January 2013 arXiv papers — page 6

David M. Pennock

I present a parallel algorithm for exact probabilistic inference in Bayesian networks. For polytree networks with n variables, the worst-case time complexity is O(log n) on a CREW PRAM (concurrent-read, exclusive-write parallel random-access machine) with n processors, for any constant number of evidence variables. For arbitrary networks, the time complexity

Ron Parr

This paper presents two new approaches to decomposing and solving large Markov decision problems (MDPs), a partial decoupling method and a complete decoupling method. In these approaches, a large, stochastic decision problem is divided into smaller pieces. The first approach builds a cache of policies for each part of the problem independently, and then comb

Benson Hin Kwong Ng, Kam-Fai Wong, Boon-Toh Low

Distributed knowledge based applications in open domain rely on common sense information which is bound to be uncertain and incomplete. To draw the useful conclusions from ambiguous data, one must address uncertainties and conflicts incurred in a holistic view. No integrated frameworks are viable without an in-depth analysis of conflicts incurred by uncertai

Stefano Monti, Gregory F. Cooper

In this paper we address the problem of discretization in the context of learning Bayesian networks (BNs) from data containing both continuous and discrete variables. We describe a new technique for <EM>multivariate</EM> discretization, whereby each continuous variable is discretized while taking into account its interaction with the other variables. The tec

Paul-Andre Monney

Several authors have explained that the likelihood ratio measures the strength of the evidence represented by observations in statistical problems. This idea works fine when the goal is to evaluate the strength of the available evidence for a simple hypothesis versus another simple hypothesis. However, the applicability of this idea is limited to simple hypo

Charles F. Manski

I examine the problem of treatment choice when a planner observes (i) covariates that describe each member of a population of interest and (ii) the outcomes of an experiment in which subjects randomly drawn from this population are randomly assigned to treatment groups within which all subjects receive the same treatment. Covariate data for the subjects of t

Suzanne M. Mahoney, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey

This paper describes a process for constructing situation-specific belief networks from a knowledge base of network fragments. A situation-specific network is a minimal query complete network constructed from a knowledge base in response to a query for the probability distribution on a set of target variables given evidence and context variables. We present

Anders L. Madsen, Finn Verner Jensen

The efficiency of algorithms using secondary structures for probabilistic inference in Bayesian networks can be improved by exploiting independence relations induced by evidence and the direction of the links in the original network. In this paper we present an algorithm that on-line exploits independence relations induced by evidence and the direction of th

Thomas Lukasiewicz

We present locally complete inference rules for probabilistic deduction from taxonomic and probabilistic knowledge-bases over conjunctive events. Crucially, in contrast to similar inference rules in the literature, our inference rules are locally complete for conjunctive events and under additional taxonomic knowledge. We discover that our inference rules ar

Chao-Lin Liu, Michael P. Wellman

We exploit qualitative probabilistic relationships among variables for computing bounds of conditional probability distributions of interest in Bayesian networks. Using the signs of qualitative relationships, we can implement abstraction operations that are guaranteed to bound the distributions of interest in the desired direction. By evaluating incrementall

Chao-Lin Liu, Michael P. Wellman

Qualitative probabilistic reasoning in a Bayesian network often reveals tradeoffs: relationships that are ambiguous due to competing qualitative influences. We present two techniques that combine qualitative and numeric probabilistic reasoning to resolve such tradeoffs, inferring the qualitative relationship between nodes in a Bayesian network. The first app

Vasilica Lepar, Prakash P. Shenoy

In the last decade, several architectures have been proposed for exact computation of marginals using local computation. In this paper, we compare three architectures - Lauritzen-Spiegelhalter, Hugin, and Shenoy-Shafer - from the perspective of graphical structure for message propagation, message-passing scheme, computational efficiency, and storage efficien

Neil D. Lawrence, Christopher M. Bishop, Michael I. Jordan

Boltzmann machines are undirected graphical models with two-state stochastic variables, in which the logarithms of the clique potentials are quadratic functions of the node states. They have been widely studied in the neural computing literature, although their practical applicability has been limited by the difficulty of finding an effective learning algori

