miles annually, compared with non-robust dispatch
solutions.


title: Unitarity and vacuum deformation in QED with critical potential steps

abstract:
  The present article can be considered as a complement to the work P.R.D 93,
045002 (2016) where an nonperturbative approach to QED with x-electric critical
potential steps was developed. In the beginning we study conditions when in-
and out-spaces of the QED under consideration are unitarily equivalent. Then we
construct a general density operator with the vacuum initial condition. Such an
operator describes a deformation of the initial vacuum state by x-electric
critical potential steps. We construct reductions of the deformed state to
electron and positron subsystems, calculating the loss of the information in
these reductions. We illustrate the general consideration studying the
deformation of the quantum vacuum between two capacitor plates. Finally we
calculate the entanglement measures of these reduced matrices as von Neumann
entropies.


title: Collaborative prediction with expert advice

abstract:
  Many practical learning systems aggregate data across many users, while
learning theory traditionally considers a single learner who trusts all of
their observations. A case in point is the foundational learning problem of
prediction with expert advice. To date, there has been no theoretical study of
the general collaborative version of prediction with expert advice, in which
many users face a similar problem and would like to share their experiences in
order to learn faster. A key issue in this collaborative framework is
robustness: generally algorithms that aggregate data are vulnerable to
manipulation by even a small number of dishonest users.
  We exhibit the first robust collaborative algorithm for prediction with
expert advice. When all users are honest and have similar tastes our algorithm
matches the performance of pooling data and using a traditional algorithm. But
our algorithm also guarantees that adding users never significantly degrades
performance, even if the additional users behave adversarially. We achieve
strong guarantees even when the overwhelming majority of users behave
adversarially. As a special case, our algorithm is extremely robust to
variation amongst the users.


title: Multidimensional Predicates for Prolog

abstract:
  In 2014, Ungar et al. proposed Korz, a new computational model for
structuring adaptive (object-oriented) systems. Korz combines implicit
parameters and multiple dispatch to structure the behavior of objects in a
multidimensional space. Korz is a simple yet expressive model which does not
require special programming techniques such as the Visitor or Strategy pattern
to accommodate a system for emerging contextual requirements. We show how the
ideas of Korz can be integrated in a Prolog system by extending its syntax and
semantics with simple meta-programming techniques. We developed a library,
called mdp (multidimensional predicates) which can be used to experiment with
multidimensional Prolog systems. We highlight its benefits with numerous
scenarios such as printing debugging information, memoization, object-oriented
programming and adaptive GUIs. In particular, we point out that we can
structure and extend Prolog programs with additional concerns in a clear and
concise manner. We also demonstrate how Prolog's unique meta-programming
capabilities allow for quick experimentation with syntactical and semantical
enhancement of the new, multidimensional model. While there are many open
concerns, such as efficiency and comprehensibility in the case of larger
systems, we will see that we can use the leverage of mdp and Prolog to explore
new horizons in the design of adaptive systems.


title: An asymptotic formula for integer points on Markoff-Hurwitz varieties

abstract:
  We establish an asymptotic formula for the number of integer solutions to the
Markoff-Hurwitz equation \[
x_{1}^{2}+x_{2}^{2}+\ldots+x_{n}^{2}=ax_{1}x_{2}\ldots x_{n}+k. \] When
$n\geq4$ the previous best result is by Baragar (1998) that gives an
exponential rate of growth with exponent $\beta$ that is not in general an
integer when $n\geq 4$. We give a new interpretation of this exponent of growth
in terms of the unique parameter for which there exists a certain conformal
measure on projective space.


title:
Effect of the rotation and tidal dissipation history of stars on the
  evolution of close-in planets

abstract:
  Since twenty years, a large population of close-in planets orbiting various
classes of low-mass stars (from M to A-type stars) has been discovered. In such
systems, the dissipation of the kinetic energy of tidal flows in the host star
may modify its rotational evolution and shape the orbital architecture of the
surrounding planetary system. In this context, recent works demonstrated that
the amplitude of this dissipation can vary over several orders of magnitude as
a function of stellar mass, age and rotation. In addition, the stellar rotation
evolution strongly impacts angular momentum exchanges within star-planet
systems. Therefore, it is now necessary to take into account the structural and
rotational evolution of stars when studying the orbital evolution of close-in
planets. The presence of planets may also modify the rotation of the host stars
and as a consequence their evolution, magnetic activity and mixing. In this
work, we present the first study of the dynamics of close-in planets of various
masses orbiting low-mass stars (from $0.6$ to $1.2~M_\star$) where we compute
the simultaneous evolution of the star's structure, rotation and tidal
dissipation in its external convective enveloppe. We find that tidal friction
due to the stellar dynamical tide, i.e. tidal inertial waves excited in the
convection zone, can be larger by several orders of magnitude than the one of
the equilibrium tide, especially during the PMS phase. Consequently, the
orbital migration of the planet is now more pronounced and depends more on the
stellar mass, rotation and age. This would very weakly affect the planets in
the habitable zone because they are located at orbital distances such that
stellar tide-induced migration happens on very long timescales. We also
demonstrate that the rotational evolution of host stars is only weakly affected
by the presence of planets except for massive companions.


title: Odd degree number fields with odd class number

abstract:
  For every odd integer $n \geq 3$, we prove that there exist infinitely many
number fields of degree $n$ and associated Galois group $S_n$ whose class
number is odd. To do so, we study the class groups of families of number fields
of degree $n$ whose rings of integers arise as the coordinate rings of the
subschemes of $\mathbb{P}^1$ cut out by integral binary $n$-ic forms. By
obtaining upper bounds on the mean number of $2$-torsion elements in the class
groups of fields in these families, we prove that a positive proportion
(tending to $1$ as $n$ tends to $\infty$) of such fields have trivial
$2$-torsion subgroup in their class groups and narrow class groups. Conditional
on a tail estimate, we also prove the corresponding lower bounds and obtain the
exact values of these averages, which are consistent with the heuristics of
Cohen-Lenstra-Martinet-Malle and Dummit-Voight.
  Additionally, for any order $\mathcal{O}_f$ of degree $n$ arising from an
integral binary $n$-ic form $f$, we compare the sizes of
$\mathrm{Cl}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)$, the $2$-torsion subgroup of ideal classes in
$\mathcal{O}_f$, and $\mathcal{I}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)$, the $2$-torsion subgroup
of ideals in $\mathcal{O}_f$. For the family of orders arising from integral
binary $n$-ic forms and contained in fields with fixed signature $(r_1,r_2)$,
we prove that the mean value of the difference $|\mathrm{Cl}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)|
- {2^{1-r_1-r_2}}|\mathcal{I}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)|$ is equal to $1$, generalizing
a result of Bhargava and the third-named author for cubic fields. Conditional
on certain tail estimates, we also prove that the mean value of
$|\mathrm{Cl}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)| -
{2^{1-r_1-r_2}}|\mathcal{I}_2(\mathcal{O}_f)|$ remains $1$ for certain families
obtained by imposing local splitting and maximality conditions.


