title:
Diffused vorticity and moment of inertia of a spin-orbit coupled
  Bose-Einstein condensate

abstract:
  By developing the hydrodynamic theory of spinor superfluids we calculate the
moment of inertia of a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate with
spin-orbit coupling. We show that the velocity field associated with the
rotation of the fluid exhibits diffused vorticity, in contrast to the
irrotational behavior characterizing a superfluid. Both Raman-induced and
Rashba spin-orbit couplings are considered. In the first case the moment of
inertia takes the rigid value at the transition between the plane wave and the
single minimum phase, while in the latter case the rigid value is achieved in
the limit of isotropic Rashba coupling. A procedure to generate the rigid
rotation of the fluid and to measure the moment of inertia is proposed. The
quenching of the quantum of circulation $h/m$, caused by Raman induced
spin-orbit coupling in a toroidal geometry, is also discussed.


title:
Excitation of surface plasmon polariton modes with multiple nitrogen
  vacancy centers in single nanodiamonds

abstract:
  Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds are interesting due to their
remarkable characteristics that are well suited to applications in
quantum-information processing and magnetic field sensing, as well as
representing stable fluorescent sources. Multiple NV centers in nanodiamonds
(NDs) are especially useful as biological fluorophores due to their chemical
neutrality, brightness and room-temperature photostability. Furthermore, NDs
containing multiple NV centers also have potential in high-precision magnetic
field and temperature sensing. Coupling NV centers to propagating surface
plasmon polariton (SPP) modes gives a base for lab-on-a-chip sensing devices,
allows enhanced fluorescence emission and collection which can further enhance
the precision of NV-based sensors. Here, we investigate coupling of multiple NV
centers in individual NDs to the SPP modes supported by silver surfaces
protected by thin dielectric layers and by gold V-grooves (VGs) produced via
the self-terminated silicon etching. In the first case, we concentrate on
monitoring differences in fluorescence spectra obtained from a source ND, which
is illuminated by a pump laser, and from a scattering ND illuminated only by
the fluorescence-excited SPP radiation. In the second case, we observe changes
in the average NV lifetime when the same ND is characterized outside and inside
a VG. Fluorescence emission from the VG terminations is also observed, which
confirms the NV coupling to the VG-supported SPP modes.


title: Private states, quantum data hiding and the swapping of perfect secrecy

abstract:
  We derive a formal connection between quantum data hiding and quantum
privacy, confirming the intuition behind the construction of bound entangled
states from which secret bits can be extracted. We present three main results.
First, we show how to simplify the class of private states and related states
via reversible local operation and one-way communication. Second, we obtain a
bound on the one-way distillable entanglement of private states in terms of
restricted relative entropy measures, which is tight in many cases and shows
that protocols for one-way distillation of key out of states with low
distillable entanglement lead to the distillation of data hiding states. Third,
we consider the problem of extending the distance of quantum key distribution
with help of intermediate stations. In analogy to the quantum repeater, this
paradigm has been called the quantum key repeater. We show that when extending
private states with one-way communication, the resulting rate is bounded by the
one-way distillable entanglement. In order to swap perfect secrecy it is thus
essentially optimal to use entanglement swapping.


title: Density functional theory study of substitutional oxygen in diamond

abstract:
  A few studies have been recently presented for the existence of oxygen in
diamond, for example, the N3 EPR centres have been theoretically and
experimentally assigned the model made up from complex of substitutional
nitrogen and substitutional oxygen as nearest neighbours. We present ab initio
calculations of substitutional oxygen in diamond in terms of stability,
electronic structures, geometry and hyperfine interaction and show that
substitutional oxygen with C$_{2v}\,$, $S=1$ is the ground state configuration.
We find that oxygen produces either a donor or acceptor level depending on the
position of the Fermi level.


title:
A unified composite model of inflation and dark matter in the
  Nambu-Jona-Lasinio theory

abstract:
  In this work, we propose a cosmological scenario inherently based on the
effective Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model that cosmic inflation and dark matter
can be successfully described by a single framework. On the one hand, the
scalar channel of the NJL model plays a role of the composite inflaton (CI) and
we show that it is viable to achieve successful inflation via a non-minimal
coupling to gravity. For model of inflation, we compute the inflationary
parameters and confront them with recent Planck 2015 data. We discover that the
predictions of the model are in excellent agreement with the Planck analysis.
We also present in our model a simple connection of physics from the high
scales to low scales via renormalization group equations of the physical
parameters. On the other hand, the pseudoscalar channel can be assigned as a
candidate for composite dark matter (CD). For model of dark matter, we couple
the pseudoscalar to the Higgs sector of the standard model with the coupling
strength $\kappa$ and estimate its thermally-averaged relic abundance. We
discover that the CD mass is strongly sensitive to the coupling $\kappa$. We
find in case of light CD, $M_{s}<M_{h}/2$, that the required relic abundance is
archived for value of its mass $M_{s} \sim 61\,{\rm GeV}$ for $\kappa=0.1$.
However, in this case the CD mass can be lighter when the coupling is getting
larger. Moreover, in case of heavy CD, $M_{s}> M_{W,\,Z}$ (or $>M_{h}$), the
required relic abundance can be satisfied for value of the CD mass $M_{s}\sim
410\,{\rm GeV}$ for $\kappa = 0.5$. In contradiction to the light mass case,
however, the CD mass in this case can even be heavier when the coupling is
getting larger.


title:
Learning Schizophrenia Imaging Genetics Data Via Multiple Kernel
  Canonical Correlation Analysis

abstract:
  Kernel and Multiple Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) are employed
to classify schizophrenic and healthy patients based on their SNPs, DNA
Methylation and fMRI data. Kernel and Multiple Kernel CCA are popular methods
for finding nonlinear correlations between high-dimensional datasets. Data was
gathered from 183 patients, 79 with schizophrenia and 104 healthy controls.
Kernel and Multiple Kernel CCA represent new avenues for studying
schizophrenia, because, to our knowledge, these methods have not been used on
these data before. Classification is performed via k-means clustering on the
kernel matrix outputs of the Kernel and Multiple Kernel CCA algorithm.
Accuracies of the Kernel and Multiple Kernel CCA classification are compared to
that of the regularized linear CCA algorithm classification, and are found to
be significantly more accurate. Both algorithms demonstrate maximal accuracies
when the combination of DNA methylation and fMRI data are used, and experience
lower accuracies when the SNP data are incorporated.


title:
Local field enhancement at the core of cylindrical nanoinclusions
  embedded in a linear dielectric host matrix

abstract:
  In this paper we have discussed theoretical concepts and presented numerical
results of local field enhancement at the core of different assemblages of
metal/dielectric cylindrical nanoinclusions embedded in a linear dielectric
host matrix. The obtained results show that for a composite with metal coated
inclusions there exist two peak values of the enhancement factor at two
different resonant frequencies. The existence of the second maxima becomes more
important for a larger volume fraction of the metal part of the inclusion. For
dielectric coated metal core inclusions and pure metal inclusions there is only
one resonant frequency and one peak value of the enhancement factor. The
enhancement of an electromagnetic wave is promising for the existence of
nonlinear optical phenomena such as optical bistability which is important in
optical communication and in optical computing such as optical switch and
memory elements.


title:
Altitudinal dependence of meteor radio afterglows measured via optical
  counterparts

abstract:
  Utilizing the all-sky imaging capabilities of the LWA1 radio telescope along
with a host of all-sky optical cameras, we have now observed 44 optical meteor
counterparts to radio afterglows. Combining these observations we have
determined the geographic positions of all 44 afterglows. Comparing the number
of radio detections as a function of altitude above sea level to the number of
expected bright meteors we find a strong altitudinal dependence characterized
by a cutoff below $\sim$ 90 km, below which no radio emission occurs, despite
the fact that many of the observed optical meteors penetrated well below this
altitude. This cutoff suggests that wave damping from electron collisions is an
important factor for the evolution of radio afterglows, which agrees with the
hypothesis that the emission is the result of electron plasma wave emission.


title: Composition of many spins, random walks and statistics

abstract:
  The multiplicities of the decomposition of the product of an arbitrary number
$n$ of spin $s$ states into irreducible $SU(2)$ representations are computed.
Two complementary methods are presented, one based on random walks in
representation space and another based on the partition function of the system
in the presence of a magnetic field. The large-$n$ scaling limit of these
multiplicities is derived, including nonperturbative corrections, and related
to semiclassical features of the system. A physical application of these
results to ferromagnetism is explicitly worked out. Generalizations involving
several types of spins, as well as spin distributions, are also presented. The
corresponding problem for (anti-)symmetric composition of spins is also
considered and shown to obey remarkable duality and bosonization relations and
exhibit qualitatively different large-$n$ scaling properties.

categories: hep-th cond-mat.stat-mech math-ph math.MP


title:
Local excitation of surface plasmon polaritons using nitrogen-vacancy
  centers

abstract:
  Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are locally excited at silver surfaces
using (~100) nm-sized nanodiamonds (NDs) with multiple nitrogen-vacancy (NV)
centers (~400). The fluorescence from an externally illuminated (at 532 nm) ND
and from nearby NDs, which are not illuminated but produce out-of-plane
scattering of SPPs excited by the illuminated ND, exhibit distinctly different
wavelength spectra, showing short-wavelength filtering due to the SPP
propagation loss. The results indicate that NDs with multiple NV centers can be
used as efficient sub-wavelength SPP sources in planar integrated plasmonics
for various applications.


title:
Cylindrically confined assembly of diblock copolymer under oscillatory
  shear flow

abstract:
  Manipulating the self-assembly nanostructures with combined different control
measures is emerging as a promising route for numerous applications to generate
templates and scaffolds for nanostructured materials. Here, the two different
control measures are a cylindrical confinement and an oscillatory shear flow.
We study the phase behavior of diblock copolymer confined in nanopore under
oscillatory shear by considering different $D/L_0$ ($D$ is the diameter of the
cylindrical nanopore, $L_0$ is the domain spacing) and different shears via
Cell Dynamics Simulation. Under different $D/L_0$, in the system occurs
different morphology evolution and phase transition with the changing of
amplitude and frequency. Meanwhile, it forms a series of novel morphologies.
For each $D/L_0$, we construct a phase diagram of different forms and analyze
the reason why the phase transition occurs. We find that although the
morphologies are different under different $D/L_0$, the reason of the phase
transition with the changing of amplitude and frequency is roughly the same,
all caused by the interplay of the field effect and confinement effect. These
results can guide an experimentalist to an easy method of creating the ordered,
defect-free nanostructured materials using a combination of the cylindrical
confinement and oscillatory shear flow.