Michael Kearns, Lawrence Saul

We study two-layer belief networks of binary random variables in which the conditional probabilities Pr[childlparents] depend monotonically on weighted sums of the parents. In large networks where exact probabilistic inference is intractable, we show how to compute upper and lower bounds on many probabilities of interest. In particular, using methods from la

Michael Kearns, Yishay Mansour

In the literature on graphical models, there has been increased attention paid to the problems of learning hidden structure (see Heckerman [H96] for survey) and causal mechanisms from sample data [H96, P88, S93, P95, F98]. In most settings we should expect the former to be difficult, and the latter potentially impossible without experimental intervention. In

Wenxin Jiang, Martin A. Tanner

We investigate a class of hierarchical mixtures-of-experts (HME) models where exponential family regression models with generalized linear mean functions of the form psi(ga+fx^Tfgb) are mixed. Here psi(...) is the inverse link function. Suppose the true response y follows an exponential family regression model with mean function belonging to a class of smoot

Iman Jarkass, Michele Rombaut

This paper proposes a method to find the actual state of a complex dynamic system from information coming from the sensors on the system himself, or on its environment. The nominal evolution of the system is a priori known and can be modeled (by an expert, for example), by different methods. In this paper, the Petri nets have been chosen. Contrary to the usu

Jean-Yves Jaffray

The adaptation to situations of sequential choice under uncertainty of decision criteria which deviate from (subjective) expected utility raises the problem of ensuring the selection of a nondominated strategy. In particular, when following the suggestion of Machina and McClennen of giving up separability (also known as consequentialism), which requires the

Manfred Jaeger

We take another look at the general problem of selecting a preferred probability measure among those that comply with some given constraints. The dominant role that entropy maximization has obtained in this context is questioned by arguing that the minimum information principle on which it is based could be supplanted by an at least as plausible &#34;likelih

Pablo H. Ibarguengoytia, Luis Enrique Sucar, Sunil Vadera

For many real time applications, it is important to validate the information received from the sensors before entering higher levels of reasoning. This paper presents an any time probabilistic algorithm for validating the information provided by sensors. The system consists of two Bayesian network models. The first one is a model of the dependencies between

Eric J. Horvitz, John S. Breese, David Heckerman, David Hovel

The Lumiere Project centers on harnessing probability and utility to provide assistance to computer software users. We review work on Bayesian user models that can be employed to infer a users needs by considering a user&#39;s background, actions, and queries. Several problems were tackled in Lumiere research, including (1) the construction of Bayesian model

Michael C. Horsch, David L. Poole

We present an anytime algorithm which computes policies for decision problems represented as multi-stage influence diagrams. Our algorithm constructs policies incrementally, starting from a policy which makes no use of the available information. The incremental process constructs policies which includes more of the information available to the decision maker

Holger H. Hoos, Thomas Stutzle

Stochastic search algorithms are among the most sucessful approaches for solving hard combinatorial problems. A large class of stochastic search approaches can be cast into the framework of Las Vegas Algorithms (LVAs). As the run-time behavior of LVAs is characterized by random variables, the detailed knowledge of run-time distributions provides important in

Milos Hauskrecht, Nicolas Meuleau, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Thomas L. Dean

We investigate the use of temporally abstract actions, or macro-actions, in the solution of Markov decision processes. Unlike current models that combine both primitive actions and macro-actions and leave the state space unchanged, we propose a hierarchical model (using an abstract MDP) that works with macro-actions only, and that significantly reduces the s

Eric A. Hansen

Most algorithms for solving POMDPs iteratively improve a value function that implicitly represents a policy and are said to search in value function space. This paper presents an approach to solving POMDPs that represents a policy explicitly as a finite-state controller and iteratively improves the controller by search in policy space. Two related algorithms

Vu A. Ha, Peter Haddawy

While decision theory provides an appealing normative framework for representing rich preference structures, eliciting utility or value functions typically incurs a large cost. For many applications involving interactive systems this overhead precludes the use of formal decision-theoretic models of preference. Instead of performing elicitation in a vacuum, i

Peter D Grunwald, Petri Kontkanen, Petri Myllymaki, Tomi Silander

We analyze differences between two information-theoretically motivated approaches to statistical inference and model selection: the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle, and the Minimum Message Length (MML) principle. Based on this analysis, we present two revised versions of MML: a pointwise estimator which gives the MML-optimal single parameter model