title: Multi-Task Cross-Lingual Sequence Tagging from Scratch

abstract:
  We present a deep hierarchical recurrent neural network for sequence tagging.
Given a sequence of words, our model employs deep gated recurrent units on both
character and word levels to encode morphology and context information, and
applies a conditional random field layer to predict the tags. Our model is task
independent, language independent, and feature engineering free. We further
extend our model to multi-task and cross-lingual joint training by sharing the
architecture and parameters. Our model achieves state-of-the-art results in
multiple languages on several benchmark tasks including POS tagging, chunking,
and NER. We also demonstrate that multi-task and cross-lingual joint training
can improve the performance in various cases.


title: On the relation between Dyer-Lashof algebra and the hit problems

abstract:
  The aim of this note is to use geometric methods to study the hit problem of
Peterson for $H_*\mathbb{R} P^{\times k}$ as well as the symmetric hit problem
of Janfada and Wood for $H_*BO(k)$. We continue by exploring the applications
of the results of \cite{Zare-symmetric} on the $\mathcal{A}$-annihilated
generators of $H_*QX$ to obtain a family of generic `new' examples of
$\mathcal{A}$-annihilated in $H_*(\mathbb{Z}\times BO)$ and $H_*BO$, i.e. the
case of stable symmetric hit problem, where an essential step is provided by
the infinite loop space structure on $BO$ implied by the Bott periodicity.
Applying a length filtration allows to state our results in the case of
symmetric hit problem for $H_*BO(k)$. Using the Becker-Gottlieb transfer
associated to $\mathbb{R} P^{\times k}=BO(1)^{\times k}\to BO(k)$ we are able
to restate our results for the classic hit problem of $H_*\mathbb{R} P^{\times
k}$. We use the phrase `stable hit problem' to the study of hit problem for
$H_*\mathbb{R} P^{\times k}$ for all $k>0$ at once, which allows to use
multiplicative structures on which we seem to have taken some new steps after
\cite{Ault-Singer}. Our new examples depend on specific numerical conditions of
which we have provided an algorithm to construct in \cite{Zare-symmetric}. The
methodological outcome is that such conditions also have to taken into account
while dealing with counting arguments. The numerical conditions we obtain seem
to have not appeared in the literature in this context, although they may
include previous ones as examples. Therefore, our work provides an infinite
family of new examples and consequently raises the lower bounds obtained
previously.


title: Maximal torus theory for compact quantum groups

abstract:
  Associated to any compact quantum group $G\subset U_N^+$ is a canonical
family of group dual subgroups $\widehat{\Gamma}_Q\subset G$, parametrized by
unitaries $Q\in U_N$, playing the role of "maximal tori" for $G$. We present
here a series of conjectures, relating the various algebraic and analytic
properties of $G$ to those of the family $\{\widehat{\Gamma}_Q|Q\in U_N\}$.


title: On quantum corrections in higher-spin theory in flat space

abstract:
  We consider an interacting theory of an infinite tower of massless
higher-spin fields in flat space with cubic vertices and their coupling
constants found previously by Metsaev. We compute the one-loop bubble diagram
part of the self-energy of the spin 0 member of the tower by summing up all
higher-spin loop contributions. We find that the result contains an
exponentially UV divergent part and we discuss how it could be cancelled by a
tadpole contribution depending on yet to be determined quartic interaction
vertex. We also compute the tree-level four-scalar scattering amplitude due to
all higher-spin exchanges and discuss its inconsistency with the BCFW
constructibility condition. We comment on possible relation to similar
computations in AdS background in connection with AdS/CFT.


title:
Distinguishing Coherent States from Phase-Mixed Coherent States with
  Only a Variable Beam Splitter and Single-Photon Detector, In Principle

abstract:
  It is generally assumed that on-off detectors with single-photon sensitivity
cannot distinguish coherent states from phase-mixed coherent states without
some form of quadrature-based tomography. Here, we show that it is
theoretically possible to distinguish these states without quadrature-based
methods by comparing the vacuum probability of one output port of a variable
beam splitter (VBS) that has two different phase-mixed coherent states as its
inputs to the well-known case of dual coherent-state inputs. As an application,
a method is proposed to test whether a laser field is in a coherent state over
a given time by simply measuring the VBS output populations with an on-off
single-photon detector. Unfortunately, timing limitations of present technology
prohibit such simple tests, but the technique may become practical in the
future.


title:
Solution of Faddeev integral equations in configuration space using the
  hyperspherical harmonics expansion method

abstract:
  A method has been developed to solve three-particle Faddeev equations in the
configuration space making use of a series expansion in hyperspherical
harmonics. The following parameters of the bound state of triton and helium-3
nuclei have been calculated: the binding energies, the weights of symmetric and
mixed-symmetry components of the wave function, the magnetic moments, and the
charge radii.


title:
The variance of the incipient infinite cluster in two-dimensional
  percolation

abstract:
  Consider bond percolation on the square lattice. Let ${\cal C}$ be the
incipient infinite cluster with the incipient measure $\nu$. If a one-arm path
exponent exists and equals $5/48$, it is well known that $E_\nu|{\cal C}\cup
[-n,n]^2| = n^{ 91/48+o(1)}$. In this paper, we focus on the variance of
$|{\cal C}\cup [-n,n]^2|$ and show that $\sigma^2_\nu (|{\cal C}\cup
[-n,n]^2|)= n^{91/24+o(1)}$.


title:
Composing graphical models with neural networks for structured
  representations and fast inference

abstract:
  We propose a general modeling and inference framework that composes
probabilistic graphical models with deep learning methods and combines their
respective strengths. Our model family augments graphical structure in latent
variables with neural network observation models. For inference, we extend
variational autoencoders to use graphical model approximating distributions
with recognition networks that output conjugate potentials. All components of
these models are learned simultaneously with a single objective, giving a
scalable algorithm that leverages stochastic variational inference, natural
gradients, graphical model message passing, and the reparameterization trick.
We illustrate this framework with several example models and an application to
mouse behavioral phenotyping.


title:
Photon-assisted tunneling and charge dephasing in a carbon nanotube
  double quantum dot

abstract:
  We report microwave-driven photon-assisted tunneling in a suspended carbon
nanotube double quantum dot. From the resonant linewidth at a temperature of 13
mK, the charge dephasing time is determined to be 280 +- 30 ps. The linewidth
is independent of driving frequency, but increases with increasing temperature.
The moderate temperature dependence is inconsistent with expectations from
electron-phonon coupling alone, but consistent with charge noise arising in the
device. The extracted level of charge noise is comparable with that expected
from previous measurements of a valley-spin qubit, where it was hypothesized to
be the main cause of qubit decoherence. Our results suggest a possible route
towards improved valley-spin qubits.


title:
Pressure and compressibility of conformal field theories from the
  AdS/CFT correspondence

abstract:
  The equation of state associated with ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills
in 4 dimensions, for $SU(N)$ in the large $N$ limit, is investigated using the
AdS/CFT correspondence. An asymptotically AdS black-hole on the gravity side
provides a thermal background for the Yang-Mills theory on the boundary in
which the cosmological constant is equivalent to a volume. The thermodynamic
variable conjugate to the cosmological constant is a pressure and the $P-V$
diagram is studied. It is known that there is a critical point where the heat
capacity diverges and this is reflected in the isothermal compressibility.
Critical exponents are derived and found to be mean field in the large $N$
limit. The same analysis applied to 3 and 6 dimensional conformal field
theories again yields mean field exponents associated with the compressibility
at the critical point.


