title:
The Malliavin derivative and compactness: application to a degenerate
  PDE-SDE coupling

abstract:
  Compactness is one of the most versatile tools in the analysis of nonlinear
PDEs and systems. Usually, compactness is established by means of some
embedding theorem between functional spaces. Such theorems, in turn, rely on
appropriate estimates for a function and its derivatives. While a similar
result based on simultaneous estimates for the Malliavin and weak Sobolev
derivatives is available for the Wiener-Sobolev spaces, it seems that it has
not yet been widely used in the analysis of highly nonlinear parabolic problems
with stochasticity. In the present work we apply this result in order to study
compactness, existence of global solutions, and, as a by-product, the
convergence of a semi-discretisation scheme for a prototypical degenerate
PDE-SDE coupling.


title:
Quantum physics, fields and closed timelike curves: The D-CTC condition
  in quantum field theory

abstract:
  The D-CTC condition is a condition originally proposed by David Deutsch as a
condition on states of a quantum communication network that contains "backward
time-steps" in some of its branches. It has been argued that this is an
analogue for quantum processes in the presence of closed timelike curves
(CTCs). The unusual properties of states of quantum communication networks that
fulfill the D-CTC condition have been discussed extensively in recent
literature. In this work, the D-CTC condition is investigated in the framework
of quantum field theory in the local, operator-algebraic approach due to Haag
and Kastler. It is shown that the D-CTC condition cannot be fulfilled in states
which are analytic for the energy, or satisfy the Reeh-Schlieder property, for
a certain class of processes and initial conditions. On the other hand, if a
quantum field theory admits sufficiently many uncorrelated states across
acausally related spacetime regions (as implied by the split property), then
the D-CTC condition can always be fulfilled approximately to arbitrary
precision. As this result pertains to quantum field theory on globally
hyperbolic spacetimes where CTCs are absent, one may conclude that interpreting
the D-CTC condition as characteristic for quantum processes in the presence of
CTCs could be misleading, and should be regarded with caution. Furthermore, a
construction of the quantized massless Klein-Gordon field on the Politzer
spacetime, often viewed as spacetime analogue for quantum communication
networks with backward time-steps, is proposed in this work.


title:
Trochoidal trajectories of self-propelled Janus particles in a diverging
  laser beam

abstract:
  We describe colloidal Janus particles with metallic and dielectric faces that
swim vigorously when illuminated by defocused optical tweezers without
consuming any chemical fuel. Rather than wandering randomly, these
optically-activated colloidal swimmers circulate back and forth through the
beam of light, tracing out sinuous rosette patterns. We propose a model for
this mode of light-activated transport that accounts for the observed behavior
through a combination of self-thermophoresis and optically-induced torque. In
the deterministic limit, this model yields trajectories that resemble rosette
curves known as hypotrochoids.


title:
Fluorinated surfaces: towards a universal matrix-free substrates for
  Laser Desorption Ionization

abstract:
  Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization (MALDI) is a soft ionization
method that finds widespread applications in high-throughput mass spectrometric
analysis. One of the main limit of this technique is that it requires the use
of matrices: these molecules enable the analytes desorption and ionization
(D/I) processes but also generate strong interfering signals in the low mass
spectral region, preventing a suitable detection of low molecular weight
compounds. The possibility to avoid their use will ease both sample preparation
and mass spectrum (MS) interpretation. In recent years nanostructured surfaces
have been proposed as a viable method to achieve such goal but the results are
limited to specific classes of chemical compounds and the approach lacks in
generality. Here we demonstrate that the fluorination of surfaces is the only
step needed to activate the target and to achieve matrix-free operation with
the same detection limit obtained using nanostructured chips. The results of
this work suggest that D/I is a purely interfacial effect, with negligible
contribution from chemical nature of the underlying substrate, provided that
the substrate is conductive and able to efficiently absorb the UV laser beam.


title: Depth Estimation Through a Generative Model of Light Field Synthesis

abstract:
  Light field photography captures rich structural information that may
facilitate a number of traditional image processing and computer vision tasks.
A crucial ingredient in such endeavors is accurate depth recovery. We present a
novel framework that allows the recovery of a high quality continuous depth map
from light field data. To this end we propose a generative model of a light
field that is fully parametrized by its corresponding depth map. The model
allows for the integration of powerful regularization techniques such as a
non-local means prior, facilitating accurate depth map estimation.


title: Magnonic Weyl semimetal in pyrochlore ferromagnets

abstract:
  Topological states of matter have been a subject of intensive studies in
recent years because of their exotic properties such as the topologically
protected edge and surface states. The initial studies were exclusively for
electron systems. It is now known that topological states can also exist for
other particles. Indeed, topologically protected edge states have already been
found for phonons and photons. In spite of active searching for topological
states in many fields, the studies in magnetism are relatively rare although
topological states are apparently important and useful in magnonics. Here we
show that the pyrochlore ferromagnets with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
interaction are intrinsic magnonic Weyl semimetals. Similar to the electronic
Weyl semimetals, the magnon bands in a magnonic Weyl semimetal are nontrivially
crossing in pairs at special points (called Weyl nodes) in momentum space. The
equal energy contour around the Weyl nodes gives rise to the Fermi arcs on
sample surfaces due to the topologically protected surface states between each
pair of Weyl nodes. Additional Weyl nodes and Fermi arcs can be generated in
lower energy magnon bands when an anisotropic exchange interaction is
introduced.


title:
Origin of space-separated charges in photoexcited organic
  heterojunctions on ultrafast time scales

abstract:
  We present a detailed investigation of ultrafast (subpicosecond) exciton
dynamics in the lattice model of a donor/acceptor heterojunction. Exciton
generation by means of a photoexcitation, exciton dissociation, and further
charge separation are treated on equal footing. The experimentally observed
presence of space-separated charges at $\lesssim 100$ fs after the
photoexcitation is usually attributed to ultrafast transitions from excitons in
the donor to charge transfer and charge separated states. Here, we show,
however, that the space-separated charges appearing on $\lesssim 100$-fs time
scales are predominantly directly optically generated. Our theoretical insights
into the ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy challenge usual interpretations of
pump-probe spectra in terms of ultrafast population transfer from donor
excitons to space-separated charges.


title: Compressibility regularizes the "$\mu(I)$" rheology for granular flows

abstract:
  The $\mu(I)$-rheology has been recently proposed as a potential candidate to
model the flow of frictional grains in a dense inertial regime. However, this
rheology was shown to be ill-posed in the mathematical sense for a large range
of parameters, notably in the slow and fast flow limits \citep{Barker2015}. In
this rapid communication, we extend the stability analysis to compressible
flows. We show that compressibility regularizes mostly the equations, making
them well-posed for all parameters, at the condition that sufficient
dissipation is associated with volume changes. In addition to the usual Coulomb
shear friction coefficient $\mu$, we introduce a bulk friction coefficient
$\mu_b$, associated to volume changes and show that the equations are
well-posed in two dimensions if $\mu_b>2-2\mu$ ($\mu_b>3-7\mu/2$ in three
dimensions). Moreover, we show that the ill-posed domain defined in
\citep{Barker2015} transforms into a domain where the equations are unstable
but stay well-posed when compressibility is taken into account. These results
suggest thus the importance of compressibility in dense granular flows.


title:
Cosmological models in modified gravity theories with extended
  nonminimal derivative couplings

abstract:
  We construct gravitational modifications that go beyond Horndeski, namely
theories with extended nonminimal derivative couplings, in which the
coefficient functions depend not only on the scalar field but also on its
kinetic energy. Such theories prove to be ghost-free in a cosmological
background. We investigate the early-time cosmology and show that a de Sitter
inflationary phase can be realized as a pure result of the novel gravitational
couplings. Additionally, we study the late-time evolution, where we obtain an
effective dark energy sector which arises from the scalar field and its
extended couplings to gravity. We extract various cosmological observables and
analyse their behavior at small redshifts for three choices of potentials,
namely, for the exponential, the power-law, and the Higgs potential. We show
that the Universe passes from deceleration to acceleration in the recent
cosmological past, while the effective dark-energy equation-of-state parameter
tends to the cosmological-constant value at present. Finally, the effective
dark energy can be phantom-like, although the scalar field is canonical, which
is an advantage of the model.


title:
Two-loop Induced Majorana Neutrino Mass in a Radiatively Induced Quark
  and Lepton Mass Model

abstract:
  A two-loop induced radiative neutrino model is proposed as an extension of
our previous work in which the first and second generation standard model
fermion masses are generated at one-loop level in both quark and lepton
sectors. Then we discuss current neutrino oscillation data, lepton flavor
violations, muon anomalous magnetic moment, and a bosonic dark matter
candidate, for both the normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchy. Our
numerical analysis shows that less hierarchical Yukawa coupling constants can
fit the experimental data with TeV scale dark matter.


title:
Study of Parametric Instability of gravitational wave detectors using
  silicon test masses

abstract:
  Parametric instability is an intrinsic risk in high power laser
interferometer gravitational wave detectors, in which the optical cavity modes
interact with the acoustic modes of the mirrors leading to exponential growth
of the acoustic vibration. In this paper, we investigate the potential
parametric instability for a proposed next generation gravitational wave
detector based on cooled silicon test masses. It is shown that there would be
about 2 unstable modes per test mass, with the highest parametric gain of ~76.
The importance of developing suitable instability suppression schemes is
emphasized.


title:
Molecular Gas Kinematics and Line Diagnostics in Early-type Galaxies:
  NGC4710 and NGC5866

abstract:
  We present interferometric observations of CO lines (12CO(1-0, 2-1) and
13CO(1-0, 2-1)) and dense gas tracers (HCN(1-0), HCO+(1-0), HNC(1-0) and
HNCO(4-3)) in two nearby edge-on barred lenticular galaxies, NGC 4710 and NGC
5866, with most of the gas concentrated in a nuclear disc and an inner ring in
each galaxy. We probe the physical conditions of a two-component molecular
interstellar medium in each galaxy and each kinematic component by using
molecular line ratio diagnostics in three complementary ways. First, we measure
the ratios of the position-velocity diagrams of different lines, second we
measure the ratios of each kinematic component's integrated line intensities as
a function of projected position, and third we model these line ratios using a
non-local thermodynamic equilibrium radiative transfer code. Overall, the
nuclear discs appear to have a tenuous molecular gas component that is hotter,
optically thinner and with a larger dense gas fraction than that in the inner
rings, suggesting more dense clumps immersed in a hotter more diffuse molecular
medium. This is consistent with evidence that the physical conditions in the
nuclear discs are similar to those in photo-dissociation regions. A similar
picture emerges when comparing the observed molecular line ratios with those of
other galaxy types. The physical conditions of the molecular gas in the nuclear
discs of NGC4710 and NGC5866 thus appear intermediate between those of spiral
galaxies and starbursts, while the star formation in their inner rings is even
milder.


