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Published work

103 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

CrystalREPA: Transferring Physical Priors from Universal MLIPs to Crystal Generative Models

Crystal generative models mainly learn what stable crystals look like, with little explicit supervision for what makes them stable. We reveal a substantial representation gap between state-of-the-art crystal generative models and pretrained universal machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) via energy probing, and show this gap can be closed by a simple training-time alignment. We propose Crystal REPresentation Alignment (CrystalREPA), a plug-and-play framework that aligns the atom-wise hidden states of generative encoders with frozen MLIP representations through an element-aware contrastive objective, transferring stability-aware atomistic priors with marginal training overhead and no additional inference cost. Across three generative frameworks, ten MLIP teachers, and two benchmark datasets, CrystalREPA consistently improves the thermodynamic stability, structural validity, and structural fidelity of generated crystals. Equally important, we find that an MLIP's transfer effectiveness is poorly predicted by its accuracy on standard leaderboards (e.g., Matbench Discovery) but strongly predicted by the distinguishability of its atom-wise representation space, yielding a practical, accuracy-independent criterion for selecting MLIP teachers for generative transfer.

preprint2026arXiv

From Pixels to Concepts: Do Segmentation Models Understand What They Segment?

Segmentation is a fundamental vision task underlying numerous downstream applications. Recent promptable segmentation models, such as Segment Anything Model 3 (SAM3), extend segmentation from category-agnostic mask prediction to concept-guided localization conditioned on high-level textual prompts. However, existing benchmarks primarily evaluate mask accuracy or object presence, leaving unclear whether these models faithfully ground the queried concept or instead rely on visually salient but semantically misleading cues. We introduce CAFE: \textbf{C}ounterfactual \textbf{A}ttribute \textbf{F}actuality \textbf{E}valuation, a novel benchmark for evaluating concept-faithful segmentation in promptable segmentation models. Our \textbf{CAFE} is built on attribute-level counterfactual manipulation: the target region and ground-truth mask are preserved, while attributes such as surface appearance, context, or material composition are modified to introduce misleading semantic cues. The benchmark contains 2,146 paired test samples, each consisting of a target image, a ground-truth mask, a positive prompt, and a misleading negative prompt. These samples cover three counterfactual categories: Superficial Mimicry (\textbf{SM}), Context Conflict (\textbf{CC}), and Ontological Conflict (\textbf{OC}). We evaluate various model types and sizes on our CAFE. Experiments reveal a systematic gap between localization quality and concept discrimination: models often generate accurate masks even for misleading prompts, suggesting that strong mask prediction does not necessarily imply faithful semantic grounding. Our CAFE provides a controlled benchmark for diagnosing whether promptable segmentation models perform concept-faithful grounding rather than shortcut-driven mask retrieval.

preprint2024arXiv

GloTSFormer: Global Video Text Spotting Transformer

Video Text Spotting (VTS) is a fundamental visual task that aims to predict the trajectories and content of texts in a video. Previous works usually conduct local associations and apply IoU-based distance and complex post-processing procedures to boost performance, ignoring the abundant temporal information and the morphological characteristics in VTS. In this paper, we propose a novel Global Video Text Spotting Transformer GloTSFormer to model the tracking problem as global associations and utilize the Gaussian Wasserstein distance to guide the morphological correlation between frames. Our main contributions can be summarized as three folds. 1). We propose a Transformer-based global tracking method GloTSFormer for VTS and associate multiple frames simultaneously. 2). We introduce a Wasserstein distance-based method to conduct positional associations between frames. 3). We conduct extensive experiments on public datasets. On the ICDAR2015 video dataset, GloTSFormer achieves 56.0 MOTA with 4.6 absolute improvement compared with the previous SOTA method and outperforms the previous Transformer-based method by a significant 8.3 MOTA.

preprint2022arXiv

A deep potential model with long-range electrostatic interactions

Machine learning models for the potential energy of multi-atomic systems, such as the deep potential (DP) model, make possible molecular simulations with the accuracy of quantum mechanical density functional theory, at a cost only moderately higher than that of empirical force fields. However, the majority of these models lack explicit long-range interactions and fail to describe properties that derive from the Coulombic tail of the forces. To overcome this limitation we extend the DP model by approximating the long-range electrostatic interaction between ions (nuclei+core electrons) and valence electrons with that of distributions of spherical Gaussian charges located at ionic and electronic sites. The latter are rigorously defined in terms of the centers of the maximally localized Wannier distributions, whose dependence on the local atomic environment is modeled accurately by a deep neural network. In the deep potential long-range (DPLR) model, the electrostatic energy of the Gaussian charge system is added to short-range interactions that are represented as in the standard DP model. The resulting potential energy surface is smooth and possesses analytical forces and virial. Missing effects in the standard DP scheme are recovered, improving on accuracy and predictive power. By including long-range electrostatics, DPLR correctly extrapolates to large systems the potential energy surface learned from quantum mechanical calculations on smaller systems. We illustrate the approach with three examples, the potential energy profile of the water dimer, the free energy of interaction of a water molecule with a liquid water slab, and the phonon dispersion curves of the NaCl crystal.

preprint2022arXiv

A Time-Triggered Dimension Reduction Algorithm for the Task Assignment Problem

The task assignment problem is fundamental in combinatorial optimisation, aiming at allocating one or more tasks to a number of agents while minimizing the total cost or maximizing the overall assignment benefit. This problem is known to be computationally hard since it is usually formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem. In this paper, we consider a novel time-triggered dimension reduction algorithm (TTDRA). We propose convexification approaches to convexify both the constraints and the cost function for the general non-convex assignment problem. The computational speed is accelerated via our time-triggered dimension reduction scheme, where the triggering condition is designed based on the optimality tolerance and the convexity of the cost function. Optimality and computational efficiency are verified via numerical simulations on benchmark examples.

preprint2022arXiv

An Empirical Study on How Well Do COVID-19 Information Dashboards Service Users' Information Needs

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of dashboards for providing critical real-time information. In order to enable people to obtain information in time and to understand complex statistical data, many developers have designed and implemented public-oriented COVID-19 "information dashboards" during the pandemic. However, development often takes a long time and developers are not clear about many people's information needs, resulting in gaps between information needs and supplies. According to our empirical study and observations with popular developed COVID-19 dashboards, this seriously impedes information acquirement. Our study compares people's needs on Twitter with existing information suppliers. We determine that despite the COVID-19 information that is currently on existing dashboards, people are also interested in the relationship between COVID-19 and other viruses, the origin of COVID-19, vaccine development, fake new about COVID-19, impact on women, impact on school/university, and impact on business. Most of these have not yet been well addressed. We also summarise the visualization and interaction patterns commonly applied in dashboards, finding key patterns between data and visualization as well as visualization and interaction. Our findings can help developers to better optimize their dashboard to meet people's needs and make improvements to future crisis management dashboard development.

preprint2022arXiv

Automatic Multi-Label Prompting: Simple and Interpretable Few-Shot Classification

Prompt-based learning (i.e., prompting) is an emerging paradigm for exploiting knowledge learned by a pretrained language model. In this paper, we propose Automatic Multi-Label Prompting (AMuLaP), a simple yet effective method to automatically select label mappings for few-shot text classification with prompting. Our method exploits one-to-many label mappings and a statistics-based algorithm to select label mappings given a prompt template. Our experiments demonstrate that AMuLaP achieves competitive performance on the GLUE benchmark without human effort or external resources.

preprint2022arXiv

Configuration-Aware Safe Control for Mobile Robotic Arm with Control Barrier Functions

Collision avoidance is a widely investigated topic in robotic applications. When applying collision avoidance techniques to a mobile robot, how to deal with the spatial structure of the robot still remains a challenge. In this paper, we design a configuration-aware safe control law by solving a Quadratic Programming (QP) with designed Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) constraints, which can safely navigate a mobile robotic arm to a desired region while avoiding collision with environmental obstacles. The advantage of our approach is that it correctly and in an elegant way incorporates the spatial structure of the mobile robotic arm. This is achieved by merging geometric restrictions among mobile robotic arm links into CBFs constraints. Simulations on a rigid rod and the modeled mobile robotic arm are performed to verify the feasibility and time-efficiency of proposed method. Numerical results about the time consuming for different degrees of freedom illustrate that our method scales well with dimension.

preprint2022arXiv

DeePKS+ABACUS as a Bridge between Expensive Quantum Mechanical Models and Machine Learning Potentials

Recently, the development of machine learning (ML) potentials has made it possible to perform large-scale and long-time molecular simulations with the accuracy of quantum mechanical (QM) models. However, for high-level QM methods, such as density functional theory (DFT) at the meta-GGA level and/or with exact exchange, quantum Monte Carlo, etc., generating a sufficient amount of data for training a ML potential has remained computationally challenging due to their high cost. In this work, we demonstrate that this issue can be largely alleviated with Deep Kohn-Sham (DeePKS), a ML-based DFT model. DeePKS employs a computationally efficient neural network-based functional model to construct a correction term added upon a cheap DFT model. Upon training, DeePKS offers closely-matched energies and forces compared with high-level QM method, but the number of training data required is orders of magnitude less than that required for training a reliable ML potential. As such, DeePKS can serve as a bridge between expensive QM models and ML potentials: one can generate a decent amount of high-accuracy QM data to train a DeePKS model, and then use the DeePKS model to label a much larger amount of configurations to train a ML potential. This scheme for periodic systems is implemented in a DFT package ABACUS, which is open-source and ready for use in various applications.

preprint2022arXiv

DP Compress: a Model Compression Scheme for Generating Efficient Deep Potential Models

Machine-learning-based interatomic potential energy surface (PES) models are revolutionizing the field of molecular modeling. However, although much faster than electronic structure schemes, these models suffer from costly computations via deep neural networks to predict the energy and atomic forces, resulting in lower running efficiency as compared to the typical empirical force fields. Herein, we report a model compression scheme for boosting the performance of the Deep Potential (DP) model, a deep learning based PES model. This scheme, we call DP Compress, is an efficient post-processing step after the training of DP models (DP Train). DP Compress combines several DP-specific compression techniques, which typically speed up DP-based molecular dynamics simulations by an order of magnitude faster, and consume an order of magnitude less memory. We demonstrate that DP Compress is sufficiently accurate by testing a variety of physical properties of Cu, H2O, and Al-Cu-Mg systems. DP Compress applies to both CPU and GPU machines and is publicly available online.

preprint2022arXiv

DPOAD: Differentially Private Outsourcing of Anomaly Detection through Iterative Sensitivity Learning

Outsourcing anomaly detection to third-parties can allow data owners to overcome resource constraints (e.g., in lightweight IoT devices), facilitate collaborative analysis (e.g., under distributed or multi-party scenarios), and benefit from lower costs and specialized expertise (e.g., of Managed Security Service Providers). Despite such benefits, a data owner may feel reluctant to outsource anomaly detection without sufficient privacy protection. To that end, most existing privacy solutions would face a novel challenge, i.e., preserving privacy usually requires the difference between data entries to be eliminated or reduced, whereas anomaly detection critically depends on that difference. Such a conflict is recently resolved under a local analysis setting with trusted analysts (where no outsourcing is involved) through moving the focus of differential privacy (DP) guarantee from "all" to only "benign" entries. In this paper, we observe that such an approach is not directly applicable to the outsourcing setting, because data owners do not know which entries are "benign" prior to outsourcing, and hence cannot selectively apply DP on data entries. Therefore, we propose a novel iterative solution for the data owner to gradually "disentangle" the anomalous entries from the benign ones such that the third-party analyst can produce accurate anomaly results with sufficient DP guarantee. We design and implement our Differentially Private Outsourcing of Anomaly Detection (DPOAD) framework, and demonstrate its benefits over baseline Laplace and PainFree mechanisms through experiments with real data from different application domains.

