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Published work

128 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

SCOPE: Structured Decomposition and Conditional Skill Orchestration for Complex Image Generation

While text-to-image models have made strong progress in visual fidelity, faithfully realizing complex visual intents remains challenging because many requirements must be tracked across grounding, generation, and verification. We refer to these requirements as semantic commitments and formalize their lifecycle discontinuity as the Conceptual Rift, where commitments may be locally resolved or checked but fail to remain identifiable as the same operational units throughout the generation lifecycle. To address this, we propose SCOPE, a specification-guided skill orchestration framework that maintains semantic commitments in an evolving structured specification and conditionally invokes retrieval, reasoning, and repair skills around unresolved or violated commitments. To evaluate commitment-level intent realization, we introduce Gen-Arena, a human-annotated benchmark with entity- and constraint-level specifications, together with Entity-Gated Intent Pass Rate (EGIP), a strict entity-first pass criterion. SCOPE substantially outperforms all evaluated baselines on Gen-Arena, achieving 0.60 EGIP, and further achieves strong results on WISE-V (0.907) and MindBench (0.61), demonstrating the effectiveness of persistent commitment tracking for complex image generation.

preprint2025arXiv

Approximation algorithms for integer programming with resource augmentation

The classic algorithm [Papadimitriou, J.ACM '81] for IPs has a running time $n^{O(m)}(m\cdot\max\{Δ,\|\textbf{b}\|_{\infty}\})^{O(m^2)}$, where $m$ is the number of constraints, $n$ is the number of variables, and $Δ$ and $\|\textbf{b}\|_{\infty}$ are, respectively, the largest absolute values among the entries in the constraint matrix and the right-hand side vector of the constraint. The running time is exponential in $m$, and becomes pseudo-polynomial if $m$ is a constant. In recent years, there has been extensive research on FPT (fixed parameter tractable) algorithms for the so-called $n$-fold IPs, which may possess a large number of constraints, but the constraint matrix satisfies a specific block structure. It is remarkable that these FPT algorithms take as parameters $Δ$ and the number of rows and columns of some small submatrices. If $Δ$ is not treated as a parameter, then the running time becomes pseudo-polynomial even if all the other parameters are taken as constants. This paper explores the trade-off between time and accuracy in solving an IP. We show that, for arbitrary small $\varepsilon>0$, there exists an algorithm for IPs with $m$ constraints that runs in ${f(m,\varepsilon)}\cdot\textnormal{poly}(|I|)$ time, and returns a near-feasible solution that violates the constraints by at most $\varepsilonΔ$. Furthermore, for $n$-fold IPs, we establish a similar result -- our algorithm runs in time that depends on the number of rows and columns of small submatrices together with $1/\varepsilon$, and returns a solution that slightly violates the constraints. Meanwhile, both solutions guarantee that their objective values are no worse than the corresponding optimal objective values satisfying the constraints. As applications, our results can be used to obtain additive approximation schemes for multidimensional knapsack as well as scheduling.

preprint2023arXiv

Improved test-retest reliability of $\textit{R}_2^*$ and susceptibility quantification using multi-shot multi echo 3D EPI

This study aimed to evaluate the potential of 3D echo-planar imaging (EPI) for improving the reliability of $T_2^*$-weighted ($T_2^*w$) data and quantification of $\textit{R}_2^*$ decay rate and susceptibility ($χ$) compared to conventional gradient echo (GRE)-based acquisition. Eight healthy subjects in a wide age range were recruited. Each subject received repeated scans for both GRE and EPI acquisitions with an isotropic 1 mm resolution at 3 T. Maps of $\textit{R}_2^*$ and $χ$ were quantified and compared using their inter-scan difference to evaluate the test-retest reliability. Inter-protocol differences of $\textit{R}_2^*$ and $χ$ between GRE and EPI were also measured voxel by voxel and in selected ROIs to test the consistency between the two acquisition methods. The quantifications of $\textit{R}_2^*$ and $χ$ using EPI protocols showed increased test-retest reliability with higher EPI factors up to 5 as performed in the experiment and were consistent with those based on GRE. This result suggested multi-shot multi-echo 3D EPI can be a useful alternative acquisition method for $T_2^*w$ MRI and quantification of $\textit{R}_2^*$ and $χ$ with reduced scan time, improved test-retest reliability and similar accuracy compared to commonly used 3D GRE.

preprint2023arXiv

Momentum and angular correlations in \texorpdfstring{$Z/γ$}{Z/gamma}-hadron production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

We carry out a detailed study of medium modifications on momentum and angular correlations between a large transverse momentum hadron and a $Z/γ$ trigger in relativistic heavy-ion collisions within a perturbative QCD parton model improved by the Sudakov resummation technique. The total energy loss of a hard parton propagating inside the medium is employed to modify the fragmentation function, while the medium-induced transverse momentum broadening is included in the resummation approach, and both of them are related to the jet transport parameter and obtained by the high-twist formalism. We obtain good agreements with the existing data on transverse momentum and azimuthal angular correlations for the $Z/γ$-hadron pairs in $pp$ and $AA$ collisions, and predict the correlations for the $γ$-hadron in central $PbPb$ collisions at 5.02 TeV. The numerical analyses for the $Z/γ$-hadron in central $PbPb$ collisions show that the normalized angular distribution is decorrelated due to the medium-induced transverse momentum broadening, however, the angular correlation is enhanced due to the parton energy loss, namely anti-broadening. The observed modification of the angular correlation is a result of the competition between the broadening and the anti-broadening. This work provides a reliable theoretical tool for a comprehensive and precise study of jet quenching in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

preprint2022arXiv

Approximation Algorithms for Interdiction Problem with Packing Constraints

We study a bilevel optimization problem which is a zero-sum Stackelberg game. In this problem, there are two players, a leader and a follower, who pick items from a common set. Both the leader and the follower have their own (multi-dimensional) budgets, respectively. Each item is associated with a profit, which is the same to the leader and the follower, and will consume the leader's (follower's) budget if it is selected by the leader (follower). The leader and the follower will select items in a sequential way: First, the leader selects items within the leader's budget. Then the follower selects items from the remaining items within the follower's budget. The goal of the leader is to minimize the maximum profit that the follower can obtain. Let $s_A$ and $s_B$ be the dimension of the leader's and follower's budget, respectively. A special case of our problem is the bilevel knapsack problem studied by Caprara et al. [SIAM Journal on Optimization, 2014], where $s_A=s_B=1$. We consider the general problem and obtain an $(s_B+ε)$-approximation algorithm when $s_A$ and $s_B$ are both constant. In particular, if $s_B=1$, our algorithm implies a PTAS for the bilevel knapsack problem, which is the first O(1)-approximation algorithm. We also complement our result by showing that there does not exist any $(4/3-ε)$-approximation algorithm even if $s_A=1$ and $s_B=2$. We also consider a variant of our problem with resource augmentation when $s_A$ and $s_B$ are both part of the input. We obtain an O(1)-approximation algorithm with O(1)-resource augmentation, that is, we give an algorithm that returns a solution which exceeds the given leader's budget by O(1) times, and the objective value achieved by the solution is O(1) times the optimal objective value that respects the leader's budget.

preprint2022arXiv

Automorphic Gluing

We prove a gluing theorem on the automorphic side of the geometric Langlands correspondence: roughly speaking, we show that the difference between $\mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_G)$ and its full subcategory $\mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_G)^\mathrm{temp}$ of tempered objects is compensated by the categories $\mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_M)^\mathrm{temp}$ for all standard Levi subgroups $M \subsetneq G$. This theorem is designed to match exactly with the spectral gluing theorem, an analogous result occurring on the other side of the geometric Langlands conjecture. Along the way, we state and prove several facts that might be of independent interest. For instance, for any parabolic $P \subseteq G$, we show that the functors $\mathrm{CT}_{P,*}:\mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_G) \to \mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_M)$ and $\mathrm{Eis}_{P,*}: \mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_M) \to \mathrm{DMod}(\mathrm{Bun}_G)$ preserve tempered objects, whereas the standard Eisenstein functor $\mathrm{Eis}_{P,!}$ preserves anti-tempered objects.

preprint2022arXiv

Collaboration in Participant-Centric Federated Learning: A Game-Theoretical Perspective

Federated learning (FL) is a promising distributed framework for collaborative artificial intelligence model training while protecting user privacy. A bootstrapping component that has attracted significant research attention is the design of incentive mechanism to stimulate user collaboration in FL. The majority of works adopt a broker-centric approach to help the central operator to attract participants and further obtain a well-trained model. Few works consider forging participant-centric collaboration among participants to pursue an FL model for their common interests, which induces dramatic differences in incentive mechanism design from the broker-centric FL. To coordinate the selfish and heterogeneous participants, we propose a novel analytic framework for incentivizing effective and efficient collaborations for participant-centric FL. Specifically, we respectively propose two novel game models for contribution-oblivious FL (COFL) and contribution-aware FL (CAFL), where the latter one implements a minimum contribution threshold mechanism. We further analyze the uniqueness and existence for Nash equilibrium of both COFL and CAFL games and design efficient algorithms to achieve equilibrium solutions. Extensive performance evaluations show that there exists free-riding phenomenon in COFL, which can be greatly alleviated through the adoption of CAFL model with the optimized minimum threshold.

preprint2022arXiv

Constructing unextendible product bases from multiqubit ones

The construction of multipartite unextendible product bases (UPBs) is a basic problem in quantum information. We respectively construct two families of $2\times2\times4$ and $2\times2\times2\times4$ UPBs of size eight by using the existing four-qubit and five-qubit UPBs. As an application, we construct novel families of multipartite positive-partial-transpose entangled states, as well as their entanglement properties in terms of the geometric measure of entanglement.

preprint2022arXiv

Deligne--Lusztig duality on the moduli stack of bundles

Let $Bun_G(X)$ be the moduli stack of $G$-torsors on a smooth projective curve $X$ for a reductive group $G$. We prove a conjecture made by Drinfeld-Wang and Gaitsgory on the Deligne-Lusztig duality for D-modules on $Bun_G(X)$. This conjecture relates Drinfeld-Gaitsgory's pseudo-identity functors to the enhanced Eisenstein series and geometric constant term functors on $DMod(Bun_G(X))$. We also prove a "second adjointness" result for these enhanced functors.

preprint2022arXiv

Learning 3D Semantics from Pose-Noisy 2D Images with Hierarchical Full Attention Network

We propose a novel framework to learn 3D point cloud semantics from 2D multi-view image observations containing pose error. On the one hand, directly learning from the massive, unstructured and unordered 3D point cloud is computationally and algorithmically more difficult than learning from compactly-organized and context-rich 2D RGB images. On the other hand, both LiDAR point cloud and RGB images are captured in standard automated-driving datasets. This motivates us to conduct a "task transfer" paradigm so that 3D semantic segmentation benefits from aggregating 2D semantic cues, albeit pose noises are contained in 2D image observations. Among all difficulties, pose noise and erroneous prediction from 2D semantic segmentation approaches are the main challenges for the task transfer. To alleviate the influence of those factor, we perceive each 3D point using multi-view images and for each single image a patch observation is associated. Moreover, the semantic labels of a block of neighboring 3D points are predicted simultaneously, enabling us to exploit the point structure prior to further improve the performance. A hierarchical full attention network~(HiFANet) is designed to sequentially aggregates patch, bag-of-frames and inter-point semantic cues, with hierarchical attention mechanism tailored for different level of semantic cues. Also, each preceding attention block largely reduces the feature size before feeding to the next attention block, making our framework slim. Experiment results on Semantic-KITTI show that the proposed framework outperforms existing 3D point cloud based methods significantly, it requires much less training data and exhibits tolerance to pose noise. The code is available at https://github.com/yuhanghe01/HiFANet.

preprint2022arXiv

Lessons Learned from Blockchain Applications of Trusted Execution Environments and Implications for Future Research

Modern computer systems tend to rely on large trusted computing bases (TCBs) for operations. To address the TCB bloating problem, hardware vendors have developed mechanisms to enable or facilitate the creation of a trusted execution environment (TEE) in which critical software applications can execute securely in an isolated environment. Even under the circumstance that a host OS is compromised by an adversary, key security properties such as confidentiality and integrity of the software inside the TEEs can be guaranteed. The promise of integrity and security has driven developers to adopt it for use cases involving access control, PKS, IoT among other things. Among these applications include blockchain-related use cases. The usage of the TEEs doesn't come without its own implementation challenges and potential pitfalls. In this paper, we examine the assumptions, security models, and operational environments of the proposed TEE use cases of blockchain-based applications. The exercise and analysis help the hardware TEE research community to identify some open challenges and opportunities for research and rethink the design of hardware TEEs in general.

preprint2022arXiv

Package Theft Detection from Smart Home Security Cameras

Package theft detection has been a challenging task mainly due to lack of training data and a wide variety of package theft cases in reality. In this paper, we propose a new Global and Local Fusion Package Theft Detection Embedding (GLF-PTDE) framework to generate package theft scores for each segment within a video to fulfill the real-world requirements on package theft detection. Moreover, we construct a novel Package Theft Detection dataset to facilitate the research on this task. Our method achieves 80% AUC performance on the newly proposed dataset, showing the effectiveness of the proposed GLF-PTDE framework and its robustness in different real scenes for package theft detection.

preprint2022arXiv

Quantum cost of dense coding and teleportation

The quantum cost is a key ingredient to evaluate the quality of quantum protocols from a practical viewpoint. We show that the quantum cost of d-dimensional dense coding protocol is equal to d+3 when transmitting the classical message (0,0), and that is equal to d+4 when transmitting other classical message. It appears linear growth with the dimension and thus makes sense for implementation. In contrast, the quantum cost of high-dimensional teleportation protocols is equal to 13, which is the maximum value of the cost for the two-dimensional case. As an application, we establish the relation between the quantum cost and fidelity of dense coding protocols in terms of four typical noise scenario.

preprint2022arXiv

Reusing the Task-specific Classifier as a Discriminator: Discriminator-free Adversarial Domain Adaptation

Adversarial learning has achieved remarkable performances for unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA). Existing adversarial UDA methods typically adopt an additional discriminator to play the min-max game with a feature extractor. However, most of these methods failed to effectively leverage the predicted discriminative information, and thus cause mode collapse for generator. In this work, we address this problem from a different perspective and design a simple yet effective adversarial paradigm in the form of a discriminator-free adversarial learning network (DALN), wherein the category classifier is reused as a discriminator, which achieves explicit domain alignment and category distinguishment through a unified objective, enabling the DALN to leverage the predicted discriminative information for sufficient feature alignment. Basically, we introduce a Nuclear-norm Wasserstein discrepancy (NWD) that has definite guidance meaning for performing discrimination. Such NWD can be coupled with the classifier to serve as a discriminator satisfying the K-Lipschitz constraint without the requirements of additional weight clipping or gradient penalty strategy. Without bells and whistles, DALN compares favorably against the existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on a variety of public datasets. Moreover, as a plug-and-play technique, NWD can be directly used as a generic regularizer to benefit existing UDA algorithms. Code is available at https://github.com/xiaoachen98/DALN.

