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Published work

70 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

AnyCXR: Human Anatomy Segmentation of Chest X-ray at Any Acquisition Position using Multi-stage Domain Randomized Synthetic Data with Imperfect Annotations and Conditional Joint Annotation Regularization Learning

Robust anatomical segmentation of chest X-rays (CXRs) remains challenging due to the scarcity of comprehensive annotations and the substantial variability of real-world acquisition conditions. We propose AnyCXR, a unified framework that enables generalizable multi-organ segmentation across arbitrary CXR projection angles using only synthetic supervision. The method combines a Multi-stage Domain Randomization (MSDR) engine, which generates over 100,000 anatomically faithful and highly diverse synthetic radiographs from 3D CT volumes, with a Conditional Joint Annotation Regularization (CAR) learning strategy that leverages partial and imperfect labels by enforcing anatomical consistency in a latent space. Trained entirely on synthetic data, AnyCXR achieves strong zero-shot generalization on multiple real-world datasets, providing accurate delineation of 54 anatomical structures in PA, lateral, and oblique views. The resulting segmentation maps support downstream clinical tasks, including automated cardiothoracic ratio estimation, spine curvature assessment, and disease classification, where the incorporation of anatomical priors improves diagnostic performance. These results demonstrate that AnyCXR establishes a scalable and reliable foundation for anatomy-aware CXR analysis and offers a practical pathway toward reducing annotation burdens while improving robustness across diverse imaging conditions.

preprint2026arXiv

AT$^2$PO: Agentic Turn-based Policy Optimization via Tree Search

LLM agents have emerged as powerful systems for tackling multi-turn tasks by interleaving internal reasoning and external tool interactions. Agentic Reinforcement Learning has recently drawn significant research attention as a critical post-training paradigm to further refine these capabilities. In this paper, we present AT$^2$PO (Agentic Turn-based Policy Optimization via Tree Search), a unified framework for multi-turn agentic RL that addresses three core challenges: limited exploration diversity, sparse credit assignment, and misaligned policy optimization. AT$^2$PO introduces a turn-level tree structure that jointly enables Entropy-Guided Tree Expansion for strategic exploration and Turn-wise Credit Assignment for fine-grained reward propagation from sparse outcomes. Complementing this, we propose Agentic Turn-based Policy Optimization, a turn-level learning objective that aligns policy updates with the natural decision granularity of agentic interactions. ATPO is orthogonal to tree search and can be readily integrated into any multi-turn RL pipeline. Experiments across seven benchmarks demonstrate consistent improvements over the state-of-the-art baseline by up to 1.84 percentage points in average, with ablation studies validating the effectiveness of each component. Our code is available at https://github.com/zzfoutofspace/ATPO.

preprint2026arXiv

ConMax: Confidence-Maximizing Compression for Efficient Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

Recent breakthroughs in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have demonstrated that extensive Chain-of-Thought (CoT) generation is critical for enabling intricate cognitive behaviors, such as self-verification and backtracking, to solve complex tasks. However, this capability often leads to ``overthinking'', where models generate redundant reasoning paths that inflate computational costs without improving accuracy. While Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) on reasoning traces is a standard paradigm for the 'cold start' phase, applying existing compression techniques to these traces often compromises logical coherence or incurs prohibitive sampling costs. In this paper, we introduce ConMax (Confidence-Maximizing Compression), a novel reinforcement learning framework designed to automatically compress reasoning traces while preserving essential reasoning patterns. ConMax formulates compression as a reward-driven optimization problem, training a policy to prune redundancy by maximizing a weighted combination of answer confidence for predictive fidelity and thinking confidence for reasoning validity through a frozen auxiliary LRM. Extensive experiments across five reasoning datasets demonstrate that ConMax achieves a superior efficiency-performance trade-off. Specifically, it reduces inference length by 43% over strong baselines at the cost of a mere 0.7% dip in accuracy, proving its effectiveness in generating high-quality, efficient training data for LRMs.

preprint2026arXiv

Discovery and Reinforcement of Tool-Integrated Reasoning Chains via Rollout Trees

Tool-Integrated Reasoning has emerged as a key paradigm to augment Large Language Models (LLMs) with computational capabilities, yet integrating tool-use into long Chain-of-Thought (long CoT) remains underexplored, largely due to the scarcity of training data and the challenge of integrating tool-use without compromising the model's intrinsic long-chain reasoning. In this paper, we introduce DART (Discovery And Reinforcement of Tool-Integrated Reasoning Chains via Rollout Trees), a reinforcement learning framework that enables spontaneous tool-use during long CoT reasoning without human annotation. DART operates by constructing dynamic rollout trees during training to discover valid tool-use opportunities, branching out at promising positions to explore diverse tool-integrated trajectories. Subsequently, a tree-based process advantage estimation identifies and credits specific sub-trajectories where tool invocation positively contributes to the solution, effectively reinforcing these beneficial behaviors. Extensive experiments on challenging benchmarks like AIME and GPQA-Diamond demonstrate that DART significantly outperforms existing methods, successfully harmonizing tool execution with long CoT reasoning.

preprint2026arXiv

KAN-MLP-Mixer: A comprehensive investigation of the usage of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) for improving IMU-based Human Activity Recognition

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) have demonstrated an exceptional ability to learn complex functions on clean, low-dimensional data but struggle to maintain performance on noisy and imperfect real-world datasets. In contrast, conventional multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) are far more tolerant to noise and computationally efficient. Replacing all MLP components with KANs in HAR models often degrades accuracy and computation efficiency, highlighting an open challenge: how to combine KANs' precision with MLPs' noise robustness and efficiency. To address this, we systematically explore various placements of KAN modules within deep HAR networks and propose a hybrid architecture that strategically synergizes the strengths of both paradigms, which uses a KAN-based input embedding layer, retains MLP layers for intermediate feature mixing, and introduces a specialized LarctanKAN module for final activity classification. Across eight public HAR datasets, the hybrid KAN-MLP model achieves an average macro F1 score relative improvement of 5.33\% compared pure-MLP model, significantly outperforming standalone KAN and MLP baselines. Furthermore, integrating this hybrid strategy into other state-of-the-art HAR architectures consistently boosts their performance. Our findings demonstrate that a carefully orchestrated combination of KAN, MLP, or other conventional neural components yields more robust and accurate HAR models for real-world wearable sensing environments.

preprint2026arXiv

Segmental Advantage Estimation: Enhancing PPO for Long-Context LLM Training

Training Large Language Models (LLMs) for reasoning tasks is increasingly driven by Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR), where Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) provides a principled framework for stable policy updates. However, the practical application of PPO is hindered by unreliable advantage estimation in the sparse-reward RLVR regime. This issue arises because the sparse rewards in RLVR lead to inaccurate intermediate value predictions, which in turn introduce significant bias when aggregated at every token by Generalized Advantage Estimation (GAE). To address this, we introduce Segmental Advantage Estimation (SAE), which mitigates the bias that GAE can incur in RLVR. Our key insight is that aggregating $n$-step advantages at every token(as in GAE) is unnecessary and often introduces excessive bias, since individual tokens carry minimal information. Instead, SAE first partitions the generated sequence into coherent sub-segments using low-probability tokens as heuristic boundaries. It then selectively computes variance-reduced advantage estimates only from these information-rich segment transitions, effectively filtering out noise from intermediate tokens. Our experiments demonstrate that SAE achieves superior performance, with marked improvements in final scores, training stability, and sample efficiency. These gains are shown to be consistent across multiple model sizes, and a correlation analysis confirms that our proposed advantage estimator achieves a higher correlation with an approximate ground-truth advantage, justifying its superior performance.