preprint2022arXiv

Explicit Solutions for Safety Problems Using Control Barrier Functions

The control Barrier function approach has been widely used for safe controller synthesis. By solving an online convex quadratic programming problem, an optimal safe controller can be synthesized implicitly in state-space. Since the solution is unique, the mapping from state-space to control inputs is injective, thus enabling us to evaluate the underlying relationship. In this paper we aim at explicitly synthesizing a safe control law as a function of the state for nonlinear control-affine systems with limited control ability. We propose to transform the online quadratic programming problem into an offline parameterized optimisation problem which considers states as parameters. The obtained explicit safe controller is shown to be a piece-wise Lipschitz continuous function over the partitioned state space if the program is feasible. We address the infeasible cases by solving a parameterized adaptive control Barrier function-based quadratic programming problem. Extensive simulation results show the state-space partition and the controller properties.

preprint2022arXiv

Extending the limit of molecular dynamics with ab initio accuracy to 10 billion atoms

High-performance computing, together with a neural network model trained from data generated with first-principles methods, has greatly boosted applications of \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamics in terms of spatial and temporal scales on modern supercomputers. Previous state-of-the-art can achieve $1-2$ nanoseconds molecular dynamics simulation per day for 100-million atoms on the entire Summit supercomputer. In this paper, we have significantly reduced the memory footprint and computational time by a comprehensive approach with both algorithmic and system innovations. The neural network model is compressed by model tabulation, kernel fusion, and redundancy removal. Then optimizations such as acceleration of customized kernel, tabulation of activation function, MPI+OpenMP parallelization are implemented on GPU and ARM architectures. Testing results of the copper system show that the optimized code can scale up to the entire machine of both Fugaku and Summit, and the corresponding system size can be extended by a factor of $134$ to an unprecedented $17$ billion atoms. The strong scaling of a $13.5$-million atom copper system shows that the time-to-solution can be 7 times faster, reaching $11.2$ nanoseconds per day. This work opens the door for unprecedentedly large-scale molecular dynamics simulations based on {\it ab initio} accuracy and can be potentially utilized in studying more realistic applications such as mechanical properties of metals, semiconductor devices, batteries, etc. The optimization techniques detailed in this paper also provide insight for relevant high-performance computing applications.

preprint2022arXiv

FedADMM: A Federated Primal-Dual Algorithm Allowing Partial Participation

Federated learning is a framework for distributed optimization that places emphasis on communication efficiency. In particular, it follows a client-server broadcast model and is particularly appealing because of its ability to accommodate heterogeneity in client compute and storage resources, non-i.i.d. data assumptions, and data privacy. Our contribution is to offer a new federated learning algorithm, FedADMM, for solving non-convex composite optimization problems with non-smooth regularizers. We prove converges of FedADMM for the case when not all clients are able to participate in a given communication round under a very general sampling model.

preprint2022arXiv

Linear Convergence Rate Analysis of Proximal Generalized ADMM for Convex Composite Programming

The proximal generalized alternating direction method of multipliers (p-GADMM) is substantially efficient for solving convex composite programming problems of high-dimensional to moderate accuracy. The global convergence of this method was established by Xiao, Chen & Li [Math. Program. Comput., 2018], but its convergence rate was not given. One may take it for granted that the convergence rate could be proved easily by mimicking the proximal ADMM, but we find the relaxed points will certainly cause many difficulties for theoretical analysis. In this paper, we devote to exploring its convergence behavior and show that the sequence generated by p-GADMM possesses Q-linear convergence rate under some mild conditions. We would like to note that the proximal terms at the subproblems are required to be positive definite, which is very common in most practical implementations although it seems to be a bit strong.

preprint2022arXiv

Machine-learning interatomic potential for molecular dynamics simulation of ferroelectric KNbO3 perovskite

Ferroelectric perovskites have been ubiquitously applied in piezoelectric devices for decades, among which, eco-friendly lead-free (K,Na)NbO3-based materials have been recently demonstrated to be an excellent candidate for sustainable development. Molecular dynamics is a versatile theoretical calculation approach for the investigation of the dynamical properties of ferroelectric perovskites. However, molecular dynamics simulation of ferroelectric perovskites has been limited to simple systems, since the conventional construction of interatomic potential is rather difficult and inefficient. In the present study, we construct a machine-learning interatomic potential of KNbO3 (as a representative system of (K,Na)NbO3) by using a deep neural network model. Including first-principles calculation data into the training dataset ensures the quantum-mechanics accuracy of the interatomic potential. The molecular dynamics based on machine-learning interatomic potential shows good agreement with the first-principles calculations, which can accurately predict multiple fundamental properties, e.g., atomic force, energy, elastic properties, and phonon dispersion. In addition, the interatomic potential exhibits satisfactory performance in the simulation of domain wall and temperature-dependent phase transition. The construction of interatomic potential based on machine learning could potentially be transferred to other ferroelectric perovskites and consequently benefits the theoretical study of ferroelectrics.

preprint2022arXiv

Multi-modal Semantic SLAM for Complex Dynamic Environments

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is one of the most essential techniques in many real-world robotic applications. The assumption of static environments is common in most SLAM algorithms, which however, is not the case for most applications. Recent work on semantic SLAM aims to understand the objects in an environment and distinguish dynamic information from a scene context by performing image-based segmentation. However, the segmentation results are often imperfect or incomplete, which can subsequently reduce the quality of mapping and the accuracy of localization. In this paper, we present a robust multi-modal semantic framework to solve the SLAM problem in complex and highly dynamic environments. We propose to learn a more powerful object feature representation and deploy the mechanism of looking and thinking twice to the backbone network, which leads to a better recognition result to our baseline instance segmentation model. Moreover, both geometric-only clustering and visual semantic information are combined to reduce the effect of segmentation error due to small-scale objects, occlusion and motion blur. Thorough experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that our method can precisely identify dynamic objects under recognition imperfection and motion blur. Moreover, the proposed SLAM framework is able to efficiently build a static dense map at a processing rate of more than 10 Hz, which can be implemented in many practical applications. Both training data and the proposed method is open sourced at https://github.com/wh200720041/MMS_SLAM.

preprint2022arXiv

Multiqubit Toffoli gates and optimal geometry with Rydberg atoms

Due to its potential for implementing a scalable quantum computer, multiqubit Toffoli gate lies in the heart of quantum information processing. In this article, we demonstrate a multiqubit blockade gate with atoms arranged in a three-dimension spheroidal array. The gate performance is greatly improved by the method of optimizing control-qubit distributions on the spherical surface via evolutionary algorithm, which leads to an enhanced asymmetric Rydberg blockade. This spheroidal configuration, not only arises a well preservation for the dipole blockade energy between arbitrary control-target pairs, which keeps the asymmetric blockade error at a very low level; but also manifests an unprecedented robustness to the spatial position variations, leading to a negligible position error. Taking account of intrinsic errors and with typical experimental parameters, we numerically show that a C$_6$NOT Rydberg gate can be created with a fidelity of 0.992 which is only limited by the Rydberg state decays.Our protocol opens up a new platform of higher-dimensional atomic arrays for achieving multiqubit neutral-atom quantum computation.

preprint2022arXiv

Multitask Prompted Training Enables Zero-Shot Task Generalization

Large language models have recently been shown to attain reasonable zero-shot generalization on a diverse set of tasks (Brown et al., 2020). It has been hypothesized that this is a consequence of implicit multitask learning in language models' pretraining (Radford et al., 2019). Can zero-shot generalization instead be directly induced by explicit multitask learning? To test this question at scale, we develop a system for easily mapping any natural language tasks into a human-readable prompted form. We convert a large set of supervised datasets, each with multiple prompts with diverse wording. These prompted datasets allow for benchmarking the ability of a model to perform completely held-out tasks. We fine-tune a pretrained encoder-decoder model (Raffel et al., 2020; Lester et al., 2021) on this multitask mixture covering a wide variety of tasks. The model attains strong zero-shot performance on several standard datasets, often outperforming models up to 16x its size. Further, our approach attains strong performance on a subset of tasks from the BIG-bench benchmark, outperforming models up to 6x its size. All trained models are available at https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/t-zero and all prompts are available at https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/promptsource.

preprint2022arXiv

No More Pesky Hyperparameters: Offline Hyperparameter Tuning for RL

The performance of reinforcement learning (RL) agents is sensitive to the choice of hyperparameters. In real-world settings like robotics or industrial control systems, however, testing different hyperparameter configurations directly on the environment can be financially prohibitive, dangerous, or time consuming. We propose a new approach to tune hyperparameters from offline logs of data, to fully specify the hyperparameters for an RL agent that learns online in the real world. The approach is conceptually simple: we first learn a model of the environment from the offline data, which we call a calibration model, and then simulate learning in the calibration model to identify promising hyperparameters. We identify several criteria to make this strategy effective, and develop an approach that satisfies these criteria. We empirically investigate the method in a variety of settings to identify when it is effective and when it fails.

preprint2022arXiv

Nonlinear Optimal Guidance for Fixed-Time Impact on a Stationary Target

This paper is concerned with devising the nonlinear optimal guidance for intercepting a stationary target with a fixed impact time. According to Pontryagin's Maximum Principle (PMP), some optimality conditions for the solutions of the nonlinear optimal interception problem are established, and the structure of the corresponding optimal control is presented. By employing the optimality conditions, we formulate a parameterized system so that its solution space is the same as that of the nonlinear optimal interception problem. As a consequence, a simple propagation of the parameterized system, without using any optimization method, is sufficient to generate enough sampled data for the mapping from current state and time-to-go to the optimal guidance command. By virtue of the universal approximation theorem, a feedforward neural network, trained by the generated data, is able to represent the mapping from current state and time-to-go to the optimal guidance command. Therefore, the trained network eventually can generate fixed-impact-time nonlinear optimal guidance within a constant time. Finally, the developed nonlinear optimal guidance is exemplified and studied through simulations, showing that the nonlinear optimal guidance law performs better than existing interception guidance laws.

preprint2022arXiv

On the Linear Convergence Rate of Generalized ADMM for Convex Composite Programming

Over the fast few years, the numerical success of the generalized alternating direction method of multipliers (GADMM) proposed by Eckstein \& Bertsekas [Math. Prog., 1992] has inspired intensive attention in analyzing its theoretical convergence properties. In this paper, we devote to establishing the linear convergence rate of the semi-proximal GADMM (sPGADMM) for solving linearly constrained convex composite optimization problems. The semi-proximal terms contained in each subproblem possess the abilities of handling with multi-block problems efficiently. We initially present some important inequalities for the sequence generated by the sPGADMM, and then establish the local linear convergence rate under the assumption of calmness. As a by-product, the global convergence property is also discussed.

preprint2022arXiv

Production of axion-like particles via vector boson fusion at future electron-positron colliders

