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Published work

42 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Pretraining Induces a Reusable Spectral Basis for Downstream Task Adaptation

Finetuning pretrained models occurs in a low-dimensional subspace of the full parameter space. Prior work has focused on characterizing this optimization subspace, but largely ignored the complementary question: why do certain directions remain unexplored during finetuning? Are these stable directions irrelevant to downstream tasks, or do they already encode task-relevant structure that requires no further adjustment? Answering this question is central to understanding how pretrained knowledge transfers. Through systematic spectral analysis across vision and language models, we show that the leading singular vectors of pretrained weight matrices remain highly stable under finetuning and are shared across unrelated downstream tasks, revealing that pretraining establishes a reusable spectral coordinate system. Models pretrained on larger datasets exhibit greater spectral stability under distribution shift or task change, directly linking pretraining scale to geometric transferability. Motivated by these findings, we propose a parameter-efficient method that freezes pretrained singular vectors and optimizes only leading spectral coefficients, achieving competitive performance on GLUE with 0.2% trainable parameters. Our results reveal that the stable directions encode transferable structure rather than irrelevant noise: successful pretraining discovers spectral bases that downstream tasks inherit and operate within.

preprint2025arXiv

One-shot synthesis of rare gastrointestinal lesions improves diagnostic accuracy and clinical training

Rare gastrointestinal lesions are infrequently encountered in routine endoscopy, restricting the data available for developing reliable artificial intelligence (AI) models and training novice clinicians. Here we present EndoRare, a one-shot, retraining-free generative framework that synthesizes diverse, high-fidelity lesion exemplars from a single reference image. By leveraging language-guided concept disentanglement, EndoRare separates pathognomonic lesion features from non-diagnostic attributes, encoding the former into a learnable prototype embedding while varying the latter to ensure diversity. We validated the framework across four rare pathologies (calcifying fibrous tumor, juvenile polyposis syndrome, familial adenomatous polyposis, and Peutz-Jeghers syndrome). Synthetic images were judged clinically plausible by experts and, when used for data augmentation, significantly enhanced downstream AI classifiers, improving the true positive rate at low false-positive rates. Crucially, a blinded reader study demonstrated that novice endoscopists exposed to EndoRare-generated cases achieved a 0.400 increase in recall and a 0.267 increase in precision. These results establish a practical, data-efficient pathway to bridge the rare-disease gap in both computer-aided diagnostics and clinical education.

preprint2022arXiv

Block designs with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$ admitting flag-transitive automorphism groups

In this paper, we present a classification of $2$-designs with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$ admitting flag-transitive automorphism groups. If $G$ is a flag-transitive automorphism group of a non-trivial $2$-design $\mathcal{D}$ with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$, then either $(\mathcal{D},G)$ is one of the known examples described in this paper, or $\mathcal{D}$ has $q = p^{d}$ points with $p$ prime and $G$ is a subgroup of $AΓL_{1}(q)$.

preprint2022arXiv

Controllable Production of Degenerate Fermi Gases of $^6$Li Atoms in the 2D-3D Crossover

The many-body physics in the dimensional crossover regime attracts much attention in cold atom experiments, but yet to explore systematically. One of the technical difficulties existed in the experiments is the lack of the experimental technique to quantitatively tune the atom occupation ratio of the different lattice bands. In this letter, we report such techniques in a process of transferring a 3D Fermi gas into a 1D optical lattice, where the capability of tuning the occupation of the energy band is realized by varying the trapping potentials of the optical dipole trap (ODT) and the lattice, respectively. We could tune a Fermi gas with the occupation in the lowest band from unity to 50$\%$ quantitatively. This provides a route to experimentally study the dependence of many-body interaction on the dimensionality in a Fermi gas.

preprint2022arXiv

Explainable Fairness in Recommendation

Existing research on fairness-aware recommendation has mainly focused on the quantification of fairness and the development of fair recommendation models, neither of which studies a more substantial problem--identifying the underlying reason of model disparity in recommendation. This information is critical for recommender system designers to understand the intrinsic recommendation mechanism and provides insights on how to improve model fairness to decision makers. Fortunately, with the rapid development of Explainable AI, we can use model explainability to gain insights into model (un)fairness. In this paper, we study the problem of explainable fairness, which helps to gain insights about why a system is fair or unfair, and guides the design of fair recommender systems with a more informed and unified methodology. Particularly, we focus on a common setting with feature-aware recommendation and exposure unfairness, but the proposed explainable fairness framework is general and can be applied to other recommendation settings and fairness definitions. We propose a Counterfactual Explainable Fairness framework, called CEF, which generates explanations about model fairness that can improve the fairness without significantly hurting the performance.The CEF framework formulates an optimization problem to learn the "minimal" change of the input features that changes the recommendation results to a certain level of fairness. Based on the counterfactual recommendation result of each feature, we calculate an explainability score in terms of the fairness-utility trade-off to rank all the feature-based explanations, and select the top ones as fairness explanations.