title: Transverse optical and atomic pattern formation

abstract:
  The study of transverse optical pattern formation has been studied
extensively in nonlinear optics, with a recent experimental interest in
studying the phenomenon using cold atoms, which can undergo real-space
self-organization. Here, we describe our experimental observation of pattern
formation in cold atoms, which occurs using less than 1 microWatt of applied
power. We show that the optical patterns and the self-organized atomic
structures undergo continuous symmetry-breaking, which is characteristic of
non-equilibrium phenomena in a multimode system. To theoretically describe
pattern formation in cold atoms, we present a self-consistent model that allows
for tight atomic bunching in the applied optical lattice. We derive the
nonlinear refractive index of a gas of multi-level atoms in an optical lattice,
and we derive the threshold conditions under which pattern formation occurs. We
show that, by using small detunings and sub-Doppler temperatures, one achieves
two orders of magnitude reduced intensity thresholds for pattern formation
compared to warm atoms.


title:
Stability of a viral infection model with state-dependent delay, CTL and
  antibody immune responses

abstract:
  A virus dynamics model with intracellular state-dependent delay and nonlinear
infection rate of Beddington-DeAngelis functional response is studied. The
technique of Lyapunov functionals is used to analyze stability of an interior
infection equilibrium which describes the case of both CTL and antibody immune
responses activated. We consider first a particular biologically motivated
class of discrete state-dependent delays. Next, the general case is
investigated.


title:
Identical Particles in Quantum Mechanics: Operational and Topological
  Considerations

abstract:
  This dissertation reports our investigation into the existence of anyons,
which interpolate between bosons and fermions, in light of the Symmetrization
Postulate, which states that only the two extremes exist. The Symmetrization
Postulate can be understood as asserting that there are only two consistent
ways of combining the behavior of distinguishable particles to obtain the
behavior of identical ones. We showed that anyonic behavior then arises because
of the way in which the probability amplitudes of distinguishable particles in
two dimensions are affected by the topology of the space. These can then be
combined in one of the ways arising from the Symmetrization Postulate, to form
identical anyons. Therefore, anyons do not invalidate the Symmetrization
Postulate, but are entirely compatible with it. In order to show that anyons
can arise without particle identity, we investigated how distinguishable
particles can gain particular properties from the topology of their
configuration space. We managed to do so, and in the process, discovered a
novel approach for quantizing multiply-connected spaces, in a way that is more
suited to anyons than the standard approach.

categories: quant-ph math-ph math.MP physics.hist-ph


title:
Conforming Discretizations of Boundary Element Solutions of the
  Electroencephalography Forward Problem

abstract:
  In this paper we present a new discretization strategy for the boundary
element formulation of the Electroencephalography (EEG) forward problem.
Boundary integral formulations, classically solved with the Boundary Element
Method (BEM), are widely used in high resolution EEG imaging because of their
recognized advantages in several real case scenarios. Unfortunately however, it
is widely reported that the accuracy of standard BEM schemes is limited,
especially when the current source density is dipolar and its location
approaches one of the brain boundary surfaces. This is a particularly limiting
problem given that during an high-resolution EEG imaging procedure, several EEG
forward problem solutions are required for which the source currents are near
or on top of a boundary surface.
  This work will first present an analysis of standardly discretized EEG
forward problems, reporting on a theoretical issue of some of the formulations
that have been used so far in the community. We report on the fact that several
standardly used discretizations requires the expansion term to be a square
integrable function. Instead, those techniques are not consistent when a more
appropriate mapping is considered. Such a mapping allows the expansion function
term to be a less regular function, thus sensibly reducing the need for mesh
refinements and low-precisions handling strategies that are currently required.
These mappings, however, require a different and conforming discretization
which must be suitably adapted to them. To do this we adopt a mixed
discretization based on dual boundary elements residing on a suitably defined
dual mesh. Finally we show how the resulting EEG problems has favorable
properties with respect to previously proposed schemes and we show their
applicability to real case modeling scenarios obtained from MRI data.


title:
Bayesian correction for covariate measurement error: a frequentist
  evaluation and comparison with regression calibration

abstract:
  Bayesian approaches for handling covariate measurement error are well
established, and yet arguably are still relatively little used by researchers.
For some this is likely due to unfamiliarity or disagreement with the Bayesian
inferential paradigm. For others a contributory factor is the inability of
standard statistical packages to perform such Bayesian analyses. In this paper
we first give an overview of the Bayesian approach to handling covariate
measurement error, and contrast it with regression calibration (RC), arguably
the most commonly adopted approach. We then argue why the Bayesian approach has
a number of statistical advantages compared to RC, and demonstrate that
implementing the Bayesian approach is usually quite feasible for the analyst.
Next we describe the closely related maximum likelihood and multiple imputation
approaches, and explain why we believe the Bayesian approach to generally be
preferable. We then empirically compare the frequentist properties of RC and
the Bayesian approach through simulation studies. The flexibility of the
Bayesian approach to handle both measurement error and missing data is then
illustrated through an analysis of data from the Third National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey.


title:
Dynamical and orientational structural crossovers in low-temperature
  glycerol

abstract:
  Mean square displacements of hydrogen atoms in glass-forming materials and
proteins, as reported by incoherent elastic neutron scattering, show kinks in
their temperature dependence. This crossover, known as the dynamical
transition, connects two approximately linear regimes. It is often assigned to
the dynamical freezing of subsets of molecular modes at the point of equality
between their corresponding relaxation times and the instrumental observation
window. The origin of the dynamical transition in glass-forming glycerol is
studied here by extensive molecular dynamics simulations. We find the dynamical
transition to occur for both the center of mass translations and the molecular
rotations at the same temperature, insensitive to changes of the observation
window. Both the translational and rotational dynamics of glycerol show a
dynamic crossover from the structural to a secondary relaxation at the
temperature of the dynamical transition. A significant and discontinuous
increase in the orientational Kirkwood factor and in the dielectric constant is
observed in the same range of temperatures. We, however, do not find any
indications of a true thermodynamic transition to an ordered low-temperature
phase. We therefore suggest that all observed crossovers are dynamic in
character. The increase in the dielectric constant is related to the dynamic
freezing of dipolar domains on the time-scale of simulations.


title:
A Generalized LDPC Framework for Robust and Sublinear Compressive
  Sensing

abstract:
  Compressive sensing aims to recover a high-dimensional sparse signal from a
relatively small number of measurements. In this paper, a novel design of the
measurement matrix is proposed. The design is inspired by the construction of
generalized low-density parity-check codes, where the capacity-achieving
point-to-point codes serve as subcodes to robustly estimate the signal support.
In the case that each entry of the $n$-dimensional $k$-sparse signal lies in a
known discrete alphabet, the proposed scheme requires only $O(k \log n)$
measurements and arithmetic operations. In the case of arbitrary, possibly
continuous alphabet, an error propagation graph is proposed to characterize the
residual estimation error. With $O(k \log^2 n)$ measurements and computational
complexity, the reconstruction error can be made arbitrarily small with high
probability.


