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Published work

43 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

AdamFLIP: Adaptive Momentum Feedback Linearization Optimization for Hard Constrained PINN Training

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) provide a flexible framework for solving forward and inverse problems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs), but standard PINN training typically relies on soft penalty formulations that combine PDE residuals, data mismatch, and initial/boundary conditions using manually chosen weights. This often leads to ill-conditioning, sensitivity to loss weights, and poor constraint satisfaction. In this work, we reformulate PINN training as an equality-constrained optimization problem and propose a novel Adaptive Momentum Feedback Linearization Optimization for Hard Constrained PINN (AdamFLIP). The key idea is to view the constraint residuals as the output of a controlled dynamical system and to compute the Lagrange multiplier as a feedback input that locally drives these residuals toward stable linear contraction dynamics. AdamFLIP then applies Adam-style first- and second-moment adaptation to the resulting feedback-linearized Lagrangian gradient, combining principled constraint handling with the scalability and robustness of adaptive neural-network optimization. We test AdamFLIP on a range of benchmark forward and inverse PDE problem, and it consistently outperforms both the standard soft-constrained PINN and state-of-the-art constrained optimizers. Specifically, on the Navier--Stokes equations benchmark, AdamFLIP \textbf{reduces relative $L_2$ error by more than two thirds} for the predicted solution compared to the next best method. Our AdamFLIP framework provides an effective and computationally scalable hard constraint optimization method for PINN training.

preprint2025arXiv

Max-Entropy Reinforcement Learning with Flow Matching and A Case Study on LQR

Soft actor-critic (SAC) is a popular algorithm for max-entropy reinforcement learning. In practice, the energy-based policies in SAC are often approximated using simple policy classes for efficiency, sacrificing the expressiveness and robustness. In this paper, we propose a variant of the SAC algorithm that parameterizes the policy with flow-based models, leveraging their rich expressiveness. In the algorithm, we evaluate the flow-based policy utilizing the instantaneous change-of-variable technique and update the policy with an online variant of flow matching developed in this paper. This online variant, termed importance sampling flow matching (ISFM), enables policy update with only samples from a user-specified sampling distribution rather than the unknown target distribution. We develop a theoretical analysis of ISFM, characterizing how different choices of sampling distributions affect the learning efficiency. Finally, we conduct a case study of our algorithm on the max-entropy linear quadratic regulator problems, demonstrating that the proposed algorithm learns the optimal action distribution.

preprint2022arXiv

Cross-Age Speaker Verification: Learning Age-Invariant Speaker Embeddings

Automatic speaker verification has achieved remarkable progress in recent years. However, there is little research on cross-age speaker verification (CASV) due to insufficient relevant data. In this paper, we mine cross-age test sets based on the VoxCeleb dataset and propose our age-invariant speaker representation(AISR) learning method. Since the VoxCeleb is collected from the YouTube platform, the dataset consists of cross-age data inherently. However, the meta-data does not contain the speaker age label. Therefore, we adopt the face age estimation method to predict the speaker age value from the associated visual data, then label the audio recording with the estimated age. We construct multiple Cross-Age test sets on VoxCeleb (Vox-CA), which deliberately select the positive trials with large age-gap. Also, the effect of nationality and gender is considered in selecting negative pairs to align with Vox-H cases. The baseline system performance drops from 1.939\% EER on the Vox-H test set to 10.419\% on the Vox-CA20 test set, which indicates how difficult the cross-age scenario is. Consequently, we propose an age-decoupling adversarial learning (ADAL) method to alleviate the negative effect of the age gap and reduce intra-class variance. Our method outperforms the baseline system by over 10\% related EER reduction on the Vox-CA20 test set. The source code and trial resources are available on https://github.com/qinxiaoyi/Cross-Age_Speaker_Verification

preprint2022arXiv

Deep Learning-Based Intra Mode Derivation for Versatile Video Coding

In intra coding, Rate Distortion Optimization (RDO) is performed to achieve the optimal intra mode from a pre-defined candidate list. The optimal intra mode is also required to be encoded and transmitted to the decoder side besides the residual signal, where lots of coding bits are consumed. To further improve the performance of intra coding in Versatile Video Coding (VVC), an intelligent intra mode derivation method is proposed in this paper, termed as Deep Learning based Intra Mode Derivation (DLIMD). In specific, the process of intra mode derivation is formulated as a multi-class classification task, which aims to skip the module of intra mode signaling for coding bits reduction. The architecture of DLIMD is developed to adapt to different quantization parameter settings and variable coding blocks including non-square ones, which are handled by one single trained model. Different from the existing deep learning based classification problems, the hand-crafted features are also fed into the intra mode derivation network besides the learned features from feature learning network. To compete with traditional method, one additional binary flag is utilized in the video codec to indicate the selected scheme with RDO. Extensive experimental results reveal that the proposed method can achieve 2.28%, 1.74%, and 2.18% bit rate reduction on average for Y, U, and V components on the platform of VVC test model, which outperforms the state-of-the-art works.