preprint2026arXiv

TransDOA: Calibrating Array Imperfections via Transformer-based Transfer Learning

In practical scenarios, processes such as sensor design, manufacturing, and installation will introduce certain errors. Furthermore, mutual interference occurs when the sensors receive signals. These defects in array systems are referred to as array imperfections, which can significantly degrade the performance of Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation. In this study, we propose a deep-learning based transfer learning approach, which effectively mitigates the degradation of deep-learning based DOA estimation performance caused by array imperfections. In the proposed approach, we highlight three major contributions. First, we propose a Vision Transformer (ViT) based method for DOA estimation, which achieves excellent performance in scenarios with low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and limited snapshots. Second, we introduce a transfer learning framework that extends deep learning models from ideal simulation scenarios to complex real-world scenarios with array imperfections. By leveraging prior knowledge from ideal simulation data, the proposed transfer learning framework significantly improves deep learning-based DOA estimation performance in the presence of array imperfections, without the need for extensive real-world data. Finally, we incorporate visualization and evaluation metrics to assess the performance of DOA estimation algorithms, which allow for a more thorough evaluation of algorithms and further validate the proposed method. Our code can be accessed at https://github.com/zzb-nice/DOA_est_Master.

preprint2025arXiv

ProDM: Synthetic Reality-driven Property-aware Progressive Diffusion Model for Coronary Calcium Motion Correction in Non-gated Chest CT

Coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring from chest CT is a well-established tool to stratify and refine clinical cardiovascular disease risk estimation. CAC quantification relies on the accurate delineation of calcified lesions, but is oftentimes affected by artifacts introduced by cardiac and respiratory motion. ECG-gated cardiac CTs substantially reduce motion artifacts, but their use in population screening and routine imaging remains limited due to gating requirements and lack of insurance coverage. Although identification of incidental CAC from non-gated chest CT is increasingly considered for it offers an accessible and widely available alternative, this modality is limited by more severe motion artifacts. We present ProDM (Property-aware Progressive Correction Diffusion Model), a generative diffusion framework that restores motion-free calcified lesions from non-gated CTs. ProDM introduces three key components: (1) a CAC motion simulation data engine that synthesizes realistic non-gated acquisitions with diverse motion trajectories directly from cardiac-gated CTs, enabling supervised training without paired data; (2) a property-aware learning strategy incorporating calcium-specific priors through a differentiable calcium consistency loss to preserve lesion integrity; and (3) a progressive correction scheme that reduces artifacts gradually across diffusion steps to enhance stability and calcium fidelity. Experiments on real patient datasets show that ProDM significantly improves CAC scoring accuracy, spatial lesion fidelity, and risk stratification performance compared with several baselines. A reader study on real non-gated scans further confirms that ProDM suppresses motion artifacts and improves clinical usability. These findings highlight the potential of progressive, property-aware frameworks for reliable CAC quantification from routine chest CT imaging.

preprint2024arXiv

A Data-Driven Modeling and Motion Control of Heavy-Load Hydraulic Manipulators via Reversible Transformation

This work proposes a data-driven modeling and the corresponding hybrid motion control framework for unmanned and automated operation of industrial heavy-load hydraulic manipulator. Rather than the direct use of a neural network black box, we construct a reversible nonlinear model by using multilayer perceptron to approximate dynamics in the physical integrator chain system after reversible transformations. The reversible nonlinear model is trained offline using supervised learning techniques, and the data are obtained from simulations or experiments. Entire hybrid motion control framework consists of the model inversion controller that compensates for the nonlinear dynamics and proportional-derivative controller that enhances the robustness. The stability is proved with Lyapunov theory. Co-simulation and Experiments show the effectiveness of proposed modeling and hybrid control framework. With a commercial 39-ton class hydraulic excavator for motion control tasks, the root mean square error of trajectory tracking error decreases by at least 50\% compared to traditional control methods. In addition, by analyzing the system model, the proposed framework can be rapidly applied to different control plants.

preprint2023arXiv

Smart-Badge: A wearable badge with multi-modal sensors for kitchen activity recognition

Human health is closely associated with their daily behavior and environment. However, keeping a healthy lifestyle is still challenging for most people as it is difficult to recognize their living behaviors and identify their surrounding situations to take appropriate action. Human activity recognition is a promising approach to building a behavior model of users, by which users can get feedback about their habits and be encouraged to develop a healthier lifestyle. In this paper, we present a smart light wearable badge with six kinds of sensors, including an infrared array sensor MLX90640 offering privacy-preserving, low-cost, and non-invasive features, to recognize daily activities in a realistic unmodified kitchen environment. A multi-channel convolutional neural network (MC-CNN) based on data and feature fusion methods is applied to classify 14 human activities associated with potentially unhealthy habits. Meanwhile, we evaluate the impact of the infrared array sensor on the recognition accuracy of these activities. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed work to detect the 14 activities performed by ten volunteers with an average accuracy of 92.44 % and an F1 score of 88.27 %.

preprint2022arXiv

ContraReg: Contrastive Learning of Multi-modality Unsupervised Deformable Image Registration

Establishing voxelwise semantic correspondence across distinct imaging modalities is a foundational yet formidable computer vision task. Current multi-modality registration techniques maximize hand-crafted inter-domain similarity functions, are limited in modeling nonlinear intensity-relationships and deformations, and may require significant re-engineering or underperform on new tasks, datasets, and domain pairs. This work presents ContraReg, an unsupervised contrastive representation learning approach to multi-modality deformable registration. By projecting learned multi-scale local patch features onto a jointly learned inter-domain embedding space, ContraReg obtains representations useful for non-rigid multi-modality alignment. Experimentally, ContraReg achieves accurate and robust results with smooth and invertible deformations across a series of baselines and ablations on a neonatal T1-T2 brain MRI registration task with all methods validated over a wide range of deformation regularization strengths.

preprint2022arXiv

DSFormer: A Dual-domain Self-supervised Transformer for Accelerated Multi-contrast MRI Reconstruction

Multi-contrast MRI (MC-MRI) captures multiple complementary imaging modalities to aid in radiological decision-making. Given the need for lowering the time cost of multiple acquisitions, current deep accelerated MRI reconstruction networks focus on exploiting the redundancy between multiple contrasts. However, existing works are largely supervised with paired data and/or prohibitively expensive fully-sampled MRI sequences. Further, reconstruction networks typically rely on convolutional architectures which are limited in their capacity to model long-range interactions and may lead to suboptimal recovery of fine anatomical detail. To these ends, we present a dual-domain self-supervised transformer (DSFormer) for accelerated MC-MRI reconstruction. DSFormer develops a deep conditional cascade transformer (DCCT) consisting of several cascaded Swin transformer reconstruction networks (SwinRN) trained under two deep conditioning strategies to enable MC-MRI information sharing. We further present a dual-domain (image and k-space) self-supervised learning strategy for DCCT to alleviate the costs of acquiring fully sampled training data. DSFormer generates high-fidelity reconstructions which experimentally outperform current fully-supervised baselines. Moreover, we find that DSFormer achieves nearly the same performance when trained either with full supervision or with our proposed dual-domain self-supervision.

preprint2022arXiv

Estimation of 3D Body Shape and Clothing Measurements from Frontal- and Side-view Images