title: Extreme Scale-out SuperMUC Phase 2 - lessons learned

abstract:
  In spring 2015, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum,
LRZ), installed their new Peta-Scale System SuperMUC Phase2. Selected users
were invited for a 28 day extreme scale-out block operation during which they
were allowed to use the full system for their applications. The following
projects participated in the extreme scale-out workshop: BQCD (Quantum
Physics), SeisSol (Geophysics, Seismics), GPI-2/GASPI (Toolkit for HPC),
Seven-League Hydro (Astrophysics), ILBDC (Lattice Boltzmann CFD), Iphigenie
(Molecular Dynamic), FLASH (Astrophysics), GADGET (Cosmological Dynamics), PSC
(Plasma Physics), waLBerla (Lattice Boltzmann CFD), Musubi (Lattice Boltzmann
CFD), Vertex3D (Stellar Astrophysics), CIAO (Combustion CFD), and LS1-Mardyn
(Material Science). The projects were allowed to use the machine exclusively
during the 28 day period, which corresponds to a total of 63.4 million
core-hours, of which 43.8 million core-hours were used by the applications,
resulting in a utilization of 69%. The top 3 users were using 15.2, 6.4, and
4.7 million core-hours, respectively.

categories: cs.DC astro-ph.IM physics.comp-ph physics.flu-dyn


title: Low-rank Bandits with Latent Mixtures

abstract:
  We study the task of maximizing rewards from recommending items (actions) to
users sequentially interacting with a recommender system. Users are modeled as
latent mixtures of C many representative user classes, where each class
specifies a mean reward profile across actions. Both the user features (mixture
distribution over classes) and the item features (mean reward vector per class)
are unknown a priori. The user identity is the only contextual information
available to the learner while interacting. This induces a low-rank structure
on the matrix of expected rewards r a,b from recommending item a to user b. The
problem reduces to the well-known linear bandit when either user or item-side
features are perfectly known. In the setting where each user, with its
stochastically sampled taste profile, interacts only for a small number of
sessions, we develop a bandit algorithm for the two-sided uncertainty. It
combines the Robust Tensor Power Method of Anandkumar et al. (2014b) with the
OFUL linear bandit algorithm of Abbasi-Yadkori et al. (2011). We provide the
first rigorous regret analysis of this combination, showing that its regret
after T user interactions is $\tilde O(C\sqrt{BT})$, with B the number of
users. An ingredient towards this result is a novel robustness property of
OFUL, of independent interest.


title:
Rigidity and Vanishing Theorems for Almost Even-Clifford Hermitian
  Manifolds

abstract:
  We prove the rigidity and vanishing of several indices of "geometrically
natural" twisted Dirac operators on almost even-Clifford Hermitian manifolds
admitting circle actions by automorphisms.


title: Upper Domination: towards a dichotomy through boundary properties

abstract:
  An upper dominating set in a graph is a minimal (with respect to set
inclusion) dominating set of maximum cardinality. The problem of finding an
upper dominating set is generally NP-hard. We study the complexity of this
problem in classes of graphs defined by finitely many forbidden induced
subgraphs and conjecture that the problem admits a dichotomy in this family,
i.e. it is either NP-hard or polynomial-time solvable for each class in the
family. A helpful tool to study the complexity of an algorithmic problem on
finitely defined classes of graphs is the notion of boundary classes. However,
none of such classes has been identified so far for the upper dominating set
problem. In the present paper, we discover the first boundary class for this
problem and prove the dichotomy for classes defined by a single forbidden
induced subgraph.


title:
In-situ absolute calibration of electric-field amplitude measurements
  with the LPDA radio detector stations of the Pierre Auger Observatory

abstract:
  With the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) located at the Pierre Auger
Observatory, radio emission of extensive air showers is observed. To exploit
the physics potential of AERA, electric-field amplitude measurements with the
radio detector stations need to be well-calibrated on an absolute level. A
convenient tool for far-field calibration campaigns is a flying drone. Here we
make use of an octocopter to place a calibrated source at freely chosen
positions above the radio detector array. Special emphasis is put on the
reconstruction of the octocopter position and its accuracy during the flights.
The antenna response pattern of the radio detector stations was measured in a
recent calibration campaign. Results of these measurements are presented and
compared to simulations. It is found that measurements and simulations are in
good agreement.


title:
On a singular Liouville-type equation and the Alexandrov isoperimetric
  inequality

abstract:
  We obtain a generalized version of an inequality, first derived by C. Bandle
in the analytic setting, for weak subsolutions of a singular Liouville-type
equation. As an application we obtain a new proof of the Alexandrov
isoperimetric inequality on singular abstract surfaces. Interestingly enough,
motivated by this geometric problem, we obtain a seemingly new characterization
of local metrics on Alexandrov's surfaces of bounded curvature. At least to our
knowledge, the characterization of the equality case in the isoperimetric
inequality in such a weak framework is new as well.


title: Results and Perspectives of the Auger Engineering Radio Array

abstract:
  The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is an extension of the Pierre Auger
Cosmic-Ray Observatory. It is used to detect radio emission from extensive air
showers with energies beyond $10^{17}~$eV in the $30 - 80~$MHz frequency band.
After three phases of deployment, AERA now consists of more than 150 autonomous
radio stations with different spacings, covering an area of about $17~$km$^2$.
It is located at the same site as other Auger low-energy detector extensions
enabling combinations with various other measurement techniques. The radio
array allows different technical schemes to be explored as well as
cross-calibration of our measurements with the established baseline detectors
of the Auger Observatory. We report on the most recent technological
developments and give an overview of the experimental results obtained with
AERA. In particular, we will present the measurement of the radiation energy,
i.e., the amount of energy that is emitted by the air shower in the form of
radio emission, and its dependence on the cosmic-ray energy by comparing with
the measurement of the the well-calibrated Auger surface detector. Furthermore,
we outline the relevance of this result for the absolute calibration of the
energy scale of cosmic-ray observatories.


title:
Spectropolarimetric observations of an arch filament system with the
  GREGOR solar telescope

abstract:
  Arch filament systems occur in active sunspot groups, where a fibril
structure connects areas of opposite magnetic polarity, in contrast to active
region filaments that follow the polarity inversion line. We used the GREGOR
Infrared Spectrograph (GRIS) to obtain the full Stokes vector in the spectral
lines Si I 1082.7 nm, He I 1083.0 nm, and Ca I 1083.9 nm. We focus on the
near-infrared calcium line to investigate the photospheric magnetic field and
velocities, and use the line core intensities and velocities of the helium line
to study the chromospheric plasma. The individual fibrils of the arch filament
system connect the sunspot with patches of magnetic polarity opposite to that
of the spot. These patches do not necessarily coincide with pores, where the
magnetic field is strongest. Instead, areas are preferred not far from the
polarity inversion line. These areas exhibit photospheric downflows of moderate
velocity, but significantly higher downflows of up to 30 km/s in the
chromospheric helium line. Our findings can be explained with new emerging flux
where the matter flows downward along the fieldlines of rising flux tubes, in
agreement with earlier results.


title:
The age of the young bulge-like population in the stellar system
  Terzan5: linking the Galactic bulge to the high-z Universe

abstract:
  The Galactic bulge is dominated by an old, metal rich stellar population. The
possible presence and the amount of a young (a few Gyr old) minor component is
one of the major issues debated in the literature. Recently, the bulge stellar
system Terzan 5 was found to harbor three sub-populations with iron content
varying by more than one order of magnitude (from 0.2 up to 2 times the solar
value), with chemical abundance patterns strikingly similar to those observed
in bulge field stars. Here we report on the detection of two distinct main
sequence turn-off points in Terzan 5, providing the age of the two main stellar
populations: 12 Gyr for the (dominant) sub-solar component and 4.5 Gyr for the
component at super-solar metallicity. This discovery classifies Terzan 5 as a
site in the Galactic bulge where multiple bursts of star formation occurred,
thus suggesting a quite massive progenitor possibly resembling the giant clumps
observed in star forming galaxies at high redshifts. This connection opens a
new route of investigation into the formation process and evolution of
spheroids and their stellar content.


title:
Exponential-square integrability, weighted inequalities for the square
  functions associated to operators and applications

abstract:
  Let $X$ be a metric space with a doubling measure. Let $L$ be a nonnegative
self-adjoint operator acting on $L^2(X)$, hence $L$ generates an analytic
semigroup $e^{-tL}$. Assume that the kernels $p_t(x,y)$ of $e^{-tL}$ satisfy
Gaussian upper bounds and H\"older's continuity in $x$ but we do not require
the semigroup to satisfy the preservation condition $e^{-tL}1 = 1$. In this
article we aim to establish the exponential-square integrability of a function
whose square function associated to an operator $L$ is bounded, and the proof
is new even for the Laplace operator on the Euclidean spaces ${\mathbb R^n}$.
We then apply this result to obtain: (i) estimates of the norm on $L^p$ as $p$
becomes large for operators such as the square functions or spectral
multipliers; (ii) weighted norm inequalities for the square functions; and
(iii) eigenvalue estimates for Schr\"odinger operators on ${\mathbb R}^n$ or
Lipschitz domains of ${\mathbb R}^n$.


