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Published work

77 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

ChartOptimiser: Task-driven Optimisation of Chart Designs

Automated chart design has seen significant advancements with the emergence of Large-Language Models (LLMs), which offer a practical solution for generating charts. However, LLMs frequently introduce possibly critical design failures, such as data manipulation and confabulation. While expert users can potentially mitigate these issues through iterative prompt engineering, this process requires substantial design knowledge and significant effort, remaining a massive barrier for the general public. In this paper, we present ChartOptimiser, an automated method for generating chart designs with fidelity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Given the inter-dependencies between individual design parameters, ChartOptimiser employs Bayesian optimisation to effectively search the chart design space for a novel objective function grounded in four perceptual metrics. Our empirical evaluations in bar and pie charts demonstrate that ChartOptimiser eliminates iterative design loops, providing non-expert users with high-quality charts that outperform LLM-generated designs in chart clarity, task-solving ease, and visual aesthetics.

preprint2026arXiv

DV-World: Benchmarking Data Visualization Agents in Real-World Scenarios

Real-world data visualization (DV) requires native environmental grounding, cross-platform evolution, and proactive intent alignment. Yet, existing benchmarks often suffer from code-sandbox confinement, single-language creation-only tasks, and assumption of perfect intent. To bridge these gaps, we introduce DV-World, a benchmark of 260 tasks designed to evaluate DV agents across real-world professional lifecycles. DV-World spans three domains: DV-Sheet for native spreadsheet manipulation including chart and dashboard creation as well as diagnostic repair; DV-Evolution for adapting and restructuring reference visual artifacts to fit new data across diverse programming paradigms and DV-Interact for proactive intent alignment with a user simulator that mimics real-world ambiguous requirements. Our hybrid evaluation framework integrates Table-value Alignment for numerical precision and MLLM-as-a-Judge with rubrics for semantic-visual assessment. Experiments reveal that state-of-the-art models achieve less than 50% overall performance, exposing critical deficits in handling the complex challenges of real-world data visualization. DV-World provides a realistic testbed to steer development toward the versatile expertise required in enterprise workflows. Our data and code are available at \href{https://github.com/DA-Open/DV-World}{this project page}.

preprint2025arXiv

Hybrid Learning: A Novel Combination of Self-Supervised and Supervised Learning for Joint MRI Reconstruction and Denoising in Low-Field MRI

Deep learning has demonstrated strong potential for MRI reconstruction. However, conventional supervised learning requires high-quality, high-SNR references for network training, which are often difficult or impossible to obtain in different scenarios, particularly in low-field MRI. Self-supervised learning provides an alternative by removing the need for training references, but its reconstruction performance can degrade when the baseline SNR is low. To address these limitations, we propose hybrid learning, a two-stage training framework that integrates self-supervised and supervised learning for joint MRI reconstruction and denoising when only low-SNR training references are available. Hybrid learning is implemented in two sequential stages. In the first stage, self-supervised learning is applied to fully sampled low-SNR data to generate higher-quality pseudo-references. In the second stage, these pseudo-references are used as targets for supervised learning to reconstruct and denoise undersampled noisy data. The proposed technique was evaluated in multiple experiments involving simulated and real low-field MRI in the lung and brain at different field strengths. Hybrid learning consistently improved image quality over both standard self-supervised learning and supervised learning with noisy training references at different acceleration rates, noise levels, and field strengths, achieving higher SSIM and lower NMSE. The hybrid learning approach is effective for both Cartesian and non-Cartesian acquisitions. Hybrid learning provides an effective solution for training deep MRI reconstruction models in the absence of high-SNR references. By improving image quality in low-SNR settings, particularly for low-field MRI, it holds promise for broader clinical adoption of deep learning-based reconstruction methods.

preprint2022arXiv

A statistical quasi-particles thermofield theory with Gaussian environments: System-bath entanglement theorem for nonequilibrium correlation functions

For open quantum systems, the Gaussian environmental dissipative effect can be represented by statistical quasi-particles, namely, dissipatons. We exploit this fact to establish the dissipaton thermofield theory. The resulting generalized Langevin dynamics of absorptive and emissive thermofield operators are effectively noise-resolved. The system-bath entanglement theorem is then readily followed between an important class of nonequilibrium steady-state correlation functions. All these relations are validated numerically. A simple corollary is the transport current expression, which exactly recovers the result obtained from the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism.

preprint2022arXiv

An Improved Frequent Directions Algorithm for Low-Rank Approximation via Block Krylov Iteration

Frequent Directions, as a deterministic matrix sketching technique, has been proposed for tackling low-rank approximation problems. This method has a high degree of accuracy and practicality, but experiences a lot of computational cost for large-scale data. Several recent works on the randomized version of Frequent Directions greatly improve the computational efficiency, but unfortunately sacrifice some precision. To remedy such issue, this paper aims to find a more accurate projection subspace to further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing Frequent Directions techniques. Specifically, by utilizing the power of Block Krylov Iteration and random projection technique, this paper presents a fast and accurate Frequent Directions algorithm named as r-BKIFD. The rigorous theoretical analysis shows that the proposed r-BKIFD has a comparable error bound with original Frequent Directions, and the approximation error can be arbitrarily small when the number of iterations is chosen appropriately. Extensive experimental results on both synthetic and real data further demonstrate the superiority of r-BKIFD over several popular Frequent Directions algorithms, both in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy.

preprint2022arXiv

An original model for multi-target learning of logical rules for knowledge graph reasoning

Large-scale knowledge graphs provide structured representations of human knowledge. However, as it is impossible to collect all knowledge, knowledge graphs are usually incomplete. Reasoning based on existing facts paves a way to discover missing facts. In this paper, we study the problem of learning logical rules for reasoning on knowledge graphs for completing missing factual triplets. Learning logical rules equips a model with strong interpretability as well as the ability to generalize to similar tasks. We propose a model able to fully use training data which also considers multi-target scenarios. In addition, considering the deficiency in evaluating the performance of models and the quality of mined rules, we further propose two novel indicators to help with the problem. Experimental results empirically demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods on five benchmark datasets. The results also prove the effectiveness of the indicators.

preprint2022arXiv

Chat-Capsule: A Hierarchical Capsule for Dialog-level Emotion Analysis

Many studies on dialog emotion analysis focus on utterance-level emotion only. These models hence are not optimized for dialog-level emotion detection, i.e. to predict the emotion category of a dialog as a whole. More importantly, these models cannot benefit from the context provided by the whole dialog. In real-world applications, annotations to dialog could fine-grained, including both utterance-level tags (e.g. speaker type, intent category, and emotion category), and dialog-level tags (e.g. user satisfaction, and emotion curve category). In this paper, we propose a Context-based Hierarchical Attention Capsule~(Chat-Capsule) model, which models both utterance-level and dialog-level emotions and their interrelations. On a dialog dataset collected from customer support of an e-commerce platform, our model is also able to predict user satisfaction and emotion curve category. Emotion curve refers to the change of emotions along the development of a conversation. Experiments show that the proposed Chat-Capsule outperform state-of-the-art baselines on both benchmark dataset and proprietary dataset. Source code will be released upon acceptance.

preprint2022arXiv

Coherent excitation energy transfer in model photosynthetic reaction center: Effects of non-Markovian quantum environment

Excitation energy transfer (EET) and electron transfer (ET) are crucially involved in photosynthetic processes. In reality, the photosynthetic reaction center constitutes an open quantum system of EET and ET, which manifests an interplay of pigments, solar light and phonon baths. So far theoretical studies have been mainly based on master equation approaches in the Markovian condition. The non-Markovian environmental effect, which may play a crucial role, has not been sufficiently considered. In this work, we propose a mixed dynamic approach to investigate this open system. The influence of phonon bath is treated via the exact dissipaton equation of motion (DEOM) while that of photon bath is via the Lindblad master equation. Specifically, we explore the effect of non-Markovian quantum phonon bath on the coherent transfer dynamics and its manipulation on the current-voltage behavior. Distinguished from the results of completely Markovian Lindblad equation and those adopting classical environment description, the mixed DEOM-Lindblad simulations exhibit transfer coherence up to a few hundreds femtoseconds and the related environmental manipulation effect on current. These non-Markovian quantum coherent effects be extended tomore complex and realistic systems and be helpful to the design of organic photovoltaic devices.

preprint2022arXiv

Correlated driving-and-dissipation equation for non-Condon spectroscopy with the Herzberg-Teller vibronic coupling

Correlated driving-and-dissipation equation (CODDE) is an optimized complete second-order quantum dissipation approach, which is originally concerned with the reduced system dynamics only. However, one can actually extract the hybridized bath dynamics from CODDE with the aid of dissipaton-equation-of-motion theory, a statistical quasi-particle quantum dissipation formalism. Treated as an one{dissipaton theory, CODDE is successfully extended to deal with the Herzberg-Teller vibronic couplings in dipole-field interactions. Demonstrations will be carried out on the non-Condon spectroscopies of a model dimer system.

preprint2022arXiv

Detect and Approach: Close-Range Navigation Support for People with Blindness and Low Vision