preprint2022arXiv

Quantum Causal Unravelling

Complex processes often arise from sequences of simpler interactions involving a few particles at a time. These interactions, however, may not be directly accessible to experiments. Here we develop the first efficient method for unravelling the causal structure of the interactions in a multipartite quantum process, under the assumption that the process has bounded information loss and induces causal dependencies whose strength is above a fixed (but otherwise arbitrary) threshold. Our method is based on a quantum algorithm whose complexity scales polynomially in the total number of input/output systems, in the dimension of the systems involved in each interaction, and in the inverse of the chosen threshold for the strength of the causal dependencies. Under additional assumptions, we also provide a second algorithm that has lower complexity and requires only local state preparation and local measurements. Our algorithms can be used to identify processes that can be characterized efficiently with the technique of quantum process tomography. Similarly, they can be used to identify useful communication channels in quantum networks, and to test the internal structure of uncharacterized quantum circuits.

preprint2022arXiv

RawlsGCN: Towards Rawlsian Difference Principle on Graph Convolutional Network

Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) plays pivotal roles in many real-world applications. Despite the successes of GCN deployment, GCN often exhibits performance disparity with respect to node degrees, resulting in worse predictive accuracy for low-degree nodes. We formulate the problem of mitigating the degree-related performance disparity in GCN from the perspective of the Rawlsian difference principle, which is originated from the theory of distributive justice. Mathematically, we aim to balance the utility between low-degree nodes and high-degree nodes while minimizing the task-specific loss. Specifically, we reveal the root cause of this degree-related unfairness by analyzing the gradients of weight matrices in GCN. Guided by the gradients of weight matrices, we further propose a pre-processing method RawlsGCN-Graph and an in-processing method RawlsGCN-Grad that achieves fair predictive accuracy in low-degree nodes without modification on the GCN architecture or introduction of additional parameters. Extensive experiments on real-world graphs demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed RawlsGCN methods in significantly reducing degree-related bias while retaining comparable overall performance.

preprint2021arXiv

Contactless Series Resistance Imaging of Perovskite Solar Cells via Inhomogeneous Illumination

A contactless effective series resistance imaging method for large area perovskite solar cells that is based on photoluminescence imaging with non-uniform illumination is introduced and demonstrated experimentally. The proposed technique is applicable to partially and fully processed perovskite solar cells if laterally conductive layers are present. The capability of the proposed contactless method to detect features with high effective series resistance is validated by comparison with various contacted mode luminescence imaging techniques. The method can reliably provide information regarding the severeness of the detected series resistance through photo-excitation pattern manipulation. Application of the method to sub-cells in monolithic tandem devices, without the need for electrical contacting the terminals, appears feasible.

preprint2020arXiv

A Fast Radio Burst discovered in FAST drift scan survey

We report the discovery of a highly dispersed fast radio burst, FRB~181123, from an analysis of $\sim$1500~hr of drift-scan survey data taken using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The pulse has three distinct emission components, which vary with frequency across our 1.0--1.5~GHz observing band. We measure the peak flux density to be $>0.065$~Jy and the corresponding fluence $>0.2$~Jy~ms. Based on the observed dispersion measure of 1812~cm$^{-3}$~pc, we infer a redshift of $\sim 1.9$. From this, we estimate the peak luminosity and isotropic energy to be $\lesssim 2\times10^{43}$~erg~s$^{-1}$ and $\lesssim 2\times10^{40}$~erg, respectively. With only one FRB from the survey detected so far, our constraints on the event rate are limited. We derive a 95\% confidence lower limit for the event rate of 900 FRBs per day for FRBs with fluences $>0.025$~Jy~ms. We performed follow-up observations of the source with FAST for four hours and have not found a repeated burst. We discuss the implications of this discovery for our understanding of the physical mechanisms of FRBs.

preprint2020arXiv

Discovery and timing of pulsars in the globular cluster M13 with FAST

We report the discovery of a binary millisecond pulsar (namely PSR J1641+3627F or M13F) in the globular cluster M13 (NGC 6205) and timing solutions of M13A to F using observations made with the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). PSR J1641+3627F has a spin period of 3.00 ms and an orbital period of 1.4 days. The most likely companion mass is 0.16 M$_{\odot}$. M13A to E all have short spin periods and small period derivatives. We also confirm that the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1641$+$3627E (also M13E) is a black widow with a companion mass around 0.02 M$_{\odot}$. We find that all the binary systems have low eccentricities compared to those typical for globular cluster pulsars and that they decrease with distance from the cluster core. This is consistent with what is expected as this cluster has a very low encounter rate per binary.