The estimation of 3D human body shape and clothing measurements is crucial for virtual try-on and size recommendation problems in the fashion industry but has always been a challenging problem due to several conditions, such as lack of publicly available realistic datasets, ambiguity in multiple camera resolutions, and the undefinable human shape space. Existing works proposed various solutions to these problems but could not succeed in the industry adaptation because of complexity and restrictions. To solve the complexity and challenges, in this paper, we propose a simple yet effective architecture to estimate both shape and measures from frontal- and side-view images. We utilize silhouette segmentation from the two multi-view images and implement an auto-encoder network to learn low-dimensional features from segmented silhouettes. Then, we adopt a kernel-based regularized regression module to estimate the body shape and measurements. The experimental results show that the proposed method provides competitive results on the synthetic dataset, NOMO-3d-400-scans Dataset, and RGB Images of humans captured in different cameras.

preprint2022arXiv

Magnetic Field Based Hand Tracking

Sensor-based 3D hand tracking is still challenging despite the massive exploration of different sensing modalities in the past decades. This work describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel induced magnetic field-based 3D hand tracking system, aiming to address the shortcomings of existing approaches and supply an alternative solution. This system is composed of a set of transmitters for the magnetic field generation, a receiver for field strength sensing, and the Zigbee units for synchronization. In more detail, the transmitters generate the oscillating magnetic fields with a registered sequence, the receiver senses the strength of the induced magnetic field by a customized three axes coil, which is configured as the LC oscillator with the same oscillating frequency so that an induced current shows up when the receiver is located in the field of the generated magnetic field. Five scenarios are explored to evaluate the performance of the proposed system in hand tracking regarding the transmitters deployment: "in front of a whiteboard", "above a table", "in front of and in a shelf", "in front of the waist and chest", and "around the waist". The true-range multilateration method is used to calculate the coordinates of the hand in 3D space. Compared with the ground truth collected by a commercial ultrasound positioning system, the presented magnetic field-based system shows a robust accuracy of around ten centimeters with the transmitters deployed both off-body and on-body(in front of waist and chest), which indicates the feasibility of the proposed sensing modality in 3D hand tracking.

preprint2022arXiv

Targeted k-node Collapse Problem: Towards Understanding the Robustness of Local k-core Structure

The concept of k-core, which indicates the largest induced subgraph where each node has k or more neighbors, plays a significant role in measuring the cohesiveness and the engagement of a network, and it is exploited in diverse applications, e.g., network analysis, anomaly detection, community detection, etc. Recent works have demonstrated the vulnerability of k-core under malicious perturbations which focuses on removing the minimal number of edges to make a whole k-core structure collapse. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no existing research concentrating on how many edges should be removed at least to make an arbitrary node in k-core collapse. Therefore, in this paper, we make the first attempt to study the Targeted k-node Collapse Problem (TNCP) with four novel contributions. Firstly, we offer the general definition of TNCP problem with the proof of its NP-hardness. Secondly, in order to address the TNCP problem, we propose a heuristic algorithm named TNC and its improved version named ATNC for implementations on large-scale networks. After that, the experiments on 16 real-world networks across various domains verify the superiority of our proposed algorithms over 4 baseline methods along with detailed comparisons and analyses. Finally, the significance of TNCP problem for precisely evaluating the resilience of k-core structures in networks is validated.

preprint2022arXiv

Unsupervised inter-frame motion correction for whole-body dynamic PET using convolutional long short-term memory in a convolutional neural network

Subject motion in whole-body dynamic PET introduces inter-frame mismatch and seriously impacts parametric imaging. Traditional non-rigid registration methods are generally computationally intense and time-consuming. Deep learning approaches are promising in achieving high accuracy with fast speed, but have yet been investigated with consideration for tracer distribution changes or in the whole-body scope. In this work, we developed an unsupervised automatic deep learning-based framework to correct inter-frame body motion. The motion estimation network is a convolutional neural network with a combined convolutional long short-term memory layer, fully utilizing dynamic temporal features and spatial information. Our dataset contains 27 subjects each under a 90-min FDG whole-body dynamic PET scan. With 9-fold cross-validation, compared with both traditional and deep learning baselines, we demonstrated that the proposed network obtained superior performance in enhanced qualitative and quantitative spatial alignment between parametric $K_{i}$ and $V_{b}$ images and in significantly reduced parametric fitting error. We also showed the potential of the proposed motion correction method for impacting downstream analysis of the estimated parametric images, improving the ability to distinguish malignant from benign hypermetabolic regions of interest. Once trained, the motion estimation inference time of our proposed network was around 460 times faster than the conventional registration baseline, showing its potential to be easily applied in clinical settings.

preprint2021arXiv

Centralized and Distributed Age of Information Minimization with non-linear Aging Functions in the Internet of Things

Resource management in Internet of Things (IoT) systems is a major challenge due to the massive scale and heterogeneity of the IoT system. For instance, most IoT applications require timely delivery of collected information, which is a key challenge for the IoT. In this paper, novel centralized and distributed resource allocation schemes are proposed to enable IoT devices to share limited communication resources and to transmit IoT messages in a timely manner. In the considered system, the timeliness of information is captured using non-linear age of information (AoI) metrics that can naturally quantify the freshness of information. To model the inherent heterogeneity of the IoT system, the non-linear aging functions are defined in terms of IoT device types and message content. To minimize AoI, the proposed resource management schemes allocate the limited communication resources considering AoI. In particular, the proposed centralized scheme enables the base station to learn the device types and to determine aging functions. Moreover, the proposed distributed scheme enables the devices to share the limited communication resources based on available information on other devices and their AoI. The convergence of the proposed distributed scheme is proved, and the effectiveness in reducing the AoI with partial information is analyzed. Simulation results show that the proposed centralized scheme achieves significantly lower average instantaneous AoI when compared to simple centralized allocation without learning, while the proposed distributed scheme achieves significantly lower average instantaneous AoI when compared to random allocation. The results also show that the proposed centralized scheme outperforms the proposed distributed scheme in almost all cases, but the distributed approach is more viable for a massive IoT.

preprint2020arXiv

A deep learning-facilitated radiomics solution for the prediction of lung lesion shrinkage in non-small cell lung cancer trials

Herein we propose a deep learning-based approach for the prediction of lung lesion response based on radiomic features extracted from clinical CT scans of patients in non-small cell lung cancer trials. The approach starts with the classification of lung lesions from the set of primary and metastatic lesions at various anatomic locations. Focusing on the lung lesions, we perform automatic segmentation to extract their 3D volumes. Radiomic features are then extracted from the lesion on the pre-treatment scan and the first follow-up scan to predict which lesions will shrink at least 30% in diameter during treatment (either Pembrolizumab or combinations of chemotherapy and Pembrolizumab), which is defined as a partial response by the Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors (RECIST) guidelines. A 5-fold cross validation on the training set led to an AUC of 0.84 +/- 0.03, and the prediction on the testing dataset reached AUC of 0.73 +/- 0.02 for the outcome of 30% diameter shrinkage.

preprint2020arXiv

Age of Information Analysis for Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

Timely information updates are critical to time-sensitive applications in networked monitoring and control systems. In this paper, the problem of real-time status update is considered for a cognitive radio network (CRN), in which the secondary user (SU) can relay the status packets from the primary user (PU) to the destination. In the considered CRN, the SU has opportunities to access the spectrum owned by the PU to send its own status packets to the destination. The freshness of information is measured by the age of information (AoI) metric. The problem of minimizing the average AoI and energy consumption by developing new optimal status update and packet relaying schemes for the SU is addressed under an average AoI constraint for the PU. This problem is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). The monotonic and decomposable properties of the value function are characterized and then used to show that the optimal update and relaying policy is threshold-based with respect to the AoI of the SU. These structures reveal a tradeoff between the AoI of the SU and the energy consumption as well as between the AoI of the SU and the AoI of the PU. An asymptotically optimal algorithm is proposed. Numerical results are then used to show the effectiveness of the proposed policy.