preprint2022arXiv

Strong quantum nonlocality for unextendible product bases in heterogeneous systems

A set of multipartite orthogonal product states is strongly nonlocal if it is locally irreducible in every bipartition, which shows the phenomenon of strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement. It is known that unextendible product bases (UPBs) can show the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality without entanglement. Thus it is interesting to investigate the strong quantum nonlocality for UPBs. Most of the UPBs with the minimum size cannot demonstrate strong quantum nonlocality. In this paper, we construct a series of UPBs with different large sizes in $d_A\otimes d_B\otimes d_C$ and $d_A\otimes d_B\otimes d_C\otimes d_D$ for $d_A, d_B, d_C, d_D\geq 3$, and we also show that these UPBs have strong quantum nonlocality, which answers an open question given by Halder \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{122}, 040403 (2019)] and Yuan \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. A \textbf{102}, 042228 (2020)] for any possible three and four-partite systems. Furthermore, we propose an entanglement-assisted protocol to locally discriminate the UPB in $3\otimes 3\otimes 4$, and it consumes less entanglement resource than the teleportation-based protocol. Our results build the connection between strong quantum nonlocality and UPBs.

preprint2022arXiv

Strong quantum nonlocality in $N$-partite systems

A set of multipartite orthogonal quantum states is strongly nonlocal if it is locally irreducible for every bipartition of the subsystems [Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 040403 (2019)]. Although this property has been shown in three-, four- and five-partite systems, the existence of strongly nonlocal sets in $N$-partite systems remains unknown when $N\geq 6$. In this paper, we successfully show that a strongly nonlocal set of orthogonal entangled states exists in $(\mathbb{C}^d)^{\otimes N}$ for all $N\geq 3$ and $d\geq 2$, which for the first time reveals the strong quantum nonlocality in general $N$-partite systems. For $N=3$ or $4$ and $d\geq 3$, we present a strongly nonlocal set consisting of genuinely entangled states, which has a smaller size than any known strongly nonlocal orthogonal product set. Finally, we connect strong quantum nonlocality with local hiding of information as an application.

preprint2022arXiv

Strongly nonlocal unextendible product bases do exist

A set of multipartite orthogonal product states is locally irreducible, if it is not possible to eliminate one or more states from the set by orthogonality-preserving local measurements. An effective way to prove that a set is locally irreducible is to show that only trivial orthogonality-preserving local measurement can be performed to this set. In general, it is difficult to show that such an orthogonality-preserving local measurement must be trivial. In this work, we develop two basic techniques to deal with this problem. Using these techniques, we successfully show the existence of unextendible product bases (UPBs) that are locally irreducible in every bipartition in $d\otimes d\otimes d$ for any $d\geq 3$, and $3\otimes3\otimes 3$ achieves the minimum dimension for the existence of such UPBs. These UPBs exhibit the phenomenon of strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement. Our result solves an open question given by Halder \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{122}, 040403 (2019)] and Yuan \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. A \textbf{102}, 042228 (2020)]. It also sheds new light on the connections between UPBs and strong quantum nonlocality.

preprint2022arXiv

Test suite effectiveness metric evaluation: what do we know and what should we do?

Comparing test suite effectiveness metrics has always been a research hotspot. However, prior studies have different conclusions or even contradict each other for comparing different test suite effectiveness metrics. The problem we found most troubling to our community is that researchers tend to oversimplify the description of the ground truth they use. For example, a common expression is that "we studied the correlation between real faults and the metric to evaluate (MTE)". However, the meaning of "real faults" is not clear-cut. As a result, there is a need to scrutinize the meaning of "real faults". Without this, it will be half-knowledgeable with the conclusions. To tackle this challenge, we propose a framework ASSENT (evAluating teSt Suite EffectiveNess meTrics) to guide the follow-up research. In nature, ASSENT consists of three fundamental components: ground truth, benchmark test suites, and agreement indicator. First, materialize the ground truth for determining the real order in effectiveness among test suites. Second, generate a set of benchmark test suites and derive their ground truth order in effectiveness. Third, for the benchmark test suites, generate the MTE order in effectiveness by the metric to evaluate (MTE). Finally, calculate the agreement indicator between the two orders. Under ASSENT, we are able to compare the accuracy of different test suite effectiveness metrics. We apply ASSENT to evaluate representative test suite effectiveness metrics, including mutation score metrics and code coverage metrics. Our results show that, based on the real faults, mutation score and subsuming mutation score are the best metrics to quantify test suite effectiveness. Meanwhile, by using mutants instead of real faults, MTEs will be overestimated by more than 20% in values.

preprint2022arXiv

When Few-Shot Learning Meets Video Object Detection

Different from static images, videos contain additional temporal and spatial information for better object detection. However, it is costly to obtain a large number of videos with bounding box annotations that are required for supervised deep learning. Although humans can easily learn to recognize new objects by watching only a few video clips, deep learning usually suffers from overfitting. This leads to an important question: how to effectively learn a video object detector from only a few labeled video clips? In this paper, we study the new problem of few-shot learning for video object detection. We first define the few-shot setting and create a new benchmark dataset for few-shot video object detection derived from the widely used ImageNet VID dataset. We employ a transfer-learning framework to effectively train the video object detector on a large number of base-class objects and a few video clips of novel-class objects. By analyzing the results of two methods under this framework (Joint and Freeze) on our designed weak and strong base datasets, we reveal insufficiency and overfitting problems. A simple but effective method, called Thaw, is naturally developed to trade off the two problems and validate our analysis. Extensive experiments on our proposed benchmark datasets with different scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel analysis in this new few-shot video object detection problem.

preprint2022arXiv

Youling: an AI-Assisted Lyrics Creation System

Recently, a variety of neural models have been proposed for lyrics generation. However, most previous work completes the generation process in a single pass with little human intervention. We believe that lyrics creation is a creative process with human intelligence centered. AI should play a role as an assistant in the lyrics creation process, where human interactions are crucial for high-quality creation. This paper demonstrates \textit{Youling}, an AI-assisted lyrics creation system, designed to collaborate with music creators. In the lyrics generation process, \textit{Youling} supports traditional one pass full-text generation mode as well as an interactive generation mode, which allows users to select the satisfactory sentences from generated candidates conditioned on preceding context. The system also provides a revision module which enables users to revise undesired sentences or words of lyrics repeatedly. Besides, \textit{Youling} allows users to use multifaceted attributes to control the content and format of generated lyrics. The demo video of the system is available at https://youtu.be/DFeNpHk0pm4.

preprint2021arXiv

An extensive empirical study of inconsistent labels in multi-version-project defect data sets

The label quality of defect data sets has a direct influence on the reliability of defect prediction models. In this study, for multi-version-project defect data sets, we propose an approach to automatically detecting instances with inconsistent labels (i.e. the phenomena of instances having the same source code but different labels over multiple versions of a software project) and understand their influence on the evaluation and interpretation of defect prediction models. Based on five multi-version-project defect data sets (either widely used or the most up-to-date in the literature) collected by diverse approaches, we find that: (1) most versions in the investigated defect data sets contain inconsistent labels with varying degrees; (2) the existence of inconsistent labels in a training data set may considerably change the prediction performance of a defect prediction model as well as can lead to the identification of substantially different true defective modules; and (3) the importance ranking of independent variables in a defect prediction model can be substantially shifted due to the existence of inconsistent labels. The above findings reveal that inconsistent labels in defect data sets can profoundly change the prediction ability and interpretation of a defect prediction model. Therefore, we strongly suggest that practitioners should detect and exclude inconsistent labels in defect data sets to avoid their potential negative influence on defect prediction models. What is more, it is necessary for researchers to improve existing defect label collection approaches to reduce inconsistent labels. Furthermore, there is a need to re-examine the experimental conclusions of previous studies using multi-version-project defect data sets with a high ratio of inconsistent labels.

preprint2021arXiv

DAIL: Dataset-Aware and Invariant Learning for Face Recognition

To achieve good performance in face recognition, a large scale training dataset is usually required. A simple yet effective way to improve recognition performance is to use a dataset as large as possible by combining multiple datasets in the training. However, it is problematic and troublesome to naively combine different datasets due to two major issues. First, the same person can possibly appear in different datasets, leading to an identity overlapping issue between different datasets. Naively treating the same person as different classes in different datasets during training will affect back-propagation and generate non-representative embeddings. On the other hand, manually cleaning labels may take formidable human efforts, especially when there are millions of images and thousands of identities. Second, different datasets are collected in different situations and thus will lead to different domain distributions. Naively combining datasets will make it difficult to learn domain invariant embeddings across different datasets. In this paper, we propose DAIL: Dataset-Aware and Invariant Learning to resolve the above-mentioned issues. To solve the first issue of identity overlapping, we propose a dataset-aware loss for multi-dataset training by reducing the penalty when the same person appears in multiple datasets. This can be readily achieved with a modified softmax loss with a dataset-aware term. To solve the second issue, domain adaptation with gradient reversal layers is employed for dataset invariant learning. The proposed approach not only achieves state-of-the-art results on several commonly used face recognition validation sets, including LFW, CFP-FP, and AgeDB-30, but also shows great benefit for practical use.

preprint2021arXiv

Detection of genuine multipartite entanglement based on local sum uncertainty relations

Genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) offers more significant advantages in quantum information compared with entanglement. We propose a sufficient criterion for the detection of GME based on local sum uncertainty relations for chosen observables of subsystems. We apply the criterion to detect the GME properties of noisy $n$-partite W state when $n = 3, 4, 5$ and $6$, and find that the criterion can detect more noisy W states when $n$ ranges from 4 to 6. Moreover, the criterion is also used to detect the genuine entanglement of $3$-qutrit state. The result is stronger than that based on GME concurrence and fisher information.

preprint2021arXiv

EDSC: An Event-Driven Smart Contract Platform

This paper presents EDSC, a novel smart contract platform design based on the event-driven execution model as opposed to the traditionally employed transaction-driven execution model. We reason that such a design is a better fit for many emerging smart contract applications and is better positioned to address the scalability and performance challenges plaguing the smart contract ecosystem. We propose EDSC's design under the Ethereum framework, and the design can be easily adapted for other existing smart contract platforms. We have conducted implementation using Ethereum client and experiments where performance modeling results show on average 2.2 to 4.6 times reduced total latency of event triggered smart contracts, which demonstrates its effectiveness for supporting contracts that demand timely execution based on events. In addition, we discuss example use cases to demonstrate the design's utility and comment on its potential security dynamics.

preprint2021arXiv

Genuine entanglement, distillability and quantum information masking under noise

Genuineness and distillability of entanglement play a key role in quantum information tasks, and they are easily disturbed by the noise. We construct a family of multipartite states without genuine entanglement and distillability sudden death across every bipartition, respectively. They are realized by establishing the noise as the multipartite high dimensional Pauli channels. Further, we construct a locally unitary channel as another noise such that the multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state becomes the D{ü}r's multipartite state. We also show that the quantum information masking still works under the noise we constructed, and thus show a novel quantum secret sharing scheme under noise. The evolution of a family of three-qutrit genuinely entangled states distillable across every bipartition under noise is also investigated.

preprint2021arXiv

Measuring Discrimination to Boost Comparative Testing for Multiple Deep Learning Models

The boom of DL technology leads to massive DL models built and shared, which facilitates the acquisition and reuse of DL models. For a given task, we encounter multiple DL models available with the same functionality, which are considered as candidates to achieve this task. Testers are expected to compare multiple DL models and select the more suitable ones w.r.t. the whole testing context. Due to the limitation of labeling effort, testers aim to select an efficient subset of samples to make an as precise rank estimation as possible for these models. To tackle this problem, we propose Sample Discrimination based Selection (SDS) to select efficient samples that could discriminate multiple models, i.e., the prediction behaviors (right/wrong) of these samples would be helpful to indicate the trend of model performance. To evaluate SDS, we conduct an extensive empirical study with three widely-used image datasets and 80 real world DL models. The experimental results show that, compared with state-of-the-art baseline methods, SDS is an effective and efficient sample selection method to rank multiple DL models.

preprint2021arXiv

Mutant reduction evaluation: what is there and what is missing?

Background. Many mutation reduction strategies, which aim to reduce the number of mutants, have been proposed. Problem. It is important to measure the ability of a mutation reduction strategy to maintain test suite effectiveness evaluation. However, existing evaluation indicators are unable to measure the "order-preserving ability". Objective. We aim to propose evaluation indicators to measure the "order-preserving ability" of a mutation reduction strategy, which is important but missing in our community. Method. Given a test suite on a Software Under Test (SUT) with a set of original mutants, we leverage the test suite to generate a group of test suites that have a partial order relationship in fault detecting potential. When evaluating a reduction strategy, we first construct two partial order relationships among the generated test suites in terms of mutation score, one with the original mutants and another with the reduced mutants. Then, we measure the extent to which the two partial order relationships are consistent. The more consistent the two partial order relationships are, the stronger the Order Preservation (OP) of the mutation reduction strategy is, and the more effective the reduction strategy is. Furthermore, we propose Effort-aware Relative Order Preservation (EROP) to measure how much gain a mutation reduction strategy can provide compared with a random reduction strategy. Result. The experimental results show that OP and EROP are able to efficiently measure the "order-preserving ability" of a mutation reduction strategy. As a result, they have a better ability to distinguish various mutation reduction strategies compared with the existing evaluation indicators. Conclusion. We suggest, for the researchers, that OP and EROP should be used to measure the effectiveness of a mutant reduction strategy.

preprint2021arXiv

Nonlinear Blockchain Scalability: a Game-Theoretic Perspective

Recent advances in the blockchain research have been made in two important directions. One is refined resilience analysis utilizing game theory to study the consequences of selfish behaviors of users (miners), and the other is the extension from a linear (chain) structure to a non-linear (graphical) structure for performance improvements, such as IOTA and Graphcoin. The first question that comes to people's minds is what improvements that a blockchain system would see by leveraging these new advances. In this paper, we consider three major metrics for a blockchain system: full verification, scalability, and finality-duration. We { establish a formal framework and} prove that no blockchain system can achieve full verification, high scalability, and low finality-duration simultaneously. We observe that classical blockchain systems like Bitcoin achieves full verification and low finality-duration, Harmony and Ethereum 2.0 achieve low finality-duration and high scalability. As a complementary, we design a non-linear blockchain system that achieves full verification and scalability. We also establish, for the first time, the trade-off between scalability and finality-duration.

preprint2021arXiv

The construction and local distinguishability of multiqubit unextendible product bases