Clark Glymour

This paper (1)shows that the best supported current psychological theory (Cheng, 1997) of how human subjects judge the causal power or influence of variations in presence or absence of one feature on another, given data on their covariation, tacitly uses a Bayes network which is either a noisy or gate (for causes that promote the effect) or a noisy and gate

Dan Geiger, Christopher Meek

We provide a classification of graphical models according to their representation as subfamilies of exponential families. Undirected graphical models with no hidden variables are linear exponential families (LEFs), directed acyclic graphical models and chain graphs with no hidden variables, including Bayesian networks with several families of local distribut

Alex Gammerman, Volodya Vovk, Vladimir Vapnik

We describe a method for predicting a classification of an object given classifications of the objects in the training set, assuming that the pairs object/classification are generated by an i.i.d. process from a continuous probability distribution. Our method is a modification of Vapnik&#39;s support-vector machine; its main novelty is that it gives not only

Nir Friedman, Kevin Murphy, Stuart Russell

Dynamic probabilistic networks are a compact representation of complex stochastic processes. In this paper we examine how to learn the structure of a DPN from data. We extend structure scoring rules for standard probabilistic networks to the dynamic case, and show how to search for structure when some of the variables are hidden. Finally, we examine two appl

Nir Friedman

In recent years there has been a flurry of works on learning Bayesian networks from data. One of the hard problems in this area is how to effectively learn the structure of a belief network from incomplete data- that is, in the presence of missing values or hidden variables. In a recent paper, I introduced an algorithm called Structural EM that combines the

Didier Dubois, Henri Prade, Regis Sabbadin

This paper presents an axiomatic framework for qualitative decision under uncertainty in a finite setting. The corresponding utility is expressed by a sup-min expression, called Sugeno (or fuzzy) integral. Technically speaking, Sugeno integral is a median, which is indeed a qualitative counterpart to the averaging operation underlying expected utility. The a

Didier Dubois, Helene Fargier, Henri Prade

This paper relates comparative belief structures and a general view of belief management in the setting of deductively closed logical representations of accepted beliefs. We show that the range of compatibility between the classical deductive closure and uncertain reasoning covers precisely the nonmonotonic &#39;preferential&#39; inference system of Kraus, L

Benoit Desjardins

The variability of structure in a finite Markov equivalence class of causally sufficient models represented by directed acyclic graphs has been fully characterized. Without causal sufficiency, an infinite semi-Markov equivalence class of models has only been characterized by the fact that each model in the equivalence class entails the same marginal statisti

Adnan Darwiche

It is well known that one can ignore parts of a belief network when computing answers to certain probabilistic queries. It is also well known that the ignorable parts (if any) depend on the specific query of interest and, therefore, may change as the query changes. Algorithms based on jointrees, however, do not seem to take computational advantage of these f

Fabio Gagliardi Cozman

This paper analyzes irrelevance and independence relations in graphical models associated with convex sets of probability distributions (called Quasi-Bayesian networks). The basic question in Quasi-Bayesian networks is, How can irrelevance/independence relations in Quasi-Bayesian networks be detected, enforced and exploited? This paper addresses these questi

Urszula Chajewska, Lise Getoor, Joseph Norman, Yuval Shahar

We investigate the application of classification techniques to utility elicitation. In a decision problem, two sets of parameters must generally be elicited: the probabilities and the utilities. While the prior and conditional probabilities in the model do not change from user to user, the utility models do. Thus it is necessary to elicit a utility model sep

Enrique F. Castillo, Juan Ferrándiz, Pilar Sanmartin

Given an undirected graph G or hypergraph X model for a given set of variables V, we introduce two marginalization operators for obtaining the undirected graph GA or hypergraph HA associated with a given subset A c V such that the marginal distribution of A factorizes according to GA or HA, respectively. Finally, we illustrate the method by its application t

Charles Castel, Corine Cossart, Catherine Tessier

The situation assessment problem is considered, in terms of object, condition, activity, and plan recognition, based on data coming from the real-word {em via} various sensors. It is shown that uncertainty issues are linked both to the models and to the matching algorithm. Three different types of uncertainties are identified, and within each one, the numeri

