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Bin Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Bin Chen.

At least 541 records · Page 30Linked to original sources
arXiv2020

Measurement of magnetic field and relativistic electrons along a solar flare current sheet

In the standard model of solar flares, a large-scale reconnection current sheet is postulated as the central engine for powering the flare energy release and accelerating particles. However, where and how the energy release and particle acceleration occur remain unclear due to the lack of measurements for the magnetic properties of the current sheet. Here we report the measurement of spatially-resolved magnetic field and flare-accelerated relativistic electrons along a current-sheet feature in a solar flare. The measured magnetic field profile shows a local maximum where the reconnecting field lines of opposite polarities closely approach each other, known as the reconnection X point. The measurements also reveal a local minimum near the bottom of the current sheet above the flare loop-top, referred to as a "magnetic bottle". This spatial structure agrees with theoretical predictions and numerical modeling results. A strong reconnection electric field of ~4000 V/m is inferred near the X point. This location, however, shows a local depletion of microwave-emitting relativistic electrons. These electrons concentrate instead at or near the magnetic bottle structure, where more than 99% of them reside at each instant. Our observations suggest that the loop-top magnetic bottle is likely the primary site for accelerating and/or confining the relativistic electrons.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2020

Total variance and invariant information in complementary measurements

We investigate the total variance of a quantum state with respect to a complete set of mutually complementary measurements and its relation to the Brukner-Zeilinger invariant information. By summing the variances over any complete set of mutually unbiased measurements and general symmetric informationally complete measurements respectively, we show that the Brukner-Zeilinger invariant information associated with such types of quantum measurements is equal to the difference between the maximal variance and the total variance obtained. These results provide an operational link between the previous interpretations of the Brukner-Zeilinger invariant information.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2020

Mercury-related health benefits from retrofitting coal-fired power plants in China

China has implemented retrofitting measures in coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) to reduce air pollution through small unit shutdown (SUS), the installation of air pollution control devices (APCDs) and power generation efficiency (PGE) improvement. The reductions in highly toxic Hg emissions and their related health impacts by these measures have not been well studied. To refine mitigation options, we evaluated the health benefits of reduced Hg emissions via retrofitting measures during China's 12th Five-Year Plan by combining plant-level Hg emission inventories with the China Hg Risk Source-Tracking Model. We found that the measures reduced Hg emissions by 23.5 tons (approximately 1/5 of that from CFPPs in 2010), preventing 0.0021 points of per-foetus intelligence quotient (IQ) decrements and 114 deaths from fatal heart attacks. These benefits were dominated by CFPP shutdowns and APCD installations. Provincial health benefits were largely attributable to Hg reductions in other regions. We also demonstrated the necessity of considering human health impacts, rather than just Hg emission reductions, in selecting Hg control devices. This study also suggests that Hg control strategies should consider various factors, such as CFPP locations, population densities and trade-offs between reductions of total Hg (THg) and Hg2+.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2020

Evolution of Flare-accelerated Electrons Quantified by Spatially Resolved Analysis

Nonthermal electrons accelerated in solar flares produce electromagnetic emission in two distinct, highly complementary domains - hard X-rays (HXRs) and microwaves (MWs). This paper reports MW imaging spectroscopy observations from the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array of an M1.2 flare that occurred on 2017 September 9, from which we deduce evolving coronal parameter maps. We analyze these data jointly with the complementary Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager HXR data to reveal the spatially-resolved evolution of the nonthermal electrons in the flaring volume. We find that the high-energy portion of the nonthermal electron distribution, responsible for the MW emission, displays a much more prominent evolution (in the form of strong spectral hardening) than the low-energy portion, responsible for the HXR emission. We show that the revealed trends are consistent with a single electron population evolving according to a simplified trap-plus-precipitation model with sustained injection/acceleration of nonthermal electrons, which produces a double-powerlaw with steadily increasing break energy.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2020

Identifying the Lens Galaxy B1152+199 as a Ghostly Damped Lyman Alpha System by the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph

Strong quasar-galaxy lensing provides a powerful tool to probe the inter-stellar medium (ISM) of the lens galaxy using radiation from the background quasar. Using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope, we study the cold ISM properties of the lens galaxy in B1152+199 at a redshift of z=0.4377. Since existing optical extinction and X-ray absorption measurements of the lens have revealed a large amount of cold ISM, we expected to detect a damped Lya absorption (DLA) system in the near ultraviolet spectrum; however, our upper limit on the HI column density is several orders of magnitude below the expectation. We also marginally detect OI and CII absorption lines associated with the lens galaxy in the COS spectrum. Thus, the lens galaxy is identified as a ghostly DLA system, and further investigations of these ghostly DLA systems would be important to characterize the biases of using DLAs to probe the matter density of the universe. Although preliminary, the most likely explanation of the non-detection of the DLA is because of the Lya emission of the lens galaxy that fills in the absorption trough, with a Lya luminosity of 4e42 erg/s.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2020