An important problem in quantum information is to construct multiqubit unextendible product bases (UPBs). By using the unextendible orthogonal matrices, we construct a 7-qubit UPB of size 11. It solves an open problem in [Quantum Information Processing 19:185 (2020)]. Next, we graph-theoretically show that the UPB is locally indistinguishable in the bipartite systems of two qubits and five qubits, respectively. It turns out that the UPB corresponds to a complete graph with 11 vertices constructed by three sorts of nonisomorphic graphs. Taking the graphs as product vectors, we show that they are in three different orbits up to local unitary equivalence. Moreover, we also present the number of sorts of nonisomorphic graphs of complete graphs of some known UPBs and their orbits.

preprint2020arXiv

Absolutely maximally entangled states in tripartite heterogeneous systems

Absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states are typically defined in homogeneous systems. However, the quantum system is more likely to be heterogeneous in a practical setup. In this work we pay attention to the construction of AME states in tripartite heterogeneous systems. We first introduce the concept of irreducible AME states as the basic elements to construct AME states with high local dimensions. Then we investigate the tripartite heterogeneous systems whose local dimensions are $l,m,n$, with $3\leq l<m<n\leq m+l-1$. We show the existence of AME states in such heterogeneous systems is related to a kind of arrays called magic solution array. We further identify the AME states in which kinds of heterogeneous systems are irreducible. In addition, we propose a method to construct $k$-uniform states of more parties using two existing AME states. We also build the connection between heterogeneous AME states and multi-isometry matrices, and indicate an application in quantum steering.

preprint2020arXiv

An Optimal Mass Transport Method for Random Genetic Drift

We propose and analyze an optimal mass transport method for a random genetic drift problem driven by a Moran process under weak-selection. The continuum limit, formulated as a reaction-advection-diffusion equation known as the Kimura equation, inherits degenerate diffusion from the discrete stochastic process that conveys to the blow-up into Dirac-delta singularities hence brings great challenges to both the analytical and numerical studies. The proposed numerical method can quantitatively capture to the fullest possible extent the development of Dirac-delta singularities for genetic segregation on one hand, and preserves several sets of biologically relevant and computationally favored properties of the random genetic drift on the other. Moreover, the numerical scheme exponentially converges to the unique numerical stationary state in time at a rate independent of the mesh size up to a mesh error. Numerical evidence is given to illustrate and support these properties, and to demonstrate the spatio-temporal dynamics of random generic drift.

preprint2020arXiv

Black Box Submodular Maximization: Discrete and Continuous Settings

In this paper, we consider the problem of black box continuous submodular maximization where we only have access to the function values and no information about the derivatives is provided. For a monotone and continuous DR-submodular function, and subject to a bounded convex body constraint, we propose Black-box Continuous Greedy, a derivative-free algorithm that provably achieves the tight $[(1-1/e)OPT-ε]$ approximation guarantee with $O(d/ε^3)$ function evaluations. We then extend our result to the stochastic setting where function values are subject to stochastic zero-mean noise. It is through this stochastic generalization that we revisit the discrete submodular maximization problem and use the multi-linear extension as a bridge between discrete and continuous settings. Finally, we extensively evaluate the performance of our algorithm on continuous and discrete submodular objective functions using both synthetic and real data.

preprint2020arXiv

Computational Complexity Characterization of Protecting Elections from Bribery

The bribery problem in election has received considerable attention in the literature, upon which various algorithmic and complexity results have been obtained. It is thus natural to ask whether we can protect an election from potential bribery. We assume that the protector can protect a voter with some cost (e.g., by isolating the voter from potential bribers). A protected voter cannot be bribed. Under this setting, we consider the following bi-level decision problem: Is it possible for the protector to protect a proper subset of voters such that no briber with a fixed budget on bribery can alter the election result? The goal of this paper is to give a full picture on the complexity of protection problems. We give an extensive study on the protection problem and provide algorithmic and complexity results. Comparing our results with that on the bribery problems, we observe that the protection problem is in general significantly harder. Indeed, it becomes $\sum_{p}^2$-complete even for very restricted special cases, while most bribery problems lie in NP. However, it is not necessarily the case that the protection problem is always harder. Some of the protection problems can still be solved in polynomial time, while some of them remain as hard as the bribery problem under the same setting.

preprint2020arXiv

Constructions of $k$-uniform states from mixed orthogonal arrays

We study $k$-uniform states in heterogeneous systems whose local dimensions are mixed. Based on the connections between mixed orthogonal arrays with certain minimum Hamming distance, irredundant mixed orthogonal arrays and $k$-uniform states, we present two constructions of $2$-uniform states in heterogeneous systems. We also construct a family of $3$-uniform states in heterogeneous systems, which solves a question posed in [D. Goyeneche et al., Phys. Rev. A 94, 012346 (2016)]. We also show two methods of generating $(k-1)$-uniform states from $k$-uniform states. Some new results on the existence and nonexistence of absolutely maximally entangled states are provided. For the applications, we present an orthogonal basis consisting of $k$-uniform states with minimum support. Moreover, we show that some $k$-uniform bases can not be distinguished by local operations and classical communications, and this shows quantum nonlocality with entanglement.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Fusion of Local and Non-Local Features for Precision Landslide Recognition

Precision mapping of landslide inventory is crucial for hazard mitigation. Most landslides generally co-exist with other confusing geological features, and the presence of such areas can only be inferred unambiguously at a large scale. In addition, local information is also important for the preservation of object boundaries. Aiming to solve this problem, this paper proposes an effective approach to fuse both local and non-local features to surmount the contextual problem. Built upon the U-Net architecture that is widely adopted in the remote sensing community, we utilize two additional modules. The first one uses dilated convolution and the corresponding atrous spatial pyramid pooling, which enlarged the receptive field without sacrificing spatial resolution or increasing memory usage. The second uses a scale attention mechanism to guide the up-sampling of features from the coarse level by a learned weight map. In implementation, the computational overhead against the original U-Net was only a few convolutional layers. Experimental evaluations revealed that the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art general-purpose semantic segmentation approaches. Furthermore, ablation studies have shown that the two models afforded extensive enhancements in landslide-recognition performance.

preprint2020arXiv

Detection of genuine tripartite entanglement by two bipartite entangled states

It is an interesting problem to construct genuine tripartite entangled states based on the collective use of two bipartite entangled states. We consider the case that the states are two-qubit Werner states, we construct the interval of parameter of Werner states such that the tripartite state is genuine entangled. Further, we present the way of detecting the tripartite genuine entanglement using current techniques in experiments. We also investigate the lower bound of genuine multipartite entanglement concurrence.

preprint2020arXiv

Differentially Private Combinatorial Cloud Auction

Cloud service providers typically provide different types of virtual machines (VMs) to cloud users with various requirements. Thanks to its effectiveness and fairness, auction has been widely applied in this heterogeneous resource allocation. Recently, several strategy-proof combinatorial cloud auction mechanisms have been proposed. However, they fail to protect the bid privacy of users from being inferred from the auction results. In this paper, we design a differentially private combinatorial cloud auction mechanism (DPCA) to address this privacy issue. Technically, we employ the exponential mechanism to compute a clearing unit price vector with a probability proportional to the corresponding revenue. We further improve the mechanism to reduce the running time while maintaining high revenues, by computing a single clearing unit price, or a subgroup of clearing unit prices at a time, resulting in the improved mechanisms DPCA-S and its generalized version DPCA-M, respectively. We theoretically prove that our mechanisms can guarantee differential privacy, approximate truthfulness and high revenue. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that DPCA can generate near-optimal revenues at the price of relatively high time complexity, while the improved mechanisms achieve a tunable trade-off between auction revenue and running time.

preprint2020arXiv

Hybrid Cryptocurrency Pump and Dump Detection

Increasingly growing Cryptocurrency markets have become a hive for scammers to run pump and dump schemes which is considered as an anomalous activity in exchange markets. Anomaly detection in time series is challenging since existing methods are not sufficient to detect the anomalies in all contexts. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid pump and dump detection method based on distance and density metrics. First, we propose a novel automatic thresh-old setting method for distance-based anomaly detection. Second, we propose a novel metric called density score for density-based anomaly detection. Finally, we exploit the combination of density and distance metrics successfully as a hybrid approach. Our experiments show that, the proposed hybrid approach is reliable to detect the majority of alleged P & D activities in top ranked exchange pairs by outperforming both density-based and distance-based methods.

preprint2020arXiv

Joint Multi-User DNN Partitioning and Computational Resource Allocation for Collaborative Edge Intelligence

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has emerged as a promising supporting architecture providing a variety of resources to the network edge, thus acting as an enabler for edge intelligence services empowering massive mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices with AI capability. With the assistance of edge servers, user equipments (UEs) are able to run deep neural network (DNN) based AI applications, which are generally resource-hungry and compute-intensive, such that an individual UE can hardly afford by itself in real time. However the resources in each individual edge server are typically limited. Therefore, any resource optimization involving edge servers is by nature a resource-constrained optimization problem and needs to be tackled in such realistic context. Motivated by this observation, we investigate the optimization problem of DNN partitioning (an emerging DNN offloading scheme) in a realistic multi-user resource-constrained condition that rarely considered in previous works. Despite the extremely large solution space, we reveal several properties of this specific optimization problem of joint multi-UE DNN partitioning and computational resource allocation. We propose an algorithm called Iterative Alternating Optimization (IAO) that can achieve the optimal solution in polynomial time. In addition, we present rigorous theoretic analysis of our algorithm in terms of time complexity and performance under realistic estimation error. Moreover, we build a prototype that implements our framework and conduct extensive experiments using realistic DNN models, whose results demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency.

preprint2020arXiv

Meta Learning in the Continuous Time Limit

In this paper, we establish the ordinary differential equation (ODE) that underlies the training dynamics of Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML). Our continuous-time limit view of the process eliminates the influence of the manually chosen step size of gradient descent and includes the existing gradient descent training algorithm as a special case that results from a specific discretization. We show that the MAML ODE enjoys a linear convergence rate to an approximate stationary point of the MAML loss function for strongly convex task losses, even when the corresponding MAML loss is non-convex. Moreover, through the analysis of the MAML ODE, we propose a new BI-MAML training algorithm that significantly reduces the computational burden associated with existing MAML training methods. To complement our theoretical findings, we perform empirical experiments to showcase the superiority of our proposed methods with respect to the existing work.

preprint2020arXiv

More Data Can Expand the Generalization Gap Between Adversarially Robust and Standard Models

Despite remarkable success in practice, modern machine learning models have been found to be susceptible to adversarial attacks that make human-imperceptible perturbations to the data, but result in serious and potentially dangerous prediction errors. To address this issue, practitioners often use adversarial training to learn models that are robust against such attacks at the cost of higher generalization error on unperturbed test sets. The conventional wisdom is that more training data should shrink the gap between the generalization error of adversarially-trained models and standard models. However, we study the training of robust classifiers for both Gaussian and Bernoulli models under $\ell_\infty$ attacks, and we prove that more data may actually increase this gap. Furthermore, our theoretical results identify if and when additional data will finally begin to shrink the gap. Lastly, we experimentally demonstrate that our results also hold for linear regression models, which may indicate that this phenomenon occurs more broadly.

preprint2020arXiv

Prioritizing documentation effort: Can we do better?

Code documentations are essential for software quality assurance, but due to time or economic pressures, code developers are often unable to write documents for all modules in a project. Recently, a supervised artificial neural network (ANN) approach is proposed to prioritize important modules for documentation effort. However, as a supervised approach, there is a need to use labeled training data to train the prediction model, which may not be easy to obtain in practice. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the ANN approach is generalizable, as it is only evaluated on several small data sets. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised approach based on PageRank to prioritize documentation effort. This approach identifies "important" modules only based on the dependence relationships between modules in a project. As a result, the PageRank approach does not need any training data to build the prediction model. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the PageRank approach, we use six additional large data sets to conduct the experiments in addition to the same data sets collected from open-source projects as used in prior studies. The experimental results show that the PageRank approach is superior to the state-of-the-art ANN approach in prioritizing important modules for documentation effort. In particular, due to the simplicity and effectiveness, we advocate that the PageRank approach should be used as an easy-to-implement baseline in future research on documentation effort prioritization, and any new approach should be compared with it to demonstrate its effectiveness.

preprint2020arXiv

Quasibound states in the continuum in terahertz free-standing metal complementary periodic cross-shaped resonators

We numerically and experimentally achieve quasi-bound states in the continuums (BICs) with high-Q factors in the free-standing metal complementary periodic cross-shaped resonators (CPCRs) at terahertz (THz) frequencies. Such induced quasi-BICs arises from the breaking of the mirror symmetry of CPCRs. By properly tuning the asymmetric factor, the measured Q factor of quasi-BIC can reach 102, which is lower than the simulated Q factor of 166 due to the limited system resolutions. We also simulate the electric field magnitude and vector distributions at the quasi-BICs, where the out-phase alignment between the electric dipoles is found. The sharp quasi-BICs realized in this thin free-standing metal structure may immediately boost the performance of filters and sensors in terahertz wave manipulation or biomolecular sensing.

preprint2020arXiv

Region Comparison Network for Interpretable Few-shot Image Classification

While deep learning has been successfully applied to many real-world computer vision tasks, training robust classifiers usually requires a large amount of well-labeled data. However, the annotation is often expensive and time-consuming. Few-shot image classification has thus been proposed to effectively use only a limited number of labeled examples to train models for new classes. Recent works based on transferable metric learning methods have achieved promising classification performance through learning the similarity between the features of samples from the query and support sets. However, rare of them explicitly considers the model interpretability, which can actually be revealed during the training phase. For that, in this work, we propose a metric learning based method named Region Comparison Network (RCN), which is able to reveal how few-shot learning works as in a neural network as well as to find out specific regions that are related to each other in images coming from the query and support sets. Moreover, we also present a visualization strategy named Region Activation Mapping (RAM) to intuitively explain what our method has learned by visualizing intermediate variables in our network. We also present a new way to generalize the interpretability from the level of tasks to categories, which can also be viewed as a method to find the prototypical parts for supporting the final decision of our RCN. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets clearly show the effectiveness of our method over existing baselines.

preprint2020arXiv

Terahertz composite plasmonic slabs based on double-layer metallic gratings

A composite plasmonic slab based on double-layer metallic gratings and a dielectric film is experimentally and numerically demonstrated in terahertz (THz) regions, which can support two resonance modes and then form a broad bandgap (40%). As compared to the double-layer metal grating, the dielectric film in composite THz slabs significantly enhances the transmission of the transverse magnetic (TM) mode. Electric field vector proved that the low-frequency resonance mode originates from the symmetric plasmonic mode and the high-frequency resonance mode is induced by the hybrid mode of plasmonic and dielectric modes. The inherently near field coupling between metal gratings and dielectric film has been analyzed by changing the structural parameters. We further demonstrate that by tuning the metallic grating width, the plasmonic bandgap can be manipulated. These results suggest that this composite plasmonic slab has great potential for use as a filter, polarizer, and sensor in THz regions.