preprint2022arXiv

Detecting Interlocutor Confusion in Situated Human-Avatar Dialogue: A Pilot Study

In order to enhance levels of engagement with conversational systems, our long term research goal seeks to monitor the confusion state of a user and adapt dialogue policies in response to such user confusion states. To this end, in this paper, we present our initial research centred on a user-avatar dialogue scenario that we have developed to study the manifestation of confusion and in the long term its mitigation. We present a new definition of confusion that is particularly tailored to the requirements of intelligent conversational system development for task-oriented dialogue. We also present the details of our Wizard-of-Oz based data collection scenario wherein users interacted with a conversational avatar and were presented with stimuli that were in some cases designed to invoke a confused state in the user. Post study analysis of this data is also presented. Here, three pre-trained deep learning models were deployed to estimate base emotion, head pose and eye gaze. Despite a small pilot study group, our analysis demonstrates a significant relationship between these indicators and confusion states. We understand this as a useful step forward in the automated analysis of the pragmatics of dialogue.

preprint2022arXiv

Dialogue Policies for Confusion Mitigation in Situated HRI

Confusion is a mental state triggered by cognitive disequilibrium that can occur in many types of task-oriented interaction, including Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). People may become confused while interacting with robots due to communicative or even task-centred challenges. To build a smooth and engaging HRI, it is insufficient for an agent to simply detect confusion; instead, the system should aim to mitigate the situation. In light of this, in this paper, we present our approach to a linguistic design of dialogue policies to build a dialogue framework to alleviate interlocutor confusion. We also outline our sketch and discuss challenges with respect to its operationalisation.

preprint2022arXiv

Escaping High-order Saddles in Policy Optimization for Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) Control

First order policy optimization has been widely used in reinforcement learning. It guarantees to find the optimal policy for the state-feedback linear quadratic regulator (LQR). However, the performance of policy optimization remains unclear for the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control where the LQG cost has spurious suboptimal stationary points. In this paper, we introduce a novel perturbed policy gradient (PGD) method to escape a large class of bad stationary points (including high-order saddles). In particular, based on the specific structure of LQG, we introduce a novel reparameterization procedure which converts the iterate from a high-order saddle to a strict saddle, from which standard random perturbations in PGD can escape efficiently. We further characterize the high-order saddles that can be escaped by our algorithm.

preprint2022arXiv

FedDAR: Federated Domain-Aware Representation Learning

Cross-silo Federated learning (FL) has become a promising tool in machine learning applications for healthcare. It allows hospitals/institutions to train models with sufficient data while the data is kept private. To make sure the FL model is robust when facing heterogeneous data among FL clients, most efforts focus on personalizing models for clients. However, the latent relationships between clients' data are ignored. In this work, we focus on a special non-iid FL problem, called Domain-mixed FL, where each client's data distribution is assumed to be a mixture of several predefined domains. Recognizing the diversity of domains and the similarity within domains, we propose a novel method, FedDAR, which learns a domain shared representation and domain-wise personalized prediction heads in a decoupled manner. For simplified linear regression settings, we have theoretically proved that FedDAR enjoys a linear convergence rate. For general settings, we have performed intensive empirical studies on both synthetic and real-world medical datasets which demonstrate its superiority over prior FL methods.

preprint2022arXiv

Finite groups in which every maximal subgroup is nilpotent or normal or has $p'$-order

Let $G$ be a finite group and $p$ a fixed prime divisor of $|G|$. Combining the nilpotence, the normality and the order of groups together, we prove that if every maximal subgroup of $G$ is nilpotent or normal or has $p'$-order, then (1) $G$ is solvable; (2) $G$ has a Sylow tower; (3) There exists at most one prime divisor $q$ of $|G|$ such that $G$ is neither $q$-nilpotent nor $q$-closed, where $q\neq p$.

preprint2022arXiv

Improve Single-Point Zeroth-Order Optimization Using High-Pass and Low-Pass Filters

Single-point zeroth-order optimization (SZO) is useful in solving online black-box optimization and control problems in time-varying environments, as it queries the function value only once at each time step. However, the vanilla SZO method is known to suffer from a large estimation variance and slow convergence, which seriously limits its practical application. In this work, we borrow the idea of high-pass and low-pass filters from extremum seeking control (continuous-time version of SZO) and develop a novel SZO method called HLF-SZO by integrating these filters. It turns out that the high-pass filter coincides with the residual feedback method, and the low-pass filter can be interpreted as the momentum method. As a result, the proposed HLF-SZO achieves a much smaller variance and much faster convergence than the vanilla SZO method and empirically outperforms the residual-feedback SZO method, which is verified via extensive numerical experiments.

preprint2022arXiv

Model-Free Feedback Constrained Optimization Via Projected Primal-Dual Zeroth-Order Dynamics