Shadow of a Spinning Black Hole in an Expanding Universe

We study the influence of the cosmic expansion on the size of the shadow of a spinning black hole observed by a comoving observer. We first consider that the expansion is driven by a cosmological constant only and build the connection between the Kerr-de Sitter metric and the FLRW metric. We clarify that the notion of a comoving observer is well defined in the spacetime of a spinning black hole only in the sense of being asymptotic. The angular size of the shadow for a comoving observer is calculated. Significantly we find that the angular size approaches a non-zero finite value for a distant comoving observer, while it vanishes for a distant static observer. Furthermore, by adopting the approximate method proposed in \cite{Bisnovatyi-Kogan:2018vxl} we extend the study to the general multi-component universe case. The results show that the difference between the horizontal and vertical angular size changes a lot, while their ratio, i.e. the oblateness, keeps unchanged when the supermassive spinning black hole is at a high redshift, due to the common amplification factor exerted by the cosmic expansion. In addition, when $a=0$, our results agree with the previous studies in \cite{Perlick:2018iye,Bisnovatyi-Kogan:2018vxl}.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2020

Circuit complexity for generalised coherent states in thermal field dynamics

In this work, we study the circuit complexity for generalized coherent states in thermal systems by adopting the covariance matrix approach. We focus on the coherent thermal (CT) state, which is non-Gaussian and has a nonvanishing one-point function. We find that even though the CT state cannot be fully determined by the symmetric two-point function, the circuit complexity can still be computed in the framework of the covariance matrix formalism by properly enlarging the covariance matrix. Now the group generated by the unitary is the semiproduct of translation and the symplectic group. If the reference state is Gaussian, the optimal geodesic is still be generated by a horizontal generator such that the circuit complexity can be read from the generalized covariance matrix associated to the target state by taking the cost function to be $F_2$. For a single harmonic oscillator, we discuss carefully the complexity and its formation in the cases that the reference states are Gaussian and the target space is excited by a single mode or double modes. We show that the study can be extended to the free scalar field theory.

hep-th↗
arXiv2020

Accelerated electrons observed down to <7 keV in a NuSTAR solar microflare

We report the detection of emission from a non-thermal electron distribution in a small solar microflare (GOES class A5.7) observed by the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), with supporting observation by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). The flaring plasma is well accounted for by a thick-target model of accelerated electrons collisionally thermalizing within the loop, akin to the "coronal thick target" behavior occasionally observed in larger flares. This is the first positive detection of non-thermal hard X-rays from the Sun using a direct imager (as opposed to indirectly imaging instruments). The accelerated electron distribution has a spectral index of 6.3 +/- 0.7, extends down to at least 6.5 keV, and deposits energy at a rate of ~2x1027 erg/s, heating the flare loop to at least 10 MK. The existence of dominant non-thermal emission in X-rays down to <5 keV means that RHESSI emission is almost entirely non-thermal, contrary to what is usually assumed in RHESSI spectroscopy. The ratio of non-thermal to thermal energies is similar to that of large flares, in contrast to what has been found in previous studies of small RHESSI flares. We suggest that a coronal thick target may be a common property of many small microflares based on the average electron energy and collisional mean free path. Future observations of this kind will enable understanding of how flare particle acceleration changes across energy scales, and will aid the push toward the observational regime of nanoflares, which are a possible source of significant coronal heating.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2020

A Survey of Computational Tools in Solar Physics

The SunPy Project developed a 13-question survey to understand the software and hardware usage of the solar physics community. 364 members of the solar physics community, across 35 countries, responded to our survey. We found that 99$\pm$0.5% of respondents use software in their research and 66% use the Python scientific software stack. Students are twice as likely as faculty, staff scientists, and researchers to use Python rather than Interactive Data Language (IDL). In this respect, the astrophysics and solar physics communities differ widely: 78% of solar physics faculty, staff scientists, and researchers in our sample uses IDL, compared with 44% of astrophysics faculty and scientists sampled by Momcheva and Tollerud (2015). 63$\pm$4% of respondents have not taken any computer-science courses at an undergraduate or graduate level. We also found that most respondents utilize consumer hardware to run software for solar-physics research. Although 82% of respondents work with data from space-based or ground-based missions, some of which (e.g. the Solar Dynamics Observatory and Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope) produce terabytes of data a day, 14% use a regional or national cluster, 5% use a commercial cloud provider, and 29% use exclusively a laptop or desktop. Finally, we found that 73$\pm$4% of respondents cite scientific software in their research, although only 42$\pm$3% do so routinely.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2020

Adversarial Attack on Deep Product Quantization Network for Image Retrieval

Deep product quantization network (DPQN) has recently received much attention in fast image retrieval tasks due to its efficiency of encoding high-dimensional visual features especially when dealing with large-scale datasets. Recent studies show that deep neural networks (DNNs) are vulnerable to input with small and maliciously designed perturbations (a.k.a., adversarial examples). This phenomenon raises the concern of security issues for DPQN in the testing/deploying stage as well. However, little effort has been devoted to investigating how adversarial examples affect DPQN. To this end, we propose product quantization adversarial generation (PQ-AG), a simple yet effective method to generate adversarial examples for product quantization based retrieval systems. PQ-AG aims to generate imperceptible adversarial perturbations for query images to form adversarial queries, whose nearest neighbors from a targeted product quantizaiton model are not semantically related to those from the original queries. Extensive experiments show that our PQ-AQ successfully creates adversarial examples to mislead targeted product quantization retrieval models. Besides, we found that our PQ-AG significantly degrades retrieval performance in both white-box and black-box settings.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2020