preprint2020arXiv

First SETI Observations with China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST)

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) attempts to address the possibility of the presence of technological civilizations beyond the Earth. Benefiting from high sensitivity, large sky coverage, an innovative feed cabin for China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), we performed the SETI first observations with FAST's newly commisioned 19-beam receiver; we report preliminary results in this paper. Using the data stream produced by the SERENDIP VI realtime multibeam SETI spectrometer installed at FAST, as well as its off-line data processing pipelines, we identify and remove four kinds of radio frequency interference(RFI): zone, broadband, multi-beam, and drifting, utilizing the Nebula SETI software pipeline combined with machine learning algorithms. After RFI mitigation, the Nebula pipeline identifies and ranks interesting narrow band candidate ET signals, scoring candidates by the number of times candidate signals have been seen at roughly the same sky position and same frequency, signal strength, proximity to a nearby star or object of interest, along with several other scoring criteria. We show four example candidates groups that demonstrate these RFI mitigation and candidate selection. This preliminary testing on FAST data helps to validate our SETI instrumentation techniques as well as our data processing pipeline.

preprint2020arXiv

Matrix Profile Goes MAD: Variable-Length Motif And Discord Discovery in Data Series

In the last fifteen years, data series motif and discord discovery have emerged as two useful and well-used primitives for data series mining, with applications to many domains, including robotics, entomology, seismology, medicine, and climatology. Nevertheless, the state-of-the-art motif and discord discovery tools still require the user to provide the relative length. Yet, in several cases, the choice of length is critical and unforgiving. Unfortunately, the obvious brute-force solution, which tests all lengths within a given range, is computationally untenable. In this work, we introduce a new framework, which provides an exact and scalable motif and discord discovery algorithm that efficiently finds all motifs and discords in a given range of lengths. We evaluate our approach with five diverse real datasets, and demonstrate that it is up to 20 times faster than the state-of-the-art. Our results also show that removing the unrealistic assumption that the user knows the correct length, can often produce more intuitive and actionable results, which could have otherwise been missed. (Paper published in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Journal - 2020)

preprint2020arXiv

Opportunities to Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope

The discovery of ubiquitous habitable extrasolar planets, combined with revolutionary advances in instrumentation and observational capabilities, has ushered in a renaissance in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Large scale SETI activities are now underway at numerous international facilities. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is the largest single-aperture radio telescope in the world, well positioned to conduct sensitive searches for radio emission indicative of exo-intelligence. SETI is one of the five key science goals specified in the original FAST project plan. A collaboration with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative has been initiated in 2016 with a joint statement signed both by Dr. Jun Yan, the then director of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), and Dr. Peter Worden, the Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In this paper, we highlight some of the unique features of FAST that will allow for novel SETI observations. We identify and describe three different signal types indicative of a technological source, namely, narrow-band, wide-band artificially dispersed, and modulated signals. We here propose observations with FAST to achieve sensitivities never before explored.

preprint2020arXiv

Time-based Sequence Model for Personalization and Recommendation Systems

In this paper we develop a novel recommendation model that explicitly incorporates time information. The model relies on an embedding layer and TSL attention-like mechanism with inner products in different vector spaces, that can be thought of as a modification of multi-headed attention. This mechanism allows the model to efficiently treat sequences of user behavior of different length. We study the properties of our state-of-the-art model on statistically designed data set. Also, we show that it outperforms more complex models with longer sequence length on the Taobao User Behavior dataset.

preprint2020arXiv

VALMOD: A Suite for Easy and Exact Detection of Variable Length Motifs in Data Series

Data series motif discovery represents one of the most useful primitives for data series mining, with applications to many domains, such as robotics, entomology, seismology, medicine, and climatology, and others. The state-of-the-art motif discovery tools still require the user to provide the motif length. Yet, in several cases, the choice of motif length is critical for their detection. Unfortunately, the obvious brute-force solution, which tests all lengths within a given range, is computationally untenable, and does not provide any support for ranking motifs at different resolutions (i.e., lengths). We demonstrate VALMOD, our scalable motif discovery algorithm that efficiently finds all motifs in a given range of lengths, and outputs a length-invariant ranking of motifs. Furthermore, we support the analysis process by means of a newly proposed meta-data structure that helps the user to select the most promising pattern length. This demo aims at illustrating in detail the steps of the proposed approach, showcasing how our algorithm and corresponding graphical insights enable users to efficiently identify the correct motifs. (Paper published in ACM Sigmod Conference 2018.)