One kind of particularly interesting pseudoscalar particles, called axion-like particles (ALPs), have rich physical phenomenology at high- and low-energy collider experiments. After discussing most of single production channels of ALP at electron-positron colliders, we investigate the possibility of detecting this kind of new particles through the W$^{+}$W$^{-}$ fusion process e$^{+}$e$^{-}$ $\rightarrow$ $\overlineν_{e}$$ν_{e}a$ $(\rightarrow γγ)$ at the CLIC. The 3$σ$ and 5$σ$ bounds on the ALP parameter space at the three energy stages of the CLIC are obtained. We find that the bounds given by the CLIC are complementary to the existing experiments exclusion regions.

preprint2022arXiv

PromptSource: An Integrated Development Environment and Repository for Natural Language Prompts

PromptSource is a system for creating, sharing, and using natural language prompts. Prompts are functions that map an example from a dataset to a natural language input and target output. Using prompts to train and query language models is an emerging area in NLP that requires new tools that let users develop and refine these prompts collaboratively. PromptSource addresses the emergent challenges in this new setting with (1) a templating language for defining data-linked prompts, (2) an interface that lets users quickly iterate on prompt development by observing outputs of their prompts on many examples, and (3) a community-driven set of guidelines for contributing new prompts to a common pool. Over 2,000 prompts for roughly 170 datasets are already available in PromptSource. PromptSource is available at https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/promptsource.

preprint2022arXiv

Proof of a conjecture involving derangements and roots of unity

Let $n>1$ be an odd integer. For any primitive $n$-th root $ζ$ of unity in the complex field. Via the Engenvector-eigenvalue Identity, we show that $$\sum_{τ\in D(n-1)}\mathrm{sign}(τ)\prod_{j=1}^{n-1}\frac{1+ζ^{j-τ(j)}}{1-ζ^{j-τ(j)}} =(-1)^{\frac{n-1}{2}}\frac{((n-2)!!)^2}{n}, $$ where $D(n-1)$ is the set of all derangements of $1,\ldots,n-1$. This confirms a previous conjecture of Z.-W. Sun. Moreover, for each $δ=0,1$ we determine the value of $\det[x+m_{jk}]_{1\le j,k\le n}$ completely, where $$m_{jk}=\begin{cases}(1+ζ^{j-k})/(1-ζ^{j-k})&\text{if}\ j\not=k,\\δ&\text{if}\ j=k. \end{cases}$$

preprint2022arXiv

Prospects for detecting axion-like particles via the decay $Z\rightarrow af\bar{f}$ at future $Z$ factories

We investigate the prospects for detecting axion-like particles (ALPs, dubbed as "a") via the decay $Z\rightarrow a f\bar{f}$ at future $Z$ factories. Considering the decay channels $a\rightarrow μ^+ μ^-$ and $a\rightarrow b \bar{b}$ , four types of signals $μ^+ μ^- /E$, $b b /E$, $e^+ e^- μ^+ μ^-$ and $e^+ e^- b b$ are explored. We demonstrate that these channels are promising for detecting ALPs at $Z$ factories and obtain the sensitivity bounds on the couplings $g_{aZZ}$ and $g_{aγZ}$.

preprint2022arXiv

Robustness of optic-fiber-based weak value amplification against amplitude-type noise

Experiments based on free space platform have demonstrated that the weak value amplification (WVA) technique can provide high sensitivity and precision for optical sensing and metrology. To promote this technique for real-world applications, it is more suitable to implement WVA based on optical fiber platform due to the lower cost, smaller scale and higher stability. In contrast to the free space platform, the birefringence in optical fiber is strong enough to cause polarization cross talk, and the amplitude-type noise must be taken into account. By theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration, we show that the optic-fiber-based WVA is robust in presence of amplitude-type noise. In our experiment, even the angular misalignment on optical axes at the interface reaches 0.08rad, the sensitivity loss can be maintained less than 3dB. Moreover, the main results are valid to a simplified detection scheme that recently proposed, which is more compatible with the future design of optical-fiber based WVA. Our results indicate the feasibility of implementing WVA based on optical fiber, which provide a possible way for designing optical sensors with higher sensitivity and stability in the future.

preprint2022arXiv

RVAE-LAMOL: Residual Variational Autoencoder to Enhance Lifelong Language Learning

Lifelong Language Learning (LLL) aims to train a neural network to learn a stream of NLP tasks while retaining knowledge from previous tasks. However, previous works which followed data-free constraint still suffer from catastrophic forgetting issue, where the model forgets what it just learned from previous tasks. In order to alleviate catastrophic forgetting, we propose the residual variational autoencoder (RVAE) to enhance LAMOL, a recent LLL model, by mapping different tasks into a limited unified semantic space. In this space, previous tasks are easy to be correct to their own distribution by pseudo samples. Furthermore, we propose an identity task to make the model is discriminative to recognize the sample belonging to which task. For training RVAE-LAMOL better, we propose a novel training scheme Alternate Lag Training. In the experiments, we test RVAE-LAMOL on permutations of three datasets from DecaNLP. The experimental results demonstrate that RVAE-LAMOL outperforms naïve LAMOL on all permutations and generates more meaningful pseudo-samples.

preprint2022arXiv

Safety Verification and Controller Synthesis for Systems with Input Constraints

In this paper we consider the safety verification and safe controller synthesis problems for nonlinear control systems. The Control Barrier Certificates (CBC) approach is proposed as an extension to the Barrier certificates approach. Our approach can be used to characterize the control invariance of a given set in terms of safety of a general nonlinear control system subject to input constraints. From the point of view of controller design, the proposed method provides an approach to synthesize a safe control law that guarantees that the trajectories of the system starting from a given initial set do not enter an unsafe set. Unlike the related control Barrier functions approach, our formulation only considers the vector field within the tangent cone of the zero level set defined by the certificates, and is shown to be less conservative by means of numerical evidence. For polynomial systems with semi-algebraic initial and safe sets, CBCs and safe control laws can be synthesized using sum-of-squares decomposition and semi-definite programming. Examples demonstrate our method.

preprint2022arXiv

Software Engineers Response to Public Crisis: Lessons Learnt from Spontaneously Building an Informative COVID-19 Dashboard

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak quickly spread around the world, resulting in over 240 million infections and 4 million deaths by Oct 2021. While the virus is spreading from person to person silently, fear has also been spreading around the globe. The COVID-19 information from the Australian Government is convincing but not timely or detailed, and there is much information on social networks with both facts and rumors. As software engineers, we have spontaneously and rapidly constructed a COVID-19 information dashboard aggregating reliable information semi-automatically checked from different sources for providing one-stop information sharing site about the latest status in Australia. Inspired by the John Hopkins University COVID-19 Map, our dashboard contains the case statistics, case distribution, government policy, latest news, with interactive visualization. In this paper, we present a participant's in-person observations in which the authors acted as founders of https://covid-19-au.com/ serving more than 830K users with 14M page views since March 2020. According to our first-hand experience, we summarize 9 lessons for developers, researchers and instructors. These lessons may inspire the development, research and teaching in software engineer aspects for coping with similar public crises in the future.

preprint2022arXiv

Strong Neel ordering and luminescence correlation in a two-dimensional antiferromagnet

Magneto-optical effect has been widely used in light modulation, optical sensing and information storage. Recently discovered two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals layered magnets are considered as promising platforms for investigating novel magneto-optical phenomena and devices, due to the long-range magnetic ordering down to atomically-thin thickness, rich species and tunable properties. However, majority 2D antiferromagnets suffer from low luminescence efficiency which hinders their magneto-optical investigations and applications. Here, we uncover strong light-magnetic ordering interactions in 2D antiferromagnetic MnPS3 utilizing a newly-emerged near-infrared photoluminescence (PL) mode far below its intrinsic bandgap. This ingap PL mode shows strong correlation with the Neel ordering and persists down to monolayer thickness. Combining the DFT, STEM and XPS, we illustrate the origin of the PL mode and its correlation with Neel ordering, which can be attributed to the oxygen ion-mediated states. Moreover, the PL strength can be further tuned and enhanced using ultraviolet-ozone treatment. Our studies offer an effective approach to investigate light-magnetic ordering interactions in 2D antiferromagnetic semiconductors.

preprint2022arXiv

SVR-based Observer Design for Unknown Linear Systems: Complexity and Performance

In this paper we consider estimating the system parameters and designing stable observer for unknown noisy linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. We propose a Support Vector Regression (SVR) based estimator to provide adjustable asymmetric error interval for estimations. This estimator is capable to trade-off bias-variance of the estimation error by tuning parameter $γ> 0$ in the loss function. This method enjoys the same sample complexity of $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{N})$ as the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) based methods but achieves a $\mathcal{O}(1/(γ+1))$ smaller variance. Then, a stable observer gain design procedure based on the estimations is proposed. The observation performance bound based on the estimations is evaluated by the mean square observation error, which is shown to be adjustable by tuning the parameter $γ$, thus achieving higher scalability than the OLS methods. The advantages of the estimation error bias-variance trade-off for observer design are also demonstrated through matrix spectrum and observation performance optimality analysis. Extensive simulation validations are conducted to verify the computed estimation error and performance optimality with different $γ$ and noise settings. The variances of the estimation error and the fluctuations in performance are smaller with a properly-designed parameter $γ$ compared with the OLS methods.

preprint2022arXiv

Towards Large-Scale and Spatio-temporally Resolved Diagnosis of Electronic Density of States by Deep Learning

Modern laboratory techniques like ultrafast laser excitation and shock compression can bring matter into highly nonequilibrium states with complex structural transformation, metallization and dissociation dynamics. To understand and model the dramatic change of both electronic structures and ion dynamics during such dynamic processes, the traditional method faces difficulties. Here, we demonstrate the ability of deep neural network (DNN) to capture the atomic local-environment dependence of electronic density of states (DOS) for both multicomponent system under exoplanet thermodynamic condition and nonequilibrium system during super-heated melting process. Large scale and time-resolved diagnosis of DOS can be efficiently achieved within the accuracy of ab initio method. Moreover, the atomic contribution to DOS given by DNN model accurately reveals the information of local neighborhood for selected atom, thus can serve as robust order parameters to identify different phases and intermediate local structures, strongly highlights the efficacy of this DNN model in studying dynamic processes.

preprint2021arXiv

An Energy Sharing Mechanism Achieving the Same Flexibility as Centralized Dispatch

Deploying distributed renewable energy at the demand side is an important measure to implement a sustainable society. However, the massive small solar and wind generation units are beyond the control of a central operator. To encourage users to participate in energy management and reduce the dependence on dispatchable resources, a peer-to-peer energy sharing scheme is proposed which releases the flexibility at the demand side. Every user makes decision individually considering only local constraints; the microgrid operator announces the sharing prices subjective to the coupling constraints without knowing users' local constraints. This can help protect privacy. We prove that the proposed mechanism can achieve the same disutility and flexibility as centralized dispatch, and develop an effective modified best response based algorithm for reaching the market equilibrium. The concept of absorbable region is presented to measure the operating flexibility under the proposed energy sharing mechanism. A linear programming based polyhedral projection algorithm is developed to compute that region. Case studies validate the theoretical results and show that the proposed method is scalable.