preprint2020arXiv

Terahertz metallic photonic crystals integrated with dielectric waveguides

Compact and low-loss photonic crystal waveguides are critical in integrated terahertz (THz) applications. Compared with pure metal or dielectric photonic crystal waveguides, hybrid (metal-dielectric) integrated waveguides provide a simple way to further improve the field confinement and the propagation loss. In this work, we investigate a hybrid waveguide consisting of metallic photonic crystals and dielectric films in 0.1-1.0 THz. Photonic crystal waveguides based on metal pillar arrays (MPAs) support two resonance modes including the fundamental and high-order transverse magnetic (TM) modes and then form one apparent bandgap in 0.45-0.55 THz. The high-order TM-mode shows higher confinement than the fundamental mode and are thus sensitive to the dielectric film on the MPAs. The propagation loss and field confinement can be optimized by changing the dielectric film thickness and refractive index. The investigation shows that the lowest loss occurs at 0.68 THz because the high-order TM-mode THz waves are tightly confined inside the hybrid waveguide. This work proves that such hybrid waveguides based on metallic photonic crystals are promising to develop as a compact integrated terahertz device.

preprint2020arXiv

The Curious Case of Adversarially Robust Models: More Data Can Help, Double Descend, or Hurt Generalization

Adversarial training has shown its ability in producing models that are robust to perturbations on the input data, but usually at the expense of decrease in the standard accuracy. To mitigate this issue, it is commonly believed that more training data will eventually help such adversarially robust models generalize better on the benign/unperturbed test data. In this paper, however, we challenge this conventional belief and show that more training data can hurt the generalization of adversarially robust models in the classification problems. We first investigate the Gaussian mixture classification with a linear loss and identify three regimes based on the strength of the adversary. In the weak adversary regime, more data improves the generalization of adversarially robust models. In the medium adversary regime, with more training data, the generalization loss exhibits a double descent curve, which implies the existence of an intermediate stage where more training data hurts the generalization. In the strong adversary regime, more data almost immediately causes the generalization error to increase. Then we move to the analysis of a two-dimensional classification problem with a 0-1 loss. We prove that more data always hurts the generalization performance of adversarially trained models with large perturbations. To complement our theoretical results, we conduct empirical studies on Gaussian mixture classification, support vector machines (SVMs), and linear regression.

preprint2020arXiv

TransMatch: A Transfer-Learning Scheme for Semi-Supervised Few-Shot Learning

The successful application of deep learning to many visual recognition tasks relies heavily on the availability of a large amount of labeled data which is usually expensive to obtain. The few-shot learning problem has attracted increasing attention from researchers for building a robust model upon only a few labeled samples. Most existing works tackle this problem under the meta-learning framework by mimicking the few-shot learning task with an episodic training strategy. In this paper, we propose a new transfer-learning framework for semi-supervised few-shot learning to fully utilize the auxiliary information from labeled base-class data and unlabeled novel-class data. The framework consists of three components: 1) pre-training a feature extractor on base-class data; 2) using the feature extractor to initialize the classifier weights for the novel classes; and 3) further updating the model with a semi-supervised learning method. Under the proposed framework, we develop a novel method for semi-supervised few-shot learning called TransMatch by instantiating the three components with Imprinting and MixMatch. Extensive experiments on two popular benchmark datasets for few-shot learning, CUB-200-2011 and miniImageNet, demonstrate that our proposed method can effectively utilize the auxiliary information from labeled base-class data and unlabeled novel-class data to significantly improve the accuracy of few-shot learning task.

preprint2020arXiv

Tripartite genuinely entangled states from entanglement-breaking subspaces

The determination of genuine entanglement is a central problem in quantum information processing. We investigate the tripartite state as the tensor product of two bipartite entangled states by merging two systems. We show that the tripartite state is a genuinely entangled state when the range of both bipartite states are entanglement-breaking subspaces. We further investigate the tripartite state when one of the two bipartite states has rank two. Our results provide the latest progress on a conjecture proposed in the paper [Yi Shen $\textit{et al}$, J. Phys. A 53, 125302 (2020)]. We apply our results to construct multipartite states whose bipartite reduced density operators have additive EOF. Further, such states are distillable across every bipartition under local operations and classical communications.

preprint2020arXiv

Unextendible product bases from tile structures and their local entanglement-assisted distinguishability

We completely characterize the condition when a tile structure provides an unextendible product basis (UPB), and construct UPBs of different large sizes in $\mathbb{C}^m\otimes\mathbb{C}^n$ for any $n\geq m\geq 3$. This solves an open problem in [S. Halder et al., Phys. Rev. A 99, 062329 (2019)]. As an application, we show that our UPBs of size $(mn-4\lfloor\frac{m-1}{2}\rfloor)$ in $\mathbb{C}^m\otimes\mathbb{C}^n$ can be perfectly distinguished by local operations and classical communications assisted with a $\lceil\frac{m}{2}\rceil\otimes\lceil\frac{m}{2}\rceil$ maximally entangled state.

preprint2019arXiv

Construction of genuine multipartite entangled states

Genuine multipartite entanglement is of great importance in quantum information, especially from the experimental point of view. Nevertheless, it is difficult to construct genuine multipartite entangled states systematically, because the genuine multipartite entanglement is unruly. We propose another product based on the Kronecker product in this paper. The Kronecker product is a common product in quantum information with good physical interpretation. We mainly investigate whether the proposed product of two genuine multipartite entangled states is still a genuine entangled one. We understand the entanglement of the proposed product better by characterizing the entanglement of the Kronecker product. Then we show the proposed product is a genuine multipartite entangled state in two cases. The results provide a systematical method to construct genuine multipartite entangled states of more parties.

preprint2019arXiv

Faster quantum computation with permutations and resonant couplings

Recently, there has been increasing interest in designing schemes for quantum computations that are robust against errors. Although considerable research has been devoted to developing quantum error correction schemes, much less attention has been paid to optimizing the speed it takes to perform a quantum computation and developing computation models that act on decoherence-free subspaces. Speeding up a quantum computation is important, because fewer errors are likely to result. Encoding quantum information in a decoherence-free subspace is also important, because errors would be inherently suppressed. In this paper, we consider quantum computation in a decoherence-free subspace and also optimize its speed. To achieve this, we perform certain single-qubit quantum computations by simply permuting the underlying qubits. Together with exchange-interactions or Ising-interactions and other resonant couplings, we present a new scheme for quantum computation that potentially improves the speed in which a quantum computation can be done.

preprint2019arXiv

Surface/State correspondence and $T\overline{T}$ deformation

The surface/state correspondence suggests that the bulk co-dimensional two surface could be dual to the quantum state in the holographic conformal field theory(CFT). Inspired by the cutoff-AdS/$T\overline{T}$-deformed-CFT correspondence, we propose that the quantum states of two-dimensional $T\overline{T}$-deformed holographic CFT are dual to some particular surfaces in the AdS$_3$ gravity. In particular, the time slice of the cut-off surface is dual to the ground state of the $T\overline{T}$-deformed CFT. We examine our proposal by studying the entanglement entropy and quantum information metric. We find that the complexity of the ground state in the deformed theory is consistent with the one of a particular cMERA and the holographic complexity via CV or CA prescription.

preprint2016arXiv

Entanglement cost and entangling power of bipartite unitary and permutation operators

It is known that any bipartite unitary operator of Schmidt rank three is equivalent to a controlled unitary under local unitaries. We propose a standard form of such operators. Using the form we improve the upper bound for the entanglement cost to implement such operators under local operations and classical communications (LOCC), and provide a corresponding protocol. A part of our protocol is based on a recursive-control protocol which is helpful for implementing other unitary operators. We show that any bipartite permutation unitary of Schmidt rank three can be implemented using LOCC and two ebits. We give two protocols for implementing bipartite permutation unitaries of any Schmidt rank $r$, and showed that one of the protocol uses $O(r)$ ebits of entanglement and $O(r)$ bits of classical communication, while these two types of costs for the other protocol scale as $O(r\log r)$ but the actual values are smaller for all $r<1100$. Based on this we obtain upper bounds of the number of nonlocal CNOT gates needed to implement bipartite classical reversible maps using classical circuits under two different conditions. We also quantify the entangling power of bipartite permutation unitaries of Schmidt rank two and three. We show that they are respectively $1$ ebit and some value between $\log_2 9 - 16/9$ and $\log_2 3$ ebits.

preprint2016arXiv

Entangling and assisted entangling power of bipartite unitary operations

Nonlocal unitary operations can create quantum entanglement between distributed particles, and the quantification of created entanglement is a hard problem. It corresponds to the concepts of entangling and assisted entangling power when the input states are, respectively, product and arbitrary pure states. We analytically derive them for Schmidt-rank-two bipartite unitary and some complex bipartite permutation unitaries. In particular, the entangling power of permutation unitary of Schmidt rank three can take only one of two values: $\log_2 9 - 16/9$ or $\log_2 3$ ebits. The entangling power, assisted entangling power and disentangling power of $2\times d_B$ permutation unitaries of Schmidt rank four are all $2$ ebits. These quantities are also derived for generalized Clifford operators. We further show that any bipartite permutation unitary of Schmidt rank greater than two has entangling power greater than $1.223$ ebits. We construct the generalized controlled-NOT (CNOT) gates whose assisted entangling power reaches the maximum. We quantitatively compare the entangling power and assisted entangling power for general bipartite unitaries, and study their connection to the disentangling power. We also propose a probabilistic protocol for implementing bipartite unitaries.

preprint2016arXiv

Estimating the Size of a Large Network and its Communities from a Random Sample

Most real-world networks are too large to be measured or studied directly and there is substantial interest in estimating global network properties from smaller sub-samples. One of the most important global properties is the number of vertices/nodes in the network. Estimating the number of vertices in a large network is a major challenge in computer science, epidemiology, demography, and intelligence analysis. In this paper we consider a population random graph G = (V;E) from the stochastic block model (SBM) with K communities/blocks. A sample is obtained by randomly choosing a subset W and letting G(W) be the induced subgraph in G of the vertices in W. In addition to G(W), we observe the total degree of each sampled vertex and its block membership. Given this partial information, we propose an efficient PopULation Size Estimation algorithm, called PULSE, that correctly estimates the size of the whole population as well as the size of each community. To support our theoretical analysis, we perform an exhaustive set of experiments to study the effects of sample size, K, and SBM model parameters on the accuracy of the estimates. The experimental results also demonstrate that PULSE significantly outperforms a widely-used method called the network scale-up estimator in a wide variety of scenarios. We conclude with extensions and directions for future work.

preprint2016arXiv

Near-Optimal Active Learning of Halfspaces via Query Synthesis in the Noisy Setting

In this paper, we consider the problem of actively learning a linear classifier through query synthesis where the learner can construct artificial queries in order to estimate the true decision boundaries. This problem has recently gained a lot of interest in automated science and adversarial reverse engineering for which only heuristic algorithms are known. In such applications, queries can be constructed de novo to elicit information (e.g., automated science) or to evade detection with minimal cost (e.g., adversarial reverse engineering). We develop a general framework, called dimension coupling (DC), that 1) reduces a d-dimensional learning problem to d-1 low dimensional sub-problems, 2) solves each sub-problem efficiently, 3) appropriately aggregates the results and outputs a linear classifier, and 4) provides a theoretical guarantee for all possible schemes of aggregation. The proposed method is proved resilient to noise. We show that the DC framework avoids the curse of dimensionality: its computational complexity scales linearly with the dimension. Moreover, we show that the query complexity of DC is near optimal (within a constant factor of the optimum algorithm). To further support our theoretical analysis, we compare the performance of DC with the existing work. We observe that DC consistently outperforms the prior arts in terms of query complexity while often running orders of magnitude faster.

preprint2016arXiv

On Diffusion-restricted Social Network: A Measurement Study of WeChat Moments

WeChat is a mobile messaging application that has 549 million active users as of Q1 2015, and "WeChat Moments" (WM) serves its social-networking function that allows users to post/share links of web pages. WM differs from the other social networks as it imposes many restrictions on the information diffusion process to mitigate the information overload. In this paper, we conduct a measurement study on information diffusion in the WM network by crawling and analyzing the spreading statistics of more than 160,000 pages that involve approximately 40 million users. Specifically, we identify the relationship of the number of posted pages and the number of views, the diffusion path length, the similarity and distribution of users' locations as well as their connections with the GDP of the users' province. For each individual WM page, we measure its temporal characteristics (e.g., the life time, the popularity within a time period); for each individual user, we evaluate how many of, or how likely, one's friends will view his posted pages. Our results will help the business to decide when and how to release the marketing pages over WM for better publicity.

preprint2016arXiv

Precise tuning of the Curie temperature of (Ga,Mn)As-based magnetic semiconductors by hole compensation: Support for valence-band ferromagnetism

For the prototype diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As, there is a fundamental concern about the electronic states near the Fermi level, i.e., whether the Fermi level resides in a well-separated impurity band derived from Mn doping (impurity-band model) or in the valence band that is already merged with the Mn-derived impurity band (valence-band model). We investigate this question by carefully shifting the Fermi level by means of carrier compensation. We use helium-ion implantation, a standard industry technology, to precisely compensate the hole doping of GaAs-based diluted ferromagnetic semiconductors while keeping the Mn concentration constant. We monitor the change of Curie temperature ($T_C$) and conductivity. For a broad range of samples including (Ga,Mn)As and (Ga,Mn)(As,P) with various Mn and P concentrations, we observe a smooth decrease of $T_C$ with carrier compensation over a wide temperature range while the conduction is changed from metallic to insulating. The existence of $T_C$ below 10\,K is also confirmed in heavily compensated samples. Our experimental results are naturally explained within the valence-band picture.

preprint2016arXiv

Schmidt number of bipartite and multipartite states under local projections

The Schmidt number is a fundamental parameter characterizing the properties of quantum states, and the local projections are a fundamental operation in quantum physics. We investigate the relation between the Schmidt numbers of bipartite states and their projected states. We show that there exist bipartite positive-partial-transpose (PPT) entangled states of any given Schmidt number. We further construct the notion of joint Schmidt number for multipartite states, and its relation with the Schmidt number of bipartite reduced density operators.

preprint2016arXiv

Skolem Sequence Based Self-adaptive Broadcast Protocol in Cognitive Radio Networks