In this paper, we propose a model-free feedback solution method to solve generic constrained optimization problems, without knowing the specific formulations of the objective and constraint functions. This solution method is termed projected primal-dual zeroth-order dynamics (P-PDZD) and is developed based on projected primal-dual gradient dynamics and extremum seeking control. In particular, the P-PDZD method can be interpreted as a model-free controller that autonomously drives an unknown system to the solution of the optimization problem using only output feedback. The P-PDZD can properly handle both the hard and asymptotic constraints, and we develop the decentralized version of P-PDZD when applied to multi-agent systems. Moreover, we prove that the P-PDZD achieves semi-global practical asymptotic stability and structural robustness. We then apply the decentralized P-PDZD to the optimal voltage control problem in power distribution systems with square probing signals, and the simulation results verified the optimality, robustness, and adaptivity of the P-PDZD method.

preprint2022arXiv

Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE): from private notebooks to a collaborative cloud virtual research environment

Virtual Research Environments (VREs) provide user-centric support in the lifecycle of research activities, e.g., discovering and accessing research assets, or composing and executing application workflows. A typical VRE is often implemented as an integrated environment, which includes a catalog of research assets, a workflow management system, a data management framework, and tools for enabling collaboration among users. Notebook environments, such as Jupyter, allow researchers to rapidly prototype scientific code and share their experiments as online accessible notebooks. Jupyter can support several popular languages that are used by data scientists, such as Python, R, and Julia. However, such notebook environments do not have seamless support for running heavy computations on remote infrastructure or finding and accessing software code inside notebooks. This paper investigates the gap between a notebook environment and a VRE and proposes an embedded VRE solution for the Jupyter environment called Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE). The NaaVRE solution provides functional components via a component marketplace and allows users to create a customized VRE on top of the Jupyter environment. From the VRE, a user can search research assets (data, software, and algorithms), compose workflows, manage the lifecycle of an experiment, and share the results among users in the community. We demonstrate how such a solution can enhance a legacy workflow that uses Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data from country-wide airborne laser scanning surveys for deriving geospatial data products of ecosystem structure at high resolution over broad spatial extents. This enables users to scale out the processing of multi-terabyte LiDAR point clouds for ecological applications to more data sources in a distributed cloud environment.

preprint2022arXiv

Observation of biradical spin coupling through hydrogen bonds

Investigation of intermolecular electron spin interaction is of fundamental importance in both science and technology.Here, radical pairs of all-trans retinoic acid molecules on Au(111) are created using an ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. Antiferromagnetic coupling between two radicals is identified by magnetic-field dependent spectroscopy.The measured exchange energies are from 0.1 to 1.0 meV. The biradical spin coupling is mediated through O-H$\cdots$O hydrogen bonds, as elucidated from analysis combining density functional theory calculation and a modern version of valence bond theory.

preprint2022arXiv

Realization of fast all-microwave CZ gates with a tunable coupler

The development of high-fidelity two-qubit quantum gates is essential for digital quantum computing. Here, we propose and realize an all-microwave parametric Controlled-Z (CZ) gates by coupling strength modulation in a superconducting Transmon qubit system with tunable couplers. After optimizing the design of the tunable coupler together with the control pulse numerically, we experimentally realized a 100 ns CZ gate with high fidelity of 99.38%$ \pm$0.34% and the control error being 0.1%. We note that our CZ gates are not affected by pulse distortion and do not need pulse correction, {providing a solution for the real-time pulse generation in a dynamic quantum feedback circuit}. With the expectation of utilizing our all-microwave control scheme to reduce the number of control lines through frequency multiplexing in the future, our scheme draws a blueprint for the high-integrable quantum hardware design.

preprint2022arXiv

Reinforcement Learning for Selective Key Applications in Power Systems: Recent Advances and Future Challenges

With large-scale integration of renewable generation and distributed energy resources, modern power systems are confronted with new operational challenges, such as growing complexity, increasing uncertainty, and aggravating volatility. Meanwhile, more and more data are becoming available owing to the widespread deployment of smart meters, smart sensors, and upgraded communication networks. As a result, data-driven control techniques, especially reinforcement learning (RL), have attracted surging attention in recent years. This paper provides a comprehensive review of various RL techniques and how they can be applied to decision-making and control in power systems. In particular, we select three key applications, i.e., frequency regulation, voltage control, and energy management, as examples to illustrate RL-based models and solutions. We then present the critical issues in the application of RL, i.e., safety, robustness, scalability, and data. Several potential future directions are discussed as well.

preprint2022arXiv

Secure Rate-Splitting for MIMO Broadcast Channel with Imperfect CSIT and a Jammer

In this paper, we investigate the secure rate-splitting for the two-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and a multiple-antenna jammer, where each receiver has an equal number of antennas and the jammer has perfect channel state information (CSI). Specifically, we design a secure rate-splitting multiple-access strategy, where the security of split private and common messages is ensured by precoder design with joint nulling and aligning the leakage information, regarding different antenna configurations. Moreover, we show that the sum-secure degrees-of-freedom (SDoF) achieved by secure rate-splitting is optimal and outperforms that by conventional zero-forcing. Therefore, we reveal the sum-SDoF of the two-user MIMO broadcast channel with imperfect CSIT and a jammer, and validate the superiority of rate-splitting for the security purpose in this scenario with emphasis of MIMO.