Luis M. de Campos, Juan M. Fernandez-Luna, Juan F. Huete

Information Retrieval (IR) is concerned with the identification of documents in a collection that are relevant to a given information need, usually represented as a query containing terms or keywords, which are supposed to be a good description of what the user is looking for. IR systems may improve their effectiveness (i.e., increasing the number of relevan

John S. Breese, David Heckerman, Carl Kadie

Collaborative filtering or recommender systems use a database about user preferences to predict additional topics or products a new user might like. In this paper we describe several algorithms designed for this task, including techniques based on correlation coefficients, vector-based similarity calculations, and statistical Bayesian methods. We compare the

Xavier Boyen, Daphne Koller

The monitoring and control of any dynamic system depends crucially on the ability to reason about its current status and its future trajectory. In the case of a stochastic system, these tasks typically involve the use of a belief state- a probability distribution over the state of the process at a given point in time. Unfortunately, the state spaces of compl

Mark Bloemeke, Marco Valtorta

There exist two general forms of exact algorithms for updating probabilities in Bayesian Networks. The first approach involves using a structure, usually a clique tree, and performing local message based calculation to extract the belief in each variable. The second general class of algorithm involves the use of non-serial dynamic programming techniques to e

Salem Benferhat, Claudio Sossai

This paper addresses the problem of merging uncertain information in the framework of possibilistic logic. It presents several syntactic combination rules to merge possibilistic knowledge bases, provided by different sources, into a new possibilistic knowledge base. These combination rules are first described at the meta-level outside the language of possibi

Leila Amgoud, Claudette Cayrol

Argumentation is a promising model for reasoning with uncertain knowledge. The key concept of acceptability enables to differentiate arguments and counterarguments: The certainty of a proposition can then be evaluated through the most acceptable arguments for that proposition. In this paper, we investigate different complementary points of view: - an accepta

Roger E. Behrend

The fractional perfect b-matching polytope of an undirected graph G is the polytope of all assignments of nonnegative real numbers to the edges of G such that the sum of the numbers over all edges incident to any vertex v is a prescribed nonnegative number b_v. General theorems which provide conditions for nonemptiness, give a formula for the dimension, and

K. Seiya, C. Drennan, W. A. Pellico, K. Triplett

The Fermilab booster has an intensity upgrade plan called the Proton Improvement plan (PIP). The flux throughput goal is 2E17 protons/hour which is almost double the current operation at 1.1E17 protons/hour. The beam loss in the machine is going to be an issue. The booster accelerates beam from 400 MeV to 8GeV and extracts to The Main Injector (MI). Cogging

Ross Anderson, Robert Brady

Despite high hopes for quantum computation in the 1990s, progress in the past decade has been slow; we still cannot perform computation with more than about three qubits and are no closer to solving problems of real interest than a decade ago. Separately, recent experiments in fluid mechanics have demonstrated the emergence of a full range of quantum phenome

K. Seiya, J. Lackey, W. Marsh, W. Pellico

The Fermilab booster has an intensity upgrade plan called the Proton Improvement plan (PIP). The flux throughput goal is 2E17 protons/hour, which is almost double the current operation at 1.1E17 protons/hour. The beam loss in the machine is going to be the source of issues. The booster accelerates beam from 400 MeV to 8 GeV and extracts to the Main Injector.

Mohammad Sal Moslehian, Mohsen Kian

We introduce the non-commutative $f$-divergence functional $Θ(\widetilde{A},\widetilde{B}):=\int_TB_t^{\frac{1}{2}}f\left(B_t^{-\frac{1}{2}} A_tB_t^{-\frac{1}{2}}\right)B_t^{\frac{1}{2}}dμ(t)$ for an operator convex function $f$, where $\widetilde{A}=(A_t)_{t\in T}$ and $\widetilde{B}=(B_t)_{t\in T}$ are continuous fields of Hilbert space operators and study