preprint2019arXiv

A PRESTO-based Parallel Pulsar Search Pipeline Used for FAST Drift Scan Data

We developed a pulsar search pipeline based on PRESTO (PulsaR Exploration and Search Toolkit). This pipeline simply runs dedispersion, FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation), and acceleration search in process-level parallel to shorten the processing time. With two parallel strategies, the pipeline can highly shorten the processing time in both the normal searches or acceleration searches. This pipeline was first tested with PMPS (Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survery) data and discovered two new faint pulsars. Then, it was successfully used in processing the FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope) drift scan data with tens of new pulsar discoveries up to now. The pipeline is only CPU-based and can be easily and quickly deployed in computing nodes for testing purposes or data processes.

preprint2019arXiv

On the explicit constructions of certain unitary $t$-designs

Unitary $t$-designs are `good' finite subsets of the unitary group $U(d)$ that approximate the whole unitary group $U(d)$ well. Unitary $t$-designs have been applied in randomized benchmarking, tomography, quantum cryptography and many other areas of quantum information science. If a unitary $t$-design itself is a group then it is called a unitary $t$-group. Although it is known that unitary $t$-designs in $U(d)$ exist for any $t$ and $d$, the unitary $t$-groups do not exist for $t\geq 4$ if $d\geq 3$, as it is shown by Guralnick-Tiep (2005) and Bannai-Navarro-Rizo-Tiep (BNRT, 2018). Explicit constructions of exact unitary $t$-designs in $U(d)$ are not easy in general. In particular, explicit constructions of unitary $4$-designs in $U(4)$ have been an open problem in quantum information theory. We prove that some exact unitary $(t+1)$-designs in the unitary group $U(d)$ are constructed from unitary $t$-groups in $U(d)$ that satisfy certain specific conditions. Based on this result, we specifically construct exact unitary $3$-designs in $U(3)$ from the unitary $2$-group $SL(3,2)$ in $U(3),$ and also unitary $4$-designs in $U(4)$ from the unitary $3$-group $Sp(4,3)$ in $U(4)$ numerically. We also discuss some related problems.

preprint2019arXiv

Pilot HI Survey of Planck Galactic Cold Clumps with FAST

We present a pilot HI survey of 17 Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCCs) with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). HI Narrow Self-Absorption (HINSA) is an effective method to detect cold HI being mixed with molecular hydrogen H$_2$ and improves our understanding of the atomic to molecular transition in the interstellar medium. HINSA was found in 58\% PGCCs that we observed. The column density of HINSA was found to have an intermediate correlation with that of $^{13}$CO, following $\rm log( N(HINSA)) = (0.52\pm 0.26) log(N_{^{13}CO}) + (10 \pm 4.1) $. HI abundance relative to total hydrogen [HI]/[H] has an average value of $4.4\times 10^{-3}$, which is about 2.8 times of the average value of previous HINSA surveys toward molecular clouds. For clouds with total column density N$\rm_H >5 \times 10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$, an inverse correlation between HINSA abundance and total hydrogen column density is found, confirming the depletion of cold HI gas during molecular gas formation in more massive clouds. Nonthermal line width of $^{13}$CO is about 0-0.5 km s$^{-1}$ larger than that of HINSA. One possible explanation of narrower nonthermal width of HINSA is that HINSA region is smaller than that of $^{13}$CO. Based on an analytic model of H$_2$ formation and H$_2$ dissociation by cosmic ray, we found the cloud ages to be within 10$^{6.7}$-10$^{7.0}$ yr for five sources.

preprint2016arXiv

Better Computer Go Player with Neural Network and Long-term Prediction

Competing with top human players in the ancient game of Go has been a long-term goal of artificial intelligence. Go's high branching factor makes traditional search techniques ineffective, even on leading-edge hardware, and Go's evaluation function could change drastically with one stone change. Recent works [Maddison et al. (2015); Clark & Storkey (2015)] show that search is not strictly necessary for machine Go players. A pure pattern-matching approach, based on a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) that predicts the next move, can perform as well as Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS)-based open source Go engines such as Pachi [Baudis & Gailly (2012)] if its search budget is limited. We extend this idea in our bot named darkforest, which relies on a DCNN designed for long-term predictions. Darkforest substantially improves the win rate for pattern-matching approaches against MCTS-based approaches, even with looser search budgets. Against human players, the newest versions, darkfores2, achieve a stable 3d level on KGS Go Server as a ranked bot, a substantial improvement upon the estimated 4k-5k ranks for DCNN reported in Clark & Storkey (2015) based on games against other machine players. Adding MCTS to darkfores2 creates a much stronger player named darkfmcts3: with 5000 rollouts, it beats Pachi with 10k rollouts in all 250 games; with 75k rollouts it achieves a stable 5d level in KGS server, on par with state-of-the-art Go AIs (e.g., Zen, DolBaram, CrazyStone) except for AlphaGo [Silver et al. (2016)]; with 110k rollouts, it won the 3rd place in January KGS Go Tournament.