title:
Faster O(|V|^2|E|W)-Time Energy Algorithms for Optimal Strategy
  Synthesis in Mean Payoff Games

abstract:
  This study strengthens the links between Mean Payoff Games (\MPG{s}) and
Energy Games (EG{s}). Firstly, we offer a faster $O(|V|^2|E|W)$
pseudo-polynomial time and $\Theta(|V|+|E|)$ space deterministic algorithm for
solving the Value Problem and Optimal Strategy Synthesis in \MPG{s}. This
improves the best previously known estimates on the pseudo-polynomial time
complexity to: \[ O(|E|\log |V|) + \Theta\Big(\sum_{v\in
V}\texttt{deg}_{\Gamma}(v)\cdot\ell_{\Gamma}(v)\Big) = O(|V|^2|E|W), \] where
$\ell_{\Gamma}(v)$ counts the number of times that a certain energy-lifting
operator $\delta(\cdot, v)$ is applied to any $v\in V$, along a certain
sequence of Value-Iterations on reweighted \EG{s}; and
$\texttt{deg}_{\Gamma}(v)$ is the degree of $v$. This improves significantly
over a previously known pseudo-polynomial time estimate, i.e.
$\Theta\big(|V|^2|E|W + \sum_{v\in
V}\texttt{deg}_{\Gamma}(v)\cdot\ell_{\Gamma}(v)\big)$ \citep{CR15, CR16}, as
the pseudo-polynomiality is now confined to depend solely on $\ell_\Gamma$.
Secondly, we further explore on the relationship between Optimal Positional
Strategies (OPSs) in \MPG{s} and Small Energy-Progress Measures (SEPMs) in
reweighted \EG{s}. It is observed that the space of all OPSs,
$\texttt{opt}_{\Gamma}\Sigma^M_0$, admits a unique complete decomposition in
terms of extremal-SEPM{s} in reweighted EG{s}. This points out what we called
the "Energy-Lattice $\mathcal{X}^*_{\Gamma}$ associated to
$\texttt{opt}_{\Gamma}\Sigma^M_0$". Finally, it is offered a pseudo-polynomial
total-time recursive procedure for enumerating (w/o repetitions) all the
elements of $\mathcal{X}^*_{\Gamma}$, and for computing the corresponding
partitioning of $\texttt{opt}_{\Gamma}\Sigma^M_0$.


title: Infrared Peak-Splitting from phonon localization in Solid Hydrogen

abstract:
  We show that the isotope effect leads to a completely different spectroscopic
signal in hydrogen-deuterium mixtures, compared to pure elements that have the
same crystal structure. This is particularly true for molecular vibrations,
which are the main source of information about the structure of high-pressure
hydrogen. Mass disorder breaks translational symmetry, meaning that vibrations
are localized almost to single molecules, and are not zone-center phonons. In
mixtures, each observable IR peak corresponds to a collection of many such
molecular vibrations, which have a distribution of frequencies depending on
local environment. Furthermore discrete groups of environments cause the peaks
to split. We illustrate this issue by considering the IR spectrum of the high
pressure Phase III structure of hydrogen, recently interpreted as showing novel
phases in isotopic mixtures. We calculate the IR spectrum of hydrogen/deuterium
mixtures in the $C2/c$ and $Cmca$-12 structures, showing that isotopic disorder
gives rise to mode localization of the high frequency vibrons. The local
coordination of the molecules leads to discrete IR peaks. The spread of
frequencies is strongly enhanced with pressure, such that more peaks become
resolvable at higher pressures, in agreement with the recent measurements.


title: Radial Velocity Data Analysis with Compressed Sensing Techniques

abstract:
  We present a novel approach for analysing radial velocity data that combines
two features: all the planets are searched at once and the algorithm is fast.
This is achieved by utilizing compressed sensing techniques, which are modified
to be compatible with the Gaussian processes framework. The resulting tool can
be used like a Lomb-Scargle periodogram and has the same aspect but with much
fewer peaks due to aliasing. The method is applied to five systems with
published radial velocity data sets: HD 69830, HD 10180, 55 Cnc, GJ 876 and a
simulated very active star. The results are fully compatible with previous
analysis, though obtained more straightforwardly. We further show that 55 Cnc e
and f could have been respectively detected and suspected in early measurements
from the Lick observatory and Hobby-Eberly Telescope available in 2004, and
that frequencies due to dynamical interactions in GJ 876 can be seen.


title: Multiple Rabi Splittings under Ultra-Strong Vibrational Coupling

abstract:
  From the high vibrational dipolar strength offered by molecular liquids, we
demonstrate that a molecular vibration can be ultra-strongly coupled to
multiple IR cavity modes, with Rabi splittings reaching $24\%$ of the vibration
frequencies. As a proof of the ultra-strong coupling regime, our experimental
data unambiguously reveal the contributions to the polaritonic dynamics coming
from the anti-resonant terms in the interaction energy and from the dipolar
self-energy of the molecular vibrations themselves. In particular, we measure
the opening of a genuine vibrational polaritonic bandgap of ca. $60$ meV. We
also demonstrate that the multimode splitting effect defines a whole
vibrational ladder of heavy polaritonic states perfectly resolved. These
findings reveal the broad possibilities in the vibrational ultra-strong
coupling regime which impact both the optical and the molecular properties of
such coupled systems, in particular in the context of mode-selective chemistry.


title: Star polymers as unit cells for coarse-graining cross-linked networks

abstract:
  Reducing the complexity of cross-linked polymer networks by preserving their
main macroscale properties, is key to understanding them, and a crucial issue
is to relate individual properties of the polymer constituents to those of the
reduced network. Here we study polymer networks in a good solvent, by
considering star polymers as their unit elements, and first quantify the
interaction between their centers of masses. We then reduce the complexity of a
network by replacing sets of its bridged star polymers by equivalent effective
soft particles with dense cores. Our coarse graining allows us to approximate
complex polymer networks by much simpler ones, keeping their relevant
mechanical properties, as illustrated in computer experiments on an isotropic
compression.


title: Made-to-measure galaxy modelling utilising absorption line strength data

abstract:
  We enhance the Syer & Tremaine made-to-measure (M2M) particle method of
stellar dynamical modelling to model simultaneously both kinematic data and
absorption line strength data thus creating a `chemo-M2M' modelling scheme. We
apply the enhanced method to four galaxies (NGC 1248, NGC 3838, NGC 4452, NGC
4551) observed using the SAURON integral-field spectrograph as part of the
ATLAS3D programme. We are able to reproduce successfully the 2D line strength
data achieving mean chi^2 per bin values of ~1 with >95\% of particles having
converged weights. Because M2M uses a 3D particle system, we are also able to
examine the underlying 3D line strength distributions. The extent to which
these distributions are plausible representations of real galaxies requires
further consideration. Overall we consider the modelling exercise to be a
promising first step in developing a `chemo-M2M' modelling system and in
understanding some of the issues to be addressed. Whilst the made-to-measure
techniques developed have been applied to absorption line strength data, they
are in fact general and may be of value in modelling other aspects of galaxies.


title:
Size and density controlled metal nanocluster embedded
  metal-oxide-semiconductor structure for memory applications

abstract:
  Metal-nanoclusters (NC), deposited by magnetron-based nanocluster source
coupled with quadrupole mass filter (QMF) assembly having independent control
over its size and density, are used in fabricating NC-based non-volatile memory
(NVM) devices. The effect of diameter and density on the NVM charge storage
characteristics are presented where Ag is used as the metal NC. The Ag-NC,
sandwiched between HfO$_2$ tunnel and control oxides, is deposited by using the
combination of the above two instruments. No annealing is performed at any
stage of the device fabrication. The largest hysteresis loop area in the
capacitance-voltage ($C-V$) characteristics of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)
characteristics is observed for a cluster density of 1 $\times$ 10$^{11}$
cm$^{-2}$. Further, an NC size dependent hysteresis loop area is observed with
the MOS devices where the NC diameter is varied from 3 to 1.5 nm keeping the NC
density at 1 $\times$ 10$^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$. The device performance is found to
be improved with a reduction of the NC size and shows its best with the NC
diameter of 1.5 nm. The storage time of the NVM devices also increases with the
decrease in the NC diameter and exhibits their best performances for the NCs
with a diameter of 1.5 nm.


title:
Confidence-aware Levenberg-Marquardt optimization for joint motion
  estimation and super-resolution

abstract:
  Motion estimation across low-resolution frames and the reconstruction of
high-resolution images are two coupled subproblems of multi-frame
super-resolution. This paper introduces a new joint optimization approach for
motion estimation and image reconstruction to address this interdependence. Our
method is formulated via non-linear least squares optimization and combines two
principles of robust super-resolution. First, to enhance the robustness of the
joint estimation, we propose a confidence-aware energy minimization framework
augmented with sparse regularization. Second, we develop a tailor-made
Levenberg-Marquardt iteration scheme to jointly estimate motion parameters and
the high-resolution image along with the corresponding model confidence
parameters. Our experiments on simulated and real images confirm that the
proposed approach outperforms decoupled motion estimation and image
reconstruction as well as related state-of-the-art joint estimation algorithms.


title: Breakdown of 1D water wires inside Charged Carbon Nanotubes

abstract:
  Using Molecular Dynamics approach we investigated the structure, dynamics of
water confined inside pristine and charged 6,6 carbon nanotubes (CNTs). This
study reports the breakdown of 1D water wires and the emergence of triangular
faced water on incorporating charges in 6,6 CNTs. Incorporation of charges
results in high potential barriers to the flipping of water molecules due to
the formation of a large number of hydrogen bonds. The PMF analyses show the
presence of ~2 kcal/mol barrier for the movement of water inside pristine CNT
and almost negligible barrier in charged CNTs.


title:
Superconducting NbTiN Thin Films with Highly Uniform Properties over a
  100 mm diameter Wafer

abstract:
  Uniformity in thickness and electronic properties of superconducting niobium
titanium nitride (NbTiN) thin films is a critical issue for upscaling
superconducting electronics, such as microwave kinetic inductance detectors for
submillimeter wave astronomy. In this article we make an experimental
comparison between the uniformity of NbTiN thin films produced by two DC
magnetron sputtering systems with vastly different target sizes: the Nordiko
2000 equipped with a circular 100mm diameter target, and the Evatec LLS801 with
a rectangular target of 127 mm x 444.5 mm. In addition to the films deposited
staticly in both systems, we have also deposited films in the LLS801 while
shuttling the substrate in front of the target, with the aim of further
enhancing the uniformity. Among these three setups, the LLS801 system with
substrate shuttling has yielded the highest uniformity in film thickness
(+/-2%), effective resistivity (decreasing by 5% from center to edge), and
superconducting critical temperature (T_c = 15.0 K - 15.3 K) over a 100 mm
diameter wafer. However, the shuttling appears to increase the resistivity by
almost a factor of 2 compared to static deposition. Surface SEM inspections
suggest that the shuttling could have induced a different mode of
microstructural film growth.