Shawn J. McCann

Topological quivers generalize the notion of directed graphs in which the sets of vertices and edges are locally compact (second countable) Hausdorff spaces. Associated to a topological quiver $Q$ is a $C^*$-correspondence, and in turn, a Cuntz-Pimsner algebra $C^*(Q).$ Given $Γ$ a locally compact group and $α$ and $β$ endomorphisms on $Γ,$ one may construct

V. A. Lebedev, S. Nagaitsev, J. -F. Ostiguy, A. V. Shemyakin

The Project X Injector Experiment (PXIE) will serve as a prototype for the Project X front end. The aim is to validate the Project-X design and to decrease technical risks, known to be mainly related to the front end. PXIE will accelerate a 1 mA CW beam to about 25 MeV. It will consist of an ion source, LEBT, CW RFQ, MEBT, two SC cryomodules, a diagnostic se

P. N. Ostroumov, S. D. Holmes, R. D. Kephart, J. S. Kerby

A multi-MW proton facility, Project X has been proposed and is currently under development at Fermilab. As part of this development program, we are constructing a prototype of the front end of the Project X linac at Fermilab. The construction and successful operations of this facility will validate the concept for the Project X front end, thereby minimizing

Doug Johnstone, Benjamin Hendricks, Gregory J. Herczeg, Simon Bruderer

Stars may be assembled in large growth spurts, however the evidence for this hypothesis is circumstantial. Directly studying the accretion at the earliest phases of stellar growth is challenging because young stars are deeply embedded in optically thick envelopes, which have spectral energy distributions that peak in the far-IR, where observations are diffic

Daniel Platz, Daniel Forchheimer, Erik A. Tholén, David B. Haviland

In atomic force microscopy (AFM) tip-surface interactions are usually considered as functions of the tip position only, so-called force curves. However, tip-surface interactions often depend on the tip velocity and the past tip trajectory. Here, we introduce a compact and general description of these interactions appropriate to dynamic AFM where the measurem

Yaojun A. Du, Sung Sakong, Peter Kratzer

In this paper some specific issues related to point defects in GaAs nanowires are addressed with the help of density functional theory calculations. These issues mainly arise from the growth of nanowires under conditions different from those used for thin films or bulk GaAs, such as the co-existence of zincblende and wurtzite polytypes, the use of gold parti

Moataz H. Emam

In a recent paper, we studied the scalar fields of the five dimensional N=2 hypermultiplets using the method of symplectic covariance. For static spherically symmetric backgrounds, we showed that exactly two possibilities exist and detailed one of them. In this paper, we present the second case: Bogomol&#39;nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) one-branes carrying ch

N. Bender, S. Factor, J. D. Bodyfelt, H. Ramezani

A mechanism for asymmetric transport based on the interplay between the fundamental symmetries of parity (P) and time (T) with nonlinearity is presented. We experimentally demonstrate and theoretically analyze the phenomenon using a pair of coupled van der Pol oscillators, as a reference system, one with anharmonic gain and the other with complementary anhar

Yuval Oreg, Eran Sela, Ady Stern

We study one dimensional wires with spin-orbit coupling. We show that in the presence of Zeeman field and strong electron-electron interaction a clean wire may form fractional helical liquid states with phenomenology similar to fractional quantum Hall liquids. Most notably, the wire&#39;s two terminal conductance is predicted to show fractional quantized con

Lu Li, Yayu Wang, N. P. Ong

We analyze recent torque measurements of the magnetization $M_d$ vs. magnetic field $H$ in optimally doped YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-y}$ (OPT YBCO) to argue against a recent proposal by Rey et al that the magnetization results above $T_c$ are consistent with Gaussian fluctuations. We find that, despite its strong interlayer coupling, OPT YBCO displays an anomalous

Laird A. Thompson

Vesto Melvin Slipher was the first astronomer to clearly define the factors that determine the &#34;speed&#34; of a nebular spectrograph. This brief historical summary recounts the way these ideas developed and how Slipher&#39;s early work on galaxy Doppler shifts was so quickly extended in the 1930&#39;s when Milton Humason and Edwin Hubble at Mt. Wilson Ob

Gustavo E. Romero

I discuss the ontological assumptions and implications of General Relativity. I maintain that General Relativity is a theory about gravitational fields, not about space-time. The latter is a more basic ontological category, that emerges from physical relations among all existents. I also argue that there are no physical singularities in space-time. Singular