preprint2020arXiv

DuDoRNet: Learning a Dual-Domain Recurrent Network for Fast MRI Reconstruction with Deep T1 Prior

MRI with multiple protocols is commonly used for diagnosis, but it suffers from a long acquisition time, which yields the image quality vulnerable to say motion artifacts. To accelerate, various methods have been proposed to reconstruct full images from under-sampled k-space data. However, these algorithms are inadequate for two main reasons. Firstly, aliasing artifacts generated in the image domain are structural and non-local, so that sole image domain restoration is insufficient. Secondly, though MRI comprises multiple protocols during one exam, almost all previous studies only employ the reconstruction of an individual protocol using a highly distorted undersampled image as input, leaving the use of fully-sampled short protocol (say T1) as complementary information highly underexplored. In this work, we address the above two limitations by proposing a Dual Domain Recurrent Network (DuDoRNet) with deep T1 prior embedded to simultaneously recover k-space and images for accelerating the acquisition of MRI with a long imaging protocol. Specifically, a Dilated Residual Dense Network (DRDNet) is customized for dual domain restorations from undersampled MRI data. Extensive experiments on different sampling patterns and acceleration rates demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, and can reconstruct high-quality MRI.

preprint2020arXiv

Limited View Tomographic Reconstruction Using a Deep Recurrent Framework with Residual Dense Spatial-Channel Attention Network and Sinogram Consistency

Limited view tomographic reconstruction aims to reconstruct a tomographic image from a limited number of sinogram or projection views arising from sparse view or limited angle acquisitions that reduce radiation dose or shorten scanning time. However, such a reconstruction suffers from high noise and severe artifacts due to the incompleteness of sinogram. To derive quality reconstruction, previous state-of-the-art methods use UNet-like neural architectures to directly predict the full view reconstruction from limited view data; but these methods leave the deep network architecture issue largely intact and cannot guarantee the consistency between the sinogram of the reconstructed image and the acquired sinogram, leading to a non-ideal reconstruction. In this work, we propose a novel recurrent reconstruction framework that stacks the same block multiple times. The recurrent block consists of a custom-designed residual dense spatial-channel attention network. Further, we develop a sinogram consistency layer interleaved in our recurrent framework in order to ensure that the sampled sinogram is consistent with the sinogram of the intermediate outputs of the recurrent blocks. We evaluate our methods on two datasets. Our experimental results on AAPM Low Dose CT Grand Challenge datasets demonstrate that our algorithm achieves a consistent and significant improvement over the existing state-of-the-art neural methods on both limited angle reconstruction (over 5dB better in terms of PSNR) and sparse view reconstruction (about 4dB better in term of PSNR). In addition, our experimental results on Deep Lesion datasets demonstrate that our method is able to generate high-quality reconstruction for 8 major lesion types.

preprint2020arXiv

Minimum Age of Information in the Internet of Things with Non-uniform Status Packet Sizes

In this paper, a real-time Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring system is considered in which the IoT devices are scheduled to sample underlying physical processes and send the status updates to a common destination. In a real-world IoT, due to the possibly different dynamics of each physical process, the sizes of the status updates for different devices are often different and each status update typically requires multiple transmission slots. By taking into account such multi-time slot transmissions with non-uniform sizes of the status updates under noisy channels, the problem of joint device scheduling and status sampling is studied in order to minimize the average age of information (AoI) at the destination. This stochastic problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). The monotonicity of the value function of the MDP is characterized and then used to show that the optimal scheduling and sampling policy is threshold-based with respect to the AoI at each device. To overcome the curse of dimensionality, a low-complexity suboptimal policy is proposed through a semi-randomized base policy and linear approximated value functions. The proposed suboptimal policy is shown to exhibit a similar structure to the optimal policy, which provides a structural base for its effective performance. A structure-aware algorithm is then developed to obtain the suboptimal policy. The analytical results are further extended to the IoT monitoring system with random status update arrivals, for which, the optimal scheduling and sampling policy is also shown to be threshold-based with the AoI at each device. Simulation results illustrate the structures of the optimal policy and show a near-optimal AoI performance resulting from the proposed suboptimal solution approach.

preprint2020arXiv

On extremal leaf status and internal status of trees

For a vertex $u$ of a tree $T$, the leaf (internal, respectively) status of $u$ is the sum of the distances from $u$ to all leaves (internal vertices, respectively) of $T$. The minimum (maximum, respectively) leaf status of a tree $T$ is the minimum (maximum, respectively) leaf statuses of all vertices of $T$. The minimum (maximum, respectively) internal status of a tree $T$ is the minimum (maximum, respectively) internal statuses of all vertices of $T$. We give the smallest and largest values for the minimum leaf status, maximum leaf status, minimum internal status, and maximum internal status of a tree and characterize the extremal cases. We also discuss these parameters of a tree with given diameter or maximum degree.

preprint2020arXiv

On the Age of Information in Internet of Things Systems with Correlated Devices

In this paper, a real-time Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring system is considered in which multiple IoT devices must transmit timely updates on the status information of a common underlying physical process to a common destination. In particular, a real-world IoT scenario is considered in which multiple (partially) observed status information by different IoT devices are required at the destination, so that the real-time status of the physical process can be properly re-constructed. By taking into account such correlated status information at the IoT devices, the problem of IoT device scheduling is studied in order to jointly minimize the average age of information (AoI) at the destination and the average energy cost at the IoT devices. Particularly, two types of IoT devices are considered: Type-I devices whose status updates randomly arrive and type-II devices whose status updates can be generated-at-will with an associated sampling cost. This stochastic problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). The optimal scheduling policy is shown to be threshold-based with respect to the AoI at the destination, and the threshold is non-increasing with the channel condition of each device. For a special case in which all devices are type-II, the original MDP can be reduced to an MDP with much smaller state and action spaces. The optimal policy is further shown to have a similar threshold-based structure and the threshold is non-decreasing with an energy cost function of the devices. Simulation results illustrate the structure of the optimal policy and show the effectiveness of the optimal policy compared with a myopic baseline policy.

preprint2020arXiv

Risk-Aware Optimization of Age of Information in the Internet of Things

Minimization of the expected value of age of information (AoI) is a risk-neutral approach, and it thus cannot capture rare, yet critical, events with potentially large AoI. In order to capture the effect of these events, in this paper, the notion of conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) is proposed as an effective coherent risk measure that is suitable for minimization of AoI for real-time IoT status updates. In the considered monitoring system, an IoT device monitors a physical process and sends the status updates to a remote receiver with an updating cost. The optimal status update process is designed to jointly minimize the AoI at the receiver, the CVaR of the AoI at the receiver, and the energy cost. This stochastic optimization problem is formulated as an infinite horizon discounted risk-aware Markov decision process (MDP), which is computationally intractable due to the time inconsistency of the CVaR. By exploiting the special properties of coherent risk measures, the risk-aware MDP is reduced to a standard MDP with an augmented state space, for which we derive the optimal stationary policy using dynamic programming. In particular, the optimal history-dependent policy of the risk-aware MDP is shown to depend on the history only through the augmented system states and can be readily constructed using the optimal stationary policy of the augmented MDP. The proposed solution is shown to be computationally tractable and able to minimize the AoI in real-time IoT monitoring systems in a risk-aware manner.