preprint2021arXiv

F-LOAM: Fast LiDAR Odometry And Mapping

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has wide robotic applications such as autonomous driving and unmanned aerial vehicles. Both computational efficiency and localization accuracy are of great importance towards a good SLAM system. Existing works on LiDAR based SLAM often formulate the problem as two modules: scan-to-scan match and scan-to-map refinement. Both modules are solved by iterative calculation which are computationally expensive. In this paper, we propose a general solution that aims to provide a computationally efficient and accurate framework for LiDAR based SLAM. Specifically, we adopt a non-iterative two-stage distortion compensation method to reduce the computational cost. For each scan input, the edge and planar features are extracted and matched to a local edge map and a local plane map separately, where the local smoothness is also considered for iterative pose optimization. Thorough experiments are performed to evaluate its performance in challenging scenarios, including localization for a warehouse Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and a public dataset on autonomous driving. The proposed method achieves a competitive localization accuracy with a processing rate of more than 10 Hz in the public dataset evaluation, which provides a good trade-off between performance and computational cost for practical applications.

preprint2021arXiv

Fast Loop Closure Detection via Binary Content

Loop closure detection plays an important role in reducing localization drift in Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM). It aims to find repetitive scenes from historical data to reset localization. To tackle the loop closure problem, existing methods often leverage on the matching of visual features, which achieve good accuracy but require high computational resources. However, feature point based methods ignore the patterns of image, i.e., the shape of the objects as well as the distribution of objects in an image. It is believed that this information is usually unique for a scene and can be utilized to improve the performance of traditional loop closure detection methods. In this paper we leverage and compress the information into a binary image to accelerate an existing fast loop closure detection method via binary content. The proposed method can greatly reduce the computational cost without sacrificing recall rate. It consists of three parts: binary content construction, fast image retrieval and precise loop closure detection. No offline training is required. Our method is compared with the state-of-the-art loop closure detection methods and the results show that it outperforms the traditional methods at both recall rate and speed.

preprint2021arXiv

Feasible Computationally Efficient Path Planning for UAV Collision Avoidance

This paper presents a robust computationally efficient real-time collision avoidance algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), namely Memory-based Wall Following-Artificial Potential Field (MWF-APF) method. The new algorithm switches between Wall-Following Method (WFM) and Artificial Potential Field method (APF) with improved situation awareness capability. Historical trajectory is taken into account to avoid repetitive wrong decision. Furthermore, it can be effectively applied to platform with low computing capability. As an example, a quad-rotor equipped with limited number of Time-of-Flight (TOF) rangefinders is adopted to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of this algorithm. Both software simulation and physical flight test have been conducted to demonstrate the capability of the MWF-APF method in complex scenarios.

preprint2021arXiv

Identification of 27 abnormalities from multi-lead ECG signals: An ensembled Se-ResNet framework with Sign Loss function

Cardiovascular disease is a major threat to health and one of the primary causes of death globally. The 12-lead ECG is a cheap and commonly accessible tool to identify cardiac abnormalities. Early and accurate diagnosis will allow early treatment and intervention to prevent severe complications of cardiovascular disease. In the PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2020, our objective is to develop an algorithm that automatically identifies 27 ECG abnormalities from 12-lead ECG recordings.

preprint2021arXiv

Intensity-SLAM: Intensity Assisted Localization and Mapping for Large Scale Environment

Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is a task to estimate the robot location and to reconstruct the environment based on observation from sensors such as LIght Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) and camera. It is widely used in robotic applications such as autonomous driving and drone delivery. Traditional LiDAR-based SLAM algorithms mainly leverage the geometric features from the scene context, while the intensity information from LiDAR is ignored. Some recent deep-learning-based SLAM algorithms consider intensity features and train the pose estimation network in an end-to-end manner. However, they require significant data collection effort and their generalizability to environments other than the trained one remains unclear. In this paper we introduce intensity features to a SLAM system. And we propose a novel full SLAM framework that leverages both geometry and intensity features. The proposed SLAM involves both intensity-based front-end odometry estimation and intensity-based back-end optimization. Thorough experiments are performed including both outdoor autonomous driving and indoor warehouse robot manipulation. The results show that the proposed method outperforms existing geometric-only LiDAR SLAM methods.

preprint2021arXiv

Lightweight 3-D Localization and Mapping for Solid-State LiDAR

The LIght Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) sensor has become one of the most important perceptual devices due to its important role in simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Existing SLAM methods are mainly developed for mechanical LiDAR sensors, which are often adopted by large scale robots. Recently, the solid-state LiDAR is introduced and becomes popular since it provides a cost-effective and lightweight solution for small scale robots. Compared to mechanical LiDAR, solid-state LiDAR sensors have higher update frequency and angular resolution, but also have smaller field of view (FoV), which is very challenging for existing LiDAR SLAM algorithms. Therefore, it is necessary to have a more robust and computationally efficient SLAM method for this new sensing device. To this end, we propose a new SLAM framework for solid-state LiDAR sensors, which involves feature extraction, odometry estimation, and probability map building. The proposed method is evaluated on a warehouse robot and a hand-held device. In the experiments, we demonstrate both the accuracy and efficiency of our method using an Intel L515 solid-state LiDAR. The results show that our method is able to provide precise localization and high quality mapping. We made the source codes public at \url{https://github.com/wh200720041/SSL_SLAM}.

preprint2021arXiv

Robopheus: A Virtual-Physical Interactive Mobile Robotic Testbed

The mobile robotic testbed is an essential and critical support to verify the effectiveness of mobile robotics research. This paper introduces a novel multi-robot testbed, named Robopheus, which exploits the ideas of virtual-physical modeling in digital-twin. Unlike most existing testbeds, the developed Robopheus constructs a bridge that connects the traditional physical hardware and virtual simulation testbeds, providing scalable, interactive, and high-fidelity simulations-tests on both sides. Another salient feature of the Robopheus is that it enables a new form to learn the actual models from the physical environment dynamically and is compatible with heterogeneous robot chassis and controllers. In turn, the virtual world's learned models are further leveraged to approximate the robot dynamics online on the physical side. Extensive experiments demonstrate the extraordinary performance of the Robopheus. Significantly, the physical-virtual interaction design increases the trajectory accuracy of a real robot by 300%, compared with that of not using the interaction.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Attention Aware Feature Learning for Person Re-Identification

Visual attention has proven to be effective in improving the performance of person re-identification. Most existing methods apply visual attention heuristically by learning an additional attention map to re-weight the feature maps for person re-identification. However, this kind of methods inevitably increase the model complexity and inference time. In this paper, we propose to incorporate the attention learning as additional objectives in a person ReID network without changing the original structure, thus maintain the same inference time and model size. Two kinds of attentions have been considered to make the learned feature maps being aware of the person and related body parts respectively. Globally, a holistic attention branch (HAB) makes the feature maps obtained by backbone focus on persons so as to alleviate the influence of background. Locally, a partial attention branch (PAB) makes the extracted features be decoupled into several groups and be separately responsible for different body parts (i.e., keypoints), thus increasing the robustness to pose variation and partial occlusion. These two kinds of attentions are universal and can be incorporated into existing ReID networks. We have tested its performance on two typical networks (TriNet and Bag of Tricks) and observed significant performance improvement on five widely used datasets.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep neural network for the dielectric response of insulators

We introduce a deep neural network to model in a symmetry preserving way the environmental dependence of the centers of the electronic charge. The model learns from ab-initio density functional theory, wherein the electronic centers are uniquely assigned by the maximally localized Wannier functions. When combined with the Deep Potential model of the atomic potential energy surface, the scheme predicts the dielectric response of insulators for trajectories inaccessible to direct ab-initio simulation. The scheme is non-perturbative and can capture the response of a mutating chemical environment. We demonstrate the approach by calculating the infrared spectra of liquid water at standard conditions, and of ice under extreme pressure, when it transforms from a molecular to an ionic crystal.

preprint2020arXiv

Energy Minimization for Mobile Edge Computing Networks with Time-Sensitive Constraints

Mobile edge computing (MEC) provides users with a high quality experience (QoE) by placing servers with rich services close to the end users. Compared with local computing, MEC can contribute to energy saving, but results in increased communication latency. In this paper, we jointly optimize task offloading and resource allocation to minimize the energy consumption in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based MEC networks, where the time-sensitive tasks can be processed at both local users and MEC server via partial offloading. Since the optimization variables of the problem are strongly coupled, we first decompose the original problem into two subproblems named as offloading selection (PO), and subcarriers and computing resource allocation (PS), and then propose an iterative algorithm to deal with them in a sequence. To be specific, we derive the closed-form solution for PO, and deal with PS by an alternating way in the dual domain due to its NP-hardness. Simulation results demonstrate

preprint2020arXiv

Ground state energy functional with Hartree-Fock efficiency and chemical accuracy

We introduce the Deep Post-Hartree-Fock (DeePHF) method, a machine learning based scheme for constructing accurate and transferable models for the ground-state energy of electronic structure problems. DeePHF predicts the energy difference between results of highly accurate models such as the coupled cluster method and low accuracy models such as the the Hartree-Fock (HF) method, using the ground-state electronic orbitals as the input. It preserves all the symmetries of the original high accuracy model. The added computational cost is less than that of the reference HF or DFT and scales linearly with respect to system size. We examine the performance of DeePHF on organic molecular systems using publicly available datasets and obtain the state-of-art performance, particularly on large datasets.

preprint2020arXiv

Online Visual Place Recognition via Saliency Re-identification

As an essential component of visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), place recognition is crucial for robot navigation and autonomous driving. Existing methods often formulate visual place recognition as feature matching, which is computationally expensive for many robotic applications with limited computing power, e.g., autonomous driving and cleaning robot. Inspired by the fact that human beings always recognize a place by remembering salient regions or landmarks that are more attractive or interesting than others, we formulate visual place recognition as saliency re-identification. In the meanwhile, we propose to perform both saliency detection and re-identification in frequency domain, in which all operations become element-wise. The experiments show that our proposed method achieves competitive accuracy and much higher speed than the state-of-the-art feature-based methods. The proposed method is open-sourced and available at https://github.com/wh200720041/SRLCD.git.

preprint2020arXiv

Privacy Preserving Distributed Energy Trading

The smart grid incentivizes distributed agents with local generation (e.g., smart homes, and microgrids) to establish multi-agent systems for enhanced reliability and energy consumption efficiency. Distributed energy trading has emerged as one of the most important multi-agent systems on the power grid by enabling agents to sell their excessive local energy to each other or back to the grid. However, it requests all the agents to disclose their sensitive data (e.g., each agent's fine-grained local generation and demand load). In this paper, to the best of our knowledge, we propose the first privacy preserving distributed energy trading framework, Private Energy Market (PEM), in which all the agents privately compute an optimal price for their trading (ensured by a Nash Equilibrium), and allocate pairwise energy trading amounts without disclosing sensitive data (via novel cryptographic protocols). Specifically, we model the trading problem as a non-cooperative Stackelberg game for all the agents (i.e., buyers and sellers) to determine the optimal price, and then derive the pairwise trading amounts. Our PEM framework can privately perform all the computations among all the agents without a trusted third party. We prove the privacy, individual rationality, and incentive compatibility for the PEM framework. Finally, we conduct experiments on real datasets to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the PEM.

preprint2020arXiv

Pushing the limit of molecular dynamics with ab initio accuracy to 100 million atoms with machine learning