title:
Large deviations of radial statistics in the two-dimensional
  one-component plasma

abstract:
  The two-dimensional one-component plasma is an ubiquitous model for several
vortex systems. For special values of the coupling constant $\beta q^2$ (where
$q$ is the particles charge and $\beta$ the inverse temperature), the model
also corresponds to the eigenvalues distribution of normal matrix models.
Several features of the system are discussed in the limit of large number $N$
of particles for generic values of the coupling constant. We show that the
statistics of a class of radial observables produces a rich phase diagram, and
their asymptotic behaviour in terms of large deviation functions is calculated
explicitly, including next-to-leading terms up to order 1/N. We demonstrate a
split-off phenomenon associated to atypical fluctuations of the edge density
profile. We also show explicitly that a failure of the fluid phase assumption
of the plasma can break a genuine $1/N$-expansion of the free energy. Our
findings are corroborated by numerical comparisons with exact finite-N formulae
valid for $\beta q^2=2$.


title: Multi-fidelity Gaussian Process Bandit Optimisation

abstract:
  In many scientific and engineering applications, we are tasked with the
maximisation of an expensive to evaluate black box function $f$. Traditional
settings for this problem assume just the availability of this single function.
However, in many cases, cheap approximations to $f$ may be obtainable. For
example, the expensive real world behaviour of a robot can be approximated by a
cheap computer simulation. We can use these approximations to eliminate low
function value regions cheaply and use the expensive evaluations of $f$ in a
small but promising region and speedily identify the optimum. We formalise this
task as a \emph{multi-fidelity} bandit problem where the target function and
its approximations are sampled from a Gaussian process. We develop MF-GP-UCB, a
novel method based on upper confidence bound techniques. In our theoretical
analysis we demonstrate that it exhibits precisely the above behaviour, and
achieves better regret than strategies which ignore multi-fidelity information.
Empirically, MF-GP-UCB outperforms such naive strategies and other
multi-fidelity methods on several synthetic and real experiments.


title:
Towards Seamless Tracking-Free Web: Improved Detection of Trackers via
  One-class Learning

abstract:
  Numerous tools have been developed to aggressively block the execution of
popular JavaScript programs (JS) in Web browsers. Such blocking also affects
functionality of webpages and impairs user experience. As a consequence, many
privacy preserving tools (PP-Tools) that have been developed to limit online
tracking, often executed via JS, may suffer from poor performance and limited
uptake. A mechanism that can isolate JS necessary for proper functioning of the
website from tracking JS would thus be useful. Through the use of a manually
labelled dataset composed of 2,612 JS, we show how current PP-Tools are
ineffective in finding the right balance between blocking tracking JS and
allowing functional JS. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study
to assess the performance of current web PP-Tools.
  To improve this balance, we examine the two classes of JS and hypothesize
that tracking JS share structural similarities that can be used to
differentiate them from functional JS. The rationale of our approach is that
web developers often borrow and customize existing pieces of code in order to
embed tracking (resp. functional) JS into their webpages. We then propose
one-class machine learning classifiers using syntactic and semantic features
extracted from JS. When trained only on samples of tracking JS, our classifiers
achieve an accuracy of 99%, where the best of the PP-Tools achieved an accuracy
of 78%.
  We further test our classifiers and several popular PP-Tools on a corpus of
4K websites with 135K JS. The output of our best classifier on this data is
between 20 to 64% different from the PP-Tools. We manually analyse a sample of
the JS for which our classifier is in disagreement with all other PP-Tools, and
show that our approach is not only able to enhance user web experience by
correctly classifying more functional JS, but also discovers previously unknown
tracking services.


title: A new bijection on m-Dyck paths with application to random sampling

abstract:
  We present a new bijection between variants of $m$-Dyck paths (paths with
steps in $\{+1,-m\}$ starting and ending at height $0$ and remaining at
non-negative height), which generalizes a classical bijection between Dyck
prefixes and pointed {\L}ukasiewicz paths. As an application, we present a new
random sampling procedure for $m$-Dyck paths with a linear time complexity and
using a quasi-optimal number of random bits. This outperforms Devroye's
algorithm, which uses $\mathcal O(n\log n)$ random bits.


title: On the relation between measurement outcomes and physical properties

abstract:
  One of the most difficult problems in quantum mechanics is the analysis of
the measurement processes. In this paper, we point out that many of these
difficulties originate from the different roles of measurement outcomes and
observable quantities, which cannot simply be identified with each other. Our
analysis shows that the Hilbert space formalism itself describes a fundamental
separation between quantitative properties and qualitative outcomes that needs
to be taken into account in an objective description of quantum measurements.
We derive fundamental relations between the statistics of measurement outcomes
and the values of physical quantities that explain how the objective properties
of a quantum system appear in the context of different measurement
interactions. Our results indicate that non-classical correlations can be
understood in terms of the actual role of physical properties as quantifiable
causes of the external effects observed in a quantum measurement.


title: Klein-Gordon Oscillator in Kaluza-Klein Theory

abstract:
  In this contribution we study the Klein-Gordon oscillator on the curved
background within the Kaluza-Klein theory. The problem of interaction between
particles coupled harmonically with a topological defects in Kaluza-Klein
theory is studied. We consider a series of topological defects, that treat the
Klein-Gordon oscillator coupled to this background and find the energy levels
and corresponding eigenfunctions in these cases. We show that the energy levels
depend on the global parameters characterizing these spacetimes. We also
investigate a quantum particle described by the Klein-Gordon oscillator
interacting with a cosmic dislocation in Som-Raychaudhuri spacetime in the
presence of homogeneous magnetic field in a Kaluza-Klein theory. In this case,
the spectrum of energy is determined, and we observe that these energy levels
are the sum of the term related with Aharonov-Bohm flux and of the parameter
associated to the rotation of the spacetime.


title:
On stability of $N$-times integrated semigroups with nonquasianalytic
  growth

abstract:
  We discuss the behaviour at infinity of $n$-times integrated semigroups with
nonquasianalytic growth and invertible generator. The results obtained extend
in this setting a theorem of O. El Mennaoui on stability of bounded once
integrated semigroups, and (partially) a theorem of Q. P. V$\tilde{\rm u}$ on
stability of $C_0$-semigroups.


title: Spontaneous emergence of free-space optical and atomic patterns

abstract:
  The spontaneous formation of patterns in dynamical systems is a rich
phenomenon that transcends scientific boundaries. Here, we report our
observation of coupled optical-atomic pattern formation, which results in the
creation of self-organized, multimode structures in free-space laser-driven
cold atoms. We show that this process gives rise to spontaneous
three-dimensional Sisyphus cooling even at very low light intensities and the
emergence of self-organized atomic structures on both sub- and super-wavelength
scales.


title:
The Many Assembly Histories of Massive Void Galaxies as Revealed by
  Integral Field Spectroscopy

abstract:
  We present the first detailed integral field spectroscopy study of nine
central void galaxies with M*>10^10 Msun using the Wide Field Spectrograph
(WiFeS) to determine how a range of assembly histories manifest themselves in
the current day Universe. While the majority of these galaxies are evolving
secularly, we find a range of morphologies, merger histories and stellar
population distributions, though similarly low Halpha-derived star formation
rates (<1 Msun/yr). Two of our nine galaxies host AGNs, and two have kinematic
disruptions to their gas that are not seen in their stellar component. Most
massive void galaxies are red and discy, which we attribute to a lack of major
mergers. Some have disturbed morphologies and may be in the process of evolving
to early-type thanks to ongoing minor mergers at present times, likely fed by
tendrils leading off filaments. The diversity in our small galaxy sample,
despite being of similar mass and environment means that these galaxies are
still assembling at present day, with minor mergers playing an important role
in their evolution.
  We compare our sample to a mass and magnitude-matched sample of field
galaxies, using data from the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field
spectrograph (SAMI) galaxy survey. We find that despite environmental
differences, galaxies of mass M*>10^10 Msun have similarly low star formation
rates (<3 Msun/yr). The lack of distinction between the star formation rates of
the void and field environments points to quenching of massive galaxies being a
largely mass-related effect.