preprint2020arXiv

Semiparametric Testing with Highly Persistent Predictors

We address the issue of semiparametric efficiency in the bivariate regression problem with a highly persistent predictor, where the joint distribution of the innovations is regarded an infinite-dimensional nuisance parameter. Using a structural representation of the limit experiment and exploiting invariance relationships therein, we construct invariant point-optimal tests for the regression coefficient of interest. This approach naturally leads to a family of feasible tests based on the component-wise ranks of the innovations that can gain considerable power relative to existing tests under non-Gaussian innovation distributions, while behaving equivalently under Gaussianity. When an i.i.d. assumption on the innovations is appropriate for the data at hand, our tests exploit the efficiency gains possible. Moreover, we show by simulation that our test remains well behaved under some forms of conditional heteroskedasticity.

preprint2020arXiv

Simultaneous Denoising and Motion Estimation for Low-dose Gated PET using a Siamese Adversarial Network with Gate-to-Gate Consistency Learning

Gating is commonly used in PET imaging to reduce respiratory motion blurring and facilitate more sophisticated motion correction methods. In the applications of low dose PET, however, reducing injection dose causes increased noise and reduces signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), subsequently corrupting the motion estimation/correction steps, causing inferior image quality. To tackle these issues, we first propose a Siamese adversarial network (SAN) that can efficiently recover high dose gated image volume from low dose gated image volume. To ensure the appearance consistency between the recovered gated volumes, we then utilize a pre-trained motion estimation network incorporated into SAN that enables the constraint of gate-to-gate (G2G) consistency. With high-quality recovered gated volumes, gate-to-gate motion vectors can be simultaneously outputted from the motion estimation network. Comprehensive evaluations on a low dose gated PET dataset of 29 subjects demonstrate that our method can effectively recover the low dose gated PET volumes, with an average PSNR of 37.16 and SSIM of 0.97, and simultaneously generate robust motion estimation that could benefit subsequent motion corrections.

preprint2019arXiv

Alpha Decay to Doubly Magic Core in Quartetting Wave Function Approach

We present a microscopic calculation of $α$-cluster formation in heavy nuclei $^{104}$Te ($α$+$^{100}$Sn), $^{212}$Po ($α$+$^{208}$Pb) and their neighbors $^{102}$Sn, $^{102}$Te, $^{210}$Pb and $^{210}$Po by using the quartetting wave function approach. Improving the local density approximation, the shell structure of the core nucleus is considered, and the center-of-mass (c.o.m.) effective potential for the quartet is obtained self-consistently from the shell model wavefunctions. The $α$-cluster formation and decay probabilities are obtained by solving the bound-state of the c.o.m. motion of the quartet and the scattering state of the formed $α$-cluster in the Gurvitz approach. Striking shell effects on the $α$-cluster formation probabilities are analyzed for magic numbers 50, 82 and 126. The computed $α$-decay half-lives of these special nuclei are compared with the newest experimental data.

preprint2018arXiv

Semiparametrically Point-Optimal Hybrid Rank Tests for Unit Roots

We propose a new class of unit root tests that exploits invariance properties in the Locally Asymptotically Brownian Functional limit experiment associated to the unit root model. The invariance structures naturally suggest tests that are based on the ranks of the increments of the observations, their average, and an assumed reference density for the innovations. The tests are semiparametric in the sense that they are valid, i.e., have the correct (asymptotic) size, irrespective of the true innovation density. For a correctly specified reference density, our test is point-optimal and nearly efficient. For arbitrary reference densities, we establish a Chernoff-Savage type result, i.e., our test performs as well as commonly used tests under Gaussian innovations but has improved power under other, e.g., fat-tailed or skewed, innovation distributions. To avoid nonparametric estimation, we propose a simplified version of our test that exhibits the same asymptotic properties, except for the Chernoff-Savage result that we are only able to demonstrate by means of simulations.

preprint2016arXiv

ARPES study of the epitaxially grown topological crystalline insulator SnTe(111)

SnTe is a prototypical topological crystalline insulator, in which the gapless surface state is protected by a crystal symmetry. The hallmark of the topological properties in SnTe is the Dirac cones projected to the surfaces with mirror symmetry, stemming from the band inversion near the L points of its bulk Brillouin zone, which can be measured by angle-resolved photoemission. We have obtained the (111) surface of SnTe film by molecular beam epitaxy on BaF2(111) substrate. Photon-energy-dependence of in situ angle-resolved photoemission, covering multiple Brillouin zones in the direction perpendicular tothe (111) surface, demonstrate the projected Dirac cones at the Gamma_bar and M_bar points of the surface Brillouinzone. In addition, we observe a Dirac-cone-like band structure at the Gamma point of the bulk Brillouin zone,whose Dirac energy is largely different from those at the Gamma_bar and M_bar points.

preprint2016arXiv

Breathing-like excited state of the Hoyle state in ${^{12}{\rm C}}$

The existence of the $0_3^+$ and $0_4^+$ states around 10 MeV excitation energy in ${^{12}{\rm C}}$ is confirmed by a fully microscopic 3$α$ cluster model. Firstly, a GCM (generator coordinate method) calculation is performed by superposing optimized 2$α$+$α$ THSR (Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke) wave functions with the radius-constraint method. The obtained two excited $0^+$ states above the Hoyle state are consistent with the recently observed states by experiment. Secondly, a variational calculation using the single 2$α$+$α$ THSR wave function orthogonalized to the ground and Hoyle states is made and it also supports the existence of the $0_3^+$ state obtained by the GCM calculation. The analysis of the obtained $0_3^+$ state is made by studying its 2$α$-$α$ reduced width amplitude, its 2$α$ correlation function, and the large monopole matrix element between this state and the Hoyle state, which shows that this $0_3^+$ state is a breathing-like excited state of the Hoyle state. This character of the $0_3^+$ state is very different from the $0_4^+$ state which seems to have a bent-arm 3$α$ structure.

preprint2016arXiv

Caching Incentive Design in Wireless D2D Networks: A Stackelberg Game Approach

Caching in wireless device-to-device (D2D) networks can be utilized to offload data traffic during peak times. However, the design of incentive mechanisms is challenging due to the heterogeneous preference and selfish nature of user terminals (UTs). In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism in which the base station (BS) rewards those UTs that share contents with others using D2D communication. We study the cost minimization problem for the BS and the utility maximization problem for each UT. In particular, the BS determines the rewarding policy to minimize his total cost, while each UT aims to maximize his utility by choosing his caching policy. We formulate the conflict among UTs and the tension between the BS and the UTs as a Stackelberg game. We show the existence of the equilibrium and propose an iterative gradient algorithm (IGA) to obtain the Stackelberg Equilibrium. Extensive simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed caching scheme and comparisons are drawn with several baseline caching schemes with no incentives. Numerical results show that the caching scheme under our incentive mechanism outperforms other schemes in terms of the BS serving cost and the utilities of the UTs.

preprint2016arXiv

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

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

preprint2016arXiv

Optimal Dynamic Multicast Scheduling for Cache-Enabled Content-Centric Wireless Networks

Caching and multicasting at base stations are two promising approaches to support massive content delivery over wireless networks. However, existing scheduling designs do not make full use of the advantages of the two approaches. In this paper, we consider the optimal dynamic multicast scheduling to jointly minimize the average delay, power, and fetching costs for cache-enabled content-centric wireless networks. We formulate this stochastic optimization problem as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). It is well-known to be a difficult problem due to the curse of dimensionality, and there generally only exist numerical solutions. By using relative value iteration algorithm and the special structures of the request queue dynamics, we analyze the properties of the value function and the state-action cost function of the MDP for both the uniform and nonuniform channel cases. Based on these properties, we show that the optimal policy, which is adaptive to the request queue state, has a switch structure in the uniform case and a partial switch structure in the nonuniform case. Moreover, in the uniform case with two contents, we show that the switch curve is monotonically non-decreasing. Then, by exploiting these structural properties of the optimal policy, we propose two low-complexity optimal algorithms. Motivated by the switch structures of the optimal policy, to further reduce the complexity, we also propose a low-complexity suboptimal policy, which possesses similar structural properties to the optimal policy, and develop a low-complexity algorithm to compute this policy.