For 35 years, {\it ab initio} molecular dynamics (AIMD) has been the method of choice for modeling complex atomistic phenomena from first principles. However, most AIMD applications are limited by computational cost to systems with thousands of atoms at most. We report that a machine learning-based simulation protocol (Deep Potential Molecular Dynamics), while retaining {\it ab initio} accuracy, can simulate more than 1 nanosecond-long trajectory of over 100 million atoms per day, using a highly optimized code (GPU DeePMD-kit) on the Summit supercomputer. Our code can efficiently scale up to the entire Summit supercomputer, attaining $91$ PFLOPS in double precision ($45.5\%$ of the peak) and {$162$/$275$ PFLOPS in mixed-single/half precision}. The great accomplishment of this work is that it opens the door to simulating unprecedented size and time scales with {\it ab initio} accuracy. It also poses new challenges to the next-generation supercomputer for a better integration of machine learning and physical modeling.

preprint2020arXiv

Raman Spectrum and Polarizability of Liquid Water from Deep Neural Networks

We introduce a scheme based on machine learning and deep neural networks to model the environmental dependence of the electronic polarizability in insulating materials. Application to liquid water shows that training the network with a relatively small number of molecular configurations is sufficient to predict the polarizability of arbitrary liquid configurations in close agreement with ab initio density functional theory calculations. In combination with a neural network representation of the interatomic potential energy surface,the scheme allows us to calculate the Raman spectra along 2-nanosecond classical trajectories at different temperatures for H2O and D2O. The vast gains in efficiency provided by the machine learning approach enable longer trajectories and larger system sizes relative to ab initio methods, reducing the statistical error and improving the resolution of the low-frequency Raman spectra. Decomposing the spectra into intramolecular and intermolecular contributions elucidates the mechanisms behind the temperature dependence of the low-frequency and stretch modes.

preprint2020arXiv

Revealing electronic state-switching at conical intersections in alkyl iodides by ultrafast XUV transient absorption spectroscopy

Conical intersections between electronic states often dictate the chemistry of photoexcited molecules. Recently developed sources of ultrashort extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses tuned to element-specific transitions in molecules allow for the unambiguous detection of electronic state-switching at a conical intersection. Here, the fragmentation of photoexcited iso-propyl iodide and tert-butyl iodide molecules (i-C$_{3}$H$_{7}$I and t-C$_{4}$H$_{9}$I) through a conical intersection between $^{3}$Q$_{0}$/$^{1}$Q$_{1}$ spin-orbit states is revealed by ultrafast XUV transient absorption measuring iodine 4d core-to-valence transitions. The electronic state-sensitivity of the technique allows for a complete mapping of molecular dissociation from photoexcitation to photoproducts. In both molecules, the sub-100 fs transfer of a photoexcited wave packet from the $^{3}$Q$_{0}$ state into the $^{1}$Q$_{1}$ state at the conical intersection is captured. The results show how differences in the electronic state-switching of the wave packet in i-C$_{3}$H$_{7}$I and t-C$_{4}$H$_{9}$I directly lead to differences in the photoproduct branching ratio of the two systems.

preprint2020arXiv

Robust Closed-loop Model Predictive Control via System Level Synthesis

In this paper, we consider the robust closed-loop model predictive control (MPC) of a linear time-variant (LTV) system with norm bounded disturbances and LTV model uncertainty, wherein a series of constrained optimal control problems (OCPs) are solved. Guaranteeing robust feasibility of these OCPs is challenging due to disturbances perturbing the predicted states, and model uncertainty, both of which can render the closed-loop system unstable. As such, a trade-off between the numerical tractability and conservativeness of the solutions is often required. We use the System Level Synthesis (SLS) framework to reformulate these constrained OCPs over closed-loop system responses, and show that this allows us to transparently account for norm bounded additive disturbances and LTV model uncertainty by computing robust state feedback policies. We further show that by exploiting the underlying linear fractional structure of the resulting robust OCPs, we can significantly reduce the conservativeness of existing SLS-based and tube-MPC-based robust control methods while also improving computational efficiency. We conclude with numerical examples demonstrating the effectiveness of our methods.

preprint2020arXiv

SentPWNet: A Unified Sentence Pair Weighting Network for Task-specific Sentence Embedding

Pair-based metric learning has been widely adopted to learn sentence embedding in many NLP tasks such as semantic text similarity due to its efficiency in computation. Most existing works employed a sequence encoder model and utilized limited sentence pairs with a pair-based loss to learn discriminating sentence representation. However, it is known that the sentence representation can be biased when the sampled sentence pairs deviate from the true distribution of all sentence pairs. In this paper, our theoretical analysis shows that existing works severely suffered from a good pair sampling and instance weighting strategy. Instead of one time pair selection and learning on equal weighted pairs, we propose a unified locality weighting and learning framework to learn task-specific sentence embedding. Our model, SentPWNet, exploits the neighboring spatial distribution of each sentence as locality weight to indicate the informative level of sentence pair. Such weight is updated along with pair-loss optimization in each round, ensuring the model keep learning the most informative sentence pairs. Extensive experiments on four public available datasets and a self-collected place search benchmark with 1.4 million places clearly demonstrate that our model consistently outperforms existing sentence embedding methods with comparable efficiency.

preprint2019arXiv

DP-GEN: A concurrent learning platform for the generation of reliable deep learning based potential energy models

In recent years, promising deep learning based interatomic potential energy surface (PES) models have been proposed that can potentially allow us to perform molecular dynamics simulations for large scale systems with quantum accuracy. However, making these models truly reliable and practically useful is still a very non-trivial task. A key component in this task is the generation of datasets used in model training. In this paper, we introduce the Deep Potential GENerator (DP-GEN), an open-source software platform that implements the recently proposed "on-the-fly" learning procedure [Phys. Rev. Materials 3, 023804] and is capable of generating uniformly accurate deep learning based PES models in a way that minimizes human intervention and the computational cost for data generation and model training. DP-GEN automatically and iteratively performs three steps: exploration, labeling, and training. It supports various popular packages for these three steps: LAMMPS for exploration, Quantum Espresso, VASP, CP2K, etc. for labeling, and DeePMD-kit for training. It also allows automatic job submission and result collection on different types of machines, such as high performance clusters and cloud machines, and is adaptive to different job management tools, including Slurm, PBS, and LSF. As a concrete example, we illustrate the details of the process for generating a general-purpose PES model for Cu using DP-GEN.

preprint2018arXiv

Electrical switching of perpendicular magnetization in L10 FePt single layer

Electrical manipulation of magnetization is essential for integration of magnetic functionalities such as magnetic memories and magnetic logic devices into electronic circuits. The current induced spin-orbit torque (SOT) in heavy metal/ferromagnet (HM/FM) bilayers via the spin Hall effect in the HM and/or the Rashba effect at the interfaces provides an efficient way to switch the magnetization. In the meantime, current induced SOT has also been used to switch the in-plane magnetization in single layers such as ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As and antiferromagnetic metal CuMnAs with globally or locally broken inversion symmetry. Here we demonstrate the current induced perpendicular magnetization switching in L10 FePt single layer. The current induced spin-orbit effective fields in L10 FePt increase with the chemical ordering parameter (S). In 20 nm FePt films with high S, we observe a large charge-to-spin conversion efficiency and a switching current density as low as 7.0E6 A/cm2. We anticipate our findings may stimulate the exploration of the spin-orbit torques in bulk perpendicular magnetic anisotropic materials and the application of high-efficient perpendicular magnetization switching in single FM layer.

preprint2018arXiv

End-to-end Symmetry Preserving Inter-atomic Potential Energy Model for Finite and Extended Systems

Machine learning models are changing the paradigm of molecular modeling, which is a fundamental tool for material science, chemistry, and computational biology. Of particular interest is the inter-atomic potential energy surface (PES). Here we develop Deep Potential - Smooth Edition (DeepPot-SE), an end-to-end machine learning-based PES model, which is able to efficiently represent the PES for a wide variety of systems with the accuracy of ab initio quantum mechanics models. By construction, DeepPot-SE is extensive and continuously differentiable, scales linearly with system size, and preserves all the natural symmetries of the system. Further, we show that DeepPot-SE describes finite and extended systems including organic molecules, metals, semiconductors, and insulators with high fidelity.

preprint2016arXiv

Anisotropic Black Phosphorus Synaptic Device for Neuromorphic Applications

Synapses are functional links between neurons, through which "information" flows in the neural network. These connections vary significantly in strength, typically resulting from the intrinsic heterogeneity in their chemical and biological properties. Such heterogeneity is fundamental to the diversity of neural activities, which together with other features of the brain enables functions ranging from perception and recognition, to memory and reasoning. Realizing such heterogeneity in synaptic electronics is critical towards building artificial neural network with the potential for achieving the level of complexity in biological systems. However, such intrinsic heterogeneity has been very challenging to realize in current synaptic devices. Here, we demonstrate the first black phosphorus (BP) synaptic device, which offers intrinsic anisotropy in its synaptic characteristics directly resulting from its low crystal symmetry. The charge transfer between the 2-nm native oxide of BP and the BP channel is utilized to achieve the synaptic behavior. Key features of biological synapses such as long-term plasticity with heterogeneity, including long-term potentiation/depression and spike-timing-dependent plasticity, are mimicked. With the anisotropic BP synaptic devices, we also realize a simple compact heterogeneous axon-multi-synapses network. This demonstration represents an important step towards introducing intrinsic heterogeneity to artificial neuromorphic systems.

preprint2016arXiv

Detecting facial landmarks in the video based on a hybrid framework

To dynamically detect the facial landmarks in the video, we propose a novel hybrid framework termed as detection-tracking-detection (DTD). First, the face bounding box is achieved from the first frame of the video sequence based on a traditional face detection method. Then, a landmark detector detects the facial landmarks, which is based on a cascaded deep convolution neural network (DCNN). Next, the face bounding box in the current frame is estimated and validated after the facial landmarks in the previous frame are tracked based on the median flow. Finally, the facial landmarks in the current frame are exactly detected from the validated face bounding box via the landmark detector. Experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can detect the facial landmarks in the video sequence more effectively and with lower consuming time compared to the frame-by-frame method via the DCNN.

preprint2016arXiv

Information Diffusion of Topic Propagation in Social Media

Real-world social and/or operational networks consist of agents with associated states, whose connectivity forms complex topologies. This complexity is further compounded by interconnected information layers, consisting, for instance, documents/resources of the agents which mutually share topical similarities. Our goal in this work is to predict the specific states of the agents, as their observed resources evolve in time and get updated. The information diffusion among the agents and the publications themselves effectively result in a dynamic process which we capture by an interconnected system of networks (i.e. layered). More specifically, we use a notion of a supra-Laplacian matrix to address such a generalized diffusion of an interconnected network starting with the classical "graph Laplacian". The auxiliary and external input update is modeled by a multidimensional Brownian process, yielding two contributions to the variations in the states of the agents: one that is due to the intrinsic interactions in the network system, and the other due to the external inputs or innovations. A variation on this theme, a priori knowledge of a fraction of the agents' states is shown to lead to a Kalman predictor problem. This helps us refine the predicted states exploiting the error in estimating the states of agents. Three real-world datasets are used to evaluate and validate the information diffusion process in this novel layered network approach. Our results demonstrate a lower prediction error when using the interconnected network rather than the single connectivity layer between the agents. The prediction error is further improved by using the estimated diffusion connection and by applying the Kalman approach with partial observations.

preprint2016arXiv

Multiple Staggered Mesh Ewald: Boosting the Accuracy of the Smooth Particle Mesh Ewald Method