People with blindness and low vision (pBLV) experience significant challenges when locating final destinations or targeting specific objects in unfamiliar environments. Furthermore, besides initially locating and orienting oneself to a target object, approaching the final target from one's present position is often frustrating and challenging, especially when one drifts away from the initial planned path to avoid obstacles. In this paper, we develop a novel wearable navigation solution to provide real-time guidance for a user to approach a target object of interest efficiently and effectively in unfamiliar environments. Our system contains two key visual computing functions: initial target object localization in 3D and continuous estimation of the user's trajectory, both based on the 2D video captured by a low-cost monocular camera mounted on in front of the chest of the user. These functions enable the system to suggest an initial navigation path, continuously update the path as the user moves, and offer timely recommendation about the correction of the user's path. Our experiments demonstrate that our system is able to operate with an error of less than 0.5 meter both outdoor and indoor. The system is entirely vision-based and does not need other sensors for navigation, and the computation can be run with the Jetson processor in the wearable system to facilitate real-time navigation assistance.

preprint2022arXiv

Effective Tensor Completion via Element-wise Weighted Low-rank Tensor Train with Overlapping Ket Augmentation

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of applications of tensor completion based on the tensor train (TT) format because of its efficiency and effectiveness in dealing with higher-order tensor data. However, existing tensor completion methods using TT decomposition have two obvious drawbacks. One is that they only consider mode weights according to the degree of mode balance, even though some elements are recovered better in an unbalanced mode. The other is that serious blocking artifacts appear when the missing element rate is relatively large. To remedy such two issues, in this work, we propose a novel tensor completion approach via the element-wise weighted technique. Accordingly, a novel formulation for tensor completion and an effective optimization algorithm, called as tensor completion by parallel weighted matrix factorization via tensor train (TWMac-TT), is proposed. In addition, we specifically consider the recovery quality of edge elements from adjacent blocks. Different from traditional reshaping and ket augmentation, we utilize a new tensor augmentation technique called overlapping ket augmentation, which can further avoid blocking artifacts. We then conduct extensive performance evaluations on synthetic data and several real image data sets. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm TWMac-TT outperforms several other competing tensor completion methods.

preprint2022arXiv

Electron transfer under the Floquet modulation in donor-bridge-acceptor systems

Electron transfer (ET) processes are of broad interest in modern chemistry. With the advancements of experimental techniques, one may modulate the ET via such as the light-matter interactions. In this work, we study the ET under a Floquet modulation occurring in the donor-bridge-acceptor systems, with the rate kernels projected out from the exact disspaton equation of motion formalism. This together with the Floquet theorem enables us to investigate the interplay between the intrinsic non-Markovianity and the driving periodicity. The observed rate kernel exhibits a Herzberg-Teller-like mechanism induced by the bridge fluctuation subject to effective modulation.

preprint2022arXiv

Feature Compression for Rate Constrained Object Detection on the Edge

Recent advances in computer vision has led to a growth of interest in deploying visual analytics model on mobile devices. However, most mobile devices have limited computing power, which prohibits them from running large scale visual analytics neural networks. An emerging approach to solve this problem is to offload the computation of these neural networks to computing resources at an edge server. Efficient computation offloading requires optimizing the trade-off between multiple objectives including compressed data rate, analytics performance, and computation speed. In this work, we consider a "split computation" system to offload a part of the computation of the YOLO object detection model. We propose a learnable feature compression approach to compress the intermediate YOLO features with light-weight computation. We train the feature compression and decompression module together with the YOLO model to optimize the object detection accuracy under a rate constraint. Compared to baseline methods that apply either standard image compression or learned image compression at the mobile and perform image decompression and YOLO at the edge, the proposed system achieves higher detection accuracy at the low to medium rate range. Furthermore, the proposed system requires substantially lower computation time on the mobile device with CPU only.

preprint2022arXiv

FS6D: Few-Shot 6D Pose Estimation of Novel Objects

6D object pose estimation networks are limited in their capability to scale to large numbers of object instances due to the close-set assumption and their reliance on high-fidelity object CAD models. In this work, we study a new open set problem; the few-shot 6D object poses estimation: estimating the 6D pose of an unknown object by a few support views without extra training. To tackle the problem, we point out the importance of fully exploring the appearance and geometric relationship between the given support views and query scene patches and propose a dense prototypes matching framework by extracting and matching dense RGBD prototypes with transformers. Moreover, we show that the priors from diverse appearances and shapes are crucial to the generalization capability under the problem setting and thus propose a large-scale RGBD photorealistic dataset (ShapeNet6D) for network pre-training. A simple and effective online texture blending approach is also introduced to eliminate the domain gap from the synthesis dataset, which enriches appearance diversity at a low cost. Finally, we discuss possible solutions to this problem and establish benchmarks on popular datasets to facilitate future research. The project page is at \url{https://fs6d.github.io/}.

preprint2022arXiv

Improved Image Classification with Token Fusion

In this paper, we propose a method using the fusion of CNN and transformer structure to improve image classification performance. In the case of CNN, information about a local area on an image can be extracted well, but there is a limit to the extraction of global information. On the other hand, the transformer has an advantage in relatively global extraction, but has a disadvantage in that it requires a lot of memory for local feature value extraction. In the case of an image, it is converted into a feature map through CNN, and each feature map's pixel is considered a token. At the same time, the image is divided into patch areas and then fused with the transformer method that views them as tokens. For the fusion of tokens with two different characteristics, we propose three methods: (1) late token fusion with parallel structure, (2) early token fusion, (3) token fusion in a layer by layer. In an experiment using ImageNet 1k, the proposed method shows the best classification performance.

preprint2022arXiv

Magnetic Excitations in Strained Infinite-layer Nickelate PrNiO2

Strongly correlated materials often respond sensitively to the external perturbations. In the recently discovered superconducting infinite-layer nickelates, the superconducting transition temperature can be dramatically enhanced via only ~1% compressive strain-tuning enabled by substrate design. However, the root of such enhancement remains elusive. While the superconducting pairing mechanism is still not settled, magnetic Cooper pairing - similar to the cuprates has been proposed. Using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, we investigate the magnetic excitations in infinite-layer PrNiO2 thin films for different strain conditions. The magnon bandwidth of PrNiO2 shows only marginal response to strain-tuning, in sharp contrast to the striking enhancement of the superconducting transition temperature Tc in the doped superconducting samples. These results suggest the enhancement of Tc is not mediated by spin excitations and thus provide important empirics for the understanding of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates.

preprint2022arXiv

Network-Aware 5G Edge Computing for Object Detection: Augmenting Wearables to "See" More, Farther and Faster

Advanced wearable devices are increasingly incorporating high-resolution multi-camera systems. As state-of-the-art neural networks for processing the resulting image data are computationally demanding, there has been growing interest in leveraging fifth generation (5G) wireless connectivity and mobile edge computing for offloading this processing to the cloud. To assess this possibility, this paper presents a detailed simulation and evaluation of 5G wireless offloading for object detection within a powerful, new smart wearable called VIS4ION, for the Blind-and-Visually Impaired (BVI). The current VIS4ION system is an instrumented book-bag with high-resolution cameras, vision processing and haptic and audio feedback. The paper considers uploading the camera data to a mobile edge cloud to perform real-time object detection and transmitting the detection results back to the wearable. To determine the video requirements, the paper evaluates the impact of video bit rate and resolution on object detection accuracy and range. A new street scene dataset with labeled objects relevant to BVI navigation is leveraged for analysis. The vision evaluation is combined with a detailed full-stack wireless network simulation to determine the distribution of throughputs and delays with real navigation paths and ray-tracing from new high-resolution 3D models in an urban environment. For comparison, the wireless simulation considers both a standard 4G-Long Term Evolution (LTE) carrier and high-rate 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) carrier. The work thus provides a thorough and realistic assessment of edge computing with mmWave connectivity in an application with both high bandwidth and low latency requirements.

preprint2022arXiv

Nonequilibrium work distributions in quantum impurity system-bath mixing processes

The fluctuation theorem, where the central quantity is the work distribution, is an important characterization of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In this work, based on the dissipaton-equation-of-motion theory, we develop an exact method to evaluate the work distributions in quantum impurity system-bath mixing processes, in the presence of non-Markovian and strong couplings. Our results not only precisely reproduce the Jarzynski equality and Crooks relation, but also reveal rich information on large deviation. The numerical demonstrations are carried out with a spin-boson model system.

preprint2022arXiv

Three-dimensional Sandglass Magnet with Non-Kramers ions

Magnetic susceptibility, specific heat, and muon spin relaxation ($μ$SR) measurements have been performed on a newly synthesized three-dimensional sandglass-type lattice Tm$_3$SbO$_7$, where two inequivalent sets of non-Kramers Tm$^{3+}$ ions (Tm$^{3+}_1$ and Tm$^{3+}_2)$ show crystal electrical field effect at different temperature ranges. The existence of an ordered or a glassy state down to 0.1~K in zero field is excluded. The low-energy properties of Tm$_3$SbO$_7$ are dominated by the lowest non-Kramers quasi-doublet of $\rm Tm^{3+}_1$, and the energy splitting is regarded as an intrinsic transverse field. Therefore, the low-temperature paramagnetic phenomenon in Tm$_3$SbO$_7$ is explained by a transverse field Ising model, which is supported by the quantitative simulation of specific heat data. In addition, the perturbation from Tm$^{3+}_2$ may play an important role in accounting for the low temperature spin dynamics behavior observed by $μ$SR.