title:
Topologically nontrivial states in one-dimensional nonlinear bichromatic
  superlattices

abstract:
  We study topological properties of one-dimensional nonlinear bichromatic
superlattices and unveil the effect of nonlinearity on topological states. We
find the existence of nontrivial edge solitions, which distribute on the
boundaries of the lattice with their chemical potential located in the linear
gap regime and are sensitive to the phase parameter of the superlattice
potential. We further demonstrate that the topological property of the
nonlinear Bloch bands can be characterized by topological Chern numbers defined
in the extended two-dimensional parameter space. In addition, we discuss that
the composition relations between the nolinear Bloch waves and gap solitions
for the nonlinear superlattices. The stabilities of edge solitons are also
studied.


title:
Notes on "An Effective ECC based User Access Control Scheme with
  Attribute based Encryption for WSN"

abstract:
  The rapid growth of networking and communication technologies results in
amalgamation of 'Internet of Things' and 'Wireless sensor networks' to form
WSNIT. WSNIT facilitates the WSN to connect dynamically to Internet and
exchange the data with the external world. The critical data stored in sensor
nodes related to patient health, environment can be accessed by attackers via
insecure internet. To counterattack this, there is a demand for data integrity
and controlled data access by incorporating a highly secure and light weight
authentication schemes. In this context, Santanu et al had proposed an
attribute based authentication framework for WSN and discussed on its security
strengths. In this paper, we do a thorough analysis on Santanu et al scheme, to
show that their scheme is susceptible to privileged insider attack and node
capture attack. We also demonstrate that Santanu et al scheme consists of major
inconsistencies which restrict the protocol execution.


title:
Visualization of Stress Wave Propagation via Air-Coupled Acoustic
  Emission Sensors

abstract:
  We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of visualizing stress waves
propagating in plates using air-coupled acoustic emission sensors.
Specifically, we employ a device that embeds arrays of microphones around an
optical lens in a helical pattern. By implementing a beamforming technique,
this remote sensing system allows us to record wave propagation events in situ
via a single-shot and full-field measurement. This is a significant improvement
over the conventional wave propagation tracking approaches based on laser
doppler vibrometry or digital image correlation techniques. In this paper, we
focus on demonstrating the feasibility and efficacy of this air-coupled
acoustic emission technique using large metallic plates exposed to external
impacts. The visualization results of stress wave propagation will be shown
under various impact scenarios. Such wave visualization capability is of
tremendous importance from a structural health monitoring and nondestructive
evaluation (SHM/NDE) standpoint. The proposed technique can be used to
characterize and localize damage by detecting the attenuation, reflection, and
scattering of stress waves that occurs at damage locations. This can ultimately
lead to the development of new SHM/NDE methods for identifying hidden cracks or
delaminations in metallic or composite plate structures simultaneously negating
the need for mounted contact sensors.


title: SUSY Dark Matter: Beyond the Standard Paradigm

abstract:
  Within the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), we
explore a decoupling of the parameters into separate sectors that determine
consistency with collider data, the abundance of dark matter, and potential
signatures at direct dark matter searches. We consider weak-scale bino-like
neutralino dark matter, and find that annihilations via light slepton exchange
present a viable mechanism for obtaining the appropriate dark matter abundance
assuming a thermal history. Constraints and prospects for discovery of these
models are discussed, including the possibility that direct dark matter
searches may be sensitive to these models if light squarks exhibit left-right
mixing. Differences between the scenarios presented here and the typical
expectations for the MSSM are discussed.


title: Solenoidal attractors with bounded combinatorics are shy

abstract:
  We show that in a generic finite-dimensional real-analytic family of
real-analytic multimodal maps, the subset of parameters on which the
corresponding map has a solenoidal attractor with bounded combinatorics is a
set with zero Lebesgue measure.


title:
Eigenstates of the full Maxwell equations for a two-constituent
  composite medium and their application to a calculation of the local electric
  field of a time dependent point electric dipole in a flat-slabs
  microstructure

abstract:
  An exact calculation of the local electric field ${\bf E}({\bf r})$ is
described for the case of a time dependent point electric dipole ${\bf
p}e^{-i\omega t}$ in the top layer of an $\epsilon_2$, $\epsilon_1$,
$\epsilon_2$ three parallel slabs composite structure, where the $\epsilon_1$
layer has a finite thickness $2d$ but the $\epsilon_2$ layers are infinitely
thick. For this purpose we first calculate all the eigenstates of the full
Maxwell equations for the case where $\mu=1$ everywhere in the system. The
eigenvalues appear as special, non-physical values of $\epsilon_1$ when
$\epsilon_2$ is given. These eigenstates are then used to develop an exact
expansion for the physical values of ${\bf E}({\bf r})$ in the system
characterized by physical values of $\epsilon_1(\omega)$ and
$\epsilon_2(\omega)$. Results are compared with those of a previous calculation
of the local field of a time dependent point charge in the quasi-static regime.
Numerical results are shown for the local electric field in practically
important configurations where attaining an optical image with sub-wavelength
resolution has practical significance.


title: Wess-Zumino Model on Bosonic-Fermionic Noncommutative Superspace

abstract:
  In our previous paper we construct a renormalizable Wess-Zumino action on
BFNC superspace at the second order approximation of noncommutative parameters.
The action contains about 200 terms which are necessary for renormalization. By
removing chiral covariant derivatives and chiral coordinates we found that the
BFNC Wess-Zumino action can be transformed to a simpler form which have
manifest 1/2 supersymmetry. Based on this discovery, we can extend the BFNC
Wess-Zumino action to the all order of noncommutative parameters. At first we
introduce global symmetries, then obtain divergent operators in the effective
action by using dimensional analysis, the next step is to construct all
possible BFNC parameters, at the end we combine the BFNC parameters with the
divergent operators. We present the explicit action up to the fourth order of
noncommutative parameters. Because the action contain all possible divergent
operators, it is renormalizable to all order in perturbative theory.


title:
Building hyperbolic metrics suited to closed curves and applications to
  lifting simply

abstract:
  Let $\gamma$ be an essential closed curve with at most $k$ self-intersections
on a surface $\mathcal{S}$ with negative Euler characteristic. In this paper,
we construct a hyperbolic metric $\rho$ for which $\gamma$ has length at most
$M \cdot \sqrt{k}$, where $M$ is a constant depending only on the topology of
$\mathcal{S}$. Moreover, the injectivity radius of $\rho$ is at least
$1/(2\sqrt{k})$. This yields linear upper bounds in terms of self-intersection
number on the minimum degree of a cover to which $\gamma$ lifts as a simple
closed curve (i.e. lifts simply). We also show that if $\gamma$ is a closed
curve with length at most $L$ on a cusped hyperbolic surface $\mathcal{S}$,
then there exists a cover of $\mathcal{S}$ of degree at most $N \cdot L \cdot
e^{L/2}$ to which $\gamma$ lifts simply, for $N$ depending only on the topology
of $\mathcal{S}$.