preprint2022arXiv

System-level, Input-output and New Parameterizations of Stabilizing Controllers, and Their Numerical Computation

It is known that the set of internally stabilizing controller $\mathcal{C}_{\text{stab}}$ is non-convex, but it admits convex characterizations using certain closed-loop maps: a classical result is the Youla parameterization, and two recent notions are the system-level parameterization (SLP) and the input-output parameterization (IOP). In this paper, we address the existence of new convex parameterizations and discuss potential tradeoffs of each parametrization in different scenarios. Our main contributions are: 1) We reveal that only four groups of stable closed-loop transfer matrices are equivalent to internal stability: one of them is used in the SLP, another one is used in the IOP, and the other two are new, leading to two new convex parameterizations of $\mathcal{C}_{\text{stab}}$. 2) We investigate the properties of these parameterizations after imposing the finite impulse response (FIR) approximation, revealing that the IOP has the best ability of approximating $\mathcal{C}_{\text{stab}}$ given FIR constraints. 3) These four parameterizations require no \emph{a priori} doubly-coprime factorization of the plant, but impose a set of equality constraints. However, these equality constraints will never be satisfied exactly in floating-point arithmetic computation and/or implementation. We prove that the IOP is numerically robust for open-loop stable plants, in the sense that small mismatches in the equality constraints do not compromise the closed-loop stability; but a direct IOP implementation will fail to stabilize open-loop unstable systems in practice. The SLP is known to enjoy numerical robustness in the state feedback case; here, we show that numerical robustness of the four-block SLP controller requires case-by-case analysis even the plant is open-loop stable.

preprint2022arXiv

The CUHK-TENCENT speaker diarization system for the ICASSP 2022 multi-channel multi-party meeting transcription challenge

This paper describes our speaker diarization system submitted to the Multi-channel Multi-party Meeting Transcription (M2MeT) challenge, where Mandarin meeting data were recorded in multi-channel format for diarization and automatic speech recognition (ASR) tasks. In these meeting scenarios, the uncertainty of the speaker number and the high ratio of overlapped speech present great challenges for diarization. Based on the assumption that there is valuable complementary information between acoustic features, spatial-related and speaker-related features, we propose a multi-level feature fusion mechanism based target-speaker voice activity detection (FFM-TS-VAD) system to improve the performance of the conventional TS-VAD system. Furthermore, we propose a data augmentation method during training to improve the system robustness when the angular difference between two speakers is relatively small. We provide comparisons for different sub-systems we used in M2MeT challenge. Our submission is a fusion of several sub-systems and ranks second in the diarization task.

preprint2022arXiv

Transferring Studies Across Embodiments: A Case Study in Confusion Detection

Human-robot studies are expensive to conduct and difficult to control, and as such researchers sometimes turn to human-avatar interaction in the hope of faster and cheaper data collection that can be transferred to the robot domain. In terms of our work, we are particularly interested in the challenge of detecting and modelling user confusion in interaction, and as part of this research programme, we conducted situated dialogue studies to investigate users' reactions in confusing scenarios that we give in both physical and virtual environments. In this paper, we present a combined review of these studies and the results that we observed across these two embodiments. For the physical embodiment, we used a Pepper Robot, while for the virtual modality, we used a 3D avatar. Our study shows that despite attitudinal differences and technical control limitations, there were a number of similarities detected in user behaviour and self-reporting results across embodiment options. This work suggests that, while avatar interaction is no true substitute for robot interaction studies, sufficient care in study design may allow well executed human-avatar studies to supplement more challenging human-robot studies.

preprint2021arXiv

Analysis of the Optimization Landscape of Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) Control

This paper revisits the classical Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control from a modern optimization perspective. We analyze two aspects of the optimization landscape of the LQG problem: 1) connectivity of the set of stabilizing controllers $\mathcal{C}_n$; and 2) structure of stationary points. It is known that similarity transformations do not change the input-output behavior of a dynamical controller or LQG cost. This inherent symmetry by similarity transformations makes the landscape of LQG very rich. We show that 1) the set of stabilizing controllers $\mathcal{C}_n$ has at most two path-connected components and they are diffeomorphic under a mapping defined by a similarity transformation; 2) there might exist many \emph{strictly suboptimal stationary points} of the LQG cost function over $\mathcal{C}_n$ and these stationary points are always \emph{non-minimal}; 3) all \emph{minimal} stationary points are globally optimal and they are identical up to a similarity transformation. These results shed some light on the performance analysis of direct policy gradient methods for solving the LQG problem.

preprint2021arXiv

Control Reconfiguration of Dynamical Systems for Improved Performance via Reverse- and Forward-engineering

This paper presents a control reconfiguration approach to improve the performance of two classes of dynamical systems. Motivated by recent research on re-engineering cyber-physical systems, we propose a three-step control retrofit procedure. First, we reverse-engineer a dynamical system to dig out an optimization problem it actually solves. Second, we forward-engineer the system by applying a corresponding faster algorithm to solve this optimization problem. Finally, by comparing the original and accelerated dynamics, we obtain the implementation of the redesigned part (the extra dynamics). As a result, the convergence rate/speed or transient behavior of the given system can be improved while the system control structure is maintained. Internet congestion control and distributed proportional-integral (PI) control, as applications in the two different classes of target systems, are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

preprint2021arXiv

Federated Learning over Wireless Networks: A Band-limited Coordinated Descent Approach