The smooth particle mesh Ewald (SPME) method is the standard method for computing the electrostatic interactions in the molecular simulations. In this work, the multiple staggered mesh Ewald (MSME) method is proposed to boost the accuracy of the SPME method. Unlike the SPME that achieves higher accuracy by refining the mesh, the MSME improves the accuracy by averaging the standard SPME forces computed on, e.g. $M$, staggered meshes. We prove, from theoretical perspective, that the MSME is as accurate as the SPME, but uses $M^2$ times less mesh points in a certain parameter range. In the complementary parameter range, the MSME is as accurate as the SPME with twice of the interpolation order. The theoretical conclusions are numerically validated both by a uniform and uncorrelated charge system, and by a three-point-charge water system that is widely used as solvent for the bio-macromolecules.

preprint2016arXiv

Network Hardware-Accelerated Consensus

Consensus protocols are the foundation for building many fault-tolerant distributed systems and services. This paper posits that there are significant performance benefits to be gained by offering consensus as a network service (CAANS). CAANS leverages recent advances in commodity networking hardware design and programmability to implement consensus protocol logic in network devices. CAANS provides a complete Paxos protocol, is a drop-in replacement for software-based implementations of Paxos, makes no restrictions on network topologies, and is implemented in a higher-level, data-plane programming language, allowing for portability across a range of target devices. At the same time, CAANS significantly increases throughput and reduces latency for consensus operations. Consensus logic executing in hardware can transmit consensus messages at line speed, with latency only slightly higher than simply forwarding packets.

preprint2016arXiv

On the Existence of and Relationship between Canards and Torus Canards in Forced Slow/Fast Systems

Canards are special solutions of slow/fast systems which are ubiquitous in neuroscience and electrical engineering. Two distinct classes of canard solutions have been identified and carefully studied: folded singularity canards and torus canards. Recently, an explicit and analytic relationship between these seemingly unrelated families of solutions was established in the classical forced van der Pol equation (Burke et al., J. Nonlinear Sci. 26:405--451, 2015). In this article, we generalize the results of Burke et al. (2015) to the broader class of time-periodically forced planar slow/fast systems, which includes the forced van der Pol and the forced FitzHugh-Nagumo equations. We analytically determine the parameter values in this class of systems for which the two types of canard solutions exist, and show that the branches of primary canards of folded singularities continue into those of the torus canards as the forcing frequency is increased. We illustrate our results in the paradigm problem of the forced FitzHugh-Nagumo system.

preprint2016arXiv

On the existence of the optimal order for wavefunction extrapolation in Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics

Wavefunction extrapolation greatly reduces the number of self-consistent field (SCF) iterations and thus the overall computational cost of Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) that is based on the Kohn-Sham density functional theory. Going against the intuition that the higher order of extrapolation possesses a better accuracy, we demonstrate, from both theoretical and numerical perspectives, that the extrapolation accuracy firstly increases and then decreases with respect to the order, and an optimal extrapolation order in terms of minimal number of SCF iterations always exists. We also prove that the optimal order tends to be larger when using larger MD time steps or more strict SCF convergence criteria. By example BOMD simulations of a solid copper system, we show that the optimal extrapolation order covers a broad range when varying the MD time step or the SCF convergence criterion. Therefore, we suggest the necessity for BOMD simulation packages to open the user interface and to provide more choices on the extrapolation order. Another factor that may influence the extrapolation accuracy is the alignment scheme that eliminates the discontinuity in the wavefunctions with respect to the atomic or cell variables. We prove the equivalence between the two existing schemes, thus the implementation of either of them does not lead to essential difference in the extrapolation accuracy.

preprint2016arXiv

Sampling the isothermal-isobaric ensemble by Langevin dynamics

We present a new method of conducting molecular dynamics simulation in isothermal-isobaric ensemble based on Langevin equations of motion. The stochastic coupling to all particle and cell degrees of freedoms is introduced in a correct way, in the sense that the stationary configurational distribution is proved to be in consistent with that of the isothermal-isobaric ensemble. In order to apply the proposed method in computer simulations, a second order symmetric numerical integration scheme is developed by Trotter's splitting of the single-step propagator. Moreover, a practical guide of choosing working parameters is suggested for user specified thermo- and baro-coupling time-scales. The method and software implementation are carefully validated by a numerical example.

preprint2015arXiv

An exploration of fetish social networks and communities

Online Social Networks (OSNs) provide a venue for virtual interactions and relationships between individuals. In some communities, OSNs also facilitate arranging online meetings and relationships. FetLife, the worlds largest anonymous social network for the BDSM, fetish and kink communities, provides a unique example of an OSN that serves as an interaction space, community organizing tool, and sexual market. In this paper, we present a first look at the characteristics of European members of Fetlife, comprising 504,416 individual nodes with 1,912,196 connections. We looked at user characteristics in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and preferred role. We further examined the topological and structural properties of groups, as well as the type of interactions and relations between their members. Our results suggest there are important differences between the FetLife community and conventional OSNs. The network can be characterised by complex gender based interactions both from a sexual market and platonic viewpoint which point to a truly fascinating social network.

preprint2015arXiv

Black Arsenic-Phosphorus: Layered Anisotropic Infrared Semiconductors with Highly Tunable Compositions and Properties

Two-dimensional (2D) layered materials with diverse properties have attracted significant interest in the past decade. The layered materials discovered so far have covered a wide, yet discontinuous electromagnetic spectral range from semimetallic graphene, insulating boron nitride, to semiconductors with bandgaps from middle infrared to visible light. Here, we introduce new layered semiconductors, black arsenic-phosphorus (b-AsP), with highly tunable chemical compositions and electronic and optical properties. Transport and infrared absorption studies demonstrate the semiconducting nature of b-AsP with tunable bandgaps, ranging from 0.3 to 0.15 eV. These bandgaps fall into long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) regime and cannot be readily reached by other layered materials. Moreover, polarization-resolved infrared absorption and Raman studies reveal in-plane anisotropic properties of b-AsP. This family of layered b-AsP materials extend the electromagnetic spectra covered by 2D layered materials to the LWIR regime, and may find unique applications for future all 2D layered material based devices.

preprint2015arXiv

Interlayer Interactions in Anisotropic Atomically-thin Rhenium Diselenide

Recently, two-dimensional (2D) materials with strong in-plane anisotropic properties such as black phosphorus have demonstrated great potential for developing new devices that can take advantage of its reduced lattice symmetry with potential applications in electronics, optoelectronics and thermoelectrics. However, the selection of 2D material with strong in-plane anisotropy has so far been very limited and only sporadic studies have been devoted to transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) materials with reduced lattice symmetry, which is yet to convey the full picture of their optical and phonon properties, and the anisotropy in their interlayer interactions. Here, we study the anisotropic interlayer interactions in an important TMDC 2D material with reduced in-plane symmetry - atomically thin rhenium diselenide (ReSe2) - by investigating its ultralow frequency interlayer phonon vibration modes, the layer dependent optical bandgap, and the anisotropic photoluminescence (PL) spectra for the first time. The ultralow frequency interlayer Raman spectra combined with the first study of polarization-resolved high frequency Raman spectra in mono- and bi-layer ReSe2 allows deterministic identification of its layer number and crystal orientation. PL measurements show anisotropic optical emission intensity with bandgap increasing from 1.26 eV in the bulk to 1.32 eV in monolayer, consistent with the theoretical results based on first-principle calculations. The study of the layer-number dependence of the Raman modes and the PL spectra reveals the relatively weak van der Waals interaction and 2D quantum confinement in atomically-thin ReSe2.

preprint2015arXiv

Molecular Dynamics in a Grand Ensemble: Bergmann-Lebowitz model and Adaptive Resolution Simulation

This article deals with the molecular dynamics simulation of open systems that can exchange energy and matter with a reservoir; the physics of the reservoir and its interactions with the system are described by the model introduced by Bergmann and Lebowitz.Despite its conceptual appeal, the model did not gain popularity in the field of molecular simulation and, as a consequence, did not play a role in the development of open system molecular simulation techniques, even though it can provide the conceptual legitimation of simulation techniques that mimic open systems. We shall demonstrate that the model can serve as a tool to devise both numerical procedures and conceptual definitions of physical quantities that cannot be defined in a straightforward way by systems with a fixed number of molecules. In particular, we discuss the utility of the Bergmann-Lebowitz (BL) model for the calculation of equilibrium time correlation functions within the Grand Canonical Adaptive Resolution method (GC-AdResS) and report numerical results for the case of liquid water.

preprint2015arXiv

Monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide Nanoribbons with High Optical Anisotropy

Two-dimensional Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) has shown promising prospects for the next generation electronics and optoelectronics devices. The monolayer MoS2 can be patterned into quasi-one-dimensional anisotropic MoS2 nanoribbons (MNRs), in which theoretical calculations have predicted novel properties. However, little work has been carried out in the experimental exploration of MNRs with a width of less than 20 nm where the geometrical confinement can lead to interesting phenomenon. Here, we prepared MNRs with width between 5 nm to 15 nm by direct helium ion beam milling. High optical anisotropy of these MNRs is revealed by the systematic study of optical contrast and Raman spectroscopy. The Raman modes in MNRs show strong polarization dependence. Besides that the E' and A'1 peaks are broadened by the phonon-confinement effect, the modes corresponding to singularities of vibrational density of states are activated by edges. The peculiar polarization behavior of Raman modes can be explained by the anisotropy of light absorption in MNRs, which is evidenced by the polarized optical contrast. The study opens the possibility to explore quasione-dimensional materials with high optical anisotropy from isotropic 2D family of transition metal dichalcogenides.

preprint2015arXiv

Synthesis of thin-film black phosphorus on a flexible substrate

We report a scalable approach to synthesize a large-area (up to 4 mm) thin black phosphorus (BP) film on a flexible substrate. We first deposited a red phosphorus (RP) thin-film on a flexible polyester substrate, followed by its conversion to BP in a high-pressure multi-anvil cell at room temperature. Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy measurements confirmed the formation of a nano-crystalline BP thin-film with a thickness of around 40 nm. Optical characterization indicates a bandgap of around 0.28 eV in the converted BP, similar to the bandgap measured in exfoliated thin-films. Thin-film BP transistors exhibit a field-effect mobility of around 0.5 cm2/Vs, which can probably be further enhanced by the optimization of the conversion process at elevated temperatures. Our work opens the avenue for the future demonstration of large-scale, high quality thin-film black phosphorus.

preprint2015arXiv

The Renaissance of Black Phosphorus

One hundred years after its first successful synthesis in the bulk form in 1914, black phosphorus (black P) was recently rediscovered from the perspective of a two-dimensional (2D) layered material, attracting tremendous interest from condensed matter physicists, chemists, semiconductor device engineers and material scientists. Similar to graphite and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), black P has a layered structure but with a unique puckered single layer geometry. Because the direct electronic band gap of thin film black P can be varied from 0.3 to around 2 eV, depending on its film thickness, and because of its high carrier mobility and anisotropic in-plane properties, black P is promising for novel applications in nanoelectronics and nanophotonics different from graphene and TMDs. Black P as a nanomaterial has already attracted much attention from researchers within the past year. Here, we offer our opinions on this emerging material with the goal of motivating and inspiring fellow researchers in the 2D materials community and the broad readership of PNAS to discuss and contribute to this exciting new field. We also give our perspectives on future 2D and thin film black P research directions, aiming to assist researchers coming from a variety of disciplines who are desirous of working in this exciting research field.