preprint2022arXiv

Topmetal-M: a novel pixel sensor for compact tracking applications

The Topmetal-M is a large area pixel sensor (18 mm * 23 mm) prototype fabricated in a new 130 nm high-resistivity CMOS process in 2019. It contains 400 rows * 512 columns square pixels with the pitch of 40 μm. In Topmetal-M, a novel charge collection method combing the Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) and the Topmetal sensor has been proposed for the first time. Both the ionized charge deposited by the particle in the sensor and along the track over the sensor can be collected. The in-pixel circuit mainly consists of a low-noise charge sensitive amplifier to establish the signal for the energy reconstruction, and a discriminator with a Time-to-Amplitude Converter (TAC) for the Time of Arrival (TOA) measurement. With this mechanism, the trajectory, particle hit position, energy and arrival time of the particle can be measured. The analog signal from each pixel is accessible through time-shared multiplexing over the entire pixel array. This paper will discuss the design and preliminary test results of the Topmetal-M sensor.

preprint2022arXiv

Universal Prony fitting decomposition for optimized hierarchical quantum master equations

In this work, we propose the Prony fitting decomposition (PFD) as an accurate and efficient exponential series method, applicable to arbitrary interacting bath correlation functions. The resulting hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) formalism is greatly optimized, especially in extremely low temperature regimes that would be inaccessible with other methods. For demonstration, we calibrate the present PFD against the celebrated Padé spectrum decomposition method, followed by converged HEOM evaluations on the single-impurity Anderson model system.

preprint2021arXiv

CDLNet: Robust and Interpretable Denoising Through Deep Convolutional Dictionary Learning

Deep learning based methods hold state-of-the-art results in image denoising, but remain difficult to interpret due to their construction from poorly understood building blocks such as batch-normalization, residual learning, and feature domain processing. Unrolled optimization networks propose an interpretable alternative to constructing deep neural networks by deriving their architecture from classical iterative optimization methods, without use of tricks from the standard deep learning tool-box. So far, such methods have demonstrated performance close to that of state-of-the-art models while using their interpretable construction to achieve a comparably low learned parameter count. In this work, we propose an unrolled convolutional dictionary learning network (CDLNet) and demonstrate its competitive denoising performance in both low and high parameter count regimes. Specifically, we show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art denoising models when scaled to similar parameter count. In addition, we leverage the model's interpretable construction to propose an augmentation of the network's thresholds that enables state-of-the-art blind denoising performance and near-perfect generalization on noise-levels unseen during training.

preprint2021arXiv

Dispersionless orbital excitations in (Li,Fe)OHFeSe superconductors

The superconducting critical temperature $T_{\mathrm{c}}$ of intercalated iron-selenide superconductor (Li,Fe)OHFeSe (FeSe11111) can be increased to 42 K from 8 K of bulk FeSe. It shows remarkably similar electronic properties as the high-$T_{\mathrm{c}}$ monolayer FeSe and provides a bulk counterpart to investigate the origin of enhanced superconductivity. Unraveling the nature of excitations is crucial for understanding the pairing mechanism in high-$T_{\mathrm{c}}$ iron selenides. Here we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to investigate the excitations in FeSe11111. Our high-quality data exhibit several Raman-like excitations, which are dispersionless and isotropic in momentum transfer and robust against varying $T_{\mathrm{c}}$. Using atomic multiplet calculations, we assign the low-energy $\sim 0.3$ and 0.7 eV Raman peaks as local $e_g-e_g$ and $e_g-t_{2g}$ orbital excitations. The intensity of these two features decreases with increasing temperature, suggesting a primary contribution of the orbital fluctuations. Our results highlight the importance of orbital degree of freedom for high-$T_{\mathrm{c}}$ iron selenides.

preprint2021arXiv

Gapless spin liquid and pair density wave of the Hubbard model on three-leg triangular cylinders

We study the ground state properties of the Hubbard model on three-leg triangular cylinders using large-scale density-matrix renormalization group simulations. At half-filling, we identify an intermediate gapless spin liquid phase between a metallic phase at weak coupling and Mott insulating dimer phase at strong interaction, which has one gapless spin mode and algebraic spin-spin correlations but exponential decay scalar chiral-chiral correlations. Upon light doping the gapless spin liquid, the system exhibits power-law charge-density-wave (CDW) correlations but short-range single-particle, spin-spin, and chiral-chiral correlations. Similar to CDW correlations, the superconducting correlations are also quasi-long-ranged but oscillate in sign as a function of distance, which is consistent with the striped pair-density wave. When further doping the gapless spin liquid phase or doping the dimer order phase, another phase takes over, which has similar CDW correlations but all other correlations decay exponentially.

preprint2021arXiv

Incoherent transport in a classical spin liquid

We study the energy and spin transport of the classical spin liquid hosted by the pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet in the large $S$ limit. Molecular dynamics calculation suggests that both the energy and spin diffusion constants approach finite limits as the temperature tends to zero. We explain our results in terms of an effective disorder model, where the energy/spin-carrying normal modes propagate in a quasi-static disordered spin background. The finite zero temperature limits of the diffusion constants are then naturally understood as a result of the finite mean free path of the normal modes due to the effective disorder.

preprint2021arXiv

The distance between the weights of the neural network is meaningful

In the application of neural networks, we need to select a suitable model based on the problem complexity and the dataset scale. To analyze the network's capacity, quantifying the information learned by the network is necessary. This paper proves that the distance between the neural network weights in different training stages can be used to estimate the information accumulated by the network in the training process directly. The experiment results verify the utility of this method. An application of this method related to the label corruption is shown at the end.

preprint2021arXiv

Ultrafast renormalization of the onsite Coulomb repulsion in a cuprate superconductor

Ultrafast lasers are an increasingly important tool to control and stabilize emergent phases in quantum materials. Among a variety of possible excitation protocols, a particularly intriguing route is the direct light-engineering of microscopic electronic parameters, such as the electron hopping and the local Coulomb repulsion (Hubbard $U$). In this work, we use time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate the light-induced renormalization of the Hubbard $U$ in a cuprate superconductor, La$_{1.905}$Ba$_{0.095}$CuO$_4$. We show that intense femtosecond laser pulses induce a substantial redshift of the upper Hubbard band, while leaving the Zhang-Rice singlet energy unaffected. By comparing the experimental data to time-dependent spectra of single- and three-band Hubbard models, we assign this effect to a $\sim140$ meV reduction of the onsite Coulomb repulsion on the copper sites. Our demonstration of a dynamical Hubbard $U$ renormalization in a copper oxide paves the way to a novel strategy for the manipulation of superconductivity, magnetism, as well as to the realization of other long-range-ordered phases in light-driven quantum materials.

preprint2021arXiv

Unconventional hysteretic transition in a charge density wave

Hysteresis underlies a large number of phase transitions in solids, giving rise to exotic metastable states that are otherwise inaccessible. Here, we report an unconventional hysteretic transition in a quasi-2D material, EuTe4. By combining transport, photoemission, diffraction, and x-ray absorption measurements, we observed that the hysteresis loop has a temperature width of more than 400 K, setting a record among crystalline solids. The transition has an origin distinct from known mechanisms, lying entirely within the incommensurate charge-density-wave (CDW) phase of EuTe4 with no change in the CDW modulation periodicity. We interpret the hysteresis as an unusual switching of the relative CDW phases in different layers, a phenomenon unique to quasi-2D compounds that is not present in either purely 2D or strongly-coupled 3D systems. Our findings challenge the established theories on metastable states in density wave systems, pushing the boundary of understanding hysteretic transitions in a broken-symmetry state.

preprint2020arXiv

A Scalable Photonic Computer Solving the Subset Sum Problem

The subset sum problem is a typical NP-complete problem that is hard to solve efficiently in time due to the intrinsic superpolynomial-scaling property. Increasing the problem size results in a vast amount of time consuming in conventionally available computers. Photons possess the unique features of extremely high propagation speed, weak interaction with environment and low detectable energy level, therefore can be a promising candidate to meet the challenge by constructing an a photonic computer computer. However, most of optical computing schemes, like Fourier transformation, require very high operation precision and are hard to scale up. Here, we present a chip built-in photonic computer to efficiently solve the subset sum problem. We successfully map the problem into a waveguide network in three dimensions by using femtosecond laser direct writing technique. We show that the photons are able to sufficiently dissipate into the networks and search all the possible paths for solutions in parallel. In the case of successive primes the proposed approach exhibits a dominant superiority in time consumption even compared with supercomputers. Our results confirm the ability of light to realize a complicated computational function that is intractable with conventional computers, and suggest the subset sum problem as a good benchmarking platform for the race between photonic and conventional computers on the way towards "photonic supremacy".

preprint2020arXiv

Authentication against Man-in-the-Middle Attack with a Time-variant Reconfigurable Dual-LFSR-based Arbiter PUF

