arXiv subjects

Cong Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Cong Wang.

At least 397 records · Page 22Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

LightBox: Full-stack Protected Stateful Middlebox at Lightning Speed

Running off-site software middleboxes at third-party service providers has been a popular practice. However, routing large volumes of raw traffic, which may carry sensitive information, to a remote site for processing raises severe security concerns. Prior solutions often abstract away important factors pertinent to real-world deployment. In particular, they overlook the significance of metadata protection and stateful processing. Unprotected traffic metadata like low-level headers, size and count, can be exploited to learn supposedly encrypted application contents. Meanwhile, tracking the states of 100,000s of flows concurrently is often indispensable in production-level middleboxes deployed at real networks. We present LightBox, the first system that can drive off-site middleboxes at near-native speed with stateful processing and the most comprehensive protection to date. Built upon commodity trusted hardware, Intel SGX, LightBox is the product of our systematic investigation of how to overcome the inherent limitations of secure enclaves using domain knowledge and customization. First, we introduce an elegant virtual network interface that allows convenient access to fully protected packets at line rate without leaving the enclave, as if from the trusted source network. Second, we provide complete flow state management for efficient stateful processing, by tailoring a set of data structures and algorithms optimized for the highly constrained enclave space. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that LightBox, with all security benefits, can achieve 10Gbps packet I/O, and that with case studies on three stateful middleboxes, it can operate at near-native speed.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

Augmenting Encrypted Search: A Decentralized Service Realization with Enforced Execution

Searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) allows the data owner to outsource an encrypted database to a remote server in a private manner while maintaining the ability for selectively search. So far, most existing solutions focus on an honest-but-curious server, while security designs against a malicious server have not drawn enough attention. A few recent works have attempted to construct verifiable SSE that enables the data owner to verify the integrity of search results. Nevertheless, these verification mechanisms are highly dependent on specific SSE schemes, and fail to support complex queries. A general verification mechanism is desired that can be applied to all SSE schemes. In this work, instead of concentrating on a central server, we explore the potential of the smart contract, an emerging blockchain-based decentralized technology, and construct decentralized SSE schemes where the data owner can receive correct search results with assurance without worrying about potential wrongdoings of a malicious server. We study both public and private blockchain environments and propose two designs with a trade-off between security and efficiency. To better support practical applications, the multi-user setting of SSE is further investigated where the data owner allows authenticated users to search keywords in shared documents. We implement prototypes of our two designs and present experiments and evaluations to demonstrate the practicability of our decentralized SSE schemes.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

VeriML: Enabling Integrity Assurances and Fair Payments for Machine Learning as a Service

Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) allows clients with limited resources to outsource their expensive ML tasks to powerful servers. Despite the huge benefits, current MLaaS solutions still lack strong assurances on: 1) service correctness (i.e., whether the MLaaS works as expected); 2) trustworthy accounting (i.e., whether the bill for the MLaaS resource consumption is correctly accounted); 3) fair payment (i.e., whether a client gets the entire MLaaS result before making the payment). Without these assurances, unfaithful service providers can return improperly-executed ML task results or partially trained ML models while asking for over-claimed rewards. Moreover, it is hard to argue for wide adoption of MLaaS to both the client and the service provider, especially in the open market without a trusted third party. In this paper, we present VeriML, a novel and efficient framework to bring integrity assurances and fair payments to MLaaS. With VeriML, clients can be assured that ML tasks are correctly executed on an untrusted server and the resource consumption claimed by the service provider equals to the actual workload. We strategically use succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARK) on randomly-selected iterations during the ML training phase for efficiency with tunable probabilistic assurance. We also develop multiple ML-specific optimizations to the arithmetic circuit required by SNARK. Our system implements six common algorithms: linear regression, logistic regression, neural network, support vector machine, Kmeans and decision tree. The experimental results have validated the practical performance of VeriML.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

Twist-3 contributions to $γγ\rightarrowπ^+π^-,K^+K^-$ processes in perturbative QCD approach

As one of the simplest hadronic processes, $γγ\rightarrow M^{+}M^{-}$ ($M=π,K$) could be a good testing ground for our understanding of the perturbative and nonperturbative structure of QCD, and will be studied with high precision at BELLE-\RNum{2} in the near future. In this paper, we revisit these processes with twist-3 corrections in the perturbative QCD approach based on the $k_{T}$ factorization theorem, in which transverse degrees of freedom as well as resummation effects are taken into account. The influence of the distribution amplitudes on the cross sections are discussed in detail. Our work shows that not only the transverse momentum effects but also the twist-3 corrections play a significant role in the processes $γγ\rightarrow M^{+}M^{-}$ in the intermediate energy region. Especially in the few GeV region, the twist-3 contributions become dominant in the cross sections. And it is noteworthy that both the twist-3 result of the $π^{+}π^{-}$ cross section and that of the $K^{+}K^{-}$ cross section agree well with the BELLE and ALEPH measurements. For the pion and kaon angular distributions, there still exist discrepancies between our results and the experimental measurements. Possible reasons for these discrepancies are discussed briefly.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Hour-scale persistent negative anomaly of atmospheric electrostatic field near the epicenter before earthquake