preprint2016arXiv

Stochastic Content-Centric Multicast Scheduling for Cache-Enabled Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Caching at small base stations (SBSs) has demonstrated significant benefits in alleviating the backhaul requirement in heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets). While many existing works focus on what contents to cache at each SBS, an equally important problem is what contents to deliver so as to satisfy dynamic user demands given the cache status. In this paper, we study optimal content delivery in cache-enabled HetNets by taking into account the inherent multicast capability of wireless medium. We consider stochastic content multicast scheduling to jointly minimize the average network delay and power costs under a multiple access constraint. We establish a content-centric request queue model and formulate this stochastic optimization problem as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). By using \emph{relative value iteration} and special properties of the request queue dynamics, we characterize some properties of the value function of the MDP. Based on these properties, we show that the optimal multicast scheduling policy is of threshold type. Then, we propose a structure-aware optimal algorithm to obtain the optimal policy. We also propose a low-complexity suboptimal policy, which possesses similar structural properties to the optimal policy, and develop a low-complexity algorithm to obtain this policy.

preprint2015arXiv

Alpha Decay Width of $^{212}$Po from a quartetting wave function approach

A microscopic calculation of $α$-cluster preformation probability and $α$ decay width in the typical $α$ emitter $^{212}$Po is presented. Results are obtained by improving a recent approach to describe $α$ preformation in $^{212}$Po [Phys. Rev. C 90, 034304 (2014)] implementing four-nucleon correlations (quartetting). Using the actually measured density distribution of the $^{208}$ Pb core, the calculated alpha decay width of $^{212}$Po agrees fairly well with the measured one.

preprint2015arXiv

Discovery of a Weyl Semimetal in non-Centrosymmetric Compound TaAs

Three-dimensional (3D) topological Weyl semimetals (TWSs) represent a novel state of quantum matter with unusual electronic structures that resemble both a "3D graphene" and a topological insulator by possessing pairs of Weyl points (through which the electronic bands disperse linearly along all three momentum directions) connected by topological surface states, forming the unique "Fermi-arc" type Fermi-surface (FS). Each Weyl point is chiral and contains half of the degrees of freedom of a Dirac point, and can be viewed as a magnetic monopole in the momentum space. Here, by performing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy on non-centrosymmetric compound TaAs, we observed its complete band structures including the unique "Fermi-arc" FS and linear bulk band dispersion across the Weyl points, in excellent agreement with the theoretical calculations. This discovery not only confirms TaAs as the first 3D TWS, but also provides an ideal platform for realizing exotic physical phenomena (e.g. negative magnetoresistance, chiral magnetic effects and quantum anomalous Hall effect) which may also lead to novel future applications.

preprint2015arXiv

Pathwise Random Periodic Solutions of Stochastic Differential Equations

In this paper, we study the existence of random periodic solutions for semilinear stochastic differential equations. We identify these as the solutions of coupled forward-backward infinite horizon stochastic integral equations in general cases. We then use the argument of the relative compactness of Wiener-Sobolev spaces in $C^0([0, T], L^2(Ω))$ and generalized Schauder's fixed point theorem to prove the existence of a solution of the coupled stochastic forward-backward infinite horizon integral equations. The condition on $F$ is then further weakened by applying the coupling method of forward and backward Gronwall inequalities. The results are also valid for stationary solutions as a special case when the period $τ$ can be an arbitrary number.\

preprint2015arXiv

Stochastic Throughput Optimization for Two-hop Systems with Finite Relay Buffers

Optimal queueing control of multi-hop networks remains a challenging problem even in the simplest scenarios. In this paper, we consider a two-hop half-duplex relaying system with random channel connectivity. The relay is equipped with a finite buffer. We focus on stochastic link selection and transmission rate control to maximize the average system throughput subject to a half-duplex constraint. We formulate this stochastic optimization problem as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP), which is well-known to be a difficult problem. By using sample-path analysis and exploiting the specific problem structure, we first obtain an \emph{equivalent Bellman equation} with reduced state and action spaces. By using \emph{relative value iteration algorithm}, we analyze the properties of the value function of the MDP. Then, we show that the optimal policy has a threshold-based structure by characterizing the \emph{supermodularity} in the optimal control. Based on the threshold-based structure and Markov chain theory, we further simplify the original complex stochastic optimization problem to a static optimization problem over a small discrete feasible set and propose a low-complexity algorithm to solve the simplified static optimization problem by making use of its special structure. Furthermore, we obtain the closed-form optimal threshold for the symmetric case. The analytical results obtained in this paper also provide design insights for two-hop relaying systems with multiple relays equipped with finite relay buffers.

preprint2014arXiv

A Semiparametric Bayesian Model for Detecting Synchrony Among Multiple Neurons

We propose a scalable semiparametric Bayesian model to capture dependencies among multiple neurons by detecting their co-firing (possibly with some lag time) patterns over time. After discretizing time so there is at most one spike at each interval, the resulting sequence of 1's (spike) and 0's (silence) for each neuron is modeled using the logistic function of a continuous latent variable with a Gaussian process prior. For multiple neurons, the corresponding marginal distributions are coupled to their joint probability distribution using a parametric copula model. The advantages of our approach are as follows: the nonparametric component (i.e., the Gaussian process model) provides a flexible framework for modeling the underlying firing rates; the parametric component (i.e., the copula model) allows us to make inference regarding both contemporaneous and lagged relationships among neurons; using the copula model, we construct multivariate probabilistic models by separating the modeling of univariate marginal distributions from the modeling of dependence structure among variables; our method is easy to implement using a computationally efficient sampling algorithm that can be easily extended to high dimensional problems. Using simulated data, we show that our approach could correctly capture temporal dependencies in firing rates and identify synchronous neurons. We also apply our model to spike train data obtained from prefrontal cortical areas in rat's brain.

preprint2014arXiv

Bound clusters on top of doubly magic nuclei

An effective $α$ particle equation is derived for cases where an $α$ particle is formed on top of a doubly magic nucleus. As an example, we consider $^{212}$Po with the $α$ on top of the $^{208}$ Pb core. We will consider the core nucleus infinitely heavy, so that the $α$ particle moves with respect to a fixed center, i.e., recoil effects are neglected. The fully quantal solution of the problem is discussed. The approach is inspired by the THSR (Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke) wave function concept that has been successfully applied to light nuclei. Shell model calculations are improved by including four-particle ($α$-like) correlations that are of relevance when the matter density becomes low. In the region where the $α$-like cluster penetrates the core nucleus, the intrinsic bound state wave function transforms at a critical density into an unbound four-nucleon shell model state. Exploratory calculations for $^{212}$Po are presented. Such preformed cluster states are only hardly described by shell model calculations. Reasons for different physics behavior of an $α$-like cluster with respect to a deuteron-like cluster are discussed.

preprint2014arXiv

Direct observation of the transition from indirect to direct bandgap in atomically thin epitaxial MoSe2