title:
Bayesian Analysis of Two Stellar Populations in Galactic Globular
  Clusters III: Analysis of 30 Clusters

abstract:
  We use Cycle 21 Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations and HST archival
ACS Treasury observations of 30 Galactic Globular Clusters to characterize two
distinct stellar populations. A sophisticated Bayesian technique is employed to
simultaneously sample the joint posterior distribution of age, distance, and
extinction for each cluster, as well as unique helium values for two
populations within each cluster and the relative proportion of those
populations. We find the helium differences among the two populations in the
clusters fall in the range of ~0.04 to 0.11. Because adequate models varying in
CNO are not presently available, we view these spreads as upper limits and
present them with statistical rather than observational uncertainties. Evidence
supports previous studies suggesting an increase in helium content concurrent
with increasing mass of the cluster and also find that the proportion of the
first population of stars increases with mass as well. Our results are examined
in the context of proposed globular cluster formation scenarios. Additionally,
we leverage our Bayesian technique to shed light on inconsistencies between the
theoretical models and the observed data.


title:
Stochastic homogenization of linear elliptic equations: Higher-order
  error estimates in weak norms via second-order correctors

abstract:
  We are concerned with the homogenization of second-order linear elliptic
equations with random coefficient fields. For symmetric coefficient fields with
only short-range correlations, quantified through a logarithmic Sobolev
inequality for the ensemble, we prove that when measured in weak spatial norms,
the solution to the homogenized equation provides a higher-order approximation
of the solution to the equation with oscillating coefficients. In the case of
nonsymmetric coefficient fields, we provide a higher-order approximation (in
weak spatial norms) of the solution to the equation with oscillating
coefficients in terms of solutions to constant-coefficient equations. In both
settings, we also provide optimal error estimates for the two-scale expansion
truncated at second order. Our results rely on novel estimates on the
second-order homogenization corrector, which we establish via sensitivity
estimates for the second-order corrector and a large-scale $L^p$ theory for
elliptic equations with random coefficients. Our results also cover the case of
elliptic systems.


title:
Designing a Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller for Fault Tolerant
  Flight Control

abstract:
  This paper describes the design process for developing a nonlinear model
predictive controller for fault tolerant flight control. After examining and
implementing a number of numerical techniques, this paper identifies
pseudospectral discretisation as the most suitable for this design. Applying
the controller to a 2D robot model shows that the nonlinear controller performs
much better than the linear controller, especially in the closed loop scenario.
Assuming fault detection information, applying the technique to the
longitudinal motion of a generic aircraft model shows the design to be
eminently suitable for flight control.


title: Efficiency enhancement based on allocating bizarre peaks

abstract:
  A new work has been proposed in this paper in order to overcome one of the
main drawbacks that found in the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM)
systems, namely Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR). Furthermore, this work will
be compared with a previously published work that uses the neural network (NN)
as a solution to remedy this deficiency. The proposed work could be considered
as a special averaging technique (SAT), which consists of wavelet
transformation in its first stage, a globally statistical adaptive detecting
algorithm as a second stage; and in the third stage it replaces the affected
peaks by making use of moving average filter process. In the NN work, the
learning process makes use of a previously published work that is based on
three linear coding techniques. In order to check the proposed work validity, a
MATLAB simulation has been run and has two main variables to compare with;
namely BER and CCDF curves. This is true under the same bandwidth occupancy and
channel characteristics. Two types of tested data have been used; randomly
generated data and a practical data that have been extracted from a funded
project entitled by ECEM. From the achieved simulation results, the work that
is based on SAT shows promising results in reducing the PAPR effect reached up
to 80% over the work in the literature and our previously published work. This
means that this work gives an extra reduction up to 15% of our previously
published work. However, this achievement will be under the cost of complexity.
This penalty could be optimized by imposing the NN to the SAT work in order to
enhance the wireless systems performance.


title:
A unified recovery bound estimation for noise-aware Lq optimization
  model in compressed sensing

abstract:
  In this letter, we present a unified result for the stable recovery bound of
Lq(0 < q < 1) optimization model in compressed sensing, which is a constrained
Lq minimization problem aware of the noise in a linear system. Specifically,
without using the restricted isometry constant (RIC), we show that the error
between any global solution of the noise-aware Lq optimization model and the
ideal sparse solution of the noiseless model is upper bounded by a constant
times the noise level,given that the sparsity of the ideal solution is smaller
than a certain number. An interesting parameter {gamma} is introduced, which
indicates the sparsity level of the error vector and plays an important role in
our analysis. In addition, we show that when {\gamma} > 2, the recovery bound
of the Lq (0 < q < 1) model is smaller than that of the L1 model, and the
sparsity requirement of the ideal solution in the Lq(0 < q < 1) model is weaker
than that of the L1 model.


title:
A numerical investigation of wind accretion in persistent Supergiant
  X-ray Binaries I - Structure of the flow at the orbital scale

abstract:
  Classical Supergiant X-ray Binaries host a neutron star orbiting a supergiant
OB star and display persistent X-ray luminosities of 10$^{35}$ to 10$^{37}$
erg/s. The stellar wind from the massive companion is believed to be the main
source of matter accreted by the compact object. With this first paper, we
introduce a ballistic model to characterize the structure of the wind at the
orbital scale as it accelerates, from the stellar surface to the vicinity of
the accretor. Thanks to the parametrization we retained and the numerical
pipeline we designed, we can investigate the supersonic flow and the subsequent
observables as a function of a reduced set of characteristic numbers and
scales. We show that the shape of the permanent flow is entirely determined by
the mass ratio, the filling factor, the Eddington factor and the $\alpha$-force
multiplier which drives the stellar wind acceleration. Provided scales such as
the orbital period are known, we can trace back the observables to evaluate the
mass accretion rates, the accretion mechanism, the shearing of the inflow and
the stellar parameters. We confront our model to three persistent Supergiant
X-ray Binaries (Vela X-1, IGR J18027-2016, XTE J1855-026) and discuss the
likelihood of wind-formed accretion discs around the accretors in each case,
further investigated in a following paper.


title: The variational principle for weights characterizing the relevance

abstract:
  The classical method of the thematic classification of texts is based on
using the frequency weight on the list of words occurring in texts from the
text corpus that determines the theme. In this method , the weight of each word
is defined as its normalized frequency in the texts of the corpus. The
frequency weight is applied for determining the relevance of the tested text to
the theme given via a text corpus: the relevance of the tested text is defined
as the value of its frequency weight (see [1]-[3]). In the present work we
propose a method of constructing some optimal weights generated via certain
variational principles leading to LP (linear programming)problems. A noteworthy
feature of those optimal weights is a relatively small number of words
belonging to their supports: in all the examples we considered that number did
not exceed 10 percent of the quantity of different words (lemmas) occurring in
texts of the corpus, and besides the majority of those words were apparent
candidates to be selected as key words of the corpus. The application of our
method to the determination of the relevance of texts to a given collection of
thematic text corpuses demonstrated its high efficiency and performance.


title: Chimera in a neuronal network model of the cat brain

abstract:
  Neuronal systems have been modeled by complex networks in different
description levels. Recently, it has been verified that networks can
simultaneously exhibit one coherent and other incoherent domain, known as
chimera states. In this work, we study the existence of chimera states in a
network considering the connectivity matrix based on the cat cerebral cortex.
The cerebral cortex of the cat can be separated in 65 cortical areas organised
into the four cognitive regions: visual, auditory, somatosensory-motor and
frontolimbic. We consider a network where the local dynamics is given by the
Hindmarsh-Rose model. The Hindmarsh-Rose equations are a well known model of
neuronal activity that has been considered to simulate membrane potential in
neuron. Here, we analyse under which conditions chimera states are present, as
well as the affects induced by intensity of coupling on them. We observe the
existence of chimera states in that incoherent structure can be composed of
desynchronised spikes or desynchronised bursts. Moreover, we find that chimera
states with desynchronised bursts are more robust to neuronal noise than with
desynchronised spikes.


title:
Molecular dynamics-based refinement of nanodiamond size measurements
  obtained with dynamic light scattering

abstract:
  The determination of particle size by dynamic light scattering uses the
Stokes-Einstein relation, which can break down for nanoscale objects. Here we
employ a molecular dynamics simulation of fully solvated 1-5 nm carbon
nanoparticles for the refinement of the experimental data obtained for
nanodiamonds in water by using dynamic light scattering. We performed molecular
dynamics simulations in differently sized boxes and calculated nanoparticles
diffusion coefficients using the velocity autocorrelation function and
mean-square displacement. We found that the predictions of the Stokes-Einstein
relation are accurate for nanoparticles larger than 3 nm while for smaller
nanoparticles the diffusion coefficient should be corrected and different
boundary conditions should be taken into account.


title: Spin supplementary conditions for spinning compact binaries

abstract:
  We consider different spin supplementary conditions (SSC) for a spinning
compact binary with the leading-order spin-orbit (SO) interaction. The
Lagrangian of the binary system can be constructed but it is
acceleration-dependent in two cases of SSC. We rewrite the generalized
Hamiltonian formalism proposed by Ostrogradsky and compute the conserved
quantities and the dissipative part of relative motion during the gravitational
radiation of each SSC. We give the orbital elements and observed quantities of
the SO dynamics, for instance the energy and the orbital angular momentum
losses and waveforms and discuss their SSC dependence.


title:
Public scientists contributing to local literary fiction. An exploratory
  analysis

abstract:
  Public scientists (scientists only from now onwards), understood as a member
of the teaching and/or research staff of a public university or a public
research organization (including humanities and social sciences), benefit the
academic community, industry and other social collectives through teaching and
research. Active involvement of scientists in culture is part of the richness
of developed societies. Some voices in current debates on the evaluation of
societal impact and the role of universities towards social development are
claiming a refocus from a socioeconomic perspective to also including
sociocultural benefits from academiaIn this paper we will focus in one facet of
cultural engagement; writing literary fiction. We will narrow our general
objective to local activities, due to the interest in the engagement of
scientist on this geographic dimension. Do local publishers include the
literary work of scientists? Are works written by scientists more likely to be
local than works not written by scientists?


title:
JRSP of three-particle state via three tripartite GHZ class in quantum
  noisy channels

abstract:
  We present a scheme for joint remote state preparation (JRSP) of
three-particle state via three tripartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)
entangled states as the quantum channel linking the parties. We use eight-qubit
mutually orthogonal basis vector as measurement point of departure. The
likelihood of success for this scheme has been found to be $1/8$. However, by
putting some special cases into consideration, the chances can be ameliorated
to $1/4$ and $1$. The effects of amplitude-damping noise, phase-damping noise
and depolarizing noise on this scheme have been scrutinized and the analytical
derivations of fidelities for the quantum noisy channels have been presented.
We found that for $0.55\leq\eta\leq1$, the states conveyed through depolarizing
channel lose more information than phase-damping channel while the information
loss through amplitude damping channel is most minimal.