Timothy Ferguson

In this paper, we study the problem of finding the extremal element for a linear functional over a uniformly convex Banach space. We show that a unique extremal element exists and depends continuously on the linear functional, and vice versa. Using this, we simplify and clarify Ryabykh&#39;s proof that for any linear functional on a uniformly convex Bergman

Shinsuke Takasao, Hiroaki Isobe, Kazunari Shibata

We studied the acceleration mechanisms of chromospheric jets associated with emerging flux using a two dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation. We found that slow mode shock waves generated by magnetic reconnection in the chromosphere and the photosphere play key roles in the acceleration mechanisms of chromospheric jets. An important parameter is t

Francesc Malet, André Mirtschink, Jonas C. Cremon, Stephanie M. Reimann

We use the exact strong-interaction limit of the Hohenberg-Kohn energy density functional to construct an approximation for the exchange-correlation term of the Kohn-Sham approach. The resulting exchange-correlation potential is able to capture the features of the strongly-correlated regime without breaking the spin or any other symmetry. In particular, it s

J. Monterde, F. Ongay

We show that the distance trisector curve is not an algebraic curve, as was conjectured in the founding paper by T. Asano, J. Matousek and T. Tokoyama: &#34;The distance trisector curve&#34;, Advances in Math., 212, 338-360 (2007).

Milan Bradonjić, Aric Hagberg, Nicolas W. Hengartner, Nathan Lemons

We analyze the component evolution in inhomogeneous random intersection graphs when the average degree is close to 1. As the average degree increases, the size of the largest component in the random intersection graph goes through a phase transition. We give bounds on the size of the largest components before and after this transition. We also prove that the

Mario I. Molina

We examine a nonlinear magnetoinductive dimer and compute its linear and nonlinear symmetric, antisymmetric and asymmetric modes in closed-form, in the rotating-wave approximation. A linear stability analysis of these modes reveals that the asymmetric mode is always stable, for any allowed value of the coupling parameter and for both, hard and soft nonlinear

Yinghe Zhao, Nanyao Lu, C. Kevin Xu, Yu Gao

We present, for the first time, a statistical study of [N II] 205 mciron line emission for a large sample of local luminous infrared galaxies using Herschel Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver Fourier Transform Spectrometer (SPIRE FTS) data. For our sample of galaxies, we investigate the correlation between the [N II] luminosity (LNII) and the total in

Lucia Ayala

The structure, formation and evolution of the Universe were some of the main topics in the scientific debates during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. They involved novel ideas on the cosmos, which concerned aspects that were not considered before so emphatically, and which were fundamental for the future development of astronomy. This paper presents a

Pierre Arnoux, Masahiro Mizutani, Tarek Sellami

Any infinite sequence of substitutions with the same matrix of the Pisot type defines a symbolic dynamical system which is minimal. We prove that, to any such sequence, we can associate a compact set (Rauzy fractal) by projection of the stepped line associated with an element of the symbolic system on the contracting space of the matrix. We show that this Ra

Fedor V. Fomin, Michał Pilipczuk

Cutwidth of a digraph is a width measure introduced by Chudnovsky, Fradkin, and Seymour [4] in connection with development of a structural theory for tournaments, or more generally, for semi-complete digraphs. In this paper we provide an algorithm with running time 2^{O(\sqrt{k log k})} * n^{O(1)} that tests whether the cutwidth of a given n-vertex semi-comp

Daniel Meier, Timo Kuschel, Liming Shen, Arunava Gupta

We present results on the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) shown by semiconducting ferrimagnetic NiFe2O4/Pt films from room temperature down to 50K base temperature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observation of spin caloric effect in NiFe2O4 thin films. The temperature dependence of the conductivity has been studied in parallel to ob

Srijit Bhattacharjee, Parthasarathi Majumdar

We investigate the one-loop infrared behaviour of the effective potential in minimally coupled graviton Higgs theory in Minkowski background. The gravitational analogue of one loop Coleman Weinberg effective potential turns out to be complex, the imaginary part indicating an infrared instability. This instability is traced to a tachyonic pole in the graviton