With the expansion of the Internet of Things industry, the information security of Internet of Things devices attracts much attention. Traditional encryption algorithms require sensitive information such as keys to be stored in memory, and also need the support of operating system, which is obviously unacceptable for resource-constrained Internet of Things terminals. Physical not cloning function by extracting the chip is inevitable in the process of manufacturing process deviation, the introduction of the corresponding function relationship between incentive and response, not to need the storage user sensitive information, and only when electricity will respond, in power response immediately disappear, this can save a lot of resources of equipment and the power consumption. However, PUF is vulnerable to modeling attacks, and the traditional methods such as the challenge obfuscation method are time-invariant, which is equivalent to adding a fixed function to the front stage of a traditional APUF circuit. Therefore, it can be potentially modelling attacked with sufficient CRPs. In order to further enhance APUF circuit resistance to modelling attack, this paper proposes a dual-LFSR-based APUF circuit with time-variant challenge obfuscation. Besides, traditional authentication scheme generally adopts the one-time key scheme to enhance resistance to man-in-the-middle attack. The two-time authentication scheme proposed in this paper can improve the ability of RFID system to resist man-in-the-middle attack without sacrificing CRPs.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Plug-and-play Prior for Low-rank Tensor Completion

Multi-dimensional images, such as color images and multi-spectral images, are highly correlated and contain abundant spatial and spectral information. However, real-world multi-dimensional images are usually corrupted by missing entries. By integrating deterministic low-rankness prior to the data-driven deep prior, we suggest a novel regularized tensor completion model for multi-dimensional image completion. In the objective function, we adopt the newly emerged tensor nuclear norm (TNN) to characterize the global low-rankness prior of the multi-dimensional images. We also formulate an implicit regularizer by plugging into a denoising neural network (termed as deep denoiser), which is convinced to express the deep image prior learned from a large number of natural images. The resulting model can be solved by the alternating directional method of multipliers algorithm under the plug-and-play (PnP) framework. Experimental results on color images, videos, and multi-spectral images demonstrate that the proposed method can recover both the global structure and fine details very well and achieve superior performance over competing methods in terms of quality metrics and visual effects.

preprint2020arXiv

Development of readout electronics a novel beam monitoring system for ion research facility accelerator

This article presents the readout electronics of a novel beam monitoring system for ion research facility accelerator. The readout electronics are divided into Front-end Card (FEC) and Readout Control Unit (RCU). FEC uses Topmetal II minus to processes the energy of the hitting particles and convert it into a voltage signal. The main function of RCU is to digitize the analog output signal of FEC and format the raw data. On the other hand, the RCU also processes the control commands from the host and distributes the commands according to the mapping. The readout electronic has been characterized and calibrated in the laboratory, and have been installed with the detector. Implementation and testing of readout electronics have been discussed.

preprint2020arXiv

Entangled system-and-environment dynamics: Phase-space dissipaton theory

Dissipaton-equation-of-motion (DEOM) theory [Y. J. Yan, J. Chem. Phys. 140, 054105 (2014)] is an exact and nonperturbative many-particle method for open quantum systems. The existing dissipaton algebra treats also the dynamics of hybrid bath solvation coordinates. The dynamics of conjugate momentums remain to be addressed within the DEOM framework. In this work, we establish this missing ingredient, the dissipaton algebra on solvation momentums, with rigorous validations against necessary and sufficient criteria. The resulted phase-space DEOM theory will serve as a solid ground for further developments of various practical methods toward a broad range of applications. We illustrate this novel dissipaton algebra with the phase-space DEOM-evaluation on heat current fluctuation.

preprint2020arXiv

Kernel-based L_2-Boosting with Structure Constraints

Developing efficient kernel methods for regression is very popular in the past decade. In this paper, utilizing boosting on kernel-based weaker learners, we propose a novel kernel-based learning algorithm called kernel-based re-scaled boosting with truncation, dubbed as KReBooT. The proposed KReBooT benefits in controlling the structure of estimators and producing sparse estimate, and is near overfitting resistant. We conduct both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations to illustrate the power of KReBooT. Theoretically, we prove that KReBooT can achieve the almost optimal numerical convergence rate for nonlinear approximation. Furthermore, using the recently developed integral operator approach and a variant of Talagrand's concentration inequality, we provide fast learning rates for KReBooT, which is a new record of boosting-type algorithms. Numerically, we carry out a series of simulations to show the promising performance of KReBooT in terms of its good generalization, near over-fitting resistance and structure constraints.

preprint2020arXiv

Learning Scalable Multi-Agent Coordination by Spatial Differentiation for Traffic Signal Control

The intelligent control of the traffic signal is critical to the optimization of transportation systems. To achieve global optimal traffic efficiency in large-scale road networks, recent works have focused on coordination among intersections, which have shown promising results. However, existing studies paid more attention to observations sharing among intersections (both explicit and implicit) and did not care about the consequences after decisions. In this paper, we design a multiagent coordination framework based on Deep Reinforcement Learning methods for traffic signal control, defined as γ-Reward that includes both original γ-Reward and γ-Attention-Reward. Specifically, we propose the Spatial Differentiation method for coordination which uses the temporal-spatial information in the replay buffer to amend the reward of each action. A concise theoretical analysis that proves the proposed model can converge to Nash equilibrium is given. By extending the idea of Markov Chain to the dimension of space-time, this truly decentralized coordination mechanism replaces the graph attention method and realizes the decoupling of the road network, which is more scalable and more in line with practice. The simulation results show that the proposed model remains a state-of-the-art performance even not use a centralized setting. Code is available in https://github.com/Skylark0924/Gamma Reward.

preprint2020arXiv

Nagaoka ferromagnetism observed in a quantum dot plaquette

Engineered, highly-controllable quantum systems hold promise as simulators of emergent physics beyond the capabilities of classical computers. An important problem in many-body physics is itinerant magnetism, which originates purely from long-range interactions of free electrons and whose existence in real systems has been subject to debate for decades. Here we use a quantum simulator consisting of a four-site square plaquette of quantum dots to demonstrate Nagaoka ferromagnetism. This form of itinerant magnetism has been rigorously studied theoretically but has remained unattainable in experiment. We load the plaquette with three electrons and demonstrate the predicted emergence of spontaneous ferromagnetic correlations through pairwise measurements of spin. We find the ferromagnetic ground state is remarkably robust to engineered disorder in the on-site potentials and can induce a transition to the low-spin state by changing the plaquette topology to an open chain. This demonstration of Nagaoka ferromagnetism highlights that quantum simulators can be used to study physical phenomena that have not yet been observed in any system before. The work also constitutes an important step towards large-scale quantum dot simulators of correlated electron systems.

preprint2020arXiv

Neural Video Coding using Multiscale Motion Compensation and Spatiotemporal Context Model

Over the past two decades, traditional block-based video coding has made remarkable progress and spawned a series of well-known standards such as MPEG-4, H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC. On the other hand, deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown their powerful capacity for visual content understanding, feature extraction and compact representation. Some previous works have explored the learnt video coding algorithms in an end-to-end manner, which show the great potential compared with traditional methods. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep neural video coding framework (NVC), which uses variational autoencoders (VAEs) with joint spatial and temporal prior aggregation (PA) to exploit the correlations in intra-frame pixels, inter-frame motions and inter-frame compensation residuals, respectively. Novel features of NVC include: 1) To estimate and compensate motion over a large range of magnitudes, we propose an unsupervised multiscale motion compensation network (MS-MCN) together with a pyramid decoder in the VAE for coding motion features that generates multiscale flow fields, 2) we design a novel adaptive spatiotemporal context model for efficient entropy coding for motion information, 3) we adopt nonlocal attention modules (NLAM) at the bottlenecks of the VAEs for implicit adaptive feature extraction and activation, leveraging its high transformation capacity and unequal weighting with joint global and local information, and 4) we introduce multi-module optimization and a multi-frame training strategy to minimize the temporal error propagation among P-frames. NVC is evaluated for the low-delay causal settings and compared with H.265/HEVC, H.264/AVC and the other learnt video compression methods following the common test conditions, demonstrating consistent gains across all popular test sequences for both PSNR and MS-SSIM distortion metrics.

preprint2020arXiv

Observing Movement of Dirac Cones from Single-Photon Dynamics

Graphene with honeycomb structure, being critically important in understanding physics of matter, exhibits exceptionally unusual half-integer quantum Hall effect and unconventional electronic spectrum with quantum relativistic phenomena. Particularly, graphene-like structure can be used for realizing topological insulator which inspires an intrinsic topological protection mechanism with strong immunity for maintaining coherence of quantum information. These various peculiar physics arise from the unique properties of Dirac cones which show high hole degeneracy, massless charge carriers and linear intersection of bands. Experimental observation of Dirac cones conventionally focuses on the energy-momentum space with bulk measurement. Recently, the wave function and band structure have been mapped into the real-space in photonic system, and made flexible control possible. Here, we demonstrate a direct observation of the movement of Dirac cones from single-photon dynamics in photonic graphene under different biaxial strains. Sharing the same spirit of wave-particle nature in quantum mechanics, we identify the movement of Dirac cones by dynamically detecting the edge modes and extracting the diffusing distance of the packets with accumulation and statistics on individual single-particle registrations. Our results of observing movement of Dirac cones from single-photon dynamics, together with the method of direct observation in real space by mapping the band structure defined in momentum space, pave the way to understand a variety of artificial structures in quantum regime.

preprint2020arXiv

Protecting Quantum Superposition and Entanglement with Photonic Higher-Order Topological Crystalline Insulator