The base station (BS) in a multi-channel cognitive radio (CR) network has to broadcast to secondary (or unlicensed) receivers/users on more than one broadcast channels via channel hopping (CH), because a single broadcast channel can be reclaimed by the primary (or licensed) user, leading to broadcast failures. Meanwhile, a secondary receiver needs to synchronize its clock with the BS's clock to avoid broadcast failures caused by the possible clock drift between the CH sequences of the secondary receiver and the BS. In this paper, we propose a CH-based broadcast protocol called SASS, which enables a BS to successfully broadcast to secondary receivers over multiple broadcast channels via channel hopping. Specifically, the CH sequences are constructed on basis of a mathematical construct---the Self-Adaptive Skolem sequence. Moreover, each secondary receiver under SASS is able to adaptively synchronize its clock with that of the BS without any information exchanges, regardless of any amount of clock drift.

preprint2016arXiv

The $k$-proper index of graphs

A tree $T$ in an edge-colored graph is a \emph{proper tree} if any two adjacent edges of $T$ are colored with different colors. Let $G$ be a graph of order $n$ and $k$ be a fixed integer with $2\leq k\leq n$. For a vertex set $S\subseteq V(G)$, a tree containing the vertices of $S$ in $G$ is called an \emph{$S$-tree}. An edge-coloring of $G$ is called a \emph{$k$-proper coloring} if for every set $S$ of $k$ vertices in $G$, there exists a proper $S$-tree in $G$. The \emph{$k$-proper index} of a nontrivial connected graph $G$, denoted by $px_k(G)$, is the smallest number of colors needed in a $k$-proper coloring of $G$. In this paper, some simple observations about $px_k(G)$ for a nontrivial connected graph $G$ are stated. Meanwhile, the $k$-proper indices of some special graphs are determined, and for every pair of positive integers $a$, $b$ with $2\leq a\leq b$, a connected graph $G$ with $px_k(G)=a$ and $rx_k(G)=b$ is constructed for each integer $k$ with $3\leq k\leq n$. Also, the graphs with $k$-proper index $n-1$ and $n-2$ are respectively characterized.

preprint2016arXiv

The existence of the graphs that have exactly two main eigenvalues

An eigenvalue of a graph $G$ is called a main eigenvalue if it has an eigenvector the sum of whose entries is not equal to zero. It is well known that a graph $G$ has exactly two main eigenvalues if and only if there exists a unique pair of integers $a$ and $b$ such that $\sum_{u\in N(v)}d(u)=ad(v)+b$ for every vertex $v\in V(G)$. We collect such connected graph $G$ in the set $\mathscr{G}(a,b)$. In this paper, we mainly focus to the existence of such $a$ and $b$, and give the necessary and sufficient condition for $\mathscr{G}(a,b)\neq\emptyset$. In addition, we give the bound for the vertex degrees of $G\in\mathscr{G}(a,b)$ and use the bound to characterize the graphs in $\mathscr{G}(a,b)$ for some feasible pairs $(a,b)$.

preprint2015arXiv

A quantum approach to homomorphic encryption

Encryption schemes often derive their power from the properties of the underlying algebra on the symbols used. Inspired by group theoretic tools, we use the centralizer of a subgroup of operations to present a private-key quantum homomorphic encryption scheme that enables a broad class of quantum computation on encrypted data. A particular instance of our encoding hides up to a constant fraction of the information encrypted. This fraction can be made arbitrarily close to unity with overhead scaling only polynomially in the message length. This highlights the potential of our protocol to hide a non-trivial amount of information, and is suggestive of a large class of encodings that might yield better security.

preprint2015arXiv

An O(m^2 log m)-Competitive Algorithm for Online Machine Minimization

We consider the online machine minimization problem in which jobs with hard deadlines arrive online over time at their release dates. The task is to determine a feasible schedule on a minimum number of machines. Our main result is a general O(m^2 log m)-competitive algorithm for the preemptive online problem, where m is the optimal number of machines used in an offline solution. This is the first improvement on an O(log (p_max/p_min))-competitive algorithm by Phillips et al. (STOC 1997), which was to date the best known algorithm even when m=2. Our algorithm is O(1)-competitive for any m that is bounded by a constant. To develop the algorithm, we investigate two complementary special cases of the problem, namely, laminar instances and agreeable instances, for which we provide an O(log m)-competitive and an O(1)-competitive algorithm, respectively. Our O(1)-competitive algorithm for agreeable instances actually produces a non-preemptive schedule, which is of its own interest as there exists a strong lower bound of n, the number of jobs, for the general non-preemptive online machine minimization problem by Saha (FSTTCS 2013), which even holds for laminar instances.

preprint2015arXiv

Boundary of the set of separable states

Motivated by the separability problem in quantum systems $2\otimes4$, $3\otimes3$ and $2\otimes2\otimes2$, we study the maximal (proper) faces of the convex body, $S_1$, of normalized separable states in an arbitrary quantum system with finite-dimensional Hilbert space $H=H_1\otimes H_2\otimes\cdots\otimes H_n$. To any subspace $V$ of $H$ we associate a face $F_V$ of $S_1$ consisting of all states $ρ\in S_1$ whose range is contained in $V$. We prove that $F_V$ is a maximal face if and only if $V$ is a hyperplane. If $V$ is the hyperplane orthogonal to a product vector, we prove that $\dim F_V=d^2-1-\prod(2d_i-1)$, where $d_i$ is the dimension of $H_i$ and $d=\prod d_i$. We classify the maximal faces of $S_1$ in the cases $2\otimes2$ and $2\otimes3$. In particular we show that the minimum and the maximum dimension of maximal faces is 6 and 8 for $2\otimes2$, and 20 and 24 for $2\otimes3$. The boundary of $S_1$ is the union of all maximal faces. When $d>6$ we prove that there exist full states $ρ$ on the boundary, i.e., such that all partial transposes of $ρ$ (including $ρ$ itself) have rank $d$. K.-C. Ha and S.-K. Kye have recently constructed explicit such states in $2\times4$ and $3\otimes3$. In the latter case, they have also constructed a remarkable family of faces, depending on a real parameter $b>0$, $b\ne1$. Each face in the family is a 9-dimensional simplex and any interior point of the face is a full state. We construct suitable optimal entanglement witnesses (OEW) for these faces and analyze the three limiting cases $b=0,1,\infty$.

preprint2015arXiv

Decomposition of bipartite and multipartite unitary gates into the product of controlled unitary gates

We show that any unitary operator on the $d_A\times d_B$ system ($d_A\ge 2$) can be decomposed into the product of at most $4d_A-5$ controlled unitary operators. The number can be reduced to $2d_A-1$ when $d_A$ is a power of two. We also prove that three controlled unitaries can implement a bipartite complex permutation operator, and discuss the connection to an analogous result on classical reversible circuits. We further show that any $n$-partite unitary on the space $\mathbb{C}^{d_1}\otimes...\otimes\mathbb{C}^{d_n}$ is the product of at most $[2\prod^{n-1}_{j=1}(2d_j-2)-1]$ controlled unitary gates, each of which is controlled from $n-1$ systems. The number can be further reduced for $n=4$. We also decompose any bipartite unitary into the product of a simple type of bipartite gates and some local unitaries. We derive dimension-independent upper bounds for the CNOT-gate cost or entanglement cost of bipartite permutation unitaries (with the help of ancillas of fixed size) as functions of the Schmidt rank of the unitary. It is shown that such costs under a simple protocol are related to the log-rank conjecture in communication complexity theory via the link of nonnegative rank.

preprint2015arXiv

Dimension formula for induced maximal faces of separable states and genuine entanglement

The normalized separable states of a finite-dimensional multipartite quantum system, represented by its Hilbert space ${\cal H}$, form a closed convex set ${\cal S}_1$. The set ${\cal S}_1$ has two kinds of faces, induced and non-induced. An induced face, $F$, has the form $F=Γ(F_V)$, where $V$ is a subspace of ${\cal H}$, $F_V$ is the set of $ρ\in{\cal S}_1$ whose range is contained in $V$, and $Γ$ is a partial transposition operator. Such $F$ is a maximal face if and only if $V$ is a hyperplane. We give a simple formula for the dimension of any induced maximal face. We also prove that the maximum dimension of induced maximal faces is equal to $d(d-2)$ where $d$ is the dimension of ${\cal H}$. The equality $\dimΓ(F_V)=d(d-2)$ holds if and only if $V^\perp$ is spanned by a genuinely entangled vector.

preprint2015arXiv

Fidelity between a bipartite state and another one undergoing local unitary dynamics

The fidelity and local unitary transformation are two widely useful notions in quantum physics. We study two constrained optimization problems in terms of the maximal and minimal fidelity between two bipartite quantum states undergoing local unitary dynamics. The problems are related to the geometric measure of entanglement and the distillability problem. We show that the problems can be reduced to semi-definite programming optimization problems. We give close-form formulae of the fidelity when the two states are both pure states, or a pure product state and the Werner state. We explain from the point of view of local unitary actions that why the entanglement in Werner states is hard to accessible. For general mixed states, we give upper and lower bounds of the fidelity using tools such as affine fidelity, channels and relative entropy from information theory. We also investigate the power of local unitaries and quantification for the commutativity of quantum states, and the equivalence of the two optimization problems.

preprint2015arXiv

Finding Needles in a Haystack: Missing Tag Detection in Large RFID Systems

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in missing tag detection to reduce and avoid inventory shrinkage. In this application, promptly finding out the missing event is of paramount importance. However, existing missing tag detection protocols cannot efficiently handle the presence of a large number of unexpected tags whose IDs are not known to the reader, which shackles the time efficiency. To deal with the problem of detecting missing tags in the presence of unexpected tags, this paper introduces a two-phase Bloom filter-based missing tag detection protocol (BMTD). The proposed BMTD exploits Bloom filter in sequence to first deactivate the unexpected tags and then test the membership of the expected tags, thus dampening the interference from the unexpected tags and considerably reducing the detection time. Moreover, the theoretical analysis of the protocol parameters is performed to minimize the detection time of the proposed BMTD and achieve the required reliability simultaneously. Extensive experiments are then conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed BMTD. The results demonstrate that the proposed BMTD significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions.

preprint2015arXiv

From Static to Dynamic Tag Population Estimation: An Extended Kalman Filter Perspective

Tag population estimation has recently attracted significant research attention due to its paramount importance on a variety of radio frequency identification (RFID) applications. However, most, if not all, of existing estimation mechanisms are proposed for the static case where tag population remains constant during the estimation process, thus leaving the more challenging dynamic case unaddressed, despite the fundamental importance of the latter case on both theoretical analysis and practical application. In order to bridge this gap, %based on \textit{dynamic framed-slotted ALOHA} (DFSA) protocol, we devote this paper to designing a generic framework of stable and accurate tag population estimation schemes based on Kalman filter for both static and dynamic RFID systems. %The objective is to devise estimation schemes and analyze the boundedness of estimation error. Technically, we first model the dynamics of RFID systems as discrete stochastic processes and leverage the techniques in extended Kalman filter (EKF) and cumulative sum control chart (CUSUM) to estimate tag population for both static and dynamic systems. By employing Lyapunov drift analysis, we mathematically characterise the performance of the proposed framework in terms of estimation accuracy and convergence speed by deriving the closed-form conditions on the design parameters under which our scheme can stabilise around the real population size with bounded relative estimation error that tends to zero with exponential convergence rate.

preprint2015arXiv

Graph states of prime-power dimension from generalized CNOT quantum circuit

We construct multipartite graph states whose dimension is the power of a prime number. This is realized by the finite field, as well as the generalized controlled-NOT quantum circuit acting on two qudits. We propose the standard form of graph states up to local unitary transformations and particle permutations. The form greatly simplifies the classification of graph states as we illustrate up to five qudits. We also show that some graph states are multipartite maximally entangled states in the sense that any bipartite of the system produces a bipartite maximally entangled state. We further prove that 4-partite maximally entangled states exist when the dimension is an odd number at least three or a multiple of four.

preprint2015arXiv

New Results on Online Resource Minimization

We consider the online resource minimization problem in which jobs with hard deadlines arrive online over time at their release dates. The task is to determine a feasible schedule on a minimum number of machines. We rigorously study this problem and derive various algorithms with small constant competitive ratios for interesting restricted problem variants. As the most important special case, we consider scheduling jobs with agreeable deadlines. We provide the first constant ratio competitive algorithm for the non-preemptive setting, which is of particular interest with regard to the known strong lower bound of n for the general problem. For the preemptive setting, we show that the natural algorithm LLF achieves a constant ratio for agreeable jobs, while for general jobs it has a lower bound of Omega(n^(1/3)). We also give an O(log n)-competitive algorithm for the general preemptive problem, which improves upon the known O(p_max/p_min)-competitive algorithm. Our algorithm maintains a dynamic partition of the job set into loose and tight jobs and schedules each (temporal) subset individually on separate sets of machines. The key is a characterization of how the decrease in the relative laxity of jobs influences the optimum number of machines. To achieve this we derive a compact expression of the optimum value, which might be of independent interest. We complement the general algorithmic result by showing lower bounds that rule out that other known algorithms may yield a similar performance guarantee.

preprint2015arXiv

Optimizing Average-Maximum TTR Trade-off for Cognitive Radio Rendezvous

In cognitive radio (CR) networks, "TTR", a.k.a. time-to-rendezvous, is one of the most important metrics for evaluating the performance of a channel hopping (CH) rendezvous protocol, and it characterizes the rendezvous delay when two CRs perform channel hopping. There exists a trade-off of optimizing the average or maximum TTR in the CH rendezvous protocol design. On one hand, the random CH protocol leads to the best "average" TTR without ensuring a finite "maximum" TTR (two CRs may never rendezvous in the worst case), or a high rendezvous diversity (multiple rendezvous channels). On the other hand, many sequence-based CH protocols ensure a finite maximum TTR (upper bound of TTR) and a high rendezvous diversity, while they inevitably yield a larger average TTR. In this paper, we strike a balance in the average-maximum TTR trade-off for CR rendezvous by leveraging the advantages of both random and sequence-based CH protocols. Inspired by the neighbor discovery problem, we establish a design framework of creating a wake-up schedule whereby every CR follows the sequence-based (or random) CH protocol in the awake (or asleep) mode. Analytical and simulation results show that the hybrid CH protocols under this framework are able to achieve a greatly improved average TTR as well as a low upper-bound of TTR, without sacrificing the rendezvous diversity.

preprint2015arXiv

Seeing the Unseen Network: Inferring Hidden Social Ties from Respondent-Driven Sampling

Learning about the social structure of hidden and hard-to-reach populations --- such as drug users and sex workers --- is a major goal of epidemiological and public health research on risk behaviors and disease prevention. Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a peer-referral process widely used by many health organizations, where research subjects recruit other subjects from their social network. In such surveys, researchers observe who recruited whom, along with the time of recruitment and the total number of acquaintances (network degree) of respondents. However, due to privacy concerns, the identities of acquaintances are not disclosed. In this work, we show how to reconstruct the underlying network structure through which the subjects are recruited. We formulate the dynamics of RDS as a continuous-time diffusion process over the underlying graph and derive the likelihood for the recruitment time series under an arbitrary recruitment time distribution. We develop an efficient stochastic optimization algorithm called RENDER (REspoNdent-Driven nEtwork Reconstruction) that finds the network that best explains the collected data. We support our analytical results through an exhaustive set of experiments on both synthetic and real data.