Heedeuk Shin, Wenjun Qiu, Robert Jarecki, Jonathan A. Cox

While nanoscale modal confinement radically enhances a variety of nonlinear light-matter interactions within silicon waveguides, traveling-wave stimulated Brillouin scattering nonlinearities have never been observed in silicon nanophotonics. Through a new class of hybrid photonic-phononic waveguides, we demonstrate tailorable traveling-wave forward stimulate

Aude Gehrmann-De Ridder, Thomas Gehrmann, E. W. N. Glover, Joao Pires

We report the calculation of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections in the purely gluonic channel to dijet production and related observables at hadron colliders. Our result represents the first NNLO calculation of a massless jet observable at hadron colliders, and opens the path towards precision QCD phenomenology with the LHC.

Mario Mitter, Markus Hopfer, Bernd-Jochen Schaefer, Reinhard Alkofer

The center phase transition at non-vanishing temperatures is investigated in Landau gauge Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and scalar QCD. For each theory novel order parameters for the transition are introduced. The matter-gluon vertex which occurs in the Dyson-Schwinger equations of the propagators has to be modeled in contemporary studies. It is found that th

Philipp Wruck

We describe generators of universal Lefschetz groups consisting of self-maps of equivariant 1-spheres. This allows to formulate a normalization axiom which, together with the usual axioms, determines an equivariant Lefschetz number uniquely. We apply this technique to identify the fixed orbit detecting equivariant Lefschetz number of Chorny with the fixed or

Fiona A. Harrison, William W. Craig, Finn E. Christensen, Charles J. Hailey

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, launched on 13 June 2012, is the first focusing high-energy X-ray telescope in orbit. NuSTAR operates in the band from 3 -- 79 keV, extending the sensitivity of focusing far beyond the ~10 keV high-energy cutoff achieved by all previous X-ray satellites. The inherently low-background associated with

José C. Torres-Guzmán, W. Luis Mochán

We extend a fictitious-cavity approach to calculate the Casimir effect for cavities bounded by flat anisotropic materials. We calculate the energy, force and torque in terms only of the optical coefficients of the walls of the cavity. We calculate the Casimir effect at zero and finite temperature for some simple systems. As a non trivial application, we calc

Philipp Wruck

We define a notion of equivariant non-degeneracy of $G$-maps to introduce the class of equivariantly non-degenerate flows on smooth compact manifolds with compact Lie group action. We prove genericity of this class and use this result to construct an equivariant version of the Fuller index, which detects group orbits of periodic orbits of the flow, distingui

Toshiki Nakashima

We shall describe explicitly the decoration functions for certain decorated geometric crystals of classical groups and we shall show that they are represented in terms of monomial realizations of crystal bases.

Nicole D. Bailey, Shantanu Basu

Linear analysis of the formation of protostellar cores in planar magnetic interstellar clouds yields information about length scales involved in star formation. Combining these length scales with various distributions of other environmental variables, (i.e., column density and mass-to-flux ratio) and applying Monte Carlo methods allow us to produce synthetic

Michael J. Way

Edwin Hubble is famous for a number of discoveries that are well known to amateur and professional astronomers, students and the general public. The origins of these discoveries are examined and it is demonstrated that, in each case, a great deal of supporting evidence was already in place. In some cases the discoveries had either already been made, or compe

Jameson Cahill, Xuemei Chen

We study the problem of determining whether a given frame is scalable, and when it is, understanding the set of all possible scalings. We show that for most frames this is a relatively simple task in that the frame is either not scalable or is scalable in a unique way, and to find this scaling we just have to solve a linear system. We also provide some insig

Chris Van Den Broeck

This decade will see the first direct detections of gravitational waves by observatories such as Advanced LIGO and Virgo. Among the prime sources are coalescences of binary neutron stars and black holes, which are ideal probes of dynamical spacetime. This will herald a new era in the empirical study of gravitation. For the first time, we will have access to

Giovanni Peccati, Christoph Thaele

Using Stein&#39;s method and the Malliavin calculus of variations, we derive explicit estimates for the Gamma approximation of functionals of a Poisson measure. In particular, conditions are presented under which the distribution of a sequence of multiple Wiener-Ito stochastic integrals with respect to a compensated Poisson measure converges to a Gamma distr