title: Entropy and disorder enable charge separation in organic solar cells

abstract:
  Although organic heterojunctions can separate charges with near-unity
efficiency and on a sub-picosecond timescale, the full details of the
charge-separation process remain unclear. In typical models, the Coulomb
binding between the electron and the hole can exceed the thermal energy
$k_\mathrm{B}T$ by an order of magnitude, suggesting that it is impossible for
the charges to separate before recombining. Here, we consider the entropic
contribution to charge separation in the presence of disorder and find that
even modest amounts of disorder have a decisive effect, reducing the
charge-separation barrier to about $k_\mathrm{B}T$ or eliminating it
altogether. Therefore, the charges are usually not thermodynamically bound at
all and could separate spontaneously if the kinetics otherwise allowed it. Our
conclusion holds despite the worst-case assumption of localised, thermalised
carriers, and is only strengthened if mechanisms like delocalisation or `hot'
states are also present.


title:
A non-LTE study of silicon abundances in giant stars from the Si I
  infrared lines in the zJ-band

abstract:
  We investigate the feasibility of the Si I infrared (IR) lines as Si
abundance indicators for giant stars. We find that Si abundances obtained from
the Si I IR lines based on the local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) analysis
show large line-to-line scatter (mean value of 0.13dex), and are higher than
those from the optical lines. However, when the non-LTE effects are taken into
account, the line-to-line scatter reduces significantly (mean value of
0.06dex), and the Si abundances are consistent with those from the optical
lines. The typical average non-LTE correction of [Si/Fe] for our sample stars
is about $-$0.35dex. Our results demonstrate that the Si I IR lines could be
reliable abundance indicators provided that the non-LTE effects are properly
taken into account.


title: Distributed Semi-Stochastic Optimization with Quantization Refinement

abstract:
  We consider the problem of regularized regression in a network of
communication-constrained devices. Each node has local data and objectives, and
the goal is for the nodes to optimize a global objective. We develop a
distributed optimization algorithm that is based on recent work on
semi-stochastic proximal gradient methods. Our algorithm employs iteratively
refined quantization to limit message size. We present theoretical analysis and
conditions for the algorithm to achieve a linear convergence rate. Finally, we
demonstrate the performance of our algorithm through numerical simulations.


title: The golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers and BBP-type formulas

abstract:
  We derive interesting arctangent identities involving the golden ratio,
Fibonacci numbers and Lucas numbers. Binary BBP-type formulas for the
arctangents of certain odd powers of the golden ratio are also derived, for the
first time in the literature. Finally we derive golden-ratio-base BBP-type
formulas for some mathematical constants, including $\pi$, $\log 2$, $\log\phi$
and $\sqrt 2\,\arctan\sqrt 2$. The $\phi-$nary BBP-type formulas derived here
are considerably simpler than similar results contained in earlier literature.


title:
Electronic Structure, Surface Doping, and Optical Response in Epitaxial
  WSe2 Thin Films

abstract:
  High quality WSe2 films have been grown on bilayer graphene (BLG) with
layer-by-layer control of thickness using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The
combination of angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES), scanning tunneling
microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS), and optical absorption measurements reveal
the atomic and electronic structures evolution and optical response of
WSe2/BLG. We observe that a bilayer of WSe2 is a direct bandgap semiconductor,
when integrated in a BLG-based heterostructure, thus shifting the
direct-indirect band gap crossover to trilayer WSe2. In the monolayer limit,
WSe2 shows a spin-splitting of 475 meV in the valence band at the K point, the
largest value observed among all the MX2 (M = Mo, W; X = S, Se) materials. The
exciton binding energy of monolayer-WSe2/BLG is found to be 0.21 eV, a value
that is orders of magnitude larger than that of conventional 3D semiconductors,
yet small as compared to other 2D transition metal dichalcogennides (TMDCs)
semiconductors. Finally, our finding regarding the overall modification of the
electronic structure by an alkali metal surface electron doping opens a route
to further control the electronic properties of TMDCs.


title:
Stochastic optimal control using semidefinite programming for moment
  dynamics

abstract:
  This paper presents a method to approximately solve stochastic optimal
control problems in which the cost function and the system dynamics are
polynomial. For stochastic systems with polynomial dynamics, the moments of the
state can be expressed as a, possibly infinite, system of deterministic linear
ordinary differential equations. By casting the problem as a deterministic
control problem in moment space, semidefinite programming is used to find a
lower bound on the optimal solution. The constraints in the semidefinite
program are imposed by the ordinary differential equations for moment dynamics
and semidefiniteness of the outer product of moments. From the solution to the
semidefinite program, an approximate optimal control strategy can be
constructed using a least squares method. In the linear quadratic case, the
method gives an exact solution to the optimal control problem. In more complex
problems, an infinite number of moment differential equations would be required
to compute the optimal control law. In this case, we give a procedure to
increase the size of the semidefinite program, leading to increasingly accurate
approximations to the true optimal control strategy.


title: Strings and skyrmions on domain walls

abstract:
  We address a simple model allowing the existence of domain walls with
orientational moduli localized on them. Within this model, we discuss an
analytic solution and explore it in the context of previously known results. We
discuss the existence of one-dimensional domain walls localized on
two-dimensional ones, and construct the corresponding effective action. In the
low-energy limit, which is the $\mathbb{O}(3)$ sigma-model, we discuss the
existence of skyrmions localized on domain walls, and provide a solution for a
skyrmion configuration, based on an analogy with instantons. We perform
symmetry analysis of the initial model and of the low-energy theory on the
domain wall world volume.

categories: hep-th cond-mat.other cond-mat.str-el nlin.PS


title: Unfurling Khovanov-Lauda-Rouquier algebras

abstract:
  In this paper, we study the behavior of categorical actions of a Lie algebra
$\mathfrak{g}$ under the deformation of their spectra. We give conditions under
which the general point of a family of categorical actions of $\mathfrak{g}$
carry an action of a larger Lie algebra $\mathfrak{\tilde{g}}$, which we call
an {\bf unfurling} of $\mathfrak{g}$. This is closely related to the folding of
Dynkin diagrams, but to avoid confusion, we think it is better to use a
different term.
  Our motivation for studying this topic is the difficulty of proving that
explicitly presented algebras and categories in the theory of higher
representation theory have the "expected size." Deformation is a powerful
technique for showing this because of the upper semicontinuity of dimension
under deformation. In particular, we'll use this to show the non-degeneracy (in
the sense of Khovanov-Lauda) of the 2-quantum group $\mathcal U$ for an
arbitrary Cartan datum and any homogeneous choice of parameters.


title: A rank based mean field game in the strong formulation

abstract:
  We discuss a natural game of competition and solve the corresponding mean
field game with \emph{common noise} when agents' rewards are \emph{rank
dependent}. We use this solution to provide an approximate Nash equilibrium for
the finite player game and obtain the rate of convergence.