title:
Improving the Accuracy of Stereo Visual Odometry Using Visual
  Illumination Estimation

abstract:
  In the absence of reliable and accurate GPS, visual odometry (VO) has emerged
as an effective means of estimating the egomotion of robotic vehicles. Like any
dead-reckoning technique, VO suffers from unbounded accumulation of drift error
over time, but this accumulation can be limited by incorporating absolute
orientation information from, for example, a sun sensor. In this paper, we
leverage recent work on visual outdoor illumination estimation to show that
estimation error in a stereo VO pipeline can be reduced by inferring the sun
position from the same image stream used to compute VO, thereby gaining the
benefits of sun sensing without requiring a dedicated sun sensor or the sun to
be visible to the camera. We compare sun estimation methods based on
hand-crafted visual cues and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and
demonstrate our approach on a combined 7.8 km of urban driving from the popular
KITTI dataset, achieving up to a 43% reduction in translational average root
mean squared error (ARMSE) and a 59% reduction in final translational drift
error compared to pure VO alone.


title:
First-order phase transitions in lattice bilayers of Janus-like
  particles: Monte Carlo simulations

abstract:
  The first-order phase transitions in the lattice model of Janus-like
particles confined in slit-like pores are studied. We assume a cubic lattice
with molecules that can freely change their orientation on a lattice site.
Moreover, the molecules can interact with the pore walls with
orientation-dependent forces. The performed calculations are limited to the
cases of bilayers. Our emphasis is on the competition between the fluid-wall
and fluid-fluid interactions. The oriented structures formed in the systems in
which the fluid-wall interactions acting contrary to the fluid-fluid
interactions differ from those appearing in the systems with neutral walls or
with walls attracting the repulsive parts of fluid molecules.


title: Bernoulli Percolation on random Tessellations

abstract:
  We generalize the standard site percolation model on the $d$-dimensional
lattice to a model on random tessellations of $\mathbb R^d$. We prove the
uniqueness of the infinite cluster by adapting the Burton-Keane argument
\cite{burton1989density}, develop two frameworks that imply the non-triviality
of the phase transition and show that large classes of random tessellations fit
into one of these frameworks. Our focus is on a very general approach that goes
well beyond the typical Poisson driven models. The most interesting examples
might be Voronoi tessellations induced by determinantal processes or certain
classes of Gibbs processes introduced in \cite{schreiber2013}. In a second
paper we will investigate first passage percolation on random tessellations.


title:
Nonequilibrium Dynamical Cluster Approximation study of the
  Falicov-Kimball Model

abstract:
  We use a nonequilibrium implementation of the dynamical cluster approximation
(DCA) to study the effect of short-range correlations on the dynamics of the
two-dimensional Falicov-Kimball model after an interaction quench. As in the
case of single-site dynamical mean field theory, thermalization is absent in
DCA simulations, and for quenches across the metal-insulator boundary,
nearest-neighbor charge correlations in the nonthermal steady state are found
to be larger than in the thermal state with identical energy. We investigate to
what extent it is possible to define an effective temperature of the trapped
state after a quench. Based on the ratio between the lesser and retarded
Green's function we conclude that a roughly thermal distribution is reached
within the energy intervals corresponding to the momentum-patch dependent
subbands of the spectral function. The effectively different chemical
potentials of these distributions however lead to a very hot, or even negative,
effective temperature in the energy intervals between these subbands.


title: On Dirichlet's Derivation of the Ellipsoid Potential

abstract:
  Newton's potential of a massive homogeneous ellipsoid is derived via
Dirichlet's discontinuous factor. At first we review part of Dirichlet's work
in an English translation of the original German, and then continue with an
extension of his method into the complex plane. With this trick it becomes
possible to first calculate the potential and thereafter the force components
exerted on a test mass by the ellipsoid. This is remarkable in so far as all
other famous researchers prior to Dirichlet merely calculated the attraction
components. Unfortunately, Dirichlet's derivation is to a large extent
mathematically unacceptable which, however, can be corrected by treating the
problem in the complex plane.


title:
Magnetobreakdown oscillations of Nernst-Ettingshausen field in layered
  conductors

abstract:
  In the presented report, the Nernst-Ettingshausen effect in layered
conductors is investigated. Considering a Fermi surface (FS) consisting of a
slightly corrugated cylinder and two corrugated planes distributed periodically
in the momentum space, the thermoelectric effects are considered under general
assumptions for the value of a magnetic breakdown probability. As a result of
an external generalized force, the FS sheets in layered conductors with a
multisheet FS appear to be so close that the charge carriers (as a result of
magnetic breakdown) can move from one FS sheet to another. In addition, the
distribution functions of the charge carriers and the magnetic breakdown
oscillations of thermoelectrical field along the normal to the layer, under
different values and orientations of the magnetic field, $B$, are calculated.
It is shown that if the magnetic field is deflected from the $xz$-plane at an
angle $\varphi$, the oscillation part of a thermoelectrical field along the
normal to the layer under condition $\sin\varphi\tan\vartheta \gg 1$ is mainly
determined with the Nernst-Ettingshausen effect.


title:
Modeling rain-driven overland flow: empirical versus analytical friction
  terms in the shallow water approximation

abstract:
  Modeling and simulating overland flow fed by rainfall is a common issue in
watershed surface hydrology. Modelers have to choose among various friction
models when defining their simulation framework. The purpose of this work is to
compare the simulation quality for the Manning, Darcy-Weisbach, and Poiseuille
friction models on the simple case of a constant rain on a thin experimental
flume. Results show that the usual friction law of Manning is not suitable for
this type of flow. The Poiseuille friction model gave the best results both on
the flux at the outlet and the velocity and depth profile along the flume. The
Darcy-Weisbach model shows good results for laminar flow. Additional testing
should be carried out for turbulent cases.


title:
On existence of global solutions of the one-dimensional cubic NLS for
  initial data in the modulation space $M_{p,q}(\mathbb R)$

abstract:
  We prove global existence for the one-dimensional cubic non-linear
Schr\"odinger equation in modulation spaces $M_{p,p'}$ for $p$ sufficiently
close to $2$. In contrast to known results, our result requires no smallness
condition on initial data. The proof adapts a splitting method inspired by work
of Vargas-Vega and Hyakuna-Tsutsumi to the modulation space setting and
exploits polynomial growth of the free Schr\"odinger group on modulation
spaces.


title:
Method of computation of energies in the fractional quantum Hall effect
  regime

abstract:
  In a previous work, we reported exact results of energies of the ground state
in the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) regime for systems with up to
$N_{\text{e}} = 6$ electrons at the filling factor $\nu = 1/3$ by using the
method of complex polar coordinates. In this work, we display interesting
computational details of the previous calculation and extend the calculation to
$N_{\text{e}} = 7$ electrons at $\nu = 1/3$. Moreover, similar exact results
are derived at the filling $\nu = 1/5$ for systems with up to $N_{\text{e}} =
6$ electrons. The results that we obtained by analytical calculation are in
good agreement with their analogues ones derived by the method of Monte Carlo
in a precedent work.


title:
New injective proofs of the Erd\H{o}s--Ko--Rado and Hilton--Milner
  theorems

abstract:
  A set system F is intersecting if any pair of sets in F have a nonempty
intersection. A fundamental theorem of Erd\H{o}s, Ko and Rado states that if F
is an intersecting family of r-subsets of [n]={1,...,n}, and n>= 2r, then the
cardinality of F is at most the cardinality of the family of all r-subsets of
[n] containing a fixed element. Furthermore, when n>2r, equality holds if and
only if F is the family of all r-subsets of [n] containing a fixed element.
This characterization was proved as part of a stronger result by Hilton and
Milner. In this note, we provide new injective proofs of the
Erd\H{o}s--Ko--Rado and the Hilton--Milner theorems.


title:
Mordell-Weil ranks of families of elliptic curves parametrized by binary
  quadratic forms

abstract:
  We prove results on the Mordell--Weil rank of elliptic curves $y^2=x(x-\alpha
a^2)(x-\beta b^2)$ parametrized by binary quadratic forms $\alpha a^2+\beta
b^2=\gamma c^2$. We express our explicit lower bounds over number fields and
offer a detailed description of the corresponding Mordell-Weil group structure
in the function field case.


title: Nonthermal Gravitino Production after Large Field Inflation

abstract:
  We revisit the nonthermal gravitino production at the (p)reheating stage
after inflation. Particular attention is paid to large field inflation models
with a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, for which the previous perturbative analysis is
inapplicable; and inflation models with a stabilizer superfield, which have not
been studied non-perturbatively. It is found that in single-superfield
inflation models (without the stabilizer field), nonthermal production of the
transverse gravitino can be cosmologically problematic while the abundance of
the longitudinal gravitino is small enough. In multi-superfield inflation
models (with the stabilizer field), production of the transverse and
longitudinal gravitinos is significantly suppressed, and they are
cosmologically harmless. We also clarify the relation between the background
field method used in the preheating context and the standard perturbative decay
method to estimate the gravitino abundance.


title: Topological realisations of absolute Galois groups

abstract:
  Let $F$ be a field of characteristic $0$ containing all roots of unity. We
construct a functorial compact Hausdorff space $X_F$ whose profinite
fundamental group agrees with the absolute Galois group of $F$, i.e. the
category of finite covering spaces of $X_F$ is equivalent to the category of
finite extensions of $F$.
  The construction is based on the ring of rational Witt vectors of $F$. In the
case of the cyclotomic extension of $\mathbb{Q}$, the classical fundamental
group of $X_F$ is a (proper) dense subgroup of the absolute Galois group of
$F$. We also discuss a variant of this construction when the field is not
required to contain all roots of unity, in which case there are natural
Frobenius-type automorphisms which encode the descent along the cyclotomic
extension.