Although earthquake prediction is a big challenge in the world, some simple observational tools can capture many physical signals and demonstrate that an earthquake (EQ) may be forthcoming in short period. Many researchers have studied the significant variation of atmospheric electrostatic field related to the forthcoming earthquake. However, until now, there is not a compelling physical mechanism which can explain why atmospheric electrostatic abnormal signal could appear just before an earthquake. Here we present a precursor signal and propose a brief physical interpretation. Under fair air conditions, if the near-surface atmospheric electrostatic field Ez (oriented down when it is positive) presents a very stable negative anomaly (from -100 V/m to -5000 V/m), it will forebode that an earthquake (seismicity from 3-8) would take place in the next several to tens of hours within a distance less than 100 km. We name this prediction technique as "DC Ez Determination"(DED). In addition, the mechanism of such abnormal quasi-static electric field before a forthcoming earthquake has been proposed here: (1) Radon gas releases from the rock clefts near the epicenter during seismogenic process. (2) α particles are produced due to the radioactive decay of Radon gas in the air. (3) α particle ionizing radiation creates more positive particles in the air, which is much more effective than that β and γ particles produced during Radon radioactive decay. (4) The new positive particles change formal positive atmospheric electric field (Ez) into stably negative near the earth-surface. (5) The closer the instrument is to the epicenter, the more likely it is to observe the negative Ez signal related to the earthquake. It is recommended to establish an instrument network to capture the reliable precursor and make some warnings before the earthquake disaster.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2019

Hierarchical Clustering Supported by Reciprocal Nearest Neighbors

Clustering is a fundamental analysis tool aiming at classifying data points into groups based on their similarity or distance. It has found successful applications in all natural and social sciences, including biology, physics, economics, chemistry, astronomy, psychology, and so on. Among numerous existent algorithms, hierarchical clustering algorithms are of a particular advantage as they can provide results under different resolutions without any predetermined number of clusters and unfold the organization of resulted clusters. At the same time, they suffer a variety of drawbacks and thus are either time-consuming or inaccurate. We propose a novel hierarchical clustering approach on the basis of a simple hypothesis that two reciprocal nearest data points should be grouped in one cluster. Extensive tests on data sets across multiple domains show that our method is much faster and more accurate than the state-of-the-art benchmarks. We further extend our method to deal with the community detection problem in real networks, achieving remarkably better results in comparison with the well-known Girvan-Newman algorithm.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2019

Domain wall pinning and hard magnetic phase in Co-doped bulk single crystalline Fe3GeTe2

We report the effects of cobalt doping on the magnetic properties of two-dimensional van der Waals ferromagnet Fe3GeTe2. Single crystals of (Fe{1-x}Cox)3GeTe2 with x=0-0.78 were successfully synthesized and characterized with x-ray diffraction, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and magnetization measurements. Both the Curie-Weiss temperature and ferromagnetic (FM) ordered moment of Fe3GeTe2 are gradually suppressed upon Co doping. A kink in zero-field-cooling low field M(T) curve which is previously explained as an antiferromagnetic transition is observed for samples with x=0-0.58. Our detailed magnetization measurements and theoretical calculations strongly suggest that this kink is originated from the pinning of magnetic domain walls. The domain pinning effects are suddenly enhanced when the doping concentration of cobalt is around 50%, both the coercive field Hc and the magnetic remanence to saturated magnetization ratio MR/MS are largely improved and a hard magnetic phase emerges in bulk single crystal samples. The strong doping dependent magnetic properties suggest more spintronic applications of Fe3GeTe2.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Symmetrical Reality: Toward a Unified Framework for Physical and Virtual Reality

In this paper, we review the background of physical reality, virtual reality, and some traditional mixed forms of them. Based on the current knowledge, we propose a new unified concept called symmetrical reality to describe the physical and virtual world in a unified perspective. Under the framework of symmetrical reality, the traditional virtual reality, augmented reality, inverse virtual reality, and inverse augmented reality can be interpreted using a unified presentation. We analyze the characteristics of symmetrical reality from two different observation locations (i.e., from the physical world and from the virtual world), where all other forms of physical and virtual reality can be treated as special cases of symmetrical reality.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2019

A family of high-temperature ferromagnetic monolayers with locked spin-dichroism-mobility anisotropy: MnNX and CrCX (X=Cl, Br, I; C=S, Se, Te)