title: Convex block-sparse linear regression with expanders -- provably

abstract:
  Sparse matrices are favorable objects in machine learning and optimization.
When such matrices are used, in place of dense ones, the overall complexity
requirements in optimization can be significantly reduced in practice, both in
terms of space and run-time. Prompted by this observation, we study a convex
optimization scheme for block-sparse recovery from linear measurements. To
obtain linear sketches, we use expander matrices, i.e., sparse matrices
containing only few non-zeros per column. Hitherto, to the best of our
knowledge, such algorithmic solutions have been only studied from a non-convex
perspective. Our aim here is to theoretically characterize the performance of
convex approaches under such setting.
  Our key novelty is the expression of the recovery error in terms of the
model-based norm, while assuring that solution lives in the model. To achieve
this, we show that sparse model-based matrices satisfy a group version of the
null-space property. Our experimental findings on synthetic and real
applications support our claims for faster recovery in the convex setting -- as
opposed to using dense sensing matrices, while showing a competitive recovery
performance.


title:
The decoupling of the glass transitions in the two-component $p$-spin
  spherical model

abstract:
  Binary mixtures of large and small particles with disparate size ratio
exhibit a rich phenomenology at their glass transition points. In order to gain
insights on such systems, we introduce and study a two-component version of the
$p$-spin spherical spin glass model. We employ the replica method to calculate
the free energy and the phase diagram. We show that when the strengths of the
interactions of each component are not widely separated, the model has only one
glass phase characterized by the conventional one-step replica symmetry
breaking. However when the strengths of the interactions are well separated,
the model has three glass phases depending on temperature and component ratio.
One is the "single" glass phase in which only the spins of one component are
frozen while the spins of the other component remain mobile. This phase is
characterized by the one-step replica symmetry breaking. The second is the
"double" glass phase obtained by cooling further the single glass phase, in
which the spins of the remaining mobile component are also frozen. This phase
is characterized by the two-step replica symmetry breaking. The third is also
the "double" glass phase, which however is formed by the simultaneous freezing
of the spins of both components at the same temperatures and is characterized
by the one-step replica symmetry breaking. We discuss the implications of these
results for the glass transitions of binary mixtures.


title:
ALF gravitational instantons and collapsing Ricci-flat metrics on the K3
  surface

abstract:
  We construct large families of new collapsing hyperk\"ahler metrics on the K3
surface. The limit space is the quotient of a flat 3-torus by an involution.
Away from finitely many exceptional points the collapse occurs with bounded
curvature. There are at most 24 exceptional points where the curvature
concentrates, which always contains the 8 fixed points of the involution on the
3-torus. The geometry around these points is modelled by ALF gravitational
instantons: of dihedral type (Dk) for the fixed points of the involution on the
3-torus and of cyclic type (Ak) otherwise. The collapsing metrics are
constructed by deforming approximately hyperk\"ahler metrics obtained by gluing
ALF gravitational instantons to a background (incomplete) hyperk\"ahler metric
arising from the Gibbons-Hawking ansatz over a punctured 3-torus. As an
immediate application to submanifold geometry, we exhibit hyperk\"ahler metrics
on the K3 surface that admit a strictly stable minimal sphere which cannot be
holomorphic with respect to any complex structure compatible with the metric.


title: How the X(5568) challenges our understanding of QCD

abstract:
  We discuss the X(5568) particle recently announced by the D0 Collaboration.
Several types of models were proposed to explain this structure in the
literature. As pointed out by Burns and Swanson (arXiv:1603.04366), none of
them provides a satisfactory description of the observation. We provide
additional arguments using general properties of QCD, and conclude that the
observation of the X(5568), if confirmed, poses serious challenges to our
understanding of nonperturbative QCD.


title: DoraPicker: An Autonomous Picking System for General Objects

abstract:
  Robots that autonomously manipulate objects within warehouses have the
potential to shorten the package delivery time and improve the efficiency of
the e-commerce industry. In this paper, we present a robotic system that is
capable of both picking and placing general objects in warehouse scenarios.
Given a target object, the robot autonomously detects it from a shelf or a
table and estimates its full 6D pose. With this pose information, the robot
picks the object using its gripper, and then places it into a container or at a
specified location. We describe our pick-and-place system in detail while
highlighting our design principles for the warehouse settings, including the
perception method that leverages knowledge about its workspace, three grippers
designed to handle a large variety of different objects in terms of shape,
weight and material, and grasp planning in cluttered scenarios. We also present
extensive experiments to evaluate the performance of our picking system and
demonstrate that the robot is competent to accomplish various tasks in
warehouse settings, such as picking a target item from a tight space, grasping
different objects from the shelf, and performing pick-and-place tasks on the
table.


title: Harnessing Deep Neural Networks with Logic Rules

abstract:
  Combining deep neural networks with structured logic rules is desirable to
harness flexibility and reduce uninterpretability of the neural models. We
propose a general framework capable of enhancing various types of neural
networks (e.g., CNNs and RNNs) with declarative first-order logic rules.
Specifically, we develop an iterative distillation method that transfers the
structured information of logic rules into the weights of neural networks. We
deploy the framework on a CNN for sentiment analysis, and an RNN for named
entity recognition. With a few highly intuitive rules, we obtain substantial
improvements and achieve state-of-the-art or comparable results to previous
best-performing systems.


title: Statics and dynamics of the highly correlated spin ice Ho2Ge2O7

abstract:
  The pyrochlore Ho2Ge2O7 is a new highly correlated spin ice material.
Physical property measurements including x-ray diffraction, dc susceptibility
and ac susceptibility, confirm that it shares the distinctive characteristics
of other known spin ices. Polarized neutron scattering measurements on a powder
sample, combined with reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) refinements, give unique
information about the spin ice state in Ho2Ge2O7. RMC refinements are used to
fit the powder magnetic diffuse scattering and predict the single crystal
magnetic scattering of Ho2Ge2O7, demonstrating consistency with spin ice
behavior.


title: Communication capacity of mixed quantum t designs

abstract:
  We operationally introduce mixed quantum t-designs as the most general
arbitrary-rank extension of projective quantum t-designs which preserves
indistinguishability from the uniform distribution for t copies. First, we
derive upper bounds on the classical communication capacity of any mixed
t-design measurement for t in [1,5]. Second, we explicitly compute the
classical communication capacity of several mixed t-design measurements,
including the depolarized version of any qubit and qutrit symmetric,
informationally complete (SIC) measurement and complete mutually unbiased
bases, the qubit icosahedral measurement, the Hoggar SIC measurement, any
anti-SIC (where each element is proportional to the projector on the subspace
orthogonal to one of the elements of the original SIC), and the uniform
distribution over pure effects.


title: Taming Reluctant Random Walks in the Positive Quadrant

abstract:
  A lattice walk model is said to be reluctant if the defining step set has a
strong drift towards the boundaries. We describe efficient random generation
strategies for these walks.


title:
Bell-type inequality in quantum coherence theory as an entanglement
  witness

abstract:
  Bell inequality is a mathematical inequality derived using the assumptions of
locality and realism. Its violation guarantees the existence of quantum
correlations in a quantum state. Bell inequality acts as an entanglement
witness in the sense that a pure bipartite quantum state, having nonvanishing
entanglement, always violates a Bell inequality. We construct Bell-type
inequalities for product states in quantum coherence theory for different
measures of coherence, and find that the maximally entangled states violate
these inequalities. We further show that Bell-type inequalities for relative
entropy of coherence is violated by all two-qubit pure entangled states,
serving as an entanglement witness.


