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Published work

66 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Semia: Auditing Agent Skills via Constraint-Guided Representation Synthesis

An agent skill is a configuration package that equips an LLM-driven agent with a concrete capability, such as reading email, executing shell commands, or signing blockchain transactions. Each skill is a hybrid artifact-a structured half declares executable interfaces, while a prose half dictates when and how those interfaces fire-and the prose is reinterpreted probabilistically on every invocation. Conventional static analyzers parse the structured half but ignore the prose; LLM-based tools read the prose but cannot reproducibly prove that a tainted input reaches a high-impact sink. We present Semia, a static auditor for agent skills. Semia lifts each skill into the Skill Description Language (SDL), a Datalog fact base that captures LLM-triggered actions, prose-defined conditions, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints. Synthesizing a fact base that is both structurally sound and semantically faithful to the original prose is the central challenge; we address it with Constraint-Guided Representation Synthesis (CGRS), a propose-verify-evaluate loop that refines LLM candidates until convergence. Security properties (e.g., indirect injection, secret leakage, confused deputies, unguarded sinks, etc.) over an agent skill can then be reduced to Datalog reachability queries. We evaluate Semia on 13,728 real-world skills from public marketplaces. Semia renders all of them auditable and finds that more than half carry at least one critical semantic risk. On a stratified sample of 541 expert-labeled skills, Semia achieves 97.7% recall and an F1 of 90.6%, substantially outperforming signature-based scanners and LLM baselines.

preprint2024arXiv

Reconfigurable Three-Dimensional Thermal Dome

Thermal metamaterial represents a groundbreaking approach to control heat conduction, and, as a crucial component, thermal invisibility is of utmost importance for heat management. Despite the flourishing development of thermal invisibility schemes, they still face two limitations in practical applications. First, objects are typically completely enclosed in traditional cloaks, making them difficult to use and unsuitable for objects with heat sources. Second, although some theoretical proposals have been put forth to change the thermal conductivity of materials to achieve dynamic invisibility, their designs are complex and rigid, making them unsuitable for large-scale use in real three-dimensional spaces. Here, we propose a concept of a thermal dome to achieve three-dimensional invisibility. Our scheme includes an open functional area, greatly enhancing its usability and applicability. It features a reconfigurable structure, constructed with simple isotropic natural materials, making it suitable for dynamic requirements. The performance of our reconfigurable thermal dome has been confirmed through simulations and experiments, consistent with the theory. The introduction of this concept can greatly advance the development of thermal invisibility technology from theory to engineering and provide inspiration for other physical domains, such as direct current electric fields and magnetic fields.

preprint2023arXiv

Error-Mitigated Quantum Simulation of Interacting Fermions with Trapped Ions

Quantum error mitigation has been extensively explored to increase the accuracy of the quantum circuits in noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum (NISQ) computation, where quantum error correction requiring additional quantum resources is not adopted. Among various error-mitigation schemes, probabilistic error cancellation (PEC) has been proposed as a general and systematic protocol that can be applied to numerous hardware platforms and quantum algorithms. However, PEC has only been tested in two-qubit systems and a superconducting multi-qubit system by learning a sparse error model. Here, we benchmark PEC using up to four trapped-ion qubits. For the benchmark, we simulate the dynamics of interacting fermions with or without spins by applying multiple Trotter steps. By tomographically reconstructing the error model and incorporating other mitigation methods such as positive probability and symmetry constraints, we are able to increase the fidelity of simulation and faithfully observe the dynamics of the Fermi-Hubbard model, including the different behavior of charge and spin of fermions. Our demonstrations can be an essential step for further extending systematic error-mitigation schemes toward practical quantum advantages.

preprint2023arXiv

Missing data imputation for a multivariate outcome of mixed variable types

Data collected in clinical trials are often composed of multiple types of variables. For example, laboratory measurements and vital signs are longitudinal data of continuous or categorical variables, adverse events may be recurrent events, and death is a time-to-event variable. Missing data due to patients' discontinuation from the study or as a result of handling intercurrent events using a hypothetical strategy almost always occur during any clinical trial. Imputing these data with mixed types of variables simultaneously is a challenge that has not been studied extensively. In this article, we propose using an approximate fully conditional specification to impute the missing data. Simulation shows the proposed method provides satisfactory results under the assumption of missing at random. Finally, real data from a clinical trial evaluating treatments for diabetes are analyzed to illustrate the potential benefit of the proposed method.

preprint2022arXiv

Accelerated quantum Monte Carlo with mitigated error on noisy quantum computer

Quantum Monte Carlo and quantum simulation are both important tools for understanding quantum many-body systems. As a classical algorithm, quantum Monte Carlo suffers from the sign problem, preventing its application to most fermion systems and real time dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a novel non-variational algorithm using quantum simulation as a subroutine to accelerate quantum Monte Carlo by easing the sign problem. The quantum subroutine can be implemented with shallow circuits and, by incorporating error mitigation, can reduce the Monte Carlo variance by several orders of magnitude even when the circuit noise is significant. As such, the proposed quantum algorithm is applicable to near-term noisy quantum hardware.

preprint2022arXiv

Analytics and Machine Learning Powered Wireless Network Optimization and Planning

It is important that the wireless network is well optimized and planned, using the limited wireless spectrum resources, to serve the explosively growing traffic and diverse applications needs of end users. Considering the challenges of dynamics and complexity of the wireless systems, and the scale of the networks, it is desirable to have solutions to automatically monitor, analyze, optimize, and plan the network. This article discusses approaches and solutions of data analytics and machine learning powered optimization and planning. The approaches include analyzing some important metrics of performances and experiences, at the lower layers and upper layers of open systems interconnection (OSI) model, as well as deriving a metric of the end user perceived network congestion indicator. The approaches include monitoring and diagnosis such as anomaly detection of the metrics, root cause analysis for poor performances and experiences. The approaches include enabling network optimization with tuning recommendations, directly targeting to optimize the end users experiences, via sensitivity modeling and analysis of the upper layer metrics of the end users experiences v.s. the improvement of the lower layers metrics due to tuning the hardware configurations. The approaches also include deriving predictive metrics for network planning, traffic demand distributions and trends, detection and prediction of the suppressed traffic demand, and the incentives of traffic gains if the network is upgraded. These approaches of optimization and planning are for accurate detection of optimization and upgrading opportunities at a large scale, enabling more effective optimization and planning such as tuning cells configurations, upgrading cells capacity with more advanced technologies or new hardware, adding more cells, etc., improving the network performances and providing better experiences to end users.

preprint2022arXiv

Asymmetric Heat Transfer with Linear Conductive Metamaterials

Asymmetric heat transfer systems, often referred to as thermal diodes or thermal rectifiers, have garnered increasing interest due to their wide range of application possibilities. Most of those previous macroscopic thermal diodes either resort to nonlinear thermal conductivities with strong temperature dependence that may be quite limited by or fixed in natural materials or rely on active modulation that necessitated auxiliary energy payloads. Here, we establish a straightforward strategy of passively realizing asymmetric heat transfer with linear conductive materials. The strategy also introduces a new interrogative perspective on the design of asymmetric heat transfer utilizing nonlinear thermal conductivity, correcting the misconception that thermal rectification is impossible with separable nonlinear thermal conductivity. The nonlinear perturbation mode can be versatilely engineered to produce an effective and wide-ranging perturbation in the heat conduction, which imitates and bypasses intrinsic thermal nonlinearity constraints set by naturally occurring counterparts. Independent experimental characterizations of surface thermal radiation and thermal convection verified that the heat exchange between a graded linear thermal metamaterial and the ambient can be tailored to achieve macroscopic asymmetric heat transfer. Our work is envisaged to inspire conceptual models for heat transfer control, serving as a robust and convenient platform for advanced thermal management, thermal computation, and heat transport.

preprint2022arXiv

Capacity Optimal Coded Generalized MU-MIMO

With the complication of future communication scenarios, most conventional signal processing technologies of multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) become unreliable, which are designed based on ideal assumptions, such as Gaussian signaling and independent identically distributed (IID) channel matrices. As a result, this paper considers a generalized MU-MIMO (GMU-MIMO) system with more general assumptions, i.e., arbitrarily fixed input distributions, and general unitarily-invariant channel matrices. However, there is still no accurate capacity analysis and capacity optimal transceiver with practical complexity for GMU-MIMO under the constraint of coding. To address these issues, inspired by the replica method, the constrained sum capacity of coded GMU-MIMO with fixed input distribution is calculated by using the celebrated mutual information and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) lemma and the MMSE optimality of orthogonal/vector approximate message passing (OAMP/VAMP). Then, a capacity optimal multiuser OAMP/VAMP receiver is proposed, whose achievable rate is proved to be equal to the constrained sum capacity. Moreover, a design principle of multi-user codes is presented for the multiuser OAMP/VAMP, based on which a kind of practical multi-user low-density parity-check (MU-LDPC) code is designed. Numerical results show that finite-length performances of the proposed MU-LDPC codes with multi-user OAMP/VAMP are about 2 dB away from the constrained sum capacity and outperform those of the existing state-of-art methods.