title: Time reversal of ultrasound in granular media

abstract:
  Time reversal (TR) focusing of ultrasound in granular packings is
experimentally investigated. Pulsed elastic waves transmitted from a
compressional or shear transducer source are measured by a TR mirror, reversed
in time and back-propagated. We find that TR of ballistic coherent waves onto
the source position is very robust regardless driving amplitude but provides
poor spatial resolution. By contrast, the multiply scattered coda waves offer a
finer TR focusing at small amplitude by a lens effect. However, at large
amplitude, these TR focusing signals decrease significantly due to the
vibration-induced rearrangement of the contact networks, leading to the
breakdown of TR invariance. Our observations reveal that granular acoustics is
in between particle motion and wave propagation in terms of sensitivity to
perturbations. These laboratory experiments are supported by numerical
simulations of elastic wave propagation in disordered 2D percolation networks
of masses and springs, and should be helpful for source location problems in
natural processes.


title: Adiabatic transport of qubits around a black hole

abstract:
  We consider localized qubits evolving around a black hole following a quantum
adiabatic dynamics. We develop a geometric structure (based on fibre bundles)
permitting to describe the quantum states of a qubit and the spacetime geometry
in a single framework. The quantum decoherence induced by the black hole on the
qubit is analysed in this framework (the role of the dynamical and geometric
phases in this decoherence is treated), especially for the quantum
teleportation protocol when one qubit falls to the event horizon. A simple
formula to compute the fidelity of the teleportation is derived. The case of a
Schwarzschild black hole is analysed.


title: Quantum one-way permutation over the finite field of two elements

abstract:
  In quantum cryptography, a one-way permutation is a bounded unitary operator
$U:\mathcal{H} \to \mathcal{H}$ on a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ that is easy
to compute on every input, but hard to invert given the image of a random
input. Levin [Probl. Inf. Transm., vol. 39 (1): 92-103 (2003)] has conjectured
that the unitary transformation $g(a,x)=(a,f(x)+ax)$, where $f$ is any
length-preserving function and $a,x \in GF_{{2}^{\|x\|}}$, is an
information-theoretically secure operator within a polynomial factor. Here, we
show that Levin's one-way permutation is provably secure because its output
values are four maximally entangled two-qubit states, and whose probability of
factoring them approaches zero faster than the multiplicative inverse of any
positive polynomial $poly(x)$ over the Boolean ring of all subsets of $x$. Our
results demonstrate through well-known theorems that existence of classical
one-way functions implies existence of a universal quantum one-way permutation
that cannot be inverted in subexponential time in the worst ca


title: Twisted endoscopy from a sheaf-theoretic perspective

abstract:
  The standard theory of endoscopy for real groups has two parallel
formulations. The original formulation of Langlands and Shelstad relies on
methods in harmonic analysis. The subsequent formulation of Adams, Barbasch and
Vogan relies on sheaf-theoretic methods. The original formulation was extended
by Kottwitz and Shelstad to twisted endoscopy. We extend the sheaf-theoretic
formulation to the context of twisted endoscopy and provide applications for
computing Arthur packets.


title: Hilbert Matrix and Difference Operator of Order m

abstract:
  In this paper, firstly, some applications of Hilbert matrix in image
processing and cryptology are mentioned and an algorithm related to the Hilbert
view of a digital image is given. In section 2, the new matrix domains are
constructed and some properties are investigated. Furthermore, dual spaces of
new matrix domains are computed and matrix transformations are characterized.
In last section, examples of transformations of new spaces are given.


title:
$q$-log-convexity from linear transformations and polynomials with only
  real zeros

abstract:
  In this paper, we mainly study the stability of iterated polynomials and
linear transformations preserving the strong $q$-log-convexity of polynomials
  Let $[T_{n,k}]_{n,k\geq0}$ be an array of nonnegative numbers. We give some
criteria for the linear transformation $$y_n(q)=\sum_{k=0}^nT_{n,k}x_k(q)$$
preserving the strong $q$-log-convexity (resp. log-convexity). As applications,
we derive that some linear transformations (for instance, the Stirling
transformations of two kinds, the Jacobi-Stirling transformations of two kinds,
the Legendre-Stirling transformations of two kinds, the central factorial
transformations, and so on) preserve the strong $q$-log-convexity (resp.
log-convexity) in a unified manner. In particular, we confirm a conjecture of
Lin and Zeng, and extend some results of Chen {\it et al.}, and Zhu for strong
$q$-log-convexity of polynomials, and some results of Liu and Wang for
transformations preserving the log-convexity.
  The stability property of iterated polynomials implies the $q$-log-convexity.
By applying the method of interlacing of zeros, we also present two criteria
for the stability of the iterated Sturm sequences and $q$-log-convexity of
polynomials. As consequences, we get the stabilities of iterated Eulerian
polynomials of type $A$ and $B$, and their $q$-analogs. In addition, we also
prove that the generating functions of alternating runs of type $A$ and $B$,
the longest alternating subsequence and up-down runs of permutations form a
$q$-log-convex sequence, respectively.


title:
Derivation of the Maxwell-Schr\"odinger Equations from the Pauli-Fierz
  Hamiltonian

abstract:
  We consider the spinless Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian which describes a quantum
system of non-relativistic identical particles coupled to the quantized
electromagnetic field. We study the time evolution in a mean-field limit where
the number $N$ of charged particles gets large while the coupling to the
radiation field is rescaled by $1/\sqrt{N}$. At time zero we assume that almost
all charged particles are in the same one-body state (a Bose-Einstein
condensate) and we assume also the photons to be close to a coherent state. We
show that at later times and in the limit $N \rightarrow \infty$ the charged
particles as well as the photons exhibit condensation, with the time evolution
approximately described by the Maxwell-Schr\"odinger system, which models the
coupling of a non-relativistic particle to the classical electromagnetic field.
  Our result is obtained by an extension of the "method of counting",
introduced by Pickl, to condensates of charged particles in interaction with
their radiation field.


title: Zero-energy pinning from interactions in Majorana nanowires

abstract:
  Majorana zero modes at the boundaries of topological superconductors are
charge-neutral, an equal superposition of electrons and holes. This ideal
situation is, however, hard to achieve in physical implementations, such as
proximitised semiconducting nanowires of realistic length. In such systems
Majorana overlaps are unavoidable and lead to their hybridisation into charged
Bogoliubov quasiparticles of finite energy which, unlike true zero modes, are
affected by electronic interactions. We here demonstrate that these
interactions, particularly with bound charges in the dielectric surroundings,
drastically change the non-interacting paradigm. Remarkably, interactions may
completely suppress Majorana hybridisation around parity crossings, where the
total charge in the nanowire changes. This effect, dubbed zero-energy pinning,
stabilises Majoranas back to zero energy and charge, and leads to
electronically incompressible parameter regions wherein Majoranas remain
insensitive to local perturbations, despite their overlap.


title:
Bayesian subcohort selection for longitudinal covariate measurements in
  follow-up studies

abstract:
  We consider planning longitudinal covariate measurements in follow-up studies
where covariates are time-varying. We assume that the entire cohort cannot be
selected for longitudinal measurements due to financial limitations and study
how a subset of the cohort should be selected optimally in order to obtain
precise estimates of covariate effects in a survival model. In our approach,
the study will be designed sequentially utilizing the data collected in
previous measurements of the individuals as prior information. We propose using
a Bayesian optimality criterion in the subcohort selections, which is compared
with simple random sampling using simulated and real follow-up data. This study
extends previous results where optimal subcohort selection was studied with
only one re-measurement and one covariate, to more realistic cases where
several covariates and measurement points are allowed. Our results support the
conclusion that the precision of the estimates can be clearly improved by
optimal design.


title: Proposed method to reduce the determinant of order n

abstract:
  This paper presents a theorem which solves the problem of reduction of the
determinant order by means of a transformation of it, into other determinant
whose each element are a determinant of second order. This implies that, if the
process continues, desired result is obtained by solving always determinants of
second order. It also assesses the degree of efficiency compared to the method
by minors and with the method of Gauss, as well as the ability to reflect small
variations in the data. This method should have a good impact also in the area
of teaching mathematics, due to its ease of assimilation and application.


title:
A new approach to representations of $3$-Lie algebras and abelian
  extensions

abstract:
  In this paper, we introduce the notion of generalized representation of a
$3$-Lie algebra, by which we obtain a generalized semidirect product $3$-Lie
algebra. Moreover, we develop the corresponding cohomology theory. Various
examples of generalized representations of 3-Lie algebras and computation of
2-cocycles of the new cohomology are provided. Also, we show that a split
abelian extension of a 3-Lie algebra is isomorphic to a generalized semidirect
product $3$-Lie algebra. Furthermore, we describe general abelian extensions of
3-Lie algebras using Maurer-Cartan elements.


title:
A new analytic method with a convergence-control parameter for solving
  nonlinear problems

abstract:
  In this paper, a new analytic method with a convergence-control parameter $c$
is first proposed. The parameter $c$ is used to adjust and control the
convergence region and rate of the resulting series solution. It turns out that
the convergence region and rate can be greatly enlarged by choosing a proper
value of $c$. Furthermore, a numerical approach for finding the optimal value
of the convergence-control parameter is given. At the same time, it is found
that the traditional Adomian decomposition method is only a special case of the
new method. The effectiveness and applicability of the new technique are
demonstrated by several physical models including nonlinear heat transfer
problems, nano-electromechanical systems, diffusion and dissipation phenomena,
and dispersive waves. Moreover, the ideas proposed in this paper may offer us
possibilities to greatly improve current analytic and numerical techniques.


title: CePdAl - a Kondo lattice with partial frustration

abstract:
  Magnetic frustration, which is well-defined in insulating systems with
localized magnetic moments, yields exotic ground states like spin ices, spin
glasses, or spin liquids. In metals magnetic frustration is less well defined
because of the incipient delocalization of magnetic moments by the interaction
with conduction electrons, viz., the Kondo effect. Hence, the Kondo effect and
magnetic frustration are antithetic phenomena. Here we present experimental
data of electrical resistivity, magnetization, specific heat and neutron
diffraction on CePdAl, which is one of the rare examples of a geometrically
frustrated Kondo lattice, demonstrating that the combination of Kondo effect
and magnetic frustration leads to an unusual ground state.