preprint2016arXiv

On Layered Erasure Interference Channels without CSI at Transmitters

This paper studies a layered erasure model for two-user interference channels, which can be viewed as a simplified version of Gaussian fading interference channel. It is assumed that channel state information~(CSI) is only available at receivers but not at transmitters. Under such assumption, an outer bound is derived for the capacity region of such interference channel. The new outer bound is tight in many circumstances. For the remaining open cases, the outer bound extends previous results.

preprint2016arXiv

Semantic Amodal Segmentation

Common visual recognition tasks such as classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation are rapidly reaching maturity, and given the recent rate of progress, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that techniques for many of these problems will approach human levels of performance in the next few years. In this paper we look to the future: what is the next frontier in visual recognition? We offer one possible answer to this question. We propose a detailed image annotation that captures information beyond the visible pixels and requires complex reasoning about full scene structure. Specifically, we create an amodal segmentation of each image: the full extent of each region is marked, not just the visible pixels. Annotators outline and name all salient regions in the image and specify a partial depth order. The result is a rich scene structure, including visible and occluded portions of each region, figure-ground edge information, semantic labels, and object overlap. We create two datasets for semantic amodal segmentation. First, we label 500 images in the BSDS dataset with multiple annotators per image, allowing us to study the statistics of human annotations. We show that the proposed full scene annotation is surprisingly consistent between annotators, including for regions and edges. Second, we annotate 5000 images from COCO. This larger dataset allows us to explore a number of algorithmic ideas for amodal segmentation and depth ordering. We introduce novel metrics for these tasks, and along with our strong baselines, define concrete new challenges for the community.

preprint2015arXiv

Isotropization and hydrodynamization in weakly coupled heavy-ion collisions

We numerically solve 2+1D effective kinetic theory of weak coupling QCD under longitudinal expansion relevant for early stages of heavy-ion collisions. We find agreement with viscous hydrodynamics and classical Yang-Mills simulations in the regimes where they are applicable. By choosing initial conditions that are motivated by color-glass-condensate framework we find that for Q=2GeV and $α_s$=0.3 the system is approximately described by viscous hydrodynamics well before $τ\lesssim 1.0$ fm/c.

preprint2015arXiv

Jet propagation within a Linearized Boltzmann Transport Model

A Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model has been developed for the study of jet propagation inside a quark-gluon plasma. Both leading and thermal recoiled partons are transported according to the Boltzmann equations to account for jet-induced medium excitations. In this talk, we present our study within the LBT model in which we implement the complete set of elastic parton scattering processes. We investigate elastic parton energy loss and their energy and length dependence. We further investigate elastic energy loss and transverse shape of reconstructed jets. Contributions from the recoiled thermal partons are found to have significant influences on the jet energy loss and transverse profile.

preprint2015arXiv

More on spherical designs of harmonic index $t$

A finite subset $Y$ on the unit sphere $S^{n-1} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ is called a spherical design of harmonic index $t$, if the following condition is satisfied: $\sum_{\mathbf{x}\in Y}f(\mathbf{x})=0$ for all real homogeneous harmonic polynomials $f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$ of degree $t$. Also, for a subset $T$ of $\mathbb{N} = \{1,2,\cdots \}$, a finite subset $Y\subset S^{n-1}$ is called a spherical design of harmonic index $T,$ if $\sum_{\mathbf{x}\in Y}f(\mathbf{x})=0$ is satisfied for all real homogeneous harmonic polynomials $f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$ of degree $k$ with $k\in T$. In the present paper we first study Fisher type lower bounds for the sizes of spherical designs of harmonic index $t$ (or for harmonic index $T$). We also study 'tight' spherical designs of harmonic index $t$ or index $T$. Here 'tight' means that the size of $Y$ attains the lower bound for this Fisher type inequality. The classification problem of tight spherical designs of harmonic index $t$ was started by Bannai-Okuda-Tagami (2015), and the case $t = 4$ was completed by Okuda-Yu (2015+). In this paper we show the classification (non-existence) of tight spherical designs of harmonic index 6 and 8, as well as the asymptotic non-existence of tight spherical designs of harmonic index $2e$ for general $e\geq 3$. We also study the existence problem for tight spherical designs of harmonic index $T$ for some $T$, in particular, including index $T = \{8,4\}$. We use (i) the linear programming method by Delsarte, (ii) the detailed information on the locations of the zeros as well as the local minimum values of Gegenbauer polynomials, (iii) the generalization by Hiroshi Nozaki of the Larman-Rogers-Seidel theorem on $2$-distance sets to $s$-distance sets, (iv) the theory of elliptic diophantine equations, and (v) the semidefinite programming method of eliminating some $2$-angular line systems for small dimensions.