preprint2015arXiv

Universal steering inequalities

We propose a general framework for constructing universal steering criteria that are applicable to arbitrary bipartite states and measurement settings of the steering party. The same framework is also useful for studying the joint measurement problem. Based on the data-processing inequality for an extended Rényi relative entropy, we then introduce a family of universal steering inequalities, which detect steering much more efficiently than those inequalities known before. As illustrations, we show unbounded violation of a steering inequality for assemblages constructed from mutually unbiased bases and establish an interesting connection between maximally steerable assemblages and complete sets of mutually unbiased bases. We also provide a single steering inequality that can detect all bipartite pure states of full Schmidt rank. In the course of study, we generalize a number of results intimately connected to data-processing inequalities, which are of independent interest.

preprint2014arXiv

A Distributed Demand-Side Management Framework for the Smart Grid

This paper proposes a fully distributed Demand-Side Management system for Smart Grid infrastructures, especially tailored to reduce the peak demand of residential users. In particular, we use a dynamic pricing strategy, where energy tariffs are function of the overall power demand of customers. We consider two practical cases: (1) a fully distributed approach, where each appliance decides autonomously its own scheduling, and (2) a hybrid approach, where each user must schedule all his appliances. We analyze numerically these two approaches, showing that they are characterized practically by the same performance level in all the considered grid scenarios. We model the proposed system using a non-cooperative game theoretical approach, and demonstrate that our game is a generalized ordinal potential one under general conditions. Furthermore, we propose a simple yet effective best response strategy that is proved to converge in a few steps to a pure Nash Equilibrium, thus demonstrating the robustness of the power scheduling plan obtained without any central coordination of the operator or the customers. Numerical results, obtained using real load profiles and appliance models, show that the system-wide peak absorption achieved in a completely distributed fashion can be reduced up to 55%, thus decreasing the capital expenditure (CAPEX) necessary to meet the growing energy demand.

preprint2014arXiv

Bias current dependence of the spin lifetime in insulating Al$_{0.3}$Ga$_{0.7}$As

The spin lifetime and Hanle signal amplitude dependence on bias current has been investigated in insulating Al$_{0.3}$Ga$_{0.7}$As:Si using a three-terminal Hanle effect geometry. The amplitudes of the Hanle signals are much larger for forward bias than for reverse bias, although the spin lifetimes found are statistically equivalent. The spin resistance-area product shows a strong increase with bias current for reverse bias and small forward bias until 150 $μ$A, beyond which a weak dependence is observed. The spin lifetimes diminish substantially with increasing bias current. The dependence of the spin accumulation and lifetime diminish only moderately with temperature from 5 K to 30 K.

preprint2014arXiv

Canonical form of three-fermion pure-states with six single particle states

We construct a canonical form for pure states in $\bwe^3(\bC^6)$, the three-fermion system with six single particle states, under local unitary (LU) transformations, i.e., the unitary group $\Un(6)$. We also construct a minimal set of generators of the algebra of polynomial $\Un(6)$-invariants on $\bwe^3(\bC^6)$. It turns out that this algebra is isomorphic to the algebra of polynomial LU-invariants of three-qubits which are additionally invariant under qubit permutations. As a consequence of this surprising fact, we deduce that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the $\Un(6)$-orbits of pure three-fermion states in $\bwe^3(\bC^6)$ and the LU orbits of pure three-qubit states when qubit permutations are allowed. As an important byproduct, we obtain a new canonical form for pure three-qubit states under LU transformations $\Un(2)\times\Un(2)\times\Un(2)$ (no qubit permutations allowed).

preprint2014arXiv

Defeating jamming with the power of silence: a game-theoretic analysis

The timing channel is a logical communication channel in which information is encoded in the timing between events. Recently, the use of the timing channel has been proposed as a countermeasure to reactive jamming attacks performed by an energy-constrained malicious node. In fact, whilst a jammer is able to disrupt the information contained in the attacked packets, timing information cannot be jammed and, therefore, timing channels can be exploited to deliver information to the receiver even on a jammed channel. Since the nodes under attack and the jammer have conflicting interests, their interactions can be modeled by means of game theory. Accordingly, in this paper a game-theoretic model of the interactions between nodes exploiting the timing channel to achieve resilience to jamming attacks and a jammer is derived and analyzed. More specifically, the Nash equilibrium is studied in the terms of existence, uniqueness, and convergence under best response dynamics. Furthermore, the case in which the communication nodes set their strategy and the jammer reacts accordingly is modeled and analyzed as a Stackelberg game, by considering both perfect and imperfect knowledge of the jammer's utility function. Extensive numerical results are presented, showing the impact of network parameters on the system performance.

preprint2014arXiv

Matching Energy of Unicyclic and Bicyclic Graphs with a Given Diameter

Gutman and Wagner proposed the concept of matching energy (ME) and pointed out that the chemical applications of ME go back to the 1970s. Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $n$ and $μ_1,μ_2,\ldots,μ_n$ be the roots of its matching polynomial. The matching energy of $G$ is defined to be the sum of the absolute values of $μ_{i}\ (i=1,2,\ldots,n)$. In this paper, we characterize the graphs with minimal matching energy among all unicyclic and bicyclic graphs with a given diameter $d$.

preprint2014arXiv

Mc-Dis: A Heterogeneous Neighbor Discovery Protocol for Multi-channel Wireless Networks

In distributed wireless networks, neighbor discovery is one of the bootstrapping primitives in supporting many important network functionalities. Existing neighbor discovery protocols mostly assume a single-channel network model and can only support a subset of duty cycles, thus limiting the energy conservation levels of wireless devices. In this paper, we study the neighbor discovery problem in multi-channel networks where the wireless nodes have heterogeneous duty cycles, asynchronous clocks and asymmetrical channel perceptions, which we formulate as heterogeneous neighbor discovery problem. We first establish a performance bound for any neighbor discovery protocol by relating the two performance metrics, discovery delay and diversity. We then present the design, analysis and evaluation of Mc-Dis, a multi-channel neighbor discovery protocol that can support can practically support almost all duty cycles and guarantee discovery on every channel in multichannel networks even when nodes have asynchronous clocks and asymmetrical channel perceptions.

preprint2014arXiv

Non-zero total correlation means non-zero quantum correlation

We investigated the super quantum discord based on weak measurements. The super quantum discord is an extension of the standard quantum discord defined by projective measurements and also describes the quantumness of correlations. We provide some equivalent conditions for zero super quantum discord by using quantum discord, classical correlation and mutual information. In particular, we find that the super quantum discord is zero only for product states, which have zero mutual information. This result suggests that non-zero correlations can always be detected using the quantum correlation with weak measurements. As an example, we present the assisted state-discrimination method.

preprint2014arXiv

Nonlocal and controlled unitary operators of Schmidt rank three

Implementing nonlocal unitary operators is an important and hard question in quantum computing and cryptography. We show that any bipartite nonlocal unitary operator of Schmidt rank three on the $(d_A \times d_B)$-dimensional system is locally equivalent to a controlled unitary when $d_A$ is at most three. This operator can be locally implemented assisted by a maximally entangled state of Schmidt rank $r=\min\{d_A^2,d_B\}$. We further show that stochastic-equivalent nonlocal unitary operators are indeed locally equivalent, and propose a sufficient condition on which nonlocal and controlled unitary operators are locally equivalent. We also provide the solution to a special case of a conjecture on the ranks of multipartite quantum states.

preprint2014arXiv

On Heterogeneous Neighbor Discovery in Wireless Sensor Networks

Neighbor discovery plays a crucial role in the formation of wireless sensor networks and mobile networks where the power of sensors (or mobile devices) is constrained. Due to the difficulty of clock synchronization, many asynchronous protocols based on wake-up scheduling have been developed over the years in order to enable timely neighbor discovery between neighboring sensors while saving energy. However, existing protocols are not fine-grained enough to support all heterogeneous battery duty cycles, which can lead to a more rapid deterioration of long-term battery health for those without support. Existing research can be broadly divided into two categories according to their neighbor-discovery techniques---the quorum based protocols and the co-primality based protocols.In this paper, we propose two neighbor discovery protocols, called Hedis and Todis, that optimize the duty cycle granularity of quorum and co-primality based protocols respectively, by enabling the finest-grained control of heterogeneous duty cycles. We compare the two optimal protocols via analytical and simulation results, which show that although the optimal co-primality based protocol (Todis) is simpler in its design, the optimal quorum based protocol (Hedis) has a better performance since it has a lower relative error rate and smaller discovery delay, while still allowing the sensor nodes to wake up at a more infrequent rate.

preprint2014arXiv

On the Schmidt-rank-three bipartite and multipartite unitary operator

Unitary operations are physically implementable. We further the understanding of such operations by studying the possible forms of nonlocal unitary operators, which are bipartite or multipartite unitary operators that are not tensor product operators. They are of broad relevance in quantum information processing. We prove that any nonlocal unitary operator of Schmidt rank three on a $d_A\times d_B$ bipartite system is locally equivalent to a controlled unitary. This operator can be locally implemented assisted by a maximally entangled state of Schmidt rank $\min\{d_A^2,d_B\}$ when $d_A\le d_B$. We further show that any multipartite unitary operator $U$ of Schmidt rank three can be controlled by one system or collectively controlled by two systems, regardless of the number of systems of $U$. In the scenario of $n$-qubit, we construct non-controlled $U$ for any odd $n\ge5$, and prove that $U$ is a controlled unitary for any even $n\ge4$.

preprint2014arXiv

Pricing Mobile Data Offloading: A Distributed Market Framework

Mobile data offloading is an emerging technology to avoid congestion in cellular networks and improve the level of user satisfaction. In this paper, we develop a distributed market framework to price the offloading service, and conduct a detailed analysis of the incentives for offloading service providers and conflicts arising from the interactions of different participators. Specifically, we formulate a multi-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game (MLMF-SG) to model the interactions between the offloading service providers and the offloading service consumers in the considered market framework, and investigate the cases where the offloading capacity of APs is unlimited and limited, respectively. For the case without capacity limit, we decompose the followers' game of the MLMF-SG (FG-MLMF-SG) into a number of simple follower games (FGs), and prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium of the FGs from which the existence and uniqueness of the FG-MLMF-SG also follows. For the leaders' game of the MLMF-SG, we also prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium. For the case with capacity limit, by considering a symmetric strategy profile, we establish the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium of the corresponding MLMF-SG, and present a distributed algorithm that allows the leaders to achieve the equilibrium. Finally, extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that the Stackelberg equilibrium is very close to the corresponding social optimum for both considered cases.

preprint2014arXiv

Role of correlations in the two-body-marginal problem

Quantum properties of correlations have a key role in disparate fields of physics, from quantum information processing, to quantum foundations, to strongly correlated systems. We tackle a specific aspect of the fundamental quantum marginal problem: we address the issue of deducing the global properties of correlations of tripartite quantum states based on the knowledge of their bipartite reductions, focusing on relating specific properties of bipartite correlations to global correlation properties. We prove that strictly classical bipartite correlations may still require global entanglement and that unentangled---albeit not strictly classical---reductions may require global genuine multipartite entanglement, rather than simple entanglement. On the other hand, for three qubits, the strict classicality of the bipartite reductions rules out the need for genuine multipartite entanglement. Our work sheds new light on the relation between local and global properties of quantum states, and on the interplay between classical and quantum properties of correlations.

preprint2014arXiv

Spin transport and accumulation in the persistent photoconductor Al$_{0.3}$Ga$_{0.7}$As

Electrical spin transport and accumulation have been measured in highly Si doped Al0.3Ga0.7As utilizing a lateral spin transport device. Persistent photoconductivity allows for the tuning of the effective carrier density of the channel material in situ via photodoping. Hanle effect measurements are completed at various carrier densities and the measurements yield spin lifetimes on the order of nanoseconds, an order of magnitude smaller than in bulk GaAs. These measurements illustrate that this methodology can be used to obtain a detailed description of how spin lifetimes depend on carrier density in semiconductors across the metal-insulator transition.

preprint2014arXiv

Stability Analysis of Frame Slotted Aloha Protocol

Frame Slotted Aloha (FSA) protocol has been widely applied in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems as the de facto standard in tag identification. However, very limited work has been done on the stability of FSA despite its fundamental importance both on the theoretical characterisation of FSA performance and its effective operation in practical systems. In order to bridge this gap, we devote this paper to investigating the stability properties of FSA by focusing on two physical layer models of practical importance, the models with single packet reception and multipacket reception capabilities. Technically, we model the FSA system backlog as a Markov chain with its states being backlog size at the beginning of each frame. The objective is to analyze the ergodicity of the Markov chain and demonstrate its properties in different regions, particularly the instability region. By employing drift analysis, we obtain the closed-form conditions for the stability of FSA and show that the stability region is maximised when the frame length equals the backlog size in the single packet reception model and when the ratio of the backlog size to frame length equals in order of magnitude the maximum multipacket reception capacity in the multipacket reception model. Furthermore, to characterise system behavior in the instability region, we mathematically demonstrate the existence of transience of the backlog Markov chain.

preprint2014arXiv

The Maximal Matching Energy of Tricyclic Graphs

Gutman and Wagner proposed the concept of the matching energy (ME) and pointed out that the chemical applications of ME go back to the 1970s. Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $n$ and $μ_1,μ_2,\ldots,μ_n$ be the roots of its matching polynomial. The matching energy of $G$ is defined to be the sum of the absolute values of $μ_{i}\ (i=1,2,\ldots,n)$. Gutman and Cvetkoić determined the tricyclic graphs on $n$ vertices with maximal number of matchings by a computer search for small values of $n$ and by an induction argument for the rest. Based on this result, in this paper, we characterize the graphs with the maximal value of matching energy among all tricyclic graphs, and completely determine the tricyclic graphs with the maximal matching energy. We prove our result by using Coulson-type integral formula of matching energy, which is similar as the method to comparing the energies of two quasi-order incomparable graphs.

preprint2014arXiv

Ultra-broadband Terahertz Perfect Absorber Based on Multi-frequency Destructive Interference and Grating Diffraction

High absorption in a wide frequency band has attracted considerable interest since their potential applications in frequency spectrum imaging systems and anti-radar cloaking. In this paper, a polarization-independent, ultra-broadband and omnidirectional terahertz absorber is proposed, fabricated and evaluated. It is experimentally demonstrated that an over 95% absorption can be obtained in the frequency range of 0.75~2.41 THz. Attributing to the multi-frequency destructive interference between the layers and the impedance-matching condition of the grating, five successive absorption peaks at 0.88 THz, 1.20 THz, 1.53 THz, 1.96 THz and 2.23 THz merged into a ultra-broadband absorption spectrum.