Two-dimensional magnets have received increasing attention since Cr2Ge2Te6 and CrI3 were experimentally exfoliated and measured in 2017. Although layered ferromagnetic metals were demonstrated at room temperature, a layered ferromagnetic semiconductor with high Curie temperature (Tc) is yet to be unveiled. Here, we theoretically predicted a family of high Tc ferromagnetic monolayers, namely MnNX and CrCX (X=Cl, Br and I; C=S, Se and Te). Their Tc values were predicted from over 100 K to near 500 K with Monte Carlo simulations using an anisotropic Heisenberg model. Eight members among them show semiconducting bandgaps varying from roughly 0.23 to 1.85 eV. These semiconducting monolayers also show extremely large anisotropy, i.e. ~101 for effective masses and ~102 for carrier mobilities, along the two in-plane lattice directions of these layers. Additional orbital anisotropy leads to a spin-locked linear dichroism, in different from previously known circular and linear dichroisms in layered materials. Together with the mobility anisotropy, it offers a spin-, dichroism- and mobility-anisotropy locking. These results manifest the potential of this 2D family for both fundamental research and high performance spin-dependent electronic and optoelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Stacking tunable interlayer magnetism in bilayer CrI3

Diverse interlayer tunability of physical properties of two-dimensional layers mostly lies in the covalent-like quasi-bonding that is significant in electronic structures but rather weak for energetics. Such characteristics result in various stacking orders that are energetically comparable but may significantly differ in terms of electronic structures, e.g. magnetism. Inspired by several recent experiments showing interlayer anti-ferromagnetically coupled CrI3 bilayers, we carried out first-principles calculations for CrI3 bilayers. We found that the anti-ferromagnetic coupling results from a new stacking order with the C2/m space group symmetry, rather than the graphene-like one with R3 as previously believed. Moreover, we demonstrated that the intra- and inter-layer couplings in CrI3 bilayer are governed by two different mechanisms, namely ferromagnetic super-exchange and direct-exchange interactions, which are largely decoupled because of their significant difference in strength at the strong- and weak-interaction limits. This allows the much weaker interlayer magnetic coupling to be more feasibly tuned by stacking orders solely. Given the fact that interlayer magnetic properties can be altered by changing crystal structure with different stacking orders, our work opens a new paradigm for tuning interlayer magnetic properties with the freedom of stacking order in two dimensional layered materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Exploring Stereovision-Based 3-D Scene Reconstruction for Augmented Reality

Three-dimensional (3-D) scene reconstruction is one of the key techniques in Augmented Reality (AR), which is related to the integration of image processing and display systems of complex information. Stereo matching is a computer vision based approach for 3-D scene reconstruction. In this paper, we explore an improved stereo matching network, SLED-Net, in which a Single Long Encoder-Decoder is proposed to replace the stacked hourglass network in PSM-Net for better contextual information learning. We compare SLED-Net to state-of-the-art methods recently published, and demonstrate its superior performance on Scene Flow and KITTI2015 test sets.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

Record-high photocatalytic rate at single atomic metal oxide

Metal oxides have been extensively investigated and applied in environmental remediation and protection, energy conversion and storage. Most of these diverse applications are results of a large diversity of the electronic states of metal oxides. Noticeably, however, numerous metal oxides have obstacles for applications in catalysis because of low density of active sites in these materials. Size reduction of oxide catalyst is a strategy to improve the active site density. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of single atomic metal oxide in which the oxide size reaches its minimum. However, the catalytic mechanism in this SATO is determined by a quasi atom physics which is fundamentally distinct from the traditional size effect, and also is in contrast to the standard condensed matter physics. SATO results in a record high and stable sunlight photocatalytic degradation rate of 0.24, which exceeds those of available photocatalysis by approximately two orders of magnitude. The photocatalytic process is enabled by a quasi atom physical mechanism, in which, an electron in the spin up channel is excited from HOMO to LUMO+1 state, which can only occur in SATO with W5+.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

S-type Negative Differential Resistance in Semiconducting Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides

Current-controlled (also known as "S-type") negative differential resistance (NDR) is of crucial importance to many emerging applications including neuromorphic computing and high-density memristors integration. However, the experimental realization of S-type NDR based on conventional mechanisms poses demanding requirements on materials, which greatly limits their potential applications. Here, we experimentally identify that semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) can host a bipolar S-type NDR devices. Theoretical simulations indicate that the origin of the NDR in these devices arises from a thermal feedback mechanism. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential applications of TMDs based S-type NDR device in signal processing and neuromorphic electronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Self-energy effects and energy band theory for warm dense matter