Higher-order topological insulator, as a newly found non-trivial material and structure, possesses a topological phase beyond the bulk-boundary correspondence. Here, we present an experimental observation of photonic higher-order topological crystalline insulator and its topological protection to quantum superposition and entanglement in a two-dimensional lattice. By freely writing the insulator structure with femtosecond laser and directly measuring evolution dynamics with single-photon imaging techniques, we are able to observe the distinct features of the topological corner states in C_4 and C_2 photonic lattice symmetry. Especially, we propose and experimentally identify the topological corner states by exciting the photonic lattice with single-photon superposition state, and we examine the protection impact of topology on quantum entanglement for entangled photon states. The single-photon dynamics and the protected entanglement reveal an intrinsic topological protection mechanism isolating multi-partite quantum states from diffusion-induced decoherence. The higher-order topological crystalline insulator, built-in superposition state generation, heralded single-photon imaging and quantum entanglement demonstrated here link topology, material, and quantum physics, opening the door to wide investigations of higher-order topology and applications of topological enhancement in genuine quantum regime.

preprint2020arXiv

System-bath entanglement theorem with Gaussian environments

In this work, we establish a so-called "system-bath entanglement theorem", for arbitrary systems coupled with Gaussian environments. This theorem connects the entangled system-bath response functions in the total composite space to those of local systems, as long as the interacting bath spectral densities are given. We validate the theorem with the direct evaluation via the exact dissipaton-equation-of-motion approach. Therefore, this work enables various quantum dissipation theories, which originally describe only the reduced system dynamics, for their evaluations on the system-bath entanglement properties. Numerical demonstrations are carried out on the Fano interference spectroscopies of spin-boson systems.

preprint2020arXiv

The spontaneous symmetry breaking in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ is structural in nature

The excitonic insulator is an electronically-driven phase of matter that emerges upon the spontaneous formation and Bose condensation of excitons. Detecting this exotic order in candidate materials is a subject of paramount importance, as the size of the excitonic gap in the band structure establishes the potential of this collective state for superfluid energy transport. However, the identification of this phase in real solids is hindered by the coexistence of a structural order parameter with the same symmetry as the excitonic order. Only a few materials are currently believed to host a dominant excitonic phase, Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ being the most promising. Here, we test this scenario by using an ultrashort laser pulse to quench the broken-symmetry phase of this transition metal chalcogenide. Tracking the dynamics of the material's electronic and crystal structure after light excitation reveals surprising spectroscopic fingerprints that are only compatible with a primary order parameter of phononic nature. We rationalize our findings through state-of-the-art calculations, confirming that the structural order accounts for most of the electronic gap opening. Not only do our results uncover the long-sought mechanism driving the phase transition of Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$, but they also conclusively rule out any substantial excitonic character in this instability.

preprint2020arXiv

Time-Resolved Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering in a Pumped Mott Insulator

Collective excitations contain rich information about photoinduced transient states in correlated systems. In a Mott insulator, charge degrees of freedom are frozen, but can be activated by photodoping. The energy-momentum distribution of the charge excitation spectrum reflects the propagation of charge degrees of freedom, and provides information about the interplay among various intertwined instabilities on the time scale set by the pump. To reveal charge excitations out of equilibrium, we simulate time-resolved x-ray absorption and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering using a Hubbard model. After pumping, the former resolves photodoping, while the latter characterizes the formation, dispersion, weight, and nonlinear effects of collective excitations. Intermediate-state information from time-resolved resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (trRIXS) can be used to decipher the origin of these excitations, including bimagnons, Mott-gap excitations, doublon and single-electron in-gap states, and anti-Stokes relaxation during an ultrafast pump. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for existing and future trRIXS experiments.

preprint2020arXiv

Towards a Geometric Approach to Strassen's Asymptotic Rank Conjecture

We make a first geometric study of three varieties in $\mathbb{C}^m \otimes \mathbb{C}^m \otimes \mathbb{C}^m$ (for each $m$), including the Zariski closure of the set of tight tensors, the tensors with continuous regular symmetry. Our motivation is to develop a geometric framework for Strassen's Asymptotic Rank Conjecture that the asymptotic rank of any tight tensor is minimal. In particular, we determine the dimension of the set of tight tensors. We prove that this dimension equals the dimension of the set of oblique tensors, a less restrictive class introduced by Strassen.

preprint2020arXiv

Tuning the two-step melting of magnetic orders in a dipolar kagome spin ice by quantum fluctuations

Complex magnetic orders in frustrated magnets may exhibit rich melting processes when the magnet is heated toward the paramagnetic phase. We show that one may tune such melting processes by quantum fluctuations. We consider a kagome lattice dipolar Ising model subject to transverse field and focus on the thermal transitions out of its magnetic ground state, which features a $\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}$ magnetic unit cell. Our quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations suggest that, at weak transverse field, the $\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}$ phase melts by way of an intermediate magnetic charge ordered phase where the lattice translation symmetry is restored while the time reversal symmetry remains broken. By contrast, at stronger transverse field, QMC simulations suggest the $\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}$ phase melts through a floating Kosterlitz-Thouless phase. The two distinct melting processes are separated by either a multicritical point or a short line of first order phase transition.

preprint2016arXiv

Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo

We characterize the three-orbital Hubbard model using state-of-the-art determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations with parameters relevant to the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. The simulations find that doped holes preferentially reside on oxygen orbitals and that the (π,π) antiferromagnetic ordering vector dominates in the vicinity of the undoped system, as known from experiments. The orbitally-resolved spectral functions agree well with photoemission spectroscopy studies and enable identification of orbital content in the bands. A comparison of DQMC results with exact diagonalization and cluster perturbation theory studies elucidates how these different numerical techniques complement one another to produce a more complete understanding of the model and the cuprates. Interestingly, our DQMC simulations predict a charge-transfer gap that is significantly smaller than the direct (optical) gap measured in experiment. Most likely, it corresponds to the indirect gap that has recently been suggested to be on the order of 0.8 eV, and demonstrates the subtlety in identifying charge gaps.

preprint2016arXiv

Degrees of Freedom of the MIMO 2x2 Interference Network with General Message Sets

We establish the DoF region for the MIMO 2x2 interference network with a general message set, consisting of nine messages, one for each pair of a subset of transmitters at which that message is known and a subset of receivers where that message is desired. An outer bound on the general nine-message network is obtained and then it is shown to be tight, establishing the DoF region for the most general antenna setting wherein all four nodes have an arbitrary number of antennas each. The DoF-optimal scheme is applicable to the MIMO 2x2 network with constant channel coefficients, and hence, a fortiori, to time/frequency varying channel scenarios. In particular, a linear precoding scheme is proposed that can achieve all the DoF tuples in the DoF region. In it, the precise roles played by transmit zero-forcing, interference alignment, random beamforming, symbol extensions and asymmetric complex signaling are delineated. For instance, we identify a class of antenna settings in which ACS is required to achieve the fractional-valued corner points. Evidently, the DoF regions of all previously unknown cases of the 2x2 interference network with a subset of the nine-messages are established as special cases of the general result of this paper. In particular, the DoF region of the well-known four-message (and even three-message) MIMO X channel is established. This problem had remained open despite previous studies which had found inner and outer bounds that were not tight in general. Hence, the DoF regions of all special cases obtained from the general DoF region of the nine-message 2x2 interference network of this work that include at least three of the four X channel messages are new, among many others. Our work sheds light on how the same physical 2x2 network could be used by a suitable choice of message sets to take most advantage of the channel resource in a flexible and efficient manner.

preprint2016arXiv

Degrees of Freedom of the Two-User MIMO Broadcast Channel with Private and Common Messages Under Hybrid CSIT Models

We study the degrees of freedom (DoF) regions of the two-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel with a general message set (BC-CM) - that includes private and common messages - under fast fading. Nine different channel state knowledge assumptions -collectively known as hybrid CSIT models - are considered wherein the transmitter has either perfect/instantaneous (P), delayed (D) or no (N) channel state information (CSI) from each of the two receivers. General antenna configurations are addressed wherein the three terminals have arbitrary numbers of antennas. The DoF regions are established for the five hybrid CSIT models in which either both channels are unknown at the transmitter or each of the two channels is known perfectly or with delay. In the four remaining cases in which exactly one of the two channels is unknown at the transmitter, the DoF regions under the restriction of linear encoding strategies - also known as the linear DoF (LDoF) regions- are established. As the key to the converse proofs of the LDoF region of the MIMO BC-CM under such hybrid CSIT assumptions, we show that, when only considering linear encoding strategies, the channel state information from the receiver with more antennas does not help if there is no channel state information available from the receiver with fewer antennas. This result is conjectured to be true even without the restriction on the encoding strategies to be linear. If true, the LDoF regions obtained for the four hybrid CSIT cases herein will also be the DoF regions for those cases.

preprint2016arXiv

Developing spatiotemporal solitons in step-index multimode fibers

Spatiotemporal solitons (STSs) are localized solitary waves in both space and time that involve complex linear and nonlinear processes. Optical STSs have been observed in various media, but they are difficult to be realized in multimode fibers due to their large modal dispersion. Here, we report STS mode-locking and spatiotemporal nonlinear dynamics in a step-index multimode fiber mediated by gain. Gain competition and energy redistribution among different spatial modes help nonlinearity effectively cancel both temporal splitting and spatial diffracting of the entire pulse (multicomponent soliton) and thereby maintain its shape during propagation. Optical STSs in multimode fibers therefore open a new way to clarify the fundamental science of spatiotemporal solitary waves and also imply important applications in multi-channel communications, optical switches and mode-area power scaling of fiber laser pulses.