title: On Maximal Displacement of Bridges in the Random Conductance model

abstract:
  We study a discrete time random walk in an environment of i.i.d. non-negative
conductances in $\mathbb{Z}^d$. We consider the maximum displacements for
bridges, i.e. we condition the random walk on returning to the origin, and we
prove first a normal (diffusive) behavior under some regularity assumptions:
standard heat kernel decay and polynomial volume growth. Afterwards, we prove
that if the heat kernel decay is such that the return probabilities are
sufficiently slow, we obtain anomalous (subdiffusive) maximal displacements for
bridges.


title:
Adaptive Path Planning for Depth Constrained Bathymetric Mapping with an
  Autonomous Surface Vessel

abstract:
  This paper describes the design, implementation and testing of a suite of
algorithms to enable depth constrained autonomous bathymetric (underwater
topography) mapping by an Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV). Given a target depth
and a bounding polygon, the ASV will find and follow the intersection of the
bounding polygon and the depth contour as modeled online with a Gaussian
Process (GP). This intersection, once mapped, will then be used as a boundary
within which a path will be planned for coverage to build a map of the
Bathymetry. Methods for sequential updates to GP's are described allowing
online fitting, prediction and hyper-parameter optimisation on a small embedded
PC. New algorithms are introduced for the partitioning of convex polygons to
allow efficient path planning for coverage. These algorithms are tested both in
simulation and in the field with a small twin hull differential thrust vessel
built for the task.


title:
Optical spectroscopy and ultrafast pump-probe studies on the heavy
  fermion compound CePt$_2$In$_7$

abstract:
  We report optical spectroscopy and ultrafast pump-probe measurements on the
antiferromagnetic heavy fermion compound CePt$_2$In$_7$, a member showing
stronger two dimensionality than other compounds in CeIn$_3$-derived
heavy-fermion family. We identify clear and typical hybridization spectral
structures at low temperature from the two different spectroscopy probes.
However, the strength and related energy scale of the hybridization are much
weaker and smaller than that in the superconducting compounds CeCoIn$_5$ and
CeIrIn$_5$. The features are more similar to observations on the
antiferromagnetic compounds CeIn$_3$ and CeRhIn$_5$ in the same family. The
results clearly indicate that the Kondo interaction and hybridizations exist in
the antiferromagnetic compounds but with weaker strength.


title: CP violation in $h\to \tau\tau$ and LFV $h\to \mu\tau$

abstract:
  The CMS collaboration has reported a possible lepton flavour violating (LFV)
signal $h\to\mu\tau$. Whereas this does not happen in the standard model (SM),
we point out that new physics responsible for this type of decay would, in
general, also produce charge-parity (CP) violation in $h\to \tau\tau$. We
estimate the size of this effect in a model independent manner and find that a
large asymmetry, of order 25\%, is allowed by current constraints.


title:
Deep Self-Convolutional Activations Descriptor for Dense Cross-Modal
  Correspondence

abstract:
  We present a novel descriptor, called deep self-convolutional activations
(DeSCA), designed for establishing dense correspondences between images taken
under different imaging modalities, such as different spectral ranges or
lighting conditions. Motivated by descriptors based on local self-similarity
(LSS), we formulate a novel descriptor by leveraging LSS in a deep
architecture, leading to better discriminative power and greater robustness to
non-rigid image deformations than state-of-the-art cross-modality descriptors.
The DeSCA first computes self-convolutions over a local support window for
randomly sampled patches, and then builds self-convolution activations by
performing an average pooling through a hierarchical formulation within a deep
convolutional architecture. Finally, the feature responses on the
self-convolution activations are encoded through a spatial pyramid pooling in a
circular configuration. In contrast to existing convolutional neural networks
(CNNs) based descriptors, the DeSCA is training-free (i.e., randomly sampled
patches are utilized as the convolution kernels), is robust to cross-modal
imaging, and can be densely computed in an efficient manner that significantly
reduces computational redundancy. The state-of-the-art performance of DeSCA on
challenging cases of cross-modal image pairs is demonstrated through extensive
experiments.


title: Systems that become $\cal{PT}$ symmetric through interaction

abstract:
  In this article, we consider an interesting class of optical and other
systems in which the interaction or coupling makes the systems to be
$\cal{PT}$-symmetric. We aim to compare their dynamical behaviors with that of
the usual $\cal{PT}$ symmetric systems with intrinsic loss-gain terms. In
particular, we focus on the interesting non-reciprocal nature of the $\cal{PT}$
symmetric systems which has a promising application in optical diodes and
optical isolators. We check whether the non-reciprocal nature is common to all
$\cal{PT}$ symmetric systems and, if not, what are the situations under which
it can be observed. Due to the recent interest in studying spontaneous symmetry
breaking in coupled waveguide systems, we here present such symmetry breaking
bifurcations in certain reciprocal and non-reciprocal $\cal{PT}$ symmetric
systems.


title:
Conic K\"{a}hler-Einstein metrics along simple normal crossing divisors
  on Fano manifolds

abstract:
  We prove that on one K\"{a}hler-Einstein Fano manifold without holomorphic
vector fields, there exists a unique conical K\"{a}hler-Einstein metric along a
simple normal crossing divisor with admissible prescribed cone angles. We also
establish a curvature estimate for conic metrics along a simple normal crossing
divisor which generalizes Li-Rubinstein's estimate and derive high order
estimates from this estimate.


title: The relaxation rate of a stochastic spreading process in a closed ring

abstract:
  The relaxation process of a diffusive ring becomes under-damped if the bias
(so called affinity) exceeds a critical threshold value, aka delocalization
transition. This is related to the spectral properties of the pertinent
stochastic kernel. We find the dependence of the relaxation rate on the
affinity and on the length of the ring. Additionally we study the implications
of introducing a weak-link into the circuit, and illuminate some subtleties
that arise while taking the continuum limit of the discrete model.


title: Time Delay Analysis of the Lensed Quasar SDSS J1001+5027

abstract:
  We modify the algorithm we proposed before in Aghamousa & Shafieloo (2015) on
time delay estimation of the strong lens systems incorporating weighted
cross-correlation and weighted summation of correlation coefficients. We show
the high performance of this algorithm by applying it on Time Delay Challenge
(TDC1) simulated data. We apply then our proposed method on the light curves of
the lensed quasar SDSS J1001+5027 since this system has been well studied by
other groups to compare our results with their findings. In this work we
propose a new estimator namely "mirror" estimator along with a list of criteria
for reliability test of estimation. Our mirror estimator results to
$-117.1^{+7.1}_{-3.7}$ and $-117.1^{+7.2}_{-8.8}$ using simple Monte Carlo
simulations and simulated light curves provided by Rathna Kumar et al. (2013)
respectively. Although TDC1 simulations do not reflect the properties of SDSS
J1001+5027 light curves, using these simulations results to smaller uncertainty
which shows the higher quality observations can lead to substantially more
precise time delay estimation. Our time delay estimation is in agreement with
findings of the other groups for this strong lens system and the difference in
the size of the error bars reflects the importance of appropriate light curve
simulations.