preprint2013arXiv

A comparison of old and new definitions of the geometric measure of entanglement

Several inequivalent definitions of the geometric measure of entanglement (GM) have been introduced and studied in the past. Here we review several known and new definitions, with the qualifying criterion being that for pure states the measure is a linear or logarithmic function of the maximal fidelity with product states. The entanglement axioms and properties of the measures are studied, and qualitative and quantitative comparisons are made between all definitions. Streltsov et al. [New J. Phys 12 123004 (2010)] proved the equivalence of two linear definitions of GM, whereas we show that the corresponding logarithmic definitions are distinct. Certain classes of states such as "maximally correlated states" and isotropic states are particularly valuable for this analysis. A little-known GM definition is found to be the first one to be both normalized and weakly monotonous, thus being a prime candidate for future studies of multipartite entanglement. We also find that a large class of graph states, which includes all cluster states, have a "universal" closest separable state that minimizes the quantum relative entropy, the Bures distance and the trace distance.

preprint2013arXiv

A note on scheduling with low rank processing times

We consider the classical minimum makespan scheduling problem, where the processing time of job $j$ on machine $i$ is $p_{ij}$, and the matrix $P=(p_{ij})_{m\times n}$ is of a low rank. It is proved in (Bhaskara et al., SODA 2013) that rank 7 scheduling is NP-hard to approximate to a factor of $3/2-ε$, and rank 4 scheduling is APX-hard (NP-hard to approximate within a factor of $1.03-ε$). We improve this result by showing that rank 4 scheduling is already NP-hard to approximate within a factor of $3/2-ε$, and meanwhile rank 3 scheduling is APX-hard.

preprint2013arXiv

Approximating the optimal competitive ratio for an ancient online scheduling problem

We consider the classical online scheduling problem P||C_{max} in which jobs are released over list and provide a nearly optimal online algorithm. More precisely, an online algorithm whose competitive ratio is at most (1+ε) times that of an optimal online algorithm could be achieved in polynomial time, where m, the number of machines, is a part of the input. It substantially improves upon the previous results by almost closing the gap between the currently best known lower bound of 1.88 (Rudin, Ph.D thesis, 2001) and the best known upper bound of 1.92 (Fleischer, Wahl, Journal of Scheduling, 2000). It has been known by folklore that an online problem could be viewed as a game between an adversary and the online player. Our approach extensively explores such a structure and builds up a completely new framework to show that, for the online over list scheduling problem, given any ε>0, there exists a uniform threshold K which is polynomial in m such that if the competitive ratio of an online algorithm is ρ<=2, then there exists a list of at most K jobs to enforce the online algorithm to achieve a competitive ratio of at least ρ-O(ε). Our approach is substantially different from that of Gunther et al. (Gunther et al., SODA 2013), in which an approximation scheme for online over time scheduling problems is given, where the number of machines is fixed. Our method could also be extended to several related online over list scheduling models.

preprint2013arXiv

Dimensions, lengths and separability in finite-dimensional quantum systems

Many important sets of normalized states in a multipartite quantum system of finite dimension d, such as the set S of all separable states, are real semialgebraic sets. We compute dimensions of many such sets in several low-dimensional systems. By using dimension arguments, we show that there exist separable states which are not convex combinations of d or less pure product states. For instance, such states exist in bipartite M x N systems when (M-1)(N-1)>1. This solves an open problem proposed in [J. Mod. Opt. 47 (2000), 377-385]. We prove that there exist a separable state rho and a pure product state, whose mixture has smaller length than that of rho. We show that any real rho in S, which is invariant under all partial transpose operations, is a convex sum of real pure product states. In the case of the 2 x N system, the number r of product states can be taken to be r=rank(rho). We also show that the general multipartite separability problem can be reduced to the case of real states. Regarding the separability problem, we propose two conjectures describing S as a semialgebraic set, which may eventually lead to an analytic solution in some low-dimensional systems such as 2 x 4, 3 x 3 and 2 x 2 x 2.

preprint2013arXiv

Four-qubit pure states as fermionic states

The embedding of the $n$-qubit space into the $n$-fermion space with $2n$ modes is a widely used method in studying various aspects of these systems. This simple mapping raises a crucial question: does the embedding preserve the entanglement structure? It is known that the answer is affirmative for $n=2$ and $n=3$. That is, under either local unitary (LU) operations or with respect to stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC), there is a one-to-one correspondence between the 2- (or 3)-qubit orbits and the 2- (or 3)-fermion orbits with 4 (or 6) modes. However these results do not generalize as the mapping from the $n$-qubit orbits to the $n$-fermion orbits with $2n$ modes is no longer surjective for $n>3$. Here we consider the case of $n=4$. We show that surprisingly, the orbit mapping from qubits to fermions remains injective under SLOCC, and a similar result holds under LU for generic orbits. As a byproduct, we obtain a complete answer to the problem of SLOCC equivalence of pure 4-qubit states.

preprint2013arXiv

On the optimality of approximation schemes for the classical scheduling problem

We consider the classical scheduling problem on parallel identical machines to minimize the makespan, and achieve the following results under the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) 1. The scheduling problem on a constant number $m$ of identical machines, which is denoted as $Pm||C_{max}$, is known to admit a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) of running time $O(n) + (1/ε)^{O(m)}$ (indeed, the algorithm works for an even more general problem where machines are unrelated). We prove this algorithm is essentially the best possible in the sense that a $(1/ε)^{O(m^{1-δ})}+n^{O(1)}$ time FPTAS for any $δ>0$ implies that ETH fails. 2. The scheduling problem on an arbitrary number of identical machines, which is denoted as $P||C_{max}$, is known to admit a polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) of running time $2^{O(1/ε^2\log^3(1/ε))}+n^{O(1)}$. We prove this algorithm is nearly optimal in the sense that a $2^{O((1/ε)^{1-δ})}+n^{O(1)}$ time PTAS for any $δ>0$ implies that ETH fails, leaving a small room for improvement. To obtain these results we will provide two new reductions from 3SAT, one for $Pm||C_{max}$ and another for $P||C_{max}$. Indeed, the new reductions explore the structure of scheduling problems and can also lead to other interesting results. For example, using the framework of our reduction for $P||C_{max}$, Chen et al. (arXiv:1306.3727) is able to prove the APX-hardness of the scheduling problem in which the matrix of job processing times $P=(p_{ij})_{m\times n}$ is of rank 3, solving the open problem mentioned by Bhaskara et al. (SODA 2013).

preprint2013arXiv

Properties and construction of extreme bipartite states having positive partial transpose

We consider a bipartite quantum system H_A x H_B with M=dim H_A and N=dim H_B. We study the set E of extreme points of the compact convex set of all states having positive partial transpose (PPT) and its subsets E_r={rho in E: rank rho=r}. Our main results pertain to the subsets E_r^{M,N} of E_r consisting of states whose reduced density operators have ranks M and N, respectively. The set E_1 is just the set of pure product states. It is known that E_r^{M,N} is empty for 1< r <= min(M,N) and for r=MN. We prove that also E_{MN-1}^{M,N} is empty. Leinaas, Myrheim and Sollid have conjectured that E_{M+N-2}^{M,N} is not empty for all M,N>2 and that E_r^{M,N} is empty for 1<r<M+N-2. We prove the first part of their conjecture. The second part is known to hold when min(M,N)=3 and we prove that it holds also when min(M,N)=4. This is a consequence of our result that E_{N+1}^{M,N} is empty if M,N>3. We introduce the notion of "good" states, show that all pure states are good and give a simple description of the good separable states. For a good state rho in E_{M+N-2}^{M,N}, we prove that the range of rho contains no product vectors and that the partial transpose of rho has rank M+N-2 as well. In the special case M=3, we construct good 3 x N extreme states of rank N+1 for all N>3.

preprint2013arXiv

Separability problem for multipartite states of rank at most four

One of the most important problems in quantum information is the separability problem, which asks whether a given quantum state is separable. We investigate multipartite states of rank at most four which are PPT (i.e., all their partial transposes are positive semidefinite). We show that any PPT state of rank two or three is separable and has length at most four. For separable states of rank four, we show that they have length at most six. It is six only for some qubit-qutrit or multiqubit states. It turns out that any PPT entangled state of rank four is necessarily supported on a 3x3 or a 2x2x2 subsystem. We obtain a very simple criterion for the separability problem of the PPT states of rank at most four: such a state is entangled if and only if its range contains no product vectors. This criterion can be easily applied since a four-dimensional subspace in the 3x3 or 2x2x2 system contains a product vector if and only if its Pluecker coordinates satisfy a homogeneous polynomial equation (the Chow form of the corresponding Segre variety). We have computed an explicit determinantal expression for the Chow form in the former case, while such expression was already known in the latter case.

preprint2013arXiv

Unextendible Product Basis for Fermionic Systems

We discuss the concept of unextendible product basis (UPB) and generalized UPB for fermionic systems, using Slater determinants as an analogue of product states, in the antisymmetric subspace $\wedge^ N \bC^M$. We construct an explicit example of generalized fermionic unextendible product basis (FUPB) of minimum cardinality $N(M-N)+1$ for any $N\ge2,M\ge4$. We also show that any bipartite antisymmetric space $\wedge^ 2 \bC^M$ of codimension two is spanned by Slater determinants, and the spaces of higher codimension may not be spanned by Slater determinants. Furthermore, we construct an example of complex FUPB of $N=2,M=4$ with minimum cardinality $5$. In contrast, we show that a real FUPB does not exist for $N=2,M=4$ . Finally we provide a systematic construction for FUPBs of higher dimensions using FUPBs and UPBs of lower dimensions.

preprint2013arXiv

Universal Subspaces for Local Unitary Groups of Fermionic Systems

Let $\mathcal{V}=\wedge^N V$ be the $N$-fermion Hilbert space with $M$-dimensional single particle space $V$ and $2N\le M$. We refer to the unitary group $G$ of $V$ as the local unitary (LU) group. We fix an orthonormal (o.n.) basis $\ket{v_1},...,\ket{v_M}$ of $V$. Then the Slater determinants $e_{i_1,...,i_N}:= \ket{v_{i_1}\we v_{i_2}\we...\we v_{i_N}}$ with $i_1<...<i_N$ form an o.n. basis of $\cV$. Let $\cS\subseteq\cV$ be the subspace spanned by all $e_{i_1,...,i_N}$ such that the set $\{i_1,...,i_N\}$ contains no pair $\{2k-1,2k\}$, $k$ an integer. We say that the $\ketψ\in\cS$ are single occupancy states (with respect to the basis $\ket{v_1},...,\ket{v_M}$). We prove that for N=3 the subspace $\cS$ is universal, i.e., each $G$-orbit in $\cV$ meets $\cS$, and that this is false for N>3. If $M$ is even, the well known BCS states are not LU-equivalent to any single occupancy state. Our main result is that for N=3 and $M$ even there is a universal subspace $\cW\subseteq\cS$ spanned by $M(M-1)(M-5)/6$ states $e_{i_1,...,i_N}$. Moreover the number $M(M-1)(M-5)/6$ is minimal.

preprint2012arXiv

Band modification in (Ga, Mn)As evidenced by new measurement scheme --- magnetic photoresistance circular dichroism

The expected features of diluted magnetic semiconductors still remain in controversial issue, concerning whether or not s, p-d (f) exchange interactions indeed modify the host semiconductor band structure. To solve this doubt, a new scheme for measuring magneto-optical (MO) effect is developed, called magnetic photoresistance circular dichroism (PR-MCD), which detects the differential photoresistance of materials between two circularly polarized excitations. That allows us to detect the MO effect induced only by interband transitions, and provide unambiguous evidence that the host semiconductor band structure is indeed modified by the strong exchange interactions. Our PR-MCD spectra also disclose intrigue features which may come from strong coupling correlation effect at very high manganese concentration limit.

preprint2012arXiv

Equivalence classes and canonical forms for two-qutrit entangled states of rank four having positive partial transpose

Let E' denote the set of non-normalized two-qutrit entangled states of rank four having positive partial transpose (PPT). We show that the set of SLOCC equivalence classes of states in E', equipped with the quotient topology, is homeomorphic to the quotient R/A_5 of the open rectangular box R in the Euclidean space R^4 by an action of the alternating group A_5. We construct an explicit map omega: Omega -> E', where Omega is the open positive orthant in R^4, whose image meets every SLOCC equivalence class E containeed in E'. Although the intersection of the image of omega and E is not necessarily a singleton set, it is always a finite set of cardinality at most 60. By abuse of language, we say that any state in this intersection is a canonical form of states rho in E. In particular, we show that all checkerboard PPT entangled states can be parametrized up to SLOCC equivalence by only two real parameters. We also summarize the known results on two-qutrit extreme PPT states and edge states, and examine which other interesting properties they may have. Thus we find the first examples of extreme PPT states whose rank is different from the rank of its partial transpose.

preprint2012arXiv

Geometric measure of entanglement for pure multipartite states

We provide methods for computing the geometric measure of entanglement for two families of pure states with both experimental and theoretical interests: symmetric multiqubit states with non-negative amplitudes in the Dicke basis and symmetric three-qubit states. In addition, we study the geometric measure of pure three-qubit states systematically in virtue of a canonical form of their two-qubit reduced states, and derive analytical formulae for a three-parameter family of three-qubit states. Based on this result, we further show that the W state is the maximally entangled three-qubit state with respect to the geometric measure.

preprint2012arXiv

Joint Rate Adaptation and Medium Access in Wireless LANs: a Non-cooperative Game Theoretic Perspective

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on IEEE 802.11 standards are becoming ubiquitous today and typically support multiple data rates. In such multi-rate WLANs, distributed medium access and rate adaptation are two key elements to achieve efficient radio resource utilization, especially in non-cooperative environments. In this paper, we present an analytical study on the non-cooperative multi-rate WLANs composed of selfish users jointly adjusting their data rate and contention window size at the medium access level to maximize their own throughput, irrespective of the impact of their selfish behaviors on overall system performance. Specifically, we develop an adapted Tit-For-Tat (TFT) strategy to guide the system to an efficient equilibrium in non-cooperative environments. We model the interactions among selfish users under the adapted TFT framework as a non-cooperative joint medium access and rate adaptation game. A systematic analysis is conducted on the structural properties of the game to provide insights on the interaction between rate adaptation and 802.11 medium access control in a competitive setting. We show that the game has multiple equilibria, which, after the equilibrium refinement process that we develop, reduce to a unique efficient equilibrium. We further develop a distributed algorithm to achieve this equilibrium and demonstrate that the equilibrium achieves the performance very close to the system optimum in a social perspective.