preprint2022arXiv

Charmless Quasi-two-body $B$ Decays in Perturbative QCD Approach: Taking $B\to K({\cal R}\to) K^+K^-$ As Examples

Three-body $B$ decays not only significantly broaden the study of $B$ meson decay mechanisms, but also provide information of resonant particles. Because of complicate dynamics, it is very hard for us to study the whole phase space in a specific approach. In this review, we take $B\to K({\cal R}\to) K^+K^-$ decays as examples and show the application of the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach in studying the quasi-two-body $B$ decays, where two particles move collinearly with large energy and the bachelor one recoils back. To describe the dynamics of two collinear particles, the ($S$, $P$ and $D$)-wave functions of kaon-pair with different waves are introduced. By keeping the transverse momenta, all possible diagrams including the hard spectator diagrams and annihilation ones can be calculated in PQCD approach. Most results are well consistent with the current measurements from BaBar, Belle and LHCb experiments. Moreover, under the narrow-width approximation we can extract the branching fractions of the two-body decays involving the resonant states, and also predict the branching fractions of the corresponding quasi-two-body decays $B\to K(\cal{R}\to )π^+π^-$. All prediction are expected to be tested in the ongoing LHCb and Belle-II experiments.

preprint2022arXiv

Correlating Gravitational Waves with $W$-boson Mass, FIMP Dark Matter, and Majorana Seesaw Mechanism

We study a minimal extension of the Standard Model by introducing three right-handed neutrinos and a new scotogenic scalar doublet, in which the mass splittings between neutral and charged components are responsible for the $W$-boson mass newly measured by the CDF collaboration. This model can not only generate non-vanishing Majorana neutrino masses via the interaction of right-handed neutrinos and scotogenic scalars, but also explain the Universe's missing matter in the form of FIMP dark matter. We also study the influence of the mass splitting on the first order electroweak phase transition, and find that it can further enhance the transition strength and thus induce gravitational waves during the phase transition, which may be detected in the forthcoming detectors such as U-DECIGO.

preprint2022arXiv

Decoupled Multi-task Learning with Cyclical Self-Regulation for Face Parsing

This paper probes intrinsic factors behind typical failure cases (e.g. spatial inconsistency and boundary confusion) produced by the existing state-of-the-art method in face parsing. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel Decoupled Multi-task Learning with Cyclical Self-Regulation (DML-CSR) for face parsing. Specifically, DML-CSR designs a multi-task model which comprises face parsing, binary edge, and category edge detection. These tasks only share low-level encoder weights without high-level interactions between each other, enabling to decouple auxiliary modules from the whole network at the inference stage. To address spatial inconsistency, we develop a dynamic dual graph convolutional network to capture global contextual information without using any extra pooling operation. To handle boundary confusion in both single and multiple face scenarios, we exploit binary and category edge detection to jointly obtain generic geometric structure and fine-grained semantic clues of human faces. Besides, to prevent noisy labels from degrading model generalization during training, cyclical self-regulation is proposed to self-ensemble several model instances to get a new model and the resulting model then is used to self-distill subsequent models, through alternating iterations. Experiments show that our method achieves the new state-of-the-art performance on the Helen, CelebAMask-HQ, and Lapa datasets. The source code is available at https://github.com/deepinsight/insightface/tree/master/parsing/dml_csr.

preprint2022arXiv

Effects from Hadronic Structure of Photon on $B\toϕγ$ and $B_s\to(ρ^0,ω)γ$ Decays

Using the perturbative QCD approach, we studied the effects from hadronic structure of photon on the pure annihilation rediative decays $B\toϕγ$ and $B_s\to(ρ^0,ω)γ$. These decays have small branching fractions due to the power suppression by the $Λ/m_B$, which make them very sensitive to the next-leading power corrections. The quark components and the related two-particle distribution amplitudes of a final state photon are introduced. The branching fractions can be enhanced remarkably by the factorizable and nonfactorizable emission diagrams. The branching fraction of $B\to ϕγ$ even increases by about 40 times, and those of $B_s \to ρ^0γ$ and $B_s \to ωγ$ are at the order of ${\cal O}(10^{-10})$. We also note that the ratio of branching fractions of $B_s \to ρ^0γ$ and $B_s \to ωγ$ is very sensitive to the effects from hadronic structure of photon. All above results could be tested in future.

preprint2022arXiv

Electronic and magnetic properties of the RuX$_3$ (X=Cl, Br, I) family: Two siblings -- and a cousin?

Motivated by recent reports of metallic behavior in the recently synthesized RuI$_3$, in contrast to the Mott-insulating nature of the actively discussed $α$-RuCl$_3$, as well as RuBr$_3$, we present a detailed comparative analysis of the electronic and magnetic properties of this family of trihalides. Using a combination of first-principles calculations and effective-model considerations, we conclude that RuI$_3$, similarly to the other two members, is most probably on the verge of a Mott insulator, but with much smaller magnetic moments and a strong magnetic frustration. We predict the ideal pristine crystal of RuI$_3$ to have a nearly vanishing conventional nearest-neighbor Heisenberg interaction and to be a quantum spin liquid candidate of possibly different kind than the Kitaev spin liquid. In order to understand the apparent contradiction to the reported resistivity $ρ$, we analyze the experimental evidence for all three compounds and propose a scenario for the observed metallicity in existing samples of RuI$_3$. Furthermore, for the Mott insulator RuBr$_3$ we obtain a magnetic Hamiltonian of a similar form to that in the much discussed $α$-RuCl$_3$ and show that this Hamiltonian is in agreement with experimental evidence in RuBr$_3$.

preprint2022arXiv

Multi-Center Magnon Excitations Open the Entire Brillouin Zone to Terahertz Magnetometry of Quantum Magnets

Due to the small photon momentum, optical spectroscopy commonly probes magnetic excitations only at the center of the Brillouin zone; however, there are ways to override this restriction. In the case of the distorted kagome quantum magnet Y-kapellasite, Y$_3$Cu$_9$(OH)$_{19}$Cl$_8$, under scrutiny here, the magnon density of states can be accessed over the entire Brillouin zone through three-center magnon excitations. This mechanism is aided by the three different magnetic sublattices and strong short-range correlations in the distorted kagome lattice. The results of THz time-domain experiments agree remarkably well with linear spin-wave theory. Relaxing the conventional zone-center constraint of photons gives a new aspect to probe magnetism in matter.

preprint2022arXiv

Quantifying Community Evolution in Developer Social Networks: Proof of Indices' Properties

The document provides the proof to properties of community evolution indices including community split and shrink in paper: Liang Wang, Ying Li, Jierui Zhang, and Xianping Tao. 2022. Quantifying Community Evolution in Developer Social Networks. In Proceedings of the30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposiumon the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 22), November 14 - 18, 2022, Singapore, Singapore. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages. Proof to properties of community merge and expand is similar.

preprint2022arXiv

Quantitative Analysis of Community Evolution in Developer Social Networks Around Open Source Software Projects

Understanding the evolution of communities in developer social networks (DSNs) around open source software (OSS) projects can provide valuable insights about the socio-technical process of OSS development. Existing studies show the evolutionary behaviors of social communities can effectively be described using patterns including split, shrink, merge, expand, emerge, and extinct. However, existing pattern-based approaches are limited in supporting quantitative analysis, and are potentially problematic for using the patterns in a mutually exclusive manner when describing community evolution. In this work, we propose that different patterns can occur simultaneously between every pair of communities during the evolution, just in different degrees. Four entropy-based indices are devised to measure the degree of community split, shrink, merge, and expand, respectively, which can provide a comprehensive and quantitative measure of community evolution in DSNs. The indices have properties desirable to quantify community evolution including monotonicity, and bounded maximum and minimum values that correspond to meaningful cases. They can also be combined to describe more patterns such as community emerge and extinct. We conduct experiments with real-world OSS projects to evaluate the validity of the proposed indices. The results suggest the proposed indices can effectively capture community evolution, and are consistent with existing approaches in detecting evolution patterns in DSNs with an accuracy of 94.1\%. The results also show that the indices are useful in predicting OSS team productivity with an accuracy of 0.718. In summary, the proposed approach is among the first to quantify the degree of community evolution with respect to different patterns, which is promising in supporting future research and applications about DSNs and OSS development.

preprint2022arXiv

Role of disorder in the electronic and magnetic properties of Ag$_3$LiIr$_2$O$_6$