title:
Glassbox: Dynamic Analysis Platform for Malware Android Applications on
  Real Devices

abstract:
  Android is the most widely used smartphone OS with 82.8% market share in
2015. It is therefore the most widely targeted system by malware authors.
Researchers rely on dynamic analysis to extract malware behaviors and often use
emulators to do so. However, using emulators lead to new issues. Malware may
detect emulation and as a result it does not execute the payload to prevent the
analysis. Dealing with virtual device evasion is a never-ending war and comes
with a non-negligible computation cost. To overcome this state of affairs, we
propose a system that does not use virtual devices for analysing malware
behavior. Glassbox is a functional prototype for the dynamic analysis of
malware applications. It executes applications on real devices in a monitored
and controlled environment. It is a fully automated system that installs, tests
and extracts features from the application for further analysis. We present the
architecture of the platform and we compare it with existing Android dynamic
analysis platforms. Lastly, we evaluate the capacity of Glassbox to trigger
application behaviors by measuring the average coverage of basic blocks on the
AndroCoverage dataset. We show that it executes on average 13.52% more basic
blocks than the Monkey program.


title: An Alternate Path Integral for Quantum Gravity

abstract:
  We define a (semi-classical) path integral for gravity with Neumann boundary
conditions in $D$ dimensions, and show how to relate this new partition
function to the usual picture of Euclidean quantum gravity. We also write down
the action in ADM Hamiltonian formulation and use it to reproduce the entropy
of black holes and cosmological horizons. A comparison between the
(background-subtracted) covariant and Hamiltonian ways of semi-classically
evaluating this path integral in flat space reproduces the generalized Smarr
formula and the first law. This "Neumann ensemble" perspective on gravitational
thermodynamics is parallel to the canonical (Dirichlet) ensemble of
Gibbons-Hawking and the microcanonical approach of Brown-York.


title: Chance in the Everett interpretation

abstract:
  The notion of objective probability or chance, as a physical trait of the
world, has proved elusive; the identification of chances with actual
frequencies does not succeed. An adequate theory of chance should explain not
only the connection of chance with statistics, but with degrees of belief, and
more broadly the entire phenomenology of (seemingly) chance events and their
measurement. Branching structure in the decoherence-based many worlds theory
provides an account of what chance is that satisfies all these desiderata,
including the requirement that chance involves uncertainty.


title: Mixture model modal clustering

abstract:
  The two most extended density-based approaches to clustering are surely
mixture model clustering and modal clustering. In the mixture model approach,
the density is represented as a mixture and clusters are associated to the
different mixture components. In modal clustering, clusters are understood as
regions of high density separated from each other by zones of lower density, so
that they are closely related to certain regions around the density modes. If
the true density is indeed in the assumed class of mixture densities, then
mixture model clustering allows to scrutinize more subtle situations than modal
clustering. However, when mixture modeling is used in a nonparametric way,
taking advantage of the denseness of the sieve of mixture densities to
approximate any density, then the correspondence between clusters and mixture
components may become questionable. In this paper we introduce two methods to
adopt a modal clustering point of view after a mixture model fit. Numerous
examples are provided to illustrate that mixture modeling can also be used for
clustering in a nonparametric sense, as long as clusters are understood as the
domains of attraction of the density modes.


title: Concordance and the Smallest Covering Set of Preference Orderings

abstract:
  Preference orderings are orderings of a set of items according to the
preferences (of judges). Such orderings arise in a variety of domains,
including group decision making, consumer marketing, voting and machine
learning. Measuring the mutual information and extracting the common patterns
in a set of preference orderings are key to these areas. In this paper we deal
with the representation of sets of preference orderings, the quantification of
the degree to which judges agree on their ordering of the items (i.e. the
concordance), and the efficient, meaningful description of such sets.
  We propose to represent the orderings in a subsequence-based feature space
and present a new algorithm to calculate the size of the set of all common
subsequences - the basis of a quantification of concordance, not only for pairs
of orderings but also for sets of orderings. The new algorithm is fast and
storage efficient with a time complexity of only $O(Nn^2)$ for the orderings of
$n$ items by $N$ judges and a space complexity of only $O(\min\{Nn,n^2\})$.
  Also, we propose to represent the set of all $N$ orderings through a smallest
set of covering preferences and present an algorithm to construct this smallest
covering set.
  The source code for the algorithms is available at
https://github.com/zhiweiuu/secs


title: K-Medoids For K-Means Seeding

abstract:
  We run experiments showing that algorithm clarans (Ng et al., 2005) finds
better K-medoids solutions than the Voronoi iteration algorithm. This finding,
along with the similarity between the Voronoi iteration algorithm and Lloyd's
K-means algorithm, suggests that clarans may be an effective K-means
initializer. We show that this is the case, with clarans outperforming other
seeding algorithms on 23/23 datasets with a mean decrease over K-means++ of 30%
for initialization mse and 3% or final mse. We describe how the complexity and
runtime of clarans can be improved, making it a viable initialization scheme
for large datasets.


title: Black hole formation from axion stars

abstract:
  The classical equations of motion for an axion with potential
$V(\phi)=m_a^2f_a^2 [1-\cos (\phi/f_a)]$ possess quasi-stable, localized,
oscillating solutions, which we refer to as "axion stars". We study, for the
first time, collapse of axion stars numerically using the full non-linear
Einstein equations of general relativity and the full non-perturbative cosine
potential. We map regions on an "axion star stability diagram", parameterized
by the initial ADM mass, $M_{\rm ADM}$, and axion decay constant, $f_a$. We
identify three regions of the parameter space: i) long-lived oscillating axion
star solutions, with a base frequency, $m_a$, modulated by self-interactions,
ii) collapse to a BH and iii) complete dispersal due to gravitational cooling
and interactions. We locate the boundaries of these three regions and an
approximate "triple point" $(M_{\rm TP},f_{\rm TP})\sim (2.4 M_{pl}^2/m_a,0.3
M_{pl})$. For $f_a$ below the triple point BH formation proceeds during winding
(in the complex $U(1)$ picture) of the axion field near the dispersal phase.
This could prevent astrophysical BH formation from axion stars with $f_a\ll
M_{pl}$. For larger $f_a\gtrsim f_{\rm TP}$, BH formation occurs through the
stable branch and we estimate the mass ratio of the BH to the stable state at
the phase boundary to be $\mathcal{O}(1)$ within numerical uncertainty. We
discuss the observational relevance of our findings for axion stars as BH
seeds, which are supermassive in the case of ultralight axions. For the QCD
axion, the typical BH mass formed from axion star collapse is $M_{\rm BH}\sim
3.4 (f_a/0.6 M_{pl})^{1.2} M_\odot$.


title:
A Hopf's lemma and a strong minimum principle for the fractional
  $p$-Laplacian

abstract:
  Our propose here is to provide a Hopf Lemma and a strong minimum principle
for week supersolutions of \[ (-\Delta_p)^s u= c(x)|u|^{p-2}u \quad \text{ in }
\Omega \] where $\Omega$ is an open set of $\mathbb{R}^N,$ $s\in(0,1),$
$p\in(1,+\infty),$ $c\in C(\overline{\Omega})$ and $(-\Delta_p)^s$ is the
fractional $p$-Laplacian.


title: The Bok Globule BHR 160: structure and star formation

abstract:
  BHR 160 is a virtually unstudied cometary globule within the Sco OB4
association in Scorpius at a distance of 1600pc. It is part of a system of
cometary clouds which face the luminous O star HD155806. BHR 160 is special
because it has an intense bright rim. We attempt to derive physical parameters
for BHR 160 and to understand its structure and the origin of its peculiar
bright rim. BHR 160 was mapped in the $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O (2-1)
and (1-0) and CS (3-2) and (2-1) lines. These data, augmented with stellar
photometry derived from the ESO VVV survey, were used to derive the mass and
distribution of molecular material in BHR 160 and its surroundings. Archival
mid-infrared data from the WISE satellite was used to find IR excess stars in
the globule and its neighbourhood. An elongated 1' by 0.6' core lies adjacent
to the globule bright rim. $^{12}$CO emission covers the whole globule, but the
$^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O and CS emission is more concentrated to the core. The
$^{12}$CO line profiles indicate the presence of outflowing material near the
core, but the spatial resolution of the mm data is not sufficient for a
detailed spatial analysis. The BHR 160 mass estimated from the C$^{18}$O
mapping is 100$\pm$50Msun(d/1.6kpc)$^2$ where d is the distance to the globule.
Approximately 70 percent of the mass lies in the dense core. The total mass of
molecular gas in the direction of BHR 160 is 210$\pm$(d/1.6kpc)$^2$ Msun when
estimated from the more extended VVV NIR photometry. We argue that the bright
rim of BHR 160 is produced by a close-by early B-type star, HD 319648, that was
likely recently born in the globule. This star is likely to have triggered the
formation of a source, IRS 1, that is embedded within the core of the globule
and detected only in Ks and by WISE and IRAS.


title: Controllability Gramian Spectra of Random Networks

abstract:
  We propose a theoretical framework to study the eigenvalue spectra of the
controllability Gramian of systems with random state matrices, such as
networked systems with a random graph structure. Using random matrix theory, we
provide expressions for the moments of the eigenvalue distribution of the
controllability Gramian. These moments can then be used to derive useful
properties of the eigenvalue distribution of the Gramian (in some cases, even
closed-form expressions for the distribution). We illustrate this framework by
considering system matrices derived from common random graph and matrix
ensembles, such as the Wigner ensemble, the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE),
and random regular graphs. Subsequently, we illustrate how the eigenvalue
distribution of the Gramian can be used to draw conclusions about the energy
required to control random system.


title:
On the Inference of the Cosmic Ray Ionization Rate $\zeta$ from the
  HCO$^+$-to-DCO$^+$ Abundance Ratio: The Effect of Nuclear Spin

abstract:
  The chemistry of dense interstellar regions was analyzed using a
time-dependent gas-grain astrochemical simulation and a new chemical network
that incorporates deuterated chemistry taking into account nuclear spin-states
for the hydrogen chemistry and its deuterated isotopologues. With this new
network, the utility of the [HCO$^+$]/[DCO$^+$] abundance ratio as a probe of
the cosmic ray ionization rate has been reexamined, with special attention paid
to the effect of the initial value of the molecular hydrogen ortho-to-para
ratio (OPR). After discussing the use of the probe for cold cores, we then
compare our results with previous theoretical and observational results for a
molecular cloud close to the supernova remnant W51C, which is thought to have
an enhanced cosmic ray ionization rate $\zeta$ caused by the nearby
$\gamma$-ray source. In addition, we attempt to use our approach to estimate
the cosmic ray ionization rate for L1174, a dense core with an embedded star.
Beyond the previously known sensitivity of [HCO$^+$]/[DCO$^+$] to $\zeta$, we
demonstrate its additional dependence on the initial OPR and, secondarily, on
the age of the source, its temperature, and its density. We conclude that the
usefulness of the [HCO$^+$]/[DCO$^+$] abundance ratio to constrain the cosmic
ray ionization rate in dense regions increases with source age and ionization
rate as the ratio becomes far less sensitive to the initial value of the OPR.