We consider a many-to-one wireless architecture for federated learning at the network edge, where multiple edge devices collaboratively train a model using local data. The unreliable nature of wireless connectivity, together with constraints in computing resources at edge devices, dictates that the local updates at edge devices should be carefully crafted and compressed to match the wireless communication resources available and should work in concert with the receiver. Thus motivated, we propose SGD-based bandlimited coordinate descent algorithms for such settings. Specifically, for the wireless edge employing over-the-air computing, a common subset of k-coordinates of the gradient updates across edge devices are selected by the receiver in each iteration, and then transmitted simultaneously over k sub-carriers, each experiencing time-varying channel conditions. We characterize the impact of communication error and compression, in terms of the resulting gradient bias and mean squared error, on the convergence of the proposed algorithms. We then study learning-driven communication error minimization via joint optimization of power allocation and learning rates. Our findings reveal that optimal power allocation across different sub-carriers should take into account both the gradient values and channel conditions, thus generalizing the widely used water-filling policy. We also develop sub-optimal distributed solutions amenable to implementation.

preprint2021arXiv

Observation of thermalization and information scrambling in a superconducting quantum processor

Understanding various phenomena in non-equilibrium dynamics of closed quantum many-body systems, such as quantum thermalization, information scrambling, and nonergodic dynamics, is a crucial for modern physics. Using a ladder-type superconducting quantum processor, we perform analog quantum simulations of both the $XX$ ladder and one-dimensional (1D) $XX$ model. By measuring the dynamics of local observables, entanglement entropy and tripartite mutual information, we signal quantum thermalization and information scrambling in the $XX$ ladder. In contrast, we show that the $XX$ chain, as free fermions on a 1D lattice, fails to thermalize, and local information does not scramble in the integrable channel. Our experiments reveal ergodicity and scrambling in the controllable qubit ladder, and opens the door to further investigations on the thermodynamics and chaos in quantum many-body systems.

preprint2021arXiv

On the Regret Analysis of Online LQR Control with Predictions

In this paper, we study the dynamic regret of online linear quadratic regulator (LQR) control with time-varying cost functions and disturbances. We consider the case where a finite look-ahead window of cost functions and disturbances is available at each stage. The online control algorithm studied in this paper falls into the category of model predictive control (MPC) with a particular choice of terminal costs to ensure the exponential stability of MPC. It is proved that the regret of such an online algorithm decays exponentially fast with the length of predictions. The impact of inaccurate prediction on disturbances is also investigated in this paper.

preprint2021arXiv

Replay and Synthetic Speech Detection with Res2net Architecture

Existing approaches for replay and synthetic speech detection still lack generalizability to unseen spoofing attacks. This work proposes to leverage a novel model structure, so-called Res2Net, to improve the anti-spoofing countermeasure's generalizability. Res2Net mainly modifies the ResNet block to enable multiple feature scales. Specifically, it splits the feature maps within one block into multiple channel groups and designs a residual-like connection across different channel groups. Such connection increases the possible receptive fields, resulting in multiple feature scales. This multiple scaling mechanism significantly improves the countermeasure's generalizability to unseen spoofing attacks. It also decreases the model size compared to ResNet-based models. Experimental results show that the Res2Net model consistently outperforms ResNet34 and ResNet50 by a large margin in both physical access (PA) and logical access (LA) of the ASVspoof 2019 corpus. Moreover, integration with the squeeze-and-excitation (SE) block can further enhance performance. For feature engineering, we investigate the generalizability of Res2Net combined with different acoustic features, and observe that the constant-Q transform (CQT) achieves the most promising performance in both PA and LA scenarios. Our best single system outperforms other state-of-the-art single systems in both PA and LA of the ASVspoof 2019 corpus.

preprint2021arXiv

Spatial Focusing of Surface Polaritons Based on Cross-Phase Modulation

We theoretically study the spatial focusing of surface polaritons (SPs) in a negative index metamaterial (NIMM)-atomic gas interface waveguide system, based on cross phase modulation (XPM) in a tripod type double electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) scheme. In the linear region, we realize the low loss stable propagation of SPs, and the group velocities of the probe and signal fields are well matched via double EIT. In the nonlinear region, we show that giant enhancement of the XPM can be obtained. Using a narrow optical soliton in free space, we realize spatial focusing of the SPs solitons, including bright, multi bright, and dark solitons. The full width at the half-maximum (FWHM) of the SPs soliton can be compressed to about ten nanometers, thus, even nanofucsing can be obtained. The results obtained here have certain theoretical significance for micro-nano optics, and also have application potentials in nano-scale sensing, spectral enhancement and precision measurement.