preprint2016arXiv

Divide and Conquer Local Average Regression

The divide and conquer strategy, which breaks a massive data set into a se- ries of manageable data blocks, and then combines the independent results of data blocks to obtain a final decision, has been recognized as a state-of-the-art method to overcome challenges of massive data analysis. In this paper, we merge the divide and conquer strategy with local average regression methods to infer the regressive relationship of input-output pairs from a massive data set. After theoretically analyzing the pros and cons, we find that although the divide and conquer local average regression can reach the optimal learning rate, the restric- tion to the number of data blocks is a bit strong, which makes it only feasible for small number of data blocks. We then propose two variants to lessen (or remove) this restriction. Our results show that these variants can achieve the optimal learning rate with much milder restriction (or without such restriction). Extensive experimental studies are carried out to verify our theoretical assertions.

preprint2016arXiv

Image Segmentation Using Overlapping Group Sparsity

Sparse decomposition has been widely used for different applications, such as source separation, image classification and image denoising. This paper presents a new algorithm for segmentation of an image into background and foreground text and graphics using sparse decomposition. First, the background is represented using a suitable smooth model, which is a linear combination of a few smoothly varying basis functions, and the foreground text and graphics are modeled as a sparse component overlaid on the smooth background. Then the background and foreground are separated using a sparse decomposition framework and imposing some prior information, which promote the smoothness of background, and the sparsity and connectivity of foreground pixels. This algorithm has been tested on a dataset of images extracted from HEVC standard test sequences for screen content coding, and is shown to outperform prior methods, including least absolute deviation fitting, k-means clustering based segmentation in DjVu, and shape primitive extraction and coding algorithm.

preprint2016arXiv

Palmprint Recognition Using Deep Scattering Convolutional Network

Palmprint recognition has drawn a lot of attention during the recent years. Many algorithms have been proposed for palmprint recognition in the past, majority of them being based on features extracted from the transform domain. Many of these transform domain features are not translation or rotation invariant, and therefore a great deal of preprocessing is needed to align the images. In this paper, a powerful image representation, called scattering network/transform, is used for palmprint recognition. Scattering network is a convolutional network where its architecture and filters are predefined wavelet transforms. The first layer of scattering network captures similar features to SIFT descriptors and the higher-layer features capture higher-frequency content of the signal which are lost in SIFT and other similar descriptors. After extraction of the scattering features, their dimensionality is reduced by applying principal component analysis (PCA) which reduces the computational complexity of the recognition task. Two different classifiers are used for recognition: multi-class SVM and minimum-distance classifier. The proposed scheme has been tested on a well-known palmprint database and achieved accuracy rate of 99.95% and 100% using minimum distance classifier and SVM respectively.

preprint2016arXiv

Screen Content Image Segmentation Using Robust Regression and Sparse Decomposition

This paper considers how to separate text and/or graphics from smooth background in screen content and mixed document images and proposes two approaches to perform this segmentation task. The proposed methods make use of the fact that the background in each block is usually smoothly varying and can be modeled well by a linear combination of a few smoothly varying basis functions, while the foreground text and graphics create sharp discontinuity. The algorithms separate the background and foreground pixels by trying to fit background pixel values in the block into a smooth function using two different schemes. One is based on robust regression, where the inlier pixels will be considered as background, while remaining outlier pixels will be considered foreground. The second approach uses a sparse decomposition framework where the background and foreground layers are modeled with a smooth and sparse components respectively. These algorithms have been tested on images extracted from HEVC standard test sequences for screen content coding, and are shown to have superior performance over previous approaches. The proposed methods can be used in different applications such as text extraction, separate coding of background and foreground for compression of screen content, and medical image segmentation.

preprint2016arXiv

Screen Content Image Segmentation Using Sparse Decomposition and Total Variation Minimization

Sparse decomposition has been widely used for different applications, such as source separation, image classification, image denoising and more. This paper presents a new algorithm for segmentation of an image into background and foreground text and graphics using sparse decomposition and total variation minimization. The proposed method is designed based on the assumption that the background part of the image is smoothly varying and can be represented by a linear combination of a few smoothly varying basis functions, while the foreground text and graphics can be modeled with a sparse component overlaid on the smooth background. The background and foreground are separated using a sparse decomposition framework regularized with a few suitable regularization terms which promotes the sparsity and connectivity of foreground pixels. This algorithm has been tested on a dataset of images extracted from HEVC standard test sequences for screen content coding, and is shown to have superior performance over some prior methods, including least absolute deviation fitting, k-means clustering based segmentation in DjVu and shape primitive extraction and coding (SPEC) algorithm.

preprint2016arXiv

Super-resolution reconstruction of hyperspectral images via low rank tensor modeling and total variation regularization

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to hyperspectral image super-resolution by modeling the global spatial-and-spectral correlation and local smoothness properties over hyperspectral images. Specifically, we utilize the tensor nuclear norm and tensor folded-concave penalty functions to describe the global spatial-and-spectral correlation hidden in hyperspectral images, and 3D total variation (TV) to characterize the local spatial-and-spectral smoothness across all hyperspectral bands. Then, we develop an efficient algorithm for solving the resulting optimization problem by combing the local linear approximation (LLA) strategy and alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Experimental results on one hyperspectral image dataset illustrate the merits of the proposed approach.

preprint2016arXiv

Total Variation Regularized Tensor RPCA for Background Subtraction from Compressive Measurements

Background subtraction has been a fundamental and widely studied task in video analysis, with a wide range of applications in video surveillance, teleconferencing and 3D modeling. Recently, motivated by compressive imaging, background subtraction from compressive measurements (BSCM) is becoming an active research task in video surveillance. In this paper, we propose a novel tensor-based robust PCA (TenRPCA) approach for BSCM by decomposing video frames into backgrounds with spatial-temporal correlations and foregrounds with spatio-temporal continuity in a tensor framework. In this approach, we use 3D total variation (TV) to enhance the spatio-temporal continuity of foregrounds, and Tucker decomposition to model the spatio-temporal correlations of video background. Based on this idea, we design a basic tensor RPCA model over the video frames, dubbed as the holistic TenRPCA model (H-TenRPCA). To characterize the correlations among the groups of similar 3D patches of video background, we further design a patch-group-based tensor RPCA model (PG-TenRPCA) by joint tensor Tucker decompositions of 3D patch groups for modeling the video background. Efficient algorithms using alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) are developed to solve the proposed models. Extensive experiments on simulated and real-world videos demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approaches over the existing state-of-the-art approaches.

preprint2016arXiv

Using Nonequilibrium Dynamics to Probe Competing Orders in a Mott-Peierls System

Competition between ordered phases, and their associated phase transitions, are significant in the study of strongly correlated systems. Here we examine one aspect, the nonequilibrium dynamics of a photoexcited Mott-Peierls system, using an effective Peierls-Hubbard model and exact diagonalization. Near a transition where spin and charge become strongly intertwined, we observe anti-phase dynamics and a coupling-strength-dependent suppression or enhancement in the static structure factors. The renormalized bosonic excitations coupled to a particular photoexcited electron can be extracted, which provides an approach for characterizing the underlying bosonic modes. The results from this analysis for different electronic momenta show an uneven softening due to a stronger coupling near $k_F$. This behavior reflects the strong link between the fermionic momenta, the coupling vertices, and ultimately the bosonic susceptibilities when multiple phases compete for the ground state of the system.

preprint2015arXiv

A Robust Regression Approach for Background/Foreground Segmentation

Background/foreground segmentation has a lot of applications in image and video processing. In this paper, a segmentation algorithm is proposed which is mainly designed for text and line extraction in screen content. The proposed method makes use of the fact that the background in each block is usually smoothly varying and can be modeled well by a linear combination of a few smoothly varying basis functions, while the foreground text and graphics create sharp discontinuity. The algorithm separates the background and foreground pixels by trying to fit pixel values in the block into a smooth function using a robust regression method. The inlier pixels that can fit well will be considered as background, while remaining outlier pixels will be considered foreground. This algorithm has been extensively tested on several images from HEVC standard test sequences for screen content coding, and is shown to have superior performance over other methods, such as the k-means clustering based segmentation algorithm in DjVu. This background/foreground segmentation can be used in different applications such as: text extraction, separate coding of background and foreground for compression of screen content and mixed content documents, principle line extraction from palmprint and crease detection in fingerprint images.

preprint2015arXiv

A two-stage video coding framework with both self-adaptive redundant dictionary and adaptively orthonormalized DCT basis