preprint2015arXiv

On the infrared behavior of the shear spectral function in hot Yang-Mills theory

We revisit the determination of the two-loop spectral function in the shear channel of hot Yang-Mills theory. Correcting a technical error in an earlier computation and extending the result with a leading order Hard Thermal Loop resummation is seen to improve the infrared behavior of the quantity significantly. This makes it possible to straightforwardly use the result in the corresponding imaginary time correlator and the shear sum rule.

preprint2015arXiv

Relative t-designs in binary Hamming association scheme H(n,2)

A relative t-design in the binary Hamming association schemes H(n,2) is equivalent to a weighted regular t-wise balanced design, i.e., certain combinatorial t-design which allow different sizes of blocks and a weight function on blocks. In this paper, we study relative t-designs in H(n,2), putting emphasis on Fisher type inequalities and the existence of tight relative t-designs. We mostly consider relative t-designs on two shells. We prove that if the weight function is constant on each shell of a relative t-design on two shells then the subset in each shell must be a combinatorial (t-1)-design. This is a generalization of the result of Kageyama who proved this under the stronger assumption that the weight function is constant on the whole block set. Using this, we define tight relative t-designs for odd t, and a strong restriction on the possible parameters of tight relative t-designs in H(n,2). We obtained a new family of such tight relative t-designs, which were unnoticed before. We will give a list of feasible parameters of such relative 3-designs with n up to 100, and then we discuss the existence and/or the non-existence of such tight relative 3-designs. We also discuss feasible parameters of tight relative 4-designs on two shells in H(n,2) with n up 50. In this study we come up with the connection on the topics of classical design theory, such as symmetric 2-designs (in particular 2-(4u-1,2u-1,u-1) Hadamard designs) and Driessen's result on the non-existence of certain 3-designs. We believe the Problem 1 and Problem 2 presented in Section 5.2 open a new way to study relative t-designs in H(n,2). We conclude our paper listing several open problems.

preprint2015arXiv

Weak and strong coupling equilibration in nonabelian gauge theories

We present a direct comparison studying equilibration through kinetic theory at weak coupling and through holography at strong coupling in the same set-up. The set-up starts with a homogeneous thermal state, which then smoothly transitions through an out-of-equilibrium phase to an expanding system undergoing boost-invariant flow. This first apples-to-apples comparison of equilibration provides a benchmark for similar equilibration processes in heavy-ion collisions, where the equilibration mechanism is still under debate. We find that results at weak and strong coupling can be smoothly connected by simple, empirical power-laws for the viscosity, equilibration time and entropy production of the system.

preprint2014arXiv

Jet quenching and $γ$-jet correlation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Medium modification of $γ$-tagged jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions is investigated within a linearized Boltzmann transport model which includes both elastic parton scattering and induced gluon emission. In Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV, a $γ$-tagged jet is seen to lose 15\% of its energy at 0-10\% central collisions. Simulations also point to a sizable azimuthal angle broadening of $γ$-tagged jets at the tail of a distribution which should be measurable when experimental errors are significantly reduced. An enhancement at large $z_\text{jet}=p_L/E_{\text{jet}}$ in jet fragmentation function at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be attributed to the dominance of leading particles in the reconstructed jet. A $γ-$tagged jet fragmentation function is shown to be more sensitive to jet quenching, therefore a better probe of the jet transport parameter.

preprint2014arXiv

MITEoR: A Scalable Interferometer for Precision 21 cm Cosmology

We report on the MIT Epoch of Reionization (MITEoR) experiment, a pathfinder low-frequency radio interferometer whose goal is to test technologies that improve the calibration precision and reduce the cost of the high-sensitivity 3D mapping required for 21 cm cosmology. MITEoR accomplishes this by using massive baseline redundancy, which enables both automated precision calibration and correlator cost reduction. We demonstrate and quantify the power and robustness of redundancy for scalability and precision. We find that the calibration parameters precisely describe the effect of the instrument upon our measurements, allowing us to form a model that is consistent with $χ^2$ per degree of freedom < 1.2 for as much as 80% of the observations. We use these results to develop an optimal estimator of calibration parameters using Wiener filtering, and explore the question of how often and how finely in frequency visibilities must be reliably measured to solve for calibration coefficients. The success of MITEoR with its 64 dual-polarization elements bodes well for the more ambitious Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) project and other next-generation instruments, which would incorporate many identical or similar technologies.

preprint2014arXiv

On parallel multisplitting methods for non-Hermitian positive definite linear systems