The nature of magnetism in the intercalated honeycomb iridate Ag$_3$LiIr$_2$O$_6$ has been a subject of recent intensive debate, where the absence or presence of antiferromagnetic order has been reported to be related to possible structural disorder effects and, an enhanced Ir-O hybridization and itinerancy with respect to the parent Li$_2$IrO$_3$ has been suggested as the origin of distinct x-ray spectroscopy features. In the present work we investigate the microscopic nature of the electronic and magnetic properties of Ag$_3$LiIr$_2$O$_6$ via a combination of density functional theory combined with exact diagonalization of ab initio-derived models for various experimental and theoretical structures. We evaluate two possible scenarios, the itinerant quasimolecular framework (QMO) on the one hand, and the localized relativistic $j_{\rm eff} = 1/2$ and $j_{\rm eff} = 3/2$ picture on the other hand, and find that the latter description is still viable for this system. We further calculate resonant inelastic x-ray scattering spectra and show that agreement with experimental observations can be obtained if the presence of Ag vacancies leading to changes in Ir filling and structural disorder is assumed. Finally, we show that the experimentally observed antiferromagnetic spiral magnetic order is reproduced by our ab-initio derived magnetic models.

preprint2022arXiv

Swin-Pose: Swin Transformer Based Human Pose Estimation

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely utilized in many computer vision tasks. However, CNNs have a fixed reception field and lack the ability of long-range perception, which is crucial to human pose estimation. Due to its capability to capture long-range dependencies between pixels, transformer architecture has been adopted to computer vision applications recently and is proven to be a highly effective architecture. We are interested in exploring its capability in human pose estimation, and thus propose a novel model based on transformer architecture, enhanced with a feature pyramid fusion structure. More specifically, we use pre-trained Swin Transformer as our backbone and extract features from input images, we leverage a feature pyramid structure to extract feature maps from different stages. By fusing the features together, our model predicts the keypoint heatmap. The experiment results of our study have demonstrated that the proposed transformer-based model can achieve better performance compared to the state-of-the-art CNN-based models.

preprint2022arXiv

Systematic assessment of the effects of space averaging and time averaging on weather forecast skill

Intuitively, one would expect a more skillful forecast if predicting weather averaged over one week instead of the weather averaged over one day, and similarly for different spatial averaging areas. However, there are few systematic studies of averaging and forecast skill with modern forecasts, and it is therefore not clear how much improvement in forecast performance is produced via averaging. Here we present a direct investigation of averaging effects, based on data from operational numerical weather forecasts. Data is analyzed for precipitation and surface temperature, for lead times of roughly 1 to 7 days, and for time- and space-averaging diameters of 1 to 7 days and 100 to 4500 km, respectively. For different geographic locations, the effects of time- or space-averaging can be different, and while no clear geographical pattern is seen for precipitation, a clear spatial pattern is seen for temperature. For temperature, in general, time averaging is most effective near coastlines, also effective over land, and least effective over oceans. Based on all locations globally, time averaging was less effective than one might expect. To help understand why time averaging may sometimes be minimally effective, a stochastic model is analyzed as a synthetic weather time series, and analytical formulas are presented for the decorrelation time. In effect, while time averaging creates a time series that is visually smoother, it does not necessarily cause a substantial increase in the predictability of the time series.

preprint2022arXiv

The Existence of Graph whose Vertex Set Can be Partitioned into a Fixed Number of Domination Strong Critical Vertex-sets

Let $γ(G)$ denote the domination number of a graph $G$. A vertex $v\in V(G)$ is called a \emph{critical vertex} of $G$ if $γ(G-v)=γ(G)-1$. A graph is called \emph{vertex-critical} if every vertex of it is critical. In this paper, we correspondingly introduce two such definitions: (i) a set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is called a \emph{strong critical vertex-set} of $G$ if $γ(G-S)=γ(G)-|S|$; (ii) a graph $G$ is called \emph{strong $l$-vertex-sets-critical} if $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $l$ strong critical vertex-sets of $G$. Whereafter, we give some properties of strong $l$-vertex-sets-critical graphs by extending the previous results of vertex-critical graphs. As the core work, we study on the existence of this class of graphs and obtain that there exists a strong $l$-vertex-sets-critical connected graph if and only if $l\notin\{2,3,5\}$.

preprint2022arXiv

Understanding the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Transportation-related Behaviors with Human Mobility Data

The constrained outbreak of COVID-19 in Mainland China has recently been regarded as a successful example of fighting this highly contagious virus. Both the short period (in about three months) of transmission and the sub-exponential increase of confirmed cases in Mainland China have proved that the Chinese authorities took effective epidemic prevention measures, such as case isolation, travel restrictions, closing recreational venues, and banning public gatherings. These measures can, of course, effectively control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, they may dramatically change the human mobility patterns, such as the daily transportation-related behaviors of the public. To better understand the impact of COVID-19 on transportation-related behaviors and to provide more targeted anti-epidemic measures, we use the huge amount of human mobility data collected from Baidu Maps, a widely-used Web mapping service in China, to look into the detail reaction of the people there during the pandemic. To be specific, we conduct data-driven analysis on transportation-related behaviors during the pandemic from the perspectives of 1) means of transportation, 2) type of visited venues, 3) check-in time of venues, 4) preference on "origin-destination" distance, and 5) "origin-transportation-destination" patterns. For each topic, we also give our specific insights and policy-making suggestions. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, infecting millions of people, the insights and suggestions provided here may help fight COVID-19.

preprint2021arXiv

3D-ANAS: 3D Asymmetric Neural Architecture Search for Fast Hyperspectral Image Classification

Hyperspectral images involve abundant spectral and spatial information, playing an irreplaceable role in land-cover classification. Recently, based on deep learning technologies, an increasing number of HSI classification approaches have been proposed, which demonstrate promising performance. However, previous studies suffer from two major drawbacks: 1) the architecture of most deep learning models is manually designed, relies on specialized knowledge, and is relatively tedious. Moreover, in HSI classifications, datasets captured by different sensors have different physical properties. Correspondingly, different models need to be designed for different datasets, which further increases the workload of designing architectures; 2) the mainstream framework is a patch-to-pixel framework. The overlap regions of patches of adjacent pixels are calculated repeatedly, which increases computational cost and time cost. Besides, the classification accuracy is sensitive to the patch size, which is artificially set based on extensive investigation experiments. To overcome the issues mentioned above, we firstly propose a 3D asymmetric neural network search algorithm and leverage it to automatically search for efficient architectures for HSI classifications. By analysing the characteristics of HSIs, we specifically build a 3D asymmetric decomposition search space, where spectral and spatial information are processed with different decomposition convolutions. Furthermore, we propose a new fast classification framework, i,e., pixel-to-pixel classification framework, which has no repetitive operations and reduces the overall cost. Experiments on three public HSI datasets captured by different sensors demonstrate the networks designed by our 3D-ANAS achieve competitive performance compared to several state-of-the-art methods, while having a much faster inference speed.

preprint2021arXiv

A Histogram Thresholding Improvement to Mask R-CNN for Scalable Segmentation of New and Old Rural Buildings

Mapping new and old buildings are of great significance for understanding socio-economic development in rural areas. In recent years, deep neural networks have achieved remarkable building segmentation results in high-resolution remote sensing images. However, the scarce training data and the varying geographical environments have posed challenges for scalable building segmentation. This study proposes a novel framework based on Mask R-CNN, named HTMask R-CNN, to extract new and old rural buildings even when the label is scarce. The framework adopts the result of single-object instance segmentation from the orthodox Mask R-CNN. Further, it classifies the rural buildings into new and old ones based on a dynamic grayscale threshold inferred from the result of a two-object instance segmentation task where training data is scarce. We found that the framework can extract more buildings and achieve a much higher mean Average Precision (mAP) than the orthodox Mask R-CNN model. We tested the novel framework's performance with increasing training data and found that it converged even when the training samples were limited. This framework's main contribution is to allow scalable segmentation by using significantly fewer training samples than traditional machine learning practices. That makes mapping China's new and old rural buildings viable.

preprint2021arXiv

Charmless $B_s\to V S$ Decays in PQCD Approach

In this work, we investigate the $B_s\to V S$ decays in the perturbative QCD approach, where $V$ and $S$ denote the vector meson and scalar meson respectively. Based on the two-quark structure, considering two different scenarios for describing the scalar mesons, we calculate the branching fractions and the direct $CP$ asymmetries of all $B_s\to VS$ decays. Most branching fractions are predicted to be at $10^{-7}$ to $10^{-5}$, which could be measured in the LHCb and Belle-II experiments, especially for these color-allowed $B_s\to κ(800)(K_0^*(1430))K^*$ decays. It is found that the branching fractions of $B_s\to K_0^{*0}(1430)\bar{K}^{*0}$ and $B_s\to K_0^{*+}(1430)\bar{K}^{*-}$ are very sensitive to the scenarios, which can be used to determine whether $K_0^{*0}(1430)$ belongs to the ground state or the first excited state, if the data were available. We also note that some decays have large direct $CP$ asymmetries, some of which are also sensitive to the scenarios, such as the $B_s \to a_0^+(1450)K^{*-}$ and the $B_s\to f_0(1500) K^{*0}$ decays. Since the experimental measurements of $B_s\to VS$ decays are on the way, combined with the available data in the future, we expect the theoretical predictions will shed light on the structure of the scalar mesons.

preprint2021arXiv

Dual-state purification for practical quantum error mitigation

Quantum error mitigation is essential for computing on the noisy quantum computer with a limited number of qubits. In this paper, we propose a practical protocol of error mitigation by virtually purifying the quantum state without qubit overhead or requiring only one ancillary qubit. In dual-state purification, we effectively generate a purified state with increased fidelity using the erroneous state and its dual state, respectively, prepared with the noisy quantum circuit and the dual map of its inverse circuit. Combined with tomography purification, we can make sure that the final estimate of an observable is obtained from a pure state. The numerical result suggests that our protocol reduces the error by a rescaling factor decreasing with the qubit number and circuit depth, i.e. the performance of purification is better for larger circuits. On a cloud quantum computer, we successfully demonstrate the reduced error with a quantum variational eigensolver circuit.

preprint2021arXiv

Is $f_X(1500)$ observed in the $B\to π(K)KK$ decays $ρ^0(1450)$?