Quantum systems in confined geometries are host to novel physical phenomena. Examples include quantum Hall systems in semiconductors and Dirac electrons in graphene. Interest in such systems has also been intensified by the recent discovery of a large enhancement in photoluminescence quantum efficiency and a potential route to valleytronics in atomically thin layers of transition metal dichalcogenides, MX2 (M = Mo, W; X = S, Se, Te), which are closely related to the indirect to direct bandgap transition in monolayers. Here, we report the first direct observation of the transition from indirect to direct bandgap in monolayer samples by using angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy on high-quality thin films of MoSe2 with variable thickness, grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The band structure measured experimentally indicates a stronger tendency of monolayer MoSe2 towards a direct bandgap, as well as a larger gap size, than theoretically predicted. Moreover, our finding of a significant spin-splitting of 180 meV at the valence band maximum of a monolayer MoSe2 film could expand its possible application to spintronic devices.

preprint2014arXiv

Investigation of ${}^9$Be from nonlocalized clustering concept

The nonlocalized aspect of clustering, which is a new concept for self-conjugate nuclei, is extended for the investigation of the N{\not=}Z nucleus ${}^9$Be. A modified version of the THSR (Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke) wave function is introduced based on the container picture. It is found that the constructed negative-parity THSR wave function is very suitable for describing the cluster states of ${}^9$Be. Namely the nonlocalized clustering is shown to prevail in ${}^9$Be. The calculated binding energy and radius of ${}^9$Be are consistent with calculations in other models and with experimental values. The squared overlaps between the THSR wave function and the Brink+GCM wave function for the $3/2^-$ rotational band of ${}^9$Be are found to be near 96%. Furthermore, by showing the density distribution of the ground state of ${}^9$Be, the π-orbit structure is naturally reproduced by using this THSR wave function.

preprint2014arXiv

The container picture with two-alpha correlation for the ground state of $^{12}$C

It is shown that the single $0^+$ THSR (Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke) wave function which is extended to include 2$α$ correlation is almost completely equivalent to the 3$α$ wave function obtained as the full solution of 3$α$ cluster model. Their squared overlap is as high as 98\% while it is 93\% if the 2$α$ correlation is not included. This result implies that, by incorporating the 2$α$ correlation in the 3$α$ model, the ground state of $^{12}$C is describable in the container picture which is valid for the Hoyle state for which the 2$α$ correlation is weak and a single $0^+$ THSR wave function without 2$α$ correlation is almost completely equivalent to the full solution of 3$α$ cluster model.

preprint2014arXiv

Weak Localization Effects as Evidence for Bulk Quantization in Thin Films Bi2Se3

Strong spin-orbit coupling in topological insulators results in the ubiquitously observed weak antilocalization feature in their magnetoresistance. Here we present magnetoresistance measurements in ultra thin films of the topological insulator Bi_2Se_3, and show that in the 2D quantum limit, in which the topological insulator bulk becomes quantized, an additional negative magnetoresistance feature appears. Detailed analysis associates this feature with weak localization of the quantized bulk channels, providing thus evidence for this quantization. Examination of the dephasing fields at different temperatures indicates different scattering mechanism in the bulk vs the surface states.

preprint2013arXiv

Bounds for the spectral radius of nonnegative matrices

We give upper and lower bounds for the spectral radius of a nonnegative matrix by using its average 2-row sums, and characterize the equality cases if the matrix is irreducible. We also apply these bounds to various nonnegative matrices associated with a graph, including the adjacency matrix, the signless Laplacian matrix, the distance matrix, the distance signless Laplacian matrix, and the reciprocal distance matrix.

preprint2013arXiv

Nonlocalized cluster dynamics and nuclear molecular structure

A container picture is proposed for understanding cluster dynamics where the clusters make nonlocalized motion occupying the lowest orbit of the cluster mean-field potential characterized by the size parameter $``B"$ in the THSR (Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke) wave function. The nonlocalized cluster aspects of the inversion-doublet bands in $^{20}$Ne which have been considered as a typical manifestation of localized clustering are discussed. So far unexplained puzzling features of the THSR wave function, namely that after angular-momentum projection for two cluster systems the prolate THSR wave function is almost 100$\%$ equivalent to an oblate THSR wave function is clarified. It is shown that the true intrinsic two-cluster THSR configuration is nonetheless prolate. The proposal of the container picture is based on the fact that typical cluster systems, 2$α$, 3$α$, and $α$+$^{16}$O, are all well described by a single THSR wave function. It will be shown for the case of linear-chain states with two and three $α$-clusters as well as for the $α$+$^{16}$O system that localization is entirely of kinematical origin, that is, due to the inter-cluster Pauli repulsion. It is concluded that this feature is general for nuclear cluster states.

preprint2013arXiv

Nonlocalized Clustering: A New Concept in Nuclear Cluster Structure Physics

We investigate the $α$+\oo\ cluster structure in the inversion-doublet band ($K^π=0_{1}^\pm$) states of \nene\ with an angular-momentum-projected version of the Tohsaki-Horiuchi-Schuck-Röpke (THSR) wave function, which was successful "in its original form" for the description of, e.g., the famous Hoyle state. In contrast with the traditional view on clusters as localized objects, especially in inversion doublets, we find that these {\it single} THSR wave functions, which are based on the concept of nonlocalized clustering, can well describe the $K^π=0_1^-$ band and the $K^π=0_1^+$ band. For instance, they have 99.98% and 99.87% squared overlaps for $1^-$ and $3^- $ states (99.29%, 98.79% and 97.75% for $0^+, 2^+$ and $4^+$ states), respectively, with the corresponding exact solution of the $α$+\oo\ resonating group method. These astounding results shed a completely new light on the physics of low energy nuclear cluster states in nuclei: The clusters are nonlocalized and move around in the whole nuclear volume, only avoiding mutual overlap due to the Pauli blocking effect.

preprint2013arXiv

On spectral radius of strongly connected digraphs

We determine the digraphs which achieve the second, the third and the fourth minimum spectral radii respectively among strongly connected digraphs of order $n\ge 4$, and thus we answer affirmatively the problem whether the unique digraph which achieves the minimum spectral radius among all strongly connected bicyclic digraphs of order $n$ achieves the second minimum spectral radius among all strongly connected digraphs of order $n$ for $n\ge 4$ proposed in [H. Lin, J. Shu, A note on the spectral characterization of strongly connected bicyclic digraphs, Linear Algebra Appl. 436 (2012) 2524--2530]. We also discuss the strongly connected bicyclic digraphs with small and large spectral radii respectively.

preprint2013arXiv

Spherical Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Constrained Target Distributions

We propose a new Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for constrained target distributions. Our method first maps the $D$-dimensional constrained domain of parameters to the unit ball ${\bf B}_0^D(1)$. Then, it augments the resulting parameter space to the $D$-dimensional sphere, ${\bf S}^D$. The boundary of ${\bf B}_0^D(1)$ corresponds to the equator of ${\bf S}^D$. This change of domains enables us to implicitly handle the original constraints because while the sampler moves freely on the sphere, it proposes states that are within the constraints imposed on the original parameter space. To improve the computational efficiency of our algorithm, we split the Lagrangian dynamics into several parts such that a part of the dynamics can be handled analytically by finding the geodesic flow on the sphere. We apply our method to several examples including truncated Gaussian, Bayesian Lasso, Bayesian bridge regression, and a copula model for identifying synchrony among multiple neurons. Our results show that the proposed method can provide a natural and efficient framework for handling several types of constraints on target distributions.

preprint2012arXiv

Period Distribution of Inversive Pseudorandom Number Generators Over Finite Fields