preprint2021arXiv

Zeroth-Order Feedback Optimization for Cooperative Multi-Agent Systems

We study a class of cooperative multi-agent optimization problems, where each agent is associated with a local action vector and a local cost, and the goal is to cooperatively find the joint action profile that minimizes the average of the local costs. Such problems arise in many applications, such as distributed routing control, wind farm operation, etc. In many of these problems, gradient information may not be readily available, and the agents may only observe their local costs incurred by their actions as a feedback to determine their new actions. In this paper, we propose a zeroth-order feedback optimization scheme for the class of problems we consider, and provide explicit complexity bounds for both the convex and nonconvex settings with noiseless and noisy local cost observations. We also discuss briefly on the impacts of knowledge of local function dependence between agents. The algorithm's performance is justified by a numerical example of distributed routing control.

preprint2020arXiv

A Reliability-aware Multi-armed Bandit Approach to Learn and Select Users in Demand Response

One challenge in the optimization and control of societal systems is to handle the unknown and uncertain user behavior. This paper focuses on residential demand response (DR) and proposes a closed-loop learning scheme to address these issues. In particular, we consider DR programs where an aggregator calls upon residential users to change their demand so that the total load adjustment is close to a target value. To learn and select the right users, we formulate the DR problem as a combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem with a reliability objective. We propose a learning algorithm: CUCB-Avg (Combinatorial Upper Confidence Bound-Average), which utilizes both upper confidence bounds and sample averages to balance the tradeoff between exploration (learning) and exploitation (selecting). We consider both a fixed time-invariant target and time-varying targets, and show that CUCB-Avg achieves $O(\log T)$ and $O(\sqrt{T \log(T)})$ regrets respectively. Finally, we numerically test our algorithms using synthetic and real data, and demonstrate that our CUCB-Avg performs significantly better than the classic CUCB and also better than Thompson Sampling.

preprint2020arXiv

Correlated states in twisted double bilayer graphene

Electron-electron interactions play an important role in graphene and related systems and can induce exotic quantum states, especially in a stacked bilayer with a small twist angle. For bilayer graphene where the two layers are twisted by a "magic angle", flat band and strong many-body effects lead to correlated insulating states and superconductivity. In contrast to monolayer graphene, the band structure of untwisted bilayer graphene can be further tuned by a displacement field, providing an extra degree of freedom to control the flat band that should appear when two bilayers are stacked on top of each other. Here, we report the discovery and characterization of such displacement-field tunable electronic phases in twisted double bilayer graphene. We observe insulating states at a half-filled conduction band in an intermediate range of displacement fields. Furthermore, the resistance gap in the correlated insulator increases with respect to the in-plane magnetic fields and we find that the g factor according to spin Zeeman effect is ~2, indicating spin polarization at half filling. These results establish the twisted double bilayer graphene as an easily tunable platform for exploring quantum many-body states.

preprint2020arXiv

Distributed Automatic Load-Frequency Control with Optimality in Power Systems

With the increasing penetration of renewable energy resources, power systems face new challenges in balancing power supply and demand and maintaining the nominal frequency. This paper studies load control to handle these challenges. In particular, a fully distributed automatic load control (ALC) algorithm, which only needs local measurement and local communication, is proposed. We prove that the load control algorithm globally converges to an optimal operating point which minimizes the total disutility of users, restores the nominal frequency and the scheduled tie-line power flows, and respects the load capacity limits and the thermal constraints of transmission lines. It is further shown that the asymptotic convergence still holds even when inaccurate system parameters are used in the control algorithm. In addition, the global exponential convergence of the reduced ALC algorithm without considering the capacity limits is proved and leveraged to study the dynamical tracking performance and robustness of the algorithm. Lastly, the effectiveness, optimality, and robustness of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated via numerical simulations.

preprint2020arXiv

Distributed Optimal Voltage Control with Asynchronous and Delayed Communication

The increased penetration of volatile renewable energy into distribution networks necessities more efficient distributed voltage control. In this paper, we design distributed feedback control algorithms where each bus can inject \emph{both active and reactive} power into the grid to regulate the voltages. The control law on each bus is only based on local voltage measurements and communication to its physical neighbors. Moreover, the buses can perform their updates \emph{asynchronously} without receiving information from their neighbors for periods of time. The algorithm enforces \emph{hard upper and lower limits} on the active and reactive powers at every iteration. We prove that the algorithm converges to the optimal feasible voltage profile, assuming linear power flows. This provable convergence is maintained under bounded communication delays and asynchronous communications. We further numerically test the performance of the algorithm using the full \emph{nonlinear AC power flow} model. Our simulations show the effectiveness of our algorithm on realistic networks with both static and fluctuating loads, even in the presence of communication delays.

preprint2020arXiv

Distributed Zero-Order Algorithms for Nonconvex Multi-Agent Optimization

Distributed multi-agent optimization finds many applications in distributed learning, control, estimation, etc. Most existing algorithms assume knowledge of first-order information of the objective and have been analyzed for convex problems. However, there are situations where the objective is nonconvex, and one can only evaluate the function values at finitely many points. In this paper we consider derivative-free distributed algorithms for nonconvex multi-agent optimization, based on recent progress in zero-order optimization. We develop two algorithms for different settings, provide detailed analysis of their convergence behavior, and compare them with existing centralized zero-order algorithms and gradient-based distributed algorithms.