We suggest that the uncertain state $f_X(1500)$ observed by Belle and BaBar more than a decade ago, which has been viewed as a single scalar or a combination of several even spin resonances, is the vector $ρ^0(1450)$ reported recently by LHCb. Adopting the perturbative QCD approach, we determine the di-kaon distribution amplitudes with the $ρ^0(1450)$ resonance from the LHCb data for the quasi-two-body decays $B^{\pm}\to π^{\pm}ρ^0(1450)\toπ^{\pm}K^+K^-$. It is then shown that the $B^+ \to K^+K^+K^-$ decay spectrum around the invariant mass $M(K^+K^-)\sim 1.5~\rm GeV$ measured by BaBar can be well described by the resonant contribution from $ρ^0(1450)$. The broad structure in the $B^{+}\to K^{+} K_SK_S$ spectrum around the invariant mass $1.5~\rm GeV$ of a $K_SK_S$ pair, which $ρ^0(1450)$ cannot decay into because of Bose-Einstein statistics, can be accounted for by a nonresonant $S$-wave contribution alone. The branching fractions and/or the direct $CP$ asymmetries of the $B^{\pm}\to π^{\pm}ρ^0(1450)\toπ^{\pm}K^+K^-$, $B^{+}\to K^{+}ρ^0(1450)\to K^+K^+K^-$ and $B^{0}\to K^{0}ρ^0(1450)\to K^0K^+K^-$ modes are predicted, which can be tested at the ongoing LHCb and Belle-II experiments. We encourage experimental colleagues to scrutinize our postulation by analyzing relevant data with higher precision.

preprint2021arXiv

Learning-based quantum error mitigation

If NISQ-era quantum computers are to perform useful tasks, they will need to employ powerful error mitigation techniques. Quasi-probability methods can permit perfect error compensation at the cost of additional circuit executions, provided that the nature of the error model is fully understood and sufficiently local both spatially and temporally. Unfortunately these conditions are challenging to satisfy. Here we present a method by which the proper compensation strategy can instead be learned ab initio. Our training process uses multiple variants of the primary circuit where all non-Clifford gates are substituted with gates that are efficient to simulate classically. The process yields a configuration that is near-optimal versus noise in the real system with its non-Clifford gate set. Having presented a range of learning strategies, we demonstrate the power of the technique both with real quantum hardware (IBM devices) and exactly-emulated imperfect quantum computers. The systems suffer a range of noise severities and types, including spatially and temporally correlated variants. In all cases the protocol successfully adapts to the noise and mitigates it to a high degree.

preprint2021arXiv

Plasmonic Waveguides to Enhance Quantum Electrodynamic Phenomena at the Nanoscale

The emerging field of plasmonics can lead to enhanced light matter interactions at extremely nanoscale regions. Plasmonic (metallic) devices promise to efficiently control both classical and quantum properties of light. Plasmonic waveguides are usually used to excite confined electromagnetic modes at the nanoscale that can strongly interact with matter. The analysis of these nanowaveguides exhibits similarities with their low frequency microwave counterparts. In this article, we review ways to study plasmonic nanostructures coupled to quantum optical emitters from a classical electromagnetic perspective. These quantum emitters are mainly used to generate single photon quantum light that can be employed as a quantum bit or qubit in the envisioned quantum information technologies. We demonstrate different ways to enhance a diverse range of quantum electrodynamic phenomena based on plasmonic configurations by using the classical dyadic tensor Green function formalism. More specifically, spontaneous emission and superradiance are analyzed by using the Green function based field quantization. The exciting new field of quantum plasmonics will lead to a plethora of novel optical devices for communications and computing applications operating in the quantum realm, such as efficient single-photon sources, quantum sensors, and compact on-chip nanophotonic circuits.

preprint2021arXiv

Quantum operation of fermionic systems and process tomography using Majorana fermion gates

Quantum tomography is an important tool for the characterisation of quantum operations. In this paper, we present a framework of quantum tomography in fermionic systems. Compared with qubit systems, fermions obey the superselection rule, which sets constraints on states, processes and measurements in a fermionic system. As a result, we can only partly reconstruct an operation that acts on a subset of fermion modes, and the full reconstruction always requires at least one ancillary fermion mode in addition to the subset. We also report a protocol for the full reconstruction based on gates in Majorana fermion quantum computer, including a set of circuits for realising the informationally-complete state preparation and measurement.

preprint2021arXiv

Reciprocity of thermal diffusion in time-modulated systems

The reciprocity principle governs the symmetry in transmission of electromagnetic and acoustic waves, as well as the diffusion of heat between two points in space, with important consequences for thermal management and energy harvesting. There has been significant recent interest in materials with time-modulated properties, which have been shown to efficiently break reciprocity for light, sound, and even charge diffusion. Quite surprisingly, here we show that, from a practical point of view, time modulation cannot generally be used to break reciprocity for thermal diffusion. We establish a theoretical framework to accurately describe the behavior of diffusive processes under time modulation, and prove that thermal reciprocity in dynamic materials is generally preserved by the continuity equation, unless some external bias or special material is considered. We then experimentally demonstrate reciprocal heat transfer in a time-modulated device. Our findings correct previous misconceptions regarding reciprocity breaking for thermal diffusion, revealing the generality of symmetry constraints in heat transfer, and clarifying its differences from other transport processes in what concerns the principles of reciprocity and microscopic reversibility.

preprint2021arXiv

Topological Luttinger semimetallic phase accompanied with surface states realized in silicon

By means of systematically first-principles calculations and model analysis, a complete phase diagram of the body-centered silicon(BC8-Si) via lattice constant a and internal atomic coordinate x is explored, which demonstrates that BC8-Si is a topological Luttinger semimetal(LSM) accompanied with topologically nontrivial surface states, and the electronic properties of BC8-Si can be further tuned to a normal insulator or topological Dirac semimetal by very tiny changing of a and x. These results successfully explain the contradictory transport reports of BC8-Si. More importantly, the topological surface states in the LSM phase fill in the gap between the topological matters and silicon, which provide an opportunity to integrate the topological quantum devices and silicon chips together.

preprint2020arXiv

A chip-scale oscillation-mode optomechanical inertial sensor near the thermodynamical limits

High-precision inertial sensing and gravity sensing are key in navigation, oil exploration, and earthquake prediction. In contrast to prior accelerometers using piezoelectric or electronic capacitance readout techniques, optical readout provides narrow-linewidth high-sensitivity laser detection along with low-noise resonant optomechanical transduction near the thermodynamical limits. Here an optomechanical inertial sensor with 8.2micro-g/Hz^1/2 velocity random walk (VRW) at acquisition rate of 100 Hz and 50.9 micro-g bias instability is demonstrated, suitable for consumer and industrial grade applications, e.g., inertial navigation, inclination sensing, platform stabilization, and/or wearable device motion detection. Driven into optomechanical sustained-oscillation, the slot photonic crystal cavity provides radio-frequency readout of the optically-driven transduction with enhanced 625 microg/Hz sensitivity. Measuring the optomechanically-stiffened oscillation shift, instead of the optical transmission shift, provides a 220x VRW enhancement over pre-oscillation mode detection due to the strong optomechanical transduction. Supported by theory, this inertial sensor operates 2.56x above the thermodynamical limit at small integration times, with 43-dB dynamic range, in a solid-state room-temperature readout architecture.

preprint2020arXiv

A novel random access scheme for M2M communication in crowded asynchronous massive MIMO systems

A new random access scheme is proposed to solve the intra-cell pilot collision for M2M communication in crowded asynchronous massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The proposed scheme utilizes the proposed estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance technique enhanced (ESPRIT-E) method to estimate the effective timing offsets, and then active UEs obtain their timing errors from the effective timing offsets for uplink message transmission. We analyze the mean squared error of the estimated effective timing offsets of UEs, and the uplink throughput. Simulation results show that, compared to the exiting random access scheme for the crowded asynchronous massive MIMO systems, the proposed scheme can improve the uplink throughput and estimate the effective timing offsets accurately at the same time.