title: Momentum dissipation and holographic transport without self-duality

abstract:
  We implement the momentum dissipation introduced by spatial linear axionic
fields in a holographic model without self-duality, broke by Weyl tensor
coupling to Maxwell field, and study its response. It is found that for the
positive Weyl coupling parameter $\gamma>0$, the momentum dissipation
characterized by parameter $\hat{\alpha}$ drives the boundary conformal field
theory (CFT), in which the conductivity exhibits a peak at low frequency, into
the incoherent metallic phase with a dip, which is away from CFT due to the
introduction of axionic fields. While for $\gamma<0$, an oppositive scenario is
found. Our present model provides a possible route toward the problem that
which sign of $\gamma$ is the correct description of the CFT of boson Hubbard
model. In addition, we also investigate the DC conductivity, diffusion constant
and susceptibility. We find that for each of these observables there is a
specific value of $\hat{\alpha}$, for which these observables are independent
of $\gamma$. Finally, the electromagnetic (EM) duality is also studied and we
find that there is also a specific value of $\hat{\alpha}$, for which the
particle-vortex duality related by the change of the sign of $\gamma$ in the
boundary theory holds better than for other values of $\hat{\alpha}$.


title: The Robotarium: A remotely accessible swarm robotics research testbed

abstract:
  This paper describes the Robotarium -- a remotely accessible, multi-robot
research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is that multi-robot
testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the multi-robot research
cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming to develop, operate,
and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit access for large
groups of researchers and students, which is what the Robotarium is remedying
by providing users with remote access to a state-of-the-art multi-robot test
facility. This paper details the design and operation of the Robotarium and
discusses the considerations one must take when making complex hardware
remotely accessible. In particular, safety must be built into the system
already at the design phase without overly constraining what coordinated
control programs users can upload and execute, which calls for minimally
invasive safety routines with provable performance guarantees.


title: Distribution of Mordell--Weil ranks of families of elliptic curves

abstract:
  We discuss the distribution of Mordell--Weil ranks of the family of elliptic
curves $y^2=(x+\alpha f^2)(x+\beta b g^2)(x+\gamma h^2)$ where $f,g,h$ are
coprime polynomials that parametrize the projective smooth conic $a^2+b^2=c^2$
and $\alpha,\beta,\gamma$ are elements from $\overline{\mathbb{Q}}$. In our
previous papers we discussed certain special cases of this problem and in this
article we complete the picture by proving the general results.


title: Entanglement of two qubits mediated by a localized surface plasmon

abstract:
  We investigate relaxation dynamics in the system of two identical quantum
dipole emitters (QDEs) located near a metal nanoparticle (MNP) exhibiting a
dipolar localized surface plasmon (LSP) resonance at the frequency of the QDE
radiative transition. Considering one QDE to be brought into an optically
active excited state and weakly coupled to the resonant LSP, we show that a
stable superposition state of two QDEs is formed during the transition time,
which is much shorter than the QDE spontaneous decay time and determined by the
efficiency of resonant interaction between the QDEs and induced LSP. It is
elucidated that the superposition state is established as a result of
redistribution of the energy of the initially excited QDE so that the
corresponding steady-state QDE fields induced at the MNP site cancel each
other. The degree of steady-state entanglement characterized by the concurrence
is found dependent only on the ratio of distances between the QDEs and the MNP,
reaching its maximum value of ~ 0.65, when the separation between the MNP and
the initially excited QDE is larger by ~ 20% than the distance from the other
QDE to the MNP.


title:
Single-photon emission associated with double electron capture in F9+ +
  C collisions

abstract:
  Radiative double electron capture (RDEC), the one-step process occurring in
ion-atom collisions, has been investigated for bare fluorine ions colliding
with carbon. RDEC is completed when two target electrons are captured to a
bound state of a projectile simultaneously with the emission of a single
photon. This work is a follow-up to our earlier measurement of RDEC for bare
oxygen projectiles, thus providing a recipient system free of electron-related
Coulomb fields in both cases and allowing for the comparison between the two
collision systems as well as with available theoretical studies. The most
significant mechanisms of x-ray emission that may contribute to the RDEC energy
region as background processes are also addressed.


title: Hybrid graphene plasmonic waveguide modulators

abstract:
  The unique optical and electronic properties of graphene allow one to realize
active optical devices. While several types of graphene-based photonic
modulators have already been demonstrated, the potential of combining the
versatility of graphene with subwavelength field confinement of
plasmonic/metallic structures is not fully realized. Here we report fabrication
and study of hybrid graphene-plasmonic modulators. We consider several types of
modulators and identify the most promising one for light modulation at telecom
and near-infrared. Our proof-of-concept results pave the way towards on-chip
realization of efficient graphene-based active plasmonic waveguide devices for
optical communications.


title:
RALL - Routing-Aware Of Path Length, Link Quality, And Traffic Load For
  Wireless Sensor Networks

abstract:
  Due to the enormous variety of application scenarios and ubiquity,Internet of
Things (IoT) brought a new perspective of applications for the current and
future Internet. The Wireless Sensor Networks provide key devices for
developing the IoT communication paradigm, such as the sensors collecting
various kind of information and the routing and MAC protocols. However, this
type of network has strong power consumption and transmission capacity
restrictions (low speed wireless links and subject to interference). In this
context, it is necessary to develop solutions that enable a more efficient
communication based on the optimized utilization of the network resources. This
papers aims to present a multi-objective routing algorithm, named Routing-Aware
of path Length, Link quality, and traffic Load (RALL), that seeks to balance
three objectives: to minimize bottlenecks, to minimize path length, and to
avoid links with low quality. RALL results in good performance when taking into
consideration delivery rate, overhead, delay, and power consumption.


title:
Differential branching fraction and angular moments analysis of the
  decay $B^0 \to K^+ \pi^- \mu^+ \mu^-$ in the $K^*_{0,2}(1430)^0$ region

abstract:
  Measurements of the differential branching fraction and angular moments of
the decay $B^0 \to K^+ \pi^- \mu^+ \mu^-$ in the $K^+\pi^-$ invariant mass
range $1330<m(K^+ \pi^-)<1530~MeV/c^2$ are presented. Proton-proton collision
data are used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 $fb^{-1}$
collected by the LHCb experiment. Differential branching fraction measurements
are reported in five bins of the invariant mass squared of the dimuon system,
$q^2$, between 0.1 and 8.0 $GeV^2/c^4$. For the first time, an angular analysis
sensitive to the S-, P- and D-wave contributions of this rare decay is
performed. The set of 40 normalised angular moments describing the decay is
presented for the $q^2$ range 1.1--6.0 $GeV^2/c^4$.


title:
Dynamical systems and operator algebras associated to Artin's
  representation of braid groups

abstract:
  Artin's representation is an injective homomorphism from the braid group
$B_n$ on $n$ strands into $\operatorname{Aut}\mathbb{F}_n$, the automorphism
group of the free group $\mathbb{F}_n$ on $n$ generators. The representation
induces maps $B_n\to\operatorname{Aut}C^*_r(\mathbb{F}_n)$ and
$B_n\to\operatorname{Aut}C^*(\mathbb{F}_n)$ into the automorphism groups of the
corresponding group $C^*$-algebras of $\mathbb{F}_n$. These maps also have
natural restrictions to the pure braid group $P_n$. In this paper, we consider
twisted versions of the actions by cocycles with values in the circle, and
discuss the ideal structure of the associated crossed products. Additionally,
we make use of Artin's representation to show that the braid groups $B_\infty$
and $P_\infty$ on infinitely many strands are both $C^*$-simple.


title:
Phase-transitions in spin-crossover thin films probed by graphene
  transport measurements

abstract:
  Future multi-functional hybrid devices might combine switchable molecules and
2D material-based devices. Spin-crossover compounds are of particular interest
in this context since they exhibit bistability and memory effects at room
temperature while responding to numerous external stimuli. Atomically-thin 2D
materials such as graphene attract a lot of attention for their fascinating
electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, but also for their reliability
for room-temperature operations. Here, we demonstrate that thermally-induced
spin-state switching of spin-crossover nanoparticle thin films can be monitored
through the electrical transport properties of graphene lying underneath the
films. Model calculations indicate that the charge carrier scattering mechanism
in graphene is sensitive to the spin-state dependence of the relative
dielectric constants of the spin-crossover nanoparticles. This graphene sensor
approach can be applied to a wide class of (molecular) systems with tunable
electronic polarizabilities.


title: Shortcomings of New Parametrizations of Inflation

abstract:
  In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables,
phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been
proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated
with an expansion of the inflationary quantities matching the belief that
inflation is characterized by two numbers only, the tensor-to-scalar ratio and
the scalar spectral index. We give different arguments and examples showing
that these new approaches are either not generic or insufficient to make
predictions at the accuracy level needed by the cosmological data. We conclude
that disconnecting inflation from high energy physics and gravity might not be
the most promising way to learn about the physics of the early Universe.


title: Heretical Multiple Importance Sampling

abstract:
  Multiple Importance Sampling (MIS) methods approximate moments of complicated
distributions by drawing samples from a set of proposal distributions. Several
ways to compute the importance weights assigned to each sample have been
recently proposed, with the so-called deterministic mixture (DM) weights
providing the best performance in terms of variance, at the expense of an
increase in the computational cost. A recent work has shown that it is possible
to achieve a trade-off between variance reduction and computational effort by
performing an a priori random clustering of the proposals (partial DM
algorithm). In this paper, we propose a novel "heretical" MIS framework, where
the clustering is performed a posteriori with the goal of reducing the variance
of the importance sampling weights. This approach yields biased estimators with
a potentially large reduction in variance. Numerical examples show that
heretical MIS estimators can outperform, in terms of mean squared error (MSE),
both the standard and the partial MIS estimators, achieving a performance close
to that of DM with less computational cost.


title: Joint Attention in Autonomous Driving (JAAD)

abstract:
  In this paper we present a novel dataset for a critical aspect of autonomous
driving, the joint attention that must occur between drivers and of
pedestrians, cyclists or other drivers. This dataset is produced with the
intention of demonstrating the behavioral variability of traffic participants.
We also show how visual complexity of the behaviors and scene understanding is
affected by various factors such as different weather conditions, geographical
locations, traffic and demographics of the people involved. The ground truth
data conveys information regarding the location of participants (bounding
boxes), the physical conditions (e.g. lighting and speed) and the behavior of
the parties involved.