preprint2014arXiv

Adaptive Resolution Simulation in Equilibrium and Beyond

In this paper, we investigate the equilibrium statistical properties of both the force and potential interpolations of adaptive resolution simulation (AdResS) under the theoretical framework of grand-canonical like AdResS (GC-AdResS). The thermodynamic relations between the higher and lower resolutions are derived by considering the absence of fundamental conservation laws in mechanics for both branches of AdResS. In order to investigate the applicability of AdResS method in studying the properties beyond the equilibrium, we demonstrate the accuracy of AdResS in computing the dynamical properties in two numerical examples: The velocity auto-correlation of pure water and the conformational relaxation of alanine dipeptide dissolved in water. Theoretical and technical open questions of the AdResS method are discussed in the end of the paper.

preprint2014arXiv

Black Phosphorus Radio-Frequency Transistors

Few-layer and thin film forms of layered black phosphorus (BP) have recently emerged as a promising material for applications in high performance nanoelectronics and infrared optoelectronics. Layered BP thin film offers a moderate bandgap of around 0.3 eV and high carrier mobility, leading to transistors with decent on-off ratio and high on-state current density. Here, we demonstrate the gigahertz frequency operation of black phosphorus field-effect transistors for the first time. The BP transistors demonstrated here show excellent current saturation with an on-off ratio exceeding 2000. We achieved a current density in excess of 270 mA/mm and DC transconductance above 180 mS/mm for hole conduction. Using standard high frequency characterization techniques, we measured a short-circuit current-gain cut-off frequency fT of 12 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency fmax of 20 GHz in 300 nm channel length devices. BP devices may offer advantages over graphene transistors for high frequency electronics in terms of voltage and power gain due to the good current saturation properties arising from their finite bandgap, thus enabling the future ubiquitous transistor technology that can operate in the multi-GHz frequency range and beyond.

preprint2014arXiv

Chemical potential of liquids and mixtures via Adaptive Resolution Simulation

We employ the adaptive resolution approach AdResS, in its recently developed Grand Canonical-like version (GC-AdResS) [Wang et al. Phys.Rev.X 3, 011018 (2013)], to calculate the excess chemical potential, $μ^{ex}$, of various liquids and mixtures. We compare our results with those obtained from full atomistic simulations using the technique of thermodynamic integration and show a satisfactory agreement. In GC-AdResS the procedure to calculate $μ^{ex}$ corresponds to the process of standard initial equilibration of the system; this implies that, independently of the specific aim of the study, $μ^{ex}$, for each molecular species, is automatically calculated every time a GC-AdResS simulation is performed.

preprint2014arXiv

Detection and classification from electromagnetic induction data

In this paper we introduce an efficient algorithm for identifying conductive objects using induction data derived from eddy currents. Our method consists of first extracting geometric features from the induction data and then matching them to precomputed data for known objects from a given dictionary. The matching step relies on fundamental properties of conductive polarization tensors and new invariants introduced in this paper. A new shape identification scheme is introduced and studied. We test it numerically in the presence of measurement noise. Stability and resolution capabilities of the proposed identification algorithm are quantified in numerical simulations.

preprint2014arXiv

Electronic transport and device prospects of monolayer molybdenum disulphide grown by chemical vapour deposition

Layered transition metal dichalcogenides display a wide range of attractive physical and chemical properties and are potentially important for various device applications. Here we report the electronic transport and device properties of monolayer molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD). We show that these devices have the potential to suppress short channel effects and have high critical breakdown electric field. However, our study reveals that the electronic properties of these devices are at present, severely limited by the presence of a significant amount of band tail trapping states. Through capacitance and ac conductance measurements, we systematically quantify the density-of-states and response time of these states. Due to the large amount of trapped charges, the measured effective mobility also leads to a large underestimation of the true band mobility and the potential of the material. Continual engineering efforts on improving the sample quality are needed for its potential applications.

preprint2014arXiv

Exploring the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide in solution subjected to an external electric field: A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation

In this paper, we investigate the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide under an external electric field by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. We consider the case of a constant and of an oscillatory field. In this context we propose a procedure to implement the temperature control, which removes the irrelevant thermal effects of the field. For the constant field different time-scales are identified in the conformational, dipole moment, and orientational dynamics. Moreover, we prove that the solvent structure only marginally changes when the external field is switched on. In the case of oscillatory field, the conformational changes are shown to be as strong as in the previous case, and non-trivial nonequilibrium circular paths in the conformation space are revealed by calculating the integrated net probability fluxes.

preprint2014arXiv

Highly Anisotropic and Robust Excitons in Monolayer Black Phosphorus

Semi-metallic graphene and semiconducting monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are the two-dimensional (2D) materials most intensively studied in recent years. Recently, black phosphorus emerged as a promising new 2D material due to its widely tunable and direct bandgap, high carrier mobility and remarkable in-plane anisotropic electrical, optical and phonon properties. However, current progress is primarily limited to its thin-film form, and its unique properties at the truly 2D quantum confinement have yet to be demonstrated. Here, we reveal highly anisotropic and tightly bound excitons in monolayer black phosphorus using polarization-resolved photoluminescence measurements at room temperature. We show that regardless of the excitation laser polarization, the emitted light from the monolayer is linearly polarized along the light effective mass direction and centers around 1.3 eV, a clear signature of emission from highly anisotropic bright excitons. In addition, photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy suggests a quasiparticle bandgap of 2.2 eV, from which we estimate an exciton binding energy of around 0.9 eV, consistent with theoretical results based on first-principles. The experimental observation of highly anisotropic, bright excitons with exceedingly large binding energy not only opens avenues for the future explorations of many-electron effects in this unusual 2D material, but also suggests a promising future in optoelectronic devices such as on-chip infrared light sources.

preprint2014arXiv

Microwave-driven Topological Resonant Excitations of Coupled Skyrmions

We study nonlinear dynamics of coupled Skyrmions and present a method for manipulating topological resonant excitations by a dual-frequency microwave field. Thiele's equation is extended by introducing a new effective mass associated with time derivative of topological density. Two coupled resonant modes endowed with the new effective mass are found in the coupled Skyrmions. Polygon-like resonant excitations are observed and modulated when the two modes are activated simultaneously by microwave field with commensurate frequency ratio. Quasiperiodic behavior of excitations are related to an incommensurate ratio. Numerical solutions based on the extended Thiele's equation for Skyrmion under a dual-frequency field agree well with the micromagnetic simulation results and clarify the importance of frequency value, frequency ratio of an external field and the effective mass to the polygon-like dynamics of Skyrmion. We also show the coupling between two Skyrmions can dominate their topological resonant excitations.

preprint2014arXiv

Plasmons and screening in monolayer and multilayer black phosphorus

Black phosphorus exhibits a high degree of band anisotropy. However, we found that its in-plane static screening remains relatively isotropic for momenta relevant to elastic long-range scattering processes. On the other hand, the collective electronic excitations in the system exhibit a strong anisotropy. Band non-parabolicity leads to a plasmon frequency which scales as $n^β$, where $n$ is the carrier concentration, and $β<\tfrac{1}{2}$. Screening and charge distribution in the out-of-plane direction are also studied using a non-linear Thomas-Fermi model.

preprint2014arXiv

Rediscovering Black Phosphorus: A Unique Anisotropic 2D Material for Optoelectronics and Electronics

Anisotropy refers to the property of a material exhibiting directionally dependent features. In this paper, we introduce black phosphorous (BP), the most stable allotrope of phosphorus in layered orthorhombic structure with a bandgap of 0.3 eV in bulk, as a unique 2D material in which electrons, phonons and their interactions with photons behave in a highly anisotropic manner within the plane of the layers. The unique anisotropic nature of BP thin films is revealed using angle-resolved Raman and infrared spectroscopies, together with angle-resolved transport study. For 15 nm thick BP, we measure Hall mobility of 1000 and 600 cm^2/Vs for holes along the light (x) and heavy (y) effective mass directions, respectively, at 120 K. These BP thin films also exhibit large and anisotropic in-plane optical conductivity from 2 to 5 micrometer wavelength. Field effect transistors using 4 to 30 layers of BP (2 to 15 nm) as channel material exhibit an on-off current ratio exceeding 10^5, a field-effect mobility of 205 cm^2/Vs, and good saturation properties all at room temperature, suggesting its promising future in high performance thin film electronics. By introducing narrow bandgap BP into the 2D material family, we fill the space between semi-metallic graphene and large bandgap TMDCs, where great potentials for infrared optoelectronics lie. Most importantly, the unique anisotropic nature of this intriguing material creates unprecedented possibilities for the realization of conceptually new optoelectronic and electronic devices in which angle-dependent physical properties are highly desirable.

preprint2014arXiv

Time-domain multiscale shape identification in electro-sensing

This paper presents premier and innovative time-domain multi-scale method for shape identification in electro-sensing using pulse-type signals. The method is based on transform-invariant shape descriptors computed from filtered polarization tensors at multi-scales. The proposed algorithm enjoys a remarkable noise robustness even with far-field measurements at very limited angle of view. It opens a door for pulsed imaging using echolocation and induction data.

preprint2014arXiv

Tunable optical properties of multilayers black phosphorus thin films

Black phosphorus thin films might offer attractive alternatives to narrow gap compound semiconductors for optoelectronics across mid- to near-infrared frequencies. In this work, we calculate the optical conductivity tensor of multilayer black phosphorus thin films using the Kubo formula within an effective low-energy Hamiltonian. The optical absorption spectra of multilayer black phosphorus are shown to vary sensitively with thickness, doping, and light polarization. In conjunction with experimental spectra obtained from infrared absorption spectroscopy, we also discuss the role of interband coupling and disorder on the observed anisotropic absorption spectra.

preprint2014arXiv

Two-Dimensional Material Nanophotonics

The emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials exhibit a wide range of electronic properties, ranging from insulating hexagonal boron nitride, semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides such as molybdenum disulfide, to semi-metallic graphene. Here, we first review the optical properties and applications of a variety of 2D materials, followed by two different approaches to enhance their interactions with light: through their integration with external photonic structures and through their intrinsic polaritonic resonances. Finally, we cover a narrow bandgap layered material, black phosphorus, which serendipitously bridges the zero gap graphene and the relatively large-bandgap TMDCs. The plethora of 2D materials and their heterostructures, together with the approaches for enhancing light-matter interaction offers the promise of scientific discoveries and nanophotonics technologies across a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum.

preprint2013arXiv

Covering with Excess One: Seeing the Topology

We have initiated the study of topology of the space of coverings on grid domains. The space has the following constraint: while all the covering agents can move freely (we allow overlapping) on the domain, their union must cover the whole domain. A minimal number $N$ of the covering agents is required for a successful covering of the domain. In this paper, we demonstrate beautiful topological structures of this space on grid domains in 2D with $N+1$ coverings, the topology of the space has the homotopy type of $1$ dimensional complex, regardless of the domain shape. We also present the Euler characteristic formula which connects the topology of the space with that of the domain itself.

preprint2013arXiv

Grand-canonical-like molecular-dynamics simulations by using an adaptive-resolution technique

In this work, we provide a detailed theoretical analysis, supported by numerical tests, of the reliability of the adaptive resolution simulation (AdResS) technique in sampling the Grand Canonical ensemble. We demonstrate that the correct density and radial distribution functions in the hybrid region, where molecules change resolution, are two necessary conditions for considering the atomistic and coarse-grained regions in AdResS equivalent to subsystems of a full atomistic system with an accuracy up to the second order with respect to the probability distribution of the system. Moreover, we show that the work done by the thermostat and a thermodynamic force in the transition region is formally equivalent to balance the chemical potential difference between the different resolutions. From these results follows the main conclusion that the atomistic region exchanges molecules with the coarse-grained region in a Grand Canonical fashion with an accuracy up to (at least) second order. Numerical tests, for the relevant case of liquid water at ambient conditions, are carried out to strengthen the conclusions of the theoretical analysis. Finally, in order to show the computational convenience of AdResS as a Grand Canonical set up, we compare our method to the Insertion Particle Method (IMP) in its most efficient computational implementation. This fruitful combination of theoretical principles and numerical evidence candidates the adaptive resolution technique as a natural, general and efficient protocol for Grand Canonical Molecular Dynamics for the case of large systems.

preprint2013arXiv

Is there a third order phase transition for supercritical fluids?