preprint2020arXiv

An Immunology-Inspired Network Security Architecture

The coming 5G networks have been enabling the creation of a wide variety of new services and applications which demand a new network security architecture. Immunology is the study of the immune system in vertebrates (including humans) which protects us from infection through various lines of defence. By studying the resemblance between the immune system and network security system, we acquire some inspirations from immunology and distill some guidelines for the design of network security architecture. We present a philosophical design principle, that is maintaining the balance between security and availability. Then, we derive two methodological principles: 1) achieving situation-awareness and fast response through community cooperation among heterogeneous nodes, and 2) Enhancing defense capability through consistently contesting with invaders in a real environment and actively mutating/evolving attack strategies. We also present a reference architecture designed based on the principles.

preprint2020arXiv

Branching Fractions and CP Asymmetries of the Quasi-Two-Body Decays in $B_{s} \to K^0(\overline K^0)K^\pm π^\mp$ within PQCD Approach

Motivated by the first untagged decay-time-integrated amplitude analysis of $B_s \to K_SK^{\mp}π^{\pm}$ decays performed by LHCb collaboration, where the decay amplitudes are modeled to contain the resonant contributions from intermediate resonances $K^*(892)$, $K_0^*(1430)$ and $K_2^*(1430)$, we comprehensively investigate the quasi-two-body $B_{s} \to K^0/\overline{\kern -0.2em K}^0 K^{\pm}π^{\mp}$ decays, and calculate the branching fractions and the time-dependent $CP$ asymmetries within the perturbative QCD approach based on the $k_T$ factorization. In the quasi-two-body space region the calculated branching fractions with the considered intermediate resonances are in good agreement with the experimental results of LHCb by adopting proper $Kπ$ pair wave function, describing the interaction between the kaon and pion in the $Kπ$ pair. Furthermore,within the obtained branching fractions of the quasi-two-body decays, we also calculate the branching fractions of corresponding two-body decays, and the results consist with the LHCb measurements and the earlier studies with errors. For these considered decays, since the final states are not flavour-specific, the time-dependent $CP$ could be measured. We calculate six $CP$-violation observables, which can be tested in the ongoing LHCb experiment.

preprint2020arXiv

Can scaling analysis be used to interpret the anti-parity-time symmetry in heat transfer?

In a previous work (Li et al. Science 364, 170) [1], we proposed a heat transfer system that preserves the anti-parity-time (APT) symmetry, and observe the rest-to-motion phase transition during the symmetry breaking. Recently, it was suggested (Zhao et al. arXiv:1906.08431) [2] that the behaviours of the system can be understood using scaling analysis based on the Péclet and Nusselt numbers (Pe and Nu). It was further proposed that there exists a third regime in the phase diagram in addition to the symmetric and symmetry broken phases. Although we appreciate the proposal to characterize the contributions of coupling, diffusion, and advection with dimensionless numbers, here we show that they do not help to predict or interpret the behaviours of the APT system. The dimensionless numbers do not provide enough details about the system to conclude that there is a motionless phase, a phase transition, to find the critical point, or to give the correct phase diagram with only two regimes.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Learning for LiDAR Point Clouds in Autonomous Driving: A Review

Recently, the advancement of deep learning in discriminative feature learning from 3D LiDAR data has led to rapid development in the field of autonomous driving. However, automated processing uneven, unstructured, noisy, and massive 3D point clouds is a challenging and tedious task. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of existing compelling deep learning architectures applied in LiDAR point clouds, detailing for specific tasks in autonomous driving such as segmentation, detection, and classification. Although several published research papers focus on specific topics in computer vision for autonomous vehicles, to date, no general survey on deep learning applied in LiDAR point clouds for autonomous vehicles exists. Thus, the goal of this paper is to narrow the gap in this topic. More than 140 key contributions in the recent five years are summarized in this survey, including the milestone 3D deep architectures, the remarkable deep learning applications in 3D semantic segmentation, object detection, and classification; specific datasets, evaluation metrics, and the state of the art performance. Finally, we conclude the remaining challenges and future researches.

preprint2020arXiv

Diffusive non-reciprocity and thermal diode

Wave propagation and diffusion in linear materials preserve local reciprocity in terms of a symmetric Green's function. For wave propagations, the relation between the fields entering and leaving a system is more relevant than the detailed information about the fields inside it. In such cases, the global reciprocity of the scattering off a system through several ports is more important, which is defined as the symmetric transmission between the scattering channels. When a two-port system supports non-reciprocal (electromagnetic, acoustic) wave propagation, it is a (optical, phonon) diode directly following the definition. However, to date no concrete definition or discussion has been made on the global reciprocity of diffusive processes through a multiple-port system. It thus remains unclear what are the differences and relations between the three concepts, namely local non-reciprocity, global non-reciprocity, and diode effect in diffusion. Here, we provide theoretical analysis on the frequency-domain Green's function and define the global reciprocity of heat diffusion through a two-port system, which has a different setup from that of a thermal diode. We further prove the equivalence between a heat transfer system with broken steady-state global reciprocity and a thermal diode, assuming no temperature-dependent heat generation. The validities of some typical mechanisms in breaking the diffusive reciprocity and making a thermal diode have been discussed. Our results set a general background for future studies on symmetric and asymmetric diffusive processes.

preprint2020arXiv

Epsilon-near-zero plasmonic waveguides to enhance nonlinear coherent light-matter interactions

We demonstrate a way to coherently control light at the nanoscale and achieve coherent perfect absorption (CPA) by using epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) plasmonic waveguides. The presented waveguides support an effective ENZ response at their cut-off frequency, combined with strong and homogeneous field enhancement along their nanochannels. The CPA conditions are perfectly satisfied at the ENZ frequency, surprisingly by a subwavelength plasmonic structure, resulting in strong CPA under the illumination of two counter-propagating plane waves with appropriate amplitudes and phases. In addition , we investigate the nonlinear response of the proposed ENZ plasmonic configuration as we increase the input intensity of the incident waves. We demonstrate that the CPA phenomenon can become both intensity- and phase-dependent in this case leading to new tunable all-optical switching and absorption devices.

preprint2020arXiv

Fault-tolerant fidelity based on few-qubit codes: Parity-check circuits for biased error channels

In the shallow sub-threshold regime, fault-tolerant quantum computation requires a tremendous amount of qubits. In this paper, we study the error correction in the deep sub-threshold regime. We estimate the physical error rate for achieving the logical error rates of $10^{-6} - 10^{-15}$ using few-qubit codes, i.e. short repetition codes, small surface codes and the Steane code. Error correction circuits that are efficient for biased error channels are identified. Using the Steane code, when error channels are biased with a ratio of $10^{-3}$, the logical error rate of $10^{-15}$ can be achieved with the physical error rate of $10^{-5}$, which is much higher than the physical error rate of $10^{-9}$ for depolarising errors.

preprint2020arXiv

FuSSI-Net: Fusion of Spatio-temporal Skeletons for Intention Prediction Network

Pedestrian intention recognition is very important to develop robust and safe autonomous driving (AD) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) functionalities for urban driving. In this work, we develop an end-to-end pedestrian intention framework that performs well on day- and night- time scenarios. Our framework relies on objection detection bounding boxes combined with skeletal features of human pose. We study early, late, and combined (early and late) fusion mechanisms to exploit the skeletal features and reduce false positives as well to improve the intention prediction performance. The early fusion mechanism results in AP of 0.89 and precision/recall of 0.79/0.89 for pedestrian intention classification. Furthermore, we propose three new metrics to properly evaluate the pedestrian intention systems. Under these new evaluation metrics for the intention prediction, the proposed end-to-end network offers accurate pedestrian intention up to half a second ahead of the actual risky maneuver.

preprint2020arXiv

Hyperspectral Classification Based on 3D Asymmetric Inception Network with Data Fusion Transfer Learning

Hyperspectral image(HSI) classification has been improved with convolutional neural network(CNN) in very recent years. Being different from the RGB datasets, different HSI datasets are generally captured by various remote sensors and have different spectral configurations. Moreover, each HSI dataset only contains very limited training samples and thus it is prone to overfitting when using deep CNNs. In this paper, we first deliver a 3D asymmetric inception network, AINet, to overcome the overfitting problem. With the emphasis on spectral signatures over spatial contexts of HSI data, AINet can convey and classify the features effectively. In addition, the proposed data fusion transfer learning strategy is beneficial in boosting the classification performance. Extensive experiments show that the proposed approach beat all of the state-of-art methods on several HSI benchmarks, including Pavia University, Indian Pines and Kennedy Space Center(KSC). Code can be found at: https://github.com/UniLauX/AINet.

preprint2020arXiv

Hyperspectral Image Classification with Spatial Consistence Using Fully Convolutional Spatial Propagation Network