title:
Efficient representation of fully many-body localized systems using
  tensor networks

abstract:
  We propose a tensor network encoding the set of all eigenstates of a fully
many-body localized system in one dimension. Our construction, conceptually
based on the ansatz introduced in Phys. Rev. B 94, 041116(R) (2016), is built
from two layers of unitary matrices which act on blocks of $\ell$ contiguous
sites.
  We argue this yields an exponential reduction in computational time and
memory requirement as compared to all previous approaches for finding a
representation of the complete eigenspectrum of large many-body localized
systems with a given accuracy. Concretely, we optimize the unitaries by
minimizing the magnitude of the commutator of the approximate integrals of
motion and the Hamiltonian, which can be done in a local fashion. This further
reduces the computational complexity of the tensor networks arising in the
minimization process compared to previous work. We test the accuracy of our
method by comparing the approximate energy spectrum to exact diagonalization
results for the random field Heisenberg model on 16 sites. We find that the
technique is highly accurate deep in the localized regime and maintains a
surprising degree of accuracy in predicting certain local quantities even in
the vicinity of the predicted dynamical phase transition. To demonstrate the
power of our technique, we study a system of 72 sites and we are able to see
clear signatures of the phase transition. Our work opens a new avenue to study
properties of the many-body localization transition in large systems.


title: A relative error estimation approach for single index model

abstract:
  A product relative error estimation method for single index regression model
is proposed as an alternative to absolute error methods, such as the least
square estimation and the least absolute deviation estimation. It is scale
invariant for outcome and covariates in the model. Regression coefficients are
estimated via a two-stage procedure and their statistical properties such as
consistency and normality are studied. Numerical studies including simulation
and a body fat example show that the proposed method performs well.


title: Phase-space views into dye-microcavity thermalised and condensed photons

abstract:
  We have observed momentum- and position-resolved spectra and images of the
photoluminescence from thermalised and condensed dye-microcavity photons. The
spectra yield the dispersion relation and the potential energy landscape for
the photons. From this dispersion relation, we find that the effective mass is
that of a free photon not a polariton. We place an upper bound on the
dimensionless two-dimensional interaction strength of $\tilde{g}\lesssim
10^{-3}$, which is compatible with existing estimates. Both photon-photon and
photon-molecule interactions are weak. The temperature is found to be
independent of momentum, but dependent on pump spot size, indicating that the
system is ergodic but not perfectly at thermal equilibrium. Condensation always
happens first in the mode with lowest potential and lowest kinetic energy,
although at very high pump powers multimode condensation occurs into other
modes.


title: Inverse moment problem for non-Abelian Coxeter double Bruhat cells

abstract:
  We solve the inverse problem for non-Abelian Coxeter double Bruhat cells in
terms of the matrix Weyl functions. This result can be used to establish
complete integrability of the non-Abelian version of nonlinear Coxeter-Toda
lattices in $GL_n$.


title:
Position-dependent radiative transfer as a tool for studying Anderson
  localization: Delay time, time-reversal and coherent backscattering

abstract:
  Previous work has established that the localized regime of wave transport in
open media is characterized by a position-dependent diffusion coefficient. In
this work we study how the concept of position-dependent diffusion affects the
delay time, the transverse confinement, the coherent backscattering, and the
time reversal of waves. Definitions of energy transport velocity of localized
waves are proposed. We start with a phenomenological model of radiative
transfer and then present a novel perturbational approach based on the
self-consistent theory of localization. The latter allows us to obtain results
relevant for realistic experiments in disordered quasi-1D wave guides and 3D
slabs.


title: Non orientable three-submanifolds of $\mathrm{G}_2-$manifolds

abstract:
  By analogy with associative and co-associative cases we introduce a class of
three-dimensional non-orientable submanifolds, of almost
$\mathrm{G}_2-$manifolds, modelled on planes lying in a special
$\mathrm{G}_2-$orbit. An application of the Cartan-K\"ahler theory shows that
some three-manifold can be presented in this way. We also classify all the
homogeneous ones in $\mathbb{RP}^7$.


title: Towards optimal experimental tests on the reality of the quantum state

abstract:
  The Barrett-Cavalcanti-Lal-Maroney (BCLM) argument stands as the most
effective means of demonstrating the reality of the quantum state. Its
advantages include being derived from very few assumptions, and a robustness to
experimental error. Finding the best way to implement the argument
experimentally is an open problem, however, and involves cleverly choosing sets
of states and measurements. I show that techniques from convex optimisation
theory can be leveraged to numerically search for these sets, which then form a
recipe for experiments that allow for the strongest statements about the
ontology of the wavefunction to be made. The optimisation approach presented is
versatile, efficient and can take account of the finite errors present in any
real experiment. I find significantly improved low-cardinality sets which are
guaranteed partially optimal for a BCLM test in low Hilbert space dimension. I
further show that mixed states can be more optimal than pure states.


title: Skeletons and moduli of Stokes torsors

abstract:
  We prove an analogue for Stokes torsors of Deligne's skeleton conjecture and
deduce from it the representability of the functor of relative Stokes torsors
by an affine scheme of finite type over C. This provides, in characteristic 0,
a local analogue of the existence of a coarse moduli for skeletons with bounded
ramification, due to Deligne. As an application, we use the geometry of this
moduli to derive quite strong finiteness results for integrable systems of
differential equations in several variables which did not have any analogue in
one variable.


title: Production of strongly bound 39K bright solitons

abstract:
  We report on the production of 39 K matter-wave bright solitons, i.e., 1D
matter-waves that propagate without dispersion thanks to attractive
interactions. The volume of the soliton is studied as a function of the
scattering length through three-body losses, revealing peak densities as high
as $\sim 5 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$. Our solitons, close to the collapse
threshold, are strongly bound and will find applications in fundamental physics
and atom interferometry.


title: Universal Critical Behavior at a Phase Transition to Quantum Turbulence

abstract:
  Turbulence is one of the most prototypical phenomena of systems driven out of
equilibrium. While turbulence has been studied mainly with classical fluids
like water, considerable attention is now drawn to quantum turbulence (QT),
observed in quantum fluids such as superfluid helium and Bose-Einstein
condensates. A distinct feature of QT is that it consists of quantum vortices,
by which turbulent circulation is quantized. Yet, under strong forcing,
characteristic properties of developed classical turbulence such as
Kolmogorov's law have also been identified in QT. Here, we study the opposite
limit of weak forcing, i.e., the onset of QT, numerically, and find another set
of universal scaling laws known for classical non-equilibrium systems.
Specifically, we show that the transition belongs to the directed percolation
universality class, known to arise generically in transitions into an absorbing
state, including transitions to classical shear-flow turbulence after very
recent studies. We argue that quantum vortices play an important role in our
finding.

categories: cond-mat.quant-gas cond-mat.other cond-mat.stat-mech physics.flu-dyn


title:
Decomposition of Jacobian varieties of curves with dihedral actions via
  equisymmetric stratification

abstract:
  Given a compact Riemann surface $X$ with an action of a finite group $G$, the
group algebra Q[G] provides an isogenous decomposition of its Jacobian variety
$JX$, known as the group algebra decomposition of $JX$. We consider the set of
equisymmetric Riemann surfaces $\mathcal{M}(2n-1, D_{2n}, \theta)$ for all
$n\geq 2$. We study the group algebra decomposition of the Jacobian $JX$ of
every curve $X\in \mathcal{M}(2n-1, D_{2n},\theta)$ for all admissible actions,
and we provide affine models for them. We use the topological equivalence of
actions on the curves to obtain facts regarding its Jacobians. We describe some
of the factors of $JX$ as Jacobian (or Prym) varieties of intermediate
coverings. Finally, we compute the dimension of the corresponding Shimura
domains.


title:
A Note on Computable Proximity of $\mathcal{L}_1$-Discs on the Digital
  Plane

abstract:
  This paper investigates problems in the characterization of the proximity of
digital discs. Based on the $\mathcal{L}_1$-metric structure for the 2D digital
plane and using a Jaccard-like metric, we determine numerical characters for
intersecting digital discs.


title: Sparse Bounds for Maximal Monomial Oscillatory Hilbert Transforms

abstract:
  For each $ d \geq 2$, the Hilbert transform with a polynomial oscillation as
below satisfies a $ (1, r )$ sparse bound, for all $ r>1$ $$ H _{ \ast } f (x)
= \sup _{\epsilon } \Bigl\lvert \int_{|y| > \epsilon} f (x-y) \frac { e ^{2 \pi
i y ^d }} y\; dy \Bigr\rvert. $$ This quickly implies weak-type inequalities
for the maximal truncations, which hold for $A_1$ weights, but are new even in
the case of Lebesgue measure. The unweighted weak-type estimate \emph{without
maximal truncations} but with arbitrary polynomials, is due to Chanillo and
Christ (1987).


title: Pythagorean means and Carnot machines: When music meets heat

abstract:
  Some interesting relations between Pythagorean means (arithmetic, geometric
and harmonic means) and the coefficients of performance of reversible Carnot
machines (heat engine, refrigerator and heat pump) are discussed.


title:
The Complexity of Molecular Interactions and Bindings between Cyclic
  Peptide and Inhibit Polymerase A and B1 (PAC-PB1N) H1N1

abstract:
  The influenza/H1N1 virus has caused hazard in the public health of many
countries. Hence, existing influenza drugs could not cope with H1N1 infection
due to the high mutation rate of the virus. In this respect, new method to
block the virus was devised. The polymerase PAC-PB1N enzyme is responsible for
the replication of H1N1 virus. Thus, novel inhibitors were developed to ward
off the functionality of the enzyme. In this research, cyclic peptides has been
chosen to inhibit PAC-PB1N due to its proven stability in reaching the drug
target. Thus, computational method for elucidating the molecular interaction
between cyclic peptides and PAC-PB1N has been developed by using the LigX tools
from MOE 2008.10 software. The tools could render the bindings that involved in
the interactions. The interactions between individual amino acid in the
inhibitor and enzyme could be seen as well. Thus, the peptide sequences of
CKTTC and CKKTC were chosen as the lead compounds. In this end, the feasibility
of cyclic peptides to act as drug candidate for H1N1 could be exposed by the 2d
and 3d modeling of the molecular interactions.


title:
OpenCL/CUDA algorithms for parallel decoding of any irregular LDPC code
  using GPU

abstract:
  The development of multicore architectures supporting parallel data
processing has led to a paradigm shift, which affects communication systems
significantly. This article provides a scalable parallel approach of an
iterative LDPC decoder, presented in a tutorial-based style. It is suitable for
decoding any irregular LDPC code without the limitation of the maximum node
degree, and it includes a parallel calculation of the syndrome. This is the
main difference from algorithms presented so far. The proposed approach can be
implemented in applications supporting massive parallel computing, such as GPU
or FPGA devices. The implementation of the LDPC decoder with the use the OpenCL
and CUDA frameworks is discussed and the performance evaluation is given at the
end of this contribution.