In this work, we propose a two-stage video coding framework, as an extension of our previous one-stage framework in [1]. The two-stage frameworks consists two different dictionaries. Specifically, the first stage directly finds the sparse representation of a block with a self-adaptive dictionary consisting of all possible inter-prediction candidates by solving an L0-norm minimization problem using an improved orthogonal matching pursuit with embedded orthonormalization (eOMP) algorithm, and the second stage codes the residual using DCT dictionary adaptively orthonormalized to the subspace spanned by the first stage atoms. The transition of the first stage and the second stage is determined based on both stages' quantization stepsizes and a threshold. We further propose a complete context adaptive entropy coder to efficiently code the locations and the coefficients of chosen first stage atoms. Simulation results show that the proposed coder significantly improves the RD performance over our previous one-stage coder. More importantly, the two-stage coder, using a fixed block size and inter-prediction only, outperforms the H.264 coder (x264) and is competitive with the HEVC reference coder (HM) over a large rate range.

preprint2015arXiv

eOMP: Finding Sparser Representation by Recursively Orthonormalizing the Remaining Atoms

Greedy algorithms for minimizing L0-norm of sparse decomposition have profound application impact on many signal processing problems. In the sparse coding setup, given the observations $\mathrm{y}$ and the redundant dictionary $\mathbfΦ$, one would seek the most sparse coefficient (signal) $\mathrm{x}$ with a constraint on approximation fidelity. In this work, we propose a greedy algorithm based on the classic orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) with improved sparsity on $\mathrm{x}$ and better recovery rate, which we name as eOMP. The key ingredient of the eOMP is recursively performing one-step orthonormalization on the remaining atoms, and evaluating correlations between residual and orthonormalized atoms. We show a proof that the proposed eOMP guarantees to maximize the residual reduction at each iteration. Through extensive simulations, we show the proposed algorithm has better exact recovery rate on i.i.d. Gaussian ensembles with Gaussian signals, and more importantly yields smaller L0-norm under the same approximation fidelity compared to the original OMP, for both synthetic and practical scenarios. The complexity analysis and real running time result also show a manageable complexity increase over the original OMP. We claim that the proposed algorithm has better practical perspective for finding more sparse representations than existing greedy algorithms.

preprint2015arXiv

Fingerprint Recognition Using Translation Invariant Scattering Network

Fingerprint recognition has drawn a lot of attention during last decades. Different features and algorithms have been used for fingerprint recognition in the past. In this paper, a powerful image representation called scattering transform/network, is used for recognition. Scattering network is a convolutional network where its architecture and filters are predefined wavelet transforms. The first layer of scattering representation is similar to sift descriptors and the higher layers capture higher frequency content of the signal. After extraction of scattering features, their dimensionality is reduced by applying principal component analysis (PCA). At the end, multi-class SVM is used to perform template matching for the recognition task. The proposed scheme is tested on a well-known fingerprint database and has shown promising results with the best accuracy rate of 98\%.

preprint2015arXiv

Influences of pump transitions on thermal effects of multi-kilowatt thulium-doped fiber lasers

Thermal effects are critical constrains for developing high-power thulium-doped fiber lasers (TDFLs). In this paper, we numerically investigate the lasing and thermal characteristics of the TDFLs under different pump transitions. Our results show, the widely-used pump transition $^3H_6\rightarrow^3H_4$, taking advantages of high-power high-efficiency laser diodes at $\sim$0.8 $μ$m, may not be a superior choice for directly outputting multi-kilowatt at 2 $μ$m because of severe thermal problems. Meanwhile, using other pump transitions resulting 2-$μ$m emissions, especially the in-band pump transition $^3H_6\rightarrow^3F_4$, will decrease the generated heat to a large extent. By optimizing the power filling factor of the gain fiber, we find a 2-$μ$m TDFL cladding-pumped at 1.9 $μ$m will lead to the laser slope efficiency close to its quantum efficiency (95\%). The induced ultra-low quantum defect would be of great importance for power scaling. We thus propose tandem-pumped TDFLs for reducing the heat at high powers and discuss the related issues of design. Besides, we also explore the differences of the thermal characteristics between laser and superfluorescent operations, which will contribute to deepening the understanding of the thermal effects in high-power thulium-doped fiber amplifiers.

preprint2015arXiv

Iris Recognition Using Scattering Transform and Textural Features

Iris recognition has drawn a lot of attention since the mid-twentieth century. Among all biometric features, iris is known to possess a rich set of features. Different features have been used to perform iris recognition in the past. In this paper, two powerful sets of features are introduced to be used for iris recognition: scattering transform-based features and textural features. PCA is also applied on the extracted features to reduce the dimensionality of the feature vector while preserving most of the information of its initial value. Minimum distance classifier is used to perform template matching for each new test sample. The proposed scheme is tested on a well-known iris database, and showed promising results with the best accuracy rate of 99.2%.

preprint2015arXiv

Origin of Strong Dispersion in Hubbard Insulators

Using cluster perturbation theory, we explain the origin of the strongly dispersive feature found at high binding energy in the spectral function of the Hubbard model. By comparing the Hubbard and $t\small{-}J\small{-} 3s$ model spectra, we show that this dispersion does not originate from either coupling to spin fluctuations ($\propto\! J$) or the free hopping ($\propto\! t$). Instead, it should be attributed to a long-range, correlated hopping $\propto\! t^2/U$, which allows an effectively free motion of the hole within the same antiferromagnetic sublattice. This origin explains both the formation of the high energy anomaly in the single-particle spectrum and the sensitivity of the high binding energy dispersion to the next-nearest-neighbor hopping $t^\prime$.

preprint2015arXiv

Re-scale boosting for regression and classification

Boosting is a learning scheme that combines weak prediction rules to produce a strong composite estimator, with the underlying intuition that one can obtain accurate prediction rules by combining "rough" ones. Although boosting is proved to be consistent and overfitting-resistant, its numerical convergence rate is relatively slow. The aim of this paper is to develop a new boosting strategy, called the re-scale boosting (RBoosting), to accelerate the numerical convergence rate and, consequently, improve the learning performance of boosting. Our studies show that RBoosting possesses the almost optimal numerical convergence rate in the sense that, up to a logarithmic factor, it can reach the minimax nonlinear approximation rate. We then use RBoosting to tackle both the classification and regression problems, and deduce a tight generalization error estimate. The theoretical and experimental results show that RBoosting outperforms boosting in terms of generalization.

preprint2015arXiv

Screen Content Image Segmentation Using Sparse-Smooth Decomposition

Sparse decomposition has been extensively used for different applications including signal compression and denoising and document analysis. In this paper, sparse decomposition is used for image segmentation. The proposed algorithm separates the background and foreground using a sparse-smooth decomposition technique such that the smooth and sparse components correspond to the background and foreground respectively. This algorithm is tested on several test images from HEVC test sequences and is shown to have superior performance over other methods, such as the hierarchical k-means clustering in DjVu. This segmentation algorithm can also be used for text extraction, video compression and medical image segmentation.

preprint2015arXiv

Shrinkage degree in $L_2$-re-scale boosting for regression

Re-scale boosting (RBoosting) is a variant of boosting which can essentially improve the generalization performance of boosting learning. The key feature of RBoosting lies in introducing a shrinkage degree to re-scale the ensemble estimate in each gradient-descent step. Thus, the shrinkage degree determines the performance of RBoosting. The aim of this paper is to develop a concrete analysis concerning how to determine the shrinkage degree in $L_2$-RBoosting. We propose two feasible ways to select the shrinkage degree. The first one is to parameterize the shrinkage degree and the other one is to develope a data-driven approach of it. After rigorously analyzing the importance of the shrinkage degree in $L_2$-RBoosting learning, we compare the pros and cons of the proposed methods. We find that although these approaches can reach the same learning rates, the structure of the final estimate of the parameterized approach is better, which sometimes yields a better generalization capability when the number of sample is finite. With this, we recommend to parameterize the shrinkage degree of $L_2$-RBoosting. To this end, we present an adaptive parameter-selection strategy for shrinkage degree and verify its feasibility through both theoretical analysis and numerical verification. The obtained results enhance the understanding of RBoosting and further give guidance on how to use $L_2$-RBoosting for regression tasks.

preprint2015arXiv

Using RIXS to uncover elementary charge and spin excitations in correlated materials

Despite significant progress in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments on cuprates at the Cu L-edge, a theoretical understanding of the cross-section remains incomplete in terms of elementary excitations and the connection to both charge and spin structure factors. Here we use state-of-the-art, unbiased numerical calculations to study the low energy excitations probed by RIXS in undoped and doped Hubbard model relevant to the cuprates. The results highlight the importance of scattering geometry, in particular both the incident and scattered x-ray photon polarization, and demonstrate that on a qualitative level the RIXS spectral shape in the cross-polarized channel approximates that of the spin dynamical structure factor. However, in the parallel-polarized channel the complexity of the RIXS process beyond a simple two-particle response complicates the analysis, and demonstrates that approximations and expansions which attempt to relate RIXS to less complex correlation functions can not reproduce the full diversity of RIXS spectral features.