In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown impressive ability to represent hyperspectral images (HSIs) and achieved encouraging results in HSI classification. However, the existing CNN-based models operate at the patch-level, in which pixel is separately classified into classes using a patch of images around it. This patch-level classification will lead to a large number of repeated calculations, and it is difficult to determine the appropriate patch size that is beneficial to classification accuracy. In addition, the conventional CNN models operate convolutions with local receptive fields, which cause failures in modeling contextual spatial information. To overcome the aforementioned limitations, we propose a novel end-to-end, pixels-to-pixels fully convolutional spatial propagation network (FCSPN) for HSI classification. Our FCSPN consists of a 3D fully convolution network (3D-FCN) and a convolutional spatial propagation network (CSPN). Specifically, the 3D-FCN is firstly introduced for reliable preliminary classification, in which a novel dual separable residual (DSR) unit is proposed to effectively capture spectral and spatial information simultaneously with fewer parameters. Moreover, the channel-wise attention mechanism is adapted in the 3D-FCN to grasp the most informative channels from redundant channel information. Finally, the CSPN is introduced to capture the spatial correlations of HSI via learning a local linear spatial propagation, which allows maintaining the HSI spatial consistency and further refining the classification results. Experimental results on three HSI benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed FCSPN achieves state-of-the-art performance on HSI classification.

preprint2020arXiv

Lattice dynamics in the spin-1/2 frustrated kagome compound herbertsmithite

We investigate the lattice dynamics in the spin-1/2 frustrated kagome compound herbertsmithite ZnCu$_3$(OH)$_6$Cl$_2$ by a combination of infrared spectroscopy measurements and ab initio density functional theory calculations, and provide an unambiguous assignment of infrared-active lattice vibrations involving in-plane and out-of-plane atom displacements in the kagome layers. Upon cooling, non-thermal red-shifts and broadening appear specifically for modes that deform the kagome layer or affect the Cu-O-Cu bond angles, thus creating pronounced modifications of the antiferromagnetic exchange coupling. Our results indicate the presence of a strong magnetoelastic coupling to the spin system. We discuss the effects of this coupling and its relation to recent experiments reporting a global symmetry reduction of the kagome lattice symmetry.

preprint2020arXiv

Locality-Aware Rotated Ship Detection in High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery Based on Multi-Scale Convolutional Network

Ship detection has been an active and vital topic in the field of remote sensing for a decade, but it is still a challenging problem due to the large scale variations, the high aspect ratios, the intensive arrangement, and the background clutter disturbance. In this letter, we propose a locality-aware rotated ship detection (LARSD) framework based on a multi-scale convolutional neural network (CNN) to tackle these issues. The proposed framework applies a UNet-like multi-scale CNN to generate multi-scale feature maps with high-level semantic information in high resolution. Then, a rotated anchor-based regression is applied for directly predicting the probability, the edge distances, and the angle of ships. Finally, a locality-aware score alignment is proposed to fix the mismatch between classification results and location results caused by the independence of each subnet. Furthermore, to enlarge the datasets of ship detection, we build a new high-resolution ship detection (HRSD) dataset, where 2499 images and 9269 instances were collected from Google Earth with different resolutions. Experiments based on public dataset HRSC2016 and our HRSD dataset demonstrate that our detection method achieves state-of-the-art performance.

preprint2020arXiv

Memory-Efficient Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Image Denoising

Recently, neural architecture search (NAS) methods have attracted much attention and outperformed manually designed architectures on a few high-level vision tasks. In this paper, we propose HiNAS (Hierarchical NAS), an effort towards employing NAS to automatically design effective neural network architectures for image denoising. HiNAS adopts gradient based search strategies and employs operations with adaptive receptive field to build an flexible hierarchical search space. During the search stage, HiNAS shares cells across different feature levels to save memory and employ an early stopping strategy to avoid the collapse issue in NAS, and considerably accelerate the search speed. The proposed HiNAS is both memory and computation efficient, which takes only about 4.5 hours for searching using a single GPU. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed HiNAS on two different datasets, namely an additive white Gaussian noise dataset BSD500, and a realistic noise dataset SIM1800. Experimental results show that the architecture found by HiNAS has fewer parameters and enjoys a faster inference speed, while achieving highly competitive performance compared with state-of-the-art methods. We also present analysis on the architectures found by NAS. HiNAS also shows good performance on experiments for image de-raining.

preprint2020arXiv

Modeling the IRIS Lines During a Flare. I. The Blue-Wing Enhancement in the Mg II k Line

The IRIS Mg II k line serves as a very good tool to diagnose the heating processes in solar flares. Recent studies have shown that apart from the usual red asymmetries which are interpreted as the result of condensation downflows, this line could also show a blue-wing enhancement. To investigate how such a blue asymmetry is formed, we perform a grid of radiative hydrodynamic simulations and calculate the corresponding line profiles. We find that such a spectral feature is likely to originate from the upward plasma motion in the upper chromosphere. However, the formation region that is responsible for the blue-wing enhancement could be located in an evaporation region, in an upward moving blob, and even an upward moving condensation region. We discuss how the electron beam parameters affect these different dynamics of the atmosphere.

preprint2020arXiv

Multispectral Pan-sharpening via Dual-Channel Convolutional Network with Convolutional LSTM Based Hierarchical Spatial-Spectral Feature Fusion

Multispectral pan-sharpening aims at producing a high resolution (HR) multispectral (MS) image in both spatial and spectral domains by fusing a panchromatic (PAN) image and a corresponding MS image. In this paper, we propose a novel dual-channel network (DCNet) framework for MS pan-sharpening. In our DCNet, the dual-channel backbone involves a spatial channel to capture spatial information with a 2D CNN, and a spectral channel to extract spectral information with a 3D CNN. This heterogeneous 2D/3D CNN architecture can minimize causing spectral information distortion, which typically happens in conventional 2D CNN models. In order to fully integrate the spatial and spectral features captured from different levels, we introduce a multi-level fusion strategy. Specifically, a spatial-spectral CLSTM (S$^2$-CLSTM) module is proposed for fusing the hierarchical spatial and spectral features, which can effectively capture correlations among multi-level features. The S$^2$-CLSTM module attaches two fusion ways: the intra-level fusion via bi-directional lateral connections and inter-level fusion via the cell state in the S$^2$-CLSTM. Finally, the ideal HR-MS image is recovered by a reconstruction module. Extensive experiments have been conducted at both simulated lower scale and the original scale of real-world datasets. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, the proposed DCNet achieves superior or competitive performance.

preprint2020arXiv

Non-LTE Calculations of the Mg I 12.32 $μ$m Line in a Flaring Atmosphere

The infrared Mg I lines near 12 microns are a pair of emission lines which are magnetically sensitive and have been used to measure solar magnetic fields. Here we calculate the response of the Mg I 12.32 $μ$m line during a flare and find that in our modeling this line has a complicated behavior. At the beginning of the flare heating, this line shows an intensity dimming at the line center. The intensity then increases when heating continues, with increasing contributions from the heated layers in the chromosphere. The line formation height and the line width also increase as a result. As for the polarized line profiles, we find that flare heating tends to decrease the Zeeman splitting width and attenuates the Stokes $V$ lobe intensity. The wider features in the Stokes $V$ profiles are more pronounced during flare heating, which should be considered when performing magnetic field inversions.

preprint2020arXiv

Observations of a quasi-periodic pulsation in the coronal loop and microwave flux during a solar preflare phase

We report a quasi-periodic pulsation (QPP) event simultaneously detected from the spatial displacements of coronal loop at both EUV images and microwave emission during the preflare phase of a C1.1 flare on 2016 March 23. Using the motion magnification technique, a low-amplitude transverse oscillation with the growing period is discovered in a diffuse coronal loop in Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) image sequences at wavelength of 171 A, and the initial oscillation period is estimated to be ~397 s with a slow growth rate of 0.045. At the same time, a QPP with growing periods from roughly 300 s to nearly 500 s is discovered in the microwave flux in the same active region. Based on the imaging observations measured at EUV wavelengths by the AIA and at microwave 17 GHz by Nobeyama Radioheliograph, the diffuse coronal loop and the microwave radiation source are found to be connected through a hot loop seen in AIA images at wavelength of 94 A. The growing period of the QPP should be related to the modulation of LRC-circuit oscillating process in a current-carrying plasma loop. The existence of electric currents may imply the non-potentialities in the source region during the preflare phase.