John A. Peacock

By 1917, V.M. Slipher had singlehandedly established a tendency for &#39;spiral nebulae&#39; to be redshifted (21 out of 25 cases). From a modern perspective, it could seem surprising that the expansion of the universe was not announced at this point. Examination of Slipher&#39;s papers shows that he reached a more subtle conclusion: the identification of co

A. Wofford, C. Leitherer, J. Salzer

The usefulness of H I Lyman-alpha photons for characterizing star formation in the distant universe is limited by our understanding of the astrophysical processes that regulate their escape from galaxies. These processes can only be observed in detail out to a few x100 Mpc. Past nearby (z<0.3) spectroscopic studies are based on small samples and/or kinematic

Ivo M. Michailov

Let $K$ be a field and $G$ be a finite group. Let $G$ act on the rational function field $K(x(g):g\in G)$ by $K$ automorphisms defined by $g\cdot x(h)=x(gh)$ for any $g,h\in G$. Denote by $K(G)$ the fixed field $K(x(g):g\in G)^G$. Noether&#39;s problem then asks whether $K(G)$ is rational (i.e., purely transcendental) over $K$. The first main result of this

J. D. Hogg, J. A. Scott

The open-source nonlinear solver Ipopt (https://projects.coin-or.org/Ipopt) is a widely-used software package for the solution of large-scale non-linear optimization problems. At its heart, it employs a third-party linear solver to solve a series of sparse symmetric indefinite systems. The speed, accuracy and robustness of the chosen linear solver is critica

Stefan Lanz

In recent years, the decay eta --> 3 pi has received considerable attention from experimental and theoretical side. It is of particular theoretical interest because it allows for the determination of (m_u - m_d). In addition, for many years now theory has had difficulties to understand the slope of the neutral channel Dalitz plot distribution, which in contr

René Pannekoek

We show that, for every prime number p, there exist infinitely many K3 surfaces over Q whose rational points lie dense in the space of p-adic points. We also show that there exists a K3 surface over Q whose rational points lie dense in the space of p-adic points for all prime numbers p with p congruent to 3 mod 4 and greater than 7.

Johan Helsing

This note is about promoting singularity subtraction as a helpful tool in the discretization of singular integral operators on curved surfaces. Singular and nearly singular kernels are expanded in series whose terms are integrated on parametrically rectangular regions using high-order product integration, thereby reducing the need for spatial adaptivity and

Tanran Zhang

The explicit formula for the hyperbolic metric $λ_{α,\,β,\,γ}(z)|dz|$ on the thrice-punctured sphere $\mathbb{P} \backslash \{z_1,\,z_2,\,z_3\}$ with singularities of order $α,\,β,\,γ\leq 1$ with $α+β+γ>2$ at $z_1,\,z_2,\,z_3$ was given by Kraus, Roth and Sugawa in \cite{Rothhyper}. In this paper we investigate the asymptotic properties of the higher order d

Brendan Hassett, Yuri Tschinkel

We classify quartic del Pezzo surface fibrations over the projective line via numerical invariants, giving explicit examples for small values of the invariants. For generic such fibrations, we describe explicitly the geometry of spaces of sections to the fibration, and mappings to the intermediate Jacobian of the total space. We exhibit examples where these

J. N. Marcus

Carl Lampland was the first to observe a comet in the infrared, a feat little known today because he failed to formally publish his data. I have retrieved the radiometry of this comet, C/1927 X1 (Skjellerup-Maristany), taken in broad daylight, from Lampland&#39;s logbook in the Lowell Observatory archives, and present a preliminary reduction of it here. Ther

Ian Hambleton, Erik K. Pedersen

We survey some results and questions about free actions of infinite groups on products of spheres and euclidean spaces, and give some new co-compact examples.

Shiue-Yuan Shiau, Monique Combescot, Yia-Chung Chang

We approach the biexciton Schrödinger equation not through the free-carrier basis as usually done, but through the free-exciton basis, exciton-exciton interactions being treated according to the recently developed composite boson many-body formalism which allows an exact handling of carrier exchange between excitons, as induced by the Pauli exclusion princip