To solve non-Hermitian linear system Ax=b on parallel and vector machines, some paralell multisplitting methods are considered. In this work, in particular: i) We establish the convergence results of the paralell multisplitting methods, together with its relaxed version, some of which can be regarded as generalizations of analogous results for the Hermitian positive definite case; ii) We extend the positive-definite and skew-Hermitian splitting (PSS) method methods in [{\em SIAM J. Sci. Comput.}, 26:844--863, 2005] to the parallel PSS methods and propose the corresponding convergence results.

preprint2013arXiv

Bulk and shear spectral functions in weakly and strongly coupled Yang-Mills theory

In this talk, we discuss a number of recent calculations aimed at determining the spectral functions corresponding to various components of the energy momentum tensor in high-temperature SU(N) Yang-Mills theory. The computations reviewed include applications of both weak coupling and gauge/gravity techniques, and thus enable one to access different limits of the quantities. The motivation for the work is twofold: On one hand, the results are hoped to aid the eventual nonperturbative extraction of the bulk and shear viscosities from lattice data, while on the other hand they also enable an immediate comparison of the lattice, perturbative and holographic predictions for certain Euclidean correlators.

preprint2013arXiv

Mapping our Universe in 3D with MITEoR

Mapping our universe in 3D by imaging the redshifted 21 cm line from neutral hydrogen has the potential to overtake the cosmic microwave background as our most powerful cosmological probe, because it can map a much larger volume of our Universe, shedding new light on the epoch of reionization, inflation, dark matter, dark energy, and neutrino masses. We report on MITEoR, a pathfinder low-frequency radio interferometer whose goal is to test technologies that greatly reduce the cost of such 3D mapping for a given sensitivity. MITEoR accomplishes this by using massive baseline redundancy both to enable automated precision calibration and to cut the correlator cost scaling from N^2 to NlogN, where N is the number of antennas. The success of MITEoR with its 64 dual-polarization elements bodes well for the more ambitious HERA project, which would incorporate many identical or similar technologies using an order of magnitude more antennas, each with dramatically larger collecting area.

preprint2013arXiv

Medium Modification of γ-jets in High-energy Heavy-ion Collisions

Medium modification of γ-tagged jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions is investigated within a Linearized Boltzmann Transport model for jet propagation that includes both elastic parton scattering and induced gluon emission. Inclusion of recoiled medium partons in the reconstruction of partonic jets is found to significantly reduce the net jet energy loss. Experimental data on γ-jet asymmetry and survival rate in Pb + Pb collisions at \sqrt{s}=2.76 TeV can be reproduced. Medium modifications of reconstructed jet fragmentation function, transverse profile and energy flow outside the jet-cone are found to be sizable especially for γ-tagged jets with small values of x=p_T^{jet}/p_T^γ.

preprint2013arXiv

On the Perturbative Evaluation of Thermal Green's Functions in the Bulk and Shear Channels of Yang-Mills Theory

In this PhD thesis, I will review recent progress in perturbative studies of energy momentum tensor correlators in high-temperature Yang-Mills theory. After briefly introducing the necessary tools and physical motivation, I proceed to discuss the machinery developed for the extraction of next-to-leading order Operator Product Expansions and thermal spectral functions and to introduce the results obtained in the bulk and shear channels of Yang-Mills theory. Particular emphasis is placed on the comparison of the results with recent lattice and gauge/gravity calculations, as well as on discussing their use in extracting the corresponding transport coefficients from Euclidean lattice data.

preprint2013arXiv

Tap-Wave-Rub: Lightweight Malware Prevention for Smartphones Using Intuitive Human Gestures

In this paper, we introduce a lightweight permission enforcement approach - Tap-Wave-Rub (TWR) - for smartphone malware prevention. TWR is based on simple human gestures that are very quick and intuitive but less likely to be exhibited in users' daily activities. Presence or absence of such gestures, prior to accessing an application, can effectively inform the OS whether the access request is benign or malicious. Specifically, we present the design of two mechanisms: (1) accelerometer based phone tapping detection; and (2) proximity sensor based finger tapping, rubbing or hand waving detection. The first mechanism is geared for NFC applications, which usually require the user to tap her phone with another device. The second mechanism involves very simple gestures, i.e., tapping or rubbing a finger near the top of phone's screen or waving a hand close to the phone, and broadly appeals to many applications (e.g., SMS). In addition, we present the TWR-enhanced Android permission model, the prototypes implementing the underlying gesture recognition mechanisms, and a variety of novel experiments to evaluate these mechanisms. Our results suggest the proposed approach could be very effective for malware detection and prevention, with quite low false positives and false negatives, while imposing little to no additional burden on the users.

preprint2012arXiv

The shear channel spectral function in hot Yang-Mills theory

We determine a next-to-leading order result for the shear channel thermal spectral function in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, working in the limit of vanishing external three-momentum. The result is subsequently applied to the evaluation of the corresponding imaginary time correlator, and its use in the context of sum rules is discussed. Our hope is that the calculation will eventually find use in the nonperturbative determination of the shear viscosity of the theory.