title:
$B^+\to K^-\pi^+\pi^+$: three-body final state interactions and $K\pi$
  isospin states

abstract:
  Final state interactions are considered to formulate the $B$ meson decay
amplitude for the $K\pi\pi$ channel. The Faddeev decomposition of the
Bethe-Salpeter equation is used in order to build a relativistic three-body
model within the light-front framework. The S-wave scattering amplitude for the
$K\pi$ system is considered in the $1/2$ and $3/2$ isospin channels with the
set of inhomogeneous integral equations solved perturbatively. In comparison
with previous results for the $D$ meson decay in the same channel, one has to
consider the different partonic processes, which build the source amplitudes,
and the larger absorption to other decay channels appears, that are important
features to be addressed. As in the $D$ decay case, the convergence of the
rescattering perturbative series is also achieved with two-loop contributions.


title: Statistical Mechanics and Kinetics of Amyloid Fibrillation

abstract:
  Amyloid fibrillation is a protein self-assembly phenomenon that is intimately
related to well-known human neurodegenerative diseases. During the past few
decades, striking advances have been achieved in our understanding of the
physical origin of this phenomenon and they constitute the contents of this
review. Starting from a minimal model of amyloid fibrils, we explore
systematically the equilibrium and kinetic aspects of amyloid fibrillation in
both dilute and semi-dilute limits. We then incorporate further molecular
mechanisms into the analyses. We also discuss the mathematical foundation of
kinetic modeling based on chemical mass-action equations, the quantitative
linkage with experimental measurements, as well as the procedure to perform
global fitting.


title:
Personalized Mathematical Model Predicting Endotoxin-Induced
  Inflammatory Responses in Young Men

abstract:
  The initial reaction of the body to pathogenic microbial infection or severe
tissue trauma is an acute inflammatory response. The magnitude of such a
response is of critical importance, since an uncontrolled response can cause
further tissue damage, sepsis, and ultimately death, while an insufficient
response can result in inadequate clearance of pathogens. A normal inflammatory
response helps to annihilate threats posed by microbial pathogenic ligands,
such as endotoxins, and thus, restore the body to a healthy state. Using a
personalized mathematical model, comprehension and a detailed description of
the interactions between pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines can provide
important insight in the evaluation of a patient with sepsis or a susceptible
patient in surgery. Our model is calibrated to experimental data obtained from
experiments measuring pro-inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor
necrosis factor (TNF-), and chemokine ligand-8 (CXCL8)) and the
anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-10 (IL-10) over 8 hours in 20 healthy
young male subjects, given a low dose intravenous injection of
lipopolysaccharide (LPS), resulting in endotoxin-stimulated inflammation.
Through the calibration process, we created a personalized mathematical model
that can accurately determine individual differences between subjects, as well
as identify those who showed an abnormal response.


title:
Best-Buddies Similarity - Robust Template Matching using Mutual Nearest
  Neighbors

abstract:
  We propose a novel method for template matching in unconstrained
environments. Its essence is the Best-Buddies Similarity (BBS), a useful,
robust, and parameter-free similarity measure between two sets of points. BBS
is based on counting the number of Best-Buddies Pairs (BBPs)--pairs of points
in source and target sets, where each point is the nearest neighbor of the
other. BBS has several key features that make it robust against complex
geometric deformations and high levels of outliers, such as those arising from
background clutter and occlusions. We study these properties, provide a
statistical analysis that justifies them, and demonstrate the consistent
success of BBS on a challenging real-world dataset while using different types
of features.


title:
Disorder induced phase transition in an opinion dynamics model: results
  in 2 and 3 dimensions

abstract:
  We study a model of continuous opinion dynamics with both positive and
negative mutual interaction. The model shows a continuous phase transition
between a phase with consensus (order) and a phase having no consensus
(disorder). The mean field version of the model was already studied. Using
extensive numerical simulations, we study the same model in $2$ and $3$
dimensions. The critical points of the phase transitions for various cases and
the associated critical exponents have been estimated. The universality class
of the phase transitions in the model is found to be same as Ising model in the
respective dimensions.


title: Connected, Disconnected and Strange Quark Contributions to HVP

abstract:
  We calculate all neutral vector two-point functions in Chiral Perturbation
Theory (ChPT) to two-loop order and use these to estimate the ratio of
disconnected to connected contributions as well as contributions involving the
strange quark. We extend the ratio of $-1/10$ derived earlier in two flavour
ChPT at one-loop order to a large part of the higher order contributions and
discuss corrections to it. Our final estimate of the ratio disconnected to
connected is negative and a few % in magnitude.


title:
Automatically extracting, ranking and visually summarizing the
  treatments for a disease

abstract:
  Clinicians are expected to have up-to-date and broad knowledge of disease
treatment options for a patient. Online health knowledge resources contain a
wealth of information. However, because of the time investment needed to
disseminate and rank pertinent information, there is a need to summarize the
information in a more concise format. Our aim of the study is to provide
clinicians with a concise overview of popular treatments for a given disease
using information automatically computed from Medline abstracts. We analyzed
the treatments of two disorders - Atrial Fibrillation and Congestive Heart
Failure. We calculated the precision, recall, and f-scores of our two ranking
methods to measure the accuracy of the results. For Atrial Fibrillation
disorder, maximum f-score for the New Treatments weighing method is 0.611,
which occurs at 60 treatments. For Congestive Heart Failure disorder, maximum
f-score for the New Treatments weighing method is 0.503, which occurs at 80
treatments.


title: On the Existence of Weak One-Way Functions

abstract:
  This note is an attempt to unconditionally prove the existence of weak one
way functions (OWF). Starting from a provably intractable decision problem
$L_D$ (whose existence is nonconstructively assured from the well-known
discrete time-hierarchy theorem from complexity theory), we construct another
intractable decision problem $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^*$ that has its words
scattered across $\{0,1\}^\ell$ at a relative frequency $p(\ell)$, for which
upper and lower bounds can be worked out. The value $p(\ell)$ is computed from
the density of the language within $\{0,1\}^\ell$ divided by the total word
count $2^\ell$. It corresponds to the probability of retrieving a yes-instance
of a decision problem upon a uniformly random draw from $\{0,1\}^\ell$. The
trick to find a language with known bounds on $p(\ell)$ relies on switching
from $L_D$ to $L_0:=L_D\cap L'$, where $L'$ is an easy-to-decide language with
a known density across $\{0,1\}^*$. In defining $L'$ properly (and upon a
suitable G\"odel numbering), the hardness of deciding $L_D\cap L'$ is inherited
from $L_D$, while its density is controlled by that of $L'$. The lower and
upper approximation of $p(\ell)$ then let us construct an explicit threshold
function (as in random graph theory) that can be used to efficiently and
intentionally sample yes- or no-instances of the decision problem (language)
$L_0$ (however, without any auxiliary information that could ease the decision
like a polynomial witness). In turn, this allows to construct a weak OWF that
encodes a bit string $w\in\{0,1\}^*$ by efficiently (in polynomial time)
emitting a sequence of randomly constructed intractable decision problems,
whose answers correspond to the preimage $w$.


title: Role of Particle Entanglement in the Violation of Bell Inequalities

abstract:
  Entanglement between two separate systems is a necessary resource to violate
a Bell inequality in a test of local realism. We demonstrate that to overcome
the Bell bound, this correlation must be accompanied by the entanglement
between the constituent particles. This happens whenever a super-selection rule
imposes a constraint on feasible local operations. As we show in an example,
the necessary particle entanglement might solely result from their
indistinguishability. Our result reveals a fundamental relation between the
non-locality and the particle entanglement.


title:
Full adaptation to smoothness using randomly truncated series priors
  with Gaussian coefficients and inverse gamma scaling

abstract:
  We study random series priors for estimating a functional parameter (f\in
L^2[0,1]). We show that with a series prior with random truncation, Gaussian
coefficients, and inverse gamma multiplicative scaling, it is possible to
achieve posterior contraction at optimal rates and adaptation to arbitrary
degrees of smoothness. We present general results that can be combined with
existing rate of contraction results for various nonparametric estimation
problems. We give concrete examples for signal estimation in white noise and
drift estimation for a one-dimensional SDE.


title:
Spatial nonlinearity in anisotropic metamaterial plasmonic slot
  waveguides

abstract:
  We study the main nonlinear solutions of plasmonic slot waveguides made from
an anisotropic metamaterial core with a positive Kerr-type nonlinearity
surrounded by two semi-infinite metal regions. First, we demonstrate that for a
highly anisotropic diagonal elliptical core, the bifurcation threshold of the
asymmetric mode is reduced from GW/m threshold for the isotropic case to 50
MW/m one indicating a strong enhancement of the spatial nonlinear effects, and
that the slope of the dispersion curve of the asymmetric mode stays positive,
at least near the bifurcation, suggesting a stable mode. Second, we show that
for the hyperbolic case there is no physically meaningful asymmetric mode, and
that the sign of the effective nonlinearity can become negative.


title:
Rigidity of Marginally Outer Trapped (Hyper)Surfaces with Negative
  $\sigma$-Constant

abstract:
  In this paper we generalize the main result of [13] in two different
situations: in the first case for MOTSs of genus greater than one and, in the
second case, for MOTSs of high dimension with negative $\sigma$-constant. In
both cases we obtain a splitting result for the ambient manifold when it
contains a stable closed MOTS which saturates a lower bound for the area (in
dimension 2) or for the volume (in dimension $\ge3$). These results are
extensions of [21, Theorem 3] and [20, Theorem 3] to general
(non-time-symmetric) initial data sets.


title:
Using Natural Language Processing to Screen Patients with Active Heart
  Failure: An Exploration for Hospital-wide Surveillance

abstract:
  In this paper, we proposed two different approaches, a rule-based approach
and a machine-learning based approach, to identify active heart failure cases
automatically by analyzing electronic health records (EHR). For the rule-based
approach, we extracted cardiovascular data elements from clinical notes and
matched patients to different colors according their heart failure condition by
using rules provided by experts in heart failure. It achieved 69.4% accuracy
and 0.729 F1-Score. For the machine learning approach, with bigram of clinical
notes as features, we tried four different models while SVM with linear kernel
achieved the best performance with 87.5% accuracy and 0.86 F1-Score. Also, from
the classification comparison between the four different models, we believe
that linear models fit better for this problem. Once we combine the
machine-learning and rule-based algorithms, we will enable hospital-wide
surveillance of active heart failure through increased accuracy and
interpretability of the outputs.