preprint2020arXiv

Plasmonic random laser on an optical fiber tip

Random lasing occurs as the result of a coherent optical feedback from multiple scattering centers. Here, we demonstrate that plasmonic gold nanostars are efficient light scattering centers, exhibiting strong field enhancement at their nanotips, which assists a very narrow bandwidth and highly amplified coherent random lasing with a low lasing threshold. First, by embedding plasmonic gold nanostars in a rhodamine 6G dye gain medium, we observe a series of very narrow random lasing peaks with full-width at half-maximum ~ 0.8 nm. In contrast, free rhodamine 6G dye molecules exhibit only a single amplified spontaneous emission peak with a broader linewidth of 6 nm. The lasing threshold for the dye with gold nanostars is two times lower than that for a free dye. Furthermore, by coating the tip of a single-mode optical fiber with gold nanostars, we demonstrate a collection of random lasing signal through the fiber that can be easily guided and analyzed. Time-resolved measurements show a significant increase in the emission rate above the lasing threshold, indicating a stimulated emission process. Our study provides a method for generating random lasing in the nanoscale with low threshold values that can be easily collected and guided, which promise a range of potential applications in remote sensing, information processing, and on-chip coherent light sources.

preprint2020arXiv

Polestar: An Intelligent, Efficient and National-Wide Public Transportation Routing Engine

Public transportation plays a critical role in people's daily life. It has been proven that public transportation is more environmentally sustainable, efficient, and economical than any other forms of travel. However, due to the increasing expansion of transportation networks and more complex travel situations, people are having difficulties in efficiently finding the most preferred route from one place to another through public transportation systems. To this end, in this paper, we present Polestar, a data-driven engine for intelligent and efficient public transportation routing. Specifically, we first propose a novel Public Transportation Graph (PTG) to model public transportation system in terms of various travel costs, such as time or distance. Then, we introduce a general route search algorithm coupled with an efficient station binding method for efficient route candidate generation. After that, we propose a two-pass route candidate ranking module to capture user preferences under dynamic travel situations. Finally, experiments on two real-world data sets demonstrate the advantages of Polestar in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness. Indeed, in early 2019, Polestar has been deployed on Baidu Maps, one of the world's largest map services. To date, Polestar is servicing over 330 cities, answers over a hundred millions of queries each day, and achieves substantial improvement of user click ratio.

preprint2020arXiv

Quantifying the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Mainland China Using Human Mobility Data

To contain the pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Mainland China, the authorities have put in place a series of measures, including quarantines, social distancing, and travel restrictions. While these strategies have effectively dealt with the critical situations of outbreaks, the combination of the pandemic and mobility controls has slowed China's economic growth, resulting in the first quarterly decline of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since GDP began to be calculated, in 1992. To characterize the potential shrinkage of the domestic economy, from the perspective of mobility, we propose two new economic indicators: the New Venues Created (NVC) and the Volumes of Visits to Venue (V^3), as the complementary measures to domestic investments and consumption activities, using the data of Baidu Maps. The historical records of these two indicators demonstrated strong correlations with the past figures of Chinese GDP, while the status quo has dramatically changed this year, due to the pandemic. We hereby presented a quantitative analysis to project the impact of the pandemic on economies, using the recent trends of NVC and V^3. We found that the most affected sectors would be travel-dependent businesses, such as hotels, educational institutes, and public transportation, while the sectors that are mandatory to human life, such as workplaces, residential areas, restaurants, and shopping sites, have been recovering rapidly. Analysis at the provincial level showed that the self-sufficient and self-sustainable economic regions, with internal supplies, production, and consumption, have recovered faster than those regions relying on global supply chains.

preprint2020arXiv

Radiative Hydrodynamic Simulations of the Spectral Characteristics of Solar White-light Flares

As one of the most violent activities in the solar atmosphere, white-light flares (WLFs) are generally known for their enhanced white-light (or continuum) emission, which primarily originates in the solar lower atmosphere. However, we know little about how white-light emission is produced. In this study, we aim to investigate the response of the continua at 3600Å and 4250Å and also the H$α$ and Ly$α$ lines during WLFs modeled with radiative hydrodynamics simulations. We take non-thermal electron beams as the energy source for the WLFs in two different initial atmospheres and vary their parameters. Our results show that the model with non-thermal electron beam heating can clearly show enhancements in the continua at 3600Å and 4250Å as well as in the H$α$ and Ly$α$ lines. A larger electron beam flux, a smaller spectral index, or a penumbral initial atmosphere leads to a stronger emission increase at 3600Å, 4250Å and in the H$α$ line. For the Ly$α$ line, however, it is more preferably enhanced in a quiet-Sun initial atmosphere with a larger spectral index of the electron beam. It is also notable that the continua at 3600Å and 4250Å and the H$α$ line exhibit a dimming at the beginning of the heating and reach their peak emissions later than the peak time of the heating function, while the Ly$α$ line does not show such behaviors. These results can be served as a reference for analyzing future WLF observations.

preprint2020arXiv

Random NOMA With Cross-Slot Successive Interference Cancellation Packet Recovery

Conventional power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) relies on precise power control, which requires real-time channel state information at transmitters. This requirement severely limits its application to future wireless communication systems. To address this problem, we consider NOMA without power allocation, where we exploit the random channel fading and opportunistically perform successive interference cancellation (SIC) detection. To mitigate the multi-user interference, we propose a random NOMA where users randomly transmit their data packets with a certain probability. Then a cross-slot SIC packet recovery scheme is proposed to recover transmitted data packets. We model the cross-slot SIC packet recovery as a Markov process, and provide a throughput analysis, based on which the sum rate is maximized by jointly optimizing the transmission probability and the encoding rate of users.

preprint2020arXiv

Resonant Contributions to Three-body $B\to KKK$ Decays in Perturbative QCD Approach

In this work, we study the ($S$, $P$ and $D$)-wave $K^+K^-$ contributions to $B\to KKK$ decays in the perturbative QCD approach at leading order. Within the two-meson wave functions describing the nonperturbative dynamics in the kaon-pair for different waves, we calculate the branching fractions and the direct $CP$ asymmetries of these decay modes in the corresponding resonance regions. Most of our numerical results are well consistent with the current measurements. We note that the narrow-width approximation is invalid in the quasi-two-body decays $B\to Kf_0(980)\to KKK$. For other decays, under the narrow-width approximation we can extract the branching fractions of the corresponding two-body decays involving the intermediate resonant states, and the related branching fractions agree with the current experimental data well. Furthermore, we also predict the corresponding quasi-two-body decays $B\to Kπ^+π^-$, which are expected to be measured in the ongoing LHCb and Belle-II experiments.

preprint2020arXiv

Scalable evaluation of quantum-circuit error loss using Clifford sampling

A major challenge in developing quantum computing technologies is to accomplish high precision tasks by utilizing multiplex optimization approaches, on both the physical system and algorithm levels. Loss functions assessing the overall performance of quantum circuits can provide the foundation for many optimization techniques. In this paper, we use the quadratic error loss and the final-state fidelity loss to characterize quantum circuits. We find that the distribution of computation error is approximately Gaussian, which in turn justifies the quadratic error loss. It is shown that these loss functions can be efficiently evaluated in a scalable way by sampling from Clifford-dominated circuits. We demonstrate the results by numerically simulating ten-qubit noisy quantum circuits with various error models as well as executing four-qubit circuits with up to ten layers of two-qubit gates on a superconducting quantum processor. Our results pave the way towards the optimization-based quantum device and algorithm design in the intermediate-scale quantum regime.

preprint2020arXiv

Soft and anisotropic local moments in 4$d$ and 5$d$ mixed-valence M$_2$O$_9$ dimers

We investigate via exact diagonalization of finite clusters the electronic structure and magnetism of M$_2$O$_9$ dimers in the mixed-valence hexagonal perovskites A$_3$B'M$_2$O$_9$ for various different fillings of 4$d$ and 5$d$ transition-metal M ions. We find that the magnetic moments of such dimers are determined by a subtle interplay of spin-orbit coupling, Hund's coupling, and Coulomb repulsion, as well as the electron filling of the M ions. Most importantly, the magnetic moments are anisotropic and temperature-dependent. This behavior is a result of spin-orbit coupling, magnetic field effects, and the existence of several nearly-degenerate electronic configurations whose proximity allows occupation of excited states already at room temperature. This analysis is consistent with experimental susceptibility measurements for a variety of dimer-based materials. Furthermore, we perform a survey of A$_3$B'M$_2$O$_9$ materials and propose ground-state phase diagrams for the experimentally relevant M fillings of $d^{4.5}$, $d^{3.5}$ and $d^{2.5}$. Finally, our results show that the usually applied Curie-Weiss law with a constant magnetic moment cannot be used in these spin-orbit-coupled materials.

preprint2020arXiv

Study of Quasi-two-body $B_{(s)}\to ϕ(f_0(980)/f_2(1270)\to)ππ$ Decays in Perturbative QCD Approach