In this paper, we focus on analyzing the period distribution of the inversive pseudorandom number generators (IPRNGs) over finite field $({\rm Z}_{N},+,\times)$, where $N>3$ is a prime. The sequences generated by the IPRNGs are transformed to 2-dimensional linear feedback shift register (LFSR) sequences. By employing the generating function method and the finite field theory, the period distribution is obtained analytically. The analysis process also indicates how to choose the parameters and the initial values such that the IPRNGs fit specific periods. The analysis results show that there are many small periods if $N$ is not chosen properly. The experimental examples show the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis.

preprint2012arXiv

Period Distribution of Inversive Pseudorandom Number Generators Over Galois Rings

In 2009, Solé and Zinoviev (\emph{Eur. J. Combin.}, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 458-467, 2009) proposed an open problem of arithmetic interest to study the period of the inversive pseudorandom number generators (IPRNGs) and to give conditions bearing on $a, b$ to achieve maximal period, we focus on resolving this open problem. In this paper, the period distribution of the IPRNGs over the Galois ring $({\rm Z}_{p^{e}},+,\times)$ is considered, where $p>3$ is a prime and $e\geq 2$ is an integer. The IPRNGs are transformed to 2-dimensional linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) so that the analysis of the period distribution of the IPRNGs is transformed to the analysis of the period distribution of the LFSRs. Then, by employing some analytical approaches, the full information on the period distribution of the IPRNGs is obtained, which is to make exact statistics about the period of the IPRNGs then count the number of IPRNGs of a specific period when $a$, $b$ and $x_{0}$ traverse all elements in ${\rm Z}_{p^{e}}$. The analysis process also indicates how to choose the parameters and the initial values such that the IPRNGs fit specific periods.

preprint2011arXiv

Electronic structure of BaNi$_2$As$_2$

BaNi$_2$As$_2$, with a first order phase transition around 131 K, is studied by the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The measured electronic structure is compared to the local density approximation calculations, revealing similar large electronlike bands around $\bar{M}$ and differences along $\barΓ$-$\bar{X}$. We further show that the electronic structure of BaNi$_2$As$_2$ is distinct from that of the sibling iron pnictides. Particularly, there is no signature of band folding, indicating no collinear SDW related magnetic ordering. Moreover, across the strong first order phase transition, the band shift exhibits a hysteresis, which is directly related to the significant lattice distortion in BaNi$_2$As$_2$.

preprint2011arXiv

Laplacian Estrada index of trees

Let $G$ be a simple graph with $n$ vertices and let $μ_1 \geqslant μ_2 \geqslant...\geqslant μ_{n - 1} \geqslant μ_n = 0$ be the eigenvalues of its Laplacian matrix. The Laplacian Estrada index of a graph $G$ is defined as $LEE (G) = \sum\limits_{i = 1}^n e^{μ_i}$. Using the recent connection between Estrada index of a line graph and Laplacian Estrada index, we prove that the path $P_n$ has minimal, while the star $S_n$ has maximal $LEE$ among trees on $n$ vertices. In addition, we find the unique tree with the second maximal Laplacian Estrada index.

preprint2011arXiv

On Distance Spectral Radius and Distance Energy of Graphs

For a connected graph, the distance spectral radius is the largest eigenvalue of its distance matrix, and the distance energy is defined as the sum of the absolute values of the eigenvalues of its distance matrix. We establish lower and upper bounds for the distance spectral radius of graphs and bipartite graphs, lower bounds for the distance energy of graphs, and characterize the extremal graphs. We also discuss upper bounds for the distance energy.

preprint2011arXiv

On sum of powers of Laplacian eigenvalues and Laplacian Estrada index of graphs

Let $G$ be a simple graph and $α$ a real number. The quantity $s_α(G)$ defined as the sum of the $α$-th power of the non-zero Laplacian eigenvalues of $G$ generalizes several concepts in the literature. The Laplacian Estrada index is a newly introduced graph invariant based on Laplacian eigenvalues. We establish bounds for $s_α$ and Laplacian Estrada index related to the degree sequences.

preprint2010arXiv

Circulant Arrays on Cyclic Subgroups of Finite Fields: Rank Analysis and Construction of Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

This paper consists of three parts. The first part presents a large class of new binary quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes with girth of at least 6 whose parity-check matrices are constructed based on cyclic subgroups of finite fields. Experimental results show that the codes constructed perform well over the binary-input AWGN channel with iterative decoding using the sum-product algorithm (SPA). The second part analyzes the ranks of the parity-check matrices of codes constructed based on finite fields with characteristic of 2 and gives combinatorial expressions for these ranks. The third part identifies a subclass of constructed QC-LDPC codes that have large minimum distances. Decoding of codes in this subclass with the SPA converges very fast.

preprint2010arXiv

Electronic structure of Fe1.04(Te0.66Se0.34)

We report the electronic structure of the iron-chalcogenide superconductor, Fe1.04(Te0.66Se0.34), obtained with high resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional calculations. In photoemission measurements, various photon energies and polarizations are exploited to study the Fermi surface topology and symmetry properties of the bands. The measured band structure and their symmetry characters qualitatively agree with our density function theory calculations of Fe(Te0.66Se0.34), although the band structure is renormalized by about a factor of three. We find that the electronic structures of this iron-chalcogenides and the iron-pnictides have many aspects in common, however, significant differences exist near the Gamma-point. For Fe1.04(Te0.66Se0.34), there are clearly separated three bands with distinct even or odd symmetry that cross the Fermi energy (EF) near the zone center, which contribute to three hole-like Fermi surfaces. Especially, both experiments and calculations show a hole-like elliptical Fermi surface at the zone center. Moreover, no sign of spin density wave was observed in the electronic structure and susceptibility measurements of this compound.

preprint2010arXiv

High-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study of the electronic structure of EuFe2As2

We report the high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy studies of electronic structure of EuFe2As2. The paramagnetic state data are found to be consistent with density-functional calculations. In the antiferromagnetic ordering state of Fe, our results show that the band splitting, folding, and hybridization evolve with temperature, which cannot be explained by a simple folding picture. Detailed measurements reveal that a tiny electron Fermi pocket and a tiny hole pocket are formed near (pi,pi) in the (0,0)-(pi,pi) direction, which qualitatively agree with the results of quantum oscillations, considering kz variation of Fermi surface. Furthermore, no noticeable change within the energy resolution is observed across the antiferromagnetic transition of Eu2+ ordering, suggesting weak coupling between Eu sublattice and FeAs sublattice.

preprint2010arXiv

On eccentric connectivity index

The eccentric connectivity index, proposed by Sharma, Goswami and Madan, has been employed successfully for the development of numerous mathematical models for the prediction of biological activities of diverse nature. We now report mathematical properties of the eccentric connectivity index. We establish various lower and upper bounds for the eccentric connectivity index in terms of other graph invariants including the number of vertices, the number of edges, the degree distance and the first Zagreb index. We determine the n-vertex trees of diameter with the minimum eccentric connectivity index, and the n-vertex trees of pendent vertices, with the maximum eccentric connectivity index. We also determine the n-vertex trees with respectively the minimum, second-minimum and third-minimum, and the maximum, second-maximum and third-maximum eccentric connectivity indices for

preprint2010arXiv

Ordering trees having small reverse Wiener indices

The reverse Wiener index of a connected graph $G$ is a variation of the well-known Wiener index $W(G)$ defined as the sum of distances between all unordered pairs of vertices of $G$. It is defined as $Λ(G)=\frac{1}{2}n(n-1)d-W(G)$, where $n$ is the number of vertices, and $d$ is the diameter of $G$. We now determine the second and the third smallest reverse Wiener indices of $n$-vertex trees and characterize the trees whose reverse Wiener indices attain these values for $n\ge 6$ (it has been known that the star is the unique tree with the smallest reverse Wiener index).