title:
Long-term stability and temperature variability of Iris AO segmented
  MEMS deformable mirrors

abstract:
  Long-term stability of deformable mirrors (DM) is a critical performance
requirement for instruments requiring open-loop corrections. The effects of
temperature changes in the DM performance are equally critical for such
instruments. This paper investigates the long-term stability of three different
Iris AO PTT111 DMs that were calibrated at different times ranging from 13
months to nearly 29 months prior to subsequent testing. Performance testing
showed that only a small increase in positioning errors occurred from the
initial calibration date to the test dates. The increases in errors ranged from
as little as 1.38 nm rms after 18 months to 5.68 nm rms after 29 months. The
paper also studies the effects of small temperature changes, up to 6.2{\deg}C
around room temperature. For three different arrays, the errors ranged from
0.62-1.42 nm rms/{\deg}C. Removing the effects of packaging shows that errors
are $\le$0.50 nm rms/{\deg}C. Finally, measured data showed that individual
segments deformed $\le$0.11 nm rms/{\deg}C when heated.


title:
Coronal type III radio bursts and their X-ray flare and interplanetary
  type III counterparts

abstract:
  Type III bursts and hard X-rays are both produced by flare energetic electron
beams. The link between both emissions has been investigated in many previous
studies, but no statistical studies have compared both coronal and
interplanetary type III bursts with X-ray flares. Using coronal radio events
above 100 MHz exclusively from type III bursts, we revisited long-standing
questions: Do all coronal type III bursts have X-ray counterparts. What
correlation, if any, occurs between radio and X-ray intensities. What X-ray and
radio signatures above 100 MHz occur in connection with interplanetary type III
bursts below 14 MHz. We analysed data from 2002 to 2011 starting with coronal
type III bursts above 100 MHz. We used RHESSI X-ray data greater than 6 keV to
make a list of 321 events that have associated type III bursts and X-ray
flares, encompassing at least 28 percent of the initial sample of type III
events. We examined the timings, intensities, associated GOES class, and any
interplanetary radio signature. For our 321 events, the X-ray emission at 6 keV
usually lasted longer than type III burst groups at frequencies greater than
100 MHz. A weak correlation was found between the type III radio flux at
frequencies below 327 MHz and the X-ray intensity at 25-50 keV, with an absence
of events at high X-ray intensity and low type III radio flux. Interplanetary
type III bursts less than 14 MHz were observed for 54 percent of the events,
increasing when events were observed with 25-50 keV X-rays. A stronger
interplanetary association was present when 25-50 keV count rates were above
250 counts per second or 170 MHz fluxes were greater than 1000 SFU, relating to
more energetic electrons above 25 keV and events where magnetic flux tubes
extend into the high corona. On average type III bursts increase in flux with
decreasing frequency, the rate varies from event to event.


title: A non-exponential extension of Sanov's theorem via convex duality

abstract:
  This work is devoted to a vast extension of Sanov's theorem, in Laplace
principle form, based on alternatives to the classical convex dual pair of
relative entropy and cumulant generating functional. The abstract results give
rise to a number of probabilistic limit theorems and asymptotics. For instance,
widely applicable non-exponential large deviation upper bounds are derived for
empirical distributions and averages of i.i.d. samples under minimal
integrability assumptions, notably accommodating heavy-tailed distributions.
Other interesting manifestations of the abstract results include new results on
the rate of convergence of empirical measures in Wasserstein distance, uniform
large deviation bounds, and variational problems involving optimal transport
costs, as well as an application to error estimates for approximate solutions
of stochastic optimization problems. The proofs build on the Dupuis-Ellis weak
convergence approach to large deviations as well as the duality theory for
convex risk measures.


title:
A Portable, 3D-Printing Enabled Multi-Vehicle Platform for Robotics
  Research and Education

abstract:
  microMVP is an affordable, portable, and open source micro-scale mobile robot
platform designed for robotics research and education. As a complete and unique
multi-vehicle platform enabled by 3D printing and the maker culture, microMVP
can be easily reproduced and requires little maintenance: a set of six micro
vehicles, each measuring $8\times 5\times 6$ cubic centimeters and weighing
under $100$ grams, and the accompanying tracking platform can be fully
assembled in under two hours, all from readily available components. In this
paper, we describe microMVP's hardware and software architecture, and the
design thoughts that go into the making of the platform. The capabilities of
microMVP APIs are then demonstrated with several single- and multi-robot path
and motion planning algorithms. microMVP supports all common operation systems.


title: On Unbounded Delays in Asynchronous Parallel Fixed-Point Algorithms

abstract:
  The need for scalable numerical solutions has motivated the development of
asynchronous parallel algorithms, where a set of nodes run in parallel with
little or no synchronization, thus computing with delayed information. This
paper studies the convergence of the asynchronous parallel algorithm ARock
under potentially unbounded delays.
  ARock is a general asynchronous algorithm that has many applications. It
parallelizes fixed-point iterations by letting a set of nodes randomly choose
solution coordinates and update them in an asynchronous parallel fashion. ARock
takes some recent asynchronous coordinate descent algorithms as special cases
and gives rise to new asynchronous operator-splitting algorithms. Existing
analysis of ARock assumes the delays to be bounded, and uses this bound to set
a step size that is important to both convergence and efficiency. Other work,
though allowing unbounded delays, imposes strict conditions on the underlying
fixed-point operator, resulting in limited applications.
  In this paper, convergence is established under unbounded delays, which can
be either stochastic or deterministic. The proposed step sizes are more
practical and generally larger than those in the existing work. The step size
adapts to the delay distribution or the current delay being experienced in the
system. New Lyapunov functions, which are the key to analyzing asynchronous
algorithms, are generated to obtain our results. A set of applicable
optimization algorithms with large-scale applications are given, including
machine learning and scientific computing algorithms.


title: An overview of gradient descent optimization algorithms

abstract:
  Gradient descent optimization algorithms, while increasingly popular, are
often used as black-box optimizers, as practical explanations of their
strengths and weaknesses are hard to come by. This article aims to provide the
reader with intuitions with regard to the behaviour of different algorithms
that will allow her to put them to use. In the course of this overview, we look
at different variants of gradient descent, summarize challenges, introduce the
most common optimization algorithms, review architectures in a parallel and
distributed setting, and investigate additional strategies for optimizing
gradient descent.


title: Existence of Hukuhara differentiability of fuzzy-valued functions

abstract:
  In this paper, we discuss existence of Hukuhara differentiability of
fuzzy-valued functions. Several examples are worked out to check that
fuzzy-valued functions are one time, two times and n-times H-differentiable. We
study the effects of fuzzy modelling on existence of Hukuhara differentiability
of fuzzy-valued functions. We discuss existence of gH-differentiability and its
comparison with H-differentiability.


title:
On some curvature restricted geometric structures for projective
  curvature tensor

abstract:
  The projective curvature tensor $P$ is invariant under a geodesic preserving
transformation on a semi-Riemannian manifold. It is well known that $P$ is not
a generalized curvature tensor and hence it possesses different geometric
properties than other generalized curvature tensors. The main object of the
present paper is to study some semisymmetric type and pseudosymmetric type
curvature restricted geometric structures due to projective curvature tensor.
The reduced pseudosymmetric type structures for various Walker type conditions
are deduced and the existence of Venzi space is ensured. It is shown that the
geometric structures formed by imposing projective operator on a (0,4)-tensor
is different from that for the corresponding (1,3)-tensor. Characterization of
various semisymmetric type and pseudosymmetric type curvature restricted
geometric structures due to projective curvature tensor is obtained on a
Riemannian and a semi-Riemannian manifold, and it is shown that some of them
reduce to Einstein manifold for the Riemann case. Finally to support our
theorems four suitable examples are presented.


title: Divisibility sequences of polynomials and heights estimates

abstract:
  In this note we compute a constant $N$ that bounds the number of
non--primitive divisors in elliptic divisibility sequences over function fields
of any characteristic. We improve a result of
Ingram--Mah{\'e}--Silverman--Stange--Streng, 2012, and we show that the
constant can be chosen independently of the specific point and to some extent
of the specific curve, as predicted in loc. cit.


title:
Highly siderophile elements were stripped from Earth's mantle by iron
  sulfide segregation

abstract:
  Highly siderophile elements (HSEs) are strongly depleted in the bulk silicate
Earth (BSE) but are present in near-chondritic relative abundances. The
conventional explanation is that the HSEs were stripped from the mantle by the
segregation of metal during core formation but were added back in
near-chondritic proportions by late accretion, after core formation had ceased.
Here we show that metal-silicate equilibration and segregation during Earth's
core formation actually increased HSE mantle concentrations because HSE
partition coefficients are relatively low at the high pressures of core
formation within Earth. The pervasive exsolution and segregation of iron
sulfide liquid from silicate liquid (the "Hadean matte") stripped magma oceans
of HSEs during cooling and crystallization, before late accretion, and resulted
in slightly suprachondritic palladium/iridium and ruthenium/iridium ratios.


title:
A field theoretic approach to the energy momentum tensor for theories
  coupled with gravity

abstract:
  We provide a field-theoretic algorithm of obtaining energy momentum tensor
(EMT) for gravitationally coupled theories. The method is based on an auxiliary
field theory and equally applicable to both minimal and non-minimal coupling.
The algorithm illuminates the connection between the EMT, obtained by
functional variation of the metric, and local balance of energy and momentum.
Our method is of cardinal value for the proper identification of the EMT in
context of non-minimally coupled gravity theories.


title:
Low-damping sub-10-nm thin films of lutetium iron garnet grown by
  molecular-beam epitaxy

abstract:
  We analyze the structural and magnetic characteristics of (111)-oriented
lutetium iron garnet (Lu$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$) films grown by molecular-beam
epitaxy, for films as thin as 2.8 nm. Thickness-dependent measurements of the
in- and out-of-plane ferromagnetic resonance allow us to quantify the effects
of two-magnon scattering, along with the surface anisotropy and the saturation
magnetization. We achieve effective damping coefficients of $11.1(9) \times
10^{-4}$ for 5.3 nm films and $32(3) \times 10^{-4}$ for 2.8 nm films, among
the lowest values reported to date for any insulating ferrimagnetic sample of
comparable thickness.