preprint2020arXiv

Epitaxial Growth and Band Structure of Antiferromagnetic Mott Insulator CeOI

The van der Waals material CeOI is predicted to be a layered antiferromagnetic Mott insulator by DFT+U calculation. We successfully grow the CeOI films down to monolayer on graphene/6H-SiC(0001) substrate by using molecular beam epitaxy. Films are studied by {\it in-situ} scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, which shows a band gap of 4.4 eV. A metallic phase with composition unidentified also exists. This rare earth oxyhalide adds a new member to the two-dimensional magnetic materials.

preprint2020arXiv

Investigating Robustness of Adversarial Samples Detection for Automatic Speaker Verification

Recently adversarial attacks on automatic speaker verification (ASV) systems attracted widespread attention as they pose severe threats to ASV systems. However, methods to defend against such attacks are limited. Existing approaches mainly focus on retraining ASV systems with adversarial data augmentation. Also, countermeasure robustness against different attack settings are insufficiently investigated. Orthogonal to prior approaches, this work proposes to defend ASV systems against adversarial attacks with a separate detection network, rather than augmenting adversarial data into ASV training. A VGG-like binary classification detector is introduced and demonstrated to be effective on detecting adversarial samples. To investigate detector robustness in a realistic defense scenario where unseen attack settings may exist, we analyze various kinds of unseen attack settings' impact and observe that the detector is robust (6.27\% EER_{det} degradation in the worst case) against unseen substitute ASV systems, but it has weak robustness (50.37\% EER_{det} degradation in the worst case) against unseen perturbation methods. The weak robustness against unseen perturbation methods shows a direction for developing stronger countermeasures.

preprint2020arXiv

Large spin to charge conversion in topological superconductor \b{eta}-PdBi2 at room temperature

\b{eta}-PdBi2 has attracted much attention for its prospective ability to possess simultaneously topological surface and superconducting states due to its unprecedented spin-orbit interaction (SOC). Whereas most works have focused solely on investigating its topological surface states, the coupling between spin and charge degrees of freedom in this class of quantum material remains unexplored. Here we first report a study of spin-to-charge conversion in a \b{eta}-PdBi2 ultrathin film grown by molecular beam epitaxy, utilizing a spin pumping technique to perform inverse spin Hall effect measurements. We find that the room temperature spin Hall angle of Fe/\b{eta}-PdBi2, θ_SH=0.037. This value is one order of magnitude larger than that of reported conventional superconductors, and is comparable to that of the best SOC metals and topological insulators. Our results provide an avenue for developing superconductor-based spintronic applications.

preprint2020arXiv

Online Optimization with Predictions and Switching Costs: Fast Algorithms and the Fundamental Limit

This paper studies an online optimization problem with a finite prediction window of cost functions and additional switching costs on decisions. We propose two gradient-based online algorithms: Receding Horizon Gradient Descent (RHGD), and Receding Horizon Accelerated Gradient (RHAG). Both algorithms only require a finite number of projected gradient evaluations at each stage. We provide upper bounds on the dynamic regrets of the proposed algorithms and show that the regret upper bounds decay exponentially with the length of the prediction window. Moreover, we study the fundamental lower bound on the dynamic regret for a broad class of deterministic online algorithms. The lower bound is close to RHAG's regret upper bound, indicating that our gradient-based RHAG is a near-optimal online algorithm. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments to complement our theoretical analysis.

preprint2020arXiv

Online Residential Demand Response via Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits

Residential loads have great potential to enhance the efficiency and reliability of electricity systems via demand response (DR) programs. One major challenge in residential DR is to handle the unknown and uncertain customer behaviors. Previous works use learning techniques to predict customer DR behaviors, while the influence of time-varying environmental factors is generally neglected, which may lead to inaccurate prediction and inefficient load adjustment. In this paper, we consider the residential DR problem where the load service entity (LSE) aims to select an optimal subset of customers to maximize the expected load reduction with a financial budget. To learn the uncertain customer behaviors under the environmental influence, we formulate the residential DR as a contextual multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, and the online learning and selection (OLS) algorithm based on Thompson sampling is proposed to solve it. This algorithm takes the contextual information into consideration and is applicable to complicated DR settings. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the learning effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

preprint2020arXiv

Scalable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Networked Systems with Average Reward

It has long been recognized that multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) faces significant scalability issues due to the fact that the size of the state and action spaces are exponentially large in the number of agents. In this paper, we identify a rich class of networked MARL problems where the model exhibits a local dependence structure that allows it to be solved in a scalable manner. Specifically, we propose a Scalable Actor-Critic (SAC) method that can learn a near optimal localized policy for optimizing the average reward with complexity scaling with the state-action space size of local neighborhoods, as opposed to the entire network. Our result centers around identifying and exploiting an exponential decay property that ensures the effect of agents on each other decays exponentially fast in their graph distance.