In 2017, LHCb collaboration reported their first observation of the rare decays $B_s \to ϕ(f_0(980)$ $/f_2(1270) \to ) π^+π^-$ and the evidence of $B^0 \to ϕ(f_0(980)/f_2(1270)\to)π^+π^-$. Motivated by this, we study these quasi-two-body decays in the perturbative QCD approach. The branching fractions, $CP$ asymmetries and the polarization fractions are calculated. We find that within the appropriate two-meson wave functions, the calculated branching fractions are in agreement with the measurements of LHCb. Based on the narrow-width approximation, We also calculate the branching fractions of the quasi-two-body $B_{d,s}\to ϕ(f_0(980)/f_2(1270)\to) π^0π^0$ and $B_{d,s}\to ϕ(f_2(1270)\to) K^+K^-$, and hope the predictions to be tested in the ongoing LHCb and Belle II experiments. Moreover, the processes $B_{d,s}\to ϕf_2(1270)$ are also analyzed under this approximation. We note that the $CP$ asymmetries of these decays are very small, because these decays are either penguin dominant or pure penguin processes.

preprint2020arXiv

User Activity Detection and Channel Estimation for Grant-Free Random Access in LEO Satellite-Enabled Internet-of-Things

With recent advances on the dense low-earth orbit (LEO) constellation, LEO satellite network has become one promising solution to providing global coverage for Internet-of-Things (IoT) services. Confronted with the sporadic transmission from randomly activated IoT devices, we consider the random access (RA) mechanism, and propose a grant-free RA (GF-RA) scheme to reduce the access delay to the mobile LEO satellites. A Bernoulli-Rician message passing with expectation maximization (BR-MP-EM) algorithm is proposed for this terrestrial-satellite GF-RA system to address the user activity detection (UAD) and channel estimation (CE) problem. This BR-MP-EM algorithm is divided into two stages. In the inner iterations, the Bernoulli messages and Rician messages are updated for the joint UAD and CE problem. Based on the output of the inner iterations, the expectation maximization (EM) method is employed in the outer iterations to update the hyper-parameters related to the channel impairments. Finally, simulation results show the UAD and CE accuracy of the proposed BR-MP-EM algorithm, as well as the robustness against the channel impairments.

preprint2020arXiv

Variational quantum simulation of general processes

Variational quantum algorithms have been proposed to solve static and dynamic problems of closed many-body quantum systems. Here we investigate variational quantum simulation of three general types of tasks---generalised time evolution with a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, linear algebra problems, and open quantum system dynamics. The algorithm for generalised time evolution provides a unified framework for variational quantum simulation. In particular, we show its application in solving linear systems of equations and matrix-vector multiplications by converting these algebraic problems into generalised time evolution. Meanwhile, assuming a tensor product structure of the matrices, we also propose another variational approach for these two tasks by combining variational real and imaginary time evolution. Finally, we introduce variational quantum simulation for open system dynamics. We variationally implement the stochastic Schrödinger equation, which consists of dissipative evolution and stochastic jump processes. We numerically test the algorithm with a six-qubit 2D transverse field Ising model under dissipation.

preprint2019arXiv

Calculation of the $B\to K_{0,2}^*(1430)f_0(980)/σ$ decays in the Perturbative QCD Approach

Motivated by the observations of the decays $B^0 \to K_0^{*}(1430)^0 f_0(980)$ and $ B^0 \to K_2^{*}(1430)^0 f_0(980)$ from BaBar collaboration, we study the $B^{0(+)} \to K_{0,2}^{*}(1430)^{0(+)} f_0(980)/σ$ decays in the perturbative QCD approach for the first time. In the absence of reliable nonperturbative wave functions we only assume the scalar meson $f_0(980)$ and $σ$ are two-quark ground states. In our calculations, these decays are all dominated by the hard-scattering emission and annihilation diagrams, while the factorizable emission diagrams are forbidden or suppressed heavily by the vector decay constants. Furthermore, the branching fractions are sensitive to the mixing between $f_0(980)$ and $σ$. Comparing our results with the experimental data, a large mixing angle $θ$ is favored. Taking $θ=145^\circ$, the orders of branching fractions of $B \to K_0^{*}(1430)^0 σ$, $B \to K_{2}^{*}(1430)^0 σ$ and $B \to K_{0,2}^{*}(1430)^0 f_0(980)$ are predicted to be $10^{-4}$, $10^{-5}$ and $10^{-6}$, respectively, which can be measured in the current experiments such as LHCb and Belle-2. In addition, although these decays are penguin dominant, the mixing also leads to large direct $CP$ asymmetries in these decays. With the precise data in future, our results could shed light on the inner structure of the scalar mesons and can be used to determine the mixing angle of the $σ-f_0(980)$ system.

preprint2019arXiv

Error-Mitigated Quantum Gates Exceeding Physical Fidelities in a Trapped-Ion System

Various quantum applications can be reduced to estimating expectation values, which are inevitably deviated by operational and environmental errors. Although errors can be tackled by quantum error correction, the overheads are far from being affordable for near-term technologies. To alleviate the detrimental effects of errors, quantum error mitigation techniques have been proposed, which require no additional qubit resources. Here, we benchmark the performance of a quantum error mitigation technique based on probabilistic error cancellation in a trapped-ion system. Our results clearly show that effective gate fidelities exceed physical fidelities, i.e. we surpass the break-even point of eliminating gate errors, by programming quantum circuits. The error rates are effectively reduced from $(1.10\pm 0.12)\times10^{-3}$ to $(1.44\pm 5.28)\times10^{-5}$ and from $(0.99\pm 0.06)\times10^{-2}$ to $(0.96\pm 0.10)\times10^{-3}$ for single- and two-qubit gates, respectively. Our demonstration opens up the possibility of implementing high-fidelity computations on a near-term noisy quantum device.

preprint2019arXiv

Hardware-efficient quantum algorithm for the simulation of open-system dynamics and thermalisation

The quantum open-system simulation is an important category of quantum simulation. By simulating the thermalisation process at the zero temperature, we can solve the ground-state problem of quantum systems. To realise the open-system evolution on the quantum computer, we need to encode the environment using qubits. However, usually the environment is much larger than the system, i.e. numerous qubits are required if the environment is directly encoded. In this paper, we propose a way to simulate open-system dynamics by reproducing reservoir correlation functions using a minimised Hilbert space. In this way, we only need a small number of qubits to represent the environment. To simulate the $n$-th-order expansion of the time-convolutionless master equation by reproducing up to $n$-time correlation functions, the number of qubits representing the environment is $\sim \lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor \log_2(N_ωN_β)$. Here, $N_ω$ is the number of frequencies in the discretised environment spectrum, and $N_β$ is the number of terms in the system-environment interaction. By reproducing two-time correlation functions, i.e. taking $n = 2$, we can simulate the Markovian quantum master equation. In our algorithm, the environment on the quantum computer could be even smaller than the system.

preprint2019arXiv

Separability discrimination and decomposition of $m$-partite quantum mixed states

The separability detecting problem of mixed states is one of the fundamental problems in quantum information theory. In the last 20 years, almost all methods are based on the sufficient or necessary conditions for entanglement. However, in this paper, we only need one algorithm to solve the problem. We propose a tensor optimization method to check whether an $m$-partite quantum mixed state is separable or not and give a decomposition for it if it is. We first convert the separability discrimination problem of mixed states to the positive Hermitian decomposition problem of Hermitian tensors. Then, employing the $E$-truncated $K$-moment method, we obtain an optimization model for discriminating separability. Moreover, applying semidefinite relaxation method, we get a hierarchy of semidefinite relaxation optimization models and propose an $E$-truncated $K$-moment and semidefinite relaxations (ETKM-SDR) algorithm for detecting the separability of mixed states. The algorithm can also be used for symmetric and non-symmetric decomposition of separable mixed states. By numerical examples, we find that not all symmetric separable states have symmetric decompositions. The algorithm can be used for studying properties of mixed states in the future.

preprint2019arXiv

Spectroscopic and Stereoscopic Observations of the Solar Jets

We present a comprehensive study of a series of recurrent jets that occurred at the periphery of the NOAA active region 12114 on 2014 July 7. These jets were found to share the same source region and exhibited rotational motions as they propagated outward. The multi-wavelength imaging observations made by the AIA and {\it IRIS} telescopes reveal that some of the jets contain cool plasma only, while some others contain not only cool but also hot plasma. The Doppler velocities calculated from the {\it IRIS} spectra show a continuous evolution from blue to red shifts as the jet motions change from upward to downward. Additionally, some jets exhibit opposite Doppler shifts on their both sides, indicative of rotating motions along their axes. The inclination angle and three-dimensional velocity of the largest jet were inferred from the imaging and spectroscopic observations, which show a high consistence with those derived from the stereoscopic analysis using dual-perspective observations by {\it SDO}/AIA and {\it STEREO}-B/EUVI. By relating the jets to the local UV/EUV and full-disk {\it GOES} X-ray emission enhancements, we found that the previous five small-scale jets were triggered by five bright points while the last/largest one was triggered by a C1.6 solar flare. Together with a number of type III radio bursts generated during the jet eruptions as well as a weak CME that was observed in association with the last jet, our observations provide evidences in support of multi-scale magnetic reconnection processes being responsible for the production of jet events.