title:
Hartree Corrections in a Mean-field Limit for Fermions with Coulomb
  Interaction

abstract:
  We consider the many-body dynamics of fermions with Coulomb interaction in a
mean-field scaling limit where the kinetic and potential energy are of the same
order for large particle numbers. In the considered limit the spatial variation
of the mean-field is small. We prove two results about this scaling limit.
First, due to the small variation, i.e., small forces, we show that the
many-body dynamics can be approximated by the free dynamics with an appropriate
phase factor with the conjectured optimal error term. Second, we show that the
Hartree dynamics gives a better approximation with a smaller error term. In
this sense, assuming that the error term in the first result is optimal, we
derive the Hartree equations from the many-body dynamics with Coulomb
interaction in a mean-field scaling limit.


title: The Post-Starburst Evolution of Tidal Disruption Event Host Galaxies

abstract:
  We constrain the recent star formation histories of the host galaxies of
eight optical/UV-detected tidal disruption events (TDEs). Six hosts had quick
starbursts of <200 Myr duration that ended 10 to 1000 Myr ago, indicating that
TDEs arise at different times in their host's post-starburst evolution. If the
disrupted star formed in the burst or before, the post-burst age constrains its
mass, generally excluding O, most B, and highly massive A stars. If the
starburst arose from a galaxy merger, the time since the starburst began limits
the coalescence timescale and thus the merger mass ratio to more equal than
12:1 in most hosts. This uncommon ratio, if also that of the central
supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary, disfavors the scenario in which the TDE
rate is boosted by the binary but is insensitive to its mass ratio. The stellar
mass fraction created in the burst is 0.5-10% for most hosts, not enough to
explain the observed 30-200x boost in TDE rates, suggesting that the host's
core stellar concentration is more important. TDE hosts have stellar masses
10^9.4 - 10^10.3 Msun, consistent with the SDSS volume-corrected, quiescent
Balmer-strong comparison sample and implying SMBH masses of 10^5.5 - 10^7.5
Msun. Subtracting the host absorption line spectrum, we uncover emission lines;
at least five hosts have ionization sources inconsistent with star formation
that instead may be related to circumnuclear gas, merger shocks, or post-AGB
stars.


title:
Dynamo Sensitivity in Solar Analogs with 50 Years of Ca II H & K
  Activity

abstract:
  The Sun has a steady 11-year cycle in magnetic activity most well-known by
the rising and falling in the occurrence of dark sunspots on the solar disk in
visible bandpasses. The 11-year cycle is also manifest in the variations of
emission in the Ca II H & K line cores, due to non-thermal (i.e. magnetic)
heating in the lower chromosphere. The large variation in Ca II H & K emission
allows for study of the patterns of long-term variability in other stars thanks
to synoptic monitoring with the Mount Wilson Observatory HK photometers
(1966-2003) and Lowell Observatory Solar-Stellar Spectrograph (1994-present).
Overlapping measurements for a set of 27 nearby solar-analog (spectral types
G0-G5) stars were used to calibrate the two instruments and construct time
series of magnetic activity up to 50 years in length. Precise properties of
fundamental importance to the dynamo are available from Hipparcos, the
Geneva-Copenhagen Survey, and CHARA interferometry. Using these long time
series and measurements of fundamental properties, we do a comparative study of
stellar "twins" to explore the sensitivity of the stellar dynamo to small
changes to structure, rotation, and composition. We also compare this sample to
the Sun and find hints that the regular periodic variability of the solar cycle
may be rare among its nearest neighbors in parameter space.


title:
Perceptual Quality Prediction on Authentically Distorted Images Using a
  Bag of Features Approach

abstract:
  Current top-performing blind perceptual image quality prediction models are
generally trained on legacy databases of human quality opinion scores on
synthetically distorted images. Therefore they learn image features that
effectively predict human visual quality judgments of inauthentic, and usually
isolated (single) distortions. However, real-world images usually contain
complex, composite mixtures of multiple distortions. We study the perceptually
relevant natural scene statistics of such authentically distorted images, in
different color spaces and transform domains. We propose a bag of feature-maps
approach which avoids assumptions about the type of distortion(s) contained in
an image, focusing instead on capturing consistencies, or departures therefrom,
of the statistics of real world images. Using a large database of authentically
distorted images, human opinions of them, and bags of features computed on
them, we train a regressor to conduct image quality prediction. We demonstrate
the competence of the features towards improving automatic perceptual quality
prediction by testing a learned algorithm using them on a benchmark legacy
database as well as on a newly introduced distortion-realistic resource called
the LIVE In the Wild Image Quality Challenge Database. We extensively evaluate
the perceptual quality prediction model and algorithm and show that it is able
to achieve good quality prediction power that is better than other leading
models.


title: Partially Bounded Transformations have Trivial Centralizer

abstract:
  We prove that for infinite rank-one transformations satisfying a property
called "partial boundedness," the only commuting transformations are powers of
the original transformation. This shows that a large class of infinite
measure-preserving rank-one transformations with bounded cuts have trivial
centralizers. We also characterize when partially bounded transformations are
isomorphic to their inverse.


title: Review of the electric dipole moment of light nuclei

abstract:
  In this review, we summarize the theoretical development on the electric
dipole moment of light nuclei. We first describe the nucleon level CP violation
and its parametrization. We then present the results of calculations of the EDM
of light nuclei in the ab initio approach and in the cluster model. The
analysis of the effect of several models beyond standard model is presented,
together with the prospects for its discovery. The advantage of the electric
dipole moment of light nuclei is focused in the point of view of the many-body
physics. The evaluations of the nuclear electric dipole moment generated by the
$\theta$-term and by the CP phase of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix are
also reviewed.


title:
Structures and finite-temperature abundances of defects in
  In$_2$O$_3$-II from first-principles calculations

abstract:
  We have studied intrinsic defect complexes in In$_2$O$_3$ using ab initio
random structure searching (AIRSS). Our first-principles
density-functional-theory calculations predict the thermodynamic stability of
several novel defect structures. We combine the static lattice energy and
harmonic vibrational energy with the often-neglected configurational entropy to
construct the free energy, which is minimised to predict defect abundances at
finite temperatures. We predict that some of our new defect structures - in
particular our {In,2V$_\mathrm{O}$} and {2In,3V$_\mathrm{O}$} defects - can
exist in significant abundances at finite temperatures, and their densities of
electronic states indicate that they could play an important role in the
unexpectedly high density of n-type charge carriers observed in In$_2$O$_3$.


title: On the Linear Cycle Cover Conjecture of Gy\'arf\'as and S\'ark\"ozy

abstract:
  A linear cycle in a hypergraph $H$ is a cyclic sequence of hyperedges such
that two consecutive hyperedges intersect in exactly one element and two
nonconsecutive hyperedges are disjoint and $\alpha(H)$ denotes the size of a
largest independent set of $H$. In this note, we show that the vertex set of
every $3$-uniform hypergraph $H$ can be covered by at most $\alpha(H)$ pairwise
edge-disjoint linear cycles (where we accept a vertex and a hyperedge as a
linear cycle), proving a weaker version of a conjecture of Gy\'arf\'as and
S\'ark\"ozy.


title: Effects of Interactions on Bose-Einstein Condensation

abstract:
  Bose-Einstein condensation is a unique phase transition in that it is not
driven by inter-particle interactions, but can theoretically occur in an ideal
gas, purely as a consequence of quantum statistics. This chapter addresses the
question \emph{`How is this ideal Bose gas condensation modified in the
presence of interactions between the particles?' } This seemingly simple
question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Here we outline the
theoretical background to this question and discuss some recent measurements on
ultracold atomic Bose gases that have sought to provide some answers.


title: Cabello's nonlocality for generalized three-qubit GHZ states

abstract:
  In this note, we study Cabello's nonlocality argument (CNA) for three-qubit
systems configured in the generalized GHZ state. For this class of states, we
show that CNA runs for almost all entangled ones, and that the maximum
probability of success of CNA is 14% (approx.), which is attained for the
maximally entangled GHZ state. This maximum probability is slightly higher than
that achieved for the standard Hardy's nonlocality argument (HNA) for three
qubits, namely 12.5%. Also, we show that the success probability of both HNA
and CNA for three-qubit systems can reach a maximum of 50% in the framework of
generalized no-signaling theory.


title:
Spontaneous CP violation in the 2HDM: physical conditions and the
  alignment limit

abstract:
  For the general Two-Higgs-Doublet model, we present conditions for having
spontaneous CP violation, in terms of physical masses and couplings. These
relations involve the charged-Higgs mass, its cubic couplings with neutral
scalars and quartic coupling, and become particularly simple in the alignment
limit. In the simplified model with softly broken $Z_2$ symmetry, some
deviation from alignment is required for spontaneous CP violation to be
present.


title:
Nonequilibrium Quantum Critical Steady State: Transport Through a
  Dissipative Resonant Level

abstract:
  Nonequilibrium properties of correlated quantum matter are being intensively
investigated because of the rich interplay between external driving and the
many-body correlations. Of particular interest is the nonequilibrium behavior
near a quantum critical point (QCP), where the system is delicately balanced
between different ground states. We present both an analytical calculation of
the nonequilibrium steady-state current in a critical system and experimental
results to which the theory is compared. The system is a quantum dot coupled to
resistive leads: a spinless resonant level interacting with an ohmic
dissipative environment. A two channel Kondo-like QCP occurs when the level is
on resonance and symmetrically coupled to the leads, conditions achieved by
fine-tuning using electrostatic gates. We calculate and measure the nonlinear
current as a function of bias ($I$-$V$ curve) at the critical values of the
gate voltages corresponding to the QCP. The quantitative agreement between the
experimental data and the theory, with no fitting parameter, is excellent. As
our system is fully accessible to both theory and experiment, it provides an
ideal setting for addressing nonequilibrium phenomena in correlated quantum
matter.