title:
Effect of morphology and defectiveness of graphene-related materials on
  the electrical and thermal conductivity of their polymer nanocomposites

abstract:
  In this work, electrically and thermally conductive poly (butylene
terephthalate) nanocomposites were prepared by in-situ ring-opening
polymerization of cyclic butylene terephthalate (CBT) in presence of a
tin-based catalyst. One type of graphite nanoplatelets (GNP) and two different
grades of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) were used. Furthermore, high temperature
annealing treatment under vacuum at 1700{\deg}C was carried out on both RGO to
reduce their defectiveness and study the correlation between the
electrical/thermal properties of the nanocomposites and the nanoflakes
structure/defectiveness. The morphology and quality of the nanomaterials were
investigated by means of electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,
thermogravimetry and Raman spectroscopy. Thermal, mechanical and electrical
properties of the nanocomposites were investigated by means of rheology,
dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, volumetric resistivity and thermal
conductivity measurements. Physical properties of nanocomposites were
correlated with the structure and defectiveness of nanoflakes, evidencing a
strong dependence of properties on nanoflakes structure and defectiveness. In
particular, a significant enhancement of both thermal and electrical
conductivities was demonstrated upon the reduction of nanoflakes defectiveness.


title:
Codes, Lower Bounds, and Phase Transitions in the Symmetric Rendezvous
  Problem

abstract:
  In the rendezvous problem, two parties with different labelings of the
vertices of a complete graph are trying to meet at some vertex at the same
time. It is well-known that if the parties have predetermined roles, then the
strategy where one of them waits at one vertex, while the other visits all $n$
vertices in random order is optimal, taking at most $n$ steps and averaging
about $n/2$. Anderson and Weber considered the symmetric rendezvous problem,
where both parties must use the same randomized strategy. They analyzed
strategies where the parties repeatedly play the optimal asymmetric strategy,
determining their role independently each time by a biased coin-flip. By tuning
the bias, Anderson and Weber achieved an expected meeting time of about $0.829
n$, which they conjectured to be asymptotically optimal.
  We change perspective slightly: instead of minimizing the expected meeting
time, we seek to maximize the probability of meeting within a specified time
$T$. The Anderson-Weber strategy, which fails with constant probability when
$T= \Theta(n)$, is not asymptotically optimal for large $T$ in this setting.
Specifically, we exhibit a symmetric strategy that succeeds with probability
$1-o(1)$ in $T=4n$ steps. This is tight: for any $\alpha < 4$, any symmetric
strategy with $T = \alpha n$ fails with constant probability. Our strategy uses
a new combinatorial object that we dub a "rendezvous code," which may be of
independent interest.
  When $T \le n$, we show that the probability of meeting within $T$ steps is
indeed asymptotically maximized by the Anderson-Weber strategy. Our results
imply new lower bounds, showing that the best symmetric strategy takes at least
$0.638 n$ steps in expectation. We also present some partial results for the
symmetric rendezvous problem on other vertex-transitive graphs.


title: The interaction of atoms with LiF(001) revisited

abstract:
  Pairwise additive potentials for multielectronic atoms interacting with a
LiF(001) surface are revisited by including an improved description of the
electron density associated with the different lattice sites, as well as
non-local electron density contributions. Within this model, the electron
distribution around each ionic site of the crystal is described by means of an
onion approach that accounts for the influence of the Madelung potential. From
such densities, binary interatomic potentials are then derived by using
well-known non-local functionals for the kinetic, exchange and correlation
terms. Rumpling and long-range contributions due to projectile polarization and
van der Waals forces are also included in an analogous fashion. We apply this
pairwise additive approximation to evaluate the interaction potential between
closed-shell - He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe - and open-shell - N, S, and Cl - atoms
and the LiF surface, analyzing the relative importance of the different
contributions. The performance of the proposed potentials is assessed by
contrasting angular positions of rainbow and supernumerary rainbow maxima
produced by fast grazing incidence with available experimental data. The good
agreement found for normal energies in the eV- range represents a meaningful
evidence of the quality of the present description.


title:
Resurrection of large lepton number asymmetries from neutrino flavor
  oscillations

abstract:
  We numerically solve the evolution equations of neutrino three-flavor density
matrices, and show that, even if neutrino oscillations mix neutrino flavors,
large lepton number asymmetries are still allowed in certain limits by Big Bang
Nucleosynthesis (BBN).


title:
A Hardware-Efficient Approach to Computing the Rotation Matrix from a
  Quaternion

abstract:
  In this paper, we have proposed a novel VLSI-oriented approach to computing
the rotation matrix entries from the quaternion coefficients. The advantage of
this approach is the complete elimination of multiplications and replacing them
by less costly squarings. Our approach uses Logan's identity, which proposes to
replace the calculation of the product of two numbers on summing the squares
via the Binomial Theorem. Replacing multiplications by squarings implies
reducing power consumption as well as decreases hardware circuit complexity.


title:
A Bootstrap Machine Learning Approach to Identify Rare Disease Patients
  from Electronic Health Records

abstract:
  Rare diseases are very difficult to identify among large number of other
possible diagnoses. Better availability of patient data and improvement in
machine learning algorithms empower us to tackle this problem computationally.
In this paper, we target one such rare disease - cardiac amyloidosis. We aim to
automate the process of identifying potential cardiac amyloidosis patients with
the help of machine learning algorithms and also learn most predictive factors.
With the help of experienced cardiologists, we prepared a gold standard with 73
positive (cardiac amyloidosis) and 197 negative instances. We achieved high
average cross-validation F1 score of 0.98 using an ensemble machine learning
classifier. Some of the predictive variables were: Age and Diagnosis of cardiac
arrest, chest pain, congestive heart failure, hypertension, prim open angle
glaucoma, and shoulder arthritis. Further studies are needed to validate the
accuracy of the system across an entire health system and its generalizability
for other diseases.


title: New Moduli for Banach Spaces

abstract:
  Modifying the moduli of supporting convexity and supporting smoothness, we
introduce new moduli for Banach spaces which occur, e.g., as lengths of catheti
of right-angled triangles (defined via so-called quasi-orthogonality). These
triangles have two boundary points of the unit ball of a Banach space as
endpoints of their hypotenuse, and their third vertex lies in a supporting
hyperplane of one of the two other vertices. Among other things it is our goal
to quantify via such triangles the local deviation of the unit sphere from its
supporting hyperplanes. We prove respective Day-Nordlander type results,
involving generalizations of the modulus of convexity and the modulus of
Bana\'{s}.


title:
Primordial black hole formation in the matter-dominated phase of the
  Universe

abstract:
  We investigate primordial black hole formation in the matter-dominated phase
of the Universe, where nonspherical effects in gravitational collapse play a
crucial role. This is in contrast to the black hole formation in a
radiation-dominated era. We apply the Zel'dovich approximation, Thorne's hoop
conjecture, and Doroshkevich's probability distribution and subsequently derive
the production probability $\beta_{0}$ of primordial black holes. The numerical
result obtained is applicable even if the density fluctuation $\sigma$ at
horizon entry is of the order of unity. For $\sigma\ll 1$, we find a
semi-analytic formula $\beta_{0}\simeq 0.05556 \sigma^{5}$, which is comparable
with the Khlopov-Polnarev formula. We find that the production probability in
the matter-dominated era is much larger than that in the radiation-dominated
era for $\sigma\lesssim 0.05$, while they are comparable with each other for
$\sigma\gtrsim 0.05$. We also discuss how $\sigma$ can be written in terms of
primordial curvature perturbations.


title: Simulating and Optimising Quantum Thermometry Using Single Photons

abstract:
  A classical thermometer typically works by exchanging energy with the system
being measured until it comes to equilibrium, at which point the readout is
related to the final energy state of the thermometer. A recent paper noted that
different-temperature baths lead not only to different equilibrium states but
also to different equilibration rates. In some cases this means that
temperature discrimination is better achieved by comparing the rates than the
asymptotic states -- and should therefore be carried out at finite times rather
than once equilibration is essentially complete. The theory work also noted
that for a \emph{quantum} thermometer, the difference between the relaxation
rates for populations and coherences means that for intermediate time regimes
(before full equilibration but after some characteristic time that depends on
the temperatures of the baths), optimal discrimination is achieved not by
probing energy only but by using quantum coherence as well. In this work, we
study these effects experimentally. Implementing a recent proposal for
efficiently emulating an arbitrary quantum channel, we use the quantum
polarisation state of individual photons as models of "single-qubit
thermometers" which evolve for a certain time in contact with a thermal bath.
We investigate the optimal thermometer states for temperature discrimination,
and the optimal interaction times, confirming that there is a broad regime
where quantum coherence provides a significant improvement. We also discuss the
more practical question of thermometers composed of a finite number of
spins/qubits (greater than one), and characterize the performance of an
adaptive protocol for making optimal use of all the qubits.


title: Quantum Simulation of single-qubit thermometry using linear optics

abstract:
  Standard thermometry employs the thermalisation of a probe with the system of
interest. This approach can be extended by incorporating the possibility of
using the non-equilibrium states of the probe, and the presence of coherence.
Here, we illustrate how these concepts apply to the single-qubit thermometer
introduced by Jevtic et al. by performing a simulation of the qubit-environment
interaction in a linear-optical device. We discuss the role of the coherence,
and how this affects the usefulness of non-equilibrium conditions. The origin
of the observed behaviour is traced back to the propensity to thermalisation,
as captured by the Helmholtz free energy.


title: Generalized Skyrme model with the loosely bound potential

abstract:
  We study a generalization of the loosely bound Skyrme model which consists of
the Skyrme model with a sixth-order derivative term - motivated by its
fluid-like properties - and the second-order loosely bound potential -
motivated by lowering the classical binding energies of higher-charged
Skyrmions. We use the rational map approximation for the Skyrmion of
topological charge B=4, calculate the binding energy of the latter and estimate
the systematic error in using this approximation. In the parameter space that
we can explore within the rational map approximation, we find classical binding
energies as low as 1.8% and once taking into account the contribution from
spin-isospin quantization we obtain binding energies as low as 5.3%. We also
calculate the contribution from the sixth-order derivative term to the electric
charge density and axial coupling.