preprint2011arXiv

HMTT: A Hybrid Hardware/Software Tracing System for Bridging Memory Trace's Semantic Gap

Memory trace analysis is an important technology for architecture research, system software (i.e., OS, compiler) optimization, and application performance improvements. Hardware-snooping is an effective and efficient approach to monitor and collect memory traces. Compared with software-based approaches, memory traces collected by hardware-based approaches are usually lack of semantic information, such as process/function/loop identifiers, virtual address and I/O access. In this paper we propose a hybrid hardware/software mechanism which is able to collect memory reference trace as well as semantic information. Based on this mechanism, we designed and implemented a prototype system called HMTT (Hybrid Memory Trace Tool) which adopts a DIMMsnooping mechanism to snoop on memory bus and a software-controlled tracing mechanism to inject semantic information into normal memory trace. To the best of our knowledge, the HMTT system is the first hardware tracing system capable of correlating memory trace with high-level events. Comprehensive validations and evaluations show that the HMTT system has both hardware's (e.g., no distortion or pollution) and software's advantages (e.g., flexibility and more information).

preprint2011arXiv

Mach cone induced by $γ$-triggered jets in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

MMedium excitation by jet shower propagation inside a quark-gluon plasma is studied within a linear Boltzmann transport and a multiphase transport model. Contrary to the naive expectation, it is the deflection of both the jet shower and the Mach-cone-like excitation in an expanding medium that is found to gives rise to a double-peak azimuthal particle distribution with respect to the initial jet direction. Such deflection is the strongest for hadron-triggered jets which are often produced close to the surface of dense medium due to trigger-bias and travel against or tangential to the radial flow. Without such trigger bias, the effect of deflection on $γ$-jet showers and their medium excitation is weaker. Comparative study of hadron and $γ$-triggered particle correlations can therefore reveal the dynamics of jet-induced medium excitation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.

preprint2011arXiv

The Degrees of Freedom of MIMO Interference Channels without State Information at Transmitters

This paper fully determines the degree-of-freedom (DoF) region of two-user interference channels with arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas and isotropic fading, where the channel state information is available to the receivers but not to the transmitters. The result characterizes the capacity region to the first order of the logarithm of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the high-SNR regime. The DoF region is achieved using random Gaussian codebooks independent of the channel states. Hence the DoF gain due to beamforming and interference alignment is completely lost in absence of channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT).

preprint2010arXiv

Dihadron and gamma-hadron correlations from jet-induced medium excitation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Jet propagation is shown to produce Mach-cone-like medium excitation inside a quark-gluon plasma. However, only deflection of such medium excitation and jet shower partons by radial flow leads to double-peaked dihadron correlation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Dihadron correlations from harmonic flow, hot spots and dijets are studied separately within the AMPT Monte Carlo model and all lead to double-peaked dihadron azimuthal correlation. The $γ$-hadron correlation has similar double-peak feature but is free of the contributions from harmonic flow and hot spots. Dihadron and $γ$-hadron correlations are compared to shed light on jet-induced medium excitation and hot spots in an expanding medium.

preprint2009arXiv

Elliptic flow of thermal photons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV

The transverse momentum (pt) dependence, the centrality dependence and the rapidity dependence of the elliptic flow of thermal photons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV are predicted, based on a three-dimensional ideal hydrodynamic description of the hot and dense matter. The elliptic flow parameter $v_{2}$, i.e. the second Fourier coefficient of azimuthal distribution, of thermal photons, first increases with $\pt$ and then decreases for $\pt>$ 2 GeV/$c$, due to the weak transverse flow at the early stage. The $\pt$-integrated $v_{2}$ first increases with centrality, reaches a maximum at about 50% centrality, and decreases. The rapidity dependence of the elliptic flow $v_{2}(y)$ of direct photons (mainly thermal photons) is very sensitive to the initial energy density distribution along longitudinal direction, which provides a useful tool to extract the realistic initial condition from measurements.

preprint2008arXiv

Jet quenching and direct photon production

Jet quenching effect has been investigated in the direct photon production, based on a realistic data-constrained (3+1) dimensional hydrodynamic description of the expanding hot and dense matter, a reasonable treatment of the propagation of partons and their energy loss in the fluid, and a systematic study of the main sources of direct photons. Our resultant $\pt$ spectra agree with recent PHENIX data in a broad $\pt$ range. Parton energy loss in the plasma eventually effect significantly direct photon production from fragmentation and jet photon conversion, similar to hadron suppression in central heavy ion collisions. But this only causes about 40% decrease in the total production of direct photons, due to the mixture with other direct photon sources.