title:
An extension of compact operators by compact operators with no
  nontrivial multipliers

abstract:
  We construct an essential extension of $\mathcal K(\ell_2({\mathfrak{c}}))$
by $\mathcal K(\ell_2)$, where ${\mathfrak{c}}$ denotes the cardinality of
continuum, i.e., a $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal A\subseteq \mathcal B(\ell_2)$
satisfying the short exact sequence $$0\rightarrow \mathcal
K(\ell_2)\xrightarrow{\iota} \mathcal A \rightarrow\mathcal
K(\ell_2({\mathfrak{c}}))\rightarrow 0,$$ where $\iota[\mathcal K(\ell_2)]$ is
an essential ideal of $\mathcal A$ such that the algebra of multipliers
$\mathcal M(\mathcal A)$ of $\mathcal A$ is equal to the unitization of
$\mathcal A$. In particular $\mathcal A$ is not stable which sheds light on
permanence properties of the stability in the nonseparable setting. Namely, an
extension of a nonseparable algebra of compact operators, even by $\mathcal
K(\ell_2)$, does not have to be stable.
  This construction can be considered as a noncommutative version of Mr\'owka's
$\Psi$-space; a space whose one point compactification equals to its Cech-Stone
compactification and is induced by a special uncountable family of almost
disjoint subsets of ${\mathbb{N}}$. The role of the almost disjoint family is
played by an almost orthogonal family of projections in $\mathcal B(\ell_2)$,
but the almost matrix units corresponding to the matrix units in $\mathcal
K(\ell_2({\mathfrak{c}}))$ must be constructed with extra care.
  This example may also contribute in the future to our understanding of the
semigroups $Ext(\mathcal K(\ell_2({\kappa})))$ for $\omega_1\leq
\kappa\leq\mathfrak{c}$ which are unexplored at the moment.


title:
Transport-based analysis, modeling, and learning from signal and data
  distributions

abstract:
  Transport-based techniques for signal and data analysis have received
increased attention recently. Given their abilities to provide accurate
generative models for signal intensities and other data distributions, they
have been used in a variety of applications including content-based retrieval,
cancer detection, image super-resolution, and statistical machine learning, to
name a few, and shown to produce state of the art in several applications.
Moreover, the geometric characteristics of transport-related metrics have
inspired new kinds of algorithms for interpreting the meaning of data
distributions. Here we provide an overview of the mathematical underpinnings of
mass transport-related methods, including numerical implementation, as well as
a review, with demonstrations, of several applications.


title:
Formation of new phase inclusions in the system of quasi-equilibrium
  magnons of high density

abstract:
  The paper studies the spatial variation of the magnetization in a
nonconducting magnetic sample with an excess number of magnons in comparison to
the equilibrium. The phenomenon is considered using the Landau-Lifshits
equation with additional terms describing the longitudinal relaxation of the
magnetization, the magnon diffusion and the magnon creation by external
pumping. The free energy of the system is presented in the mean field
approximation. It is shown that, if the pumping exceeds some critical value,
regions of the new phase arise where the magnetic moments are oriented opposite
to the magnetization of the magnetic sample. The phenomenon is similar to the
appearance of droplets of the condensed phase in the supersaturated vapor. The
appearance of the new phase either in the form of a single domain or a
periodical lattice is demonstrated. The studied process is a competitor to the
process of the Bose-Einstein condensation of magnons.


title:
Nonperturbative-transverse-momentum effects and evolution in dihadron
  and direct photon-hadron angular correlations in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at
  $\sqrt{s}$=510 GeV

abstract:
  Dihadron and isolated direct photon-hadron angular correlations are measured
in $p$$+$$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV. Correlations of charged hadrons
of $0.7<p_T<10$ GeV/$c$ with $\pi^0$ mesons of $4<p_T<15$ GeV/$c$ or isolated
direct photons of $7<p_T<15$ GeV/$c$ are used to study nonperturbative effects
generated by initial-state partonic transverse momentum and final-state
transverse momentum from fragmentation. The nonperturbative behavior is
characterized by measuring the out-of-plane transverse momentum component
$p_{\rm out}$ perpendicular to the axis of the trigger particle, which is the
high-$p_T$ direct photon or $\pi^0$. Nonperturbative evolution effects are
extracted from Gaussian fits to the away-side inclusive-charged-hadron yields
for different trigger-particle transverse momenta ($p_T^{\rm trig}$). The
Gaussian widths and root mean square of $p_{\rm out}$ are reported as a
function of the interaction hard scale $p_T^{\rm trig}$ to investigate possible
transverse-momentum-dependent evolution differences between the $\pi^0$-h$^\pm$
and direct photon-h$^\pm$ correlations and factorization breaking effects. The
widths are found to decrease with $p_T^{\rm trig}$, which indicates that the
Collins-Soper-Sterman soft factor is not driving the evolution with the hard
scale in nearly back-to-back dihadron and direct photon-hadron production in
$p$$+$$p$ collisions. This behavior is in contrast to Drell-Yan and
semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering measurements.


title:
Two-point correlators revisited: Fast and slow scales in multifield
  models of inflation

abstract:
  We study the structure of two-point correlators of the inflationary field
fluctuations in order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the existing
methods to calculate primordial spectra. We present a description motivated by
the separation of the fast and slow evolving components of the spectrum which
is based on Cholesky decomposition of the field correlator matrix. Our purpose
is to rewrite all the relevant equations of motion in terms of slowly varying
quantities. This is important in order to consider the contribution from
high-frequency modes to the spectrum without affecting computational
performance. The slow-roll approximation is not required to reproduce the main
distinctive features in the power spectrum for each specific model of
inflation.


title: Formula of Volume of Revolution with Integration by Parts and Extension

abstract:
  A calculation formula of volume of revolution with integration by parts of
definite integral is derived based on monotone function, and extended to a
general case that curved trapezoids is determined by continuous, piecewise
strictly monotone and differential function. And, two examples are given, ones
curvilinear trapezoids is determined by Kepler equation, and the other
curvilinear trapezoids is a function transmuted from Kepler equation.


title: Fractional Euler Limits and Their Applications

abstract:
  Generalisations of the classical Euler formula to the setting of fractional
calculus are discussed. Compound interest and fractional compound interest
serve as motivation. Connections to fractional master equations are
highlighted. An application to the Schlogl reactions with Mittag-Leffler
waiting times is described.


title:
A Search For X-ray Emission From Colliding Magnetospheres In Young
  Eccentric Stellar Binaries

abstract:
  Among young binary stars whose magnetospheres are expected to collide, only
two systems have been observed near periastron in the X-ray band: the low-mass
DQ Tau and the older and more massive HD 152404. Both exhibit elevated levels
of X-ray emission at periastron. Our goal is to determine whether colliding
magnetospheres in young high-eccentricity binaries commonly produce elevated
average levels of X-ray activity. This work is based on Chandra snapshots of
multiple periastron and non-periastron passages in four nearby young eccentric
binaries (Parenago 523, RX J1622.7-2325 Nw, UZ Tau E, and HD 152404). We find
that for the merged sample of all 4 binaries the current X-ray data show an
increasing average X-ray flux near periastron (at about 2.5-sigma level).
Further comparison of these data with the X-ray properties of hundreds of young
stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster, produced by the Chandra Orion Ultradeep
Project (COUP), indicates that the X-ray emission from the merged sample of our
binaries can not be explained within the framework of the COUP-like X-ray
activity. However, due to the inhomogeneities of the merged binary sample and
the relatively low statistical significance of the detected flux increase,
these findings are regarded as tentative only. More data are needed to prove
that the flux increase is real and is related to the processes of colliding
magnetospheres.


title:
Hermite-Hadamard and Hermite-Hadamard-Fej\'er type Inequalities for
  Generalized Fractional Integrals

abstract:
  In this paper we obtain the Hermite-Hadamard and Hermite-Hadamard-Fej\'er
type inequalities for fractional integrals which generalize the two familiar
fractional integrals namely, the Riemann-Liouville and the Hadamard fractional
integrals into a single form. We prove that, in most cases, we obtain the
Riemann--Liouville and the Hadamard equivalence just by taking limits when a
parameter $\rho \rightarrow 1$ and $\rho \rightarrow 0^+$, respectively.


title:
A Caputo fractional derivative of a function with respect to another
  function

abstract:
  In this paper we consider a Caputo type fractional derivative with respect to
another function. Some properties, like the semigroup law, a relationship
between the fractional derivative and the fractional integral, Taylor's
Theorem, Fermat's Theorem, etc, are studied. Also, a numerical method to deal
with such operators, consisting in approximating the fractional derivative by a
sum that depends on the first-order derivative, is presented. Relying on
examples, we show the efficiency and applicability of the method. Finally, an
application of the fractional derivative, by considering a Population Growth
Model, and showing that we can model more accurately the process using
different kernels for the fractional operator is provided.


title:
The number of Hamiltonian fixed points on symplectically aspherical
  manifolds

abstract:
  We show that a generic Hamiltonian diffeomorphism on a closed symplectic
manifold which is symplectically aspherical has at least the stable Morse
number of fixed points - this is in line with a conjecture by Arnold.


title:
Stable approximation of the advection-diffusion equation using the
  invariant measure

abstract:
  We consider an advection-diffusion equation that is both non-coercive and
advection-dominated. We present a possible numerical approach, to our best
knowledge new, and based on the invariant measure associated to the original
equation. The approach has been summarized in [C. Le Bris, F. Legoll and F.
Madiot, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Serie I, vol. 354, 799-803 (2016)]. We show
that the approach allows for an unconditionally well-posed finite element
approximation. We provide a numerical analysis and a set of comprehensive
numerical tests showing that the approach can be stable, as accurate as, and
more robust than a classical stabilization approach.


title:
False Discovery Rate Control for High-Dimensional Networks of Quantile
  Associations Conditioning on Covariates

abstract:
  Motivated by the gene co-expression pattern analysis, we propose a novel
sample quantile-based contingency (squac) statistic to infer quantile
associations conditioning on covariates. It features enhanced flexibility in
handling variables with both arbitrary distributions and complex association
patterns conditioning on covariates. We first derive its asymptotic null
distribution, and then develop a multiple testing procedure based on squac to
simultaneously test the independence between one pair of variables conditioning
on covariates for all $p(p-1)/2$ pairs. Here, $p$ is the length of the outcomes
and could exceed the sample size. The testing procedure does not require
resampling or perturbation, and thus is computationally efficient. We prove by
theory and numerical experiments that this testing method asymptotically
controls the false discovery rate (\FDR). It outperforms all alternative
methods when the complex association panterns exist. Applied to a gastric
cancer data, this testing method successfully inferred the gene co-expression
networks of early and late stage patients. It identified more changes in the
networks which are associated with cancer survivals. We extend our method to
the case that both the length of the outcomes and the length of covariates
exceed the sample size, and show that the asymptotic theory still holds.