The energy band structures caused by self-energy shifting that results in bound energy levels broadening and merging in warm dense aluminum and beryllium are observed. An energy band theory for warm dense matter (WDM) is proposed and a new code based on the energy band theory is developed to improve the traditional density functional method. Massive data of the equation of state and transport coefficients for WDM in medium and low Z have been simulated. The transition from fully degenerate to partially degenerate (related to WDM) and finally to non-degenerate state is investigated using the Lorenz number varying with the degeneracy parameter, and the lower and upper parameter boundaries for WDM are achieved. It is shown that the pressure ionization results in the Wiedemann-Franz law no longer available for WDM.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2018

Characterizing pump line phase offset of a single-soliton Kerr comb by dual comb interferometry

We experimentally demonstrate phase retrieval of a single-soliton Kerr comb using electric field cross-correlation implemented via dual-comb interferometry. The phase profile of the Kerr comb is acquired through the heterodyne beat between the Kerr comb and a reference electro-optical comb with a pre-characterized phase profile. The soliton Kerr comb has a nearly flat phase profile, and the pump line is observed to show a phase offset which depends on the pumping parameters. The experimental results are in agreement with numerical simulations. Our all-linear approach enables rapid measurements (3.2 $μ$s) with low input power (20 $μ$W).

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

A Polynomial-Time Method for Testing Admissibility of Uncertain Power Injections in Microgrids

We study the admissibility of power injections in single-phase microgrids, where the electrical state is represented by complex nodal voltages and controlled by nodal power injections. Assume that (i) there is an initial electrical state that satisfies security constraints and the non-singularity of load-flow Jacobian, and (ii) power injections reside in some uncertainty set. We say that the uncertainty set is admissible for the initial electrical state if any continuous trajectory of the electrical state is ensured to be secured and non-singular as long as power injections remain in the uncertainty set. We use the recently proposed V-control and show two new results. First, if a complex nodal voltage set V is convex and every element in V is nonsingular, then V is a domain of uniqueness. Second, we give sufficient conditions to guarantee that every element in some power injection set S has a load-flow solution in V, based on impossibility of obtaining load-flow solutions at the boundary of V. By these results, we develop a framework for the admissibility-test method; this framework is extensible to multi-phase grids. Within the framework, we establish a polynomial-time method, using the infeasibility check of convex optimizations. The method is evaluated numerically.

math.OC↗

arXiv2018

Two ultra-stable novel allotropes of Tellurium few-layers

At least four two- or quasi-one- dimensional allotropes and a mixture of them were theoretically predicted or experimentally observed for low-dimensional Te, namely the α, \b{eta}, γ, δ and chiral-α+δ phases. Among them the γ and α phases were found the most stable phases for monolayer and thicker layers, respectively. Here, we found two novel low-dimensional phases, namely the ε and ζ phases. The ζ phase is over 29 meV/Te more stable than and the ε phase shows comparable stability with the most stable monolayer γ phase. The energetic difference between the ζ and α phases reduces with respect to the increased layer thickness and vanishes at the four-layer (12-sublayer) thickness, while this thickness increases under change doping. Both ε and ζ phases are metallic chains and layers, respectively. The ζ phase, with very strong interlayer coupling, shows quantum well states in its layer-dependent bandstructures. These results provide significantly insight into the understanding of polytypism in Te few-layers and may boost tremendous studies on properties of various few-layer phases.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Significant low lattice thermal conductivity and potential high thermoelectric figure of merit in Na$_2$MgSn

Thermoelectric materials enables the harvest of waste heat and directly conversion into electricity. In search of high efficient thermoelectric materials, low thermal conductivity of a material is essential and critical. Here, we have theoretically investigated the lattice thermal conductivity and thermoelectric properties of layered intermetallic Na$_2$MgSn and Na$_2$MgPb based on the density functional theory and linearized Boltzmann equation with the single-mode relaxation-time approximation. It is found that both materials exhibit very low and anisotropic intrinsic lattice thermal conductivity. Despite of the very low mass density and simple crystal structure of Na$_2$MgSn, its lattice thermal conductivities along $a$ and $c$ axes are only 1.75 and 0.80 W/m$\cdot$K respectively at room temperatures. When Sn is replaced by the heavier element Pb, its lattice thermal conductivities decrease remarkably to 0.51 and 0.31 W/m$\cdot$K respectively along $a$ and $c$ axes at room temperatures. We show that the low lattice thermal conductivities of both materials are mainly due to their very short phonon lifetimes, which are roughly between 0.4 to 4.5 ps. Combined with previous experimental measurements, the metallic Na$_2$MgPb can not be a good thermoelectric material. However, we predict that the semiconducting Na$_2$MgSn is a potential room-temperature thermoelectric material with a considerable $ZT$ of 0.34 at 300 K. Our calculations not only imply that the intermetallic Na$_2$MgSn is a potential thermoelectric material, but also can motivate more theoretical and experimental works on the thermoelectric researches in simple layered intermetallic compounds.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