We prove that according to Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of liquid mixtures of Lennard-Jones (L-J) particles, there is no third order phase transition in the supercritical regime beyond Andrew's critical point. This result is in open contrast with recent theoretical studies and experiments which instead suggest not only its existence but also its universality regarding the chemical nature of the fluid. We argue that our results are solid enough to go beyond the limitations of MD and the generic character of L-J models, thus suggesting a rather smooth liquid-vapor thermodynamic behavior of fluids in supercritical regime.

preprint2013arXiv

Large-scale 2D Electronics based on Single-layer MoS2 Grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition

2D nanoelectronics based on single-layer MoS2 offers great advantages for both conventional and ubiquitous applications. This paper discusses the large-scale CVD growth of single-layer MoS2 and fabrication of devices and circuits for the first time. Both digital and analog circuits are fabricated to demonstrate its capability for mixed-signal applications.

preprint2013arXiv

Shape identification and classification in echolocation

The paper aims at proposing the first shape identification and classification algorithm in echolocation. The approach is based on first extracting geometric features from the reflected waves and then matching them with precomputed ones associated with a dictionary of targets. The construction of such frequency-dependent shape descriptors is based on some important properties of the scattering coefficients and new invariants. The stability and resolution of the proposed identification algorithm with respect to measurement noise and the limited-view aspect are analytically and numerically quantified.

preprint2013arXiv

Shape recognition and classification in electro-sensing

This paper aims at advancing the field of electro-sensing. It exhibits the physical mechanism underlying shape perception for weakly electric fish. These fish orient themselves at night in complete darkness by employing their active electrolocation system. They generate a stable, high-frequency, weak electric field and perceive the transdermal potential modulations caused by a nearby target with different admittivity than the surrounding water. In this paper, we explain how weakly electric fish might identify and classify a target, knowing by advance that the latter belongs to a certain collection of shapes. Our model of the weakly electric fish relies on differential imaging, i.e., by forming an image from the perturbations of the field due to targets, and physics-based classification. The electric fish would first locate the target using a specific location search algorithm. Then it could extract, from the perturbations of the electric field, generalized (or high-order) polarization tensors of the target. Computing, from the extracted features, invariants under rigid motions and scaling yields shape descriptors. The weakly electric fish might classify a target by comparing its invariants with those of a set of learned shapes. On the other hand, when measurements are taken at multiple frequencies, the fish might exploit the shifts and use the spectral content of the generalized polarization tensors to dramatically improve the stability with respect to measurement noise of the classification procedure in electro-sensing. Surprisingly, it turns out that the first-order polarization tensor at multiple frequencies could be enough for the purpose of classification. A procedure to eliminate the background field in the case where the permittivity of the surrounding medium can be neglected, and hence improve further the stability of the classification process, is also discussed.

preprint2013arXiv

Skyrmion ground state and gyration of skyrmions in magnetic nanodisks without the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction

We show by micromagnetic simulations that spontaneous skyrmion ground state can exist in Co/Ru/Co nanodisks without the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction (DMI), which can remain stable in the applied magnetic field along +z direction even up to 0.44 T. The guiding center ($R_x$,$R_y$) of skyrmion defined by the moments of the topological density presents a novel gyration with a star-like trajectory in a pulsed magnetic field and a hexagonal trajectory after the field is switched off, which is different from that of vortex or bubble. One of the coupled skyrmions could move without an external magnetic field, but only induced by the motion of the other one due to strong inter-layer magnetostatic interactions. This work sheds light on how novel skyrmions can be discovered in various (not limited to magnetic) systems with competing energies and contributes to the understanding of the dynamical properties of skyrmion.

preprint2013arXiv

Target Identification Using Dictionary Matching of Generalized Polarization Tensors

The aim of this paper is to provide a fast and efficient procedure for (real-time) target identification in imaging based on matching on a dictionary of precomputed generalized polarization tensors (GPTs). The approach is based on some important properties of the GPTs and new invariants. A new shape representation is given and numerically tested in the presence of measurement noise. The stability and resolution of the proposed identification algorithm is numerically quantified.

preprint2012arXiv

Integrated Circuits Based on Bilayer MoS2 Transistors

Two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), have been shown to exhibit excellent electrical and optical properties. The semiconducting nature of MoS2 allows it to overcome the shortcomings of zero-bandgap graphene, while still sharing many of graphene's advantages for electronic and optoelectronic applications. Discrete electronic and optoelectronic components, such as field-effect transistors, sensors and photodetectors made from few-layer MoS2 show promising performance as potential substitute of Si in conventional electronics and of organic and amorphous Si semiconductors in ubiquitous systems and display applications. An important next step is the fabrication of fully integrated multi-stage circuits and logic building blocks on MoS2 to demonstrate its capability for complex digital logic and high-frequency ac applications. This paper demonstrates an inverter, a NAND gate, a static random access memory, and a five-stage ring oscillator based on a direct-coupled transistor logic technology. The circuits comprise between two to twelve transistors seamlessly integrated side-by-side on a single sheet of bilayer MoS2. Both enhancement-mode and depletion-mode transistors were fabricated thanks to the use of gate metals with different work functions.

preprint2012arXiv

Leading-order spin-orbit and spin(1)-spin(2) radiation-reaction Hamiltonians

In the present paper, the leading-order post-Newtonian spin-orbit and spin(1)-spin(2) radiation-reaction Hamiltonians are calculated. We utilize the canonical formalism of Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner (ADM), which has shown to be valuable for this kind of calculation. The results are valid for arbitrary many objects. The energy loss is then computed and compared to well-known results for the energy flux as a check.

preprint2012arXiv

Optimizing working parameters of the twin-range cutoff method in terms of accuracy and efficiency

We construct a priori error estimation for the force error of the twin-range cutoff method, which is widely used to treat the short-range non-bonded interactions in molecular simulations. Based on the error and cost estimation, we develop a work flow that can automatically determine the nearly most efficient twin-range cutoff parameters (i.e. the cutoff radii and the neighbor list updating frequency) prior to a simulation for a predetermined accuracy. Both the error estimate and the parameter tuning method are demonstrated to be effective by testing simulations of the standard Lennard-Jones 6-12 fluid in gas, liquid as well as supercritical state. We recommend the tuned twin-range cutoff method that can save precious user time and computational resources.

preprint2012arXiv

Tracking of a Mobile Target Using Generalized Polarization Tensors

In this paper we apply an extended Kalman filter to track both the location and the orientation of a mobile target from multistatic response measurements. We also analyze the effect of the limited-view aspect on the stability and the efficiency of our tracking approach. Our algorithm is based on the use of the generalized polarization tensors, which can be reconstructed from the multistatic response measurements by solving a linear system. The system has the remarkable property that low order generalized polarization tensors are not affected by the error caused by the instability of higher orders in the presence of measurement noise.

preprint2011arXiv

BN/Graphene/BN Transistors for RF Applications

In this letter, we demonstrate the first BN/Graphene/BN field effect transistor for RF applications. The BN/Graphene/BN structure can preserve the high mobility of graphene, even when it is sandwiched between a substrate and a gate dielectric. Field effect transistors (FETs) using a bilayer graphene channel have been fabricated with a gate length LG=450 nm. A current density in excess of 1 A/mm and DC transconductance close to 250 mS/mm are achieved for both electron and hole conductions. RF characterization is performed for the first time on this device structure, giving a current-gain cut-off frequency fT=33 GHz and an fT.LG product of 15 GHz.um. The improved performance obtained by the BN/Graphene/BN structure is very promising to enable the next generation of high frequency graphene RF electronics.

preprint2011arXiv

Cohomologous Harmonic Cochains

We describe algorithms for finding harmonic cochains, an essential ingredient for solving elliptic partial differential equations in exterior calculus. Harmonic cochains are also useful in computational topology and computer graphics. We focus on finding harmonic cochains cohomologous to a given cocycle. Amongst other things, this allows localization near topological features of interest. We derive a weighted least squares method by proving a discrete Hodge-deRham theorem on the isomorphism between the space of harmonic cochains and cohomology. The solution obtained either satisfies the Whitney form finite element exterior calculus equations or the discrete exterior calculus equations for harmonic cochains, depending on the discrete Hodge star used.

preprint2011arXiv

Delay Analysis of Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

In this letter, we analyze the carrier transit delay in graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs). GFETs are fabricated at the wafer-scale on sapphire substrate. For a device with a gate length of 210 nm, a current gain cut-off frequency fT of 18 GHz and 22 GHz is obtained before and after de-embedding. The extraction of the internal (Cgs,i, Cgd,i) and external capacitances (Cgs,ex and Cgd,ex) from the scaling behavior of the gate capacitances Cgs and Cgd allows the intrinsic (τ_int), extrinsic (τ_ext) and parasitic delays (τ_par) to be obtained. In addition, the extraction of the intrinsic delay provides a new way to directly estimate carrier velocity from the experimental data while the breakdown of the total delay into intrinsic, extrinsic, and parasitic components can offer valuable information for optimizing RF GFETs structures.

preprint2011arXiv

Image representation by blob and its application in CT reconstruction from few projections

The localized radial symmetric function, or blob, is an ideal alternative to the pixel basis for X-ray computed tomography (CT) image reconstruction. In this paper we develop image representation models using blob, and propose reconstruction methods for few projections data. The image is represented in a shift invariant space generated by a Gaussian blob or a multiscale blob system of different frequency selectivity, and the reconstruction is done through minimizing the Total Variation or the 1 norm of blob coefficients. Some 2D numerical results are presented, where we use GPU platform for accelerating the X-ray projection and back-projection, the interpolation and the gradient computations.

preprint2010arXiv

Canonical formulation of gravitating spinning objects at 3.5 post-Newtonian order

The 3.5 post-Newtonian (PN) order is tackled by extending the canonical formalism of Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner to spinning objects. This extension is constructed order by order in the PN setting by utilizing the global Poincare invariance as the important consistency condition. The formalism is valid to linear order in the single spin variables. Agreement with a recent action approach is found. A general formula for the interaction Hamiltonian between matter and transverse-traceless part of the metric at 3.5PN is derived. The wave equation resulting from this Hamiltonian is considered in the case of the constructed formalism for spinning objects. Agreement with the Einstein equations is found in this case. The energy flux at the spin-orbit level is computed.