preprint2012arXiv

Non-distillable entanglement guarantees distillable entanglement

The monogamy of entanglement is one of the basic quantum mechanical features, which says that when two partners Alice and Bob are more entangled then either of them has to be less entangled with the third party. Here we qualitatively present the converse monogamy of entanglement: given a tripartite pure system and when Alice and Bob are entangled and non-distillable, then either of them is distillable with the third party. Our result leads to the classification of tripartite pure states based on bipartite reduced density operators, which is a novel and effective way to this long-standing problem compared to the means by stochastic local operations and classical communications. Furthermore we systematically indicate the structure of the classified states and generate them. We also extend our results to multipartite states.

preprint2012arXiv

On Optimality of Myopic Policy for Restless Multi-armed Bandit Problem with Non i.i.d. Arms and Imperfect Detection

We consider the channel access problem in a multi-channel opportunistic communication system with imperfect channel sensing, where the state of each channel evolves as a non independent and identically distributed Markov process. This problem can be cast into a restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem that is intractable for its exponential computation complexity. A natural alternative is to consider the easily implementable myopic policy that maximizes the immediate reward but ignores the impact of the current strategy on the future reward. In particular, we develop three axioms characterizing a family of generic and practically important functions termed as $g$-regular functions which includes a wide spectrum of utility functions in engineering. By pursuing a mathematical analysis based on the axioms, we establish a set of closed-form structural conditions for the optimality of myopic policy.

preprint2012arXiv

On Optimality of Myopic Sensing Policy with Imperfect Sensing in Multi-channel Opportunistic Access

We consider the channel access problem under imperfect sensing of channel state in a multi-channel opportunistic communication system, where the state of each channel evolves as an independent and identically distributed Markov process. The considered problem can be cast into a restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem that is of fundamental importance in decision theory. It is well-known that solving the RMAB problem is PSPACE-hard, with the optimal policy usually intractable due to the exponential computation complexity. A natural alternative is to consider the easily implementable myopic policy that maximizes the immediate reward but ignores the impact of the current strategy on the future reward. In this paper, we perform an analytical study on the optimality of the myopic policy under imperfect sensing for the considered RMAB problem. Specifically, for a family of generic and practically important utility functions, we establish the closed-form conditions under which the myopic policy is guaranteed to be optimal even under imperfect sensing. Despite our focus on the opportunistic channel access, the obtained results are generic in nature and are widely applicable in a wide range of engineering domains.

preprint2012arXiv

Qubit-qudit states with positive partial transpose

We show that the length of a qubit-qutrit separable state is equal to the max(r,s), where r is the rank of the state and s is the rank of its partial transpose. We refer to the ordered pair (r,s) as the birank of this state. We also construct examples of qubit-qutrit separable states of any feasible birank (r,s). We determine the closure of the set of normalized two-qutrit entangled states of rank four having positive partial transpose (PPT). The boundary of this set consists of all separable states of length at most four. We prove that the length of any qubit-qudit separable state of birank (d+1,d+1) is d+1. We also show that all qubit-qudit PPT entangled states of birank (d+1,d+1) can be built in a simple way from edge states. If V is a subspace of dimension k<d in the tensor product of C^2 and C^d such that V contains no product vectors, we show that the set of all product vectors in the orthogonal complement of V is a vector bundle of rank d-k over the projective line. Finally, we explicitly construct examples of qubit-qudit PPT states (both separable and entangled) of any feasible birank.

preprint2011arXiv

Connections of geometric measure of entanglement of pure symmetric states to quantum state estimation

We study the geometric measure of entanglement (GM) of pure symmetric states related to rank-one positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) and establish a general connection with quantum state estimation theory, especially the maximum likelihood principle. Based on this connection, we provide a method for computing the GM of these states and demonstrate its additivity property under certain conditions. In particular, we prove the additivity of the GM of pure symmetric multiqubit states whose Majorana points under Majorana representation are distributed within a half sphere, including all pure symmetric three-qubit states. We then introduce a family of symmetric states that are generated from mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), and derive an analytical formula for their GM. These states include Dicke states as special cases, which have already been realized in experiments. We also derive the GM of symmetric states generated from symmetric informationally complete POVMs (SIC~POVMs) and use it to characterize all inequivalent SIC~POVMs in three-dimensional Hilbert space that are covariant with respect to the Heisenberg--Weyl group. Finally, we describe an experimental scheme for creating the symmetric multiqubit states studied in this article and a possible scheme for measuring the permanent of the related Gram matrix.

preprint2011arXiv

Description of rank four PPT entangled states of two qutrits

It is known that some two qutrit entangled states of rank 4 with positive partial transpose [PPT] can be built from the unextendible product bases [UPB]. We show that this fact is indeed universal, namely all such states can be constructed from UPB. We also classify the 5-dimensional subspaces of two qutrits which contain only finitely many product states (up to scalar multiple), and in particular those spanned by a UPB.

preprint2011arXiv

Distillability and PPT entanglement of low-rank quantum states

It is known that he bipartite quantum states, with rank strictly smaller than the maximum of the ranks of its two reduced states, are distillable by local operations and classical communication. Our first main result is that this is also true for NPT states with rank equal to this maximum. (A state is PPT if the partial transpose of its density matrix is positive semidefinite, and otherwise it is NPT.) This was conjectured first in 1999 in the special case when the two local ranks are equal. Our second main result provides a complete solution of the separability problem for bipartite states of rank 4. Namely, we show that such a state is separable if and only if it is PPT and its range contains at least one product state. We also prove that the so called checkerboard states are distillable if and only if they are NPT.

preprint2011arXiv

Let Cognitive Radios Imitate: Imitation-based Spectrum Access for Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, we tackle the problem of opportunistic spectrum access in large-scale cognitive radio networks, where the unlicensed Secondary Users (SU) access the frequency channels partially occupied by the licensed Primary Users (PU). Each channel is characterized by an availability probability unknown to the SUs. We apply evolutionary game theory to model the spectrum access problem and develop distributed spectrum access policies based on imitation, a behavior rule widely applied in human societies consisting of imitating successful behavior. We first develop two imitation-based spectrum access policies based on the basic Proportional Imitation (PI) rule and the more advanced Double Imitation (DI) rule given that a SU can imitate any other SUs. We then adapt the proposed policies to a more practical scenario where a SU can only imitate the other SUs operating on the same channel. A systematic theoretical analysis is presented for both scenarios on the induced imitation dynamics and the convergence properties of the proposed policies to an imitation-stable equilibrium, which is also the $ε$-optimum of the system. Simple, natural and incentive-compatible, the proposed imitation-based spectrum access policies can be implemented distributedly based on solely local interactions and thus is especially suited in decentralized adaptive learning environments as cognitive radio networks.

preprint2011arXiv

On Optimality of Greedy Policy for a Class of Standard Reward Function of Restless Multi-armed Bandit Problem

In this paper,we consider the restless bandit problem, which is one of the most well-studied generalizations of the celebrated stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory. However, it is known be PSPACE-Hard to approximate to any non-trivial factor. Thus the optimality is very difficult to obtain due to its high complexity. A natural method is to obtain the greedy policy considering its stability and simplicity. However, the greedy policy will result in the optimality loss for its intrinsic myopic behavior generally. In this paper, by analyzing one class of so-called standard reward function, we establish the closed-form condition about the discounted factor βsuch that the optimality of the greedy policy is guaranteed under the discounted expected reward criterion, especially, the condition β= 1 indicating the optimality of the greedy policy under the average accumulative reward criterion. Thus, the standard form of reward function can easily be used to judge the optimality of the greedy policy without any complicated calculation. Some examples in cognitive radio networks are presented to verify the effectiveness of the mathematical result in judging the optimality of the greedy policy.

preprint2011arXiv

On the Optimality of Myopic Sensing in Multi-channel Opportunistic Access: the Case of Sensing Multiple Channels

Recent works have developed a simple and robust myopic sensing policy for multi-channel opportunistic communication systems where a secondary user (SU) can access one of N i.i.d. Markovian channels. The optimality of the myopic sensing policy in maximizing the SU's cumulated reward is established under certain conditions on channel parameters. This paper studies the generic case where the SU can sense more than one channel each time. By characterizing the myopic sensing policy in this context, we establish analytically its optimality for certain system setting when the SU is allowed to sense two channels. In the more generic case, we construct counterexamples to show that the myopic sensing policy, despite its simple structure, is non-optimal.

preprint2011arXiv

Sudden death and robustness of quantum discord and entanglement of two atoms in dissipative cavities in dispersive limit

The quantum dynamics of two entangled two-level atoms initially in extended Werner-like (EWL) states is studied. Each of the two atoms is located within an isolated and dissipative cavity. If the interaction time of atoms and cavities is not very long, the amount of quantum discord and entanglement between two atoms decreases as the system evolves. The sudden death of quantum discord and entanglement of two atoms occurs within a short interaction time. However, after a long interaction time, quantum discord and entanglement of two atoms could be partially preserved due to the long-lived nature of quantum discord and entanglement. Surprisingly, we find the amount of long-lived quantum discord could be smaller than that of long-lived entanglement. Thus, entanglement may be more robust than quantum discord against decoherence.

preprint2011arXiv

Weaker entanglement guarantees stronger entanglement

The monogamy of entanglement is one of the basic quantum mechanical features, which says that when two partners Alice and Bob are more entangled then either of them has to be less entangled with the third party. Here we qualitatively present the converse monogamy of entanglement: given a tripartite pure system and when Alice and Bob are weakly entangled, then either of them is generally strongly entangled with the third party. Our result leads to the classification of tripartite pure states based on bipartite reduced density operators, which is a novel and effective way to this long-standing problem compared to the means by stochastic local operations and classical communications. We also systematically indicate the structure of the classified states and generate them.

preprint2010arXiv

Additivity and non-additivity of multipartite entanglement measures

We study the additivity property of three multipartite entanglement measures, i.e. the geometric measure of entanglement (GM), the relative entropy of entanglement and the logarithmic global robustness. First, we show the additivity of GM of multipartite states with real and non-negative entries in the computational basis. Many states of experimental and theoretical interests have this property, e.g. Bell diagonal states, maximally correlated generalized Bell diagonal states, generalized Dicke states, the Smolin state, and the generalization of Dür's multipartite bound entangled states. We also prove the additivity of other two measures for some of these examples. Second, we show the non-additivity of GM of all antisymmetric states of three or more parties, and provide a unified explanation of the non-additivity of the three measures of the antisymmetric projector states. In particular, we derive analytical formulae of the three measures of one copy and two copies of the antisymmetric projector states respectively. Third, we show, with a statistical approach, that almost all multipartite pure states with sufficiently large number of parties are nearly maximally entangled with respect to GM and relative entropy of entanglement. However, their GM is not strong additive; what's more surprising, for generic pure states with real entries in the computational basis, GM of one copy and two copies, respectively, are almost equal. Hence, more states may be suitable for universal quantum computation, if measurements can be performed on two copies of the resource states. We also show that almost all multipartite pure states cannot be produced reversibly with the combination multipartite GHZ states under asymptotic LOCC, unless relative entropy of entanglement is non-additive for generic multipartite pure states.

preprint2010arXiv

Detecting Multipartite Classical States and their Resemblances

We study various types of multipartite states lying near the quantum-classical boundary. The class of so-called classical states are precisely those in which each party can perform a projective measurement to identify a locally held state without disturbing the global state, a task known as non-disruptive local state identification (NDLID). We introduce a new class of states called generalized-classical states which allow for NDLID when the most general quantum measurements are permitted. A simple analytic method as well as a physical criterion are presented for detecting whether a multipartite state is classical. To decide whether a state is generalized-classical, we provide a semi-definite programming algorithm which can be adapted for use in other unrelated contexts such as signal processing.

preprint2010arXiv

Evaluation of two different entanglement measures on a bound entangled state

We consider the mixed three-qubit bound entangled state defined as the normalized projector on the subspace that is complementary to an Unextendible Product Basis [C. H. Bennett et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 5385 (1999)]. Using the fact that no product state lies in the support of that state, we compute its entanglement by providing a basis of its subspace formed by "minimally-entangled" states. The approach is in principle applicable to any entanglement measure; here we provide explicit values for both the geometric measure of entanglement and a generalized concurrence.

preprint2010arXiv

Multi-copy and stochastic transformation of multipartite pure states

Characterizing the transformation and classification of multipartite entangled states is a basic problem in quantum information. We study the problem under two most common environments, local operations and classical communications (LOCC), stochastic LOCC and two more general environments, multi-copy LOCC (MCLOCC) and multi-copy SLOCC (MCSLOCC). We show that two transformable multipartite states under LOCC or SLOCC are also transformable under MCLOCC and MCSLOCC. What's more, these two environments are equivalent in the sense that two transformable states under MCLOCC are also transformable under MCSLOCC, and vice versa. Based on these environments we classify the multipartite pure states into a few inequivalent sets and orbits, between which we build the partial order to decide their transformation. In particular, we investigate the structure of SLOCC-equivalent states in terms of tensor rank, which is known as the generalized Schmidt rank. Given the tensor rank, we show that GHZ states can be used to generate all states with a smaller or equivalent tensor rank under SLOCC, and all reduced separable states with a cardinality smaller or equivalent than the tensor rank under LOCC. Using these concepts, we extended the concept of "maximally entangled state" in the multi-partite system.

preprint2010arXiv

Orthogonal Quantum Group Invariants of Links

We study the Chern-Simons partition function of orthogonal quantum group invariants, and propose a new orthogonal Labastida-Mariño-Ooguri-Vafa conjecture as well as degree conjecture for free energy associated to the orthogonal Chern-Simons partition function. We prove the degree conjecture and some interesting cases of orthogonal LMOV conjecture. In particular, We provide a formula of colored Kauffman polynomials for torus knots and links, and applied this formula to verify certain case of the conjecture at roots of unity except $1$. We also derive formulas of Lickorish-Millett type for Kauffman polynomials and relate all these to the orthogonal LMOV conjecture.

preprint2010arXiv

Tensor Rank and Stochastic Entanglement Catalysis for Multipartite Pure States

The tensor rank (also known as generalized Schmidt rank) of multipartite pure states plays an important role in the study of entanglement classifications and transformations. We employ powerful tools from the theory of homogeneous polynomials to investigate the tensor rank of symmetric states such as the tripartite state $\ket{W_3}=\tfrac{1}{\sqrt{3}}(\ket{100}+\ket{010}+\ket{001})$ and its $N$-partite generalization $\ket{W_N}$. Previous tensor rank estimates are dramatically improved and we show that (i) three copies of $\ket{W_3}$ has rank either 15 or 16, (ii) two copies of $\ket{W_N}$ has rank $3N-2$, and (iii) $n$ copies of $\ket{W_N}$ has rank O(N). A remarkable consequence of these results is that certain multipartite transformations, impossible even probabilistically, can become possible when performed in multiple copy bunches or when assisted by some catalyzing state. This effect is impossible for bipartite pure states.