title:
Characterizing the Language of Online Communities and its Relation to
  Community Reception

abstract:
  This work investigates style and topic aspects of language in online
communities: looking at both utility as an identifier of the community and
correlation with community reception of content. Style is characterized using a
hybrid word and part-of-speech tag n-gram language model, while topic is
represented using Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Experiments with several Reddit
forums show that style is a better indicator of community identity than topic,
even for communities organized around specific topics. Further, there is a
positive correlation between the community reception to a contribution and the
style similarity to that community, but not so for topic similarity.


title: Detecting essential surfaces as intersections in the character variety

abstract:
  We describe a family of hyperbolic knots whose character variety contain
exactly two distinct components of characters of irreducible representations.
The intersection points between the components carry rich topological
information. In particular, these points are non-integral and detect the
Seifert surface.


title:
Confining Windows Inter-Process Communications for OS-Level Virtual
  Machine

abstract:
  As OS-level virtualization technology usually imposes little overhead on
virtual machine start-up and running, it provides an excellent choice for
building intrusion/fault tolerant applications that require redundancy and
frequent invocation. When developing Windows OS-level virtual machine, however,
people will inevitably face the challenge of confining Windows Inter-Process
Communications (IPC). As IPC on Windows platform is more complex than UNIX
style OS and most of the programs on Windows are not open-source, it is
difficult to discover all of the performed IPCs and confine them. In this
paper, we propose three general principles to confine IPC on Windows OS and a
novel IPC confinement mechanism based on the principles. With the mechanism,
for the first time from the literature, we successfully virtualized RPC System
Service (RPCSS) and Internet Information Server (IIS) on Feather-weight Virtual
Machine (FVM). Experimental results demonstrate that multiple IIS web server
instances can simultaneously run on single Windows OS with much less
performance overhead than other popular VM technology, offering a good basis
for constructing dependable system.


title: Mechanism Design with Exchangeable Allocations

abstract:
  We investigate mechanism design without payments when agents have different
types of preferences. Contrary to most settings in the literature where agents
have the same preference, e.g. in the facility location games all agents would
like to stay close to (or away from) the facility, we demonstrate the
limitation of mechanism design without payments when agents have different
preferences by introducing exchanging phases. We consider two types of
exchanging phases. The first model is called central exchanges where the
exchanges are performed by a central authority. The other model is called
individual exchanges where agents exchange their outcomes by themselves. By
using facility location games as an example, we provide a truthful mechanism
that optimizes social welfare in central exchanges. We also provide a
universally truthful randomized mechanism that achieves at least a half of the
optimal social welfare in individual exchanges.


title: Patterns of Flavour Violation in Models with Vector-Like Quarks

abstract:
  We study the patterns of flavour violation in renormalisable extensions of
the Standard Model (SM) that contain vector-like quarks (VLQs) in a single
complex representation of either the SM gauge group $G_{SM}$ or $G_{SM}' =
G_{SM} \times U(1)_{L_\mu - L_\tau}$. We first decouple VLQs in the $M=(1-10)$
TeV range and then at the electroweak scale also $Z, Z'$ gauge bosons and
additional scalars to study the resulting phenomenology that depends on the
relative size of $Z$- and $Z'$-induced flavour-changing neutral currents, as
well as the size of $\Delta F=2$ contributions including the effects of
renormalisation group Yukawa evolution from $M$ to the electroweak scale that
turn out to be very important for models with right-handed currents through the
generation of left-right operators. In addition to rare decays like $P\to
\ell\bar\ell$, $P\to P' \ell\bar\ell$, $P\to P'\nu\bar\nu$ with $P=K, B_s, B_d$
and $\Delta F=2$ observables we analyze the ratio $\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$
which appears in the SM to be significantly below the data. We study patterns
and correlations between these observables which taken together should in the
future allow for differentiating between VLQ models. In particular the patterns
in models with left-handed and right-handed currents are markedly different
from each other. Among the highlights are large $Z$-mediated new physics
effects in Kaon observables in some of the models and significant effects in
$B_{s,d}$-observables. $\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$ can easily be made consistent
with the data, implying then uniquely the suppression of $K_L\to \pi^0
\nu\bar\nu$. Significant enhancements of $Br(K^+\to \pi^+ \nu\bar\nu)$ are
still possible. We point out that the combination of $\Delta F=2$ and $\Delta
F=1$ observables in a given meson system generally allows to determine the
masses of VLQs independently of the size of VLQ couplings.


title:
Variance-reduced multiscale simulation of slow-fast stochastic
  differential equations

abstract:
  We study a variance reduction strategy based on control variables for
simulating the averaged macroscopic behavior of a stochastic slow-fast system.
We assume that this averaged behavior can be written in terms of a few slow
degrees of freedom, and that the fast dynamics is ergodic for every fixed value
of the slow variable. The time derivative for the averaged dynamics can then be
approximated by a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The variance-reduced scheme
that is introduced here uses the previous time instant as a control variable.
We analyze the variance and bias of the proposed estimator and illustrate its
performance when applied to a linear and nonlinear model problem.


title:
Virtualizing System and Ordinary Services in Windows-based OS-Level
  Virtual Machines

abstract:
  OS-level virtualization incurs smaller start-up and run-time overhead than
HAL-based virtualization and thus forms an important building block for
developing fault-tolerant and intrusion-tolerant applications. A complete
implementation of OS-level virtualization on the Windows platform requires
virtualization of Windows services, such as system services like the Remote
Procedure Call Server Service (RPCSS), because they are essentially extensions
of the kernel. As Windows system services work very differently from their
counterparts on UNIX-style OS, i.e., daemons, and many of their implementation
details are proprietary, virtualizing Windows system services turned out to be
the most challenging technical barrier for OS-level virtualization for the
Windows platform. In this paper, we describe a general technique to virtualize
Windows services, and demonstrate its effectiveness by applying it to
successfully virtualize a set of important Windows system services and ordinary
services on different versions of Windows OS, including RPCSS, DcomLaunch, IIS
service group, Tlntsvr, MySQL, Apache2.2, CiSvc, ImapiService, etc.


title:
Effect of surface-mantle water exchange parameterizations on exoplanet
  ocean depths

abstract:
  Terrestrial exoplanets in the canonical habitable zone may have a variety of
initial water fractions due to random volatile delivery by planetesimals. If
the total planetary water complement is high, the entire surface may be covered
in water, forming a "waterworld." On a planet with active tectonics, competing
mechanisms act to regulate the abundance of water on the surface by determining
the partitioning of water between interior and surface. Here we explore how the
incorporation of different mechanisms for the degassing and regassing of water
changes the volatile evolution of a planet. For all of the models considered,
volatile cycling reaches an approximate steady-state after $\sim 2 \
\mathrm{Gyr}$. Using these steady-states, we find that if volatile cycling is
either solely dependent on temperature or seafloor pressure, exoplanets require
a high abundance ($\gtrsim 0.3\%$ of total mass) of water to have fully
inundated surfaces. However, if degassing is more dependent on seafloor
pressure and regassing mainly dependent on mantle temperature, the degassing
rate is relatively large at late times and a steady-state between degassing and
regassing is reached with a substantial surface water fraction. If this hybrid
model is physical, super-Earths with a total water fraction similar to that of
the Earth can become waterworlds. As a result, further understanding of the
processes that drive volatile cycling on terrestrial planets is needed to
determine the water fraction at which they are likely to become waterworlds.


title: The Dade group of Mackey functors for p-groups

abstract:
  We introduce endo-permutation Mackey functors and the Mackey-Dade group of a
$p$-group and study their basic properties. We exhibit relations between the
Mackey-Dade group of a finite $p$-group $P$ and the Dade groups of the Weyl
groups of all subgroups of $P$. As a result, we show that the Mackey-Dade group
tensored with $\mathbb Q$ over $\mathbb Z$ is the kernel of the linearization
map for Mackey functors, introduced by the author.


title: Complete Reionization Constraints from Planck 2015 Polarization

abstract:
  We conduct an analysis of the Planck 2015 data that is complete in
reionization observables from the large angle polarization $E$-mode spectrum in
the redshift range $6 < z < 30$. Based on 5 principal components, all of which
are constrained by the data, this single analysis can be used to infer
constraints on any model for reionization in the same range; we develop an
effective likelihood approach for applying these constraints to models. By
allowing for an arbitrary ionization history, this technique tests the
robustness of inferences on the total optical depth from the usual step-like
transition assumption, which is important for the interpretation of many other
cosmological parameters such as the dark energy and neutrino mass. The Planck
2015 data not only allow a high redshift $z>15$ component to the optical depth
but prefer it at the $2\sigma$ level. This preference is associated with excess
power in the multipole range $10 \lesssim \ell \lesssim 20$ and may indicate
high redshift ionization sources or unaccounted for systematics and foregrounds
in the 2015 data.


title: Coherence Pursuit: Fast, Simple, and Robust Principal Component Analysis

abstract:
  This paper presents a remarkably simple, yet powerful, algorithm termed
Coherence Pursuit (CoP) to robust Principal Component Analysis (PCA). As
inliers lie in a low dimensional subspace and are mostly correlated, an inlier
is likely to have strong mutual coherence with a large number of data points.
By contrast, outliers either do not admit low dimensional structures or form
small clusters. In either case, an outlier is unlikely to bear strong
resemblance to a large number of data points. Given that, CoP sets an outlier
apart from an inlier by comparing their coherence with the rest of the data
points. The mutual coherences are computed by forming the Gram matrix of the
normalized data points. Subsequently, the sought subspace is recovered from the
span of the subset of the data points that exhibit strong coherence with the
rest of the data. As CoP only involves one simple matrix multiplication, it is
significantly faster than the state-of-the-art robust PCA algorithms. We derive
analytical performance guarantees for CoP under different models for the
distributions of inliers and outliers in both noise-free and noisy settings.
CoP is the first robust PCA algorithm that is simultaneously non-iterative,
provably robust to both unstructured and structured outliers, and can tolerate
a large number of unstructured outliers.


title: Gluon fusion contribution to $HBB$ ($B = H,\gamma, Z$) at the LHC

abstract:
  We have calculated one-loop amplitudes for the production of Higgs boson in
association with two electroweak bosons ($H,\gamma,Z$) via gluon-gluon fusion.
We present preliminary results for the total cross section at 8, 13 and 100 TeV
center-of-mass energies at $pp$ colliders. We study the interference effect
and, also comment on the effect of new physics in terms of anomalous couplings
of the Higgs boson in these processes.