Notes on index of quantum integrability

A quantum integrability index was proposed in \cite{KMS}. It systematizes the Goldschmidt and Witten's operator counting argument \cite{GW} by using the conformal symmetry. In this work we compute the quantum integrability indexes for the symmetric coset models ${SU(N)}/{SO(N)}$ and $SO(2N)/{SO(N)\times SO(N)}$. The indexes of these theories are all non-positive except for the case of ${SO(4)}/{SO(2)\times SO(2)}$. Moreover we extend the analysis to the theories with fermions and consider a concrete theory: the $\mathbb{CP}^N$ model coupled with a massless Dirac fermion. We find that the indexes for this class of models are non-positive as well.

hep-th↗
arXiv2020

Quantum chaos associated with emergent ergosurface in transition layer between type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals

We present emergent ergosurfaces (ES) in a transition layer between type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals (WSMs). The Hawking temperature defined by the surface gravity at the acoustic event horizon which coincides with the ES when the tangent velocity $v_{\parallel}$ is small is in a measurable interval. On the type-II WSM side, i.e., inside the {ES when $v_{\parallel}$ is large}, the motion of the quasiparticles may be chaotic {after} a critical surface as they are governed by an effective inverted oscillator potential induced by the mismatch between the type-I and type-II Weyl nodes. In a relevant lattice model, we calculate out of time ordered correlators (OTOCs). We find that the OTOCs are fast scrambling with a quantum Lyapunov exponent in high temperature and the scrambling is saturated after the Ehrenfest time. This confirms the quantum chaotic behavior.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2020

Photon Emission Near Myers-Perry Black Holes in the Large Dimension Limit

We study the null geodesics extending from the near-horizon region out to the far region in the background of the Schwarzschild and the singly-spinning Myers-Perry black holes in the large dimension limit. We find that in this limit the radial integrals of these geodesics can be obtained by using the method of matched asymptotic expansions. If the motion of the photon is confined to the equator plane, then all geodesic equations are solvable analytically. The study in this paper may provide a toy model to analyze the observables relevant to the electromagnetic phenomena occurring near the black holes.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2019

30% Reach Increase via Low-complexity Hybrid HD/SD FEC and Nonlinearity-tolerant 4D Modulation

Current optical coherent transponders technology is driving data rates towards 1 Tb/s/λand beyond. This trend requires both high-performance coded modulation schemes and efficient implementation of the forward-error-correction (FEC) decoder. A possible solution to this problem is combining advanced multidimensional modulation formats with low-complexity hybrid HD/SD FEC decoders. Following this rationale, in this paper we combine two recently introduced coded modulation techniques:the geometrically-shaped 4D-64 polarization ring-switched and the soft-aided bit-marking-scaled reliability decoder. This joint scheme enabled us to experimentally demonstrate the transmission of 11x218 Gbit/s channels over transatlantic distances at 5.2bit/4D-sym. Furthermore, a 30% reach increase is demonstrated over PM-8QAM and conventional HD-FEC decoding for product codes.

eess.SP↗
arXiv2019

Pressure-induced superconductivity in topological type II Dirac semimetal NiTe2

Very recently, NiTe2 has been reported to be a type II Dirac semimetal with Dirac nodes near the Fermi surface. Furthermore, it is unveiled that NiTe2 presents the Hall Effect, which is ascribed to orbital magnetoresistance. The physical properties behavior of NiTe2 under high pressure attracts us. In this paper, we investigate the electrical properties of polycrystalline NiTe2 by application of pressure ranging from 3.4GPa to 54.45Gpa. Superconductivity emerges at critical pressure 12GPa with a transition temperature of 3.7K, and Tc reaches its maximum, 6.4 K, at the pressure of 52.8GPa. Comparing with the superconductivity in MoP, we purposed the possibility of topological superconductivity in NiTe2. Two superconductivity transitions are observed with pressure increasing in single crystal.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2019

Complexity-Adjustable SC Decoding of Polar Codes for Energy Consumption Reduction

This paper proposes an enhanced list-aided successive cancellation stack (ELSCS) decoding algorithm with adjustable decoding complexity. In addition, a logarithmic likelihood ratio (LLR)-threshold based path extension scheme is designed to further reduce the memory consumption of stack decoding. Numerical simulation results show that without affecting the error correction performance, the proposed ELSCS decoding algorithm provides a flexible tradeoff between time complexity and computational complexity, while reducing storage space up to $70\%$. Based on the fact that most mobile devices operate in environments with stringent energy budget to support diverse applications, the proposed scheme is a promising candidate for meeting requirements of different applications while maintaining a low computational complexity and computing resource utilization.

cs.IT↗