preprint2014arXiv

$L_{1/2}$ Regularization: Convergence of Iterative Half Thresholding Algorithm

In recent studies on sparse modeling, the nonconvex regularization approaches (particularly, $L_{q}$ regularization with $q\in(0,1)$) have been demonstrated to possess capability of gaining much benefit in sparsity-inducing and efficiency. As compared with the convex regularization approaches (say, $L_{1}$ regularization), however, the convergence issue of the corresponding algorithms are more difficult to tackle. In this paper, we deal with this difficult issue for a specific but typical nonconvex regularization scheme, the $L_{1/2}$ regularization, which has been successfully used to many applications. More specifically, we study the convergence of the iterative \textit{half} thresholding algorithm (the \textit{half} algorithm for short), one of the most efficient and important algorithms for solution to the $L_{1/2}$ regularization. As the main result, we show that under certain conditions, the \textit{half} algorithm converges to a local minimizer of the $L_{1/2}$ regularization, with an eventually linear convergence rate. The established result provides a theoretical guarantee for a wide range of applications of the \textit{half} algorithm. We provide also a set of simulations to support the correctness of theoretical assertions and compare the time efficiency of the \textit{half} algorithm with other known typical algorithms for $L_{1/2}$ regularization like the iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm and the iteratively reweighted $l_{1}$ minimization (IRL1) algorithm.

preprint2014arXiv

A Novel No-reference Video Quality Metric for Evaluating Temporal Jerkiness due to Frame Freezing

In this work, we propose a novel no-reference (NR) video quality metric that evaluates the impact of frame freezing due to either packet loss or late arrival. Our metric uses a trained neural network acting on features that are chosen to capture the impact of frame freezing on the perceived quality. The considered features include the number of freezes, freeze duration statistics, inter-freeze distance statistics, frame difference before and after the freeze, normal frame difference, and the ratio of them. We use the neural network to find the mapping between features and subjective test scores. We optimize the network structure and the feature selection through a cross validation procedure, using training samples extracted from both VQEG and LIVE video databases. The resulting feature set and network structure yields accurate quality prediction for both the training data containing 54 test videos and a separate testing dataset including 14 videos, with Pearson Correlation Coefficients greater than 0.9 and 0.8 for the training set and the testing set, respectively. Our proposed metric has low complexity and could be utilized in a system with realtime processing constraint.

preprint2014arXiv

Perceptual Quality of Video with Periodic Frame Rate and Quantization Variation-Subjective Studies and Analytical Modeling

In networked video applications, the frame rate (FR) and quantization stepsize (QS) of a compressed video are often adapted in response to the changes of the available bandwidth. It is important to understand how do the variation of FR and QS and their variation pattern affect the video quality. In this paper, we investigate the impact of temporal variation of FR and QS on the perceptual video quality. Among all possible variation patterns, we focus on videos in which two FR's (or QS's) alternate over a fixed interval. We explore the human responses to such variation by conducting subjective evaluation of test videos with different variation magnitudes and frequencies. We further analyze statistical significance of the impact of variation magnitude, variation frequency, video content, and their interactions. By analyzing the subjective ratings, we propose two models for predicting the quality of video with alternating FR and QS, respectively, The proposed models have simple mathematical forms with a few content-dependent parameters. The models fit the measured data very well using parameters determined by least square fitting with the measured data. We further propose some guidelines for adaptation of FR and QS based on trends observed from subjective test results.

preprint2014arXiv

Real-Space Visualization of Remnant Mott Gap and Magnon Excitations

We demonstrate the ability to visualize real-space dynamics of charge gap and magnon excitations in the Mott phase of the single-band Hubbard model and the remnants of these excitations with hole or electron doping. At short times, the character of magnetic and charge excitations is maintained even for large doping away from the Mott and antiferromagnetic phases. Doping influences both the real-space patterns and long timescales of these excitations with a clear carrier asymmetry attributable to particle-hole symmetry breaking in the underlying model. Further, a rapidly-oscillating charge density wave-like pattern weakens, but persists as a visible demonstration of a sub-leading instability at half-filling which remains upon doping. The results offer an approach to analyzing the behavior of systems where momentum-space is either inaccessible or poorly defined.

preprint2014arXiv

Wireless Video Multicast with Cooperative and Incremental Transmission of Parity Packets

In this paper, a cooperative multicast scheme that uses Randomized Distributed Space Time Codes (R-DSTC), along with packet level Forward Error Correction (FEC), is studied. Instead of sending source packets and/or parity packets through two hops using R-DSTC as proposed in our prior work, the new scheme delivers both source packets and parity packets using only one hop. After the source station (access point, AP) first sends all the source packets, the AP as well as all nodes that have received all source packets together send the parity packets using R-DSTC. As more parity packets are transmitted, more nodes can recover all source packets and join the parity packet transmission. The process continues until all nodes acknowledge the receipt of enough packets for recovering the source packets. For each given node distribution, the optimum transmission rates for source and parity packets are determined such that the video rate that can be sustained at all nodes is maximized. This new scheme can support significantly higher video rates, and correspondingly higher PSNR of decoded video, than the prior approaches. Three suboptimal approaches, which do not require full information about user distribution or the feedback, and hence are more feasible in practice are also presented. The proposed suboptimal scheme with only the node count information and without feedback still outperforms our prior approach that assumes full channel information and no feedback.

preprint2013arXiv

Coupled Mesoscale-Large-Eddy Modeling of Realistic Stable Boundary Layer Turbulence

Site-specific flow and turbulence information are needed for various practical applications, ranging from aerodynamic/aeroelastic modeling for wind turbine design to optical diffraction calculations. Even though highly desirable, collecting on-site meteorological measurements can be an expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes a challenging task. In this work, we propose a coupled mesoscale-large-eddy modeling framework to synthetically generate site-specific flow and turbulence data. The workhorses behind our framework are a state-of-the-art, open-source atmospheric model called the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and a tuning-free large-eddy simulation (LES) model. Using this coupled framework, we simulate a nighttime stable boundary layer (SBL) case from the well-known CASES-99 field campaign. One of the unique aspects of this work is the usage of a diverse range of observations for characterization and validation. The coupled models reproduce certain characteristics of observed low-level jets. They also capture various scaling regimes of energy spectra, including the so-called spectral gap. However, the coupled models are unable to capture the intermittent nature of the observed surface fluxes. Lastly, we document and discuss: (i) the tremendous spatio-temporal variabilities of observed and modeled SBL flow fields, and (ii) the significant disagreements among different observational platforms. Based on these results, we strongly recommend that future SBL modeling studies consider rigorous validation exercises based on multi-sensor/multi-platform datasets. In summary, we believe that the numerical generation of realistic SBL is not an impossible task. Without any doubt, there remain several computational and fundamental challenges. The present work should be viewed as a first step to confront some of these challenges.

preprint2012arXiv

Compressed Sensing for Moving Imagery in Medical Imaging

Numerous applications in signal processing have benefited from the theory of compressed sensing which shows that it is possible to reconstruct signals sampled below the Nyquist rate when certain conditions are satisfied. One of these conditions is that there exists a known transform that represents the signal with a sufficiently small number of non-zero coefficients. However when the signal to be reconstructed is composed of moving images or volumes, it is challenging to form such regularization constraints with traditional transforms such as wavelets. In this paper, we present a motion compensating prior for such signals that is derived directly from the optical flow constraint and can utilize the motion information during compressed sensing reconstruction. Proposed regularization method can be used in a wide variety of applications involving compressed sensing and images or volumes of moving and deforming objects. It is also shown that it is possible to estimate the signal and the motion jointly or separately. Practical examples from magnetic resonance imaging has been presented to demonstrate the benefit of the proposed method.

preprint2012arXiv

High Speed Compressed Sensing Reconstruction in Dynamic Parallel MRI Using Augmented Lagrangian and Parallel Processing

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is one of the fields that the compressed sensing theory is well utilized to reduce the scan time significantly leading to faster imaging or higher resolution images. It has been shown that a small fraction of the overall measurements are sufficient to reconstruct images with the combination of compressed sensing and parallel imaging. Various reconstruction algorithms has been proposed for compressed sensing, among which Augmented Lagrangian based methods have been shown to often perform better than others for many different applications. In this paper, we propose new Augmented Lagrangian based solutions to the compressed sensing reconstruction problem with analysis and synthesis prior formulations. We also propose a computational method which makes use of properties of the sampling pattern to significantly improve the speed of the reconstruction for the proposed algorithms in Cartesian sampled MRI. The proposed algorithms are shown to outperform earlier methods especially for the case of dynamic MRI for which the transfer function tends to be a very large matrix and significantly ill conditioned. It is also demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can be accelerated much further than other methods in case of a parallel implementation with graphics processing units (GPUs).

preprint2012arXiv

Two-way Wireless Video Communication using Randomized Cooperation, Network Coding and Packet Level FEC

Two-way real-time video communication in wireless networks requires high bandwidth, low delay and error resiliency. This paper addresses these demands by proposing a system with the integration of Network Coding (NC), user cooperation using Randomized Distributed Space-time Coding (R-DSTC) and packet level Forward Error Correction (FEC) under a one-way delay constraint. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms both conventional direct transmission as well as R-DSTC based two-way cooperative transmission, and is most effective when the distance between the users is large.

preprint2010arXiv

Stationary state solutions for a gently stochastic nonlinear wave equation with ultraviolet cutoffs

We consider a non-linear, one-dimensional wave equation system with finite-dimensional stochastic driving terms and with weak dissipation. A stationary process that solves the system is used to model steady-state non-equilibrium heat flow through a non-linear medium. We show existence and uniqueness of invariant measures for the system modified with ultraviolet cutoffs, and we obtain estimates for the field covariances with respect to these measures, estimates that are uniform in the cutoffs. Finally, we discuss the limit of these measures as the ultraviolet cutoffs are removed.