preprint2020arXiv

Stem-leaf segmentation and phenotypic trait extraction of maize shoots from three-dimensional point cloud

Nowadays, there are many approaches to acquire three-dimensional (3D) point clouds of maize plants. However, automatic stem-leaf segmentation of maize shoots from three-dimensional (3D) point clouds remains challenging, especially for new emerging leaves that are very close and wrapped together during the seedling stage. To address this issue, we propose an automatic segmentation method consisting of three main steps: skeleton extraction, coarse segmentation based on the skeleton, fine segmentation based on stem-leaf classification. The segmentation method was tested on 30 maize seedlings and compared with manually obtained ground truth. The mean precision, mean recall, mean micro F1 score and mean over accuracy of our segmentation algorithm were 0.964, 0.966, 0.963 and 0.969. Using the segmentation results, two applications were also developed in this paper, including phenotypic trait extraction and skeleton optimization. Six phenotypic parameters can be accurately and automatically measured, including plant height, crown diameter, stem height and diameter, leaf width and length. Furthermore, the values of R2 for the six phenotypic traits were all above 0.94. The results indicated that the proposed algorithm could automatically and precisely segment not only the fully expanded leaves, but also the new leaves wrapped together and close together. The proposed approach may play an important role in further maize research and applications, such as genotype-to-phenotype study, geometric reconstruction and dynamic growth animation. We released the source code and test data at the web site https://github.com/syau-miao/seg4maize.git

preprint2019arXiv

Accelerated Distributed Nesterov Gradient Descent

This paper considers the distributed optimization problem over a network, where the objective is to optimize a global function formed by a sum of local functions, using only local computation and communication. We develop an Accelerated Distributed Nesterov Gradient Descent (Acc-DNGD) method. When the objective function is convex and $L$-smooth, we show that it achieves a $O(\frac{1}{t^{1.4-ε}})$ convergence rate for all $ε\in(0,1.4)$. We also show the convergence rate can be improved to $O(\frac{1}{t^2})$ if the objective function is a composition of a linear map and a strongly-convex and smooth function. When the objective function is $μ$-strongly convex and $L$-smooth, we show that it achieves a linear convergence rate of $O([ 1 - C (\fracμ{L})^{5/7} ]^t)$, where $\frac{L}μ$ is the condition number of the objective, and $C>0$ is some constant that does not depend on $\frac{L}μ$.

preprint2019arXiv

On the Equivalence of Youla, System-level and Input-output Parameterizations

A convex parameterization of internally stabilizing controllers is fundamental for many controller synthesis procedures. The celebrated Youla parameterization relies on a doubly-coprime factorization of the system, while the recent system-level and input-output characterizations require no doubly-coprime factorization but a set of equality constraints for achievable closed-loop responses. In this paper, we present explicit affine mappings among Youla, system-level and input-output parameterizations. Two direct implications of the affine mappings are 1) any convex problem in Youla, system level, or input-output parameters can be equivalently and convexly formulated in any other one of these frameworks, including the convex system-level synthesis (SLS); 2) the condition of quadratic invariance (QI) is sufficient and necessary for the classical distributed control problem to admit an equivalent convex reformulation in terms of Youla, system-level, or input-output parameters.

preprint2019arXiv

Optimal Distributed Feedback Voltage Control under Limited Reactive Power

In this paper, we propose a distributed voltage control in power distribution networks through reactive power compensation. The proposed control can (i) operate in a distributed fashion where each bus makes its decision based on local voltage measurements and communication with neighboring buses, (ii) always satisfy the reactive power capacity constraint, (iii) drive the voltage magnitude into an acceptable range, and (iv) minimize an operational cost. We also perform various numerical case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the controller using the nonlinear power flow model.

preprint2019arXiv

Resilient Cyberphysical Systems and their Application Drivers: A Technology Roadmap

Cyberphysical systems (CPS) are ubiquitous in our personal and professional lives, and they promise to dramatically improve micro-communities (e.g., urban farms, hospitals), macro-communities (e.g., cities and metropolises), urban structures (e.g., smart homes and cars), and living structures (e.g., human bodies, synthetic genomes). The question that we address in this article pertains to designing these CPS systems to be resilient-from-the-ground-up, and through progressive learning, resilient-by-reaction. An optimally designed system is resilient to both unique attacks and recurrent attacks, the latter with a lower overhead. Overall, the notion of resilience can be thought of in the light of three main sources of lack of resilience, as follows: exogenous factors, such as natural variations and attack scenarios; mismatch between engineered designs and exogenous factors ranging from DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks or other cybersecurity nightmares, so called "black swan" events, disabling critical services of the municipal electrical grids and other connected infrastructures, data breaches, and network failures; and the fragility of engineered designs themselves encompassing bugs, human-computer interactions (HCI), and the overall complexity of real-world systems. In the paper, our focus is on design and deployment innovations that are broadly applicable across a range of CPS application areas.